Sarah Morgan - Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 1

Hopefully better than the reception he’d got in May when he’d come to the barbeque here. Still, Nick had agreed to their meeting, so presumably Lucy had finally talked him round. Not that he expected miracles. A chilly silence would be more like it, but even that might be better than outright hostility.

A vessel caught his eye, a little fishing smack coming into the harbour, running in on the waves. The sea beyond the harbour mouth was wild and stormy today, the water the colour of gunmetal. It looked cold and uninviting, and he was glad he didn’t make his living from it.

He turned his head and studied the cars in the car park, wondering which one of them was Lucy’s. The silver Volvo? No. That was most likely to be Nick’s. The little Nissan? Possibly. Not the sleek black Maserati that crouched menacingly in the corner of the car park, he’d stake his life on it. That, he’d hazard a guess, was Marco Avanti’s.

He was just psyching himself up to get out of the car and go inside when a VW turned into the car park and drove into one of the spaces marked ‘Doctor’.

Lucy. His pulse picked up, and he took a slow, steadying breath to calm himself. After all, the last time he’d seen her had been in early May, and they’d both made it clear it wasn’t going anywhere. He was sure they could be adult about this—even if it had taken weeks to get her out of his mind again.

Longer still to get her out of his dreams, but he’d done it, finally, by working double shifts and staying up half the night trawling the internet in the name of research. And he was over her. He was.

So why was his heart racing and his body thrumming? Crazy. He shouldn’t be here. He should have let someone else do it—one of the other A and E guys…

She was getting out of the car, opening the door, and in the rear-view mirror he could see her legs emerging, and then her…body?

He was on his feet and moving towards her before he had time to realise he’d moved, before he’d thought what he was going to say, before he’d done anything but react. And then, having got there, all he could do was stare.

‘Ah, Mr Carter, welcome!’

He realised Kate Althorp was beside them, talking to him, and over the roaring in his ears he tried to make sense of it. She was holding out her hand, and he sucked in a lungful of air, pulled himself together and shook it, the firm, no-nonsense grip curiously grounding. ‘Ben, please—and it’s good to see you again, Mrs Althorp. Thank you for setting this up.’

‘Call me Kate—and it’s my pleasure. Lucy, I’ve put tea and biscuits out in my office for you, so you won’t be disturbed. Dragan Lovak’s had to go out on a call—he’ll be joining you later. But since we’re here now, why don’t we have a quick guided tour before the clinics start, and then I’ll leave you both to it?’

And he was led inside, Lucy bringing up the rear, her image imprinted on his retinas for life. He followed the practice manager through the entrance to Reception, smiling blankly at the ladies behind the counter, nodding at the patients in the waiting room, vaguely registering the children playing in the corner with the brightly coloured toys. He saw the stairs straight ahead, easy-rising, and the consulting rooms to the right, on each side of the short corridor that led to the lift.

‘It’s a big lift,’ Kate was saying as the doors opened and they stepped in. ‘Designed for buggies and wheelchairs and so on, but not big enough for stretchers, although we don’t have any call for them really. If people collapse and have to go to hospital in an ambulance, they’ve probably been in to see one of the doctors, and as most of the consulting rooms are downstairs anyway, that’s more than likely where they’ll be. If not, the paramedics usually manage to get them down in the lift without difficulty. The trouble is the building wasn’t designed to be a surgery, so it’s been adapted to make the best use of what we have.’

‘How long has the practice been here?’

‘Two years. After Phil died there wasn’t a practice here in Penhally Bay until two years ago. A neighbouring practice closed and they lost the last of the local doctors, and Marco Avanti and Nick set up the practice here where it is now to fill the gap.’

The lift doors opened again and he found himself at the end of a corridor the same as the one downstairs, with rooms to left and right. ‘We’ve got the nurses’ room and a treatment room up here, and our MIU, such as it is. I’ll let Lucy show you that, she’ll know more about it than me.’

‘What about a waiting area?’ he asked, forcing himself to concentrate on something other than Lucy. She was going through a door marked ‘Private’, closing it firmly behind her. Damn.

‘We have a couple of chairs out here but we don’t tend to use them except in the summer when it’s busier,’ Kate was saying. ‘Usually they call the patients up one at a time from downstairs. Our staffroom and shower and loo are up here, too, as well as another public toilet and the stores, and this is my office.’

She opened the door and ushered him in. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. ‘Lucy won’t be a moment. I’ll put the kettle on.’

He didn’t sit. He crossed the room, standing by the window, looking out. It was a pleasant room, and from the window he could see across the boatyard to the lifeboat station and beyond it the sea.

He didn’t notice, though, not really. Didn’t take it in, couldn’t have described the colour of the walls or the furniture, because there was only one thing he’d really seen, only one thing he’d been aware of since Lucy had got out of her car.

The door opened and she came in, and with a smile to them both Kate excused herself and went out, closing the door softly behind her, leaving them to it.

Lucy met his eyes, but only with a huge effort, and he could see the emotions racing through their wary, soft brown depths. God only knows what his own expression was, but he held her gaze for a long moment before she coloured and looked away.

‘Um—can I make you some tea?’ she offered, and he gave a short, disbelieving cough of laughter.

‘Don’t you think there’s something we should talk about first?’ he suggested, and she hesitated, her hand on the kettle, catching her lip between those neat, even teeth and nibbling it unconsciously.

‘I intend to,’ she began, and he laughed and propped his hips on the edge of the desk, his hands each side gripping the thick, solid wood as if his life depended on it.

‘When, exactly? Assuming, as I am, perhaps a little rashly, that unless that’s a beachball you’ve got up your jumper it has something to do with me?’

She put the kettle down with a little thump and turned towards him, her eyes flashing fire. ‘Rashly? Rashly? Is that what you think of me? That I’d sleep with you and then go and fall into bed with another man?’

He shrugged, ignoring the crazy, irrational flicker of hope that it was, indeed, his child. ‘I don’t know. I would hope not, but I don’t know anything about your private life. Not any more,’ he added with a tinge of regret.

‘Well, you should know enough about me to know that isn’t the way I do things.’

‘So how do you do things, Lucy?’ he asked, trying to stop the anger from creeping into his voice. ‘Like your father? You don’t like it, so you just pretend it hasn’t happened?’

‘And what was I supposed to do?’ she asked, her eyes flashing sparks again. ‘We weren’t seeing each other. We’d agreed.’

‘But this, surely, changes things? Or should have. Unless you just weren’t going to tell me? It must have made it simpler for you.’

She turned away again, but not before he saw her eyes fill, and guilt gnawed at him. ‘Simpler?’ she said. ‘That’s not how I’d describe it.’