The Celebrity Doctor′s Proposal
The Celebrity Doctor's Proposal
Sarah Morgan
Praise for Sarah Morgan:
‘Whether it’s a Modern
Romance or a Medical
Romance, if a book’s got Sarah Morgan’s name on the front cover, then a spellbinding read is guaranteed!’
—Cataromance.com
‘Morgan’s brilliant talent never ceases to amaze, and this time she whisks readers deep into the desert, in an emotional tale about second chances, fear and love.’
—RT Book Reviews on
WOMAN IN A SHEIKH’S WORLD
‘Morgan is a magician with words, and she thrillingly transports readers to picturesque Sicily, where she spins a modern-day fairytale of grudges, feuds and forbidden passion…’
—RT Book Reviews on
THE FORBIDDEN FERRARA
Sarah won a RITA
Award in 2012 for DOUKAKIS’S APPRENTICE
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author SARAH MORGAN writes lively, sexy stories for both Mills & Boon
Modern
Romance and Medical™ Romance.
As a child Sarah dreamed of being a writer, and although she took a few interesting detours on the way she is now living that dream. With her writing career she has successfully combined business with pleasure, and she firmly believes that reading romance is one of the most satisfying and fat-free escapist pleasures available. Her stories are unashamedly optimistic, and she is always pleased when she receives letters from readers saying that her books have helped them through hard times.
Romantic Times has described her writing as ‘action-packed and sexy’, and nominated her books for their Reviewer’s Choice Awards and their ‘Top Pick’ slot.
Sarah lives near London with her husband and two children, who innocently provide an endless supply of authentic dialogue. When she isn’t writing or reading Sarah enjoys music, movies, and any activity that takes her outdoors.
Readers can find out more about Sarah and her books from her website: www.sarahmorgan.com She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Recent titles by the same author:
AN INVITATION TO SIN (Sicily’s Corretti Dynasty) SOLD TO THE ENEMY WOMAN IN A SHEIKH’S WORLD (The Private Lives of Public Playboys) A NIGHT OF NO RETURN (The Private Lives of Public Playboys) THE FORBIDDEN FERRARA
The Celebrity
Doctor’s
Proposal
Sarah Morgan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘I CAN manage without you just for the summer. I want you to go off and breathe mountain air and forget all about medicine and your patients.’ Anna turned off the motorway and followed the signs for the airport. She was all brisk efficiency, mentally ticking off things to be done when she got home. There were lots of them. Too many. Her life was manic, but she loved it that way. ‘And when you come back your lungs will be better and you’ll be totally refreshed and raring to go.’
At least she hoped he would be because she couldn’t keep this pace up for much longer.
David McKenna glanced across at her with a tired smile. The smile said it all. ‘We both know that that isn’t true. The truth is that you should be looking for a new partner. I’m getting too old for this, Anna,’ he said gruffly. ‘Your dad and I set up the practice almost thirty-five years ago. It’s time for new blood.’
‘That’s right.’ His wife, Elizabeth, nodded agreement, a determined look in her clear blue eyes as she leaned forward from the back seat to join in the conversation. ‘It’s time for us to enjoy retirement and our grandchildren.’
Anna glanced in her rear-view mirror and laughed. ‘You don’t have any grandchildren.’
‘Not yet,’ Elizabeth agreed placidly as she settled back in her seat and adjusted her seat-belt. ‘But it’s going to happen shortly.’
Anna carefully fixed her eyes back on the road and clamped her jaw closed. Safer to do that than voice an opinion on that particular subject. The McKennas only had one son and he showed absolutely no inclination to settle down. He was far more interested in pursuing a glamorous career as a high-profile media doctor and dating everyone female.
And he drove her nuts. Always had done. Always would do.
Anna ground her teeth and tightened her grip on the steering-wheel. The mere thought of the man was enough to raise her blood pressure to dangerous levels. Every time she turned on the television, Sam McKenna was on the screen, giving his opinion on something medical. Dr Smooth. Dr Handsome. She doubted he even remembered what it was like to be a real doctor. He’d spent far too long in front of the cameras to remember how to diagnose anything other than an ingrowing toenail.
Reminding herself that dwelling on Sam McKenna wasn’t good for her health, she turned her attention back to the present and braked neatly as a car cut in front of her. ‘You can’t possibly talk about retiring, David,’ she said briskly, adjusting her speed to ensure a safe following distance. ‘The patients love you and you’re a brilliant doctor. And you know you enjoy it. You just need to get yourself well again.’
The practice needed him. The practice he and her father had built from nothing. She needed him. She didn’t want her life to change. She liked it just the way it was.
David looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It will be interesting to see how you find working with the locum I’ve arranged,’ he said idly. ‘We both know you’ve been carrying the lion’s share of work for months now. You might find you prefer a younger person who can share the load fairly.’
Anna shot him a quick glance, her brown eyes searching. There was something in his tone that wasn’t quite right. But the look he gave her seemed completely innocent so she decided that she must have imagined it.
‘I don’t want younger,’ she said firmly, flicking the indicator and turning towards the airport. ‘I want you. With all your experience. Which reminds me—we’ve been so busy, you still haven’t told me anything about this locum. You just arranged it all. I hope he knows something about medicine.’
But she wasn’t really worried. She trusted David’s judgement in everything. If David thought the locum would cope then she had no doubt that he would.
‘Of course he does. And you’ve been far too busy to bother you with the details,’ David said vaguely, glancing at his watch and casting a pointed glance at his wife. ‘We don’t have time for you to dither in the airport, dear.’
‘I never dither,’ Elizabeth protested with dignity, and her husband smiled.
‘So why are we late?’
Anna glanced at them fondly as she pulled up outside the terminal building. Since her own parents had died, Elizabeth and David had stepped into the role. And why not? David had been at medical school with her father. They’d worked together for all those years and she’d taken over her father’s role in the practice when he’d been forced to retire because of ill health. It was hardly surprising that the McKennas regarded her as a daughter.
Suddenly filled with an awful feeling that her whole life was about to change, and hating the thought, Anna switched off the engine and turned towards them. ‘I want you to be careful,’ she said urgently, undoing her seat-belt and reaching across to hug David. ‘I want you to rest and take it easy. I couldn’t bear it if anything—’ She broke off, a lump in her throat, and David hugged her back, as understanding as ever.
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me, Anna, so stop worrying,’ he said gruffly, stroking her long, dark hair with an affectionate hand. ‘It was just a nasty dose of pneumonia brought on by mixing with too many ill patients! I’m recovering well and I’m intending to see my grandchildren grow up.’
Anna sniffed and then gave him a shove. ‘You’re definitely getting senile. I keep telling you, you haven’t got any grandchildren.’
‘Yet.’ Over the top of her head, David winked at his wife. ‘Gather your belongings, woman. Time to get this show on the road.’
Anna pulled away from him, feeling as though something momentous was happening. Suddenly she really, really didn’t want them to go. Which was utterly ridiculous, she told herself firmly, since this whole sabbatical idea had been her brainchild.
What was the matter with her?
She wasn’t the sentimental sort. She was practical and efficient and she really tried not to let emotions get in the way. David and Elizabeth needed a break and it was great that they were finally having one. She should be delighted. It was just the last few months, she decided, stepping out of the car and walking round to retrieve the luggage from the boot. She’d been working too hard. Not having enough time off.
Suddenly she envied David, taking a long break.
She tugged one of the cases from the boot, the reality of her life looming large in her brain. ‘David, you still haven’t told me about this locum and I—’
‘Oh, no!’ David peered into the boot and pulled a face. ‘Don’t say we forgot the green case. Elizabeth, did you remember to bring the green case from the bedroom?’
‘It’s here.’ Anna shifted the luggage. ‘Under the blue one.’
She dragged it out and added it to the pile on the pavement.
‘Thank goodness for that. It contains all my reading matter.’ David rummaged in his pocket for his glasses. ‘All right, now, have we got everything? Tickets, passports, money—’
Anna tried again. ‘About this locum—’
‘Surgery door keys? Did we give Anna the spare set?’ Elizabeth fussed in her handbag and Anna realised with a mixture of frustration and affection that neither of them was taking the slightest bit of notice of her. They were already on holiday. Far away from life in a Cornish fishing village. Far away from her and the practice.
David patted his other pocket and smiled. ‘I left the spares on the kitchen table. Now, we really need to dash.’ He leaned forward and kissed Anna on the cheek. ‘No need to come in with us. It was wonderful of you to bring us this far. I hate goodbyes and you have to get back to the needy.’
He waved a hand at a porter, who immediately brought a trolley and loaded the bags.
It was only after the glass doors of the terminal building had closed behind them that Anna realised that he’d left without answering her question about the locum.
She gave a sigh of exasperation and settled herself back in the car, ready for the long drive back to Cornwall. She knew nothing about the doctor David had appointed to cover his absence, except that it was a man. But perhaps it didn’t matter. She didn’t really need to know the details. Just that he was going to turn up.
Knowing that the summer holidays were almost upon them, Anna just hoped he liked hard work. Because he was going to get it in spades.
‘Do you think she’s guessed?’ From inside the privacy of the terminal building, David watched Anna’s little car pull away. ‘She kept asking and I kept evading the question. Now she thinks I’m going senile.’
‘She was joking. If she’d guessed then we wouldn’t be standing here now,’ Elizabeth said calmly. ‘You know what our Anna is like when she loses her temper. We’d be lying in pieces on the pavement and the fire brigade would be on their way.’
David rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and cast her a dubious look. ‘I hope we’ve done the right thing. Just because you and Anna’s mother always had this thing about our children marrying each other …’
‘You and Philip had the same dream,’ Elizabeth reminded him firmly, ‘and don’t think Susan and I didn’t know it. You wanted to hand the practice over to the two of them. You still do.’
Her husband shot her an impatient look. ‘Well, of course I do. It would be perfect. The only thing that isn’t perfect is that they can’t stand the sight of one another. I have to admit that, much as I would like this whole plan to work, I can’t see how it is going to.’
Elizabeth delved into her handbag for a mirror. ‘They’re both strong characters. Neither would want an insipid partner for the journey through life. They suit each other. It’s just that they’re both too stubborn and blind to see it themselves and that’s just because they’ve never been forced to spend time together. Hopefully, by the time we return, they’ll have discovered that they can’t live without each other.’
David pulled a face. ‘They might kill each other first.’
‘Possibly.’ Elizabeth gave a womanly smile and checked her lipstick. ‘But I don’t think so. Now, that’s our flight they’re calling. Are you ready?’
David cast a glance through the window again but Anna’s car was long gone. ‘There are going to be fireworks in Cornwall tonight,’ he muttered, and his wife clipped her bag shut and gave him a little push.
‘Then it’s just as well we’ll be in Switzerland. Now, stop worrying. Everything is in place and we can do no more. We have to leave the rest up to fate and the chemistry that has always been there between those two. Oh …’ She gave a smug smile. ‘And then there’s the whole of the village, of course. I’m sure they’ll be only too happy to give fate a helping hand.’
Anna drove home, mentally listing all the urgent jobs that had to be done. Too many jobs, not enough time.
She just hoped the locum was a good swimmer because he was going to be thrown right in the deep end with no buoyancy aid.
The sun blazed down on the car, the sea sparkled and Anna turned up the volume on the radio. Cornwall in the summer might be a crazy place to work but it was a beautiful place and she’d never want to live anywhere else. She smiled and the smile lasted for the time it took for her to pull up outside the surgery.
She was met by a film crew and her smile went out like a light.
For a moment she just sat in her little car and stared at the big van and the cameras and then finally she opened the door and ventured outside.
‘Are you Dr Riggs?’ A man with a microphone scurried over to her and she nodded.
‘Yes. Is there a problem? What’s going on here?’
‘Just hold it right there.’ The man held up a hand to halt her movement and gestured to the cameraman. ‘We want to get some footage of you greeting Dr McKenna. Wait just a moment …’
Footage? Of her greeting Dr McKenna?
To the best of her knowledge, she’d just waved Dr McKenna off at the airport and there was only one other Dr McKenna that she knew of, and he wasn’t …
She glanced at the film crew again and shook her head in denial.
Oh, no. No. No. David wouldn’t have done that to her. He couldn’t …
Ignoring the man’s plea for her to stay put while they prepared to shoot, she slammed her car door and stalked across the small car park towards the group of people gathered by the entrance, a suspicion growing inside her.
‘McKenna?’ She growled his name like a threat and the people moved to one side. But she had eyes only for one person.
Cool blue eyes swept over her and his mouth tilted slightly. ‘Riggs. What an unexpected pleasure.’
He was as handsome as the devil and his arrogance drove her nuts.
‘Unexpected?’ She slammed her hands on her hips and glared at him. ‘This is my surgery, McKenna, so how can my presence here be unexpected? What is unexpected is the fact that you’re standing outside it. You’d better have a damn good reason for causing a disturbance.’
He lifted a dark eyebrow in that lazy, careless way that always drove her mad. ‘Nice to see you haven’t changed. I have to confess that I thought you’d leg it once my father told you that I was coming,’ he drawled. ‘Never thought you’d show up to greet me. I’m flattered, Riggs. And touched. I obviously mean more to you than I thought.’
‘Greet you? I’m not greeting you, and you need to move yourself and that van …’ she stabbed a finger towards the offending vehicle, her dark hair swinging over her shoulders as she turned her head ‘… from my car park before I have it towed away. I have a surgery starting in an hour and at the moment there is no room for my patients.’
‘Our patients,’ he corrected her mildly, not moving an inch, ‘and you’re going to have to learn not to swear while the cameras are here. You’d be amazed how little it takes to get complaints from viewers. They like their doctors wholesome and clean-living. No sex or swearing.’
She opened her mouth to make a sharp observation about his reputation for the former and then stopped herself. It wasn’t worth it. She really didn’t care about his sex life. And anyway, something he’d said was jarring inside her head.
She stared at him, drew breath and finally mentally reran the last few sentences. ‘Hold on.’ She lifted a hand as if to ward him off. ‘What did you mean when you said that your dad should have told me you were coming? Tell me he didn’t know you were coming. Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.’
Surely David wouldn’t have done that to her.
He couldn’t …
Sam leaned impossibly broad shoulders against the wall and looked at her, a trace of amusement lighting his blue eyes. ‘He’s been nagging me for more than three months, Riggs. Finally he resorted to emotional blackmail. ‘‘I need this break, Sam, and if I can’t find a decent locum I can’t leave poor Anna.’’’
His imitation of his father was so good that if she hadn’t been so horrified, Anna would have laughed. Instead she gaped at him. ‘Locum? You’re the locum?’ Her voice cracked and all her important bodily functions like breathing and staying upright suddenly seemed threatened. It had to be a joke. ‘You have a sick sense of humour, McKenna.’
He shrugged. ‘Better a sick sense of humour than no sense of humour at all.’ He gave her a meaningful look. ‘Now, enough chatting. You can thank me later.’ He straightened and waved a hand to the cameraman who was still hovering. ‘In the meantime, we have work to do.’
She clenched her fists in her palms. He was implying that she had no sense of humour. He’d always accused her of being too uptight. Of not knowing how to relax. Of planning every detail of her life.
‘What I mean is, there is no way your dad would arrange for you to be the locum,’ she said, her teeth gritted as she spoke. ‘He knows we’d kill each other.’
‘That possibility does exist,’ Sam agreed, stifling a yawn and moving past her with a loose-limbed stride that betrayed absolutely no sense of urgency. ‘However, I reckon that if you stay in your space and I stay in mine, we should just about manage to coexist without significant injury.’
‘Wait a minute.’ She elbowed her way past the cameraman and planted herself in front of Sam again. Strands of dark hair trailed over her face and she brushed them back with an impatient hand. ‘If you’re really the locum, why are they here?’ She glared at the film crew as if they were a disease and he muttered something incomprehensible under his breath.
‘They’re here because I have a job to do,’ he said bluntly. ‘Normally I’d be in London, filming a new series. It seems I’m spending the summer in Cornwall so we’ve had to make some changes to the programme. We’ve had to adapt. You ought to try it some time.’
At that point, the woman who had been hovering at a tactful distance stepped forward. ‘It’s going to be brilliant, Dr Riggs.’ She reached out and shook Anna’s hand. ‘I’m Polly. I’m the producer of this series of Medical Matters. When Sam told us he was going to be working down here, we decided to do a whole series on summer health. It will be fantastic. We can look at taking care of yourself in the sun, first aid—everything families should know before they go on holiday.’
Warm and friendly, she listed her ideas with enthusiasm, and in normal circumstances Anna would have liked her immediately. But these weren’t normal circumstances. And she couldn’t like anyone who looked at Sam McKenna with such blatant adoration.
‘This is a busy practice,’ she said crisply. ‘We work flat out to cater to the needs of the locals and at this time of year our numbers double because of the tourist population. We don’t have time for film crews.’
‘But that’s the beauty of it,’ Polly said cheerfully, ‘Sam already knows the score. He’s used to being filmed all the time. There’ll be very little intrusion, I can assure you.’
‘The patients won’t like it.’
‘The patients will love it,’ Sam predicted dryly, lifting a hand and shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘And if they don’t, they don’t have to take part. They always have the right to refuse to be filmed. But I can tell you now that they won’t.’
‘We’re going to do a variety of different things,’ Polly explained eagerly, ‘a straightforward Medical Matters from the surgery, which is our usual format, but we’re also going to film on location, do some first-aid stuff on the beach—that sort of thing.’
‘It sounds as though you’ve got it all worked out,’ Anna said frostily, her eyes on Sam who simply shrugged. ‘We need to talk, McKenna. And we need to do it now.’
Polly glanced towards the cameraman who was still hovering. ‘Perhaps we should film you discussing it—it might be interesting.’
‘Well, unless you want to film something which needs a warning for bad language and violence, I suggest you switch off the camera and go and have a cream tea in the village,’ Anna said sweetly, her eyes still blazing into Sam’s. ‘You and me. Inside. Now.’
Without waiting for the sharp comment that she knew would come, she turned and strode to the front door, unlocking it and letting herself in. Functioning on automatic, she switched off the alarm and picked up the post, aware that he was behind her.
‘Don’t you have a receptionist any more? What happened to Glenda?’ He peered behind the empty reception area with a frown and she gritted her teeth.
She didn’t need his comments on the way the surgery ran.
‘Glenda is sometimes a bit late,’ she muttered, dropping the post behind Reception, ready for Glenda to sort out when she arrived. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’
‘Late?’ He frowned, his expression suddenly thoughtful. ‘But she used to be the most punctual person in the world. Really dedicated. Why would Glenda be late?’
Anna bit her lip. She’d asked herself the same question a few times lately and she was steeling herself to address the matter with Glenda. But there was no way she was discussing this with Sam McKenna.
‘It’s really none of your business,’ she said coldly, and he gave a dismissive shrug.
‘Fair enough. Just didn’t sound much like the Glenda I used to know, that’s all.’
‘Well, you haven’t exactly been spending much time around here lately and people do change,’ Anna said tartly.
He ran a hand over his jaw, his expression thoughtful. ‘Have you tackled her?’
She gave an impatient sigh. ‘No. No, actually, I haven’t. If you must know, I haven’t had time to breathe or eat in the last few months, let alone sit down and get cosy with the staff.’
His eyes narrowed and his gaze swept her face. ‘That bad, huh?’
She gritted her teeth again and cursed herself for showing emotion in front of Sam. He would waste no time throwing it back at her. ‘Not bad. Just busy. And if it’s all right by you, I’d like to drop the subject now. When I need your advice, I’ll ask for it.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’ He hooked his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and lounged against the reception desk. He had a lean, athletic physique, honed to perfection by his obsession with dangerous sports. ‘You wouldn’t ask my advice if you were hanging off a cliff by your fingernails. You’re so crazily independent, Riggs, that you’d drown rather than ask someone to throw you a lifebelt.’
‘Then it’s a good job I’m not drowning,’ she said coldly, walking through to the reception area and automatically picking up some scattered toys and returning them to the basket. ‘And for your information, I’d take the lifebelt as long as you weren’t the one throwing it. Now, are we going to sort this problem out?’
He shrugged and stifled a yawn. ‘What’s there to sort out? You need a locum. I’m here.’
She straightened one of the chairs. ‘As far as I’m concerned, those two statements are not linked.’
He drew a breath and she lifted a hand to indicate that she hadn’t finished. ‘What I need, McKenna, is a serious doctor willing to do some serious work. What I don’t need is some image-hungry film-star medic with an over-inflated ego which is going to get in my way every time I try and see a patient.’
To her surprise and immense irritation, he smiled. An all-male, sexy smile that tugged something deep in her pelvis.
Damn, he irritated her.
Completely aware of that fact, he straightened up and strolled towards her, a dangerous gleam in his blue eyes as they swept her face. ‘Oh, boy, oh, boy, I really do unsettle you, don’t I, Riggs? Why is that, I wonder?’
‘Do you want a list?’ She backed away, trying to maintain her personal space. ‘And I can’t imagine this is exactly your idea of heaven either. Why did you agree to it?’
His blue eyes glittered. ‘I told you. Emotional blackmail on the part of my father. He was ill. He needed a holiday. He couldn’t find anyone else. That kind of thing. Tugs at the heart.’
‘You don’t have a heart.’
He grinned. ‘Ouch. Been reading my press cuttings again, Riggs?’
‘Hardly.’ Her glance was impatient. ‘The way you run your love life—or should I say sex life—is your business. But the practice is my business. Your dad certainly never mentioned to me that he was having trouble finding anyone.’
Sam gave a careless shrug. ‘Well, the fact is I’m here now. Make the most of me.’
She angled her head and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Excuse me? I’m supposed to be honoured that you’ve graced us with your presence? Let me tell you something, Dr Charm, I’m not at all convinced you’ll know a real patient when you see one. You see, here in real life surgery land, the problems aren’t staged.’
His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘Is that so?’
‘What happens when you deal with something that doesn’t make good television? Are you going to pass them through to me? Or do you grab a textbook?’
He examined his fingernails thoughtfully. ‘You really aren’t going to make this easy, are you, Riggs?’
She bit her lip. Somehow he made her feel small, childish. ‘It’s just that this practice is busy,’ she said wearily, sweeping her dark hair away from her face and risking eye contact. ‘I need proper help. Heavy-duty help.’
Sharp blue eyes searched hers. ‘My dad hasn’t been pulling his weight, has he?’
She didn’t trust herself not to give too much away so her own eyes slid from his, away from that penetrating gaze that saw too much. ‘Your dad is a good doctor. The best.’
‘But he hasn’t got the stamina that he used to,’ Sam said softly, running a hand over the back of his neck and giving a frustrated sigh. ‘Damn. It’s hard, watching your parents grow older. You have this vision of how they are and you never want it to change. I always knew this moment would come, but that doesn’t make it any easier.’
She frowned. ‘What moment?’
His hand dropped to his side and his glance was ironic. ‘The moment when I have to decide whether to go into the family business.’
‘You mean, take your father’s place?’ She stared at him in horror. ‘You can’t possibly be serious! You don’t need me to remind you that you couldn’t wait to leave Cornwall at the earliest opportunity. Even if we go along with your dad’s plan, it’s only short term. No one suggested it was for ever. He’s coming back …’
Sam looked at her. ‘And when he does, he’ll retire and spend his days fishing.’
Anna shook her head. ‘He won’t retire.’
Sam gave a sigh and stabbed long fingers through his dark hair. ‘He has to. We both know that. And you being stubborn about it isn’t going to change that fact.’ He paced over to the reception area. ‘But while he’s working out how to break the news to you that this is all too much for him and he doesn’t want to do it any more, we’ll get the place in order. And work out a plan. Things are going to have to change around here.’
Anna felt as though she’d been doused in cold water.
She didn’t want things to change. She loved the way the practice was now. She loved working with David. They understood each other.
Was Sam right? Was David really planning to tell her that he was going to retire from the practice?
She sank onto the nearest chair, her legs suddenly wobbly. It was a moment before she realised that Sam was pressing a glass of water into her hand.
‘Drink something,’ he said roughly. ‘You’ve obviously been working too hard. You look done in. You’re pale and you’ve got black rings under your eyes. You always were too stubborn to ask for help. I’m going to get rid of the film crew for now and then come back and we can work out what’s to be done.’
Anna took a sip of water and found her voice. ‘Whatever’s to be done,’ she muttered, ‘I really, really don’t want to do it with you, McKenna.’
He was the last person in the world that she could imagine developing a good working relationship with.
He laughed and rose to his feet in a fluid movement. ‘Likewise. But seeing as that is what fate has decreed, I’d say we’re both in for an interesting summer. Looks like we’re going to be meeting at dawn. Swords or pistols?’
CHAPTER TWO
SHE hadn’t changed a bit.
Sam strode out of the reception area and paused in the foyer, trying to get his emotions back under control before he faced the camera crew. Anna Riggs always did that to him. Drove him so mad that he needed to pump iron for a week in order to burn off the frustration coursing around his body. Thanks to some nifty avoidance tactics on both their parts, they hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years, but she was still the same hard-nosed, bossy control freak she’d always been. Not at all his kind of woman. He liked his women soft and gentle. Anna Riggs was about as soft as steel. And the fact that she had a pair of legs that stopped a man in his tracks didn’t do anything to change his opinion of her.
And he’d allowed himself to be manipulated into spending the summer with her.
He smashed a fist against the wall and inhaled deeply. Damn, she was right. They were going to kill each other. What had his father been thinking of, arranging for them to work together when he knew that there was so much animosity between them? When he knew that they were just so different? It was all very well saying that they didn’t need to see much of each other, but they were running a small practice. They were the only two doctors. How could they not see each other?
And how was he going to cope with Anna being confrontational and prickly with a camera stuck in his face all day?
He gritted his teeth and applied his brain to the problem.
The first thing was that the cameras certainly couldn’t be allowed free access, otherwise they could find themselves filming bloodshed. He’d have to stage each shoot carefully, making sure that Anna wasn’t within firing distance.
And the second thing was that he was going to work as independently as possible. Surely he could just see his patients and she could see hers? Did they really need to talk much?
And he wasn’t going to involve himself in the practice. He was going to do the job and then see what happened. And if his father decided to retire, he’d find him the best possible replacement. And it wasn’t going to be him. Hadn’t his parents always accepted that this wasn’t the practice for him? His life was in London. He’d chosen a different path. He didn’t want to work here permanently any more than Anna wanted him to.
Satisfied that, given sufficient thought, it would be possible to minimise the contact between them, he finally pushed open the glass door of the surgery and walked into the car park.
Glenda turned up, breathless and apologetic, five minutes before surgery started. She dropped her bag behind the reception desk and smoothed her hair, clearly flustered.
‘Are you OK?’ Anna frowned in concern and Glenda gave a bright smile.
‘I’m fine. Sorry I’m a bit late. I was caught up.’
Caught up with what? Anna wanted to ask, but now wasn’t the time with a busy surgery about to start and Sam strolling across the reception area as if he’d worked here all his life.
How could he be so relaxed?
‘Hi, Glenda.’ He gave the receptionist a big hug and for some reason that she couldn’t quite identify Anna felt her tension rise.
It was just her that he needled and goaded. With everyone else he was capable of being extremely civilised. Warm. People in the village had always adored Sam McKenna and now he was a major TV personality they never stopped talking about him.
Glenda’s face softened. ‘Oh—Dr McKenna. How lovely to see you.’ She pulled away and tried to straighten her hair, her movements jerky and uncoordinated. ‘I suppose you’ll be helping our Anna. Good thing, too. She needs some help around here. She’s been struggling for far too long.’
Anna’s frown deepened. Glenda knew that she and Sam didn’t see eye to eye on anything. Why would she think it was a good thing that he’d arrived? Had she known that David had appointed him as locum?
Or was it just that she wasn’t concentrating because she had something else on her mind?
She hated to admit that Sam was right about anything, but suddenly Anna decided that a conversation with the receptionist was becoming a priority.
‘Busy surgery.’ Glenda flicked on the computer and checked the appointments, seeming more flustered than usual. ‘Open those doors and let the battle commence.’
Resolving to tackle Glenda in private later, Anna turned to Sam. ‘I know that this is throwing you in at the deep end, but can you take your father’s surgery? I expect you’ll know some of the patients anyway, and if you need to know anything that isn’t in the notes you can buzz through to me. Press 4 on your phone. Or I’m just next door.’
Sam lifted an eyebrow, his expression mocking. ‘Sure you don’t want to sit in with me, just to be sure that I don’t kill anyone?’
She gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t think you’re about to kill anyone.’
‘No.’ His voice was dry. ‘You just think my clinical skills are rustier than an old garden fork.’
‘I’m just aware that it’s probably a long time since you did a consultation that wasn’t staged. The way our surgeries run at the moment, there’s not a lot of time to look in a textbook between cases. And you only get the one take.’ Anna sucked in a breath. ‘I was trying to be helpful. Next time I won’t bother.’
‘Good idea. You worry about your own patients. I’ll worry about mine.’ Without giving her time to respond, Sam strode down the corridor towards his father’s consulting room.
‘I’m going to kill him.’ For the first time since she was five years old, Anna found herself wanting to stamp her foot. With an enormous effort of will she managed to restrict herself to an inward growl of frustration. ‘Well, at least we don’t need to change the name on his door,’ she muttered, and then turned to Glenda who was watching open-mouthed. ‘Don’t look like that.’
Glenda found her voice. ‘Nice to see that neither of you have changed,’ she said faintly, and Anna sighed.
‘Oh, don’t make me feel guilty. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken to him like that, but the guy drives me crazy. And whatever he says to the contrary, he hasn’t seen a real patient for ages. Diseases that they stage for the camera aren’t the same thing at all.’
Glenda frowned. ‘Anna, I thought he’d—’
‘He won’t admit it, of course, because he’s a man, and a man with a big ego,’ Anna said, reaching forward to pick up a pile of results, ‘but you’d better keep an eye on him, Glenda. If you think he’s got a problem with someone, let me know because his pride won’t let him do it himself and he certainly won’t ask me.’
Glenda looked confused. ‘But, Anna, I thought that Dr McKenna—’
‘Oh, let’s drop the subject for now,’ Anna muttered, deciding that she’d had enough of talking about Sam McKenna. ‘Just buzz me if you think there’s a problem.’
With that, she walked through to her own surgery and settled herself behind her desk. Instantly she felt calmer and more in control. This was her space, a place that she loved, and even having Sam next door couldn’t spoil it.
She switched on her computer and pressed the buzzer for her first patient. Seconds later there was a tap on the door and a young mother entered, struggling with a wriggling toddler.
‘Hello, Heather, how are things?’ Anna had been in the year above Heather at school and the two of them were still friends.
That was the wonderful thing about general practice, she mused as she stood up and walked around her desk to admire the baby. You knew the patients. Not like Accident and Emergency where she’d spent six months during her GP rotational training. There the patients were little more than cases and numbers. In general practice the patients had lives. They were real. And the family doctor was part of all that. It was a job worth doing.
‘It isn’t me, Anna,’ Heather murmured, settling herself in the chair and trying to persuade the whining toddler to sit still with her. ‘It’s Grace. She’s had a personality change lately and, frankly, I’m ready to scream.’
Anna reached for her favourite puppet and slipped her hand inside. ‘Hi, Grace,’ she said cheerfully, waggling the furry fox at the toddler. ‘Nice of you to visit me.’
The little girl stopped grizzling at once and stared at the puppet, transfixed. Then she held out a hand to stroke its nose. ‘Fox.’
‘That’s right.’ Anna waggled the puppet. ‘Fox.’ While the little girl’s attention was caught she questioned the mother. ‘So what’s been happening, Heather?’
‘It’s Grace. She just doesn’t seem to listen to me any more,’ the young mother said helplessly. ‘She takes absolutely no notice of anything I say and she’s so loud all of a sudden. She shouts all the time.’
Anna frowned. ‘How long has it been going on for?’
‘I don’t know.’ Heather shrugged. ‘A couple of months, I suppose. We had a terrible winter with her as you know. We virtually lived in your surgery with colds.’
Anna tickled Grace’s ear with the puppet and reached across her desk for some equipment. ‘How’s her speech?’
‘Well, she was doing really well but if anything she’s slipped back.’ Heather gave a rueful smile and cuddled the little girl closer. ‘Whoever said being a mother was easy? Do you think it’s just her age? That she’s just being naughty?’
‘No, I don’t. I suspect that she might have glue ear,’ Anna said calmly, judging whether it was a good moment to abandon the fox in favour of a clinical examination. ‘Heather, hold out your hand. I need you to take over acting duties while I take a look at her ears.’
Heather dutifully slipped her hand inside the puppet, leaving Anna to concentrate on the little girl.
‘Grace, I’m just going to look inside the fox’s ears,’ she said cheerfully, ‘and then I’m going to look inside yours.’
Grace watched with round eyes as Anna pretended to look inside the puppet’s ears, then she sat still while Anna gently used the auriscope to examine her.
‘I’m just checking that there’s no wax or foreign bodies,’ she murmured as she examined the eardrum. ‘Oh, yes, there’s the problem. I see it. The eardrum is very dull and looks indrawn. She definitely has glue ear.’
‘Glue ear?’ Heather frowned. ‘What exactly is that?’
‘It’s a condition where the child has fluid deep in the ear,’ Anna explained, ‘but without signs of infection. It’s called glue ear because the fluid tends to be like runny glue—thick, clear and sticky.’
Heather pulled a face. ‘Sounds awful. But why does that make her shout?’
‘Because I suspect it is affecting her hearing.’ Anna reached for a pad and scribbled a simple diagram. ‘People can hear because sound waves are transmitted via their eardrums and tiny bones inside the middle ear. The eardrum and bones vibrate.’
Heather stared at the diagram and pulled a face. ‘I was always bottom in biology.’
Anna smiled and put the pencil down. ‘Doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that in glue ear the middle ear, which is usually full of air, becomes filled with a sticky fluid and that damps down the vibrations.’
‘And stops the child from hearing?’
‘It can do.’ Anna stood up. ‘It’s very common in children so don’t think Grace is the only one. Speech is affected because she isn’t hearing well.’
‘So what do we do about it?’
‘Fortunately glue ear almost always settles down of its own accord but if Grace’s hearing gets worse then we may need to look at referring her to an ENT specialist. But at the moment I don’t think we should do that. I’m going to refer her to the audiology department for an assessment of her hearing and we’ll take it from there.’
‘So she doesn’t need antibiotics or anything now?’
Anna shook her head. ‘She doesn’t have an infection so they won’t work. I’m fairly confident that if we leave it alone it will go by itself, but we’ll keep a close eye on it and if we’re worried at any point then we can refer her.’
‘I’m not wild about her having an operation,’ Heather admitted, and Anna smiled sympathetically.
‘I doubt it will be necessary so let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ll refer her to Audiology today and you’ll get a letter from them in the next month or so, inviting Grace to come for a test.’
‘Thanks, Anna.’ Heather stood up and brushed her curls away from her face, her cheeks slightly pink. ‘I heard a rumour that our Sam’s back. Is it true that he’s going to be working here for the summer?’
Anna stiffened. Not if she could find a way out of it. ‘Well, he’s here at the moment, but he may not be able to stay for the whole summer.’
At least, not if she had anything to do with it.
‘Oh, I hope he can,’ Heather enthused, shifting the toddler more comfortably in her arms. ‘I mean, it’s so brilliant having him. I never miss him on the telly. He’s so sympathetic, isn’t he? So warm. Can’t believe it’s our Sam, really.’
Our Sam.
Anna clamped her jaws together and resisted the temptation to point out that Sam McKenna was a gifted actor and was warm when it suited him to appear that way. With her he was about as warm as the polar icepack.
Then she remembered that Heather had had a massive crush on Sam when they’d been at school. As had most of the girls. Except her.
Anna rolled her eyes. She and Sam had been thrown together a lot because of their parents’ working relationship and at one time she knew that both sets of parents had harboured a fond hope that they might take over the practice. But that had never been an option for Sam. He hadn’t been able to wait to get away.
And just as well, she thought briskly, otherwise there would have been bloodshed. She and Sam would not have made a good partnership. They clashed on just about everything.
Heather was still talking. ‘Everyone thinks it would be great if he stayed permanently,’ she gossiped happily. ‘I mean, it used to be both your dads, then it was you and his dad and now it could be the two of you.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Anna rose to her feet so rapidly she almost knocked the chair over. Aware that Heather was looking at her in surprise, Anna produced a smile. ‘You’re jumping the gun, Heather. This is temporary. Just temporary.’
And she certainly didn’t want that sort of gossip and speculation spreading around the village.
‘Well, you never really know how things are going to turn out, do you?’ Heather said sagely, standing up and reaching for her bag. ‘Thanks, Anna. See you soon.’
She left the surgery and Anna stared after her. Heather had said, Everyone thinks. So did that mean that everyone in the village were already aware that Sam was here? Did that mean that the whole village already thought that this might be a permanent arrangement?
No, no, no.
She covered her face with her hands and stifled a groan. If it turned out to be a permanent arrangement then she would have to leave. There was no way she could spend every day working alongside Sam. Her blood pressure wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But he wouldn’t stay, she consoled herself, applying logic to the situation. No way. Sam had chosen a very different life for himself. The City. Bright lights. Fame and fortune. He wouldn’t last five minutes in a sleepy Cornish fishing village. In fact, she doubted he’d even last the summer. He’d already made it clear that there wasn’t enough here to keep him entertained.
Cheered by that thought, she buzzed for her next patient and steadily worked her way through her afternoon list.
When she finally emerged from her surgery, she found Glenda deep in conversation with Sam who was perched on the desk, an intent expression on his handsome face.
Glenda coloured and broke off the moment she saw Anna, and Sam slid off the desk and walked towards her.
‘So, how did your surgery go, Riggs? Nothing you needed to ask me about?’
She ignored his sarcastic tone and gave him a withering look. ‘When I need help, I’ll consult a textbook.’
‘How boring,’ he drawled, lifting a hand and tucking a strand of her long dark hair behind her ear. ‘Better watch it, the country girl is trying to escape.’
Country girl.
It was what he’d always called her when she’d been little. He’d loved to tease her for being so at home in the outdoors. Unlike him, she’d never been comfortable with bright lights and hordes of people.
Aware that his fingers were still in her hair, she jerked her head away from him with a frosty glare, handed Glenda a pile of results for filing and stalked back to her room. For a moment she just stood there, sucking in deep breaths, and then she moved over to the wash-basin and opened the taps, splashing her face with cold water to cool her burning cheeks.
‘Drowning yourself?’
She reached for the towel, dried her face and turned slowly. ‘Just answer me that one question, McKenna. Why? Why did you come here? We both know that a GP practice in Cornwall isn’t where you see your future. So why are you here? Or have they run out of women in London?’
He strolled into the room and leaned narrow hips against her desk, wickedly handsome and altogether too dangerous for words. ‘You know the answer to that. I’m here because Dad asked me to come. And because Cornwall isn’t a bad place in the summer.’
He was winding her up and she knew it. Even he couldn’t fail to like Cornwall in the summer. Especially as being here would undoubtedly allow him to indulge in his favourite sports. She knew he’d be kite-surfing and windsurfing the moment he’d unpacked his suitcase.
‘So this is a free holiday.’ She ground her teeth. ‘You could have said no. You should have said no.’
He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘Because you know this isn’t going to work, that’s why.’
‘I hate to disappoint you but saying no to a sick man, especially when that sick man is my father, isn’t exactly my forte.’ He gazed at one of the photographs on her wall and Anna bit her lip, hating the intrusion into her personal space. ‘That’s nice. Bedruthan steps. Do you remember that time we were almost cut off by the tide? You always loved that beach when we were kids.’
‘Stop changing the subject. You could have pretended you couldn’t get away. You could have encouraged him to arrange a locum.’
‘He did arrange a locum. Me.’ Sam ran a hand over the back of his neck and shot her an impatient look. ‘All right, you tell me how I was supposed to say no. With Dad so ill and Mum so worried, how was I supposed to say no?’
‘You’ve said no before, lots of times.’
‘When he’s asked me to join the practice, to be part of the family firm,’ Sam agreed. ‘This is different. This is an emergency. I don’t say no to emergencies.’
‘Just to commitment.’ The words were out before she could stop them and even before she saw the narrowing of his eyes she regretted them. ‘Forget I said that. The way you run your life is none of my business.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ He folded his arms across his chest, his gaze fixed on hers. ‘But the way I run my life clearly bothers you.’
Suddenly the room felt unusually warm. ‘It doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that you’re going to swan in here for a few weeks or until you get bored then leave us in the lurch.’
‘No, that isn’t what bothers you.’ His gaze didn’t shift. ‘What really bothers you is the fact that you haven’t planned this and we both know that you have to plan everything. You think you have your whole life sorted, don’t you, Riggs?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with planning.’ She wondered why she was defending herself to someone she didn’t even like.
‘Except that life has a way of throwing you surprises. And it’s harder to cope with surprises if you’re inflexible.’
‘I’m not inflexible. And you’re not a surprise, McKenna. You’re a nightmare.’
‘I promised my father I’d stay for the summer and that’s what I intend to do.’
‘Along with your film crew.’
He shrugged. ‘Life goes on. When I return to London in the autumn I’ll want to pick up where I left off. The film crew is part of my life.’
Anna shook her head. ‘It isn’t going to work, McKenna.’
‘It’ll work if you don’t get all high and mighty on me. Why shouldn’t it?’ He was as direct as she was, hard and uncompromising in his approach to life. ‘Because I’m the only person you can’t control, Riggs? Because I don’t fit your image of a doctor? Because I don’t do things the way you do them?’
She tilted her head, her gaze cool. ‘Because you drive me nuts.’
‘Likewise.’
Their eyes locked in combat for endless minutes and then she gave a sigh. ‘All right. Let’s look at the facts here. I need help and I don’t have time to look for a new locum. You’re here. You can stay until I find a suitable replacement. But there are rules.’
‘You amaze me.’ He folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘And there I was thinking you were such a relaxed, laid-back person. Always willing to go with the flow.’
She chose to ignore his sarcasm. ‘No filming without my permission, and the patients’ permission, and if it interferes with your workload then it stops.’
His eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, actually.’ Her tone was businesslike with just a touch of frost around the edges. ‘I’m the partner in this practice, you’re the locum. You do things my way. If you disagree, we still do things my way.’
‘What if my way’s better?’
She gritted her teeth. He was doing it on purpose, of course. Annoying her. Irritating her. Winding her up so tightly that she was ready to explode. ‘It won’t be. You don’t have any experience of primary care. And even if you did, why would you even care about changing things? We both know you won’t be hanging around long enough to make an impact.’
He studied her carefully. ‘Unfortunately, Riggs, your rules don’t work for me. If I see something that I think needs changing I’m going to say so and we’re going to talk about it. I may be the locum but I still have an opinion on how the practice is run and you’re going to listen to it. Starting with Glenda.’
Anna stared at him. ‘What about Glenda?’
‘What do you know about her home life?’
Anna frowned, thrown by the sudden shift in the conversation. ‘Well, I know she lives with her elderly mother in a cottage down by the harbour. Her mother is your father’s patient and to be honest I haven’t seen much of her for the past few years so I can’t honestly say I know her. She doesn’t go out much. Why?’
‘Because her mother is the reason Glenda was late this morning. She had her buttons done up in the wrong holes,’ Sam said calmly. ‘She hasn’t told me much yet but she hinted that her mother isn’t herself.’
‘I didn’t know that. Your father hasn’t said anything.’ Anna felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t found the time to question Glenda’s lateness herself. If she was honest, she’d found it more annoying than concerning. It hadn’t occurred to her that something might be wrong. She bit her lip. She was the doctor, for goodness’ sake. She should have noticed that Glenda was upset about something.
It annoyed her that Sam had spotted it first and it made her feel guilty.
Resolving to talk to the receptionist immediately, Anna poured herself a glass of water and took a few sips.
‘This practice is stretched to the limit,’ Sam said grimly, ‘and we need efficient staff. If Glenda can’t perform the role then we need to get someone in who can.’
Anna slammed the glass down on the table. ‘And what are you proposing to do with Glenda?’ Her eyes sparked into his. ‘Fire her?’
‘No, actually.’ He stood in the centre of her consulting room, legs planted firmly apart, totally comfortable and maddeningly sure of himself. ‘Support her. And expecting her to fulfil a full-time employment commitment with what I suspect is a major family problem brewing isn’t support.’
Anna sagged slightly, her conscience pricking her. ‘Oh, hell. You’re right,’ she muttered, rubbing her fingers across her temples to ease the ache. ‘I should have noticed that something was wrong. She hasn’t been herself for weeks now I come to think of it.’
‘Don’t blame yourself.’ Sam’s voice was deep and slightly roughened. It was the voice that turned millions of female viewers to jelly. ‘I know you’ve had your work cut out covering for my father while he’s been so ill. But now it’s time to accept some help. You can’t run the whole show by yourself, Riggs. No matter what you may think of yourself, you’re not superwoman.’
She felt nothing like superwoman.
Anna’s hand dropped into her lap. Suddenly she didn’t have the energy to argue. ‘All right.’ Her voice was brisk and professional. ‘We’ll make the best of the situation. You take your father’s surgeries but if you have any queries, you refer them to me.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘You think I can’t cope?’
‘I think it’s been a long time since you’ve seen real patients. I’m not prepared for you to practise on mine.’
He would never admit he was wrong and she couldn’t take that risk with people’s lives.
‘Fine. If I get stuck, I’ll call.’ His voice was a drawl and she had a feeling he was mocking her. ‘Anything else?’
‘We share the clinics and the house calls. The deputising service does the on call and weekends.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And any filming or fancy stuff that you want to do takes place outside surgery time.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Thanks for the welcome, Riggs.’
She stiffened. What did he want? Applause? ‘If you’re expecting a red carpet and a cheering crowd, you’re not going to get one here.’
‘Evidently.’
‘And I’ll sort out Glenda.’
‘Her mother is my patient.’
‘Your father’s patient.’
He shrugged. ‘Same thing. As you just said, I’m taking my father’s patients.’ He gave a humourless laugh as he realised what he’d just said. ‘Following the old man’s dream.’
‘But not your dream, thank goodness.’
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Why ‘‘thank goodness’’?’
‘Because if you decided to take over your father’s half of the practice permanently, we’d really be in trouble.’ Frowning, Anna studied him. ‘We can make this work because it’s temporary, McKenna. Let’s both remember that. Temporary.’
‘If you think I’d want to make this a permanent arrangement then you’re even more deranged than I already think you are.’ He stifled a yawn and strolled out of the room as if he had all the time in the world, leaving her ready to punch something.
CHAPTER THREE
‘SUBSIDENCE.’
‘Sorry?’ Anna juggled several bags and her mobile phone as she tried to concentrate on what the surveyor was saying. She still had one more house call to make before she finished for the evening.
‘This cottage that you’re hoping to buy has subsidence.’ The man stepped back and angled his head. ‘Didn’t you notice that the windows are crooked?’
Anna followed his gaze, squinting against the bright evening sunshine. ‘It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with it. Crooked windows add to the character, Mike. They’re what makes it quaint.’
‘They’re what makes it dangerous and a complete no-no for your mortgage company.’ The surveyor looked at her sympathetically. ‘I hope you’re better at diagnosing patients than you are buildings, Doc. If this was an animal and you were a vet, you’d be putting it down.’
Anna groaned and dropped two of her bags. ‘Mike, no! I don’t need this. Tell me you’re joking. You have to be joking. This is my new home.’
Her dream.
Her cottage by the beach.
‘Not joking.’ He shook his head solemnly, stepping back to look at the cottage with a gloomy expression on his face. ‘It’s a bad lot, Anna, love. Let it go.’
‘Let it go? No way.’ Anna stuck out her chin at an angle that made the surveyor sigh.
‘Determination and backbone isn’t going to fix this one, I’m afraid. The only way this is going to be yours is if you put up all the cash yourself.’
Anna almost growled with frustration. ‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘Or find a rich man.’
Anna kicked a stone at the mere thought. ‘I don’t attract rich men. Rich men want useless trophy wives who’ll agree with everything they say.’
Mike laughed. ‘Not much chance of that with you. In which case, I think you’re looking at another house, Anna.’
Anna shook her head in denial and disbelief. ‘But it’s all going through. I’ve chosen the curtains …’
Mike shrugged. ‘Hang them in your next house,’ he advised, ‘but you have to give this one a miss. It’s a bundle of trouble.’
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Sarah Morgan
Praise for Sarah Morgan:
‘Whether it’s a Modern
Romance or a Medical
Romance, if a book’s got Sarah Morgan’s name on the front cover, then a spellbinding read is guaranteed!’
—Cataromance.com
‘Morgan’s brilliant talent never ceases to amaze, and this time she whisks readers deep into the desert, in an emotional tale about second chances, fear and love.’
—RT Book Reviews on
WOMAN IN A SHEIKH’S WORLD
‘Morgan is a magician with words, and she thrillingly transports readers to picturesque Sicily, where she spins a modern-day fairytale of grudges, feuds and forbidden passion…’
—RT Book Reviews on
THE FORBIDDEN FERRARA
Sarah won a RITA
Award in 2012 for DOUKAKIS’S APPRENTICE
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author SARAH MORGAN writes lively, sexy stories for both Mills & Boon
Modern
Romance and Medical™ Romance.
As a child Sarah dreamed of being a writer, and although she took a few interesting detours on the way she is now living that dream. With her writing career she has successfully combined business with pleasure, and she firmly believes that reading romance is one of the most satisfying and fat-free escapist pleasures available. Her stories are unashamedly optimistic, and she is always pleased when she receives letters from readers saying that her books have helped them through hard times.
Romantic Times has described her writing as ‘action-packed and sexy’, and nominated her books for their Reviewer’s Choice Awards and their ‘Top Pick’ slot.
Sarah lives near London with her husband and two children, who innocently provide an endless supply of authentic dialogue. When she isn’t writing or reading Sarah enjoys music, movies, and any activity that takes her outdoors.
Readers can find out more about Sarah and her books from her website: www.sarahmorgan.com She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Recent titles by the same author:
AN INVITATION TO SIN (Sicily’s Corretti Dynasty) SOLD TO THE ENEMY WOMAN IN A SHEIKH’S WORLD (The Private Lives of Public Playboys) A NIGHT OF NO RETURN (The Private Lives of Public Playboys) THE FORBIDDEN FERRARA
The Celebrity
Doctor’s
Proposal
Sarah Morgan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘I CAN manage without you just for the summer. I want you to go off and breathe mountain air and forget all about medicine and your patients.’ Anna turned off the motorway and followed the signs for the airport. She was all brisk efficiency, mentally ticking off things to be done when she got home. There were lots of them. Too many. Her life was manic, but she loved it that way. ‘And when you come back your lungs will be better and you’ll be totally refreshed and raring to go.’
At least she hoped he would be because she couldn’t keep this pace up for much longer.
David McKenna glanced across at her with a tired smile. The smile said it all. ‘We both know that that isn’t true. The truth is that you should be looking for a new partner. I’m getting too old for this, Anna,’ he said gruffly. ‘Your dad and I set up the practice almost thirty-five years ago. It’s time for new blood.’
‘That’s right.’ His wife, Elizabeth, nodded agreement, a determined look in her clear blue eyes as she leaned forward from the back seat to join in the conversation. ‘It’s time for us to enjoy retirement and our grandchildren.’
Anna glanced in her rear-view mirror and laughed. ‘You don’t have any grandchildren.’
‘Not yet,’ Elizabeth agreed placidly as she settled back in her seat and adjusted her seat-belt. ‘But it’s going to happen shortly.’
Anna carefully fixed her eyes back on the road and clamped her jaw closed. Safer to do that than voice an opinion on that particular subject. The McKennas only had one son and he showed absolutely no inclination to settle down. He was far more interested in pursuing a glamorous career as a high-profile media doctor and dating everyone female.
And he drove her nuts. Always had done. Always would do.
Anna ground her teeth and tightened her grip on the steering-wheel. The mere thought of the man was enough to raise her blood pressure to dangerous levels. Every time she turned on the television, Sam McKenna was on the screen, giving his opinion on something medical. Dr Smooth. Dr Handsome. She doubted he even remembered what it was like to be a real doctor. He’d spent far too long in front of the cameras to remember how to diagnose anything other than an ingrowing toenail.
Reminding herself that dwelling on Sam McKenna wasn’t good for her health, she turned her attention back to the present and braked neatly as a car cut in front of her. ‘You can’t possibly talk about retiring, David,’ she said briskly, adjusting her speed to ensure a safe following distance. ‘The patients love you and you’re a brilliant doctor. And you know you enjoy it. You just need to get yourself well again.’
The practice needed him. The practice he and her father had built from nothing. She needed him. She didn’t want her life to change. She liked it just the way it was.
David looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It will be interesting to see how you find working with the locum I’ve arranged,’ he said idly. ‘We both know you’ve been carrying the lion’s share of work for months now. You might find you prefer a younger person who can share the load fairly.’
Anna shot him a quick glance, her brown eyes searching. There was something in his tone that wasn’t quite right. But the look he gave her seemed completely innocent so she decided that she must have imagined it.
‘I don’t want younger,’ she said firmly, flicking the indicator and turning towards the airport. ‘I want you. With all your experience. Which reminds me—we’ve been so busy, you still haven’t told me anything about this locum. You just arranged it all. I hope he knows something about medicine.’
But she wasn’t really worried. She trusted David’s judgement in everything. If David thought the locum would cope then she had no doubt that he would.
‘Of course he does. And you’ve been far too busy to bother you with the details,’ David said vaguely, glancing at his watch and casting a pointed glance at his wife. ‘We don’t have time for you to dither in the airport, dear.’
‘I never dither,’ Elizabeth protested with dignity, and her husband smiled.
‘So why are we late?’
Anna glanced at them fondly as she pulled up outside the terminal building. Since her own parents had died, Elizabeth and David had stepped into the role. And why not? David had been at medical school with her father. They’d worked together for all those years and she’d taken over her father’s role in the practice when he’d been forced to retire because of ill health. It was hardly surprising that the McKennas regarded her as a daughter.
Suddenly filled with an awful feeling that her whole life was about to change, and hating the thought, Anna switched off the engine and turned towards them. ‘I want you to be careful,’ she said urgently, undoing her seat-belt and reaching across to hug David. ‘I want you to rest and take it easy. I couldn’t bear it if anything—’ She broke off, a lump in her throat, and David hugged her back, as understanding as ever.
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me, Anna, so stop worrying,’ he said gruffly, stroking her long, dark hair with an affectionate hand. ‘It was just a nasty dose of pneumonia brought on by mixing with too many ill patients! I’m recovering well and I’m intending to see my grandchildren grow up.’
Anna sniffed and then gave him a shove. ‘You’re definitely getting senile. I keep telling you, you haven’t got any grandchildren.’
‘Yet.’ Over the top of her head, David winked at his wife. ‘Gather your belongings, woman. Time to get this show on the road.’
Anna pulled away from him, feeling as though something momentous was happening. Suddenly she really, really didn’t want them to go. Which was utterly ridiculous, she told herself firmly, since this whole sabbatical idea had been her brainchild.
What was the matter with her?
She wasn’t the sentimental sort. She was practical and efficient and she really tried not to let emotions get in the way. David and Elizabeth needed a break and it was great that they were finally having one. She should be delighted. It was just the last few months, she decided, stepping out of the car and walking round to retrieve the luggage from the boot. She’d been working too hard. Not having enough time off.
Suddenly she envied David, taking a long break.
She tugged one of the cases from the boot, the reality of her life looming large in her brain. ‘David, you still haven’t told me about this locum and I—’
‘Oh, no!’ David peered into the boot and pulled a face. ‘Don’t say we forgot the green case. Elizabeth, did you remember to bring the green case from the bedroom?’
‘It’s here.’ Anna shifted the luggage. ‘Under the blue one.’
She dragged it out and added it to the pile on the pavement.
‘Thank goodness for that. It contains all my reading matter.’ David rummaged in his pocket for his glasses. ‘All right, now, have we got everything? Tickets, passports, money—’
Anna tried again. ‘About this locum—’
‘Surgery door keys? Did we give Anna the spare set?’ Elizabeth fussed in her handbag and Anna realised with a mixture of frustration and affection that neither of them was taking the slightest bit of notice of her. They were already on holiday. Far away from life in a Cornish fishing village. Far away from her and the practice.
David patted his other pocket and smiled. ‘I left the spares on the kitchen table. Now, we really need to dash.’ He leaned forward and kissed Anna on the cheek. ‘No need to come in with us. It was wonderful of you to bring us this far. I hate goodbyes and you have to get back to the needy.’
He waved a hand at a porter, who immediately brought a trolley and loaded the bags.
It was only after the glass doors of the terminal building had closed behind them that Anna realised that he’d left without answering her question about the locum.
She gave a sigh of exasperation and settled herself back in the car, ready for the long drive back to Cornwall. She knew nothing about the doctor David had appointed to cover his absence, except that it was a man. But perhaps it didn’t matter. She didn’t really need to know the details. Just that he was going to turn up.
Knowing that the summer holidays were almost upon them, Anna just hoped he liked hard work. Because he was going to get it in spades.
‘Do you think she’s guessed?’ From inside the privacy of the terminal building, David watched Anna’s little car pull away. ‘She kept asking and I kept evading the question. Now she thinks I’m going senile.’
‘She was joking. If she’d guessed then we wouldn’t be standing here now,’ Elizabeth said calmly. ‘You know what our Anna is like when she loses her temper. We’d be lying in pieces on the pavement and the fire brigade would be on their way.’
David rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and cast her a dubious look. ‘I hope we’ve done the right thing. Just because you and Anna’s mother always had this thing about our children marrying each other …’
‘You and Philip had the same dream,’ Elizabeth reminded him firmly, ‘and don’t think Susan and I didn’t know it. You wanted to hand the practice over to the two of them. You still do.’
Her husband shot her an impatient look. ‘Well, of course I do. It would be perfect. The only thing that isn’t perfect is that they can’t stand the sight of one another. I have to admit that, much as I would like this whole plan to work, I can’t see how it is going to.’
Elizabeth delved into her handbag for a mirror. ‘They’re both strong characters. Neither would want an insipid partner for the journey through life. They suit each other. It’s just that they’re both too stubborn and blind to see it themselves and that’s just because they’ve never been forced to spend time together. Hopefully, by the time we return, they’ll have discovered that they can’t live without each other.’
David pulled a face. ‘They might kill each other first.’
‘Possibly.’ Elizabeth gave a womanly smile and checked her lipstick. ‘But I don’t think so. Now, that’s our flight they’re calling. Are you ready?’
David cast a glance through the window again but Anna’s car was long gone. ‘There are going to be fireworks in Cornwall tonight,’ he muttered, and his wife clipped her bag shut and gave him a little push.
‘Then it’s just as well we’ll be in Switzerland. Now, stop worrying. Everything is in place and we can do no more. We have to leave the rest up to fate and the chemistry that has always been there between those two. Oh …’ She gave a smug smile. ‘And then there’s the whole of the village, of course. I’m sure they’ll be only too happy to give fate a helping hand.’
Anna drove home, mentally listing all the urgent jobs that had to be done. Too many jobs, not enough time.
She just hoped the locum was a good swimmer because he was going to be thrown right in the deep end with no buoyancy aid.
The sun blazed down on the car, the sea sparkled and Anna turned up the volume on the radio. Cornwall in the summer might be a crazy place to work but it was a beautiful place and she’d never want to live anywhere else. She smiled and the smile lasted for the time it took for her to pull up outside the surgery.
She was met by a film crew and her smile went out like a light.
For a moment she just sat in her little car and stared at the big van and the cameras and then finally she opened the door and ventured outside.
‘Are you Dr Riggs?’ A man with a microphone scurried over to her and she nodded.
‘Yes. Is there a problem? What’s going on here?’
‘Just hold it right there.’ The man held up a hand to halt her movement and gestured to the cameraman. ‘We want to get some footage of you greeting Dr McKenna. Wait just a moment …’
Footage? Of her greeting Dr McKenna?
To the best of her knowledge, she’d just waved Dr McKenna off at the airport and there was only one other Dr McKenna that she knew of, and he wasn’t …
She glanced at the film crew again and shook her head in denial.
Oh, no. No. No. David wouldn’t have done that to her. He couldn’t …
Ignoring the man’s plea for her to stay put while they prepared to shoot, she slammed her car door and stalked across the small car park towards the group of people gathered by the entrance, a suspicion growing inside her.
‘McKenna?’ She growled his name like a threat and the people moved to one side. But she had eyes only for one person.
Cool blue eyes swept over her and his mouth tilted slightly. ‘Riggs. What an unexpected pleasure.’
He was as handsome as the devil and his arrogance drove her nuts.
‘Unexpected?’ She slammed her hands on her hips and glared at him. ‘This is my surgery, McKenna, so how can my presence here be unexpected? What is unexpected is the fact that you’re standing outside it. You’d better have a damn good reason for causing a disturbance.’
He lifted a dark eyebrow in that lazy, careless way that always drove her mad. ‘Nice to see you haven’t changed. I have to confess that I thought you’d leg it once my father told you that I was coming,’ he drawled. ‘Never thought you’d show up to greet me. I’m flattered, Riggs. And touched. I obviously mean more to you than I thought.’
‘Greet you? I’m not greeting you, and you need to move yourself and that van …’ she stabbed a finger towards the offending vehicle, her dark hair swinging over her shoulders as she turned her head ‘… from my car park before I have it towed away. I have a surgery starting in an hour and at the moment there is no room for my patients.’
‘Our patients,’ he corrected her mildly, not moving an inch, ‘and you’re going to have to learn not to swear while the cameras are here. You’d be amazed how little it takes to get complaints from viewers. They like their doctors wholesome and clean-living. No sex or swearing.’
She opened her mouth to make a sharp observation about his reputation for the former and then stopped herself. It wasn’t worth it. She really didn’t care about his sex life. And anyway, something he’d said was jarring inside her head.
She stared at him, drew breath and finally mentally reran the last few sentences. ‘Hold on.’ She lifted a hand as if to ward him off. ‘What did you mean when you said that your dad should have told me you were coming? Tell me he didn’t know you were coming. Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.’
Surely David wouldn’t have done that to her.
He couldn’t …
Sam leaned impossibly broad shoulders against the wall and looked at her, a trace of amusement lighting his blue eyes. ‘He’s been nagging me for more than three months, Riggs. Finally he resorted to emotional blackmail. ‘‘I need this break, Sam, and if I can’t find a decent locum I can’t leave poor Anna.’’’
His imitation of his father was so good that if she hadn’t been so horrified, Anna would have laughed. Instead she gaped at him. ‘Locum? You’re the locum?’ Her voice cracked and all her important bodily functions like breathing and staying upright suddenly seemed threatened. It had to be a joke. ‘You have a sick sense of humour, McKenna.’
He shrugged. ‘Better a sick sense of humour than no sense of humour at all.’ He gave her a meaningful look. ‘Now, enough chatting. You can thank me later.’ He straightened and waved a hand to the cameraman who was still hovering. ‘In the meantime, we have work to do.’
She clenched her fists in her palms. He was implying that she had no sense of humour. He’d always accused her of being too uptight. Of not knowing how to relax. Of planning every detail of her life.
‘What I mean is, there is no way your dad would arrange for you to be the locum,’ she said, her teeth gritted as she spoke. ‘He knows we’d kill each other.’
‘That possibility does exist,’ Sam agreed, stifling a yawn and moving past her with a loose-limbed stride that betrayed absolutely no sense of urgency. ‘However, I reckon that if you stay in your space and I stay in mine, we should just about manage to coexist without significant injury.’
‘Wait a minute.’ She elbowed her way past the cameraman and planted herself in front of Sam again. Strands of dark hair trailed over her face and she brushed them back with an impatient hand. ‘If you’re really the locum, why are they here?’ She glared at the film crew as if they were a disease and he muttered something incomprehensible under his breath.
‘They’re here because I have a job to do,’ he said bluntly. ‘Normally I’d be in London, filming a new series. It seems I’m spending the summer in Cornwall so we’ve had to make some changes to the programme. We’ve had to adapt. You ought to try it some time.’
At that point, the woman who had been hovering at a tactful distance stepped forward. ‘It’s going to be brilliant, Dr Riggs.’ She reached out and shook Anna’s hand. ‘I’m Polly. I’m the producer of this series of Medical Matters. When Sam told us he was going to be working down here, we decided to do a whole series on summer health. It will be fantastic. We can look at taking care of yourself in the sun, first aid—everything families should know before they go on holiday.’
Warm and friendly, she listed her ideas with enthusiasm, and in normal circumstances Anna would have liked her immediately. But these weren’t normal circumstances. And she couldn’t like anyone who looked at Sam McKenna with such blatant adoration.
‘This is a busy practice,’ she said crisply. ‘We work flat out to cater to the needs of the locals and at this time of year our numbers double because of the tourist population. We don’t have time for film crews.’
‘But that’s the beauty of it,’ Polly said cheerfully, ‘Sam already knows the score. He’s used to being filmed all the time. There’ll be very little intrusion, I can assure you.’
‘The patients won’t like it.’
‘The patients will love it,’ Sam predicted dryly, lifting a hand and shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘And if they don’t, they don’t have to take part. They always have the right to refuse to be filmed. But I can tell you now that they won’t.’
‘We’re going to do a variety of different things,’ Polly explained eagerly, ‘a straightforward Medical Matters from the surgery, which is our usual format, but we’re also going to film on location, do some first-aid stuff on the beach—that sort of thing.’
‘It sounds as though you’ve got it all worked out,’ Anna said frostily, her eyes on Sam who simply shrugged. ‘We need to talk, McKenna. And we need to do it now.’
Polly glanced towards the cameraman who was still hovering. ‘Perhaps we should film you discussing it—it might be interesting.’
‘Well, unless you want to film something which needs a warning for bad language and violence, I suggest you switch off the camera and go and have a cream tea in the village,’ Anna said sweetly, her eyes still blazing into Sam’s. ‘You and me. Inside. Now.’
Without waiting for the sharp comment that she knew would come, she turned and strode to the front door, unlocking it and letting herself in. Functioning on automatic, she switched off the alarm and picked up the post, aware that he was behind her.
‘Don’t you have a receptionist any more? What happened to Glenda?’ He peered behind the empty reception area with a frown and she gritted her teeth.
She didn’t need his comments on the way the surgery ran.
‘Glenda is sometimes a bit late,’ she muttered, dropping the post behind Reception, ready for Glenda to sort out when she arrived. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’
‘Late?’ He frowned, his expression suddenly thoughtful. ‘But she used to be the most punctual person in the world. Really dedicated. Why would Glenda be late?’
Anna bit her lip. She’d asked herself the same question a few times lately and she was steeling herself to address the matter with Glenda. But there was no way she was discussing this with Sam McKenna.
‘It’s really none of your business,’ she said coldly, and he gave a dismissive shrug.
‘Fair enough. Just didn’t sound much like the Glenda I used to know, that’s all.’
‘Well, you haven’t exactly been spending much time around here lately and people do change,’ Anna said tartly.
He ran a hand over his jaw, his expression thoughtful. ‘Have you tackled her?’
She gave an impatient sigh. ‘No. No, actually, I haven’t. If you must know, I haven’t had time to breathe or eat in the last few months, let alone sit down and get cosy with the staff.’
His eyes narrowed and his gaze swept her face. ‘That bad, huh?’
She gritted her teeth again and cursed herself for showing emotion in front of Sam. He would waste no time throwing it back at her. ‘Not bad. Just busy. And if it’s all right by you, I’d like to drop the subject now. When I need your advice, I’ll ask for it.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’ He hooked his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and lounged against the reception desk. He had a lean, athletic physique, honed to perfection by his obsession with dangerous sports. ‘You wouldn’t ask my advice if you were hanging off a cliff by your fingernails. You’re so crazily independent, Riggs, that you’d drown rather than ask someone to throw you a lifebelt.’
‘Then it’s a good job I’m not drowning,’ she said coldly, walking through to the reception area and automatically picking up some scattered toys and returning them to the basket. ‘And for your information, I’d take the lifebelt as long as you weren’t the one throwing it. Now, are we going to sort this problem out?’
He shrugged and stifled a yawn. ‘What’s there to sort out? You need a locum. I’m here.’
She straightened one of the chairs. ‘As far as I’m concerned, those two statements are not linked.’
He drew a breath and she lifted a hand to indicate that she hadn’t finished. ‘What I need, McKenna, is a serious doctor willing to do some serious work. What I don’t need is some image-hungry film-star medic with an over-inflated ego which is going to get in my way every time I try and see a patient.’
To her surprise and immense irritation, he smiled. An all-male, sexy smile that tugged something deep in her pelvis.
Damn, he irritated her.
Completely aware of that fact, he straightened up and strolled towards her, a dangerous gleam in his blue eyes as they swept her face. ‘Oh, boy, oh, boy, I really do unsettle you, don’t I, Riggs? Why is that, I wonder?’
‘Do you want a list?’ She backed away, trying to maintain her personal space. ‘And I can’t imagine this is exactly your idea of heaven either. Why did you agree to it?’
His blue eyes glittered. ‘I told you. Emotional blackmail on the part of my father. He was ill. He needed a holiday. He couldn’t find anyone else. That kind of thing. Tugs at the heart.’
‘You don’t have a heart.’
He grinned. ‘Ouch. Been reading my press cuttings again, Riggs?’
‘Hardly.’ Her glance was impatient. ‘The way you run your love life—or should I say sex life—is your business. But the practice is my business. Your dad certainly never mentioned to me that he was having trouble finding anyone.’
Sam gave a careless shrug. ‘Well, the fact is I’m here now. Make the most of me.’
She angled her head and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Excuse me? I’m supposed to be honoured that you’ve graced us with your presence? Let me tell you something, Dr Charm, I’m not at all convinced you’ll know a real patient when you see one. You see, here in real life surgery land, the problems aren’t staged.’
His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘Is that so?’
‘What happens when you deal with something that doesn’t make good television? Are you going to pass them through to me? Or do you grab a textbook?’
He examined his fingernails thoughtfully. ‘You really aren’t going to make this easy, are you, Riggs?’
She bit her lip. Somehow he made her feel small, childish. ‘It’s just that this practice is busy,’ she said wearily, sweeping her dark hair away from her face and risking eye contact. ‘I need proper help. Heavy-duty help.’
Sharp blue eyes searched hers. ‘My dad hasn’t been pulling his weight, has he?’
She didn’t trust herself not to give too much away so her own eyes slid from his, away from that penetrating gaze that saw too much. ‘Your dad is a good doctor. The best.’
‘But he hasn’t got the stamina that he used to,’ Sam said softly, running a hand over the back of his neck and giving a frustrated sigh. ‘Damn. It’s hard, watching your parents grow older. You have this vision of how they are and you never want it to change. I always knew this moment would come, but that doesn’t make it any easier.’
She frowned. ‘What moment?’
His hand dropped to his side and his glance was ironic. ‘The moment when I have to decide whether to go into the family business.’
‘You mean, take your father’s place?’ She stared at him in horror. ‘You can’t possibly be serious! You don’t need me to remind you that you couldn’t wait to leave Cornwall at the earliest opportunity. Even if we go along with your dad’s plan, it’s only short term. No one suggested it was for ever. He’s coming back …’
Sam looked at her. ‘And when he does, he’ll retire and spend his days fishing.’
Anna shook her head. ‘He won’t retire.’
Sam gave a sigh and stabbed long fingers through his dark hair. ‘He has to. We both know that. And you being stubborn about it isn’t going to change that fact.’ He paced over to the reception area. ‘But while he’s working out how to break the news to you that this is all too much for him and he doesn’t want to do it any more, we’ll get the place in order. And work out a plan. Things are going to have to change around here.’
Anna felt as though she’d been doused in cold water.
She didn’t want things to change. She loved the way the practice was now. She loved working with David. They understood each other.
Was Sam right? Was David really planning to tell her that he was going to retire from the practice?
She sank onto the nearest chair, her legs suddenly wobbly. It was a moment before she realised that Sam was pressing a glass of water into her hand.
‘Drink something,’ he said roughly. ‘You’ve obviously been working too hard. You look done in. You’re pale and you’ve got black rings under your eyes. You always were too stubborn to ask for help. I’m going to get rid of the film crew for now and then come back and we can work out what’s to be done.’
Anna took a sip of water and found her voice. ‘Whatever’s to be done,’ she muttered, ‘I really, really don’t want to do it with you, McKenna.’
He was the last person in the world that she could imagine developing a good working relationship with.
He laughed and rose to his feet in a fluid movement. ‘Likewise. But seeing as that is what fate has decreed, I’d say we’re both in for an interesting summer. Looks like we’re going to be meeting at dawn. Swords or pistols?’
CHAPTER TWO
SHE hadn’t changed a bit.
Sam strode out of the reception area and paused in the foyer, trying to get his emotions back under control before he faced the camera crew. Anna Riggs always did that to him. Drove him so mad that he needed to pump iron for a week in order to burn off the frustration coursing around his body. Thanks to some nifty avoidance tactics on both their parts, they hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years, but she was still the same hard-nosed, bossy control freak she’d always been. Not at all his kind of woman. He liked his women soft and gentle. Anna Riggs was about as soft as steel. And the fact that she had a pair of legs that stopped a man in his tracks didn’t do anything to change his opinion of her.
And he’d allowed himself to be manipulated into spending the summer with her.
He smashed a fist against the wall and inhaled deeply. Damn, she was right. They were going to kill each other. What had his father been thinking of, arranging for them to work together when he knew that there was so much animosity between them? When he knew that they were just so different? It was all very well saying that they didn’t need to see much of each other, but they were running a small practice. They were the only two doctors. How could they not see each other?
And how was he going to cope with Anna being confrontational and prickly with a camera stuck in his face all day?
He gritted his teeth and applied his brain to the problem.
The first thing was that the cameras certainly couldn’t be allowed free access, otherwise they could find themselves filming bloodshed. He’d have to stage each shoot carefully, making sure that Anna wasn’t within firing distance.
And the second thing was that he was going to work as independently as possible. Surely he could just see his patients and she could see hers? Did they really need to talk much?
And he wasn’t going to involve himself in the practice. He was going to do the job and then see what happened. And if his father decided to retire, he’d find him the best possible replacement. And it wasn’t going to be him. Hadn’t his parents always accepted that this wasn’t the practice for him? His life was in London. He’d chosen a different path. He didn’t want to work here permanently any more than Anna wanted him to.
Satisfied that, given sufficient thought, it would be possible to minimise the contact between them, he finally pushed open the glass door of the surgery and walked into the car park.
Glenda turned up, breathless and apologetic, five minutes before surgery started. She dropped her bag behind the reception desk and smoothed her hair, clearly flustered.
‘Are you OK?’ Anna frowned in concern and Glenda gave a bright smile.
‘I’m fine. Sorry I’m a bit late. I was caught up.’
Caught up with what? Anna wanted to ask, but now wasn’t the time with a busy surgery about to start and Sam strolling across the reception area as if he’d worked here all his life.
How could he be so relaxed?
‘Hi, Glenda.’ He gave the receptionist a big hug and for some reason that she couldn’t quite identify Anna felt her tension rise.
It was just her that he needled and goaded. With everyone else he was capable of being extremely civilised. Warm. People in the village had always adored Sam McKenna and now he was a major TV personality they never stopped talking about him.
Glenda’s face softened. ‘Oh—Dr McKenna. How lovely to see you.’ She pulled away and tried to straighten her hair, her movements jerky and uncoordinated. ‘I suppose you’ll be helping our Anna. Good thing, too. She needs some help around here. She’s been struggling for far too long.’
Anna’s frown deepened. Glenda knew that she and Sam didn’t see eye to eye on anything. Why would she think it was a good thing that he’d arrived? Had she known that David had appointed him as locum?
Or was it just that she wasn’t concentrating because she had something else on her mind?
She hated to admit that Sam was right about anything, but suddenly Anna decided that a conversation with the receptionist was becoming a priority.
‘Busy surgery.’ Glenda flicked on the computer and checked the appointments, seeming more flustered than usual. ‘Open those doors and let the battle commence.’
Resolving to tackle Glenda in private later, Anna turned to Sam. ‘I know that this is throwing you in at the deep end, but can you take your father’s surgery? I expect you’ll know some of the patients anyway, and if you need to know anything that isn’t in the notes you can buzz through to me. Press 4 on your phone. Or I’m just next door.’
Sam lifted an eyebrow, his expression mocking. ‘Sure you don’t want to sit in with me, just to be sure that I don’t kill anyone?’
She gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t think you’re about to kill anyone.’
‘No.’ His voice was dry. ‘You just think my clinical skills are rustier than an old garden fork.’
‘I’m just aware that it’s probably a long time since you did a consultation that wasn’t staged. The way our surgeries run at the moment, there’s not a lot of time to look in a textbook between cases. And you only get the one take.’ Anna sucked in a breath. ‘I was trying to be helpful. Next time I won’t bother.’
‘Good idea. You worry about your own patients. I’ll worry about mine.’ Without giving her time to respond, Sam strode down the corridor towards his father’s consulting room.
‘I’m going to kill him.’ For the first time since she was five years old, Anna found herself wanting to stamp her foot. With an enormous effort of will she managed to restrict herself to an inward growl of frustration. ‘Well, at least we don’t need to change the name on his door,’ she muttered, and then turned to Glenda who was watching open-mouthed. ‘Don’t look like that.’
Glenda found her voice. ‘Nice to see that neither of you have changed,’ she said faintly, and Anna sighed.
‘Oh, don’t make me feel guilty. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken to him like that, but the guy drives me crazy. And whatever he says to the contrary, he hasn’t seen a real patient for ages. Diseases that they stage for the camera aren’t the same thing at all.’
Glenda frowned. ‘Anna, I thought he’d—’
‘He won’t admit it, of course, because he’s a man, and a man with a big ego,’ Anna said, reaching forward to pick up a pile of results, ‘but you’d better keep an eye on him, Glenda. If you think he’s got a problem with someone, let me know because his pride won’t let him do it himself and he certainly won’t ask me.’
Glenda looked confused. ‘But, Anna, I thought that Dr McKenna—’
‘Oh, let’s drop the subject for now,’ Anna muttered, deciding that she’d had enough of talking about Sam McKenna. ‘Just buzz me if you think there’s a problem.’
With that, she walked through to her own surgery and settled herself behind her desk. Instantly she felt calmer and more in control. This was her space, a place that she loved, and even having Sam next door couldn’t spoil it.
She switched on her computer and pressed the buzzer for her first patient. Seconds later there was a tap on the door and a young mother entered, struggling with a wriggling toddler.
‘Hello, Heather, how are things?’ Anna had been in the year above Heather at school and the two of them were still friends.
That was the wonderful thing about general practice, she mused as she stood up and walked around her desk to admire the baby. You knew the patients. Not like Accident and Emergency where she’d spent six months during her GP rotational training. There the patients were little more than cases and numbers. In general practice the patients had lives. They were real. And the family doctor was part of all that. It was a job worth doing.
‘It isn’t me, Anna,’ Heather murmured, settling herself in the chair and trying to persuade the whining toddler to sit still with her. ‘It’s Grace. She’s had a personality change lately and, frankly, I’m ready to scream.’
Anna reached for her favourite puppet and slipped her hand inside. ‘Hi, Grace,’ she said cheerfully, waggling the furry fox at the toddler. ‘Nice of you to visit me.’
The little girl stopped grizzling at once and stared at the puppet, transfixed. Then she held out a hand to stroke its nose. ‘Fox.’
‘That’s right.’ Anna waggled the puppet. ‘Fox.’ While the little girl’s attention was caught she questioned the mother. ‘So what’s been happening, Heather?’
‘It’s Grace. She just doesn’t seem to listen to me any more,’ the young mother said helplessly. ‘She takes absolutely no notice of anything I say and she’s so loud all of a sudden. She shouts all the time.’
Anna frowned. ‘How long has it been going on for?’
‘I don’t know.’ Heather shrugged. ‘A couple of months, I suppose. We had a terrible winter with her as you know. We virtually lived in your surgery with colds.’
Anna tickled Grace’s ear with the puppet and reached across her desk for some equipment. ‘How’s her speech?’
‘Well, she was doing really well but if anything she’s slipped back.’ Heather gave a rueful smile and cuddled the little girl closer. ‘Whoever said being a mother was easy? Do you think it’s just her age? That she’s just being naughty?’
‘No, I don’t. I suspect that she might have glue ear,’ Anna said calmly, judging whether it was a good moment to abandon the fox in favour of a clinical examination. ‘Heather, hold out your hand. I need you to take over acting duties while I take a look at her ears.’
Heather dutifully slipped her hand inside the puppet, leaving Anna to concentrate on the little girl.
‘Grace, I’m just going to look inside the fox’s ears,’ she said cheerfully, ‘and then I’m going to look inside yours.’
Grace watched with round eyes as Anna pretended to look inside the puppet’s ears, then she sat still while Anna gently used the auriscope to examine her.
‘I’m just checking that there’s no wax or foreign bodies,’ she murmured as she examined the eardrum. ‘Oh, yes, there’s the problem. I see it. The eardrum is very dull and looks indrawn. She definitely has glue ear.’
‘Glue ear?’ Heather frowned. ‘What exactly is that?’
‘It’s a condition where the child has fluid deep in the ear,’ Anna explained, ‘but without signs of infection. It’s called glue ear because the fluid tends to be like runny glue—thick, clear and sticky.’
Heather pulled a face. ‘Sounds awful. But why does that make her shout?’
‘Because I suspect it is affecting her hearing.’ Anna reached for a pad and scribbled a simple diagram. ‘People can hear because sound waves are transmitted via their eardrums and tiny bones inside the middle ear. The eardrum and bones vibrate.’
Heather stared at the diagram and pulled a face. ‘I was always bottom in biology.’
Anna smiled and put the pencil down. ‘Doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that in glue ear the middle ear, which is usually full of air, becomes filled with a sticky fluid and that damps down the vibrations.’
‘And stops the child from hearing?’
‘It can do.’ Anna stood up. ‘It’s very common in children so don’t think Grace is the only one. Speech is affected because she isn’t hearing well.’
‘So what do we do about it?’
‘Fortunately glue ear almost always settles down of its own accord but if Grace’s hearing gets worse then we may need to look at referring her to an ENT specialist. But at the moment I don’t think we should do that. I’m going to refer her to the audiology department for an assessment of her hearing and we’ll take it from there.’
‘So she doesn’t need antibiotics or anything now?’
Anna shook her head. ‘She doesn’t have an infection so they won’t work. I’m fairly confident that if we leave it alone it will go by itself, but we’ll keep a close eye on it and if we’re worried at any point then we can refer her.’
‘I’m not wild about her having an operation,’ Heather admitted, and Anna smiled sympathetically.
‘I doubt it will be necessary so let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ll refer her to Audiology today and you’ll get a letter from them in the next month or so, inviting Grace to come for a test.’
‘Thanks, Anna.’ Heather stood up and brushed her curls away from her face, her cheeks slightly pink. ‘I heard a rumour that our Sam’s back. Is it true that he’s going to be working here for the summer?’
Anna stiffened. Not if she could find a way out of it. ‘Well, he’s here at the moment, but he may not be able to stay for the whole summer.’
At least, not if she had anything to do with it.
‘Oh, I hope he can,’ Heather enthused, shifting the toddler more comfortably in her arms. ‘I mean, it’s so brilliant having him. I never miss him on the telly. He’s so sympathetic, isn’t he? So warm. Can’t believe it’s our Sam, really.’
Our Sam.
Anna clamped her jaws together and resisted the temptation to point out that Sam McKenna was a gifted actor and was warm when it suited him to appear that way. With her he was about as warm as the polar icepack.
Then she remembered that Heather had had a massive crush on Sam when they’d been at school. As had most of the girls. Except her.
Anna rolled her eyes. She and Sam had been thrown together a lot because of their parents’ working relationship and at one time she knew that both sets of parents had harboured a fond hope that they might take over the practice. But that had never been an option for Sam. He hadn’t been able to wait to get away.
And just as well, she thought briskly, otherwise there would have been bloodshed. She and Sam would not have made a good partnership. They clashed on just about everything.
Heather was still talking. ‘Everyone thinks it would be great if he stayed permanently,’ she gossiped happily. ‘I mean, it used to be both your dads, then it was you and his dad and now it could be the two of you.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Anna rose to her feet so rapidly she almost knocked the chair over. Aware that Heather was looking at her in surprise, Anna produced a smile. ‘You’re jumping the gun, Heather. This is temporary. Just temporary.’
And she certainly didn’t want that sort of gossip and speculation spreading around the village.
‘Well, you never really know how things are going to turn out, do you?’ Heather said sagely, standing up and reaching for her bag. ‘Thanks, Anna. See you soon.’
She left the surgery and Anna stared after her. Heather had said, Everyone thinks. So did that mean that everyone in the village were already aware that Sam was here? Did that mean that the whole village already thought that this might be a permanent arrangement?
No, no, no.
She covered her face with her hands and stifled a groan. If it turned out to be a permanent arrangement then she would have to leave. There was no way she could spend every day working alongside Sam. Her blood pressure wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But he wouldn’t stay, she consoled herself, applying logic to the situation. No way. Sam had chosen a very different life for himself. The City. Bright lights. Fame and fortune. He wouldn’t last five minutes in a sleepy Cornish fishing village. In fact, she doubted he’d even last the summer. He’d already made it clear that there wasn’t enough here to keep him entertained.
Cheered by that thought, she buzzed for her next patient and steadily worked her way through her afternoon list.
When she finally emerged from her surgery, she found Glenda deep in conversation with Sam who was perched on the desk, an intent expression on his handsome face.
Glenda coloured and broke off the moment she saw Anna, and Sam slid off the desk and walked towards her.
‘So, how did your surgery go, Riggs? Nothing you needed to ask me about?’
She ignored his sarcastic tone and gave him a withering look. ‘When I need help, I’ll consult a textbook.’
‘How boring,’ he drawled, lifting a hand and tucking a strand of her long dark hair behind her ear. ‘Better watch it, the country girl is trying to escape.’
Country girl.
It was what he’d always called her when she’d been little. He’d loved to tease her for being so at home in the outdoors. Unlike him, she’d never been comfortable with bright lights and hordes of people.
Aware that his fingers were still in her hair, she jerked her head away from him with a frosty glare, handed Glenda a pile of results for filing and stalked back to her room. For a moment she just stood there, sucking in deep breaths, and then she moved over to the wash-basin and opened the taps, splashing her face with cold water to cool her burning cheeks.
‘Drowning yourself?’
She reached for the towel, dried her face and turned slowly. ‘Just answer me that one question, McKenna. Why? Why did you come here? We both know that a GP practice in Cornwall isn’t where you see your future. So why are you here? Or have they run out of women in London?’
He strolled into the room and leaned narrow hips against her desk, wickedly handsome and altogether too dangerous for words. ‘You know the answer to that. I’m here because Dad asked me to come. And because Cornwall isn’t a bad place in the summer.’
He was winding her up and she knew it. Even he couldn’t fail to like Cornwall in the summer. Especially as being here would undoubtedly allow him to indulge in his favourite sports. She knew he’d be kite-surfing and windsurfing the moment he’d unpacked his suitcase.
‘So this is a free holiday.’ She ground her teeth. ‘You could have said no. You should have said no.’
He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘Because you know this isn’t going to work, that’s why.’
‘I hate to disappoint you but saying no to a sick man, especially when that sick man is my father, isn’t exactly my forte.’ He gazed at one of the photographs on her wall and Anna bit her lip, hating the intrusion into her personal space. ‘That’s nice. Bedruthan steps. Do you remember that time we were almost cut off by the tide? You always loved that beach when we were kids.’
‘Stop changing the subject. You could have pretended you couldn’t get away. You could have encouraged him to arrange a locum.’
‘He did arrange a locum. Me.’ Sam ran a hand over the back of his neck and shot her an impatient look. ‘All right, you tell me how I was supposed to say no. With Dad so ill and Mum so worried, how was I supposed to say no?’
‘You’ve said no before, lots of times.’
‘When he’s asked me to join the practice, to be part of the family firm,’ Sam agreed. ‘This is different. This is an emergency. I don’t say no to emergencies.’
‘Just to commitment.’ The words were out before she could stop them and even before she saw the narrowing of his eyes she regretted them. ‘Forget I said that. The way you run your life is none of my business.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ He folded his arms across his chest, his gaze fixed on hers. ‘But the way I run my life clearly bothers you.’
Suddenly the room felt unusually warm. ‘It doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that you’re going to swan in here for a few weeks or until you get bored then leave us in the lurch.’
‘No, that isn’t what bothers you.’ His gaze didn’t shift. ‘What really bothers you is the fact that you haven’t planned this and we both know that you have to plan everything. You think you have your whole life sorted, don’t you, Riggs?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with planning.’ She wondered why she was defending herself to someone she didn’t even like.
‘Except that life has a way of throwing you surprises. And it’s harder to cope with surprises if you’re inflexible.’
‘I’m not inflexible. And you’re not a surprise, McKenna. You’re a nightmare.’
‘I promised my father I’d stay for the summer and that’s what I intend to do.’
‘Along with your film crew.’
He shrugged. ‘Life goes on. When I return to London in the autumn I’ll want to pick up where I left off. The film crew is part of my life.’
Anna shook her head. ‘It isn’t going to work, McKenna.’
‘It’ll work if you don’t get all high and mighty on me. Why shouldn’t it?’ He was as direct as she was, hard and uncompromising in his approach to life. ‘Because I’m the only person you can’t control, Riggs? Because I don’t fit your image of a doctor? Because I don’t do things the way you do them?’
She tilted her head, her gaze cool. ‘Because you drive me nuts.’
‘Likewise.’
Their eyes locked in combat for endless minutes and then she gave a sigh. ‘All right. Let’s look at the facts here. I need help and I don’t have time to look for a new locum. You’re here. You can stay until I find a suitable replacement. But there are rules.’
‘You amaze me.’ He folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘And there I was thinking you were such a relaxed, laid-back person. Always willing to go with the flow.’
She chose to ignore his sarcasm. ‘No filming without my permission, and the patients’ permission, and if it interferes with your workload then it stops.’
His eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, actually.’ Her tone was businesslike with just a touch of frost around the edges. ‘I’m the partner in this practice, you’re the locum. You do things my way. If you disagree, we still do things my way.’
‘What if my way’s better?’
She gritted her teeth. He was doing it on purpose, of course. Annoying her. Irritating her. Winding her up so tightly that she was ready to explode. ‘It won’t be. You don’t have any experience of primary care. And even if you did, why would you even care about changing things? We both know you won’t be hanging around long enough to make an impact.’
He studied her carefully. ‘Unfortunately, Riggs, your rules don’t work for me. If I see something that I think needs changing I’m going to say so and we’re going to talk about it. I may be the locum but I still have an opinion on how the practice is run and you’re going to listen to it. Starting with Glenda.’
Anna stared at him. ‘What about Glenda?’
‘What do you know about her home life?’
Anna frowned, thrown by the sudden shift in the conversation. ‘Well, I know she lives with her elderly mother in a cottage down by the harbour. Her mother is your father’s patient and to be honest I haven’t seen much of her for the past few years so I can’t honestly say I know her. She doesn’t go out much. Why?’
‘Because her mother is the reason Glenda was late this morning. She had her buttons done up in the wrong holes,’ Sam said calmly. ‘She hasn’t told me much yet but she hinted that her mother isn’t herself.’
‘I didn’t know that. Your father hasn’t said anything.’ Anna felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t found the time to question Glenda’s lateness herself. If she was honest, she’d found it more annoying than concerning. It hadn’t occurred to her that something might be wrong. She bit her lip. She was the doctor, for goodness’ sake. She should have noticed that Glenda was upset about something.
It annoyed her that Sam had spotted it first and it made her feel guilty.
Resolving to talk to the receptionist immediately, Anna poured herself a glass of water and took a few sips.
‘This practice is stretched to the limit,’ Sam said grimly, ‘and we need efficient staff. If Glenda can’t perform the role then we need to get someone in who can.’
Anna slammed the glass down on the table. ‘And what are you proposing to do with Glenda?’ Her eyes sparked into his. ‘Fire her?’
‘No, actually.’ He stood in the centre of her consulting room, legs planted firmly apart, totally comfortable and maddeningly sure of himself. ‘Support her. And expecting her to fulfil a full-time employment commitment with what I suspect is a major family problem brewing isn’t support.’
Anna sagged slightly, her conscience pricking her. ‘Oh, hell. You’re right,’ she muttered, rubbing her fingers across her temples to ease the ache. ‘I should have noticed that something was wrong. She hasn’t been herself for weeks now I come to think of it.’
‘Don’t blame yourself.’ Sam’s voice was deep and slightly roughened. It was the voice that turned millions of female viewers to jelly. ‘I know you’ve had your work cut out covering for my father while he’s been so ill. But now it’s time to accept some help. You can’t run the whole show by yourself, Riggs. No matter what you may think of yourself, you’re not superwoman.’
She felt nothing like superwoman.
Anna’s hand dropped into her lap. Suddenly she didn’t have the energy to argue. ‘All right.’ Her voice was brisk and professional. ‘We’ll make the best of the situation. You take your father’s surgeries but if you have any queries, you refer them to me.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘You think I can’t cope?’
‘I think it’s been a long time since you’ve seen real patients. I’m not prepared for you to practise on mine.’
He would never admit he was wrong and she couldn’t take that risk with people’s lives.
‘Fine. If I get stuck, I’ll call.’ His voice was a drawl and she had a feeling he was mocking her. ‘Anything else?’
‘We share the clinics and the house calls. The deputising service does the on call and weekends.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And any filming or fancy stuff that you want to do takes place outside surgery time.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Thanks for the welcome, Riggs.’
She stiffened. What did he want? Applause? ‘If you’re expecting a red carpet and a cheering crowd, you’re not going to get one here.’
‘Evidently.’
‘And I’ll sort out Glenda.’
‘Her mother is my patient.’
‘Your father’s patient.’
He shrugged. ‘Same thing. As you just said, I’m taking my father’s patients.’ He gave a humourless laugh as he realised what he’d just said. ‘Following the old man’s dream.’
‘But not your dream, thank goodness.’
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Why ‘‘thank goodness’’?’
‘Because if you decided to take over your father’s half of the practice permanently, we’d really be in trouble.’ Frowning, Anna studied him. ‘We can make this work because it’s temporary, McKenna. Let’s both remember that. Temporary.’
‘If you think I’d want to make this a permanent arrangement then you’re even more deranged than I already think you are.’ He stifled a yawn and strolled out of the room as if he had all the time in the world, leaving her ready to punch something.
CHAPTER THREE
‘SUBSIDENCE.’
‘Sorry?’ Anna juggled several bags and her mobile phone as she tried to concentrate on what the surveyor was saying. She still had one more house call to make before she finished for the evening.
‘This cottage that you’re hoping to buy has subsidence.’ The man stepped back and angled his head. ‘Didn’t you notice that the windows are crooked?’
Anna followed his gaze, squinting against the bright evening sunshine. ‘It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with it. Crooked windows add to the character, Mike. They’re what makes it quaint.’
‘They’re what makes it dangerous and a complete no-no for your mortgage company.’ The surveyor looked at her sympathetically. ‘I hope you’re better at diagnosing patients than you are buildings, Doc. If this was an animal and you were a vet, you’d be putting it down.’
Anna groaned and dropped two of her bags. ‘Mike, no! I don’t need this. Tell me you’re joking. You have to be joking. This is my new home.’
Her dream.
Her cottage by the beach.
‘Not joking.’ He shook his head solemnly, stepping back to look at the cottage with a gloomy expression on his face. ‘It’s a bad lot, Anna, love. Let it go.’
‘Let it go? No way.’ Anna stuck out her chin at an angle that made the surveyor sigh.
‘Determination and backbone isn’t going to fix this one, I’m afraid. The only way this is going to be yours is if you put up all the cash yourself.’
Anna almost growled with frustration. ‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘Or find a rich man.’
Anna kicked a stone at the mere thought. ‘I don’t attract rich men. Rich men want useless trophy wives who’ll agree with everything they say.’
Mike laughed. ‘Not much chance of that with you. In which case, I think you’re looking at another house, Anna.’
Anna shook her head in denial and disbelief. ‘But it’s all going through. I’ve chosen the curtains …’
Mike shrugged. ‘Hang them in your next house,’ he advised, ‘but you have to give this one a miss. It’s a bundle of trouble.’
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Сара Морган
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The Celebrity Doctor′s Proposal, электронная книга автора Сара Морган на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы