A Family Of Their Own

‘No, again.’ He paused and she steeled herself when she realised that he was looking at her. She knew that she couldn’t keep avoiding making eye contact with him, but it was difficult to make herself turn and face him.

It was a relief when she felt nothing but the tiniest tremor as their eyes met, and that could easily be attributed to first-day nerves. Maybe that also helped to explain what had happened before? she mused. After all, it wasn’t as though Nick Slater was the best-looking man she had ever seen, was he? She made herself take stock, bit by bit, hoping that it would help to work this glitch out of her system if she saw him simply as the person he was.

His hair was dark brown and cut very short because she guessed that it had a tendency to curl if he let it grow. His eyes were hazel rather than the pure green she had first thought them to be, heavily lashed with thick, straight, black lashes. His nose had a definite crook in it, as though it might have been broken on more than one occasion, possibly playing some kind of sport. He definitely had an athlete’s physique with those broad shoulders and that well-muscled chest, the trim waist and narrow hips…

Leanne paused when she realised that she’d allowed herself to be sidetracked and had skipped a bit. Her gaze backtracked while she took note of a mobile mouth that naturally curved up at the corners, a strong chin with just the hint of a dimple in it, a pair of well-shaped ears.

All in all, Nick Slater was a nice-looking man in his thirties, not exactly heart-throb material but verging on it, she decided. She could understand a woman being attracted to him and it was a comfort to realise that. But was it really enough to help explain how she had reacted to him?

She tried to tell herself that it was possible—probable even if it was added to the understandable nervousness of starting a new job—but she wasn’t convinced. The way she had responded to Nick Slater wasn’t going to be explained away that easily.

Nick cleared his throat purely and simply because he wasn’t sure what else to do. Leanne was staring at him and it made him feel very odd to be on the receiving end of such an intent scrutiny. ‘Over half of the people whom we see at HealthFirst are UK citizens.’

He coughed again, wondering what was wrong with his vocal cords. His voice had the quavery cadence of a teenage boy. In fact, now that he thought about it, he felt rather like he had done as a teenager when he’d developed a crush on the school’s gym mistress…

This time his cough was genuine and he saw Leanne look at him in concern. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine.’ He managed to suck some air into his lungs but it was an effort to act as though there was nothing wrong. How in the name of all that was holy had he developed a crush on Leanne Russell in the space of ten minutes?

‘Just a tickle in my throat. What was I saying…? Oh, yes, most of the patients we treat here are business people who can’t get to see their own GPs because the surgeries’ hours don’t correspond with their busy schedules. They appreciate the fact that they can call into the clinic and be seen virtually straight away.’

‘And they are prepared to pay for this service?’ she queried, frowning.

‘Yes.’ Nick shrugged, striving for a nonchalance he wished he felt. Of course he hadn’t developed a crush on Leanne—the idea was ridiculous. But, try as he may, he couldn’t dismiss it.

‘You know the old saying that time is money? Well, it applies in this instance. People don’t have the time to hang around a GP’s surgery when they should be at work. We aim never to have any patient wait longer than fifteen minutes even during our busiest periods, which are the morning and evening rush hours. And most are seen well before then.’

‘You must have a big staff working here with targets like that?’

‘We have thirty people employed here at the present time and we are currently advertising five more vacancies.’ He smiled when he saw her surprise then found himself wondering if she realised how expressive her face was. Everything she thought showed. He’d noticed that before when she’d been staring at him…

He shut off the rest of that thought. To recall the bewilderment he had seen in Leanne’s expressive grey eyes certainly wouldn’t help. Maybe she was having trouble understanding this awareness they both seemed to feel, but letting himself get hung up on the idea would cause even more problems.

‘We’re open from eight in the morning to eight at night, seven days a week,’ he explained, steadfastly confining his thoughts to work. ‘That’s a lot of hours to cover, especially when a number of the staff working here are only employed on a part-time basis.’

‘Like me. I decided that full-time work would be too constricting which is why I opted to do twenty-five hours a week when I accepted the job. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough free time if I did more than that.’

Nick frowned because he wasn’t sure what she had meant. ‘Enough time to go sightseeing, you mean?’

‘No. I didn’t come to London to go sightseeing. I…well, I had another reason for coming.’

She didn’t elaborate, leaving him with the distinct impression that she didn’t want him to question her further. All of a sudden that conversation he’d had with Dennis came flooding back, but with a new twist.

Had Leanne come to London on her own, as they had assumed, or was she here with someone else, maybe her boyfriend? She had said that she wasn’t suffering from a broken heart or looking for a relationship so it seemed to fit. And maybe she had chosen to work part time so that she could spend more time with him.

Nick took a deep breath. He knew that he really should stop all this speculating. Leanne’s reasons for coming to London had nothing whatsoever to do with him. His only concern was making sure that she did her job properly, yet he knew in his heart how difficult it was going to be to stick to that. The thought of Leanne and some unknown man spending their time together made him feel all knotted up inside. Although he hated to admit it, he knew why.

He was jealous at the thought of her being with another man, at the idea of her spending time with someone who wasn’t him.

Hell and damnation! That was something he certainly hadn’t bargained for.

CHAPTER TWO

‘IF YOU could just wait a moment…’

Leanne bit back a sigh when she saw the lack of comprehension on the young woman’s face. So far all she had managed to establish was that the patient’s name was Chantal Dupré and that she was from Paris. Why Chantal needed to see a doctor was something she still had to find out.

Dredging her mind, Leanne summoned up a few words of school French. ‘Un moment, s’il vous plait, mademoiselle.’

Leaving the young woman sitting in Reception, she hurried off in search of Melanie, hoping that she might be able to help her solve the problem. After Nick Slater had finished giving her a tour of the clinic, he had asked her if she would take over the reception duties.

She’d been a little surprised by the request until he had explained that it helped to have someone medically trained greeting the patients on their arrival, to act as triage nurse. Minor ailments could be passed to one of the nursing staff, more serious matters referred to a doctor and any urgent cases could be rushed straight through.

It had been a gentle introduction to the work carried out at the clinic and she’d rather enjoyed it until she had encountered the problem of a patient who spoke no English. She spotted Melanie coming out of one of the treatment rooms and greeted her with relief.

‘How’s your French? I’ve got a woman in Reception who doesn’t speak any English and I’m stuck.’

‘Nick’s your man. He speaks French, Spanish, Italian, plus a smattering of umpteen other languages,’ Melanie told her cheerfully. ‘He’s in his office so give him a shout.’

‘Thanks,’ Leanne murmured as Melanie escorted her patient out. She made her way to Nick’s office and knocked on the door, refusing to think about what had happened a couple of hours earlier. Actually getting down to some work had helped enormously to calm her nerves, although she had to confess to a sudden attack of the jitters when she heard Nick inviting her in. She bit back a sigh. Whichever way she looked at it, her reaction to Nick Slater was very strange.

It was hardly the most comforting of thoughts so she did her best to put it out of her mind as she entered the room. Nick was at his desk and he looked up with an abstracted smile.

‘Problems?’

‘Kind of. I have a Frenchwoman in Reception who doesn’t speak any English. Melanie said that you speak French…’

‘So you want me to translate for you?’ He took off the rimless glasses he was wearing and tossed them on the desk then grinned at her. ‘It will be a pleasure. Anything to get away from this wretched paperwork!’

Leanne laughed softly but she couldn’t deny that her heart had given an uncomfortable little thump when he had smiled at her. ‘You’d think things would have got easier since computers came on the scene, but it hasn’t made much difference, I’ve found.’

‘You and me both,’ he agreed, easing himself out of the chair and groaning. ‘I’ve only been working on this wretched report for a couple of hours but it feels like a lifetime. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being stuck behind a desk.’

‘One of the hazards of the job, I would have thought,’ she observed. ‘Most GPs end up spending a lot of their time desk-bound.’

‘Which is yet another reason why I’m glad that I decided not to join the family firm,’ he responded, making for the door.

Leanne frowned as she followed him into the corridor. ‘Family firm? What do you mean?’

‘My mother and father are both GPs, although Mum only works a couple of days a week now, covering the post- and antenatal clinics. My older brother Patrick works with them and my sister Helen was the practice nurse at the surgery until she had her youngest child and found it was too much for her. Benjie is her fourth,’ he explained dryly. ‘So I think she deserves a bit of time off, don’t you?’

‘I most certainly do,’ she exclaimed. ‘Four children are a lot to cope with. But it’s amazing that your whole family works together like that. It must be marvellous for them.’

‘Depends on what you want from life, I suppose,’ he said shortly.

Leanne looked at him curiously. ‘Meaning that it isn’t what you want?’

‘No. I have no intention of spending the rest of my life stuck in Sussex. There’s too much of the world I haven’t seen yet.’

‘You’ll have to settle down one day,’ she protested.

‘Why? There’s no rule that says you have to stay put in one place.’

His tone was harsh and she had the feeling that he was annoyed, but why? Because of what she’d said or because of something that had happened in his past?

She had no time to work it out, however, because they had arrived at Reception by then. Nick went straight to the young Frenchwoman and briefly conferred with her then drew Leanne forward.

‘Mademoiselle Dupré needs emergency contraception. Can you deal with it?’

‘Of course,’ she agreed at once. ‘How long ago was it that she had unprotected sex?’

‘Last night so there shouldn’t be a problem. As you know, the tablets need to be taken within seventy-two hours of intercourse taking place.’

He glanced round when the door opened and another patient came in. ‘Why don’t you take Mademoiselle Dupré into one of the treatment rooms and fill in all the details on her card? I’ll leave it to you to administer the drugs. You can sign for them at the pharmacy.

‘I’ll have another word with her before she leaves and make sure that she understands what she has to do. Melanie can take over the desk again now that she’s finished with her patient.’

‘Fine,’ Leanne agreed immediately. She smiled at the young Frenchwoman, signalling that she should follow her. Opening the door to one of the immaculately furnished treatment rooms, she indicated that Chantal should wait there while she fetched the medication.

Emergency contraception—commonly called the morning-after pill—consisted of two high-dose oral contraceptive pills taken as soon as possible after intercourse. They were followed twelve hours later by a further two pills. Although the treatment wasn’t one hundred per cent guaranteed to work, it was effective in most cases.

Nick would explain to Chantal Dupré that, if she missed her next period, she would need to take a pregnancy test in a month’s time, just to be certain, Leanne thought as she signed for the tablets. The poor woman obviously wouldn’t be pleased to discover that she was pregnant after she had taken steps to avoid it.

She sighed as she made her way back to the treatment room. Had her own birth mother been dismayed when she had found out that she was pregnant? She must have been otherwise she would never have given her daughter up for adoption.

It made Leanne wonder if her friends had been right and if she was making a mistake by trying to track down the woman who had given her away. After all, her adoptive parents had given her all the love she could possibly have needed, so was it wise to go raking up the past when she might be disappointed by what she discovered? Maybe she had always longed for brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, but there was no guarantee that she would have much in common with them if she did find them. Nick had obviously made a conscious decision to escape the ties of his family.

That thought made her frown. Maybe she was reading too much into the situation, but she had a feeling that there was a reason why he had cut himself off like that and that it hadn’t been just a desire to travel either. What had happened to make Nick decide to leave his family?

For some reason it seemed important that she find out.

‘Merci, mademoiselle. Au revoir.’

Nick closed the door after Chantal Dupré finally left then glanced at his watch. The woman had been so delighted to find someone who could understand her that she had kept him talking. He was very aware that the report he needed to submit was lying on his desk, half-finished. Even though he loathed paperwork, he usually got down to it, but it seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time that day. The trouble was that his mind kept skipping off at tangents all the time.

He squared his shoulders, refusing to let himself be sidetracked again. He had spent enough time thinking about Leanne Russell for one day. He hurried back to his office but he had barely sat down when there was a knock on the door and Robert Ashford, one of the duty doctors, poked his head into the room.

‘Sorry to bother you, Nick, but I’ve got a guy with me I’d like you to take a look at.’

‘What’s the problem?’ he asked, immediately getting up.

Robert was from Tennessee and he was spending six months in the UK before he took up a residency at a hospital in his home town. Nick had found him to be extremely competent and didn’t doubt that there was a genuine problem if Robert had seen fit to ask for his opinion.

‘It’s very vague—fever, lassitude, quite noticeable enlargement of the glands in his neck.’ Robert shrugged. ‘He’s obviously unwell, there’s no doubt about that, but I can’t put my finger on the problem.’

‘Have you ordered blood tests?’ Nick asked, accompanying him from the room.

‘Yessiree. I’m waiting on the lab. They’ve promised to get back to me a.s.a.p. I just thought it might help if you had a look in case I’ve missed something,’ Robert replied laconically.

Nick nodded. ‘Fine by me.’

He followed the younger man into one of the treatment rooms and introduced himself to the patient. ‘I’m Nick Slater, acting head of the clinic. Dr Ashford has asked me to take a look at you.’

‘Take as many as you like,’ the middle-aged man replied, making an obvious effort to sound cheerful. ‘If you can work out what’s wrong with me, I’ll be eternally grateful. I’ve felt like hell these past few days, I can tell you.’

Nick smiled as he picked up the chart Robert had filled in. ‘We shall give it our best shot. It’s Mr Jacobs, is it, and you work for the Foreign Office?’

‘That’s right. Been with them for twenty years now. I’ve been working on overseas aid and development for the past three,’ Ian Jacobs replied.

‘Really? That must be interesting. Do you get to go overseas a lot, or is it mainly a desk job?’ Nick carefully checked the man’s neck. He nodded to Robert when he felt how enlarged the glands were.

‘A bit of both, actually. I’ve been to quite a lot of places in the past few years—India, Africa, places like that.’

‘And were you ever ill when you were away on any of these trips?’ Nick asked, trying to get a full picture of what might be wrong with the man.

‘Not that I can remember…’ Ian Jacobs frowned. ‘A bit of a tummy upset in India, but several members of the party suffered with it, as I recall. The sanitation where we were staying left a lot to be desired.’

‘That’s the problem with so many of these Third World countries,’ he observed lightly. ‘Anything else? Were you bitten by a dog, scratched by a cat, made a meal of by mosquitoes?’

Ian laughed ruefully. ‘The mosquitoes had a field day with me! I was covered in bites most of the time. But I was very careful about taking precautions, Dr Slater. I was on anti-malarial tablets throughout each trip and continued using them after I came home as per instructions. Do you think it’s possible that I might have contracted malaria?’

Nick shook his head when he heard the worry in the man’s voice. ‘Not if you took the medication exactly as you were advised to do. Most modern antimalaria treatment is effective. I assume that you used the ones best suited to the countries you were visiting? There are different strains of malaria so any preventative medicine must take account of that.’

‘Oh, yes. We were given the most up-to-date information before we travelled. One thing the Foreign Office is good at is looking after their employees when they are in the field,’ Ian Jacobs assured him.

‘That’s good to hear. Now, just to recap. Dr Ashford told me that you’ve been suffering from bouts of fever; is that right?’

‘Yes. I can’t recall ever experiencing anything like it, not even when I came down with flu several years ago. And I feel so worn out all the time, as though I can barely make the effort to do anything,’ the man confessed.

‘I see. And there’s nothing else at all that you can add? Something quite insignificant, perhaps.’ Nick smiled reassuringly but he was as puzzled as Robert was about the case. ‘We work a bit like Sherlock Holmes—if we eliminate the possible and find ourselves left with the improbable, then it is quite often the answer.’

‘Well, there’s an insect bite which has been a bit of a nuisance…But I really can’t see that it’s the cause of how ill I’ve been feeling.’

‘Let’s take a look. It would be silly not to check it out, wouldn’t it?’ Nick bit back a sigh. It never failed to amaze him how reluctant people were to impart information.

‘It’s here on my hip.’ Ian pulled down his underwear so that Nick could see the small lump on his hip. ‘It’s quite painful, actually. So much so that I find myself lying on my other side at night in bed.’

Nick gently probed the nodule, murmuring an apology when he felt Ian wince. He glanced at Robert and raised his brows. ‘What do you think?’

‘I’m not sure, but it doesn’t look like any mosquito bite that I’ve ever seen,’ the younger doctor told him doubtfully.

‘Exactly what I thought. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a tsetse fly bite.’ He glanced at the patient again. ‘Which part of Africa did you visit and how long ago were you there?’

‘We were on the west coast about a month ago. Doesn’t the tsetse fly carry sleeping sickness?’

‘That’s right.’ He patted Ian Jacobs’s shoulder when he heard the alarm in his voice. ‘However, even if I’m right—and we’ll need the results of the blood tests to confirm that—then sleeping sickness is curable if you catch it early enough. As soon as we can establish if that is what’s wrong with you, you will be started on a course of drugs to kill the parasites that have got into your bloodstream.’

He paused as a thought occurred to him. Leanne had worked on the tropical diseases ward of the Sydney hospital so maybe she could help to confirm his diagnosis? Obviously, his sole reason for involving her was the patient’s welfare, he told himself quickly when alarm bells started to ring inside his head. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he wanted to see her again.

‘We have a new nurse working here who was a sister on the tropical diseases ward at the Royal Free Hospital in Sydney,’ he explained before he thought better of it. ‘Would you mind if I asked her to take a look, Mr Jacobs?’

‘Not at all,’ the man said quickly. ‘The sooner you establish what this is, then the faster I can be treated.’

‘Exactly.’ Nick excused himself and left the room. He made his way to Reception but Melanie was behind the desk. She looked up when he appeared.

‘Did you want me, Nick?’

‘I was looking for Leanne, actually,’ he explained, trying to quell the shiver that ran through him when he said her name. It was so ridiculous for a grown man of thirty-five to be acting that way that his mouth compressed and he saw Melanie frown in concern.

‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? Leanne hasn’t done anything to upset you?’

‘Of course not.’ He fixed a smile to his mouth but it was an effort to hold it in place. Get a grip, Slater! he told himself sternly. Stop acting like a moron and start acting like a doctor.

It was good advice but as he made his way to the supply room, where Leanne was checking in a delivery, he knew how difficult it was going to be to follow it. Leanne and being sensible were two concepts his mind had difficulty putting together. He didn’t want to act like a doctor when she was around. He wanted to act like a man in the company of a woman whom he found overwhelmingly attractive.

Leanne ticked off the last item on the list and slipped the delivery note into her pocket. She took a quick look around the small room to make sure that everything was where it was meant to be. Her eyes alighted on half a dozen boxes of hypodermic syringes which she had put on the floor while she’d unpacked the rest of the delivery and she sighed. They needed putting away before she finished.

She quickly pulled over the ladder so that she could put the boxes in their rightful place on the top shelf. She was halfway up the steps when she heard someone coming into the room and automatically glanced round to see who it was. Her foot missed the rung she had been aiming for when she found herself looking into a familiar pair of hazel-green eyes.

‘Careful!’ Nick made a grab for her as she swayed perilously, his hands clamping firmly on her hips while he steadied her.

Leanne sucked in a little breath through lips that felt as though they had turned to rubber all of a sudden. She could feel the warmth of his palms against her hip bones, feel his fingers curving around the lower part of her abdomen, and the sensations that were flowing through her at that moment weren’t ones she should have been feeling about a man she had known barely three hours. All of a sudden, she was awash with desire to feel his hands on other parts of her body, to feel them caressing her and bringing alive the passion that was simmering inside her…

‘Are you OK? Do you want me to help you down if you’re feeling dizzy?’

She blinked when he spoke, feeling her face suffuse with heat when she realised that she had been standing there, daydreaming about Nick making love to her. Frankly, it was a scenario guaranteed to give her sleepless nights for weeks to come, but she couldn’t afford to worry about that right then.

‘No, I’m fine.’

She swiftly deposited the boxes on the shelf, murmuring her thanks like an obedient child when he handed her the rest of them. He stepped back as she began to descend and she had to physically stop herself flinching when he put a steadying hand under her elbow as she stepped off the bottom rung.