CHAPTER ONE

      ABIGAIL PEARCE was going to marry a doctor. It wasn’t a conscious decision, rather something she had always known and accepted.

      What she also knew, after a week in general practice, was that there was no way he would be a GP!

      The lifestyle was horrendous. Paper mountains, patients with nothing wrong with them and patients who were clearly dying and had left it too late to do anything, all muddled up with legions of bronchitics and asthmatics —and the whole lot of them tied together with endless miles of tangled red tape!

      It didn’t suit Abbie’s chaotic and ephemeral mind at all, and as she drove towards the surgery on that lovely August morning she felt the now familiar panic tightening her chest. What would she do if someone came in and she wasn’t sure about her diagnosis? For the first time in her life there wasn’t someone else to ask, a registrar to fall back on at a moment’s notice.

      Not that she was really alone. There were other doctors in the practice, she was hardly single-handed, but the senior partner Dr Williams was off sick with a bad back, Dr Patel didn’t seem inclined to be over-friendly towards her, and Dr Chandler was on holiday. Only Peter Sargent had been welcoming, and Abbie was fairly sure it was because all his ‘heartsink’ patients had transferred themselves to her within the first thirty seconds, or so it seemed.

      And her heart was sinking, too, at the thought of the rest of the year yawning away ahead of her like something out of a horror movie. It wasn’t going to be improved by the fact that she was late, either.

      Her inventive mind busily working on excuses, she swung into the car park and skidded to an undignified halt. There was a red sports car — well, it had been once, about thirty years ago, she thought disparagingly—abandoned across the entrance, the roof down and Tina Turner blaring forth from the open cockpit. She had nearly hit it — not that she would have done it a great deal of harm, when all was said and done, but her own could have sustained considerable damage ——

      A car tooted furiously behind her, and she inched forwards until she was nearly touching the muddy bumper. What a heap!

      And blocking her space. She climbed out and locked her car, checking to see how far out into the road it was hanging. Not very. She might just get away with it until whoever owned it moved the horrible relic.

      She squeezed past the front of the car, smearing mud on her jacket as she went, and ran up the steps into the office at the back of the surgery where the practice meeting was drawing to a close.

      ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she apologised, scattering her smile among the assembled company. ‘Some yob’s abandoned a heap of scrap in the car park and I couldn’t get in.’

      ‘Ah.’

      Her eyes swivelled to the owner of the voice, and as their gazes locked a tiny quiver of something unfamiliar curled around her throat and tightened.

      She watched, mesmerised, as the stranger unravelled his long legs and stood up, the soft battered leather of his jacket tugging over his broad shoulders as he pushed the chair in, sending her pulse rocketing; confused, she dropped her eyes and they lingered over lean hips and long, long legs in faded denim jeans that hugged his body intimately, finally crumpling to a halt at the ancient trainers on his feet.

      She relaxed with a tiny sigh of relief. He looked for all the world like an overgrown college student — or one of her brothers, she thought absently, and then found herself trapped again by those extraordinary blue-gold eyes.

      He was laughing at her, aware of her minute inspection of his person and supremely, masculinely confident that he would have passed muster. As he returned the compliment with a quick, appreciative once-over, all her muscles leapt to attention again, and she felt the heat rising from her toes upwards until she flushed almost guiltily.

      ‘I’ll move it.’

      His voice was rich and deep and gravelly, and completed the process of cerebral disintegration that had started the second she clapped eyes on him. ‘What?’ she said absently.

      ‘The car.’

      She gathered her scattered thought-processes rapidly. Oh. It’s yours, then,’ she managed inanely, and to her disgust and humiliation her voice sounded breathless and far-away.

      His smile was brilliant, teasing, wicked. ‘ “Heap of scrap”,’ he said softly. ‘Is that any way to speak of my charger, when I’ve come dashing back from my holiday like a knight in shining armour to rescue you from the clutches of my colleagues? Not to mention calling me a yob!’

      ‘Oh, God,’ she mumbled under her breath, and felt the heat rising in her cheeks. Had she really said all that?

      He shrugged away from the table and held out his hand. ‘You must be Abigail Pearce. Leo Chandler — yob, doctor, knight in shining armour — at your service, ma’am.’ His hand was warm and dry and firm, engulfing hers and making her feel unexpectedly feminine and fragile. She was stunned at the shock-wave that rippled up her arm from the brief contact, and as soon as she could she whipped her hand away and tucked it into her pocket.

      He smiled knowingly. ‘I’ll move the “heap of scrap”.’

      And with a grin he sauntered out through the door and left her standing rooted to the spot, her mouth hanging slightly open.

      A slight noise behid her brought her back to reality with a bump, and, snapping her mouth shut, she turned back to the others.

      ‘Oh, God,’ she repeated, and slumped against the wall.

      Peter Sargent chuckled. ‘That’ll get you off to a flying start — good job he doesn’t take offence easily.’

      Abbie was still feeling thoroughly rattled by the encounter, and she was sure it