Partners by Contract (3 page)

‘That’s our leader all right,’ Grace agreed, blowing a kiss in his direction before heading off with her student in tow. Connor’s eyes stayed on Phoebe’s face as Fran hugged him, then his gaze drifted reluctantly away.

‘You should have said you knew Con, Phoebe,’ Will said, a puzzled frown knitting his brow.

‘Oh, we lost touch years ago.’ She glanced at her watch
and murmured a realistic-sounding squeal of horror. ‘Is that the time already?’

‘I expect she didn’t think I’d recognise her,’ Connor drawled.

How could he joke about it? Talk about bad taste! Phoebe shot him a reproachful look and discovered that his expression wasn’t nearly as careless as his tone. His brooding examination sent an electrical surge through her tense frame.

‘Heavens, I’m running late! I must dash,’ she babbled. No longer caring if Will thought her behaviour odd, she did just that, as fast as her long legs would carry her.

Her heart was thumping, only not from the burst of speed, by the time she inserted the key shakily in the lock of the car door. This is all my fault, she thought. Why didn’t I turn and run the moment I realised that Connor worked here? Oh, she’d spent plenty of time rationalising the decision, but the bottom line was that she’d known all along it had been crazy and self-indulgent to stay.

She stood still for a few moments, waiting for waves of nausea to pass. When they did she hastily slid into the driver’s seat, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she did so. A showdown was inevitable but she wanted to choose the time and place. She was about to drive away when Will thumped the roof of her car. She let out a cry and jumped a mile.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,’ Will said as the window slid down.

‘Well you did!’ she barked. ‘Sorry, Will, I’m just...I hate being late,’ she ended lamely.

Easygoing Will brushed aside her stumbling apology. ‘I was wondering, Phoebe, are you calling in on Rob Marlow this morning?’

‘I thought I would, yes.’

Phoebe was relieved the conversation had turned to more professional matters. Here at least she felt in control. Rob Marlow had been the first patient she’d seen at Hayfield. It had taken Phoebe about two seconds to see beyond his outward aggressive behaviour to the fearful young man beneath.

‘We’ve been discussing the idea of him getting used to using a long stick now while his sight is still reasonable.’

The young computer programmer had been diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a congenital inherited degenerative eye condition, some years before, but up until recently he’d been able to lead a normal life as night blindness had been the only manifestation of the disease. Over the previous months, however, Rob had lost a significant degree of peripheral vision, leaving him with tunnel vision.

Will looked impressed. ‘When
I
suggested a white stick, he told me in no uncertain terms what I could do with it.’

‘I think the counselling is helping him come to terms with things,’ Phoebe responded modestly.

‘Bad timing, the fiancée walking out on him like she did. Hardly surprising the poor bloke went into denial.’

Phoebe nodded. ‘I’m sure she had her reasons,’ she agreed diplomatically. From things Rob had let slip, she suspected that ‘pushed’ rather than ‘walked’ would have been a more accurate description. ‘But,’ she continued on a genuinely upbeat note, ‘Rob’s one of life’s survivors. He seems determined to make the most of what sight he eventually retains.’

‘Good, good!’ Will approved benignly. ‘And if you’re heading out that way, would you mind dropping Con off at his place? It’s only a mile or so past the Marlows’ farm. I wouldn’t ask but I’ve got a clinic, and the idiot came straight here from the airport. And if you know Con, you’ll
know he must be feeling pretty hellish if he admits to feeling off-colour. Here he is now...’

Phoebe’s smile became fixed as the tall, achingly familiar figure appeared, making his way towards them. The way he moved was as firmly lodged in her brain as the sound of his voice, the gold tips of the ends of his long eyelashes or the shape of his elegant hands. Right now his loose-limbed elegance was severely hampered by his injury, but it didn’t stop a stab of pure sexual longing from jolting through her with the force of a lightning bolt.

Nothing had changed! It wasn’t the best moment to discover that she’d been successfully in denial for the last four years. Her first instinct was to drive away and leave them both standing there—such a shame she couldn’t follow it.

‘Fine, Will,’ she responded, a little wild-eyed.

Connor endured his partner’s fussing with growing impatience and a noticeable lack of gratitude. His temper snapped when Will readjusted the passenger seat yet again.

‘I’ve plenty of room for my damned leg!’

‘He was only trying to help,’ Phoebe remonstrated, sparing her passenger a disapproving glare before she started the engine.

‘He’s an old woman!’ Connor grouched.

‘He’s a warm and caring person, and very dedicated—a perfect GP,’ Phoebe corrected in a shaky voice. Will brought out the maternal instinct in most women and Phoebe was no exception.

‘Since when,’ she asked, an antagonistic note creeping into her strained voice, ‘did you want to be a GP anyhow?’ Four years ago he’d just been made a senior registrar in one of the top neurological units in the country. If he’d stayed on that course he would undoubtedly have been a
consultant now and, more importantly, he wouldn’t be here in her car, filling it with a warm, sexy Con smell.

‘Perhaps I was inspired by Will. Of course, I can’t aspire to his level of dedication but, despite my lack of warmth, some people think I’m quite good at the job,’ he drawled sarcastically.

Phoebe had never doubted it, and if she had, a day of treating his patients would have put her straight. They’d all made it quite clear that Connor wasn’t just a hard act to follow—he was an impossible act to follow!

‘You’re good at everything, Con,’ she observed with a resigned little sigh. Especially kissing...he was excellent at kissing. Don’t go there Phoebe. Don’t think about his mouth...don’t think about anything!

‘Except being a husband.’

CHAPTER TWO

P
HOEBE
’
S
stomach churned with self-disgust. Connor’s bleak pronouncement was confirmation of all her worst nightmares.

This was all her fault!

You did it, you fix it, Phoebe. Nice in theory, but in reality she was swamped by a wave of inadequacy. If this had been a heart with an irregular beat or a broken limb, she’d have known what to do, but it wasn’t—this was something they didn’t teach you how to fix in medical school!

It had been bad enough to lose the closest friend she’d ever had because of a moment of weakness, but to learn that he was so guilt-ridden about what they’d done that he considered himself a failure as a husband was just too awful to contemplate. Just when she’d thought she’d finally come to terms with her own guilt, she had his to sort out.

‘Don’t you think you’re being just a tad over-dramatic, Con?’ she began tentatively.

She heard the anger in his hissing intake of breath. Good, anger was infinitely preferable to that terrible desolation she had seen in his face moments before. ‘I have to admit I’m surprised to hear you speaking like that.’

‘Truthfully you mean?’

‘You know perfectly well you’re talking a load of rubbish!’ she countered, a sliver of desperation creeping into her tense tone.

‘Do I?’

‘Sure you do. If it wasn’t so silly, I’d laugh,’ she claimed.

‘You’ve got a nice laugh.’

The sheer unexpectedness of this comment and the strange driven note in his voice made her involuntarily stiffen.

‘Just an observation,’ he added in a much less alarming tone.

Phoebe’s hands relaxed slightly on the steering-wheel.

‘But you’re completely wrong about me being a good husband.’ His lips twisted in an expression of sour distaste. ‘I was actually a disaster from beginning to end.’

Phoebe caught her lower lip between her teeth. She was so embarrassed she could hardly get her words out, but she supposed it needed to be said.

‘I suppose you’re thinking about...’ She shook her head, unable to say it.

‘No, I’m not thinking about the unmentionable.’ Actually, there had been very few days over the past four years when he hadn’t thought about it, thought about Phoebe...

His mocking drawl hurt. ‘It’s not funny,’ she reproached gruffly. Perhaps making light of it was part of his coping mechanism.

‘I’m not laughing.’

A brief sideways peek revealed this to be true. His spectacular eyes were burning in his rigid countenance. Phoebe hurriedly looked away, deeply relieved she had a legitimate excuse to do so.

‘Are you?’ he challenged huskily, directing a diamond-hard searching glance at her clear-cut profile.

‘Am I what?’

‘Thinking about it?’

‘Why would I?’ she blustered. ‘It’s not as if anything actually happened.’ Her laugh sounded almost authentic.

‘In fact, you hardly remember,’ he drawled sarcastically.

Phoebe felt the heat rise up her neck. ‘I remember, but let’s keep this in proportion, shall we?’

‘By all means,’ he agreed smoothly. ‘I’m assuming your version of keeping things in proportion involves skipping the country?’

Sarcastic beast! ‘It was just a...a kiss...’ The fine muscles in her pale throat quivered. ‘Penny would have understood.’ She wished she really believed that.

‘She did.’

His cryptic comment only served to deepen Phoebe’s confusion, and it showed in her wildly fluctuating colour.

‘What a day!’ he sighed, rotating his neck from side to side to alleviate the knots of tension that were tying his spine in knots. ‘I pop in to catch up on my paperwork...’ He yawned.

‘You shouldn’t be doing paperwork,’ she responded automatically. She was relieved he’d changed the subject.

‘And I find our brilliant new locum is none other than my elusive sister-in-law.’

Her relief seemed a bit premature. ‘I didn’t set this up, Con,’ she told him urgently.

‘And here’s me thinking you missed me,’ he drawled.

Only about as much as she’d have missed her right arm.

‘Bad luck about the knee,’ she heard herself babble brightly. Wasn’t that the sort of things that casual acquaintances said when they bumped into one another? ‘Was it the anterior cruciate ligament? Isn’t that usually the most common skiing—?’ Now I sound like a medical textbook!

‘To hell with my knee!’ he blasted.

‘I’m trying, Con.’ He didn’t seem to appreciate how hard.

‘Trying to do what?’

Now she knew he was being deliberately obtuse.

‘You could at least make an effort!’ she burst out, keeping a wary eye on a stray sheep that had wandered into the road. ‘It’s very uncomfortable, of course.’

‘My knee?’

His flippancy exasperated her. ‘That, too,’ she agreed, refusing to get angry. Anger made you say things you regretted later and she needed to keep a careful guard on her tongue.

Connor’s lips curled into a derisive smile. ‘
Uncomfortable.
You always were good at understatement, Phoebe.’

‘By the time you’re fit to come back to work I’ll be gone. When I applied for the job,’ she continued doggedly, ‘I had no idea that you were the partner I was standing in for.’

‘And when you did?’

That was a question she’d been asking herself a lot. The truth was, some masochistic part of her hadn’t been able to resist a glimpse of the new life Con had built for himself. The temptation of seeing where he worked, the people he knew, had been too great for her to resist. Phoebe refused to acknowledge the possibility that subconsciously a little part of her had hoped that this would happen, that deep down she’d wanted to see Connor again.

‘Fair question,’ she admitted with a beleaguered shrug.

‘An honest answer to a fair question seems reasonable.’

‘You wouldn’t recognise reasonable if you fell over it,’ she snapped, forgetting for the moment about keeping her temper. She took a deep steadying breath. ‘I’ve already explained. I thought I’d be long gone before you came back, and when Will asked me to stay a little longer after your accident I couldn’t refuse. With hindsight, of course, I can see—’

‘I tried to write to you,’ he interrupted abruptly. The crack in his resonant voice made her startled eyes swivel
in his direction. In profile she could see a maverick pulse thumping like crazy in his lean cheek. Her eyes slid as if preconditioned to the firm sensual outline of his lips and her tummy muscles did a lot of squirming.

With a tiny snort of denial she managed to tear her eyes away and nodded.

‘I know.’ She trained her eyes with glassy fixed concentration on the road ahead.

Connor raked a hand through his blond hair. ‘You must know that I never intended that we lose touch completely...or at all...’

Aware his eyes were on her face, Phoebe kept her facial muscles still, presenting a bland mask to his searching scrutiny.

‘The letters kept being returned unopened. Then you left with no forwarding address.’

‘It seemed easier that way.’ Her composed tone didn’t even hint at the hours she’d spent agonising over the decision not to open his letters. ‘You’re the one who said you didn’t want to see me again.’ The bitterness crept, unintended, into her voice and she knew it was unrealistic to suppose he hadn’t heard it, too. ‘And I gave you every justification,’ she added with painful honesty. She didn’t want him to think she was trying to shift the blame.

‘You gave me...!’ he snarled. Connor closed his eyes, his chest heaving with the effort to control his feelings. ‘Stop the car, will you?’

‘I can’t. I’m already running late.’ If she stopped the car she’d have to look at him.

‘What happened was...’ A deep sigh reverberated through his powerful frame. ‘It was in the heat of the moment, Phoebe,’ he rasped.

The moment was long gone, but the heat remained. A lot of heat! Phoebe, her eyes locked in forward position,
didn’t see the colour seeping slowly across the high contours of his cheekbones.