Partners By Contract

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‘Take the first left after the—’

‘I know where you live,’ she snapped.

‘Ask, did you?’

‘I didn’t have to. The community takes a deep, and in my view unhealthy, interest in everything about you, from the colour scheme in your bedroom to your love life!’

‘And did you learn anything interesting?’

Phoebe despised herself for being so damned receptive to his sexy low-pitched drawl. ‘You don’t wear pyjamas!’ she returned snappily.

Oh, heavens! First bedroom and love life, now this! She could have taken a whole day to pick a retort likely to discompose and generally embarrass and not come up with one that did both so efficiently.

‘According to Mrs Sanderson, that is,’ she faltered.

‘Oh, dear Olive. What would I do without her,’ Connor drawled.

‘Very well, if she’s to be believed. I’m not sure she actually approves of men who can iron a shirt,’ Phoebe elaborated dryly.

‘Rob Marlow looked a lot more cheerful than the last time I saw him.’

Here it comes. Anyone who didn’t know Con as well as she did might have taken this statement at face value, but Phoebe knew him too well to be lulled into a false sense of security.

‘Are you suggesting that’s not a good thing?’ she asked spikily.

‘Not at all.’

‘If you’ve got some problem with my professional judgement, Con, spit it out. It’s not like you to be so coy.’

‘I’m suggesting,’ Connor replied, his tone hardening, ‘that our resources are stretched thinly enough without including social calls on your rounds. I’m curious, Phoebe, do all your patients warrant such individual attention? I’d have thought you’d have learnt by now that it’s not a good idea to get involved with patients, especially vulnerable ones. Leaving the ethics of becoming romantically involved with a patient aside...’

Phoebe caught her breath. Con hadn’t lost any of his bluntness over the years.

‘Are you aware that you sound incredibly pompous?’ she enquired sweetly. ‘Is this Connor Carlyle, senior partner, flexing his biceps?’

‘Are you aware you sound as if you’re trying to deflect the question?’ he countered annoyingly.

‘Are you implying there’s anything improper in my relationship with Rob Marlow?’ she said through gritted teeth, determined to keep up his question-for-a-question policy as long as he did.

‘I don’t know.’ An image of the younger man, his hands placed proprietorially on Phoebe’s slender shoulders, materialised in his brain and Connor felt the blood pound in his temples. ‘Is there?’

He was watching as a tide of dark colour travelled up her slender neck until her whole face was suffused in a delicious shade of delicate pink.

‘I suppose you only see a patient when you’re doling out a prescription. Sometimes they need to talk...’ she choked scornfully.

‘Yeah...yeah, and in a perfect world we’d have time to listen, but even in that world there’s such a thing as professional distance,’ Connor bit back cynically. ‘He’s smitten, Phoebe,’ he told her bluntly. ‘It’s written all over him.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Phoebe exclaimed, a hint of defensiveness creeping into her voice. ‘I’ve been helping him come to terms with his situation...’

‘Have it your own way, Phoebe. You usually did, as I recall. A more stubborn, self-opinionated female I never did meet,’ he reflected grimly.

Phoebe’s jaw dropped. The bare-faced cheek of the man! ‘Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!’ she gasped.

Connor shrugged. ‘Don’t come running to me when things go pear-shaped.’

‘As if I would. A man who is to empathy...’ She clamped her lips over the insult that rose to her tongue.

‘Restraint, Phoebe, from you...?’

‘Let’s just say I think the likelihood of me crying on your shoulder is remote at best,’ she assured him frigidly. Been there, done that and suffered the consequences...was still suffering...

‘Fair enough, but it’ll end in tears, as my old mum would have said.’

Phoebe’s expression softened. Maureen Carlyle was a lovely woman and, if she’d read a comment Maureen had made at Penny’s wedding correctly, the only person who had suspected Phoebe’s true feelings for Connor.

‘How is Mo?’

‘Died last summer.’

Phoebe’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Connor, I’m so sorry. She was a lovely lady.’

‘She liked you, too,’ Connor said quietly.

‘Was it her heart?’ she probed gently. Maureen Carlyle had had a long history of heart disease, but a triple bypass operation some years back had given her a new lease of life.

Connor nodded. ‘A massive MI,’ he confirmed.

‘I wish I’d been around.’

‘Where were you, Phoebe?’

Her dark, spiky lashes flickered downwards. ‘Abroad.’

‘You always did want to travel,’ he recalled, allowing his head to drop wearily against the headrest. The day’s exertions were beginning to catch up on him with a vengeance. ‘I suppose rural Cheshire must seem a bit tame after all the glamorous places you’ve been to?’

A grim smile curved Phoebe’s lips as she glanced out at the green fields. ‘Restful,’ she corrected softly.

She had been to worse places than the camp on the border of the two war-ridden African countries, but it had been there she’d faced the fact she’d reached the limit of her endurance. Emotionally and physically drained from her stint with the aid agency and nursing a nagging sense of failure, she’d returned home, where she’d been a locum for the past six months.

‘You say that now, but in six months time I expect you’ll be hankering for the bright lights,’ Connor predicted cynically.

Phoebe remained silent. Connor seemed to be in danger of confusing her with Penny—and not, she thought darkly, for the first time. It had been Penny who had been the party animal. She’d often teased Phoebe, who’d preferred curling up with a box of chocolates and a nice romantic video to going out to a nightclub, about her anti-social tendencies.

The nerve-stretching silence continued for several minutes before it finally dawned on Phoebe that Connor had fallen asleep. An ironic laugh worked its way past the emotional congestion in her raw throat as her rigid back slumped back into the seat. Here she was, primed for the most traumatic encounter in her life, and her combatant—if that was the right word under the circumstances—had fallen asleep.

He still didn’t stir when she pulled up on the cobbled drive of his home. She’d always tried to stifle her curiosity when she’d driven past before. Now she could see how attractive the three-storey building built of the mellow local stone was.

Speaking of attractive... In repose, the cynicism and tension wiped clean from his face, Con looked like the young medical student bursting with enthusiasm she’d met when she’d replied to the ad for a flatmate.

A smile played about her lips as she recalled how hard it had been for her to persuade him that a female flatmate would be just as good as, if not better than, a male counterpart. The accommodation situation in the university town had been notoriously bad, and Phoebe had been desperate.

She was seized by an overwhelming urge to brush the hank of fair hair—he wore it much shorter and neater these days—from his broad forehead. The sound of a car pulling up behind her brought her back to reality with an almost audible thump.

The slam of the car door to the rear was audible, too—audible enough to rouse Connor from a deep sleep.

He blinked in a sleepy, confused way and slowly focused on Phoebe. The smile that slowly spread across his face made Phoebe catch her breath, it warming the neglected corners of her aching heart.

Then his expression changed. It was like watching shutters come down. The enveloping warmth was snuffed out like a candle, leaving wary caution...or possibly simply dislike...in its place.