Caroline Anderson - Nothing Left to Give

She turned to him, a silly smile lurking on her face. ‘It’s perfect,’ she told him, ‘absolutely perfect. I can’t believe my luck.’

He smiled then, the weary eyes warming, and Beth felt somthing quiver deep inside her.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ he said softly, and she was suddenly aware of him, of his size, his nearness in the room that was suddenly far, far too small.

She turned away, flustered. ‘It’s very homely—your wife must have quite a gift,’ she said, deliberately reminding herself that he was married.

The silence was deafening, and something about its quality made her turn and look searchingly at him.

The weariness was back, and with it a bone-deep sadness.

‘My wife’s dead, Miss Turner. She’s been dead for four years.’

Sophie was refusing to co-operate in the way only a four-year-old could. Gideon hung on to his patience, determined to win the battle, if not the war.

In the end she was bathed and into bed, and Claire had finished her Latin homework and was wrestling with biology. Will was in his room, Dire Straits tearing hell out of the walls and making the windows rattle. He opened the door.

‘William!’ he yelled.

The music was cut drastically.

‘Hi, Dad.’

‘Just going over to the coach house for a minute—the nurse will be here soon and I want to make sure everything’s ready. Watch the girls for me, can you?’

Will did the thumbs-up, and Gideon shut the door on the awful noise and headed for the relative sanctuary of the coach house.

To be honest, he was still trying to work out why he had let her have it. It was his retreat, the oasis of tranquillity he escaped to whenever things got too much and he needed time out from the pressing reality of life as a single parent.

He closed the door behind him and sighed, letting the absolute peace and stillness soak into him.

He must be mad to give it away.

He climbed the stairs and made his way over to the kitchen area, checking that his housekeeper had put a supply of fresh food in the fridge as he had requested, and that the bed was made up and aired and the bathroom in readiness.

On impulse he went back down and picked some roses from beside the house and took them in, standing them in a glass for want of a vase. They were hardly arranged—that sort of thing wasn’t his forte, to say the least, but he wanted to make the gesture—perhaps of atonement?

He had been rather abrupt, but he really hadn’t wanted to get into a discussion of Denise’s death and the events surrounding it.

He set the roses down on the table and dropped into the sofa, stretching his legs out in front of him and dropping his head back with a sigh.

Damn, she was pretty.

Soft and warm, like sunshine on a spring morning.

He snorted. Poetry now.

He was conscious of an ache, deep in his chest, and another tightness further down, an awareness, a need that had lain dormant for years.

No, he told himself. She was too sweet, too kind, too innocent to use for the slaking of his thirst.

Hell, she wouldn’t even know the rules.

A car scrunched gravel on the drive, and he went down and opened the door.

She was climbing out of the car and dragging a heavy case behind her. Chivalry bade him take it from her.

‘Anything else?’

Her sweet fragrance drifted against his skin, and the ache intensified.

‘No, that’s all for now. I’ll go back at the weekend.’

He turned without speaking and went back inside, carrying the heavy case ahead of him up the steps.

He set it beside the bed and dusted off his hands.

Oh, roses—how thoughtful,’ she said softly, and he felt colour brush his neck.

‘I asked my housekeeper to get the room ready for you,’ he told her. The romantic little gesture seemed suddenly very foolish, and yet he was glad it had given her pleasure.

The huge room suddenly seemed suffocatingly small.

‘Right, I’ll leave you to get settled in. If there’s anything you need, just come over and shout.’

She turned towards him, her beautiful blue eyes softened by the smile, and his fingers ached to free her hair from the ponytail and spread it over her shoulders. He could almost feel the silky strands sliding through his fingers. It would be like golden rain, fanned over his pillow, cascading across his chest as she raised herself to look down on him, a teasing smile on her lips ——

He yanked himself up short. No, Pendragon. Not this one.

He bade her goodnight and turned, running quickly down the stairs and out into the blessed darkness of the night.

Gideon—Beth found it impossible to think of him as Dr Pendragon—tracked her down the following morning at the surgery.

‘All right?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Fine, thanks. I think I can find everything I’ll need. I’m helping Julie get rid of the backlog and then I’ll start my proper routine from Monday.’

‘Good. Make sure you put in a claim for the extra hours. Oh, by the way, talking about extra hours, do you feel happy about taking over the Stop Smoking clinic? I forgot to mention it at your interview. We run it when necessary, and we had a new group scheduled to start on Monday evening.’

She shook her head. ‘No problem. I’ve run one before. Do you do much with it?’

Oh, yes, it’s a tandem effort. We’ve found it’s very cost-effective because the smokers take up so much of our time and resources, especially in the winter months. It’s just that I’ve got a man coming to see me this morning who’s been referred for bypass surgery and he’s a heavy smoker—he needs to give up, and the surgeon is being less than hopeful about his chances if he doesn’t, so I thought I’d talk him into the clinic.’

‘Good idea.’

‘Sure you don’t mind? I’m sorry I didn’t mention it yesterday.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I think I’m going to find the time hangs on my hands anyway, I’m used to being busy.’

For a moment she thought he was going to say something else, but then he nodded and turned briskly away.

Beth watched him go, the long, lazy stride eating up the ground, the supple movements of his shoulders, the swing of his arms, his movements all graceful and coordinated like a natural athlete.

She had heard gravel scrunch underfoot this morning outside the coach house and had watched as he jogged down the lane past the church and out into the square.

Half an hour later she had heard the scrunch of returning footsteps, and had forced herself to ignore them and not look, however tempted she might be by the long, sleek limbs spangled with dark hair, the breadth of those powerful shoulders over neat, narrow hips and the driving pistons of his legs. One look was enough. After all, she had her sanity to consider, and tangling with all that raw masculine energy wasn’t conducive to mental health.

She busied herself in her room, doing inoculations and well-person checks, dishing out leaflets on breast and testicle self-examination, eating for health and avoiding heart disease.

One elderly lady, Mabel Robinson, came to her for a new dressing on her leg ulcer. Plopping down into the chair with a wheeze, she smiled up at Beth.

‘Hello, dear. Just give me a second and I’ll slip my stocking off for you.’

Beth returned the smile and knelt at her feet. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it. You’ve got to have a dressing changed, is that right?’

‘Yes—perishing leg ulcer. I don’t know, the blessed thing doesn’t seem to want to get better.’

‘Let’s have a look shall we?’ Beth gently rolled the stocking down and slipped it off Mrs Robinson’s foot, then after washing her hands she eased the hydrocolloid dressing away from the wound. ‘Oh, yes, I see what you mean. It’s obviously being a bit naughty, isn’t it? Well, let’s give it a wash and I’ll ask Dr Pendragon to have a look at it.’