Partners by Contract (6 page)

‘It’s Ellen,’ she heard herself say stupidly. Fortunately, she regained control of her tongue before she blurted out the even more stupid, Does she have a key?

‘So it is.’ It was impossible to tell from the tone of Connor’s voice if the fact filled him with delight, or—nasty thought—sent his hormones soaring out of control with lust.

It wasn’t the possibility—no, probability—that Con had an active sex life that made her feel queasy, Phoebe decided, busily rationalising away her gut feeling of violent rejection, it was with whom he had it!

The passenger door was flung open and the car was instantly filled with the exotic scent of Ellen’s expensive perfume.

‘Connor!’

That woman wears way too much lipstick, Phoebe concluded critically as several pink bow-shaped lip imprints appeared on Connor’s lean cheeks. Perhaps someone should drop a word about blotting... Ellen homed in on her main target and Phoebe averted her eyes for the duration of the clinch, which Connor was doing nothing to avoid. So what if he couldn’t run away? Even a man in his situation could have done something to indicate that
being groped publicly wasn’t his cup of tea, but he hadn’t...

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were flying back early?’ Phoebe heard Ellen chide in a playful voice that was a new one on her. Ellen was rarely in a playful mood when she admonished Phoebe for some major infringement of surgery policy, the most frequent complaint being that Phoebe often spent more than the time allotted with patients.

‘I’d have driven you home, you know that...’

‘Phoebe was handy.’

‘That’s me, handy.’

Ellen, who had been acting so far as if Phoebe wasn’t there, lifted her pale blue eyes to the younger woman.

‘Dr Miller is going to be hard-pressed to complete her house calls before evening surgery.’ Ellen smiled her trade-mark frigid smile. ‘I’m afraid the patients tend to take advantage of her...
generous
nature.’ The blonde barely managed to hide her scorn.

‘You’re too kind, Ellen.’ You malicious megalomaniac you, Phoebe thought, keeping a rein on her temper with difficulty.

It seemed it was her day for criticism, first Con and now his girlfriend—or whatever she was. Ellen’s criticism would have been easier to swallow if it had been justified. Will made just as many house calls as she did and Ellen was as aware as anyone that in a rural area like this, where the public transport system was almost non-existent, elderly people especially found it hard to get into town.

Despite Connor’s silence, Phoebe had no doubt that he had already picked up on the undercurrent between herself and the other woman—he always had been remarkably perceptive.

Not that his insight was always consistent. There had
always been one significant blind spot—Connor had never guessed that his good buddy, stroke flatmate, stroke sister-in-law had been in love with him. Most of her was deeply relieved about his ignorance, but a small irrational corner of her brain resented it. An even more irrational corner envisioned blurting out the truth just to see his shocked response.

Her eyes widened with horror. Tell him? I’m mad, stark, staring bonkers, even to think it!

‘But I’m afraid in this instance my generous nature can’t take the credit,’ she elaborated hurriedly. ‘I was press-ganged by Will. It’s just as well you’re here,’ she added briskly as she slid from her seat. Her head on one side, she assessed the bucket seat Con was sitting in. ‘Because I think it’s going to take the two of us to get Con out of the car.’

‘Nonsense!’

Phoebe ignored Connor’s disgusted refusal of female assistance and ran around the car to join the other woman, who promptly nudged her aside. So much for sisterhood!

Phoebe, who wasn’t about to get embroiled in an undignified tussle for the privilege of heaving out an ungrateful Connor, took a step back, folded her arms across her chest and waited.

She didn’t have long to wait before an offended Ellen drew back, though personally Phoebe had thought Con’s language fairly moderate—for him. She couldn’t help but wonder if their relationship was all that intimate if Ellen was so shocked by Connor’s belligerent attitude and a couple of mild curses. The man could be very tolerant of others’ weaknesses, but not his own. Con made a terrible patient and always had!

A memory of him slouching grumpily around the flat when he’d had a flu, displaying a lot less charm than the
proverbial bear with a sore head, brought a nostalgic softening to her eyes and an ache to somewhere in the mid-thoracic area.

‘For goodness’ sake, Con!’ Phoebe snapped, ignoring the nebulous chest pain. She was too exasperated by the whole situation to pretend they were strangers just for the other woman’s benefit. If she was the jealous type, too bad! ‘Cut the attitude,’ she advised coldly. ‘All this macho nonsense is getting us, and more specifically you, nowhere. Lean on us!’ she instructed sternly.

It was both miraculous and suspicious that, after raising a pair of cerulean blue eyes to her angrily flushed face for a thoughtful moment, he did both with uncharacteristic meekness.

‘The crutches are in the back seat,’ she said breathlessly once they’d got him upright. Ellen, obviously still shaken by Connor’s rudeness, didn’t take issue with the instruction.

‘Can’t you stand on your own?’ Phoebe huffed hoarsely.

She closed her eyes and blew away an irritating strand of hair which was tickling her nose. The errant strand of hair wasn’t nearly as distracting as the solid warmth of Con’s body pressed against her, though. He was all long limbs and hard, unyielding muscle. Phoebe felt extremely yielding, especially in the knee area. Her knees were literally shaking. She fought stubbornly to clear her head of the loud buzzing that preceded outright gibbering panic, or was it surrender?

With Connor’s arm draped heavily over her shoulder, her chin came about level with the angular curve of his jaw—an aesthetically pleasing, well-formed jaw it was, too. Her stomach muscles tightened as her eyes focused on the stubble along the angular curve that was several
shades darker than the hair on his head. A person could run her fingers over—bad thought, Phoebe!

Despite Phoebe’s decision to think clear, pure, objective thoughts, when you were pressed thigh to thigh up against a male who had more raw sexuality in his little finger than a sweaty locker room of elite athletes—possibly her objectivity was slipping here—it was hard—cancel hard, it was impossible—not to notice how well their opposing dips and hollows slotted into each other. Her hip, his... Heavens, she was doing it again!

‘Maybe I can...?’he drawled.

There were attractive pink spots highlighting either smooth cheek and a glazed expression in her wide eyes when she raised her eyes to his face.

‘Can...? Can what...? Oh!’ Her blush expanded to all areas of her face and neck until she glowed with humiliation. ‘Then stand on your own two feet. This is killing me!’ she croaked, praying he’d never know how much.

The riveting blue eyes remained fixed on her face. ‘You and me both,’ he promised her grimly.

Phoebe stiffened.

Sometimes it wasn’t what someone said but the way he said it, especially if he had a smoky, impossibly sexy voice—that and the way his eyes flickered ever so briefly to the heaving contours of a girl’s breasts—not forgetting the air of repressed longing on his face when those same devastating eyes came to rest hungrily on her mouth.

A shiver shuddered through her aching body. It was like swimming through warm, clinging honey, trying to break the intimate eye contact.

Phoebe was sweating lightly and quivering all over by the time she succeeded.

‘Hurry up, Ellen!’ she yelled harshly. ‘Some time this century would be good. As you’re fond of pointing out,’
she added bitterly, ‘time is money, and our resources aren’t infinite.’ More importantly, neither was her self-control!

Ironically, desperation made her sound for the moment like the stereotypical type of arrogant medic Phoebe had vowed never to turn into. In Phoebe’s view, being in the job of making life-and-death decisions made all too many of her colleagues inclined to take their god-like role a little too seriously.

‘I’m doing my best!’

From the other woman’s outraged tone Phoebe knew for sure that she’d find the most difficult patients directed to her consulting room for the next few days. Under the circumstances, that might not be a bad thing. The more work she had, the less time she had to think, and thinking wasn’t something she planned doing any time soon!

Teeth gritted, eyes firmly fixed on her own narrow feet, she turned her body to try and decrease the intimate contact. This tactic backfired when Connor, balanced on his good leg, inexplicably chose this moment to relieve her of some of his weight.

The breath rushed from her lungs in a silent whoosh as the unmistakable touch of his arousal brushed against her hip-bone.

Phoebe whimpered in an unforgivably needy way. They both froze.

Dazed and drowning in a warm sea of aching desire, Phoebe raised her eyes to Connor’s face. His scorching blue gaze incapacitated her still further. No sweaty bundle of teenage hormones had ever felt more out of control than she did.

If Ellen hadn’t chosen that moment to thrust the crutches between them, she dreaded to think what she might have done next.

Standing several feet away with a brain that was working
at a rudimentary level, she realised a little later that she’d had a lucky escape.

No, leave him with Ellen, she told herself, watching the other woman fuss solicitously over him. Far safer. And as for the...the other thing... A tiny self-derisive quiver moved her stiff lips. For a doctor who had listened to the most hair-raisingly intimate sexual details in a professional capacity, she could be awfully squeamish and coy when it came to her own personal sex life, she thought.

Personal. There lay the problem. Phoebe didn’t believe for a moment that it was personal on Con’s side. At best, Ellen was the actual target of his arousal and she had just got in the way! At worst—Phoebe lifted her chin—she had no intention of standing in for her twin, not ever!

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she said at her bright professional best.

Despite the fact that thinking about what she might be leaving them to made her feel nauseous, she even managed an impersonal—not to mention insincere—smile.

‘If you can cope, Ellen?’

‘Oh, I can cope,’ the other woman assured her far too swiftly.

Phoebe, sliding hurriedly into her car, prayed that she never gave off the same desperation vibes as the blonde. With a carefree honk of her horn, she drove off—in the wrong direction—without looking at the couple standing in front of the millhouse.

* * *

‘Thanks for seeing us, Doctor. I know we didn’t have an appointment...but Jane has been so upset since the scan.’

‘Take a seat, Mr Roberts...Jane.’ Phoebe motioned the couple to the chairs.

The last time she had seen Jane Roberts had been to confirm the young woman’s much-wanted pregnancy. At
that time she had left the office ecstatically happy. The change of mood tonight was dramatic. Jane was clearly having trouble holding back the tears.

‘I hate to bother you, Doctor. They did explain it all in the hospital but, to be honest, I was so shocked that something was wrong I didn’t really take much of it in. I really want a natural childbirth, you see, and when they said I’d need a Caesarean... If John had been there...’ she choked thickly.

Phoebe’s sympathy was mingled with an unexpected pang of envy as the distressed young woman reached across and grasped her equally young husband’s hand. Jane obviously had total faith in her husband’s ability to help her when the going got tough. Just having him beside her was enough.

‘I was working...’ came the guilty response.

Phoebe smiled at the worried young couple and put aside the patient notes she’d already quickly read through.

‘The whole hospital thing can be a bit intimidating,’ she agreed. ‘Let’s start from the beginning. Do you understand what placenta praevia is, Jane?’

Jane Roberts glanced nervously at her husband. ‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘But my friend said—’

‘Friends can be a great source of information, but they don’t always get it right,’ Phoebe interjected smoothly, her calm, soothing voice having a visible effect on the tense couple. ‘This is your uterus.’ She spun around the simple pencil sketch she’d just made on a jotter. ‘The placenta feeds the baby throughout the pregnancy. The scan showed that yours is growing here, over the cervix.’ She indicated the position with her pencil. ‘Now, it might move. A lot do, in which case no problem. But it might not, that’s why they want to monitor you, do frequent scans...’

‘And what happens if it doesn’t move, Doctor?’ The
young man asked, placing a comforting arm over his wife’s shoulders.

Phoebe nodded. ‘Well, in labour the cervix opens to let you deliver the baby. If your placenta is growing over the exit, we can’t let that happen because the placenta has a rich blood supply, there could be heavy bleeding and that wouldn’t be good news for Jane or the baby.’

‘So they’ll do a Caesarean?’ Jane asked fearfully.

Phoebe nodded again. ‘It’s the only way to ensure a safe delivery. They might decide to admit you to the ward some time before your due date to keep an eye on things.’

‘But I wanted John with me...’

Phoebe smiled and handed her an open box of tissues. She waited while the young woman blew her nose.

‘There’s no reason he can’t be if you have an epidural—a spinal anaesthetic—for the section. You’ll be awake and John here can stay with you. He’ll see the baby before you do.’

‘Really?’

Phoebe grinned. ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor,’ she replied solemnly, doing a Groucho Marx imitation with her eyebrows.

The couple both laughed.

‘Listen, in a perfect world we’d all like an intervention-free delivery.’ Phoebe paused while Jane nodded eagerly. ‘But the main thing,’ she continued earnestly, ‘is safety. For you and the baby.’

‘That’s true,’ John agreed.

‘And you have to remember,’ Phoebe reminded them, ‘that this is the worst-case scenario. Things could very easily rectify themselves.’