Читать книгу Role Play - Caroline Anderson - Страница 5

AS THE days passed, so Abbie’s disordered impressions of life in general practice settled down to a sort of pattern.

Peter Sargent, she realised, was the sort to skate through life with cheerful inefficiency, constantly chivvied by the secretarial staff who were quite unmoved by his ingenuous charm.

She discovered that Ravi Patel was single, thirty-four and after Leo, who did precious little to discourage her despite his protestations to the contrary.

As for Leo himself, he was thirty-two and a constant thorn in her side, rattling through his patients at twice the speed of light so that by the time she finally emerged exhausted but triumphant at the end of her surgeries he was long gone on his visits and she was unable to ask him the inevitable string of questions that the consultations had generated.

‘Well, you shouldn’t dawdle about for so long,’ he would tell her, and then would sit and rip through the seemingly knotty problems, so that she felt a complete fool for not having seen the answers herself.

Not that he ever tried to belittle her medical knowledge. He didn’t have to. Frankly, she was more than aware of the glaring lapses in her understanding of certain conditions.

As for the paperwork, it defeated her utterly, to the point that when the receptionist told her she should fill in her PC4 she asked where she could find it, much to everyone’s amusement.

Leo, not even trying to disguise his mirth, explained cheerfully that a PC4 was a course of four tablets taken as post-coital contraception — hence the name.

Peggy Taylor, the practice manager, took pity on her and told the others off, but it did little to dilute Abbie’s humiliation.

It wasn’t that she minded being teased — lord, she was used to that. She had two brothers who had taken it as their filial duty to torment the life out of her in her childhood, until, in her teens, she’d suddenly changed into the object of their friends’ lascivious attention. Then they’d closed ranks protectively, but even so they still teased her gently to this day.

So it wasn’t being teased that troubled her, rather the glaring gaps in her knowledge that the teasing had exposed.

Leo found her later sitting in her surgery surrounded by a heap of textbooks, and came and hitched a lean hip up on to the corner of her desk.

‘Boning up on methods of contraception, Abbie?’ he teased.

She ignored him huffily.

‘Tut-tut,’ he admonished. ‘Wallowing in self-pity?’

‘Oh, go to hell,’ she muttered, her voice clogged.

He stuck a finger under her chin and tipped her head up, studying her face intently. She turned away, embarrassed that he should see the traces of tears on her cheeks.

‘Leave me alone.’

He stood up, but instead of walking away he came round her desk, pulled her to her feet and wrapped his long arms round her.

At first she was stunned into immobility, but after a few seconds she gave in to the luxury of his undemanding embrace, dropping her head forward into the hollow of his shoulder and sighing shakily.

His hand came up and smoothed her hair.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I’m sure Jackie didn’t.’

‘It’s not that,’ she mumbled into his shirt. ‘I just feel so inadequate. I should have known what a PC4 was.’

‘Probably,’ he agreed, ‘but nobody’s perfect. Stop torturing yourself.’

She lifted her head and looked up into his eyes. ‘But what if it’s something important? Something life-threatening, and I don’t know about it? I could kill someone!’

‘Do you really think you’re that bad?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you really think you would have got so far in medicine if you were a danger to your patients?’

She gave a shaky laugh. ‘Perhaps I just scraped through — perhaps it was all a fluke. Maybe I just got the examiners on a good day. Who knows?’

Leo sighed. ‘You really don’t have a very high opinion of yourself, do you?’

Numbly, she shook her head. ‘There’s so much to know, and I always feel I’m fumbling in the dark. It terrifies me, Leo, knowing I’m responsible for whether somebody lives or dies.’

He chuckled. ‘In general practice? In the average week the most drastic thing you’re likely to come across is a nasty case of piles.’

She giggled despite herself. ‘You know what I mean. What if I miss something? What if someone dies because of my ignorance?’

‘You can always ask,’ he assured her. ‘Peter or Ravi or me — any of us. Don’t feel you have to cope alone.’

‘What about when you’ve all gone and I’m still here trying to get to grips with this stupid machine?’ She flicked a contemptuous glance at the computer, and Leo laughed.

‘Does it still hate you?’

‘Does it ever,’ she grumbled.

‘You need a break — have supper with me tonight.’

She realised she was still standing in his arms, although she wasn’t crushed up against him any more, but she might just as well have been because she could feel the warmth of his body, could remember the feel of it, long and hard and lean, all sleek, solid muscle and sinew, terrifyingly, overwhelming male.

She stepped back a little further. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ she said as firmly as she could manage.

‘Why?’

‘I — I just don’t …’ she floundered.

His grin was wicked. ‘Not good enough. Come on, you’ve finished here for the night.’

He flicked off her terminal, stacked her books back on to the shelf and held out his hand. ‘Come.’

‘What if I don’t want to?’ she said defensively.

He sighed. ‘You’re lying again, Abbie,’ he teased in a soft, sing-song voice.

Her mouth firmed in defiance. ‘I have to study.’

‘Cobblers,’ he said rudely. ‘Come on. We’ll pick up a take-away.’

Her stomach rumbled loudly at the thought, and he chuckled. ‘Co-operation at last!’

‘Only from my involuntary muscles —— ’

‘That’ll do for a start. I realise that aggravating mouth of yours will take a little longer to tame. Come on — and say, Yes, Leo.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, Leo.’

‘Better. Now come on.’

She assumed they’d have fish and chips, or a Chinese at the outside, but the little town surprised her. Tucked away in a narrow alley off the main street was a tiny but immaculate kebab house owned and run by a Greek Cypriot who, Leo said, had come over from Cyprus at the time of the Turkish invasion in the early seventies and stayed ever since.

The shop, predictably, was called Spiro’s, and Spiro himself was almost circular, balding and grumbled constantly about the price of lamb and the rubbish at the market.

Leo, commiserating, bought shish kebabs in pitta pockets groaning with salad, and they ate them in the car looking out over a field because they were both too hungry to wait any longer. Despite Spiro’s complaints the quality was superb, and Abbie ate every last bit and even pinched a bit of Leo’s second one.

Then he drove her back to his house, a cottage on a quiet lane about two miles from the town centre, and the evening sun gleamed on the windows and on the glowing banks of perennials that flanked the path, the magenta of the crane’s bill, the green and white of the lady’s-mantle, the tall spires of the hollyhocks nodding at the back behind the white and yellow daisies.

‘Oh, how pretty!’ Abbie said, enchanted, and Leo let them in, retrieved a bottle of wine and two glasses and took her for a stroll round the garden.

The evening was much cooler than the day had been, and she was able to enjoy the mellow air and the sweetly scented roses that graced the soft pink walls.

‘How do you manage it all?’ she asked, incredulous, after he had finished his guided tour.

He laughed softly. ‘Me? I wouldn’t know a dandelion from a primula! I have a gardener who comes in twice a week and cuts the grass and keeps the beds in order.’

‘He does a wonderful job,’ she said admiringly, glancing round again at the riot of colour that filled every corner.

‘She. Yes, she’s excellent, I have to say. When I moved here the garden was a mess, but she’s worked wonders.’

‘She?’ Abbie said with a teasing grin. ‘I might have known.’

‘Of course. She’s tall, blonde and very, very lovely.’ He grinned back. ‘She’s also in her late forties and a grandmother. I swear she’s stronger than I am, and she’s definitely no competition to you, Abigail, my love, so you needn’t get all jealous.’

She looked away hastily. ‘I’m not your love, Leo, and I don’t intend to be. And I’m certainly not jealous!’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Look, I really ought to get on. I’ve got studying I should be doing, and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do ——’

He laughed softly. ‘Running, Abbie?’

‘Not at all,’ she blustered, but she was, and they both knew it.

He took pity on her, though, and drove her back to the surgery so that she could collect her car.

As she unlocked the door, she became suddenly, startlingly aware of his body close behind her. His hand, warm and hard, closed over her shoulder and turned her gently towards him.

‘Leo?’ she said breathlessly, and then her protest, such as it was, was cut off by his lips as they covered hers in a feather-light caress.

‘Goodnight, Abigail,’ he murmured softly, and then he turned on his heel and walked back to his car.

Shaken, she unlocked her door and slid behind the wheel, her limbs trembling. He was waiting for her to start the car and drive away, she thought dimly, so mechanically she turned the key, backed out and drove off.

After a moment she realised he was flashing his lights furiously at her, and she pulled over.

He leapt out of his car and ran towards her. She wound down the window just far enough to talk to him but not so far that he could kiss her again—just in case.

‘What do you want?’ she asked nervously.

‘Me? That’s an interesting thought.’

‘Leo ——’

‘You didn’t have your lights on.’

She blinked. ‘Oh — right. Thanks.’

His grin was infuriating. ‘My pleasure. I didn’t realise one little kiss would throw you so badly.’

‘It’s nothing to do with your kiss!’ she protested, and the grin widened.

‘You’re telling porkie-pies again, Abbie, darling,’ he murmured, and, slipping his hand through the partly-open window, he brushed her cheek with his knuckles.

It sent a shiver through her, as did his softly voiced, ‘Sleep well, princess. Dream of me.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Leo, go away,’ she said unsteadily, but he was gone, leaving her in a tangle of wild and unfamiliar emotions, not least of which was a most unsettling feeling that she would, indeed, be dreaming of him — with or without his permission!

She didn’t dream of him, in the end — largely because she didn’t sleep until almost dawn, because every time she closed her eyes she felt the brush of lips on hers and her whole body screamed to life.

Unable to bear it, incapable of sweeping aside such unfamiliar and overwhelming sensations, she paced her little flat over a shoe-shop in the centre of town and wondered how she was going to get through the next year.

By ignoring him whenever possible, was the conclusion she eventually came to, and after a drink of hot milk and another severe lecture to herself she finally crawled exhausted into bed shortly before dawn to fall instantly and deeply asleep until the traffic woke her at almost eight-thirty.

Predictably, she was late, and, equally predictably, her surgery was less than straightforward. To add insult to injury, she found that when under pressure the computer was even less co-operative, and she finally, in desperation, asked Peggy if she could come in and sit with her and show her what she was doing wrong.

‘No,’ Peggy told her, ‘I don’t think the patients would like it, but Leo’s here. I’ll send him in; it’ll get him off my back while I type these letters.’

Seconds later there was a tap on the door and Leo appeared clutching two cups of coffee and the computer manual.

‘Problems?’

‘It hates me!’ she wailed despairingly.

He chuckled. ‘Nonsense. It’s an inanimate object. It’s incapable of hate.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ she snorted. ‘Tell it to the fairies.’ She glanced at him, took in the cool cotton trousers and the turned-back cuffs of his shirt, exposing strong, hair-strewn wrists, and turned quickly away. After that kiss the night before, the very last thing she needed was him beside her looking sexy as all get-out. She forced herself to concentrate. ‘Look, how do I recall previous prescriptions and history?’ she asked, her voice a little strained to her ears.

Leo, apparently oblivious to her discomfort, leant over her, his body brushing hers, casually tapping buttons, and the information on her next patient appeared as if by magic. She blinked. The vital manoeuvres were still lost to her, drowned out by the clamouring of her hormones.

‘How did you do that?’ she asked faintly.

He grinned. ‘Easy — you should have watched.’

‘I did,’ she lied. ‘It takes me ages to get it to do that, and I’m sure I go through a far longer process —— Right, show me again.’

He shook his head. ‘Finish your surgery and I’ll go over it with you afterwards. I’ll just sit here and help you get through the rest of your patients for now.’

One or two of the patients looked askance at Leo, but he smilingly explained that they were having problems with the computer and he was fighting with it to try and save the patients’ waiting time.

‘Just ignore me,’ he said, but Abbie found it intensely off-putting and difficult.

Until, that was, she had a patient with a seemingly innocent mole just below her collarbone. She examined it, asked all the appropriate questions and was on the point of telling the patient to go home and stop worrying when Leo’s toe connected none too gently with her ankle.

She glanced at him, but he was staring fixedly at the computer screen. She followed the direction of his eyes, and saw ‘Excision and histology’ on the screen.

She cleared her throat, smiled at the patient and shot up some thanks for Leo’s presence at her elbow. ‘Right,’ she told the patient, ‘what we need to do is remove it, just as a precaution, and then send it to the lab to have it checked, just to be on the safe side. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, but removing it is such a minor procedure it seems silly not to do so. Now, the only thing is I’m not an expert in minor surgery, but I believe Dr Chandler here could remove it for you, couldn’t you, Dr Chandler?’

He turned a charming smile on the young woman. ‘My pleasure,’ he murmured, and he told her to book in with the receptionist for surgery the following day. ‘Dr Pearce will, of course, assist me and continue with your follow-up,’ he added, and the woman smiled gratefully at both of them and left.

Abbie turned to Leo. ‘Is it really necessary to remove it?’ she asked, her confidence shaken yet again.

He shrugged. ‘Probably not, but it’s the sort of blemish that could easily turn into melanoma, if not now then in the future, and it’s so dead easy to take them off and check. We have a set procedure, by the way, for follow-up of any mole or skin lesion removed in the surgery. All material excised is sent for histology, always, without exception, and the patient is always recalled automatically when the result comes back because if they’ve gone to the lengths of consulting their doctor they’re going to worry till they know the answer one way or the other. The only time we don’t do it ourselves is if we’re sure it’s gone too far for simple excision or in the case of a difficult site.’

‘Difficult as in cosmetically difficult?’

‘Or in one of the areas where nerves are likely to be implicated, like the anterior triangle of the neck, or eyelids, or over the flexor tendons of the fingers, for instance. Cheeks can be difficult, too, both cosmetically and because of the nerves and glands over the jaws. We do what we can, but it’s important to know your limitations. We aren’t plastic surgeons, and some procedures require other skills.’

‘What about this lady?’ Abbie asked doubtfully. ‘Won’t she have some scarring?’

He grinned wryly. ‘No faith, have you? I’m not a complete butcher, Abbie. She might have a tiny scar, but I won’t disfigure her for life, my love. Right, who’s next?’

Abbie, completely fazed by his endearment, floundered on with her surgery until all her patients had been dealt with and the computer had gobbled up Leo’s instructions, obediently spewed out various prescriptions and gone quietly back to sleep.

She glared at it. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she grumbled crossly. ‘Horrid thing.’

Leo grinned. ‘Think of the writer’s cramp it’s saved you.’

She snorted. ‘Yes, I’ve got cramp of the brain instead!’

‘All comes of being a simple-minded woman ——’

‘It’s nothing to do with ——’ she began, rising instantly to the bait, but then, seeing his dancing eyes, she subsided immediately. ‘Thank you so much for your help,’ she said instead, batting her lashes at him.

He laughed. ‘Come on, time for visits. Mary Tanner has gone home and I have to pop in and see her. Want to come?’

‘Sure. How’s her husband coping?’ she asked as she packed up her things.

‘I don’t know. That’s one of the things I want to find out.’

She followed him out, returning the patient envelopes to the office as she went.

Predictably, Peggy was waiting with a question. ‘Did you mean to send this urine off on a haematology form?’

‘Oh, hell,’ she muttered.

Behind her Leo tutted and gave a resigned sigh while she quickly filled in the correct form and gave it to the patient practice manager.

‘Sorry, Peggy,’ she said with an apologetic smile, and was greeted with an encouraging pat on the hand.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll come with time.’

‘I wish,’ she muttered under her breath, and then Leo was wheeling her out of the door and towards the car.

‘Now, do you need the loo before we go?’ he asked with heavy tolerance, and she glared at him.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Sure?’

‘Perfectly!’

‘Don’t get grotty with me ——’

‘I’m not getting grotty!’ she said, her voice rising steadily.

He tutted again. ‘You’ll be stamping your foot in a second.’ He hopped over the door and slid behind the wheel, watching with interest as Abbie struggled into the low bucket seat, her skirt riding up as she did so.

She shot him a furious glare. ‘Don’t leer,’ she told him crossly. ‘And anyway, where’s your Volvo? Isn’t it time you got it back?’

‘All in good time — anyway, I get a better view of your legs in Topsy.’

She glowered at him, and he chuckled. ‘God, you’re gorgeous when you’re angry, do you know that?’

She looked hastily away. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To see Mary Tanner, then an elderly lady with congestive heart failure who’s struggling for breath. I’ve put her on Bambuterol but I want to see if it’s doing the trick.’

‘I haven’t heard of it,’ Abbie said, and then could have kicked herself.

‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’ he murmured. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t have expected you to, because it’s pretty new. It’s a bronchodilator like Ventolin, but oral, to give her more prophylactic cover over twenty-four hours. She’s been waking up breathless and in those circumstances an inhaler is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Anyway, we’ll see if it’s working. Right, here we go.’

The engine purred smoothly to life, and Leo swung the car out on to the road and headed for the Tanners’ house while Abbie tried to appear nonchalant, hold her hair down and keep her knees out of reach all at once.

She failed — at least with the knees. As the car swerved round a corner, so she slid over the leather upholstery and fetched up against the gear lever just as Leo reached for it.

With a gasp she swivelled out of reach but not before the touch of his warm fingers had sent shivers down her spine. He threw her a teasing grin.

‘If you want me to touch you, Abbie, you only have to ask,’ he said softly, and his voice, deep and gravelly, turned her bones to jelly and her resolve to mush.

‘You should be so lucky,’ she mumbled, and let go of her hair to get a firmer grip on the seat. ‘Of course, if you weren’t going round the corners like a bat out of hell I wouldn’t slide around so much.’

‘Your bottom’s too small. If you had a few curves, you’d fit the seat better,’ he replied with a grin.

‘I have curves,’ she told him primly.

His eyes slid over her body and back to the road. ‘I’d noticed — but only on the front.’

Abbie’s top-heaviness had been the bane of her adolescence. All gangly legs and boyishly slim hips, the last thing she had expected or wanted was the lush fullness of her breasts, which had appeared as if by magic when she was thirteen and kept growing out of all proportion to her otherwise streamlined frame. Her brothers had ragged her to death about it, and so she had acquired a complex about a mile wide. As she grew older she had learned to deal with the leers of her male colleagues, and by wearing loose blouses and jackets she had managed to minimise the problem.

Not, apparently, enough to fool Leo. She felt the blush coming and turned away so that he wouldn’t see, but they were at the end of their journey and he pulled up outside the Tanners’ house and turned to her.

‘Coming in?’

‘Only if you’ll stop this endless sexual harassment,’ she told him grimly.

He stopped in the act of climbing out of the car and turned back to her, her face serious for once. ‘Abbie, I’m only teasing.’

‘Are you?’ She made herself look at him. ‘What about all this rubbish about an affair? Is that teasing, too?’

He met her eyes for a long time, the gold flecks gleaming in their blue surround, making his eyes almost green — like a lion, she thought, predatory but content to watch — for now. She licked her lips. ‘Well?’ she prompted.

‘No, that isn’t teasing. I’m more than ready for anything you want to offer. Just say the word. For the rest ——’ He shrugged. ‘You take youself too seriously.’

‘Damn it, Leo, someone has to! I’m sick of being treated like a bimbo just because I’ve got ——’ She floundered to a halt.

‘A chest like a page-three model?’

She flushed furiously and turned away. ‘Exactly. Female exploitation.’

He chuckled. ‘Oh, come on, Abbie — I’ve seen you looking at me. If you’d only admit it was mutual we’d maybe stand a chance.’

‘No way.’

He sighed and finished climbing out of the car. ‘Coming?’

She opened the door, grabbed her skirt and yanked it down as she squirmed out of the seat. As she straightened, she met his eyes and the blue and gold burned bright like a hot flame. The sun glinted on his tawny hair, and he stood quite still, watching her. She felt frozen by his eyes, pinned to the spot, unable to move or look away. He reminded her of a big cat, a lion, relaxed but ready to spring — on her.

She had the distinct feeling that with this particular lion, though, her time was running out. He wasn’t going to be content to watch for much longer — and she felt about as defenceless as a new-born lamb.