The Doctor She'd Never Forget

‘I’m not Miss Warner’s doctor. I’m not going to guess at a diagnosis and I’m not going to report back to you on anything. If I have any concerns, I’ll speak only to her about them and advise she gets proper medical help.’

‘Just advising isn’t going to get you anywhere. Do you plan on being a bit more assertive than that…?’

Carly’s gaze met his and Drew held it for a moment. ‘What do you think? Do I seem assertive enough to you?’

‘Yeah. You do.’ She stretched her hand out towards Drew. ‘We have a deal, then?’

CHAPTER TWO

THE NEGOTIATIONS HADN’T quite finished there. Drew had insisted that a week was quite enough for them both to see whether or not the arrangement would work. For her part, Carly had vetoed his intention of returning to London the following day to pack for the week and suggested he let Charlie throw some things into a bag for him, for the set runners to collect. When he’d acquiesced, Carly had produced a contract, written in the dates by hand, and given it to Drew.

Armed with four hours’ sleep, and the knowledge that he might well have signed away his sanity for the next week, Drew was on the bus with a sleepy film crew at six the following morning. Carly had told him to consider today as an orientation exercise, and Drew was more than content to maintain a watching brief.

‘Five dollars on ten o’clock.’ An American accent sounded from the seat behind him.

‘I’m not taking dollars. I’ll give you three quid that it’s closer to eleven.’ A woman’s voice this time, speaking in a laughing, London drawl.

‘You’re on.’ Silence for a moment and then a chuckle. ‘C’mon, Madame Sophie. If you get outta that bed now, Dawn’ll have to buy me coffee.’

‘In your dreams. She’ll have to disentangle herself from last night’s waiter and wait for the uppers to kick in.’ Dawn yawned loudly. ‘It’s not fair…’

‘You had your eye on a night of passion with one of the waiters, did you?’

‘No.’ Dawn scoffed at the idea. ‘If we turned up four hours late we’d get the sack. She does it, and Joel’s all over her, grateful that she’s made it at all.’

‘She’s the star. We can be replaced, she can’t.’

‘True enough. Though we’ve still careers when this job is finished. I’d like to be a fly on the wall when she tries for her next part.’

Drew stared straight in front of him. If this was true, then Sophie Warner was more of a nightmare than he’d reckoned. If not… The remote chance that Carly was right suddenly seemed worth taking. If Sophie was sick, and she continued to keep quiet about it, then things were only going to get worse.

The bus drew into a cluster of vehicles parked at the end of what looked like the main street of a small village.

‘Looks as if you owe me that coffee, Dawn…’ Drew couldn’t help but look out of the window, in response to the voice behind him. ‘She’s here already.’

‘Yeah, she’s not going to be ready for a while. Look, she’s on her way to her trailer. What’s the betting she’ll stay in there for another four hours?’

Drew saw Carly walking towards a group of trailers with another woman. Small and blonde, almost swamped in the large mackintosh she was wearing against the morning’s chill air. They disappeared in between two of the vehicles and he craned his neck to see where they’d gone but he couldn’t.

The set began to come alive for the day, and Drew maintained his watching brief. Before long, a concentrated buzz of movement centred around the main street of the village, which was a meticulous re-creation of wartime England. Further out, people in period costume mingled with the crew, almost as if the scene was dissolving, melting back into the present day.

From his vantage point, sitting in a fold-up chair at the edge of the activity, Drew suddenly saw a blonde head at the centre of it all, around which the whole shebang seemed suddenly to revolve. He looked at his watch. Eight-thirty. It looked as if Dawn was going to be paying for coffee today.

At lunchtime, the privileged few made for the group of trailers, and everyone else made a rush for the catering truck. Drew decided to wait until the scrum had died down a bit and flipped open the pages of his book.

‘Hello.’ Someone interrupted his reading, and Drew turned into the gaze of the greenest pair of eyes he’d ever seen. Shiny blonde hair, pinned in a wavy arrangement that was reminiscent of his grandmother’s, but to quite a different effect. A dark skirt and a white blouse, under a lacy hand-knitted sweater.

‘Sophie Warner.’ She was looking at him as if he was a mere diversion, in the absence of anyone more interesting to talk to. ‘You’re the new medical consultant.’

Now that she wasn’t half-obscured by distance and the milling entourage of people, he recognised her face from somewhere. Probably the TV, when he’d thought he’d only been half watching it. But he couldn’t have been watching at all because it hadn’t registered that she was gorgeous.

Drew smiled at her. Despite her obvious indifference to him, it was surprisingly easy to do. ‘That’s right. Drew Taylor.’

She nodded, as if there wasn’t much more to say. Drew stood, and pulled an empty chair across the grass for her and she looked at it uncertainly and then sat down.

‘Nice to meet you… um…’

‘Drew.’

She gave a little nod. ‘I’m not very good with names.’

Clearly that was an excuse. But whether it covered a lapse in memory or profound disinterest in him, it was impossible to tell.

‘Have you been watching this morning?’

‘Yes.’ Drew gestured to the copy of the script that Carly had supplied him with. ‘You’re not filming this in the same order that it’s on the page, are you?’

‘No, we’re not. We go to one location, shoot all the scenes we need to do there, and then move on to the next.’ She gave a little shrug.

‘That sounds pretty confusing.’

Her mouth hardened suddenly. ‘I’m a professional. It’s part of the job.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ Drew had known that it would be difficult to get through to Sophie Warner. What he hadn’t expected was that he’d want to, so very much.

‘So have you worked out what the story’s about yet?’ The canvas chair creaked slightly as she settled back into her seat. Her face took on a look of composed interest, which gave Drew the distinct impression that she was doing exactly the same as he was, and prolonging the conversation in order to fish for information.

‘Your character is Dr Jean Wilson, and you work at a hospital in a seaside town. Major Alan Richards is an engineer, working on a top-secret project, building and testing a new submarine. Dr Wilson meets Major Richards when she gets involved with treating some of the men who are injured during testing.’

‘That’s right. Only it’s called a submersible. A submarine’s usually bigger and can work on its own, but a submersible needs to have an outside supply of power and air.’

‘Right. I’ll remember that.’

‘I suppose you must specialise in accident and emergency medicine.’ She hardly even acknowledged his querying look. ‘Since that’s the kind of thing we’re portraying in the film.’

A yes would have been enough. But if Drew wanted her to trust him, then it wasn’t the way forward. ‘I’m actually a neurologist, but I was a member of the hospital’s trauma team. I have plenty of experience of all kinds of injuries, so I’m well qualified to advise here.’

‘Neurology.’ It was interesting that she picked on that one word. For a moment her composure faltered and then she shot him a smile, soft enough to break the strongest man, and clearly calculated to make Drew forget what she’d just let slip. ‘It sounds important.’

‘Yeah. I’m taking a break from important at the moment.’

Her face hardened suddenly and Drew regretted the words. He hadn’t been thinking, and he’d let his prejudices show. That wasn’t going to encourage any confidence on Sophie’s part.

‘Why?’ She almost snapped the word at him.

‘The hospital where I worked closed last month. I’m taking some time to look at my options for the future.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been a painful time for you.’ Suddenly the ice cracked and the look of concern on her face seemed meltingly genuine. Drew reminded himself that Sophie was an actress. However beautiful she was, however much she made him long to make her smile, it was all an illusion.

He searched for something else to say. He didn’t want to talk about the hospital or the closure, or how much it had hurt. They were real things, and they had no place here. ‘Your English accent is very good.’

‘I should hope so. I am English.’ She waved away his apology. ‘It’s okay. A lot of people who saw me in MacAdam assume that I’m American.’

‘The TV cop show? I saw the trailers.’

She gave him an amused look. ‘Have you seen anything I’ve been in?’

‘I…’ Drew gave up the unequal struggle, remembering that his first task was to gain her trust, not impress her. ‘I haven’t had much time for TV recently, I’ve been pretty busy. Are you going to be making another series?’

‘What?’ Her sudden glassy-eyed look turned quickly into a frown.

‘Another series.’ Drew deliberately didn’t proffer any more information. If she’d lost the thread of the conversation, he wanted to see if she could pick it up again, without prompting.

‘How would I know?’ She made it sound as if this was a detail that didn’t warrant her attention.

‘I just thought you might.’

‘Well, you thought wrong.’ She’d scanned his face, as if looking for clues, and then the frown gave way to a don’t-mess-with-me glare. Sophie got abruptly to her feet and stalked away from him.

Drew watched her go. As soon as she’d put thirty yards between them her pace slowed a little, almost as if she’d calculated that she was now at a safe distance. Her angry movements gave way to a more graceful rhythm and Drew forced himself to forget the way her waist moved, and consider dispassionately whether she showed any signs of impaired co-ordination.

Nothing. She carried her beauty in a different way from Gina. Gina had known she was beautiful and had used it to wind Drew around her little finger, rock his world, and then smash it. But Sophie dealt her bewitching smiles carefully, playing her cards close to her chest. It occurred to Drew that it was a far more effective form of enchantment, and a great deal more dangerous.

She shouldn’t have done that. Snapping at him and walking away only drew attention to the fact that her mind had suddenly blanked, right in the middle of a conversation. She should have thought of something clever to say to change the subject.

Clever was a bit beyond her at the moment. But she knew enough to know that no medical scenes this morning meant they didn’t need a medical consultant, and Sophie had wanted to find out what he was really here for. And somewhere, hidden deep in those cool grey eyes, she’d found it. A spark of knowingness, as if he already knew the secret that no one else did.

‘Forget it.’ She muttered the words to herself, smiling grimly at the thought that forgetting came far too easily to her these days. People could, and would, suspect anything they pleased. If she didn’t confirm those suspicions, they were nothing but idle speculation.

Carly was sitting on the steps leading up to the door of her trailer, basking in the midday sun. ‘Where have you been, Soph?’

‘I met the doctor.’

‘Yeah? What’s he like?’

‘Good looking.’ Sophie had always liked dark hair and light eyes in a man. ‘Very good looking, actually. I don’t think he approves of us much, though.’

‘Why, because he’s a doctor? Just because your father disapproves, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all doctors disapprove.’

What followed or didn’t follow was more than Sophie could think about at the moment. And she didn’t want to think about her father either.

‘He might just be shy. He’s new here…’ Carly warmed to her point.

‘No. He’s not shy.’ Those grey eyes, the assessing gaze had been anything but that.

‘Perhaps you are, then. You said he was good looking.’ Carly shrugged, betraying a slight unease with the gesture.

‘I don’t know what he’s doing here today. There’s nothing medical in the script.’

‘Forget it. Just sit back and enjoy the scenery.’

‘You’ll enjoy it with me?’ If Carly was around, perhaps the effect of the doctor’s all-too-knowing gaze would be diluted a little.

Carly grinned. ‘Sorry. Can’t help you with that. I’ve only got one piece of male scenery on my mind, and he’s back in the States.’

‘So sweet. I’ll tell Mark you said that.’ Sophie smiled. Mark and Carly were solid, best friends, lovers… Just the sort of thing that she had dared to hope for with Josh. Everyone had told her that he was a risk, that he was a little more in love with her fame than he was with her, and Sophie had refused to believe it of him. But just when she’d been at her most vulnerable, Josh had dealt his most crushing blow.

Carly chuckled, opening the door of the trailer. Inside, the table was set for two, and lunch was waiting for them, the paper cups and plates of the catering truck banished in favour of china and glass. Sophie almost envied the altogether simpler life of rushing for a place in the queue, chatting with the film crew about the morning’s work.

‘Carly…’

‘Yes?’

Wordlessly, Sophie hugged her friend. How could it be that one secret could erode almost everything between them? She missed being able to talk to Carly about everything, but even her closest friends were an unknown quantity these days. And Sophie knew that if she said anything, Carly would only tell her what she didn’t want to hear, and insist she go for a check-up with a doctor.

‘What’s this for?’ Carly was clinging to her tightly.

‘Nothing. Does it have to be for something?’ Sophie gave a final squeeze of her arms around Carly’s shoulders and then let go. ‘Come on. Let’s eat.’

After the noise and chatter of the bus back to the hotel, Drew savoured the quiet of his hotel room for ten minutes, then opened his laptop and typed Sophie’s name into the search engine. Maybe if he could watch a couple of episodes of MacAdam online, he’d get more of a feel for how Sophie had been before the accident. He wasn’t convinced about that—after all she was an actress, playing a part—but he’d be damned if he’d admit to himself that he just wanted to see more of her.

It seemed that the internet knew all about Sophie. Her own website had pictures, a biography and a list of her acting roles, and Drew studied them carefully. Drama school and then some theatre work. She’d done Shakespeare, had small parts in a couple of blindingly awful films, and received critical acclaim for her last three films and for MacAdam. If it was even half-true, Sophie Warner wasn’t all tantrums and bad behaviour.

The bad behaviour was there as well, though. When Drew clicked again, there were reports of reckless driving, an exposé by an ex-boyfriend, and a video clip of her slurring her words on a talk show. Drew watched it carefully, seeing the same look of glassy-eyed confusion on Sophie’s face that he’d noticed this morning.

Drew shook his head. It could be anything. The papers interpreted it as drink or drugs, and Carly thought it was a brain injury. Either of them could be correct, and deciding which was true on the evidence he had so far was impossible.

His finger hovered over a link that mentioned scandalous photographs, then he decided that gossip and rumour weren’t going to get him any further forward. He set about streaming the first episode of MacAdam, and within ten minutes of the opening credits he was well and truly hooked.

CHAPTER THREE

DREW HAD SPENT the whole of the previous evening with Sophie. He’d sat down to watch one episode of MacAdam and ended up watching four, back to back. He’d told himself it was an interesting show, with a great plot, but, in fact, it was Sophie he’d been unable to take his eyes off, and Sophie who’d inhabited his dreams, until it had been time to peel himself out of bed for another early start. This morning, it was in the large conference room at the hotel, which had been temporarily set aside as a rehearsal area.

Sophie looked different again. Different from the tough cop, with personal problems and a heart of gold that he’d watched last night. Different from the neatly dressed doctor he’d met yesterday.

Today she was the actress, dressed in an oversized sweatshirt, which fell by design from one shoulder, exposing the curve of her neck and the narrow strap of her top underneath. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy bundle at the back of her head, a few wisps framing her face.

And she was alone. Sitting in one of the chairs that had been cleared against the wall to make some space in the centre of the room, yawning as she leafed through the pages of a small, leather-bound notebook.

The swing doors slapped closed behind Drew and she looked up. Even Sophie’s frown was like a ray of sunshine, waking him instantly from the drowsy hangover of too little sleep.

‘Hi.’ She didn’t say his name, and Drew wondered briefly whether she’d forgotten it again. After last night, when he’d thought he’d got to know her so well, it was a humbling experience.

‘Morning. Are you ready to start?’

She shrugged, as if being in attendance was about all he could reasonably expect of her. ‘I already know CPR.’ She slipped the notebook into a large designer handbag, which lay on the seat next to her. He’d give a lot to know what that notebook contained.

He called her bluff, walking towards the dummy, which someone had arranged in a seated position, legs crossed, on one of the nearby chairs. ‘The script says that you’re resuscitating someone who’s been knocked down in the street by a truck.’

Drew arranged the dummy on the floor, in a pose that vaguely resembled the kind of position a road-accident victim might end up in. Sophie looked at it with the bored air of a film star who had better things to do at seven o’clock in the morning.

‘You’re standing on the pavement, right?’

She nodded and he pointed to a spot a couple of feet away from the dummy. ‘So that would be about here.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ When she stood, she seemed even smaller than she had yesterday, more fragile. Drew thought he saw a flash of uncertain fear in her eyes.

He needed to show her that he presented no threat. ‘Okay. I’ll give the signal and you just do what comes naturally. We’ll work from there.’ He gave her his most reassuring smile.

‘All right.’ She nodded quietly, and Drew took a couple of steps back, giving her some room. Then he clapped his hands to indicate the sickening thud of metal meeting flesh.

She jumped, whirling round in the direction of the dummy, for all the world as if she’d just heard the screeching of brakes and the rending of tyres. Then she moved. Confident, assured, with the professional focus that he’d seen so many times on the faces of the people he’d worked with.

Kneeling by the dummy, she was examining it, counterfeiting perfectly the checks and precautions that a real doctor would take in this situation. Bending over the dummy’s head, she tapped its face with two fingers.

‘Unresponsive… Not breathing…’ She muttered the words to herself, almost as if he’d walked out of the room and she was alone.

‘Great. That’s good.’ As Drew knelt down beside her, her scent brushed against his senses. Sophie smelled like every desire he’d ever experienced.

She tipped her face up towards him and suddenly he was falling, unable to catch his breath. One of her eyes was the same gorgeous green he’d seen yesterday. The other was light brown, shot through with gold. The effect was stunning, the one irregularity in an otherwise perfect face. He was bewitched.

The doctor was staring at her, and this wasn’t his suspicious, searching stare. If she had to put a name on it, she would call it…

No. She was mistaken, it was far too early in the morning for him to make a pass at her. And, in any case, he clearly disapproved of her, and she didn’t like him all that much. Whatever had put that possibility into her head?

‘Have I got breakfast all over my face?’ She brushed one of her cheeks, wondering whether she’d had time for breakfast today.

‘No. I…’ He seemed to force his gaze downwards, towards the dummy that lay between them. The sudden, almost apologetic gesture sent tingles to the tips of her fingers.

‘What is it?’ She brushed the other cheek and then realised what he’d seen. ‘This?’ Sophie made the well-worn joke that she used whenever anyone noticed her eyes. Opening and closing each one in turn, she described a circle in the air with her finger, intoning a spooky melody.

He had such a nice smile. One that could get her into trouble if she wasn’t very careful. ‘You have heterochromia.’

‘Yes. I wear a contact lens in my brown eye for filming, so it doesn’t look weird.’

‘It doesn’t look weird. It’s…’ He shrugged, seemingly at a loss for words.

‘I was born with it. It’s just a pigmentation thing, nothing else.’ Sophie was aware that heterochromia could sometimes be the result of an injury, and she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea.

‘It’s beautiful.’ Clearly his mind was on the aesthetics, rather than any medical implications.

Suddenly, even though neither of them was moving, the space between them seemed to close. As if all the air were being sucked out of the room, and they were being forced together by some trick of physics.

Then the vortex seemed to throw itself into reverse, and he drew back. ‘The patient’s probably dead by now.’ He gave a regretful twist of his mouth, and Sophie’s heart lurched.

‘No one ever dies in a film unless the script says so. We’ll perform a medical miracle.’

‘Be my guest.’ He sat back onto his heels, waiting for her to make the next move.

Suddenly she felt strong. She knew exactly what to do next. ‘Thirty compressions and two breaths?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But I have a second qualified person available.’ She took the risk of testing her recall a little further.

‘In which case?’

‘One delivers compressions and the other rescue breaths. We switch every two minutes or so to avoid getting tired.’

He grinned. ‘So we’ll take it from the top, then?’

Sophie took a breath. Yes. It all came to her, like a well-understood routine. She checked for a response again, coming to the same conclusion as she had before. He helped her position the dummy, and she tilted its head back, ready to deliver rescue breaths.

‘You start with the compressions.’

He nodded, doing as she’d told him, counting aloud when he got to twenty-five. She gave the rescue breaths right on cue, and he nodded his approval, starting the compressions again straight away.

‘Do you want to try a switch?’ He was concentrating on what he was doing and didn’t look up at her.

‘Sure. On your signal.’

The switch was perfect. Almost without thinking, Sophie fell into the lifesaving rhythm, picking up the compressions where he’d left off, using her body weight to help give her the amount of pressure that the doctor had applied. They carried on for five repeats and then switched back again.

‘Perfect.’ He finally sat back on his heels.

‘Not so bad for an airhead, you mean?’ She gave a half-smile to indicate that he could take that as a joke, if he chose.

‘You said it…’

And Sophie knew beyond a doubt that he’d thought it. He hadn’t been able to disguise the surprise in his eyes when she’d shown she really did know how to perform CPR.

‘My father’s a doctor. He taught us all what to do in emergency situations. I’ve never had to do it for real…’ She couldn’t keep the trace of bitterness from her tone. Her father had always assumed she’d become a doctor, and instead she’d taken up a profession that had no value in his eyes. His only response to the news that she was making this film had been a back-handed compliment, saying he was glad she was at least pretending to do something useful.