Partners by Contract (7 page)

It took Phoebe half an hour or so to finish up her notes once the Robertses had left. Her weariness didn’t diminish the pleasant glow of satisfaction—it was always good
when patients left feeling happier than when they’d arrived.

The waiting room was empty as she walked past, but though the hour was late Sally was still there, her head bent intently over the filing cabinet.

‘I’m off!’ Phoebe called cheerfully, poking her head through the sliding glass panel that screened off the reception area from the waiting room. ‘Shouldn’t you be, too?’

‘In theory, yes,’ Sally confirmed darkly. ‘And I’m meant to be meeting Marty at seven. I’ll never make it now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Ellen wants this lot refiled by tomorrow.’ Sally gave the manila folder in her hand a harassed look. ‘I did mean to do it earlier, but it’s been one of those days. Mrs Dennis’s waters broke in the middle of Fran’s clinic, then Will wanted me to track down Mr Henshaw’s results from the Infirmary and they didn’t—’

‘I get the picture,’ Phoebe interrupted, halting the flow with a raised hand. ‘How about if I help?’

‘You?’

‘Is there some problem with that?’

‘You’re a doctor,’ the young woman replied, as though that said everything.

Phoebe grinned. ‘Where I used to work everybody was expected to muck in together. I’m probably better at scrubbing floors than filing, but I’ll do my best,’ she promised the astonished girl. ‘By the way, what’s the latest news with Mrs Dennis?’

‘Another boy, seven pounds eight ounces.’

‘Did she make it to the hospital this time?’ From what Phoebe understood, Angela Dennis was famous locally for having so far produced one baby in the back seat of a Ford Escort and the other on the steps of the maternity unit. The
regulars at the village pub had been running on book on where she’d have it this time.

‘With three minutes to spare.’ Sally went on to recount to an amused Phoebe her own particular formula for a pain-free birth which, as far as Phoebe could tell, mainly consisted of thinking positive thoughts.

‘Well, it never does any harm to be positive,’ she responded tactfully when asked her opinion. Privately she hoped Sally wasn’t going to be in for too much of a shock when her time eventually came to put her theory to the test!

They finished the filing in about twenty minutes.

‘How about a lift home?’ Phoebe asked to halt Sally’s embarrassing gratitude.

‘Thanks, but I borrowed Mum’s car today. I’d better go and tell Ellen I’m off.’

‘Is she working late, too?’

‘If Dr Carlyle is here, she’s working late,’ came the cynical response.

Phoebe hadn’t known Con was in the building. Now she did know, hanging around didn’t seem such a good idea. Keeping a tight lid on her panic, she grabbed her coat and bade Sally a hurried goodnight.

The door of Connor’s office was open as she approached, and the stress of this discovery sent her heart rate sky high. It suddenly occurred to her as she was about to hurry past the open door that there was no point in putting off the inevitable—they were going to bump into each other some time, and how bad could it be? Very bad, an unco-operative voice in the back of her head replied.

Good idea or bad, she was committed now. Taking a deep breath, she tapped lightly on the door and walked in. The room was empty. Phoebe accepted this reprieve with a hefty sigh of relief.

She turned to leave before her luck ran out and found herself facing a wall filled with a large water-colour. It wasn’t Penny’s usual style, but a painting of a quaint seaside village in Wales Dad had taken them to most years when they’d been children. She pressed a hand to her mouth as her eyes filled with tears. She heard the very distinctive sound of Ellen Patterson’s heels close by and willed the tears to recede.

‘Do you like it?’

‘Very much.’ Phoebe was able to respond in a composed manner as the other woman came to stand beside her.

‘Connor’s wife did it, I believe. She was actually a very well-known botanical artist.’

‘Yes, she was.’

‘You know her work?’

Phoebe lifted her chin and turned to face the other woman. Ellen’s blonde hair was smooth, sleek and as faultlessly presented as the eggshell-blue skirt and pearl-grey matching twin set she wore. You had to hand it to the woman, Phoebe conceded reluctantly. She looked sexy in the most conservative of outfits. Perhaps I’d warm to her more if she ever had a hair out of place... Then again...maybe not!

‘I knew her,’ she confirmed. ‘Penny was my twin sister.’ She was tired of subterfuge, and if the blonde imagined the truth made her some sort of threat it was just too bad.

The pencilled eyebrows almost disappeared into Ellen’s hairline, and her smile became even more strained and fixed.

‘Really. You were twins?’ Ellen looked as if she was adding two and two. The results of her mathematical calculations appeared to make her extremely unhappy.

Phoebe nodded.

‘Identical?’

Another nod.

‘How strange it must be for Connor, seeing you.’

Tell me something I don’t already know. ‘You’d have to ask him about that.’

‘I probably shall. Connor does tend to confide in me...’ She gave a small smug smile which managed to neatly implant the idea that he did more than confide...

‘Then he really must have changed,’ Phoebe responded briskly. ‘Because the Con of old was always ridiculously strong and silent—you couldn’t prise information out of him with a crowbar!’

‘And do you like your men strong and silent, Phoebe?’

‘A piece of wood is strong and silent,’ she replied, shamelessly fudging the issue because a cosy girlie chat this was not! ‘Actually, Ellen...’ She glanced pointedly at her watch. ‘I must be going,’ she explained, hoping the woman wouldn’t make demands of her imagination by enquiring what tryst required her urgent presence. She doubted whether a cocoa really qualified.

‘Of course.’ Like royalty, Ellen indicated her gracious permission had been granted by a slight inclination of her head. ‘But tomorrow I’d like to have a word about some of your prescribing. We do have a drug budget to keep within, you know...’

‘I don’t prescribe anything that isn’t necessary,’ Phoebe replied, her hackles rising at the implication that she was reckless in her prescribing.

‘But if there’s a cheaper alternative?’

‘I’d prescribe it if it was the most effective treatment.’

‘That’s all well and good, but the partners rely on me to keep an eye on such things.’ She gave another of her superior little smiles. ‘We have to prioritise...’

Phoebe, who had heard all the arguments and still
wasn’t convinced, nodded. ‘You prioritise, I’ll treat people.’

Still seething from her encounter with Ellen, Phoebe stomped down the corridor past Will’s door. A light shone underneath. Desperate or not, she was going to tell Will she couldn’t stay on the extra time he wanted her to. She wouldn’t work with that woman for a moment longer than necessary!

‘Can I have a word, Will? Oh, sorry, I thought you were alone,’ she mumbled, unable to control her instinctive reaction to duck furtively back out of the door.

‘Phoebe, the very girl... We were just talking about you.’

‘You were?’ Feeling extremely foolish, she leant against the wall, gently banging her head against the paintwork. ‘I was just...’ Just making myself look a complete prat, that’s all. ‘See you in the morning.’

‘No, don’t go! It’s only Con.’

That was the problem! A term didn’t exist that could sufficiently cover the degree of gladness she’d experienced on seeing Connor. It involved every hair on her head, every blood cell circulating in her veins. Of course, she wasn’t totally stupid—though some might dispute that, she ruefully conceded. There was also dismay, awkwardness...panic, but all paled into insignificance beside the soaring light-headed feeling of inappropriate joy.

‘So I see,’ Phoebe responded, taking a deep fortifying breathe before reluctantly re-entering the room. The men were seated behind Will’s desk, several patient files open before them. The computer screen was showing a screensaver. ‘How are you, Con?’

She looked every inch the relaxed, confident young professional as she loosened the single button of her jacket. Only the most observant individual would have noticed the
tell-tale flush across the smooth curve of her high cheekbones and the over-rapid rise and fall of her breasts beneath the silk mix top she wore over her fashionably loose trousers.

She intentionally aimed the question at the diploma on the wall above Connor’s blond head rather than at the man himself, which wasn’t easy. Put Con in a room, any room, and he dominated it. Put him in a small cramped office...well! It was one of life’s little mysteries. He wasn’t pushy, loud or flamboyant, and it wasn’t just his looks. He was just that rare type of person who had a presence.

‘I’ve just finished another physio session with Becca.’ His elegant hand massaged his leg through the protective layers. Rebecca Wilson, who did several physio sessions a week at Hayfield, had worked with top athletes before she’d taken several years off after the birth of her twin daughters.

‘So now I hurt in places I didn’t know I had.’ He flexed his powerful shoulders, rotating his neck as if to relieve tension.

The tangle of fine hairs on his forearm caught the light. Phoebe found the minor detail deeply distracting. She nodded stiffly, unable to respond appropriately to the dry humour in his voice, and willed her spasming stomach muscles into temporary submission.

‘Well, you’re in good hands.’ Her own, which she slid up the loose sleeves of her open jacket, were shaking. ‘It won’t be long before you’re back in the saddle.’

‘Sooner than you think,’ Will interjected dryly.

Phoebe shot him a questioning look.

‘Con wants to take a few surgeries.’ Phoebe’s gasp of dismay was audible. ‘See, Con, Phoebe thinks you’re mad, too,’ Will responded with a smug I-told-you-so look at his partner.

No, I’m the mad one, Phoebe thought dully. I’m still here. Working alongside Connor. Seeing him every day...pretending... Her head moved slowly from side to side in dull acknowledgement of the impossibility of such a situation.

‘The ability to do the four-minute mile isn’t a prerequisite for sitting behind a desk, handing out prescriptions.’

Will snorted sarcastically. ‘Put like that, the job sounds so interesting...so challenging...’

‘You know what I mean.’ Con’s grin held restless impatience. His able foot was braced against the big desk as he pushed the swivel chair he sat in backwards. ‘You’re pushed with this flu epidemic...’

‘Not officially a flu epidemic yet.’

Connor brushed aside the semantics with a wave of his hand. They all knew it was only a matter of time before some government statistician confirmed what they already knew. ‘And I’m going slowly off my head stuck at home. It makes perfect sense.’ In one fluid motion he was on his feet, crutches in place. ‘You need me.’

Was it by accident or design that his disturbing eyes sought out and found hers as he made this soft uncompromising announcement? Did it matter? The results were just as traumatic, no matter the cause. Her chest felt as if it might explode any moment and the tingling sexual awareness that coursed through her tense frame was so strong she could literally taste the spicy tang of it on her tongue.

It took all her will-power to wrench her eyes clear of the mesmeric pull of his level gaze.

‘Nobody is irreplaceable, Con,’ Will reminded his partner.

If only that were true, Phoebe thought dully.

‘Tell that to Trish,’ Con drawled.

Will frowned. ‘What has Trish been saying?’

‘That she’d quite like to sit through a meal without her husband vanishing on a house call.’

‘Trish is used to that.’ Despite Will’s dismissive tone, Phoebe could hear the edge of troubled concern in his voice—he put his young family ahead of everything else. The last thing she needed was for Will to decide he wanted Connor back. She was still committed to another couple of weeks at Hayfield.

‘I don’t think you should compromise your recovery...’ She forced herself to smile. ‘We’ll cope.’

The fractional shift of Connor’s powerful shoulders conceded her point. ‘We should talk about it.’

‘Over dinner,’ Will added on cue. ‘At the Royal Pheasant,’ he elaborated with his most cajolingly helpless look.

Phoebe’s suspicion sharpened into outright distrust. The whole conversation had taken on a distinctly unspontaneous quality. She might only have been in the area a few weeks, but she knew the Pheasant wasn’t the sort of hotel you could just walk into and demand a table on the off-chance. Its reputation meant you needed to book in advance.

‘I’ve a prior engagement,’ she responded warily. She didn’t know what they were up to but she had a gut feeling that delving any deeper into this conspiracy wasn’t a good idea.

‘That’s a pity,’ Will moaned. ‘After Con put Ellen off, too...’

‘Anyone we know?’ Connor asked, shooting his partner a silencing look before casually manoeuvring himself into a position that coincidentally cut off her access to the door.

Phoebe, unaccountably warm, began to fiddle nervously with the loose neck of her top, pleating the fabric between her finger and thumb.

‘Connor!’ Will remonstrated, shooting Phoebe an apologetic look. ‘The girl is allowed a private life.’

‘Private life nothing,’ Con responded scornfully.

Phoebe’s generous lips thinned into a mutinous line. She was perfectly aware that if his scornful dismissal of her personal life hadn’t been so accurate it wouldn’t have rankled so much.

‘I do happen to have one.’ The blue eyes swivelled in her direction and her pulse rate started acting up again. ‘A p-private life, that is,’ she persisted stubbornly.

‘Lucky you,’ Con drawled, his eyes not leaving hers. ‘She’s also not stupid, Will, and you, old mate, are not the world’s most subtle negotiator.’

‘Thanks for that, Con,’ Phoebe responded indignantly. ‘I have to tell you “quite bright” might have earned you more brownie points than “not stupid”.’

Connor’s thickly lashed eyes levelled on her indignantly flushed face. ‘Your intelligence has never been in doubt, Phoebe.’ Pity the same couldn’t be said for his own!