Tempted by Dr. Daisy
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Caroline Anderson
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12
CHAPTER ONE
SHE could hear water running.
Her new neighbour, whoever he might be, was up and about already. Well, she hoped he’d slept better than she had, she thought grumpily. He’d kept her awake until midnight moving things, and the cat deciding she was hungry at five thirty really didn’t help.
To be fair, he hadn’t been that noisy, but she wasn’t feeling fair after another hen weekend, and another of her friends settling down to matrimonial bliss. That left her and Amy, but she couldn’t see Amy letting anyone close, and as for her—well, where were all the decent single men without a ton of emotional baggage? Not in Yoxburgh, that was for sure, and even if they were, she wasn’t sure she was quite ready to dip her toe in that particular pond again.
She fed Tabitha, made herself a cup of tea and went out to the conservatory. Dawn was breaking, the sky washed pale pink above the rooftops to the east, and she curled up on a chair overlooking her pretty little garden, pressed the mental ‘reset’ button and let herself come to slowly.
It was her favourite time of the day, before the rest of the world got up, and she cradled her mug in her hands, snuggled further down into the chair and listened to the sounds of the glorious spring morning.
The birds were singing, and she could hear boards creaking next door, more of those masculine footsteps running down the stairs, a muffled exclamation—and an almighty crash that sent Tabitha fleeing for the hills and made Daisy spill her tea.
‘Oops!’ she murmured, trying to tune out the man’s voice as she blotted uselessly at her dressing gown, but it was hard to ignore. What on earth had he done? Something pretty drastic, judging by the expletives seeping through the thin party wall.
And then there was silence.
‘Are you OK?’ she called warily—although she didn’t really need to raise her voice.
‘Um—yeah. Sort of,’ he replied, his voice muffled by the wall. ‘Sorry. Minor crisis.’
‘Anything I can do?’
A despairing laugh, then, ‘Not unless you’re a plumber.’
She heard footsteps striding down the hall, then a door opening, and a knock at her front door.
She opened it, and her mouth sagged. Wow, he was…
Well, he was many things. Tall. Broad. Gorgeous. Young enough to be interesting, old enough to have something about him. And there was plenty about him. He was covered in filthy, sodden debris, his suit drenched and splattered, his hair full of bits of stuff, his once-white shirt a dirty, streaky grey. In the striking, really rather fabulous blue eyes lurked a hint of irony that made her smile.
Then the eyes tracked down her dressing gown and stopped on the huge tea-stain. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked incredulously, and she gave a stunned little laugh.
‘I thought that was my line,’ she said, trying not to laugh any more because it really, really wasn’t funny, but his mouth quirked.
‘Ah. My ceiling came down,’ he explained unnecessarily, and Daisy had to bite her lip. To her surprise his eyes creased in a smile.
‘Sorry about the noise. And the language. I’m Ben, by the way,’ he said, holding out his hand, then withdrawing it and wiping it on his trousers, scanning it before offering it again. She took it, noting that as well as being a little wet and gritty, it was warm and firm. Strong.
And his voice—a hint of something that could have been Yorkshire? A little gruff. A little blunt. And a lot sexy.
‘Daisy,’ she said, and let herself smile properly. ‘Welcome to Rivenhall Villas. May it get better.’
He gave a slightly desperate laugh and closed his eyes, dragging his hand over his face and smearing the dirt into it. A streak of blood joined the dirt, welling slowly from a thin cut over his eyebrow.
‘I can only hope. I don’t suppose you know a plumber?’
She tightened the belt of her saturated dressing gown, hopped over the low fence between the diamond-patterned paths and peered down his hall at a scene of utter devastation. His kitchen had disappeared under a sea of sodden lime plaster and broken laths, and there was a slow, steady drip from a dangling lump of ceiling. The rush, she sensed, was over, but…
‘Just a plumber?’ she murmured thoughtfully, and behind her she heard another wry laugh.
‘A plumber would be a pretty good start. An electrician might be a handy second, that light’s hanging at a jaunty angle. And a plasterer, perhaps?’
‘Mmm. It seems to have stopped, though.’
‘Yeah. I reckon it was the waste. I’d just had a bath.’
‘Ah. Very likely, then. I tell you what,’ she said, turning back to him and finding him right behind her. She took a step back, and a nice deep breath, because under the plaster filth and the wet dog smell coming off his suit was the lingering remains of some seriously interesting aftershave. Citrusy, with a touch of amber…
‘You were about to tell me something,’ he prompted, and she collected herself.
‘Um—yes. Why don’t I throw on some clothes and come and help you clear up? I’ve got an hour before I have to leave for work.’ And a nice long shower planned, but she could feel that going out of the window rapidly.
‘Lucky you. I have to leave now. Let’s face it, it can’t get any worse, but I can’t do anything about it and I’ve got bigger fish to fry. It’s my first day in a new job, I don’t have another suit or any way of getting the filth out of my hair, and there’s no way I’m turning a tap on! I guess I’ll just have to make do with spitting on a handkerchief.’
Obviously he hadn’t looked in a mirror yet.
‘This is going to take more than spitting on a hankie to sort out,’ she said drily. ‘And you’ve got a cut over your left eye. Do you have another shirt?’
He fingered his eyebrow gingerly and nodded. ‘And trousers and a jacket, but not the power suit, sadly.’
‘Can’t help you there,’ she said, giving up all hope of starting her day with any kind of normality. ‘However, I do have a shower. Why don’t you grab some clean stuff and sort yourself out while I find you a plumber?’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Find your clothes, I’ll get dressed and I can make a start on the clean-up, too. I have a vacuum that’s very good for sucking up spills.’
‘Spills?’ He choked on a laugh, and the smile that crinkled his eyes made her stomach turn over. ‘There’s a bathful of water on that floor.’
‘No problem. It can cope. I’ll just have to empty it lots—if I can find the sink.’
He frowned. ‘Daisy, are you sure? It’s a hell of an imposition.’
Well, at least he realised it. Her morning was running away with her, but she couldn’t just leave him like this. She found a smile—not as hard as she’d thought, because those eyes were really quite…
‘I thought you were in a hurry?’ she said, and squeezed past him, hopped over the fence and ran upstairs, dragged on her gardening clothes, put a towel in the bathroom for him and had just hauled the vacuum up from the cellar as he appeared at her door.
‘Look, you really don’t have to clean up—’
‘Don’t be silly, it’s nothing. Bathroom’s at the top of the stairs, straight ahead of you. I’ve put you out a towel on the side of the bath and the plumber’s calling me back.’
He didn’t believe it.
He should. Things like this seemed to happen to him these days. He tipped his head forwards so it was under the stream of hot water and let out a tired, frustrated sigh. He’d known moving into the house before it was fixed was rash, but—this rash?
Thank God for Daisy. The shower was bliss. He could have stood there all day under the streaming hot water, but he didn’t have time. He borrowed some of her shampoo and washed the filth out of his hair, and discovered some interesting lumps and bumps on his scalp. The cut over his eyebrow was stinging, too. Damn. He sluiced the grit and grime off his body, gave himself a very hasty rub-down with Daisy’s borrowed towel, then dressed in record time, scowled at the cut on his eyebrow, frowned at a mark on his shoes that wouldn’t shift and gave up.
There was nothing more he could do. Nothing he had time to do. His ruined suit was lying in a soggy heap in the bottom of Daisy’s pristine and rather beautiful bath, and he left it there. He’d sort everything out with her later, once he’d got today out of the way.
He could hear the vacuum going next door, sucking up the water. Bless her heart. Of all the days—and of all the neighbours, he thought with a bemused smile. What a star.
A small black cat with huge ears and brilliant green eyes watched him disdainfully through the banisters as he went downstairs. He stretched out a hand to her, and after a second she turned away, and he carried on down with a wry chuckle, dismissed.
He hopped over the pointless but decorative little fence and went into his house, to find Daisy in the middle of the kitchen somehow bringing order to the chaos. The water was largely gone, and she was shoving debris to the side with a broom.
‘Daisy, you don’t have to do that! I’ll clear it up later.’
‘I’m nearly done. I’ve cleared the rubble off the boxes to give them a chance to dry out. I think you might have lost some crockery or glasses—that one tinkled a bit.’
He shrugged. Glasses he could live without. At least he was alive. He fingered the cut again, and she peered at it.
‘You need a plaster on that.’
He shrugged again. ‘No idea where they are, but I’m sure I’ll live. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the plumber, have you?’
‘No, not yet. Take my mobile number and give me a missed call, and I’ll send you a text when I hear from him.’
He keyed it in, then slid the phone back into his pocket and ran a hand through his damp hair. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’ve left my suit in your bath, but I have to go now. I’ll deal with it later, and all of this. You don’t have to do any more—’
‘Go. I’m nearly done. I’ll see you later. Can I just drop the door shut on the latch?’
‘That’s fine. Thank you so much. I owe you, big-time.’
‘Too right. I’ll expect a slap-up dinner at the least,’ she said drily, swiping an armful of soggy plaster rubble off the worktop onto the filthy floor.
‘Consider it done.’
She flashed a smile at him, a streak of dirt on her cheek giving her the impish, mischievous look of a little girl having way too much fun—and he didn’t really want to start thinking about Daisy having fun, because it was a long, long time since he’d had fun with a woman, and for all she might look fleetingly like the little girl she’d once been, there was nothing but woman under those clothes. And he was taking her out to dinner?
He cleared his throat, nodded curtly and went.
‘Phew.’
Daisy straightened up, blew the hair back out of her eyes and looked around. Utter chaos, but at least it was organised chaos now. The rubble was swept into a heap, the boxes had been blotted dry and the water sucked up—and she was going to be late for work, today of all days!
She fled, grabbing the quickest shower on record and dragging on her clothes. Her hair would have to do, she decided, pulling it back and doubling it into a loose bun in an elastic band. No time for makeup. No time for anything, and the new consultant was starting today.
Great start, she thought. Please God he wasn’t an arrogant snob—or a tedious box-ticker. One of them on the team was more than enough. She ran to the car, paused in the street to shut her garden gates and headed for the hospital.
On the way she took a call from the plumber, then dropped Ben’s suit into the cleaners in the hospital reception area, instructing them to be careful. She’d seen the label, and it had made her wince.
Then she legged it for the ward.
By the time she got there, people were clustered around the nursing station. She could see a man’s head slightly above the rest, hear a quiet voice giving some kind of team-leading chat, and her heart sank. Damn. He was here already, doing the meet and greet. So much for making a good impression.
Evan Jones, the specialist registrar, gave the ward clock a pointed look as she squeezed into the group.
‘Sorry I’m—’ she began a little breathlessly, and then stopped in her tracks as the man turned and met her eyes, and if she hadn’t been so busy staring at him in shock she would have missed the quickly masked flicker of surprise.
‘Mr Walker, this is Dr Fuller,’ Evan said, sounding and looking unimpressed, but Ben’s professional smile did something utterly different in his eyes, and he brushed Evan smoothly aside.
‘Yes, we’ve met. Dr Fuller’s very kindly been doing something for me,’ he explained, cutting him off at the knees, and then turned back to her. ‘Any joy?’
Still shocked, running on autopilot and ready to fall in love with him for saving her from another tedious lecture, she nodded. ‘Yes, it’s sorted,’ she told him without missing a beat. He’d found a plaster, she thought, staring at the cut above his eyebrow, but apart from that you’d never know how his day had started. He looked cool, calm and in control—more than she was.
‘Thank you. I don’t think you’ve missed much,’ he said with a wry smile, then he looked back at the group. ‘As I was saying, I’m looking forward to working with you all, and I hope you’ll forgive me when I ask silly, irritating questions and don’t know where things are or how they’re done here. I’ll do my best to make this transition as painless as possible, if you’ll just bear with me, and if you’ve got anything you want to talk about, my door’s always open, so to speak.’
He smiled at them all. ‘Right, that’s it, everybody. I know you’ve all got plenty to do, so I won’t hold you up. Dr Jones, rather than keep you from our patients any longer, why don’t I get Dr Fuller to show me round? I need to speak to her anyway, so she might as well give me a quick tour and I’ll introduce myself to her properly, then I suggest we meet for coffee at nine thirty, if that’s all right, and you can fill me in on anything she might have missed and show me the department in detail. Any problems with that, either of you?’
Evan looked a bit startled, but conceded with a stiff little nod. ‘No, you go ahead, Mr Walker. I’m sure Dr Fuller can tell you everything you need to know. I don’t really have time, anyway. There are some patients I need to see urgently.’
‘Clare Griffiths,’ she said, worrying about her as she had been all weekend. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘I’ve seen her already. Don’t worry, I can manage without you,’ he said dismissively, and Ben frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. In fact, he was beginning not to like Evan Jones…
‘Fine. We’ll catch up with you later,’ he said, and without pausing for breath, he ushered Daisy towards the doors.
‘Doing something for you?’ she muttered under her breath, and his laugh, low and soft and inaudible except to her whispered over her nerve endings and made her shiver.
She gulped as he swiped his ID over the sensor and pushed the door open for her.
‘Well, you were, it wasn’t a lie. OK, first things first. I want you to fill me in on everything there is to know about the department and its politics—starting with the location of the nearest decent coffee.’ His mouth tipped into a wry grin. ‘Breakfast was unexpectedly cancelled.’
She had a vision of him covered in his ceiling, and grinned back. ‘Indeed. Full English, Mr Walker, or would you rather have something sweet and sinful?’
His eyes flared slightly, and for a second her breath hitched in her throat. ‘Oh, I think sweet and sinful sounds rather promising, Dr Daisy, don’t you?’ he murmured, and followed her out of the ward while she tried to remember how to breathe.
‘So—the plumber’s coming at seven?’ Ben said as they sat down with huge mugs of coffee and wickedly sticky buns—sweet and sinful, she’d said, and he had to try very, very hard to keep his thoughts on track as he watched her bite into hers. ‘Is that seven today or in three years’ time?’
‘No, today,’ she said with a laugh, taking down her hair and twisting it back up again into a knot. Pity. He preferred it down. It looked soft, silky, and he could almost imagine sifting the long, dark strands through his fingers—
He stirred his coffee for something safe to do with his hands and dragged his mind back in line again. ‘So how come he’s available this quickly? Usually if a tradesman’s any good, you have to wait weeks. Do you know him?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. He’s doing it as a favour to me, and he is good. He refitted my bathroom for me.’
‘Ah. Yes. Your lovely bathroom. I’m afraid I left it in a horrendous mess.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s fine, I’ll deal with it later.’
‘So did he charge a fortune, or did your landlord pay?’
‘Landlord? I don’t have a landlord,’ she said ruefully. ‘It’s my house, and he was very reasonable, as plumbers go.’
‘You’re buying it alone?’ he added, fishing, although it was none of his business and utterly irrelevant, he told himself firmly. He was not interested.
She nodded and pulled a face. ‘Although sometimes I wonder how I got myself in this situation. I must be mad. I wanted my own house because I was fed up with unscrupulous landlords but I’m not quite convinced I’m really grown up enough!’
Oh, he was sure she was. She was certainly grown up enough to satisfy his frankly adolescent fantasies, he thought. She was biting into the sticky bun again and it was giving him heart failure watching her lick her lips.
And they were colleagues and neighbours? Sheesh, he thought, and was hauling his mind back to work when she spoke again.
‘So how about you?’ she asked, her clear green eyes studying him curiously. ‘I mean, you’re a consultant, so clearly you’re old enough to have a house, but—well, without being rude, what’s a consultant doing buying a rundown little semi in a place like Yoxburgh?’
Good question—and one he had no intention of answering, but at least it had dragged his mind out of the gutter. ‘What’s wrong with Yoxburgh?’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing. I love it. It’s got the best of both worlds—good hospital, nice community, the sea, the countryside—it’s a lovely town.’
‘Exactly. So why should I be flawed for wanting to be here?’ he asked, curious himself and trying to divert attention back to her and off his personal life.
‘Oh, no reason. It’s not Yoxburgh, really. It was just—I would have expected you to have a better house. Bigger. More in keeping…’ She trailed to a halt, as if she felt she’d overstepped the mark—which she probably had, but she’d rescued him before six o’clock in the morning without batting an eyelid, lent him her shower, cleared up his mess, got him a plumber…
‘I’m divorced,’ he admitted softly, surprising himself that he was giving so much away to her, and yet oddly knowing it was safe to do so. ‘And it might be modest, but the house suits my needs perfectly—or it will, when the plumber’s been and I’ve thrown a whole lot of money at it. Besides, maybe I don’t want to live in anything flashy and ostentatious—more “in keeping”,’ he added, making little air quotes with his fingers.
She coloured slightly, her thoughts chasing each other transparently through her eyes, and he had to stifle a smile as she gathered herself up and sucked in a breath.
‘Sorry. None of my business,’ she said hastily. ‘And talking of suits, I dropped yours into the dry cleaners in the main reception on the way in, and it’ll be ready at five—and before you panic, I told them to take good care of it.’
‘Chasing brownie points, Daisy?’ he murmured, and she laughed.
‘Hardly. I didn’t know who you were then. I’m just a nice person.’
‘You are, aren’t you?’
‘Not that nice. I’ve still got my eye on dinner,’ she said with a teasing grin that diverted the blood from his brain, and he wondered how the hell he was going to keep this sudden and unwanted attraction in its box.
With huge difficulty. Damn.
He turned his attention back to his coffee, and then she said quietly, ‘Thanks for covering for me so smoothly, by the way. Evan’s a stickler for punctuality, and he was getting all ready to flay me later.’
‘It was the least I could do. I was hardly going to throw you to the wolves for bailing me out—literally! And Evan doesn’t strike me as the friendliest of characters. He was pretty dismissive when you asked about that patient.’
A flicker of what could have been worry showed in her eyes. ‘Oh, he’s OK really. He can come over as a patronising jerk, but he’s a good doctor. He’s just a bit miffed that you got the job, I think. He was advised to apply for it, and I reckon he thought it was a shoo-in.’
‘And then they had to advertise it by law, and I applied. And with all due respect to Evan, I would imagine my CV knocks spots off his.’
‘Exactly. So he won’t welcome you with open arms, but you should be able to rely on him.’
He gave a choked laugh. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’
Her mouth twitched, and those mischievous green eyes were twinkling at him again. ‘So, I hope you’ve got some good ideas about what I was supposedly doing for you?’
He leant back in his chair and met her eyes with a twinkle of his own. ‘Oh, let’s say finding me some statistics on twins on the antenatal list. That should cover it. Anyway, I thought it was pretty good for a spur-of-the-moment thing. Sorry if it sounded a bit patronising, but I thought it was better than explaining I’d already had a shower in your bathroom,’ he said softly, and then felt his legs disintegrate when a soft wash of colour touched her cheeks.
He cleared his throat.
‘Tell me about Yoxburgh Park Hospital,’ he suggested hastily, and she collected herself and gave a tiny shrug.
‘It’s old and new, it’s on the site of the old lunatic asylum—’
‘How delightfully politically incorrect,’ he said drily, and she chuckled.
‘Isn’t it? Nearly as politically incorrect as locking up fifteen-year-old girls because their fathers or brothers had got them knocked up and if they were put away here for life then the family could pretend they’d gone mad and carry on as normal.’
‘Lovely.’
‘It was. It was a workhouse, really, and the pauper lunatic label was just a way of covering up what they were doing, apparently. I mean, who’s going to go near a lunatic asylum? You might end up inside, and so they got away with murder, literally. But life was cheap then, wasn’t it?’
‘So was building, which I guess is why the old Victorian part is so magnificent.’
‘Oh, absolutely, and the other plus side is that because they wanted it isolated, we’ve got glorious parkland all around us, tons of parking and plenty of room to expand. The locals have access to it for recreation, we have a lovely outlook—it couldn’t be better, and the hospital’s great. Quite a few areas of it are brand new and state of the art, like the maternity wing, and it’s earning an excellent reputation. We’ve got a bit of everything, but it’s still small enough to be friendly and it’s a good place to work. Everybody knows everybody.’
‘Is that necessarily a good thing?’
She gave a wry smile. ‘Not always. You wait till they find out we’re neighbours, for instance.’
‘You think they will?’
She laughed. ‘I give it three days—maybe less.’
Oh, that laugh! Musical, infectious—it was going to kill him. And then she flicked the tip of her tongue out and licked the icing off her lips, and his eyes zeroed in on them and locked.
‘So—guided tour?’ he suggested hastily, because if he had to sit there opposite her for very many more minutes, he was going to have to strap his hands down by his sides to stop himself reaching out and lifting that tiny smear of icing off the corner of her mouth with his fingertip.
‘Sure. Where do you want to start?’
‘Maternity Outpatients?’ he suggested wryly. ‘Then you can ask about the twins, so it’s not a lie, and there’s an antenatal clinic with my name on it later today, so I’m told, and it would look better if I could find it.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Can’t have me turning up late, clearly. Evan would have a field day with it.’
