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‘I think so,’ she replied, and was amazed at the normality of her voice. Her greedy eyes sought out every tiny detail of his movements as he reached for the coffee-pot. Were his shoulders just a touch broader? Maybe. ‘You’re looking well,’ she added.
He turned towards her, pot in hand. ‘So are you—as lovely as ever.’ His eyes flicked away. ‘You got married again, I gather. I’m sorry to hear you lost your husband.’
Emily thought of Philip, one of the kindest, most generous men she had ever known, and felt a wash of sadness. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
‘You’ve got a son.’ His voice sounded harsh, accusing almost. She ignored it.
‘Yes—James. He’s six now.’
‘Rather young for you to have a full-time job.’
‘I have to live,’ she said, still quiet but defensive now.
‘Yes—I’m sorry, your child-care arrangements are nothing to do with me.’ He sat down in one of the easy-chairs, big hand wrapped round the mug of coffee, and eyed her over the top. ‘So, what do you think of the practice?’
She shrugged. ‘Wonderful. I would have loved working here, I’m sure.’
‘Would have?’
She lifted her shoulders again. ‘Of course. This changes things, don’t you think?’
David was silent, regarding her through veiled eyes. She wished she could read his expression, but, like his looks, that aspect hadn’t changed. She could never read his eyes if he didn’t want her to.
The silence stretched on endlessly, and then finally he spoke. ‘It needn’t change things—not necessarily. We need a woman partner, and you were definitely the favoured candidate. We’re very pushed, and we have been for some time. We need to make an appointment as soon as possible, really. Locums are difficult to come by. In this part of the world they want to work in Exeter or Barnstaple, not sleepy little Biddlecombe.’
His eyes traced her features one by one, then flicked back to lock with hers, their expression still unreadable. ‘As for us—well, after all, it’s been eight years. We should be able to be civilised about it.’
She thought of all the rows, and then of the making up, the desperate depths of passion he had aroused in her. Civilised? Somehow, knowing him, she doubted it.
She glanced around at the tired décorations. ‘I wouldn’t have thought this was your thing. I had you pegged for Harley Street.’
He gave a rude snort. ‘Me? With my rural background and Cornish accent? I wouldn’t smell right—that faint tang of manure that’s so difficult to shift. Besides, I like it here.’
Her shoulders twitched. ‘I just thought—you were such a brilliant doctor. I never expected you to bury yourself in obscurity.’
‘Too good for general practice?’ He snorted again. ‘Was that why you went in for it? Because you weren’t good enough for hospital medicine?’
Her head came up. ‘How dare you? I am a good doctor—’
‘So why bury yourself in obscurity?’
Their eyes clashed for a long while, and then a slow, lazy smile curved his lips. ‘My round, I think,’ he murmured, and his voice curled round her senses and sent a dart of something forgotten stabbing through her body.
She scraped up her ragged defences. ‘I don’t think this will work,’ she said stiffly. ‘We’re fighting already.’
‘Hardly fighting,’ he countered, and she could see from his eyes that he was remembering—remembering the fights, and then the long, slow hours of making up. Sometimes she had wondered if they hadn’t provoked half the fights just for the making up.
The pause stretched on. ‘Give it a try, Emily,’ he coaxed at last. ‘If the others agree, give us six months—a probationary period. We would have had one anyway, whoever the candidate. See how it goes. If it really doesn’t work, then fair enough, but give us a chance.’
Us? she thought. Which us? Us, the practice—or us, you and me, David and Emily, one-time lovers and best friends, with the stormiest marriage on record behind us? And a chance for what? To prove we can work together—or a chance to try again, to breathe life into the corpse of our long-buried love?
‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not sure I’m strong enough to handle it.’
‘There’s nothing to handle, Emily. Eight years is a long time. We’ve changed, grown up, matured. We can deal with this.’
She looked at him, but he was staring out of the window and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Did he still feel anything for her? Possibly. Nostalgia? Fondness? Unlikely, considering the vitriolic row they had had before she walked out.
She could hide behind her widowhood, and Jamie—dear, sweet Jamie, so battered already by his short life. Nothing must hurt him now.
‘I won’t have an affair with you,’ she said, hating to bring it up but needing to make the ground rules clear before they went any further.
He turned towards her then and met her eyes with a level stare. ‘Did I suggest it?’
‘No—but if you intended to the answer’s no.’
His smile was slow and did terrifying things to her heart.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said softly, and opened the door. ‘Shall we go and have a word with the others?’
‘They haven’t said they want me yet,’ she cautioned him.
He grinned, catching her off guard again with the boyish quirk of his lips.
‘They want you—and so do I.’
The smoky glitter in his eyes made her heart race. ‘David—’
‘As a partner,’ he added softly.
‘No affair,’ she reminded him, conscious of the ambiguity of his last remark.
‘You’ve already mentioned that,’ he said.
It was only later she realised he hadn’t agreed to co-operate—and by then it was too late, because she’d agreed to take the job.
David spent the rest of that day wondering if he needed to have his bumps felt. He must have been nuts to suggest she take the job—just when the nights had begun to seem less long, when his career was on track and his life was ordered and tolerable.
He gave a bitter grunt of laughter. Tolerable? Who was he trying to kid? Emotionally it was a wasteland, a desert crying out for the sweet rain of her love, but would letting her back into his life be anything other than a mirage on the horizon, taunting him with the promise of long, cosy winter evenings by the fireside, followed by slow, lazy nights filled with passion and tenderness?
He dragged his thoughts to a halt, cursing softly as his body throbbed readily to life. Damn her. Damn her for coming back into his life. Damn the coincidence that had brought her back—and damn her for being so shatteringly, sweetly beautiful. All age had added was a soft, womanly maturity. There was no sign of the ravages of childbirth—at least none he could detect, and despite his better intentions he had looked hard enough.
No, she was still his Emily, the woman who had haunted his days and nights for the past eight years, the woman who had taken away his future and left him with nothing but bittersweet memories of a less than perfect past.
He stared out of his surgery window at the hillside opposite, the rolling folds of the valley that fell steadily to the sea two miles away.
It was a beautiful place to live, a place to find peace and tranquillity, if not happiness—until Emily.
Except, if he had to be honest, he had come here initially because of her, or at least because of those accursed memories.
They had spent two blissful, glorious weeks here on their honeymoon, courtesy of Emily’s old schoolfriend Sarah, whose parents had owned a cottage not five miles away—a cottage where they had both given up their virginity in a fumbling, earth-shattering explosion of tension—at least his tension had exploded then. Emily’s explosion had been a little later, when he had blundered his way towards a better understanding of her body and its responses, but when he had …
Remembering those responses drew a deep, agonised groan from him now, and he dropped his head into his hands, knuckling his eyes and forcing his breath through a chest that felt as if a steel band was coiled tightly round it.
Need—years of aching, unsatisfied need—rose up to swamp him. The dull, heavy throb of his body taunted him, and every time his eyes flickered shut she danced naked against his lids as she had in the cottage that bleak December of their honeymoon, her smooth skin lit only by the dancing flames of the fire.
He groaned again and stood up, only to sit down again and force his attention to the demands of paperwork until the embarrassing and unmistakable hunger in his body subsided.
Damn her.
And damn him for stopping her when she had wanted to go away earlier today and forget all about this job.
He should have let her go while the going was good.
Idiot.
It was no good, he was never going to get this paperwork done today. What he needed was some fresh air. There was a patient he needed to visit, too—he’d go and do it and take his mind off his folly, at least for a little while.
The door creaked open, cobwebs clinging to the frame, and Emily stepped cautiously over the threshold. It smelt musty, but it seemed dry enough. She walked hestitantly into the sitting-room and faltered to a standstill.
It hadn’t changed—not since—oh, lord.
Memories came back to swamp her—David, lying naked on the hearthrug, watching her hungrily as she danced in front of the flames, his eyes warming her pale skin as effectively as the fire. He had reached for her, drawing her down beside him, then his body had claimed hers again—
She became conscious of a dull, heavy ache of need, buried long ago deep down inside her, and the slow, insistent beat of her heart beneath her breasts.
She must be mad, she thought with a moan as she pressed cool palms against her flaming cheeks. Mad to think she could come back here to live, in this cottage which held so many memories. And madder still to think she could work side by side with the man who had helped to make those memories.
Her eyes strayed back to the fire, and, sinking down on to the hearthrug, she let her fingers stray over the soft woollen pile.
He had been so tender with her, so nervous himself and yet so thoughtful of her …
‘Isn’t it lovely?’
David glanced round, then back to his bride, her cheeks glowing with health and something else.
‘Absolutely,’ he said huskily, but she knew he wasn’t talking about the cottage and her throat went dry.
Her whole body tingled with anticipation, with the tension that had built between them until now.
But it would end here, tonight, their wedding night.
‘It’s cold,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll light the fire.’
It was reluctant, and she laughed at him and pushed him out of the way, interfering.
In the end, amid much teasing and hilarity, they got it going, and David went out to the car and brought in the luggage and a bottle of champagne.
The fridge, they found, was full of goodies courtesy of Sarah’s parents—the lady who looked after the cottage had been in and cleaned it, made up the beds and stocked up with groceries at their instruction.
‘How kind,’ Emily said to David, and he agreed and turned to her.
‘What about supper?’
‘I’m not really hungry,’ she confessed, her eyes tangling with his.
‘No, nor am I. Shall we sit by the fire and open the champagne?’
They found glasses and settled down on the hearthrug. Although the heating was on it was a cold, cheerless day and darkness had fallen some time before. There, though, in the flickering firelight, the outside world was forgotten.
‘To us,’ he said softly, touching his glass to hers, and, their eyes locked, they entwined their arms and sipped deeply.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Bubbles,’ she said, a little breathless, and he leaned back against a chair and pulled her between his legs, her back against his chest, one arm resting comfortably across her waist.
Her head was tipped back against his throat, and she could feel the beat of his heart against her shoulders.
‘It was a lovely day, wasn’t it?’ she said softly.
‘I thought it would never end,’ he murmured.
She turned her head a little and stared up at him. The flames were reflected in his eyes, but then he moved his head and she saw a fire in them that was all his own. She swallowed, her heart suddenly pounding, and he took her glass away and set it down with his.
Then he reached for her, a little clumsily, and she turned in his arms to meet his kiss. Their passion caught and blazed, yet he seemed reluctant somehow, as if he was holding back.
She lifted her head and looked at him. ‘What’s wrong?’
He shook his head slightly. I so badly want this to be special for you, but I expect it’s going to be a disaster,’ he confessed, his voice trembling a little. ‘I’ve never done it before, so don’t expect miracles.’
She reached up and cupped his cheek. ‘Nor have I, so don’t worry. I don’t know what to expect—except that it might hurt.’
His eyes clouded. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Emily.’
‘Well, we can’t wait forever,’ she told him with typical candour. ‘I suppose it will only be the once.’
‘I’ll be as gentle as I can.’
‘I know.’
He reached out his arms again and kissed her once more, slowly, softly, with all his love—or so it seemed, because suddenly Emily found she didn’t care how much it hurt, she just needed to hold him and be held by him, to feel his body on hers, to know him in the oldest sense.
She reached for his shirt buttons, freeing two and sliding her fingers inside against the warm, smooth skin. A light scatter of hair grazed her knuckles, sending shivers down her spine.
‘Cold?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘No—no, not cold.’
He moved away a little from her, and stripped off his jacket and tie, then his shirt.
