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He had been deliberately offensive. Gillian trundled the trolley along to the clinical room seething, her heart pounding with hatred, on the point of rushing off to the office with her notice. She simply couldn't work with such a man. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. He didn't have a good word for her. He had the lowest possible opinion of her nursing ability. He didn't like her at all and took every opportunity to be unpleasant.

Automatically, she cleared the trolley and put things away, hands shaking with suppressed fury. Penny Hughes entered the clinical room and sent her a sympathetic smile, having heard every word. She had been busy in the adjoining room, getting it ready for a new occupant. 'That was quite a slamming. What
did
you do?' she asked lightly.

'Absolutely nothing,' Gillian said bitterly.

Penny raised an eyebrow. 'He's quick but he's usually fair.

'Not where I'm concerned. To hear him, you'd think I'd been dancing on the ceiling and swinging from the chandelier instead of doing my best to restrain Mrs Maddox from attempting much the same things!'

'She's high on morphine, isn't she? Why didn't you explain?'

Gillian threw her a sceptical glance. 'I didn't get the chance—and when he'd finished wiping the floor with me I didn't have the inclination.'

Penny laughed. 'I don't think you like him very much.'

'Not at all! And he doesn't like me. It's mutual antipathy.' Gillian was very angry. His scathing words were still ringing in her ears. Her heart was hammering and she felt quite sick, her legs were jelly. She was suddenly very cold and trembly. Her head swam and she clutched at the bench for support. Penny turned to her, concerned. Through a thickening mist, she heard the girl's voice asking if she was all right. She couldn't answer. She was falling, falling ...

*

Gillian came round as she was being lifted by strong arms and laid none too gently on a couch in the clinical room.

'Sal volatile!'

She seemed to know that impatient voice. She turned away her head, murmuring protest, hating the pungency of the salts. But they were effective and her head began to clear. She opened her eyes to see Mark Barlow bending over her, fingers on the pulse in her neck. She struggled with the confusion of her thoughts, oddly determined that she wouldn't come out with the traditional '
where am I?'

'I'm all right,' she said lamely. He was much too near. She was too conscious of penetrating grey eyes and a grim expression. She was too aware of his physical presence. Instinctively she put out her hands to push him away. He caught and held them. In her muddled state of mind, his hands seemed to throb with power and passion. He was angry, she realised, surprised. Because she had been silly enough to faint? Why
had
she fainted? She was perfectly well. 'Could I have some water?'

Penny brought it. 'Feeling better?' she asked kindly.

Gillian sat up, drank some of the ice-cold water and felt the faintness receding. 'Yes, thanks ...'

Perhaps she had returned to work too soon, she thought ruefully. But it hadn't been possible to save much out of her salary and she was too independent to seek financial help from her parents. She might have managed for a few more weeks but she had hated to see her small reserves dwindling and the job at Greenvale had seemed opportune. Private nursing paid so well. She was really quite fit, she thought proudly. She had merely been doing too much. And the strongly emotional reaction to yet another clash with a man she particularly disliked and who could infuriate her without even trying had just been the last straw.

'I know you're busy, Penny.' Mark had seen the girl's quick glance at her watch. 'I'll take care of Gillian if you want to get on.'

'Well, Miss Wilmot
is
due for her injection.' Penny smiled at him, very warm. 'And you
are
a doctor, after all!'

She hurried from the room.

Thoughtful, Mark surveyed the girl on the couch who was much too pale and wouldn't meet his eyes.

'Are you pregnant?' he asked abruptly.

The brusque words shocked Gillian into full consciousness. She threw up her head and glared at him. 'No, I'm not!'

The negation was so fierce, so vehement, that he blinked. 'Just a thought,' he drawled soothingly. 'It happens.'

'Not to me, it doesn't,' she told him coldly.

The merest glimmer of a smile came and went in the grey eyes at that proud retort. 'Then we'd better have you checked out,' he decided. 'Healthy young women don't make a practice of fainting all over the place.'

'I don't make a practice of it, either,' Gillian retorted indignantly. 'That's a typically male exaggeration and just what I'd expect from you!' She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. She was a trifle unsteady at first but she moved pointedly away from the hovering hand that threatened to assist her. 'I'm fine now,' she said with a touch of defiance.

'I shall ask Dr Howard to run the rule over you, nevertheless,' Mark said firmly, referring to one of the staff physicians.

'There's no need for that. I've just had a medical. I daresay I've been overdoing things. I had pneumonia and pleurisy, rather badly. Two months ago,' Gillian told him grudgingly, strangely reluctant to admit even the slightest weakness to this unsympathetic man. She was proud. He didn't make allowances for anyone. She didn't want him to make allowances for her—
ever
! 'I've been passed as fit but it's been a hectic week. Too much too soon, I expect.' She managed a cool smile.

He studied her with impersonal, entirely professional interest as she took the tumbler to the sink and rinsed it out carefully. 'I didn't like the look of you last night,' he said bluntly, remembering her air of fragility in that absurd kimono, her marked pallor and the violet smudges beneath her rather lovely eyes. He was not art impressionable man. It was odd that he seemed to have a very vivid impression of this slight, pretty girl with her delicate face and figure etched on his mind's eye. Her very Nordic looks had been strangely emphasised by the exotic kimono and the ridiculous spray of flowers against her pale hair, he recalled.

Gillian shot him an angry glance. 'So I noticed!' She was tart. It still rankled that he had looked her over with such obvious disapproval and contempt, making her feel cheap and promiscuous when she was nothing of the kind. She didn't care what he thought of her but he didn't have to show it so plainly!

He brushed aside glance and words with an impatience that didn't endear him to her. Nor did his next words. 'Steve is a likeable fellow but very thoughtless,' he said brusquely. 'Don't allow him to use you, Gillian.'

She bridled instinctively. '
Use me ...?'
she echoed icily. 'What does that mean? And don't call me Gillian!'

'He'll treat your place as his second home if you let him,' he elaborated, dismissing the angry rider as a sign that she was overwrought. Greenvale was an informal, friendly place and all the staff were on first-name terms out of hearing of the patients. Did she expect him to call her
Nurse
or
Miss Grant
when they would be working together for the next year, for heaven's sake? Mark had no patience with that kind of false pride.

Gillian struggled to keep the simmering anger from boiling over again. He was a poisonous creature, she thought fiercely, indignant on Steve's behalf as he wasn't there to defend himself. She didn't think that the surgeon could be jealous of the instant rapport that had sprung to life between herself and Steve but he obviously disapproved of it—and he was using a particularly sneaky kind of venom in an attempt to spoil their newfound friendship.

She
liked
Steve's easy ways, his readiness to slip into her life as if he had always belonged in it. She was perfectly happy for him to treat her flat as his second home if he wished to do so, she thought defiantly. She might even ask him to move in with her eventually if affection turned to loving—as it might. Damn Mark Barlow!

'Anything else?' she asked bitingly.

He smiled, sardonic. 'Do you want to hear that he'll drop you as soon as someone more attractive or with more to offer comes along? I doubt it. The danger with Steve is that he never means to hurt anyone. He's so casual and so selfish that it just doesn't occur to him that he takes all the time and doesn't give much in return. He's entirely amoral.'

'I don't believe you,' Gillian said flatly.

He shrugged, annoyed. He didn't usually involve himself in this way with any of Steve's many and varied girlfriends. He didn't know why he should be concerned for Gillian Grant, with her prickly pride and stubborn hostility. He didn't even like the girl. That air of fragility and innocence was bound to be deceptive. She could probably take good care of herself. And if she couldn't— well, it was nothing to do with him, he told himself impatiently.

'I don't know why I'm bothering to warn you. Girls like you ask for everything they get, I'm afraid,' he said carelessly.

At that, Gillian swung round arid slapped him hard. She saw the pain and the fury leap into his grey eyes and felt sudden alarm. She stepped back, frightened by her own violent reaction to his words. In all her life she had never raised a hand to anyone in temper. She was a gentle, warm-hearted girl who had never known what it meant to hate until she met Mark Barlow. She hated him with a surprising degree of passion.

'Tears next, I expect,' he drawled, eyes glinting with cold anger. 'Then you'll have run the whole gamut. My God, you're a credit to that Kit's badge, aren't you?' He was contemptuous, furious. 'We can do without nurses like you at Greenvale!'

'I'm not sorry.'

She threw the words at him defiantly, forcing back the tears that were stinging her eyes. She would
not
give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, she thought fiercely. She
wasn't
sorry. He deserved that slap. He had been asking for it since their first encounter.

'You're a child,' he told her coldly, with dislike. She would have slapped him again, bristling, but he caught her wrist. 'Control yourself!' he commanded. She drew a deep, choking breath. He saw that she was trembling, ashen-faced, tears of anger brimming in the huge blue eyes. 'Come on,' he said, more gently, giving her a little shake. 'That's enough—pull yourself together, Gillian. If I said too much, I'm sorry.' Her eyes widened. A slight smile tugged at his lips, sternly repressed. 'Oh,
I'm
not too proud to be in the wrong or to apologise,' he drawled.

Gillian pulled her wrist free, rubbing it where his strong fingers had gripped the soft flesh. She tingled all over from his touch, from the smouldering passion that he was man .enough to master while she had given way to a flame of fury.

She glowered at him. Then she turned away, tugging at her apron, straightening her cap. 'I've work to do.'

'No.' It was quiet but firm. 'You're in no state to deal with patients.' He looked at his watch. 'I've an hour to spare. I'll take you home. Get your things while I explain to Mary Kenny.'

His tone didn't allow for argument. But Gillian wasn't going to take orders from him. 'I can take myself home, thanks,' she said promptly, proudly. She didn't insist that she was well enough to go on with her work. She knew that she wasn't. 'My car's outside ...'

'How do I know you won't collapse at the wheel? You don't look fit to drive.' He was blunt.

'Then I'll take a taxi.' Her chin lifted.

'I wish you wouldn't argue,' he said with sudden impatience. 'I know where you live and it won't take ten minutes. I don't like the look of you.'

'So you keep saying,' she said bitterly.

He looked at her in surprise.

Gillian hurried from the room, furious that she had been goaded into saying something that he would probably misconstrue. She hadn't meant that the way it had sounded. She didn't want him to like her looks or anything else about her. She didn't want him to think of her as a woman, attractive or otherwise. She might find herself thinking of him as a man, she thought wryly, shocked that in the midst of their wrangling she had known a tingling excitement, a sexual awareness of his potent masculinity. He was very much a man, she thought, with a flutter of alarm that it was possible to be physically stirred by a man she disliked and despised. It was absurd, she told herself hastily, something to be thrust to the back of her mind and forgotten.

But it had happened ...

He was waiting for her with Mary Kenny outside the administrator's office. Mary cast a concerned eye over Gillian's slender figure as she approached. Perhaps it wasn't conscious but she was immediately indignant, knowing that the elderly woman was also wondering if she was pregnant. She felt like declaring hotly that women
had
been known to faint for lots of other reasons!

'I'm sorry to hear that you aren't well, Miss Grant,' Mary said, kind but irritated that the girl should have returned to nursing before she was fully recovered from an illness.
If
that was the real reason for the faint. One never knew with these modern girls with their promiscuous behaviour and careless disregard for the consequences ...

'Thank you. It was only a faint,' Gillian said defensively. 'But Mr Barlow insists on taking me home—quite
unnecessarily, I think. I shall be perfectly all right for work tomorrow.'

'Well, I hope so, my dear. This is most unfortunate when you've only just joined us ...' The words trailed off on a sigh. The telephone rang in her office and she hurried to answer it.

Gillian bit her lip. 'She thinks I'm pregnant, too.'

Mark shrugged. 'You're too sensitive. What does it matter, anyway? As long as you know you're not.'

'I do!' she said sharply.

He took her bag from her hand as they left the clinic and began to make their way towards the car park. . 'I'm not an invalid,' she protested, trying to recapture her property.

'I'm a gentleman,' he drawled. 'Why don't you pretend to be a lady?'

'Pig!' she snapped, hot with anger.

BOOK: Unknown
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