Free First Sight by Danielle Steel Page B

The powerful woman others saw, who ran an empire so successfully, had nothing to do with the one he had seen that night. The woman he had seen had wounds in her soul that tore at his heart. He was still thinking about her as he drove home, and watched the sun come up over Paris.
    In the hospital in Neuilly, Timmie was lost in the arms of a deep, peaceful sleep. Without even knowing it, Jean-Charles Vernier had kept all the old demons of her past from engulfing her that night. And all he knew was that without knowing why, he had seen them in her eyes.

Chapter 3
    Timmie was lying in her bed the day after her surgery, looking out the window, when Jean-Charles Vernier walked into the room. He was wearing his white coat, with a stethoscope around his neck. He had patients to see at his other hospital, and had visited them first, before coming to see her at the American Hospital in Neuilly. When he arrived, he had checked her chart and spoken to the nurses earlier, and knew that all was going well. They had told him she was still asleep, but had been awake that morning, was fully alert, and had taken very little pain medicine and he was pleased. She was still on heavy doses of IV antibiotics, to combat the infection from toxins released into her system, but he thought they had remedied the situation quickly after her appendix ruptured. And although it had been painful and frightening for her, she had actually been very lucky. It could have been a lot worse. After observing her closely for the next several days, he was sure they would be able to send her back to the hotel. He was anxious to check on her himself, and was smiling when he walked into the room. Since he had seen all his other patients, he could spend whatever time he needed with her without rushing. He saw that she looked tired, but far better than he anticipated after her ordeal the night before.
    “Well, Timmie, how are you feeling today?” he asked in his heavily accented English, with his blue eyes observing her intently. She smiled when she heard him use her first name. She had half-expected him to revert to Madame O’Neill again, now that the crisis was over. She liked hearing him say Timmie. He made it sound very French.
    “I feel a lot better than I did last night,” she said with a shy smile. She was sore, and the incision hurt, but even that was less acute than the searing pain she’d had the night before.
    “You were very lucky things did not get very much worse,” he said as he sat down on the chair next to her bed, and then turned to ask her politely for permission. “May I?” He was formal, and yet at the same time warm, and she still remembered his holding her hand when she was terrified before the anesthetic. He had never let go of her hand once. And she saw the same kindness now in his eyes.
    “Of course,” she said about his sitting down. “Thank you for being nice to me last night,” she said shyly, her green eyes meeting his intense blue ones. They were both remembering his holding her hand. “I get very scared sometimes,” she admitted hesitantly. “It’s a lot of old stuff from my childhood that creeps up on me, and when I feel frightened, suddenly I’m five years old again. I felt that way when I got to the hospital, and I really appreciate that you were there, and stayed with me.” Her voice drifted off as she looked at him, and then she glanced away, as he watched her quietly from the chair. She was embarrassed to admit to him how vulnerable she felt at times.
    “What happened when you were five years old?” he asked cautiously. He wasn’t asking entirely as her physician, but he had seen something so raw and terrified in her that he had instantly seen an old trauma that was overwhelming her. It was hard to imagine what it was, although frightening things happened to children sometimes, which then pursued them for a lifetime, even as adults.
    “My parents died when I was five,” she said quietly. She didn’t speak again