CHAPTER FIVE

      THERE WAS NEVER going to be a perfect time to ask Jared, Bailey knew, and she certainly wasn’t going to ring him outside office hours to talk it through with him. But once the next training session with the team was under way and she was seated on the bench next to him, she turned to him.

      ‘Can I ask you for some professional advice—something that’s a bit personal?’

      He looked completely taken aback. ‘Why?’

      She’d known before she asked that this was going to be difficult; Jared had never talked to her about his injury. But he was the only one who might be able to help. ‘I have a patient, a teenage female tennis player. She landed awkwardly from hitting a ball.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘She, um, has a complete tear to her ACL.’

      He went very, very still and guilt flooded through her.

      ‘I know I’m being intrusive,’ she said, ‘and I apologise for that. I really don’t mean to dredge up bad memories for you about your own injury. And, yes, I did look you up, so I know what happened. I could hardly ask you, could I?’

      ‘I guess not.’

      Talk about inscrutable. Jared’s voice and his face were completely expressionless, so she had absolutely no idea how he was feeling right now. Worrying that she was risking their newfound truce, but wanting to get some real help for her patient, she said, ‘The reason I’m asking you is because when it happened you were about the same age as she is now, so you know how it feels. Her dad’s really supportive and he’s trying to get her to rest her knee sensibly so she’ll recover well from the operation, but she’s distraught at the idea that she’s going to lose a lot of ground over the next year. So I guess what I’m asking you is if there’s anything I can tell her to help her deal with it a bit better.’

      For a moment she thought Jared was going to blank her, but then he blew out a breath. ‘That really depends on whether she’s going to recover fully or not.’

      Clearly he hadn’t recovered fully enough to be able to resume his sports career. But she knew that if she tried to give him a hug—out of empathy rather than pity—he’d push her away, both literally and figuratively. So she kept the topic to a discussion about her patient. ‘I think there’s a very good chance she’ll recover fully. The surgeon’s brilliant,’ Bailey said.

      ‘Good.’

      A complete tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. Jared knew exactly how that felt. Like the end of the world. When all your dreams had suddenly exploded and there wasn’t any meaning in your life any more. You couldn’t do the one thing you knew you were really good at—the thing you were born to do. In a few moments it was all gone.

      At seventeen, it had destroyed him. Knowing that his knee wouldn’t hold up in the future—that if he played again he was likely to do more damage to his knee and eventually he’d be left with a permanent limp. Knowing that he’d never play for his country again. He’d been so sure that nothing would ever be that good for the rest of his life.

      Although it hadn’t actually turned out that way. He enjoyed his job, and he was still involved with the game he loved.

      He blew out a breath. ‘It’s a lot to deal with. Especially at that age. Tell her to take it one day at a time, and to find someone she can talk to. Someone who won’t let her wallow in self-pity and will talk her into being sensible.’ He’d been so, so lucky that the team’s deputy coach had been brilliant with him. He’d let Jared rant and rave, and then told him to look at his options, because there most definitely would be something he could do.

      What goes around comes around. It was time to pass on that same advice now. ‘Tell her there will be something else. At first it’ll feel like second best, but she’ll find something else she loves as much. Even if it doesn’t look like it right now.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Bailey said quietly. ‘I appreciate it—and I’m sorry I brought back bad memories. That really wasn’t my intention.’

      He shrugged again. ‘It was a long time ago.’

      She said nothing, simply waited, and he was surprised to find himself filling in the gap. ‘At the time, it was bad,’ he admitted. ‘I wanted someone to blame for the end of my dreams—but I always knew that the tackle wasn’t deliberate. It was just something that went wrong and it could’ve happened to anyone. The guy who tackled me felt as guilty as hell about it, but it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just an accident. Wrong time, wrong place.’ He paused. ‘And I found something else to do.’

      ‘Did you think about coaching?’ She put a hand across her mouth. ‘Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.’

      He liked the fact that she wasn’t pressuring him. There was no malice in Bailey Randall. She just wanted to help her patient, and he’d had first-hand experience of what her patient was going through right now. Of course she’d want to know how he’d coped. ‘I thought about it,’ he said. ‘Though I knew I was too young to be taken seriously when my knee was wrecked. At seventeen, you don’t really have enough experience to coach a team.’

      ‘So why did you choose medicine? That’s—well, a huge change of direction.’

      ‘My family are all GPs,’ he said. ‘I’d always thought I’d join them. I guess it was a surprise to everyone when I was spotted on the playing field at school and the local team took me on for training.’ He shrugged. ‘Then I had to make a choice. Risk trying for a career in football, or do my A-levels. My parents said to give it a go—I could always take my A-levels later if it didn’t work out. And when I was picked for the England squad … they threw one hell of a party.’

      He smiled at the memory. ‘When my knee went, it hit me pretty hard. But I was lucky in a way, in that I could fall back on my original plans—I just took my A-levels two years later than I would’ve done if I hadn’t tried for a career in sport.’

      ‘So you trained as a GP?’ she asked.

      ‘No. I ended up training in emergency medicine,’ he said. ‘I liked the buzz. Then, like you, I had a secondment to a sports medicine department. And then it occurred to me that I could have the best of both worlds—I could be a doctor in the sport I’d always loved.’

      ‘That’s a good compromise,’ she said.

      Again, to his surprise, he found himself asking questions and actually wanting to know the answers rather than being polite. ‘What about you? Is your family in medicine?’

      ‘No—my family has a restaurant. Mum’s the head chef, Dad’s front of house and my brothers are both kitchen serfs.’ At Jared’s raised eyebrows, she added swiftly, ‘Joke. Gio is Mum’s deputy—he’s going to take over when she retires. And Rob’s probably the best pastry chef in the universe and he makes the most amazing wedding cakes. They’re planning to expand the business that way, too.’

      ‘Didn’t your parents expect you to join the family firm?’

      She shook her head. ‘Mum and Dad always said that we should follow our hearts and do what we love, and that they’d back us whatever we decided. Rob and Gio were always in the kitchen making stuff, so it was obvious what they wanted to do. And I was always bandaging my teddies when I was a toddler.’ She grinned. ‘And the dog, if I could get him to sit still.’

      He could just imagine that. He’d bet she’d been the most determined and stubborn toddler ever. ‘A