Caroline Anderson - Role Play

So why the damage to her pulse-rate?

Must be a virus, she thought with the last vestige of humour, and, crunching the gears again, she eased into the tiny space he had left her and struggled out.

‘Poor little car,’ he murmured as she reached the top of the steps.

‘You put me off,’ she said crossly, and then was angry with herself for giving it away.

His grin broadened. ‘Interesting.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ she replied as coolly as she could manage, and, sucking in her breath, she squeezed past him through the gap.

Or she would have done if he hadn’t moved his arm up to block her path.

She came to a dead halt, her breasts pressed against his well-muscled forearm, her heart doing a tango against her ribs.

‘Don’t forget our date.’

She stepped back and looked up into his eyes, bewildered by his words and by the flood of sensation that was swamping her. ‘Date?’ she said weakly.

‘Coffee — to talk about your training programme.’

‘Oh — yes, of course.’

‘You’re blushing,’ he said with evident amusement, and she felt the colour deepen.

‘Rubbish, it’s hot. Excuse me, I have a surgery …’

‘Ah, yes.’ He moved out of her way, almost reluctantly, and she felt his eyes on her until she reached the door at the far side of the office.

And not only his eyes. Ravi, too, was watching her, her sloe eyes intent, accusing.

So that’s the way of it, Abbie thought. Well, I’m no threat to you, Ravi, dear. Have him, and welcome.

She shut her surgery door behind her with relief.

It was short-lived. The second her last patient exited the surgery, Leo Chandler was in, two cups of coffee balanced in one hand, a file in the other.

‘What kept you?’ she asked drily.

He grinned his appreciation. ‘Me?’ he murmured innocently. ‘I’ve been dangling around for ages while you built relationships with your patients. “Good morning, that looks nasty, have a bottle of pills, goodbye.” ’

She sighed and leant back in the chair, lifting the heavy mass of red-gold hair that tumbled in cheerful profusion over her shoulders. Her neck was hot — really she should have worn it up, or at least tied back, but she had been on the drag ——

‘Why were you late, by the way?’ he asked as if he read her mind. ‘I mean, pulling up behind my “heap of scrap” must have taken you — oh, thirty seconds? At the outside.’

She sighed again. Clearly that remark was going to haunt her forever more. ‘Time isn’t my absolutely best thing,’ she confessed with a rueful grin.

‘You don’t say.’ He handed her the coffee and sprawled in the chair beside her desk, long legs stuck out in front, his cup balanced precariously on his belt-buckle. He had changed into a pair of cool cotton trousers and a soft, stone washed shirt, the cuffs turned back to reveal the scatter of fine golden hair that dusted his wrists and forearms. The trousers were much less conspicuously masculine than the jeans had been, and yet —— She looked away, her cheeks heating again.

Her embarrassment wasn’t eased by his evident enjoyment of it.

‘So,’ he said suddenly. ‘Your training. Done any role-play exercises before?’

She groaned and rolled her eyes. ‘Role play?’

‘Mmm. Doctor, doctor, I think I’m a pair of curtains. Pull yourself together, man. That sort of thing.’

She giggled despite herself. ‘Not for years. Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Because it can be very useful for exploring the unsolved mysteries of doctor-patient relationships.’

He shifted in his chair, and swung his eyes away from her, suddenly awkward.

‘Before we get on to that, there’s something I wanted to ask you about — something personal.’

Her heart tightened in anticipation. Not that date he had teased her with, surely? But what else …?

‘Ask away,’ she prompted.

He was silent for a second, then he spoke in a rush, his voice strained. ‘I’m having problems — personal problems. Well, sexual problems, I suppose. I’m — I think I’m impotent.’

She laughed. She didn’t mean to, but the idea of the man in front of her having any kind of sexual problem at all was just absurd in the extreme.

He met her eyes, his own reproving. ‘Tut-tut. You aren’t supposed to laugh, you’re supposed to ask me when it started, how many times it’s happened, if it’s always the same pattern, if it’s only when I’m with a partner or ——’

‘All right, all right!’ She threw her hands up in the air in an attitude of surrender, and tried to school her expression. ‘You just caught me unprepared.’

‘And would you be prepared if someone came up to you and said something like that in a supermarket, or in a restaurant?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! They wouldn’t ——’

‘Oh no?’ He leant back and shook his head. ‘Don’t be too sure. I was in the bar at the squash club last winter and someone came up to me — total stranger — and asked me what he should do about his genital warts. I told him to see his GP, and he said I was his GP, and what should he do?’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Come and see me at the surgery. What else? If you give advice when you can’t make an examination, then you could be in deep legal trouble. Once you’ve started to give any advice at all, you’ve assumed responsibility for the treatment and the repercussions could be phenomenal. Now, about my sexual problems ——’

She laughed again.

He gave her a reproachful look. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Dr Pearce. I thought you might have some new perspective on it that might help me.’

‘You’re ridiculous,’ she told him bluntly, trying hard not to blush. ‘The only sexual problem you’ve got is finding time for all those opportunities in your hectic schedule, I have no doubt.’

He grinned. ‘I’m flattered.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be a compliment,’ she said severely, squashing the urge to laugh.

The grin widened. ‘Listen, little lady, with my problem I’ll take what I can get.’

‘Yes, well, just make sure it isn’t something nasty.’

‘Like Ravinda Patel?’

Her head flew up and their eyes clashed in the sudden silence. ‘I thought …’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Ravi’s interested in me, but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve never given her the slightest encouragement.’

‘That’s not how it looks.’

He shrugged. ‘Ravi’s got expressive eyes. You’ll have to trust me.’

Abbie wasn’t sure she dared. Instead, she changed tack. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

‘Because the internal politics of any closely knit working community are very sensitive — I just wanted you to know the truth.’

‘How do I know it’s the truth? How do I know you aren’t the world’s most monumental flirt who’s seen a new toy to play with?’

‘Me?’ His expression of injured innocence had to be seen to be believed. Only the wicked twinkling of his extraordinary blue-gold eyes gave him away.

‘You, Leo Chandler,’ she said firmly, and quelled the urge to laugh. ‘Anyway, all that besides, what good is role play going to do? We just end up making fools of ourselves and learning nothing we couldn’t learn by any other more conventional means.’

‘Does that worry you? Making a fool of yourself?’

She shifted awkwardly. How did he know that? ‘I like to be in control of a situation,’ she compromised.

He laughed. ‘In general practice? No way. You want pathology if you want control. Dead people don’t do anything unexpected. Live people, now …’ He shot her a sideways look. ‘I have to go out on some calls — come with me. Part of your education.’