Partners by Contract (8 page)

‘Just my professional integrity!’ she accused belligerently.

‘That’s not so, Phoebe!’ Will exclaimed, frustrated that, instead of backing him up, his friend had adopted an inexplicably confrontational attitude. ‘Why, he’s right behind me with this offer...’

Phoebe’s head came up with a snap. ‘He is?’

Like a person drowning, her horrified eyes sought and found Connor’s. A shiver chased over her clammy skin as she fell headlong into those blue, blue eyes. She heard Will’s voice as if it were coming from a distance.

‘Of course he is!’

‘Is that true, Con?’ she croaked.

Connor didn’t reply. What was he supposed to say? I’d say and do anything to stop you slipping away? How did
you tell someone who thought you looked at them and saw your dead wife that actually the reverse was true. You’d seen her—or had wanted to—everytime you’d looked at your wife, and it had been like that almost from the beginning, although he’d actually refused to acknowledge his mistake until much later.

‘I couldn’t talk partnerships without Connor’s agreement.’ Will pointed out the obvious. ‘At least listen to what we have to say, Phoebe,’ he pleaded. ‘They do the very best
crème brûlée
in the world at the Pheasant. Please.’

‘What about Alan?’

Partnership! This made less sense by the second. Connor knew that such a thing was out of the question! A surge of resentful anger brought a burnished blaze to her golden eyes as she brought her lashes down in a concealing veil. Why was he placing her in this situation? As senior partner, it would have been simple for him to veto Will’s idea.

‘Alan is an excellent junior, but he was never a possibility. For one thing, he doesn’t have the experience. Besides, he’s not interested in anything permanent. He fancies the idea of travelling. We need someone who has got all that out of their system.’ Will smiled hopefully.

‘Some people never get travelling out of their system,’ she countered.

‘You?’

Con’s sharp contribution made her start.

‘Maybe,’ she conceded cagily. ‘And actually, as corny as this sounds, I do need to wash my hair.’ To prove the point she gathered a hank of the dark silky ends in her hand and held it up for their inspection. ‘Perhaps you could take Ellen?’ she suggested with a sweet smile. I’m sure she’d be very willing, she thought darkly.

Connor watched the ebony strands fall back and was
gripped by an almost visceral need to bury his face in the fragrant cloud. His nostrils flared, anticipating the scent of it, the texture as it ran through his fingers...brushed against his skin. As his erotic absorption increased so did the depth of his inhalations.

‘It looks fine to me.’ Will turned to his friend for backup on this point and found that Connor was looking unusually tense, quite grim actually, and not a good colour under that smooth tan.

‘It looks perfect, perfectly fine,’ Connor confirmed abruptly.

Some indefinable note in his terse voice made the fine hairs on Phoebe’s nape stand on end and the warning bells in her head began to jangle loudly. She sent a compulsive covert glance in Connor’s direction from under the sweep of her lashes, and received the disturbing impression of an explosive kind of tension coiled in his big powerful body. The hollow, achy, fluttery feeling low in her tummy promptly kicked up several notches and became a sharp pain.

‘Maybe I should have a word with Becca, get her to go a bit gentler with the physio. Are you taking your analgesia, Con?’ Will rambled gently, totally oblivious to the escalating tension in the atmosphere.

Connor’s impressive chest lifted as a low hiss emerged from between his clenched lips.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me, Will.’ Nothing that could be fixed by physio, gentle or otherwise, and nothing that Will could be held responsible for, he thought, moderating the vicious snarl in his throat to a slow, patient growl.

‘Glad to hear that,’ Will came back uncertainly. He switched his attention back to Phoebe. ‘We can’t tempt you?’

Phoebe’s cheeks flamed. The ease with which she could be tempted was the heart of the present problem.

‘Sorry, Will, I’ve not made any decisions about the future yet.’

‘Well, don’t expect me to give up...we’re pretty desperate.’

‘Not an altogether flattering statement, Will,’ Connor pointed out languidly.

‘Oh, hell, I didn’t mean... Phoebe knows what I mean, don’t you?’ Will paused uncertainly in the doorway, looking worriedly at her.

Phoebe took pity on him and smiled reassuringly. ‘Of course I do.’

Will’s motivations or intentions weren’t what she was finding hard to interpret. Wondering what Con was up to made her overtaxed brain ache.

Will clicked his case shut and grabbed his raincoat from the coatstand behind the door.

‘Is it still raining?’ he asked nobody in particular. Without waiting for a reply, he added, ‘I’ll go and fetch the car around to the front for you, Con.’

They were left alone. It wasn’t a situation Phoebe thought it wise to prolong.

‘I’d better be off, too,’ she announced brightly. ‘It’s been a long day.’ Actually, her earlier weariness had been replaced by a tense adrenaline-fed high.

Connor watched her retreat with a cynical expression of frustration on his hard-boned face. He’d waited four years for this conversation. Another twenty-four hours wasn’t going to kill him. Frustrate the hell out of him, maybe, but kill, no...

CHAPTER FOUR

P
HOEBE
actually had her hand on the doorhandle when she turned back.

‘Why, Con?’ The words exploded from her as she pinned her resentful eyes on his face. ‘Why encourage Will with all that partner nonsense?’

‘Who says it’s nonsense?’

Phoebe’s eyes widened incredulously. ‘Anyone with an ounce of common sense!’ she exclaimed. ‘Including Ellen,’ she added waspishly. ‘Very little I do seems to meet with her approval,’ she replied in response to the quizzical quirk of his eyebrow.

‘Is that all?’ Connor’s indulgent smile made her want to throw something at him. ‘I can talk Ellen round.’

‘I never doubted it.’

‘And I’m sorry if you mind, but I told her.’ She didn’t want him running away with the idea that she was deliberately sabotaging his romance.

‘About what?’

‘That you were married to Pen and she was my sister. If that makes things awkward for you, I’m sorry. I thought you might want to tell Will yourself.’

‘I already have.’

Phoebe’s jaw dropped. ‘You have?’

‘Well, it’s not some state secret, is it?’

‘No, of course not. I just thought... But you hadn’t got around to telling Ellen.’

‘Is there any special reason I should have?’ he asked mildly.

Phoebe bit her lip. ‘No, I suppose not,’ she admitted huskily. ‘Though other people might find it odd that we didn’t mention it earlier. With any luck,’ she reflected gloomily, ‘I’ll be gone before everyone finds out.’ Gone and I’ll never see him again.

She wasn’t about to fall apart just because he was saying he didn’t think their past relationship—with the emphasis on the past—was important enough to discuss with his girlfriend.

‘I wouldn’t rely on that—the bush telegraph here is a very efficient device. Your time here might go more smoothly if you made an effort to like Ellen. She has the best interest of the practice at heart, you know. She’s very protective.’

Oh Ellen was protective all right, but not of the practice! ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘No, you’re not.’

Phoebe shrugged. ‘We’ll have to agree to differ on this one. It’s hardly worth arguing about. The fact remains that we can’t work together. It would be most...’

‘Uncomfortable?’ he suggested helpfully.

‘It’s all very well for you to joke!’ she accused, eyeing him with growing resentment

One expressive brow arched. ‘Do you see me laughing?’

A choking sound escaped the confines of her throat. Her mouth opened and closed several times. His persistence was totally baffling.

‘It would serve you right if I accepted Will’s offer!’ she yelled, wagging her finger in front of his masterful nose.

Head on one side, Connor regarded her thoughtfully. He didn’t seem suitably intimidated by her dire threat.

‘I reckon,’ he announced after due consideration, ‘that we could lick you into shape. There are bound to be teething problems, of course... Speaking of which, in my position
as senior partner in this practice I have to concern myself with any complaints...’

His words stopped her dead in her tracks. It had been the last thing she’d expected him to say. ‘You’ve had a complaint? About me?’

‘Don’t look so devastated. It happens to the best of us.’

Connor wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know, and in Phoebe’s experience good doctors all had one important thing in common—they were able to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes. The suggestion that she had made a mistake was something she would normally take in her stride, but this wasn’t normal...this was Connor and she was hypersensitive to any criticism from him.

‘You’re enjoying this,’ she accused, her stiff figure vibrating with antagonism.

Deep down she knew Con was just doing his job. She also knew she should be discussing the problem rationally and calmly. Knowing you were being unreasonable was one thing. Stopping it was, she discovered, another thing entirely.

Connor continued to study her with an infuriatingly enigmatic expression.

‘I don’t recall you having such a big problem with authority, Phoebe...’

‘I haven’t got a problem with authority, I’ve a problem with you!’ she admitted miserably.

Trying to maintain a semblance of composure in the face of the worryingly alert expression in Connor’s spectacular eyes, Phoebe would happily have given a month’s salary to retract the revealing comment he’d provoked her into unwisely making.

Connor’s husky voice broke the lengthening silence. ‘Now why should that be?’ There was something perilously
close to smugness about the almost smile that tugged at the corners of his firm lips.

Like he didn’t know! Damn, Connor, damn his relentless persistence. Wishing madly she hadn’t injected the personal note, Phoebe tried to retrieve the situation.

‘Who complained?’

‘Lyn Proctor.’

Phoebe sighed. That figured. She’d been angry when she’d discovered in the ambulance on the way to the hospital that Lyn Proctor hadn’t given her son any of the antibiotics Phoebe had prescribed for what had at the time been a simple chest infection. She had tried to be restrained when telling the woman that her actions had placed her son in serious danger, but maybe she’d not succeeded.

‘She rang me at home from the hospital and told me she’d found your behaviour threatening and rude.’

‘And what did you tell her?’

‘I made soothing noises...’

‘Something about my inexperience...’ she speculated bitterly.

‘Then I told her you were an excellent doctor, and you had my total trust.’ There was no evasion in his direct, clear-eyed gaze.

Phoebe’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh!’ She blinked away the moisture that threatened to spill from her eyes. Connor’s good opinion meant more to her than she cared to admit.

‘You were always good with people, you put them at their ease...’

‘Except Mrs Proctor.’

Connor smiled. ‘Except for Mrs Proctor,’ he conceded. ‘You always wanted general practice, didn’t you? I’m just surprised you’re not already a partner somewhere...’

Phoebe, aware that she’d already had the opportunity to fill him in on what she’d been doing over the last few
years, avoided the awkwardness of belatedly revealing the truth.

‘And you were always meant for great things,’ she interjected swiftly. ‘A surgeon working at the cutting edge, flying off all over the world to teach pioneering techniques. I thought they’d have named a hospital wing after you by now...’

Connor didn’t look offended ‘People change...’

Not me, she wanted to say. I still love you.

‘My grandfather died, and left his place to me.’ His contemplative glance moved over the well-equipped room, and he smiled wryly.

‘Not this building. We built that from scratch.’ He doubted if his father, had he been alive, would have approved of the use to which his son had put a small part of his hefty inheritance. Ken Carlyle had been an asset stripper of the most ruthless variety and he had done his best to quash any signs of altruism—or weakness as he’d viewed it—in his own child. ‘Grandad had his practice in a single-room surgery attached to his house. Pretty basic. I came up here with the intention of selling up.’

‘What stopped you?’

‘I saw the affection people held him in. He really made a difference in people’s lives, he was part of the community... It’s hard to explain...’ An articulate man, his inability to adequately express the feelings that had made him make such a dramatic change frustrated him. ‘I like the idea of being on the front line. You’ve got a chance to educate people. Prevention may not be as dramatic as cure but it’s a hell of a lot more satisfying.’

Their eyes met and Connor realised he didn’t have to explain—Phoebe understood exactly what he was saying.

‘You found where you were meant to be,’ she said softly. ‘I envy you, Con.’ Try as she might, Phoebe could
not imagine her twin happy, living the life of a rural GP’s wife away from the bright lights she loved. If Penny had still been alive, would Con be here today...or would his life have taken a different route?

Connor couldn’t help but reflect on the difference in her response compared with that of most of his friends and contemporaries when he’d tried to explain his decision to abandon a potentially exceptional career in surgery in favour of the more mundane rewards of general practice.

His crutch slid to the floor with a noisy clatter and the brief moment of perfect accord was lost. Connor cursed gently under his breath and bent forward, but unable to retrieve it without losing his balance he straightened up, his face flushed with annoyance.

Phoebe felt a surge of empathy for his frustration, but knew Con too well to offer sympathy that would be resented. She bent to pick up the crutch for him, their fingers briefly touching as she handed it to him. The vibration that tingled through her at the light contact was electric in its intensity. Phoebe’s hand dropped to her side, her fingers curling into tight a ball.