Role Play

‘Don’t! Don’t say it! Don’t say a word!’ she exploded. ‘How was I to know you planned a day-long expedition? Anyway, you didn’t give me time!’

‘It’s all that coffee you had for breakfast when you should have been on your way to work,’ he teased.

‘I didn’t have time,’ she repeated tightly.

‘You amaze me.’ He shot her a wink. ‘Can you hang on ten minutes? Our next call is in the hospice.’

She subsided huffily. ‘I should think so.’

‘I hope so — don’t want my upholstery ruined.’

She glared at him. ‘I think you’re a few years too late to worry about that!’

He tutted gently. ‘I don’t know — why are you so determined to insult my car? Anybody would think you didn’t like me.’

She glared at him again. ‘Anybody would be right,’ she muttered.

Without warning he swung the car off the road and screeched to a halt in a lay-by. Abbie was flung forward and grabbed the dashboard automatically, her heart pounding.

‘Sorry — the brakes snatch a bit.’

Slowly she released her death-grip on the dashboard and sagged back against the seat. ‘Do you always drive like that?’ she asked him weakly.

He chuckled softly under his breath. ‘Only when I’m trying to impress a woman.’

‘I’m impressed,’ she groaned. ‘Why have we stopped?’

‘Because you’re telling lies.’

She frowned at him in puzzlement. ‘Lies?’

‘You said you didn’t like me.’

She laughed shortly. ‘God, that’s some ego you’ve got.’

His smile was slow and lazy. ‘Abbie, Abbie — don’t beat around the bush. You like me — even though you might not want to. and you want me — even though you think it’s a lousy idea. I do, too, but ——’ His shrug was Gallic and very expressive.

She blushed. ‘Dream on,’ she muttered.

‘Oh, Abigail. You’re lovely — but then you know that, don’t you?’ His fingers sifted through her hair, fanning it out against her shoulders. ‘Beautiful — like sunlight trapped in autumn leaves. It feels wonderful …’ He let it fall from his fingers and sat back with a sigh. ‘What’s the matter, Abbie? Am I too direct for you? Should I pretend for the sake of convention? Perhaps for the first few days — a fortnight, maybe? Or wait even longer, until you’ll believe me if I say I love you, so your conscience is satisfied as well as your body?’

She drew herself away from him, so that the last strand of her hair fell from his fingers, as if breaking the contact would defuse the tension that zinged between them.

He was right, of course. She did like him, and want him, and she did, indeed, think it was a lousy idea. Furthermore, acting on her feelings was the very last thing she intended to do, and she told him so.

‘Why?’ he asked softly, and his fingers invaded her hair again, sifting the strands with sensuous slowness.

Her heartbeat grew heavier, so that she could feel the blood pulsing through her body, bringing it alive. She pulled away again.

‘Are you always so damned unsubtle?’

‘Unsubtle?’ He smiled. ‘I’m wounded. I thought I was being very understanding.’

She glowered at him. ‘I don’t know you!’

‘There’s time.’

‘A year. That’s all. I’m here for a year.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s OK. I can handle a long-term relationship.’

‘Long-term?’ she exclaimed. ‘I meant only a year!’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Damn it, Abbie, I’m not proposing. All I’m suggesting is that we spend some time together — a mutual scratching of itches.’

‘I don’t do that sort of thing,’ she replied tightly, ‘and certainly not with egotistical doctors!’

‘No? You should. You might enjoy it.’

‘I doubt it.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘What a waste. Oh, well, if you change your mind, I’m here. We’d better get to the hospice.’

For the rest of the short drive Abbie sat scrunched up at her side of the car, hardly daring to breathe in case he made some suggestive remark, and wondering all the time how he could possibly have qualified as a doctor when his morals were so clearly askew.

Then she saw him in action at the hospice, and all her preconceptions about him were eroded at a stroke.

They arrived at the modern, purpose-built hospice just as the sun broke through the clouds, and Abbie felt peace steal over her immediately. The buildings were low, constructed in mellow golden brick, and the whole atmosphere was one of tranquillity.

‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ he said softly. ‘There are other kinds of healing apart from the physical. It’s so easy to forget that, and most hospitals are soulless places, but I love coming here. Every visit refreshes me, even when, as so often, it signals the end. Even so, there’s a lightness about it.’

Abbie could feel the lightness seeping into her as they stepped into the airy, quiet reception area.

‘Ladies’ loo,’ he said with a nudge of his head towards a door. ‘I’ll have a chat to the staff for a minute.’

She escaped gratefully, and hurried back to find him deep in conversation with a diminutive little nurse in sister’s uniform.

‘You must be Dr Pearce,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Welcome to St Saviour. We’ll look forward to seeing you when Leo comes on his clinic days, shall we?’

She mumbled something non-committal, unaware that Leo even did clinic days at the hospice, and then they left the sister and went towards the little four-bedded ward.

‘We’re going to see Mary Tanner,’ Leo told her. ‘She’s forty-two, had a mastectomy three years ago and she’s got skeletal metastases. Recently she’s had some back pain so she’s had a course of radiotherapy to try and halt the pressure on the nerves, and she’s in for convalescence and drug review before going home again. Lots of emotional problems, obviously. They’ve got two girls just coming up for their teens.’

They went into the ward, and he was greeted with gentle warmth by the staff, and genuine respect and affection by the patient, Mary Tanner, and her husband Gerry.

He introduced Abbie to them, then perched on the bed and asked Mary how she was feeling now.

‘Oh, heaps better. My back feels nearly OK now already and the pain’s much better controlled. I feel almost human again,’ she said with a low laugh, and Leo smiled.

‘Good. Home soon, then?’

‘Oh, yes, I think so — if Gerry can cope.’

‘Of course I can cope,’ he told his wife, but his eyes were sad. Abbie looked away, feeling like an intruder, and Leo stood up to leave, dropping a kiss on Mary’s cheek.

‘I’ll pop in and see you again once you’re home. Come with us, Gerry, and we’ll have a chat to the staff about when she can leave.’

As they approached the reception area, Leo turned to Gerry. ‘How are you really coping?’

He shrugged. ‘I just feel so guilty. I’ve really enjoyed being able to slouch around and take the kids out for long walks without worrying about her, and I feel a real louse because she’s the one with the problems, really, and I feel I ought to be offering her more support, but I don’t know, I just can’t — not all the time. I feel better now, but — oh, I don’t know; it’s just such hard work trying to be cheerful …’

Leo squeezed his shoulder gently. ‘Don’t feel guilty, Gerry. I’m sure Mary understands, you know — and I think in a way it’s a relief for her to have some time away from you all when she doesn’t have to be brave and cheerful all the time, too.’

‘Really?’ He looked doubtful, but was clearly desperate for reassurance, and Leo gave it to him.

‘Yes, really. This situation’s very emotionally demanding on all of you and you need to recharge your batteries. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be more use to her, and her to you. Don’t feel guilty. She’ll be home to you soon, and you’ll be glad you’ve had a rest.’

Gerry smiled, more relaxed. ‘You’re right — as always.’

Leo tapped on the sister’s door, and they all trooped in and discussed Mary’s progress and decided she should go home at the end of the week unless she had any further set-backs.

As they parted at the door, Gerry turned to Leo and smiled wearily. ‘Thanks for dropping by.’

Leo shook his hand warmly. ‘My pleasure. See you soon. And don’t feel guilty. If you need to talk, you know where to find me.’

Gerry nodded and turned away, walking back to his wife and the crisis in their lives.

‘Do you know them well?’ Abbie asked, remembering the kiss he had given Mary as they left her bedside.

‘No — well, only since Mary’s mastectomy. I’ve spent a lot of time with both of them since. Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Just wondered. You kissed her.’

His mouth quirked. ‘Jealous, Abbie? The offer’s still open.’

So they were back to that, were they? ‘Of course I’m not jealous. It just seemed — odd, that’s all.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t find it odd to greet people with physical contact. I’m a toucher, Abbie …’

His hand was resting lightly on the small of her back as he spoke. She stepped away.

‘I’d noticed,’ she said shortly.

‘Whereas you — you’re a buttoned-up little virgin.’

‘I am not!’ she denied hotly, acutely uncomfortable with the sudden shift in the direction of the conversation, and he laughed, a low, smoky laugh that did incredible things to her system.

‘Well, then, all I can say is that whoever you’ve had affairs with didn’t even get close to the real you.’

Abbie made no attempt to correct him. What was the point? He was so absolutely right.

CHAPTER TWO

AS THE days passed, so Abbie’s disordered impressions of life in general practice settled down to a sort of pattern.

Peter Sargent, she realised, was the sort to skate through life with cheerful inefficiency, constantly chivvied by the secretarial staff who were quite unmoved by his ingenuous charm.

She discovered that Ravi Patel was single, thirty-four and after Leo, who did precious little to discourage her despite his protestations to the contrary.

As for Leo himself, he was thirty-two and a constant thorn in her side, rattling through his patients at twice the speed of light so that by the time she finally emerged exhausted but triumphant at the end of her surgeries he was long gone on his visits and she was unable to ask him the inevitable string of questions that the consultations had generated.

‘Well, you shouldn’t dawdle about for so long,’ he would tell her, and then would sit and rip through the seemingly knotty problems, so that she felt a complete fool for not having seen the answers herself.

Not that he ever tried to belittle her medical knowledge. He didn’t have to. Frankly, she was more than aware of the glaring lapses in her understanding of certain conditions.

As for the paperwork, it defeated her utterly, to the point that when the receptionist told her she should fill in her PC4 she asked where she could find it, much to everyone’s amusement.

Leo, not even trying to disguise his mirth, explained cheerfully that a PC4 was a course of four tablets taken as post-coital contraception — hence the name.

Peggy Taylor, the practice manager, took pity on her and told the others off, but it did little to dilute Abbie’s humiliation.

It wasn’t that she minded being teased — lord, she was used to that. She had two brothers who had taken it as their filial duty to torment the life out of her in her childhood, until, in her teens, she’d suddenly changed into the object of their friends’ lascivious attention. Then they’d closed ranks protectively, but even so they still teased her gently to this day.

So it wasn’t being teased that troubled her, rather the glaring gaps in her knowledge that the teasing had exposed.

Leo found her later sitting in her surgery surrounded by a heap of textbooks, and came and hitched a lean hip up on to the corner of her desk.

‘Boning up on methods of contraception, Abbie?’ he teased.

She ignored him huffily.

‘Tut-tut,’ he admonished. ‘Wallowing in self-pity?’

‘Oh, go to hell,’ she muttered, her voice clogged.

He stuck a finger under her chin and tipped her head up, studying her face intently. She turned away, embarrassed that he should see the traces of tears on her cheeks.

‘Leave me alone.’

He stood up, but instead of walking away he came round her desk, pulled her to her feet and wrapped his long arms round her.

At first she was stunned into immobility, but after a few seconds she gave in to the luxury of his undemanding embrace, dropping her head forward into the hollow of his shoulder and sighing shakily.

His hand came up and smoothed her hair.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I’m sure Jackie didn’t.’

‘It’s not that,’ she mumbled into his shirt. ‘I just feel so inadequate. I should have known what a PC4 was.’

‘Probably,’ he agreed, ‘but nobody’s perfect. Stop torturing yourself.’

She lifted her head and looked up into his eyes. ‘But what if it’s something important? Something life-threatening, and I don’t know about it? I could kill someone!’

‘Do you really think you’re that bad?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you really think you would have got so far in medicine if you were a danger to your patients?’

She gave a shaky laugh. ‘Perhaps I just scraped through — perhaps it was all a fluke. Maybe I just got the examiners on a good day. Who knows?’

Leo sighed. ‘You really don’t have a very high opinion of yourself, do you?’

Numbly, she shook her head. ‘There’s so much to know, and I always feel I’m fumbling in the dark. It terrifies me, Leo, knowing I’m responsible for whether somebody lives or dies.’

He chuckled. ‘In general practice? In the average week the most drastic thing you’re likely to come across is a nasty case of piles.’

She giggled despite herself. ‘You know what I mean. What if I miss something? What if someone dies because of my ignorance?’

‘You can always ask,’ he assured her. ‘Peter or Ravi or me — any of us. Don’t feel you have to cope alone.’

‘What about when you’ve all gone and I’m still here trying to get to grips with this stupid machine?’ She flicked a contemptuous glance at the computer, and Leo laughed.

‘Does it still hate you?’

‘Does it ever,’ she grumbled.

‘You need a break — have supper with me tonight.’

She realised she was still standing in his arms, although she wasn’t crushed up against him any more, but she might just as well have been because she could feel the warmth of his body, could remember the feel of it, long and hard and lean, all sleek, solid muscle and sinew, terrifyingly, overwhelming male.

She stepped back a little further. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ she said as firmly as she could manage.

‘Why?’

‘I — I just don’t …’ she floundered.

His grin was wicked. ‘Not good enough. Come on, you’ve finished here for the night.’

He flicked off her terminal, stacked her books back on to the shelf and held out his hand. ‘Come.’

‘What if I don’t want to?’ she said defensively.

He sighed. ‘You’re lying again, Abbie,’ he teased in a soft, sing-song voice.

Her mouth firmed in defiance. ‘I have to study.’

‘Cobblers,’ he said rudely. ‘Come on. We’ll pick up a take-away.’

Her stomach rumbled loudly at the thought, and he chuckled. ‘Co-operation at last!’

‘Only from my involuntary muscles —— ’

‘That’ll do for a start. I realise that aggravating mouth of yours will take a little longer to tame. Come on — and say, Yes, Leo.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, Leo.’

‘Better. Now come on.’

She assumed they’d have fish and chips, or a Chinese at the outside, but the little town surprised her. Tucked away in a narrow alley off the main street was a tiny but immaculate kebab house owned and run by a Greek Cypriot who, Leo said, had come over from Cyprus at the time of the Turkish invasion in the early seventies and stayed ever since.

The shop, predictably, was called Spiro’s, and Spiro himself was almost circular, balding and grumbled constantly about the price of lamb and the rubbish at the market.

Leo, commiserating, bought shish kebabs in pitta pockets groaning with salad, and they ate them in the car looking out over a field because they were both too hungry to wait any longer. Despite Spiro’s complaints the quality was superb, and Abbie ate every last bit and even pinched a bit of Leo’s second one.

Then he drove her back to his house, a cottage on a quiet lane about two miles from the town centre, and the evening sun gleamed on the windows and on the glowing banks of perennials that flanked the path, the magenta of the crane’s bill, the green and white of the lady’s-mantle, the tall spires of the hollyhocks nodding at the back behind the white and yellow daisies.

‘Oh, how pretty!’ Abbie said, enchanted, and Leo let them in, retrieved a bottle of wine and two glasses and took her for a stroll round the garden.

The evening was much cooler than the day had been, and she was able to enjoy the mellow air and the sweetly scented roses that graced the soft pink walls.

‘How do you manage it all?’ she asked, incredulous, after he had finished his guided tour.

He laughed softly. ‘Me? I wouldn’t know a dandelion from a primula! I have a gardener who comes in twice a week and cuts the grass and keeps the beds in order.’

‘He does a wonderful job,’ she said admiringly, glancing round again at the riot of colour that filled every corner.

‘She. Yes, she’s excellent, I have to say. When I moved here the garden was a mess, but she’s worked wonders.’

‘She?’ Abbie said with a teasing grin. ‘I might have known.’

‘Of course. She’s tall, blonde and very, very lovely.’ He grinned back. ‘She’s also in her late forties and a grandmother. I swear she’s stronger than I am, and she’s definitely no competition to you, Abigail, my love, so you needn’t get all jealous.’

She looked away hastily. ‘I’m not your love, Leo, and I don’t intend to be. And I’m certainly not jealous!’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Look, I really ought to get on. I’ve got studying I should be doing, and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do ——’

He laughed softly. ‘Running, Abbie?’

‘Not at all,’ she blustered, but she was, and they both knew it.

He took pity on her, though, and drove her back to the surgery so that she could collect her car.

As she unlocked the door, she became suddenly, startlingly aware of his body close behind her. His hand, warm and hard, closed over her shoulder and turned her gently towards him.

‘Leo?’ she said breathlessly, and then her protest, such as it was, was cut off by his lips as they covered hers in a feather-light caress.

‘Goodnight, Abigail,’ he murmured softly, and then he turned on his heel and walked back to his car.

Shaken, she unlocked her door and slid behind the wheel, her limbs trembling. He was waiting for her to start the car and drive away, she thought dimly, so mechanically she turned the key, backed out and drove off.

After a moment she realised he was flashing his lights furiously at her, and she pulled over.

He leapt out of his car and ran towards her. She wound down the window just far enough to talk to him but not so far that he could kiss her again—just in case.

‘What do you want?’ she asked nervously.

‘Me? That’s an interesting thought.’

‘Leo ——’

‘You didn’t have your lights on.’

She blinked. ‘Oh — right. Thanks.’

His grin was infuriating. ‘My pleasure. I didn’t realise one little kiss would throw you so badly.’

‘It’s nothing to do with your kiss!’ she protested, and the grin widened.

‘You’re telling porkie-pies again, Abbie, darling,’ he murmured, and, slipping his hand through the partly-open window, he brushed her cheek with his knuckles.

It sent a shiver through her, as did his softly voiced, ‘Sleep well, princess. Dream of me.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Leo, go away,’ she said unsteadily, but he was gone, leaving her in a tangle of wild and unfamiliar emotions, not least of which was a most unsettling feeling that she would, indeed, be dreaming of him — with or without his permission!

She didn’t dream of him, in the end — largely because she didn’t sleep until almost dawn, because every time she closed her eyes she felt the brush of lips on hers and her whole body screamed to life.

Unable to bear it, incapable of sweeping aside such unfamiliar and overwhelming sensations, she paced her little flat over a shoe-shop in the centre of town and wondered how she was going to get through the next year.

By ignoring him whenever possible, was the conclusion she eventually came to, and after a drink of hot milk and another severe lecture to herself she finally crawled exhausted into bed shortly before dawn to fall instantly and deeply asleep until the traffic woke her at almost eight-thirty.

Predictably, she was late, and, equally predictably, her surgery was less than straightforward. To add insult to injury, she found that when under pressure the computer was even less co-operative, and she finally, in desperation, asked Peggy if she could come in and sit with her and show her what she was doing wrong.

‘No,’ Peggy told her, ‘I don’t think the patients would like it, but Leo’s here. I’ll send him in; it’ll get him off my back while I type these letters.’

Seconds later there was a tap on the door and Leo appeared clutching two cups of coffee and the computer manual.

‘Problems?’

‘It hates me!’ she wailed despairingly.

He chuckled. ‘Nonsense. It’s an inanimate object. It’s incapable of hate.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ she snorted. ‘Tell it to the fairies.’ She glanced at him, took in the cool cotton trousers and the turned-back cuffs of his shirt, exposing strong, hair-strewn wrists, and turned quickly away. After that kiss the night before, the very last thing she needed was him beside her looking sexy as all get-out. She forced herself to concentrate. ‘Look, how do I recall previous prescriptions and history?’ she asked, her voice a little strained to her ears.

Leo, apparently oblivious to her discomfort, leant over her, his body brushing hers, casually tapping buttons, and the information on her next patient appeared as if by magic. She blinked. The vital manoeuvres were still lost to her, drowned out by the clamouring of her hormones.

‘How did you do that?’ she asked faintly.

He grinned. ‘Easy — you should have watched.’

‘I did,’ she lied. ‘It takes me ages to get it to do that, and I’m sure I go through a far longer process —— Right, show me again.’

He shook his head. ‘Finish your surgery and I’ll go over it with you afterwards. I’ll just sit here and help you get through the rest of your patients for now.’

One or two of the patients looked askance at Leo, but he smilingly explained that they were having problems with the computer and he was fighting with it to try and save the patients’ waiting time.

‘Just ignore me,’ he said, but Abbie found it intensely off-putting and difficult.

Until, that was, she had a patient with a seemingly innocent mole just below her collarbone. She examined it, asked all the appropriate questions and was on the point of telling the patient to go home and stop worrying when Leo’s toe connected none too gently with her ankle.

She glanced at him, but he was staring fixedly at the computer screen. She followed the direction of his eyes, and saw ‘Excision and histology’ on the screen.

She cleared her throat, smiled at the patient and shot up some thanks for Leo’s presence at her elbow. ‘Right,’ she told the patient, ‘what we need to do is remove it, just as a precaution, and then send it to the lab to have it checked, just to be on the safe side. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, but removing it is such a minor procedure it seems silly not to do so. Now, the only thing is I’m not an expert in minor surgery, but I believe Dr Chandler here could remove it for you, couldn’t you, Dr Chandler?’