The Doctor She'd Never Forget. Annie Claydon
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a far more effective form of enchantment, and a great deal more dangerous.
She shouldn’t have done that. Snapping at him and walking away only drew attention to the fact that her mind had suddenly blanked, right in the middle of a conversation. She should have thought of something clever to say to change the subject.
Clever was a bit beyond her at the moment. But she knew enough to know that no medical scenes this morning meant they didn’t need a medical consultant, and Sophie had wanted to find out what he was really here for. And somewhere, hidden deep in those cool grey eyes, she’d found it. A spark of knowingness, as if he already knew the secret that no one else did.
‘Forget it.’ She muttered the words to herself, smiling grimly at the thought that forgetting came far too easily to her these days. People could, and would, suspect anything they pleased. If she didn’t confirm those suspicions, they were nothing but idle speculation.
Carly was sitting on the steps leading up to the door of her trailer, basking in the midday sun. ‘Where have you been, Soph?’
‘I met the doctor.’
‘Yeah? What’s he like?’
‘Good looking.’ Sophie had always liked dark hair and light eyes in a man. ‘Very good looking, actually. I don’t think he approves of us much, though.’
‘Why, because he’s a doctor? Just because your father disapproves, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all doctors disapprove.’
What followed or didn’t follow was more than Sophie could think about at the moment. And she didn’t want to think about her father either.
‘He might just be shy. He’s new here…’ Carly warmed to her point.
‘No. He’s not shy.’ Those grey eyes, the assessing gaze had been anything but that.
‘Perhaps you are, then. You said he was good looking.’ Carly shrugged, betraying a slight unease with the gesture.
‘I don’t know what he’s doing here today. There’s nothing medical in the script.’
‘Forget it. Just sit back and enjoy the scenery.’
‘You’ll enjoy it with me?’ If Carly was around, perhaps the effect of the doctor’s all-too-knowing gaze would be diluted a little.
Carly grinned. ‘Sorry. Can’t help you with that. I’ve only got one piece of male scenery on my mind, and he’s back in the States.’
‘So sweet. I’ll tell Mark you said that.’ Sophie smiled. Mark and Carly were solid, best friends, lovers… Just the sort of thing that she had dared to hope for with Josh. Everyone had told her that he was a risk, that he was a little more in love with her fame than he was with her, and Sophie had refused to believe it of him. But just when she’d been at her most vulnerable, Josh had dealt his most crushing blow.
Carly chuckled, opening the door of the trailer. Inside, the table was set for two, and lunch was waiting for them, the paper cups and plates of the catering truck banished in favour of china and glass. Sophie almost envied the altogether simpler life of rushing for a place in the queue, chatting with the film crew about the morning’s work.
‘Carly…’
‘Yes?’
Wordlessly, Sophie hugged her friend. How could it be that one secret could erode almost everything between them? She missed being able to talk to Carly about everything, but even her closest friends were an unknown quantity these days. And Sophie knew that if she said anything, Carly would only tell her what she didn’t want to hear, and insist she go for a check-up with a doctor.
‘What’s this for?’ Carly was clinging to her tightly.
‘Nothing. Does it have to be for something?’ Sophie gave a final squeeze of her arms around Carly’s shoulders and then let go. ‘Come on. Let’s eat.’
After the noise and chatter of the bus back to the hotel, Drew savoured the quiet of his hotel room for ten minutes, then opened his laptop and typed Sophie’s name into the search engine. Maybe if he could watch a couple of episodes of MacAdam online, he’d get more of a feel for how Sophie had been before the accident. He wasn’t convinced about that—after all she was an actress, playing a part—but he’d be damned if he’d admit to himself that he just wanted to see more of her.
It seemed that the internet knew all about Sophie. Her own website had pictures, a biography and a list of her acting roles, and Drew studied them carefully. Drama school and then some theatre work. She’d done Shakespeare, had small parts in a couple of blindingly awful films, and received critical acclaim for her last three films and for MacAdam. If it was even half-true, Sophie Warner wasn’t all tantrums and bad behaviour.
The bad behaviour was there as well, though. When Drew clicked again, there were reports of reckless driving, an exposé by an ex-boyfriend, and a video clip of her slurring her words on a talk show. Drew watched it carefully, seeing the same look of glassy-eyed confusion on Sophie’s face that he’d noticed this morning.
Drew shook his head. It could be anything. The papers interpreted it as drink or drugs, and Carly thought it was a brain injury. Either of them could be correct, and deciding which was true on the evidence he had so far was impossible.
His finger hovered over a link that mentioned scandalous photographs, then he decided that gossip and rumour weren’t going to get him any further forward. He set about streaming the first episode of MacAdam, and within ten minutes of the opening credits he was well and truly hooked.
DREW HAD SPENT the whole of the previous evening with Sophie. He’d sat down to watch one episode of MacAdam and ended up watching four, back to back. He’d told himself it was an interesting show, with a great plot, but, in fact, it was Sophie he’d been unable to take his eyes off, and Sophie who’d inhabited his dreams, until it had been time to peel himself out of bed for another early start. This morning, it was in the large conference room at the hotel, which had been temporarily set aside as a rehearsal area.
Sophie looked different again. Different from the tough cop, with personal problems and a heart of gold that he’d watched last night. Different from the neatly dressed doctor he’d met yesterday.
Today she was the actress, dressed in an oversized sweatshirt, which fell by design from one shoulder, exposing the curve of her neck and the narrow strap of her top underneath. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy bundle at the back of her head, a few wisps framing her face.
And she was alone. Sitting in one of the chairs that had been cleared against the wall to make some space in the centre of the room, yawning as she leafed through the pages of a small, leather-bound notebook.
The swing doors slapped closed behind Drew and she looked up. Even Sophie’s frown was like a ray of sunshine, waking him instantly from the drowsy hangover of too little sleep.
‘Hi.’ She didn’t say his name, and Drew wondered briefly whether she’d forgotten it again. After last night, when he’d thought he’d got to know her so well, it was a humbling experience.
‘Morning. Are you ready to start?’
She shrugged, as if being in attendance was about all he could reasonably expect of her. ‘I already know CPR.’ She slipped the notebook into a large designer handbag, which lay on the seat next to her. He’d give a lot to know what that notebook contained.
He called her bluff, walking towards the dummy, which someone had arranged in a seated position, legs crossed, on one of the nearby chairs. ‘The script says that you’re resuscitating someone who’s been knocked down in the street by a truck.’
Drew arranged the dummy on the floor, in a pose that vaguely resembled the kind of position