Miracle by Deborah Smith

on his shoulder. When he began to stroke her hair she cried out and, with the quick, deadly adoration of the inexperienced, kissed him on one corner of the lips. He shivered as if he’d never been kissed before and knew that he had to move away from her immediately or forget common sense.
    “I didn’t mean to make you mad,” she said in a small voice, when he was standing across the courtyard staring into the stars above its whitewashed brick walls.
    He twisted around and straightened formally. It was time to stop their charade of togetherness. “This Friday is my last day at the hospital. I could have left a month ago; my fellowship ended officially in June. But I stayed because I had no interest in taking a month’s holiday before I left the United States.” He paused, watching her eyes widen with understanding. “A week from this Friday I’m leaving for Africa, to work in a hospital there. And I won’t be back.”
    After a stunned moment she bent her head. Her hands knotted against the cool gray material of the lounge cushion. “You think I was expectin’ you to keep takin’ care of me? Is that why you’re telling me this?”
    “Yes.”
    She lifted her head and looked at him. Tears slid down her cheeks, but her eyes were angry. “I’m not stupid. I know how to love somebody without thinkin’ that they’re gonna love me back.”
    Sebastien studied her. She would have made a fine surgeon; she knew how to cut to the heart of the matter. His brilliant logic deserted him; her scalpel had excisedrational thought. “You’re very wise, then,” he told her finally. “That’s the best way to love.”
    “No, it’s not, but it’s all I’ve been able to manage so far.”
    “You may find as you grow older that you prefer your relationships to be one-sided—in your favor, of course. They’re much simpler that way.”
    “No, no.” She scrubbed tears from her bruised face and winced. “It’s sad to live like that.” Vaulting to her feet, her control fleeing, she said, “Good night.”
    “Good night,” he told her grimly. Confusion and self-rebuke were not emotions he liked to feel.
    She gazed at him, her expression stern. “Don’t you ever get hurt?” He nodded. Her hand rose carefully, and one fingertip traced the scar under his chin. “Before you leave maybe you’ll tell me how you got this,” she murmured. “You and me are sort of a matched pair, now. I feel sorry for us both.”
    He stayed on the balcony for a long time after she went to bed, his emotions in chaos. A reckless voice whispered,
Take her with you. Teach her everything you know. Let her teach you everything you’ve forgotten
.
    Lifting his fingers to his scar, he cursed.
No
, Sebastien thought with bitter resolve. What a fool he was for involving himself with Amy, a vulnerable young woman who would never fit into his world. He would not become his father, ruthless and selfish, ready to ruin a life just to satisfy a moment’s whim. He would not be doomed to watch the magic die again.

    He was ten years old, and his life was wonderful. “Maman!” he called in an imperious tone. He was important and well loved, and he knew it. “I want you to go skiing this afternoon! Antoine and Bridgette and I are going to teach you!”
    His mother turned from the astrology chart that she had spread across a handsomely carved desk. Behind her a large window gave her a Renaissance halo of sunshine. The snow-draped Alps rose craggy and majestic in the distance. Snow crowded the window ledge outside, and farbeyond stood the white winter forest. Sebastien had never seen anything more beautiful than his dark-haired mother posed before the window.
    She smoothed a hand down her plain white sweater, pausing for a second to touch a gold crucifix on a thick chain. Her fingers also brushed across the tokens of her most important saints—more than a dozen of them—spaced along the links of a second gold necklace. Then she tugged the hem of her navy