His Christmas Bride-to-Be
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Abigail Gordon
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17,6K
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10
Chapter One
THE TAXI THAT had brought her from the airport had gone, and surrounded by the baggage that contained her belongings Emma took a deep breath and looked around her.
When she’d been driven through the town centre it had been as if nothing had changed while she’d been gone for what seemed like a lifetime. The green hills of Gloucestershire still surrounded the place where she’d been born and had never imagined leaving. Everywhere the elegant Regency properties that Glenminster was renowned for still stood in gracious splendour to delight the eye, while, busy as always, the promenades and restaurants had shown that they still attracted the shoppers and the gourmets to the extent that they always had.
All that she had to do now was turn the key in the lock, open the door and step inside the property that had been her home for as long as she could remember, and of which she was now the sole owner. The act of doing so was not going to be easy. It felt like only yesterday that she had fled in the night, heartbroken and bewildered from what she’d been told, as if the years she’d spent in a land far away had never happened.
During all that time there had been no communication between herself and the man she’d always thought was her father, and now he was gone. Since receiving the news that he had died, all the hurts of long ago had come back. What he had done to her had been cruel. He’d taken away her identity; made her feel like a nobody. Turned the life she’d been living happily enough for twenty-plus years into nothingness.
He had been a moderate parent, never very affectionate, and she’d sometimes wondered why. He’d provided the answer to that by telling her on the night she’d left Glenminster in a state of total hurt and disbelief that he wasn’t her father, that he’d married her mother to give her the respectability of having a husband and a father for her child when it was born as the result of an affair that was over.
* * *
Emma had directed the taxi driver to take her to lawyers in the town centre where the keys for the house had been held in waiting for when she made an appearance. Once she had received them she had been asked to call the following day to discuss the details of Jeremy Chalmers’s will.
She’d been informed previously that he’d left her the house, or she wouldn’t have intended going straight there on her return. She was uncertain if she would be able to live in it for any length of time after her father had disowned her that night long ago in such a cruel manner, but it would be somewhere to stay in the beginning while she slotted herself back into life in Glenminster.
Back in the taxi once more, having been given the house keys, she’d given the driver the directions for the last lap of her journey back to her roots and had thought grimly that it was some homecoming.
Gazing down at the keys, the memory was starkly clear of how she’d packed her cases and left the place that was dear to her heart that same night, intending to start a new life to replace the one that Jeremy Chalmers had shattered and made to sound unclean.
Her only thought as she’d driven out of the town that lay at the foot of the Gloucestershire hills had been to go where she could use her medical skills to benefit the sick and suffering of somewhere like Africa and start a new life as far away as she could get.
Until then they had been contained in the role of a junior doctor in a large practice in the place where she had been happy and content, but that night the urge to leave Glenminster had been overwhelming.
The last thing Emma had done before departing had been to drop a note off at the home of Lydia Forrester, the practice manager, to explain that she was about to do something she’d always wanted to do, work in Africa for one of the medical agencies, and that had been it without further explanation.
* * *
Time spent out there had been a lot of things, fulfilling, enlightening, exhausting and lonely. If she stayed and went back to work in the practice that she’d known so well in the busy town centre, would the memory of that night come crowding back, she asked herself, or would it be like balm to her soul to be back where she belonged and lonely no more?
Yet was that likely to be the case in the house where it had happened and which was just a short distance from the surgery where her stepfather had been senior doctor?
Emma had joined the staff there as soon as she’d got her degree in medicine and had been carefree and happy until that awful day. The job had absorbed her working hours and mixing happily with her own age group in her free time had made up for the atmosphere at home, where there had just been Jeremy Chalmers and herself, living in separate vacuums most of the time.
She’d lost her gentle, caring mother too soon and had been left with only him as family—a bridge-playing golf fanatic in his free time, and at the surgery a popular GP with an eye for the opposite sex. He had proved how much on the night when he’d told her that she was going to have to move out, find herself somewhere to stay, as he was getting married again and his new wife wouldn’t want her around.
‘Fine,’ she’d told him, quite happy to find a place of her own to settle in, but the way he’d said so uncaringly that he was going to replace her mother and that she was in the way had rankled and she’d said, ‘I am your daughter, you know!’
He’d been to the golf club and had told her thickly, ‘That is where you’re wrong. I married your mother to give her respectability and you a father figure. You’re not mine.’
‘What?’ she’d cried in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe you?’
‘You have to. You’ve no choice,’ he’d said, and added, turning the knife even more as he’d begun to climb the stairs, ‘She never told me who your father was, so you can’t go running to him.’
* * *
As the door swung back on its hinges at last, reality took over from the pain-filled past. Nothing had changed, Emma thought as she went from room to room. There had been no modernisation of any kind.
The new bride must have been easy to please. So where was she now that her father had died from a heart attack on the golf course? It was all very strange. Had the widow moved out at the thought of a new owner appearing?
It would be time to be concerned about that when she’d spoken to the person who had taken over the running of the practice after her father’s death. The absence of the new woman who had been in his life could be shelved until she, Emma, had been brought up to date with the present situation there.
But first, before anything else, there was the matter of arranging a suitable farewell for the man she’d thought, for most of her life, was her father. Jeremy had been well known in the town and there would be many wanting to show their respects.
The first she had heard about his death had been a month after the event, when the organisation she was working for had contacted her in a remote region of Africa to inform her of it and had explained that back in the UK her presence was required to organise the funeral as she was his only heir and would need to be the executor of his will.
* * *
It was a chilly afternoon, winter was about to take over from a mellow autumn, and having become accustomed to tropical heat Emma was grateful to discover that it was warm inside the house with the old-fashioned radiators giving out welcome heat.
Once her unpacking was finished hunger began to gnaw at her and when she looked in the refrigerator she found it was stocked with the kind of food that had become just a memory while working in the heat and dust of Africa.
It was a comforting moment. Someone had been incredibly thoughtful and had pre-empted her needs on arriving back home in such sad and gloomy circumstances, yet who had it been? There had been no evidence of anyone living there as she’d unpacked her clothes.
It was a Friday, and once she’d been to the law firm the following morning the weekend was going to be a long and empty affair until she’d got her bearings. With that thought in mind she wrapped up warmly, which wasn’t the easiest of things to do as all her clothes were for a hotter climate, and decided to walk the short distance to the practice in the town centre before it closed to see if there was anyone left on the staff that she knew.
The darkness of a winter night was all around Emma by the time she got there and the surgery was closed with just an illuminated notice board by the doorway to inform the public what the opening hours were and what numbers to ring in an emergency.
As she turned away, about to retrace her steps, a car door slammed shut nearby and in the light of a streetlamp and the glare coming from the windows of a couple of shops that were still open she saw a man in a dark overcoat with keys in his hand walking towards the practice door with long strides.
On seeing her, he stopped and said briskly, ‘The surgery is closed, as you can see. It will be open again at eight-thirty tomorrow morning and will close at twelve, it being Saturday. So can I help you at all?’
‘Er, no, thank you, I’m fine,’ she told him, taken aback by his manner and sudden appearance.
‘Good. I haven’t a lot of time to spare,’ he explained. ‘I just came back to pick up some paperwork, and after that have to be ready at any time to welcome back the prodigal daughter of our late head of the practice, which is a bind as I have a meal to organise when I get in.’
Emma was observing him wide-eyed. He was no one she recognised from the time when she’d been on the staff there and she thought he was in for a surprise.
‘I have no idea who you are,’ she told him, ‘but obviously you’re connected with the practice, so maybe I can save you one of the chores that you’ve just described. My name is Emma Chalmers. Does it ring a bell? I’ve returned to Glenminster to take possession of the property that my...er...father has left me and to find occupation as a doctor should I decide to stay.’
As he observed her, slack-jawed with surprise, she turned and began to walk back the way she’d come.
* * *
It was nine o’clock when the doorbell rang and Emma went to open the door cautiously because her knowledge of neighbours or local people was scant after her absence, so she slipped the safety chain into position before fully opening the door to her caller.
It was him again, the bossy man in the overcoat, on the doorstep and as she surveyed him blankly he said, ‘You will guess why I’m here, I suppose.’ She shook her head.
‘I’ve come to say sorry for being such a pain when we met earlier. My only excuse is that I have my father living with me and he likes his meals on the dot as eating is one of his great pleasures in life.’
‘Er, yes, I see,’ she said, ‘but why were you, as a stranger, going to be the one who welcomed me back? Surely there is someone still there who remembers me?’
‘Possibly, but I am filling the slot that your father left and so was chosen to do the honours. Everyone will be pleased to see you again, I’m sure.’
‘Hmm, maybe,’ she commented doubtfully, with the thought in mind that there was still the matter of the missing wife to be sorted.
‘We had a message from Jeremy’s lawyers a couple of days ago,’ he explained, ‘to say that you would be arriving tomorrow, so back there when we met it didn’t occur to me that you might be already here and installed in this place...which isn’t very palatial, is it?’
Emma ignored the comment and said, ‘I was fortunate when I arrived to find that the kind person with amazing foresight who had switched on the heating had also filled the refrigerator, as I was both cold and hungry after the journey and the change of climate.’
He was smiling. ‘Lucky you, then.’ Seeing her amazing tan, he asked, ‘How was Africa? I’m told that is where you’ve been. I’m behind on practice gossip as I’ve only taken over as head of the place since your father died.’
‘It was hot, hard work, and amazing,’ she said, and couldn’t believe she would be sleeping in the house that she had never wanted to see again after the night when Jeremy had removed the scales from her eyes in such a brutal manner.
Her unexpected visitor was turning to go and said, ‘I must make tracks.’ Reaching out, he shook her hand briefly and said, ‘The name is Glenn Bartlett.’
Taken aback by the gesture, Emma said, ‘Where do you live?’
‘In a converted barn on the edge of the town.’
‘Sounds nice.’
‘Yes, I suppose you could say that,’ he replied without much enthusiasm, and wishing her goodbye he went.
* * *
Driving home in the dark winter night, Glenn Bartlett thought that Emma Chalmers was nothing like her father if the big photograph on the practice wall was anything to go by. Maybe she’d inherited her dark hair and hazel eyes from her mother, although did it really matter?
He was cringing at the way he’d called her the ‘prodigal daughter’ as he knew absolutely nothing about her except that she was Jeremy Chalmers’s only relative, from the sound of things, and his moaning about how busy he was must have sounded pathetic. Would Emma Chalmers have wanted to hear the gripes of a complete stranger?
Yet they were true. Unbelievably, he’d made time that morning to switch the heating on for her, do a dash to the supermarket to fill the empty fridge in the house that she was coming to live in, and put a slow casserole in his oven for his and his father’s evening meal.
* * *
Back where he had left her, Emma had found some clean bedding in one of the drawers and was making up the bed that had been hers for as long as she could remember, while at the same time remembering word for word what the stranger who had knocked on her door had said.
It would seem that, apart from the father that he’d mentioned, there was no other immediate family in his life, and where had he come from to take over in Jeremy’s place? Whoever he was, he’d had style.
* * *
The next morning she awoke to a wintry sun outside her window and the feeling that she didn’t want the day to get under way because she had little to look forward to except the visit to the law firm in the late morning. Her instinct was telling her not to expect any good news from that, except maybe some enlightenment regarding the missing wife.
* * *
When she arrived there she was told that Jeremy’s car was hers for the taking in the scheme of things. She felt that explanations were due. It seemed that the man sitting opposite her in the office of the law firm was not aware that she wasn’t a blood relation to the deceased until she explained, and when she did so Emma was told that under those circumstances she wasn’t entitled to any of his estate, except the house, which he had willed to her when her mother had been alive.
‘The car was all that he had left,’ the partner of the law firm went on to say. ‘There were no financial assets. It would seem that our man Dr Chalmers was something of a high-flyer.’
It was at that point Emma asked if he had married again, as that was what he had been contemplating, and if so his new wife would be his next of kin.
Observing her with raised brows, he said, ‘Dr Chalmers didn’t remarry, as far as we are aware. Maybe his sudden death prevented him from accomplishing such a thing. So if no one else comes forward to claim the car, it will be yours if you want it.’
Emma left the office feeling weary and confused about life in general.
A time check revealed that the practice building only minutes away would still be open and she decided to stop by and say hello to whoever was on duty, admitting to herself that if Dr Glenn Bartlett was one of them it would be an ideal moment to see him in a different light after being taken aback by his unexpected visit the night before.
He wasn’t there, but there were those who knew her from previously and in the middle of carrying out their functions either waved or flashed a smile across until such time as they were free to talk.
As she looked around her Emma was aware that the place had been redecorated since she’d last seen it. The seating and fabrics were new and there was an atmosphere of busy contentment amongst staff that hadn’t always been there when Jeremy Chalmers had reigned.
‘Emma!’ a voice cried from behind her, and when she turned she saw Lydia Forrester, the practice manager, who ran the business side of the place from an office downstairs, was beaming across at her.
‘I hope you’re back to stay,’ she went on to say. ‘I’ve missed you and wasn’t happy about the way you disappeared into the night all that time ago. It was a relief to hear from your father’s solicitors that you’d been located and were coming home to arrange Jeremy’s funeral. He was very subdued for a long time after you left.’
‘Did he marry again?’ Emma questioned. ‘I’ve wondered who was going to be the bride.’
‘Marry!’ Lydia exclaimed. ‘Whatever makes you ask that?’ She looked around her. ‘How about us going down to my office for a coffee? They are too busy here to have time to talk. It will quieten down towards lunchtime, and then we can come back up.’
‘Yes, that would be great,’ Emma replied, and followed her downstairs.
Lydia was silent as she made the drink and produced biscuits to go with it, but once they were seated she said awkwardly, ‘I would have been the bride, Emma. Your father was going to marry me. We had been seeing each other away from the practice for a few months and when he asked me to marry him I said yes, never expecting for a moment that he would want to throw you out of the house. When he confessed that he’d told you to find somewhere else to live and that you’d gone that same night I was appalled and called the wedding off. So, my dear, you have the missing bride here before you.’
‘You!’ Emma exclaimed incredulously, with the memory of Jeremy’s hurtful revelations about him not being her father just as painful now as they’d been then. ‘You gave up your chance of happiness because of me? I wouldn’t have minded moving out, especially as it was you that he was intending to marry.’
She couldn’t tell Lydia the rest of it. Why she’d gone in the night, feeling hurt and humiliated, desperate to get away from what she’d been told, but holding no blame against her mother. She’d dealt with women and teenage girls in the practice in the same position that her mother had been in and had sympathised with their problems.
The practice manager was smiling. ‘Your disappearance saved me from what would have been a big mistake, marrying Jeremy. I’d never been married before. Had never wanted to, but as middle age was creeping up on me it was getting a bit lonely and...well you know the rest. But happiness doesn’t come at the expense of the hurt of others...and ever since I’ve looked upon it as a lucky escape.’
‘I’m so glad you’ve explained,’ Emma told her. ‘From the first moment of my return I’ve wondered why the house felt so empty and cheerless. I’ve felt that I couldn’t possibly live in it under those conditions, but now I might change my mind and make it fit to stay here.’
Feet on the stairs and voices were coming down towards them. It was twelve o’clock Saturday lunchtime, the practice had closed, and as friends of yesterday and newcomers she had to get to know crowded round her, for the first time it felt like coming home.
‘Where is Glenn this morning?’ she heard someone ask, and before a reply was forthcoming he spoke from up above.
‘Did I hear my name mentioned?’ he asked from the top of the stairs, and as he came down towards them he smiled across at her and asked the assembled staff, ‘So have you done anything about arranging a welcome night out for Dr Chalmers?’
‘We were just about to,’ someone said. ‘It’s why we’re all gathered below decks, but first we need to know if Emma would like that sort of thing.’
‘I would love it,’ she told them with a glance at Lydia, who had brought some clarity into her life and was smiling across at her.
‘So how about tonight, at one of the restaurants on the Promenade that has a dance floor?’ Mark Davies, a young GP trainee and a stranger to her, suggested. ‘Any excuse for food and fun.’
As the idea seemed to appeal to the rest of them it was arranged that they meet at the Barrington Bar at eight o’clock. As they all went home to make the best of what was left of Saturday, Emma felt that it was beginning to feel more like a homecoming, although she had no idea what to wear.
There had been no time or inclination to dress up where she’d been. It had been cotton cropped trousers and a loose shirt with a wide-brimmed hat to protect her face from the heat of the sun, and any clothes that she’d left in the wardrobe here would be reminders of the hurt that being told she had been living there on sufferance had caused. They would also smell stale.
So after a quick bite in a nearby snack bar she went clothes shopping for the evening ahead and found the experience exhilarating after the long gap of wearing attractive outfits. Her euphoria didn’t last long.
There was the arranging of Jeremy’s funeral that had to be her first priority after the weekend, and if she’d needed a reminder the amount of black outfits in the boutiques and big stores would have given her memory the necessary prod.
As she made her way homewards with a dark winter suit and matching accessories for the funeral, and, totally opposite, a turquoise mini-dress for the night ahead with silver shoes and a white fake-fur jacket, Emma was remembering that it was the new head of the practice who had prompted the staff to arrange the welcome-back occasion of the coming evening. Would he be there?
Glenn Bartlett knew her less than anyone and, having seen him in the smart black overcoat, she imagined that he would turn up well dressed.
He did come, looking more like an attractive member of the opposite sex than a sombre well-wisher, and suddenly the evening felt happy and carefree after her time of hurt and toiling in hot places.
For one thing, Lydia had solved the missing wife mystery that had been concerning Emma, and for another the surgery crowd, apart from a couple of newcomers, had been delighted to see her back in Glenminster. And to feel wanted was a wonderful thing.
The Barrington Bar, where they were gathered, was one of the town’s high spots as it boasted good food in a smart restaurant area beside a dance floor with musicians who were a delight to the ear, and as she looked around her the new head of the practice said from behind her, ‘So is it good to be back, Emma?’
‘Yes,’ she said, sparkling back at him, and he thought that the weary-looking occupant of what had been a drab, deserted house had come out of her shell with gusto. The dress, jacket and shoes were magical.
Some of the practice staff had brought partners with them but not so Glenn Bartlett. There was a look of solitariness about him, even though he was being friendly enough after their uncomfortable first meeting.
Did he live alone in the converted barn that he’d mentioned when he’d rung her bell last night? she wondered. Someone had said when they’d all been gathered at the practice earlier that he’d been taking his father with the big appetite home.
At that moment James Prentice, a young GP who had recently joined the practice, appeared at her side and asked if she would like to dance. As Emma smiled at him and took hold of his outstretched hand, the man by her side strolled towards the bar and once he’d been served seated himself at an empty table and gazed into space unsmilingly.
* * *
He’d been a fool to come, Glenn was thinking. The fact that he’d suggested a welcome homecoming for Jeremy Chalmers’s daughter would have been enough to add to switching on the heating and filling the refrigerator in that ghastly place, without turning out for a night at the Barrington Bar. It would have been a tempting idea at one time but not now, never again.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Emma Chalmers had returned to the Cotswolds for a very sad occasion he would have left her to it, but common decency had required that he make sure she had food and warmth and the pleasure of tonight’s gathering to make her feel welcome because she’d looked tired and joyless on her arrival, which was not surprising after a long flight and a funeral to arrange as soon as possible.
Glenn finished his drink and, rising from his seat, told those of his companions who were nearest that he was leaving, going home to enjoy the peace that his father’s departure had restored.
Emma was still on the dance floor in her partner’s arms and as she glanced across he waved a brief goodbye and was gone.
Back home he sat in silence, gazing out into the dark night with the memory of Jeremy Chalmers’s last moments on the golf course starkly clear. He’d known him before stepping into the vacancy that his passing had left.
The then head of the practice and his father had met at university. Jeremy, who had been on the point of retiring, had invited his friend’s son, also a doctor, to stay for the weekend to familiarise himself with the running of the practice with a view to taking over as his replacement in the very near future after the necessary procedures had been dealt with.
They’d gone for a round of golf after lunch at the club and while on the course Jeremy had suffered the heart attack that had proved fatal. In intense pain he had managed to gasp out his last request and he, Glenn, working on him desperately as he’d tried to save him, had been stunned when he’d heard what it was.
‘I have a daughter,’ he’d croaked between pain spasms, ‘and I upset her gravely some years ago, so much so that she left to go where I don’t know, except it wasn’t in this country. Emma is a doctor and most likely has gone to one of the hot spots where they need as many medics as they can get.’
‘Bring her home for me, Glenn, back to where she was happy until I told her some unmentionable things about me.’
His lips had been blue, his eyes glazing even as the sound of an approaching ambulance could be heard screeching towards them, and his last words had been, ‘Promise you will?’
‘Yes, I promise,’ he’d told him gravely, and then his father’s friend had died.
* * *
Now, sitting sombrely in the attractive sitting room of the property he’d bought on the occasion of taking over the practice, Glenn was remembering the time and effort he’d put in to discover the whereabouts of the missing daughter. He was upset to think that he hadn’t tuned in to who she was outside the surgery the night before.
Fortunately he’d made sure that the house that had been her home previously was warm and habitable a day early and had had food in the refrigerator. Then had gone the extra mile by suggesting that the folk from the practice make her welcome with an evening in one of Glenminster’s high spots.
Now just one thing remained regarding his promise to her father, and when that was done maybe he would be able to have a life of his own once again. The task of locating Emma Chalmers had been mammoth.
He would be there for her at her father’s funeral and once that ordeal was over he was going to step aside and let her get on with her life. The same way he intended to carry on with his own, which was empty of womankind and was going to stay that way.
Drawing the curtains across to shut out the night, he went slowly up the spiral staircase that graced the hallway of his home and lay on top of the bedcovers, his last concern before sleep claimed him being the stranger that he had reluctantly taken under his wing.
What was her story? he wondered. Had she been close to Jeremy and they’d rowed about something that had made her go off in a huff? From what he’d said in his dying moments, it had seemed that Jeremy had been the reason for Emma’s departure and whatever it had been he’d had cause to regret it.
Since coming back to her roots she had never mentioned him, which was not a good omen, and what about the mother that she’d lost not so long before her hasty departure? What sort of a marriage had she and Jeremy had?
