скачать книгу бесплатно
The Police Surgeon's Rescue
Abigail Gordon
Working for GP and police surgeon Dr. Blake Pemberton is a close a brush with the law as Nurse Helena Harris ever wanted.Then she finds herself testifying against a gang who threatened her father's life. Blake is determined to protect Helena, and she finds herself falling for the courageous doctor. But can she persuade him to trust her with his heart?
Was it so obvious that she was in love with Blake?
She hoped not.
He’d already made it clear that he didn’t want her to keep expressing her thanks. So how would he react if he discovered her feelings went a lot deeper than that? Since the day they’d kissed he’d never touched her, and she didn’t know why.
She wished she knew. But maybe tonight the answer would present itself. Just the two of them alone in the cosy cottage.
POLICE SURGEONS
Heart-racing romance—Heart-stopping drama—Medicine on the beat!
Working side by side—and sometimes hand in hand—
dedicated medical professionals join forces
with the police service for the very best
in emotional excitement!
From domestic disturbance to emergency room drama,
working to prove innocence or guilt, and
finding passion and emotion along the way.
The Police Surgeon’s Rescue
Abigail Gordon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
Chapter One (#u3ce0c25b-4785-5e4f-8ec8-7a2e56cafa30)
Chapter Two (#uaa42cd23-9951-51e6-8e3c-2714df423de1)
Chapter Three (#u3cf8a906-06c9-5921-a0de-fb2058f4048e)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
SO THIS is it, Helena thought as the taxi pulled away and she was left standing at the bottom of the drive surrounded by her luggage. ‘Home sweet home’.
It looked decent enough, the small detached house in a suburban cul-de-sac, but it wasn’t the place where she’d been brought up. That had been in a town much farther north than this, in a pleasant house on a road not far from the noise and bustle of the city.
Looking around her, she wondered what she was going to do in a place like this. She’d like to bet the folks around here were all in bed each night before ten. Maybe her dad was beginning to feel his age and that was why he’d moved, but he could at least have consulted her first. He’d known she wasn’t going to be away for ever.
The door opened and he was there, smiling at her. Putting to one side her feeling of grievance, she ran up the drive and into his arms.
He looked older and thinner, Helena thought as they carried her bags inside. He’d lost the robust jollity that had kept them going after they’d lost her mother, and even though she’d only just set foot in the place she had to ask, ‘Why did you move house, Dad? This is miles away from all the places I know. Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning? I couldn’t believe it when I got your letter. I know the old house was a bit big for the two of us after Mum died but…’
There was no smile on his face now. It was more sombre than she’d ever seen it.
‘I’m going to put the kettle on, Helena,’ he said, ‘and when we’ve had a cup of tea I’ve got a story to tell you that will explain why I’ve done what I have. I’m afraid that you’re going to think this is a very poor homecoming.’
‘Fine,’ she told him, feeling better now that she’d got it off her chest and having no inkling that ‘fine’ was the last word she would think of to describe the situation once she’d heard what he had to say.
Later, much later, as she lay in a strange bedroom, exhausted but sleepless after the long flight, she was trying to take in what she’d been told and amongst a jumble of emotions the one uppermost was fear.
* * *
As Blake Pemberton looked down on the body of the man lying on the smooth green turf of the golf course his eyes widened beneath raised brows. He’d seen plenty of dead bodies since he’d started working with the police in a medical capacity and the causes of death had varied. Natural causes, accidental and in some instances the victim had died in suspicious circumstances.
But it wasn’t any of those factors that were causing surprise. For the first time ever he’d been called out to examine the body of someone he knew. It was the elderly man who’d moved into the house next door who was gazing upwards with sightless eyes.
‘Somebody walking their dog found him, not long ago,’ one of the policemen who’d been summoned to the scene told him, ‘and when we radioed back to the station they said to ask you to come out to examine him before we moved him. What do you think, Doctor? There’s no obvious signs of injury.’
Blake had got over his surprise and was examining the body of his neighbour with swift expertise. Noting the froth on blue lips, the grimace of pain on the waxen features. The body was still faintly warm but there was no pulse or heartbeat. Getting to his feet, he told the constable, ‘I would think he suffered a massive heart attack. Even if help had been at hand I don’t think it would have made any difference.’
As the policeman nodded his agreement Blake told him, ‘You don’t have to worry about his identity. He’s my next-door neighbour. Only moved in recently and was living on his own until yesterday when he was expecting his daughter home from Australia. So there’s sorrow for someone.
‘I don’t know if she’s actually arrived but if you like I’ll go and break the news to her, and if she’s not there I’ll put a note through the door asking her to contact me.’
‘Sure,’ the other man agreed. ‘I’ll leave it in your capable hands and we’ll get the poor fellow to the mortuary.’
As he drove back home Blake wasn’t looking forward to passing on such sad tidings to the man’s unsuspecting daughter, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to break that kind of news to a member of the public, far from it. The good, the bad and the unthinkable were all part of the day-to-day routine of the GP.
It was a quarter to eight in the morning and thankfully it was Sunday, otherwise he would be having to dash off to the surgery once the deed was done. The man must have gone for an early morning stroll and it had turned out to be his last.
* * *
Helena awoke to the ringing of the doorbell and for a moment she lay there, bewildered, wondering where she was, then it all came back. As the bell rang once more she still didn’t move waiting for her father to answer it, but it rang again and this time she swung herself out of bed and padded to the window.
The caller had given up. He was walking down the drive with a purposeful step, a tall, dark-haired man, broad-shouldered, trim-hipped, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.
She opened the window to call to him and then thought better of it. After what her father had told her the previous night the less they had to do with strangers the better, and she shrank back into the shadows.
But he’d heard the window catch being lifted. He stopped and turned and even though he couldn’t see her he called up, ‘Could you come down to the front door, please? I need to speak to you urgently.’
There didn’t seem any point in cowering out of sight if he knew she was there, so showing herself she leaned forward and said, ‘I’m listening.’
He frowned.
‘I don’t want to tell all the neighbourhood. It’s about your father.’
‘Yes. I’ll bet it is!’ she cried. ‘If you don’t clear off immediately I’m going to call the police.’
‘I am from the police,’ he said patiently, with the feeling that this was going to be even worse than he’d imagined, ‘and I’m also your next-door neighbour. My name is Blake Pemberton. Will you, please, come downstairs? I have some grave news concerning your father.’
‘Hold on!’ Helena cried.
If it was a hoax her father would be in the dining room, having his breakfast, but if that was the case, why hadn’t he answered the door?
He wasn’t there. But a scribbled note was. It said, ‘Gone for a stroll along the golf links. Will cook you breakfast when I get back.’
As she stood with the note in her hand Helena could see the man’s shadow through the glass of the front door, and with dread in her heart she went to open it. Not knowing if it was the right thing to do, but with the certainty that if something had happened to her dad she had to know.
Her first thought as the door swung back was that he didn’t look like a thug. There was nothing shifty about the level gaze meeting hers and he was making no move to come any nearer.
‘I realise from your manner that you are wary of me for some reason,’ he was saying, ‘but I do assure you I mean you no harm. It was true what I said. I am with the police. I’m a doctor, working with them. They were called to the golf links a short time ago as the body of a man had been found by a passer-by and they got in touch with me in my position as police surgeon.
‘Sadly it was too late for me to help him. There was nothing I could do. But I did recognise the man as your father and offered to come to tell you what had happened. I am so very sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.’
If her face hadn’t been so transfixed with horror she would have been beautiful, he thought. High cheekbones, a sweetly curving mouth and green eyes beneath a tangled russet mop.
Her pyjamas weren’t the last word in glamour, soft cotton with no frills or flounces, but those were details scarcely registering as she croaked, ‘Oh, no! So they got to him after all. How could they?’
As Blake eyed her questioningly she began to crumple and he caught her as she fell. As she wept in his arms he asked above the crown of her head, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Helena,’ she sobbed. ‘Helena Harris.’
‘So tell me, Helena,’ he coaxed gently, ‘what did you mean by what you just said?’
He felt a shudder go through her and silently thanked the providence that had sent him to her in such a moment of distress.
‘My dad was the only witness to a shooting on a garage forecourt some months ago in the town where we lived. He testified in court and after that received threats. So the police took him into the witness protection programme and moved him out here.
‘He wrote and told me he’d moved but didn’t explain why until I came home yesterday. I’ve been in Australia, nursing, for the last twelve months. But it was all a waste of time, wasn’t it?’ she sobbed. ‘They found him in spite of everything.’
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘It wasn’t like that, Helena. Your father died from natural causes. He had a massive heart attack out there on the golf course and there was no one about to help him, Though I doubt it would have made any difference if there had been. So, you see, there is nothing to fear. If you’d like to get dressed I’ll drive you to where they’ve taken him.’
‘He wasn’t murdered, then,’ she whispered.
‘No. There were no signs of injury on his body. It’s my job as police surgeon to look out for that sort of thing, and there was nothing. But there was evidence of a massive cardiac arrest.’
‘I’m so sorry that I was so dubious of you when you came, but you can understand why, can’t you?’ she asked, moving out of his arms as if she’d suddenly realised where she was.
She looked sad and very vulnerable and yet there was a sort of quiet dignity about her as she stood before him in the sensible pyjamas.
‘So go and get dressed,’ he suggested again, ‘and while you’re gone I’m going to make you a cup of hot sweet tea.’
Helena nodded mutely and padded back up the stairs. When she’d gone he put the kettle on and then stood deep in thought. His expression was grim. The girl and her father had been traumatised because the man had done his duty as an honest citizen, and who was to say that the heart attack hadn’t been a direct result of the position he’d found himself in?
There’d been no mention of her having a mother. He hoped that she did have someone to turn to, and as she sipped the tea that he’d made Blake asked carefully, ‘Do you have anyone to help you through this sad time? Brothers, sisters or any other relative you can rely on?’
Helena shook her head. ‘No. I’m afraid not. I’m an only child and both my parents were the same, so I’ve no aunts, uncles or cousins.’
She was calm now but pinched-looking and drained of all colour. When she’d drunk the tea she got to her feet.
‘Will you, please, take me to where my dad is?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course. My car is the black Volvo outside the house next door. Here’s the key. Go and settle yourself inside and if you’ll give me a door key I’ll lock up behind us.’
Helena looked around her and shuddered again.
‘Yes, please. This place feels spooky to me after what Dad told me last night.’
He couldn’t leave her in that house tonight, Blake was thinking as they drove to the hospital mortuary. She was having a horrendous homecoming. Yet what was the alternative? Would she be willing to sleep in his spare room?
They hardly knew each other. She might think spending the night in the house of a stranger even more nerve-stretching than the thought of who might be lurking. When he got back he would impress upon the police to make public the fact that the witness in the recent trial was dead, so that if the friends of the convicted man had been trying to find James Harris, they would now give up.
* * *
Helena clung to Blake’s hand when they were shown her father’s body, but she managed to hold back the tears when a doctor came to inform her that there would have to be a post-mortem.
* * *
On the way back Blake made up his mind what he was going to do, and when they stopped at the front of their two houses he said, ‘Would you like to use my spare room tonight? You’ve had a dreadful shock and I would like to keep an eye on you.’
Surprised green eyes met his as he posed the question.
‘That’s very kind of you, Dr Pemberton. Are you sure I wouldn’t be in the way? Do you have family?’
He shook his head. ‘No. There’s just me. I did have a family once, but they aren’t around any more.’
‘Oh. I see.’
She didn’t, of course. Didn’t see at all, but what else was there to say if he wasn’t going to explain further? And it looked as if he wasn’t.
‘In that case, I would very much like to stay. I should have got a better grip on things by tomorrow and thank you for your kindness. I couldn’t have got through the ordeal at the mortuary without you.’
