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‘Mr McNally,’ she replied coolly. He had been the other participant in that conversation and she had no intention of letting him think that he could get away with it. Far better to put an end to any more speculation straight away.
‘I hope that you have taken note of what I told Dr Slater, especially the last part of it. I am not in the market for a relationship.’
She heard Nick Slater suck in a deep breath when she emphasised that last word and glanced at him. Just for a second their eyes met and held while she felt the oddest sensation run through her. It was as though all the strength had suddenly ebbed from her body. She could feel her arms and legs growing weak, feel her vision starting to blur…
She blinked and the room shot back into focus. Nick Slater had already turned away and she watched as he went to his desk and sat down. He picked up a pen and lined it up with infinite precision along the top edge of his leather-backed blotter.
Leanne bit her lip because she knew with a sudden flash of insight that he was trying to buy himself some time before he had to look at her again. Why? Because he had experienced that same sensation of weakness which had seized her when their eyes had met? It seemed crazy even to think such a thing, yet she knew it was true. And her racing heart raced all the faster.
‘I owe you an apology, Miss Russell. Obviously, you weren’t meant to overhear what Dennis and I were saying just now, but that is no excuse. It was extremely remiss of us to have been speculating about you that way.’
Nick Slater’s deep voice cut through the silence and made her start nervously. Leanne raised startled eyes to his face then quickly looked away because she didn’t want to risk making eye contact with him again.
‘So long as you both understand that I would take an extremely dim view of you repeating what you said to anyone else, I think we can let the matter drop,’ she said, striving for calmness.
‘You have my word on it, Miss Russell. Thank you for being so understanding.’
He turned to Dennis McNally and she breathed a sigh of relief at no longer being the object of his interest. ‘If you could let me have those figures, Dennis, I can work them into my report. I need to get it faxed to the office this afternoon, so I would appreciate it if you could get straight onto it.’
It was a dismissal and Dennis wasn’t slow to see it as such. ‘No problem. I’ll let you have them before lunch. Nice to meet you, Miss Russell, and, as Nick said, sorry and all that.’
Leanne inclined her head, although she didn’t say anything as he hurriedly left the room. She was far too busy worrying about being alone with Nick Slater to think about anything else. It stunned her that she should be so aware of him because it had never happened before, not even when she had met Michael.
That thought was less than comforting so it was a relief when Nick briskly stood up and walked to the door. ‘I’ll give you a quick tour of the place first. I’m afraid that you’re getting thrown in at the deep end because we are short-staffed at the moment.’
‘Show me any medical facility that isn’t short of staff,’ she said lightly, following him into the corridor.
She took a steadying breath as he locked his office door. If she focused solely on the job and stopped her mind from running off at tangents, it would help tremendously.
‘You’re obviously a realist. Good. The last nurse we hired only lasted a week. She had got it into her head that life would be easier working in a place where the patients didn’t have their treatment provided by the NHS, with all its attendant problems.’
He gave a deep laugh and Leanne held herself rigid when she felt a spasm shoot through her again. ‘Unfortunately, it has just the opposite effect. Because people pay for their treatment they expect a much better service. Woe betide you if you don’t come up to their expectations!’
‘It’s only natural, I suppose.’
She cleared her throat when she heard how husky her voice had sounded. She had to stop this, she told herself sternly. Had to stop reacting to everything Nick Slater said or did. He was just someone she would be working with for the next three months so maybe she should slot him into that category right away.
‘People expect value for money,’ she continued in a more normal tone. ‘It doesn’t matter if they’re buying a new car, groceries from the supermarket or medical care, they expect the very best for their hard-earned money.’
‘Exactly. And that’s what we aim to give them when they come to HealthFirst,’ Nick assured her. ‘Our aim is to provide a comprehensive, value-for-money service to all our patients.’
‘Do you deal mainly with minor ailments?’ she asked curiously.
‘Not at all. We provide the full range of services that any general practitioner would offer. If we see a patient and decide that he needs a hospital referral—we arrange it. We also offer a complete range of diagnostic tests—blood, urine, cholesterol, electrocardiograph, and so on. And we refer any which are beyond our scope to a specialist provider.’
‘Are the people you treat usually holidaymakers?’ she said, a little surprised by the extent of the services on offer at the clinic.
‘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 (#ulink_5e8f6221-0377-506c-af21-54d30971c78a)
‘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.’
