A Very Precious Gift
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Meredith Webber
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CHAPTER ONE
‘THAT’S it, I’m through with him. What does he think I am, an idiot? The first time we arrange to have what could be called a real date, and he cancels it.’
Phoebe slammed out of Charles Marlowe’s office and ran straight into the arms of his senior associate.
Nick David steadied her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders as she struggled to regain her footing.
He looked down into fury-sparked dark eyes and grinned.
‘I’ve been wondering when the worm would turn. When he’d finally goad you into showing your true colours.’
A new rage kindled more sparks as she switched the focus of her anger from Charles to him. She wrenched herself away from his supporting hands, and her clenched fists suggested she was battling an urge to do him physical harm.
‘What do you mean, goad me into showing my true colours? What true colours?’
Nick chuckled at her indignation.
‘All that “yes, Charles, no, Charles, three bags full, Charles”! You’ve never shown half as much deference to me, or hesitated to tell me exactly what you thought of me, even though, I might point out, I’m your actual boss.’
‘I did not—’ Phoebe began, then, with the innate honesty he admired in her, added, ‘Well, only when you made that poor young temporary typist fall hopelessly in love with you, then roared at her when she couldn’t do her work because of heart palpitations.’
She turned away after delivering this excuse, heading for the cupboard-like space they used as a tearoom. Nick followed, ready to argue, but when he entered the room, and had nodded in answer to coffee she’d offered by waving the jar towards him, another angle to the conversation struck him.
‘You mentioned this supposed power of mine over females. If it’s so potent, so all-conquering, how come you fell for Charles and not me?’
She busied herself with the coffee, her back turned to him but answering casually over her shoulder, ‘I was immunised against men like you at an early age. And I did not “fall” for Charles, as you so crudely put it. If you remember, he was going through a bad time when I first came to work here. I felt sorry for him. Then I was attracted to his good qualities.’
Nick’s huff of mocking disbelief made her swing around.
‘Anyway, that’s not the point,’ she added, waving the teaspoon like a weapon in front of her. ‘It’s over, finished, kaput! In fact, I told him I’m going to go out and say yes to the first man I meet. Yes to a date—to anything he asks!’
‘Now, there’s a challenge, Dr Moreton,’ Nick said, thinking he should make Phoebe angry more often, as the heightened colour in her cheeks and the sparks in her eyes brought her rather quiet beauty to brilliant life.
‘What do you mean?’ she demanded, spooning sugar into his coffee then stirring it.
‘Well, I’m the man!’ he said, and when she looked bewildered he explained. ‘The first man you met after you told him off. That’s me.’ He smiled at her, and pretended to look deeply thoughtful. ‘Now, what would I like you to say yes to?’
A tremor, which might have been presentiment, ran through Phoebe’s body.
Or maybe she was getting a chill.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she told Nick. ‘I didn’t mean it literally. But from time to time, men do ask me out, you know, and all this time I’ve said no, because I really thought Charles and I might have had something going for us.’
A sadness swept across her. She’d been sure they had something going for them. Or would have had. Eventually…
She knew he was dedicated to his work, which didn’t give him much time for a social life, but Charles was so exactly the kind of man she’d always dreamed of marrying.
Steady, focussed, undemanding…
Everything her father wasn’t?
She tried to ignore the unspoken question but she didn’t need a psychologist to tell her why she’d avoided relationships—or eventually been drawn to a man like Charles.
‘Hey! It’s not so bad,’ Nick said, coming closer and taking her chin in his hand, tilting her head up so she had to look into his eyes.
Blue, but not the soft, powdery blue of Charles’s eyes. A deeper colour, with green added—hard to read.
Especially now.
You’re immune to men like him, she reminded herself, then realised she’d missed what he was saying.
‘What was that?’ she queried, when a mental replay of what she must have heard made her move away from him again.
He picked up his coffee before he replied, and bent his head to sip it so she couldn’t see the expression on his face.
‘I said it mightn’t be a bad idea. Perhaps what he needs is to see you with someone else. He doesn’t seem to realise how unfair he’s being to you, so if it looks as if you’re enjoying another man’s company, he might wake up.’
‘Make him jealous, you mean?’ Phoebe said, feeling a frown tugging her eyebrows together as she tried to imagine such an unlikely occurrence. ‘But Charles isn’t the jealous type. I mean, half the trouble in our relationship—if you could call a handful of dates and occasional meals after work a relationship—is because he worries so much about Anne. He worries about the unreliable men she keeps going out with, and about her being hurt by them.’
Nick rolled his eyes in disbelief. Could women really fall for the line men like Charles fed them? Not that he wanted to be the one to disillusion Phoebe. If she was genuinely in love with Charles, pointing out his faults wasn’t going to do any good.
‘You could try it,’ he suggested. ‘Better than sitting around the place, moping and pining.’
‘You’re right!’ For a moment she looked almost cheerful, then the face that was usually so serenely lovely creased into uncertainty and she gave a despairing sigh. ‘But it won’t work. I mean, Charles is always here in the unit, or at home writing articles, or chasing after Anne to sort out her problems. Our entire social life has consisted of shared evenings in the lab and an occasional movie or drink on the way home from work. He wouldn’t notice if I was dating ten other men, unless I had them running in and out of the rooms, or meeting me at the front door with flowers and chocolates.’
‘I think ten might be overdoing it,’ Nick said mildly, though mild didn’t exactly describe his reaction to the thought. It had been bad enough watching the offhand way Charles had treated Phoebe, without seeing her playing up to a bevy of admirers. Not that his concern was personal. It was merely because, as a junior employee in the unit he headed, he felt some responsibility for her. ‘Anyway, the answer’s far closer to home. We come back to your threat. The first man you met as you slammed out of his office. Me.’
He could see the suspicion in her eyes, and feel it in a sudden tension in the room.
‘You?’
‘I am a man,’ he pointed out, part amused and part peeved by her reaction.
‘But you only date blondes. Charles would know straight away it was a set-up.’
Nick was surprised by the spurt of anger this blunt statement provoked. Anger that sought physical relief—like shaking the infuriating woman he was trying to help.
Not that he hadn’t felt like shaking her any number of times over the past few months. Gently, of course, and perhaps more metaphorically than practically. Anything to get her to see Charles as he really was—a man who found it impossible to cut the ties with his ex-wife, no matter how lovely a new love interest might be. Jess had found that out.
However, now wasn’t the time to point this out to his junior colleague. Or mention Jess.
‘I have been known to take out the odd redhead,’ he protested. ‘And a sultry brunette or two has graced my presence in the past.’
Phoebe snorted—a most unladylike sound given the general demeanour of poise and gentility she usually displayed.
‘What about Olivia, or is it Ophelia, who’s the flavour of the week this week? What do you intend to tell her?’
‘Juliet—’ he put a special emphasis on the name, which he was sure Phoebe knew quite well ‘—found she preferred solicitors to doctors after all. She’s moved on.’
‘Or was pushed?’ his offsider said, with a smile so pert and knowing it brought physical violence back to mind.
He curbed the urge.
‘At any rate, she’ll pose no problem.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But shouldn’t we be taking advantage of Charles’s imminent departure, rather than arguing?’
He lifted the coffee cup from Phoebe’s fingers and set it on the bench, then, holding her by the arm, he marched her out into the corridor.
Phoebe felt a flutter of uncertainty. It was OK to tease Nick about his women, and to exchange barbed banter with him when she had Charles as a secure back-stop, but these were unchartered waters, and she knew, with an inner certainty deeper than instinct, that sharks would be the least of her worries.
‘What are you doing? We doing?’ she demanded, as Nick positioned her against the wall, placing her with the care he usually reserved for patients.
‘You’re saying yes to the first man who asked you, sweetheart,’ he murmured, his blue eyes aglint with wicked delight. ‘Just the moment we hear the doorknob turn.’
She had barely assimilated the words, let alone grasped their meaning, when the rattle of the doorknob suggested Charles was about to leave his office.
Before she could protest, Nick lowered his head, and the lips she’d often fantasised about—only because they were so well shaped, not because she’d hankered for his kisses—claimed hers.
And ‘claimed’ was the correct word. There was nothing gentle about this mock embrace. The pressure was relentless, forcing her to open her own lips, demanding her tongue touch his, drawing from her a response so fevered she forgot why they were doing it.
Ripples of sensation spread downward to other parts of her body, building and building until the trickle became a flood of totally new inner awareness. It sought out secret parts and sparked them to life, contracting muscles to an aching tightness and causing a jittery alertness in her nerves.
Pleasant or unpleasant? Different, certainly. Quite possibly addictive. She wanted to stop so she could analyse this new phenomenon, but didn’t want to stop in case it disappeared and was lost for ever.
Heat fogged her mind and she gave in to the new sensations, revelling in this strange awakening of a physical self she barely knew.
Until Charles’s voice—his shocked, ‘Phoebe!’—penetrated the bright haze surrounding her and she struggled to escape Nick’s imprisoning arms.
‘Remember it’s all in a good cause,’ he murmured against her skin, the warmth of his breath making her tingle all the way down to her toes.
A good cause, she repeated weakly to herself, then she sank beneath the waves again, kissing Nick with all the fervour of an explorer intent on discovering new lands.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, somewhere a door was shutting, but the noises were peripheral, meaning nothing, as Phoebe gave in to an excitement she’d never felt before—hadn’t realised existed.
In the end, it stopped as suddenly as it had started, Nick breaking the contact, leaning back against the wall beside her and mopping his brow with the back of his hand—an extravagant gesture supported by his hearty, ‘Phew!’
Phoebe wanted to object to this theatrical reaction, but breathing was difficult enough without trying to form words, so it was Nick who spoke first.
‘Talk about still waters,’ he muttered, squinting suspiciously at her from his position against the wall. ‘If you’ve been kissing poor old Charles like that, no wonder the guy’s confused.’
Before she had time to tell him she’d never kissed Charles, or anyone else for that matter, with the wanton abandon she’d so recently displayed, he pushed himself upright and walked away. When he reached the door leading into his office, he opened it, then turned back towards her.
‘OK,’ he said, his voice so calm she realised he’d almost certainly exaggerated the kiss-reaction, ‘what shall we do for an encore?’
She should have told him right then there’d be no encore. Been firm about it, as the whole idea was too ridiculous to contemplate. But the words wouldn’t come. Wouldn’t even take shape in her head. It was as if the kiss had short-circuited her thought processes, hot-wired her brain so it had crashed like an over-extended computer hard drive.
‘Obviously kissing in the corridor has its limits,’ Nick continued in such a calm, reasonable tone he might have been discussing the roster. ‘How about the hospital ball? Isn’t it on in a fortnight? Charles will be there for sure—he never misses official functions. Shall we make it a date?’
Phoebe knew she had to react, so she shook her head. She was going to the ball with Charles.
Or was she?
She nodded, then realised her mistake when Nick said, ‘Great!’ He disappeared into his office, closing the door on any further conversation.
She’d see him tomorrow. Tell him she couldn’t go with him.
Although Charles would certainly go, with or without a partner, and she had her own ticket…
Phoebe detached herself from the wall and walked slowly back towards the locker room, another cupboard-like space in a small unit where the maximum floor area had been given over to consulting rooms, laboratory, storage of essential equipment and providing what patient comfort they could.
Changing into street clothes might help restore her equilibrium, although she doubted whether anything short of a brain transplant would erase the memory of that kiss.
