Betty Neels - Marrying a Doctor - The Doctor's Girl - new / A Special Kind Of Woman

International bestselling author

Betty Neels

&

Rising star of Harlequin Romance®

Caroline Anderson

bring you…

Two fabulously tender and deeply emotional stories that will whisk you into a heartwarming, magical world.

Betty Neels spent her childhood and youth in Devonshire, England, before training as a nurse and midwife. She was an army nursing sister during the war, married a Dutchman and subsequently lived in Holland for fourteen years. She lives with her husband in Dorset, and has a daughter and grandson. Her interests are reading, animals, old buildings and writing. Betty started to write on retirement from nursing, incited by a lady in a library bemoaning the lack of romantic novels. Betty Neels has sold over 35 million copies of her books worldwide.

ALWAYS AND FOREVER by Betty Neels

Harlequin Romance® #3675

Caroline Anderson has the mind of a butterfly. She’s been a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, run her own soft-furnishing business and now she’s settled on writing. She says, “I was looking for that elusive something. I finally realized it was variety, and now I have it in abundance. Every book brings new horizons and new friends, and in between books I have learned to be a juggler. My teacher-husband, John, and I have two beautiful daughters, Sarah and Hannah, umpteen pets and several acres of Suffolk, England, that nature tries to reclaim every time we turn our backs!” Caroline also writes for the Medical Romance™ series.

THE IMPETUOUS BRIDE by Caroline Anderson

Harlequin Romance® #3676

Marrying a Doctor

The Doctor’s Girl

Betty Neels

A Special Kind of Woman

Caroline Anderson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Doctor’s Girl The Doctor’s Girl Betty Neels

DEDICATION For Elizabeth, my friend and guiding star over the years.

LETTER TO READER Dear Reader, The last time I wrote to you it was Christmastime. Now, when I look out of my study window, our tiny garden is a wealth of green and color with lavender bushes, miniature rose bushes, tobacco plants, poppies and petunias, all growing higgledy-piggledy with buttercups and speedwell sprawling over any space that’s left. Untidy, undisciplined, but exactly right for our very small cottage. And indoors it is just as cluttered. Bits and pieces we have brought back when we traveled, presents from friends and family, photos of cats and dogs we have loved, things we cherish for their memories. And that goes for friends, too: times change but some things never will—old friends, old clothes, favorite books…and writing a letter to people you don’t know, but who are, all the same, friends. God bless you.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

A Special Kind of Woman

LETTER TO READER

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

The Doctor’s Girl

Betty Neels

For Elizabeth, my friend and guiding star over the years.

Dear Reader,

The last time I wrote to you it was Christmastime. Now, when I look out of my study window, our tiny garden is a wealth of green and color with lavender bushes, miniature rose bushes, tobacco plants, poppies and petunias, all growing higgledy-piggledy with buttercups and speedwell sprawling over any space that’s left. Untidy, undisciplined, but exactly right for our very small cottage. And indoors it is just as cluttered. Bits and pieces we have brought back when we traveled, presents from friends and family, photos of cats and dogs we have loved, things we cherish for their memories. And that goes for friends, too: times change but some things never will—old friends, old clothes, favorite books…and writing a letter to people you don’t know, but who are, all the same, friends. God bless you.

MISS MIMI CATTELL gave a low, dramatic moan followed by a few sobbing breaths, but when these had no effect upon the girl standing by the bed she sat up against her pillows, threw one of them at her and screeched, ‘Well, don’t just stand there, you little fool, phone Dr Gregg this instant. He must come and see me at once. I’m ill; I’ve hardly slept all night…’ She paused to sneeze.

The girl by the bed, a small mousy person, very neat and with a rather plain face enlivened by a pair of vivid green eyes, picked up the pillow.

‘Should you first of all try a hot lemon drink and some aspirin?’ she suggested in a sensible voice. ‘A cold in the head always makes one feel poorly. A day in bed, perhaps?’

The young woman in the bed had flung herself back onto her pillows again. ‘Just do as I say for once. I don’t pay you to make stupid suggestions. Get out and phone Dr Gregg; he’s to come at once.’ She moaned again. ‘How can I possibly go to the Sinclairs’ party this evening…?’

Dr Gregg’s receptionist laughed down the phone. ‘He’s got three more private patients to see and then a clinic at the hospital, and it isn’t Dr Gregg—he’s gone off for a week’s golf—it’s his partner. I’ll give him the message and you’d better say he’ll come as soon as he can. She’s not really ill, is she?’

‘I don’t think so. A nasty head cold…’

The receptionist laughed. ‘I don’t know why you stay with her.’

Loveday put down the phone. She wondered that too, quite often, but it was a case of beggars not being choosers, wasn’t it? She had to have a roof over her head, she had to eat and she had to earn money so that she could save for a problematical future. And that meant another year or two working as Mimi Cattell’s secretary—a misleading title if ever there was one, for she almost never sent letters, even when Loveday wrote them for her.

That didn’t mean that Loveday had nothing to do. Her days were kept nicely busy—the care of Mimi’s clothes took up a great deal of time, for what was the point of having a personal maid when Loveday had nothing else to do? Nothing except being at her beck and call each and every day, and if she came home later from a party at night as well.

Loveday, with only an elderly aunt living in a Dartmoor village whom she had never met, made the best of it. She was twenty-four, heartwhole and healthy, and perhaps one day a man would come along and sweep her off her feet. Common sense told her that this was unlikely to be the case, but a girl had to have her dreams…

She went back to the bedroom and found Mimi threshing about in her outsize bed, shouting at the unfortunate housemaid who had brought her breakfast tray.

Loveday prudently took the tray from the girl, who looked as if she was on the point of dropping it, nodded to her to slip away and said bracingly, ‘The doctor will come as soon as he can. He has one or two patients to see first.’ She made no mention of the clinic. ‘If I fetch you a pot of China tea—weak with lemon—it may help you to feel well enough to have a bath and put on a fresh nightie before he comes.’

Mimi brightened. Her life was spent in making herself attractive to men, and perhaps she would feel strong enough to do her face. She said rudely, ‘Get the tea, then, and make sure that the lemon’s cut wafer-thin…’

Loveday went down to the basement, where Mrs Branch and the housemaid lived their lives. She took the tray with her and, being a practical girl, ate the fingers of toast on it and accepted the mug of tea Mrs Branch offered her. She should have had her breakfast with Mrs Branch and Ellie, but there wasn’t much hope of getting it now. Getting Miss Cattell ready for the doctor would take quite a time. She ate the rest of the toast, sliced the lemon and bore a tray, daintily arranged, back upstairs.