Alison Fraser - Bride Required

Baxter found he didn’t feel bad so much as disconcerted. He was used to being in charge, the senior man in most situations. But he suspected this smart-mouthed girl would be no respecter of age or position.

He tried her out, saying, ‘Actually, I’m a doctor.’

He waited for her reaction. Usually people were over-impressed by his profession.

Dee gave a brief, surprised laugh. It was some coincidence.

‘Well, no one’s ever found it amusing before,’ he said with a slight edge to his voice.

She shrugged without apology. ‘You don’t look the part, though I suppose you’re a big hit with the female patients.’ Once more she forgot his sexual orientation.

‘And why do you think that?’ he enquired dryly.

Dee found herself colouring under his amused gaze before muttering, ‘As I said earlier, you’re very good-looking. I imagine you’d send a few hearts fluttering—whether you wanted to or not.’

‘Hearts fluttering?’ He raised a brow. ‘Who would have thought a romantic lay under such a cynical exterior?’

Dee realised he was taking the mickey, and said coldly, ‘I was being ironic. You know what I mean.’

‘Not personally, no,’ he denied. ‘Most of my patients are too busy dying on me to notice my physical appearance.’

He spoke so dryly Dee wondered if he was joking, but something in his eyes told her he wasn’t.

‘I used to work for an aid agency in Africa,’ he explained briefly.

It was Dee who pursued it. ‘In famine areas, that kind of thing?’

He nodded, but, though her interest was patent, he didn’t capitalise on it. Instead he turned to eating his meal.

Dee studied him surreptitiously across the table, wondering if it was true. She knew several doctors. Her father had been one—harassed and overworked, dedicated in the beginning, a burnt-out man in the end. Her stepfather was something else, a hospital consultant with expensive tastes and no real interest in medicine besides what it could earn him. Their doctor friends had been somewhere in between.

But this stranger was different. She couldn’t categorise him.

‘That must be challenging,’ she finally replied, and immediately realised what an inadequate word it was to use for such work.

He probably thought so too, from the brief, tight smile on his mouth, but he let it pass.

Before she could make a fool of herself again, Dee asked, ‘So what sort of job could you possibly want me to do, Doc?’

He pulled a face at the ‘Doc’. ‘I’ll tell you in a minute. First I want you to understand something. If you decide you don’t want a part of it, then I have to warn you. You shouldn’t waste your time going to the police or the newspapers or anyone else, because I’ll simply deny it all… And you know who people will believe?’

Not her, Dee acknowledged silently, and felt like kicking herself. It was illegal, this job of his. Of course it was. What had she expected?

She began to rise to her feet, and a hand shot out to keep her there. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Forget it.’ She thrust the two halves of money at him. ‘If it’s illegal, I’m out of here.’

‘It isn’t,’ Baxter lied without conscience, and felt relief as she subsided back in her chair. Then a thought occurred to him. ‘You aren’t already in trouble with the police, are you?’

‘No, I am not!’ she declared indignantly.

‘Okay, okay,’ he pacified her, although inwardly disputing her right to be outraged after the fare-dodging incident. ‘I was just checking. I don’t need any additional hassles…I assume you’re single, too?’

‘Single?’

‘As in unmarried.’

‘Of course.’ Dee laughed, conveying how little she thought of marriage. ‘—Why?’

Baxter hesitated, then finally decided to get round to the reason he’d approached this waif and stray.

He grimaced before relaying the information. ‘You can’t be married because that’s part of the job—getting married.’

Getting married? Dee repeated the words to herself, as if by doing so they might take on a new meaning, but they didn’t. Then she took to staring at him as if he were completely and utterly mad.

He wanted her to marry him and she didn’t even know his name!

‘I DON’T even know your name,’ Dee said aloud.

‘Baxter,’ he introduced himself, as if that would make it less ridiculous.

‘Look, Mr Baxter…’ She intended to tell him what he could do with his job.

‘It’s not Mr Baxter,’ he corrected, ‘it’s—’

‘I know,’ Dee cut across him. ‘Mustn’t forget the title, must we? Dr Baxter.’

Her tone was derisive. He was not perturbed.

‘Actually, I was about to say it’s Ross.’

‘Ross?

‘Mr Ross, if we’re going in for formalities.’ A slanting smile mocked her in return. ‘I’m not hung up on the “Dr” bit.’

Having made a fool of herself, Dee didn’t exactly feel more warmly disposed towards him. ‘Baxter. That’s your first name?’ she concluded, and, at his nod, muttered, ‘What kind of name is that?’

‘A Scottish one.’

‘Well, that explains it.’

Baxter knew he shouldn’t ask. But he did. ‘Explains what?’

‘Why you talk funny,’ Dee replied with careless rudeness.

‘I talk funny?’ He laughed at the sheer nerve of the girl. ‘Well, at least my accent doesn’t go walkabout.’

‘What do you mean?’ She glared back.

But Baxter reckoned she knew well enough. ‘What I can’t quite figure,’ he ran on, ‘is which one’s real—the cockney sparrow routine or the middle-class girl from the Home Counties?’

‘You don’t need to figure it—’ his perception disconcerted Dee ‘—because neither is crazy enough to marry you!’

He listened without expression, any insult lost on him. Mr Cool.

‘I didn’t actually ask you to marry me,’ he said at length.

Dee scowled. Perhaps he hadn’t said the words, but that was surely his intent. He was just splitting hairs now.

‘So what else were you doing? Asking me to marry someone else?’ Her tone told him that would rate as even crazier.

He hesitated fractionally before saying, ‘Whichever, it’s an irrelevancy. It would, naturally, be what’s termed a marriage of convenience.’

‘No sex, you mean.’ Dee had no time for silly euphemisms. ‘I’d kinda worked that out for myself… You need me as camouflage, right?’

‘Camouflage?’

‘You want to convince the world you’re straight, and you reckon what better way than to acquire a wife. Only you don’t want a real wife, because then she’d expect you to…well, you get my drift.’

‘I think so.’ Baxter realised she was on a completely different road, but possibly they’d arrive at the same destination in time. So why throw her off-course for now?

Dee watched the thoughts crossing his handsome face and imagined she could read them. She relented slightly, saying, ‘Look, I really have no problem with your being gay, and if you want to keep it a secret I can understand that too. But maybe life would be easier if you simply “outed” yourself. Just made a one-off declaration to the world, then just got on with your life…

Lots of people do it—TV personalities, actors, pop stars. You could almost call it fashionable… And you know what they say about honesty being the best policy and all that.’

‘I doubt it applies in this case.’ Baxter realised her sudden sympathy only applied because she thought he was gay.

‘Well, it’s your life.’ Dee decided she wasn’t in the best shape to be advising anyone else. ‘And I suppose a marriage of convenience rates one better than pretending to do it for real.’