Prognosis Incompatible

by Andrews, Amy

  Prognosis Incompatible

  Amy Andrews

  Published by Amy Andrews, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  PROGNOSIS INCOMPATIBLE

  First edition. September 9, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Amy Andrews.

  Written by Amy Andrews.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Dear Reader Letter

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  PROGNOSIS CHRISTMAS BABY

  MORE BOOKS FROM AMY ANDREWS

  This book was previously published as An Unexpected Proposal.

  Please note Australian/UK spelling used throughout.

  Dear Reader Letter

  Dear Reader,

  Opposites attract. That’s what they say, isn’t it? As a writer, this is a fascinating premise. What if two people, complete opposites in every way, were attracted to each other—does the attraction win out despite the differences?

  Out of this foundation, Madeline and Marcus emerged.

  Conservative, in control Maddy. A gorgeous, career-focused woman who knows what she wants out of life. A job that she loves and marriage with two point four kids.

  And Marcus. The complete opposite. Sexy, flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, thrill-seeking, footloose and fancy-free, Marcus. Sworn off marriage for life and perfectly happy to always play “the uncle.”

  Then I asked the question — what if? What if I threw them together? What if I gave them two vastly different jobs that were philosophically incompatible: conventional versus alternative medicine? Such a hotly debated topic and one with two very passionate and opposite camps, especially in the guise of Madeline and Marcus.

  The only thing these two have in common when their worlds collide is an inexplicable instantaneous attraction.

  Marcus is everything Madeline doesn’t want, but all she needs. Madeline is everything Marcus most definitely wants, but does a footloose, fancy-free man really need any woman?

  Woohoo! It’s a hot time in an old Brisbane town when these two clash swords. I hope you enjoy their story and rejoice in their triumph over their differences to prove love really does conquer all.

  Love,

  Amy xxx

  CHAPTER ONE

  MADELINE HARRINGTON was grateful for the air-conditioning in her car as she pulled up at the roadworks. There was heavy earthmoving machinery blocking the way and, as the heat rose in visible waves off the black tar of the road, she’d never been more pleased to have an indoor job. The worker holding the stop sign looked hot and sweaty, his skin an unhealthy weathered brown.

  Skin cancer just waiting to happen.

  It was hard to believe, watching Brisbane shimmer in the afternoon sun, that she’d been in the throes of a British winter only twenty-four hours ago. Jackets and gloves and woollen hats. As she’d flown out of Heathrow the temperature had just managed to struggle into positive figures.

  If London had been a fridge, Brisbane felt like a furnace!

  Maddy yawned and shut her eyes briefly as the overwhelming fatigue of jet lag took hold. She sighed as it gathered her into its folds but fought her way out again a minute later, rubbing her eyes to ease the grittiness. The road blockage didn’t look like it was going to clear any time soon and she desperately wanted a shower.

  Wanted her bed.

  Her gaze wandered to the neighbourhood skate park where teenagers rode their skateboards up and down the curved cement walls. The doctor in her saw all the horrible possibilities but the uncoordinated female admired their skill and lack of fear.

  A man entered her line of vision, expertly negotiating the bumps and ramps and shooting up off the wall, his skateboard staying miraculously attached to his feet even in mid-air, and landing again like he was riding a wave instead of unforgiving concrete. He was at least twenty years older than the other riders but somehow managed not to look ridiculous despite the age difference.

  He was wearing a raggedy pair of cut-off denim shorts and nothing else. His chest was magnificent, tanned, the abdominal muscles well defined — cut, wasn’t that what it was called these days? He pirouetted perfectly, one end of the board in the air, the other grounded, and her eyes were drawn downwards to his powerful quads flexing and straining to maintain balance.

  She could see the hairs covering his legs were dark brown even from this distance. A smattering of the same covered his pecs and narrowed to a fine trail that disappeared behind the waistband of his shorts. His head, too, was crowned with brown hair, short around the back and sides and longer on top.

  Why wasn’t he wearing a helmet? Macho idiot.

  He looked like the stereotypical bronzed Aussie, at home in the outdoors, kicking a footy or surfing. Except today his choice of wave was concrete instead of water. Maybe he was some kind of adrenaline junkie — any wave would do?

  The thought horrified Maddy almost as much as it fascinated. How would it be to spend your life bumming around skate parks? Or the beach? No responsibilities. No worries. No patients to see. No lives to be responsible for. No beepers. No mobile phones.

  But wait...he appeared to be with a little boy who looked about six or seven. His son? There were definite similarities between the two. The boy looked at him with total admiration and the man ruffled his hair as he helped him on his skateboard. He stood back as the boy performed a trick and clapped loudly as he successfully completed it.

  At least the kid was wearing a helmet.

  The man lifted the boy up on his shoulders and spun him around. The kid held on and laughed, his head thrown back, the sunshine accentuating his exhilaration.

  Madeline felt a weird pull low down. The man had dimples. He was gorgeous! Pure male. One hundred per cent testosterone. The boy obviously loved him and strangely enough that made him even more attractive.

  Looking at him made Maddy...restless and a feeling that something was seriously missing from her life reared its ugly head.

  God! She must be tired. Since when had overtly masculine dudes been her type? Spoken for ones at that? She returned her attention to the roadworks, suddenly desperate to get away from this inexplicable transient attraction, but the red stop sign was still stubbornly facing her way.

  Resisting for only a beat or two she snuck another glance at skater boy and found herself wondering what it would be like to be with a man like him. Despite the...casual vibe, there was a presence about him that reached across the fifty-odd metres that separated them.

  He looked like he knew what he was doing. What he wanted and where he was going. He looked dominant and in command.

  Laughing again, he jumped back on his board and Maddy recognised something else about him. He looked like he knew how to have fun. To laugh at the world and himself.

  Also how to kiss a woman. How to pleasure one.

  She shivered and turned the air-con down. Kiss? Pleasure?

  Where the hell had that come from?

  OK, it had been a while. Seven weeks since she and her fiancé had split up, and several months more since they’d last been intimate. But hell, that had never really been the focus of their relationship and re-establishing the family practice had taken up all her time and energy over the last two years, anyway.

  She hadn’t had time for carnal thoughts. Neither of them had.

  They’d barely seen each other for months, with her work and his
long shifts at the hospital and studying for his exams. Him calling the engagement off in the middle of it all had been just one more thing on her plate. She’d been confused when he’d said he needed time apart.

  How much more apart did he want?

  But she doubted it would be permanent — a decade of history was hard to walk away from forever.

  Skater boy laughed again and oozed sex appeal all over the park. It brought her temporarily out-of-order relationship with Simon into sharp contrast. Frankly, she couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, just looking at Simon had made her think sexual thoughts.

  Maddy shook her head - it was just jet lag responsible for these uncharacteristic thoughts. Sex and sexual urges had never ruled her life. She’d been thrown one too many curve balls to be a free-loving kind of girl. For goodness sake! She was a thirty-year-old doctor, she’d seen more naked men in her life than she’d had hot dinners.

  Why would looking at barely-dressed skater guy have any effect? Why did his chest and his thighs and his laugh make her want things she’d never wanted before?

  A car horn blasted from behind and Maddy was relieved to see the sign had been turned to the yellow ‘slow’ side. She accelerated away probably a little more quickly than the sign had indicated but she was grateful for something else to do, some respite from her jumbled jet-lagged thoughts.

  But it didn’t prevent her from catching one last glimpse of the man in her rear-view mirror. Prevent her from feeling another twinge of discontent.

  Damn him. Her life was just fine.

  Just. Fine.

  Madeline pulled up outside work a few hours later. She’d unpacked. She’d had a shower. She felt slightly revived. But the fog of fatigue still clung to her and she’d known she’d had to get out of the house before she’d succumbed to her bed and the seductive lure of sleep.

  It was way too early to go to bed despite her exhaustion. If she went now she’d be awake at three in the morning with no hope of going back to sleep. So a quick catch-up trip into work late on a quiet Saturday afternoon was the perfect diversion.

  She noticed the next-door shop, which had been empty when she’d left, was in the process of a fit-out. A painter was admiring his handiwork, putting the finishing touches to the signage on the glass sliding door.

  Dr Marcus Hunt. Natural Therapist.

  Madeline stared at it for a few moments, repeating it over and over in her head until her sluggish brain computed the full implications. She felt the slow burn of rising anger.

  Over her dead body!

  There was nothing quite like anger to wake a person up and Madeline felt it white and hot and burning in her gut. She was more than awake now - she felt alive again. The fog cleared from her brain and the weariness that was deep within her bones dissipated in an instant.

  How many patients had she fixed up after they’d seen alternative medicine characters? People who had let their conditions and diseases run out of control while some charlatan had used voodoo or a spell book and given them false hope?

  And then there was Abby.

  Maddy shook her head – no freaking way. Brushing abruptly past the painter, she slid back the door and entered. It was dim in stark contrast to the glare of summer afternoon sunshine and she removed her sunglasses. The chemical smell of paint assaulted her nostrils as she quickly scanned the room littered with boxes and painter’s trestles.

  ‘I’m sorry, we’re not open for business until next week.’ A deep, masculine voice drifted towards her from somewhere beyond the clutter of the immediate surroundings.

  It resonated around the room and goose-bumps broke out on her arms despite the stuffiness of the room. His voice made Madeline think of the guy at the skate park and she gave herself a mental shake as he entered from a doorway to the right and leant lazily against the jamb, filling the space easily.

  Madeline blinked. What the hell? Skater boy was smiling at her, pinning her to the spot with his laughing blue eyes and boyish dimples.

  At least he was dressed this time. Well...mostly, anyway. He was sort of wearing a shirt. White, long-sleeved but, completely unbuttoned, revealing that perfectly muscled abdomen. The impulse to touch that stomach, to run her fingers down the dark trail of hair and watch his abdominal muscles twitch beneath her nails was shocking.

  In his right hand he held a well-used paintbrush and she thought absently that she’d been wrong about his employment status. He did have a job. A painter, or decorator, or something similar. There were flecks of paint in his hair and the desire to touch them, too, was compelling.

  She couldn’t help but compare him to Simon again. Physically they weren’t too dissimilar. Her ex-fiancé was a little shorter, a little less bulky, a little paler and his chest hair a little sparser. But there was something intangible about this man, something magnetic that Simon just didn’t have.

  Simon’s face was pleasant with a ready smile that put everyone at ease. It oozed nice. Skater guy’s was sexy with a wicked smile that put her on edge and made her forget all about nice. Simon was your average good-looking guy.

  There was absolutely nothing average about this man.

  And in their whole ten years as a couple Simon had never made her body hum like it was right now.

  Madeline frowned, confused by her uncharacteristic feelings. Labourers were not her type. Buff wasn’t her type. Men that knew their way around skate parks weren’t her type. Men with children weren’t her type.

  What the hell was happening to her?

  ‘May I help you?’

  His voice was rich and deep and barely contained his obvious amusement at her appraisal. She was standing a few metres away but the caress of the air currents his voice had disturbed, swayed over her seductively.

  It was as if he had physically touched her.

  She blinked at him blankly, trying to remember why she was there. His amused gaze eventually worked its way into her consciousness and Maddy made an effort to pull herself together. So, the man had a nice body. She’d come to talk to the naturopath, not to ogle the removalist or the decorator or whoever in the hell this man was.

  ‘Ah...no. I came to talk to Dr Hunt, but it appears he’s not here...so I’ll let you get back to your...duties.’

  Marcus smothered a smile, suppressing the urge to throw back his head and laugh out loud. Put in your place, dude. This woman had just looked him over, summed him up and dismissed him as nothing in about thirty seconds flat!

  What a snob. What a sexy, beautiful snob.

  She was tall, her head crowned with the most magnificent red hair he’d ever seen. It was curly and looked slightly wild despite her efforts to tame it into a neat bundle at the back of her head and he had a sudden vision of it spread over his chest.

  And his pillows.

  Emerald-green eyes sparkled above high cheekbones and two luscious lips. Kissable lips. Very kissable lips.

  Her serious, obviously expensive suit did nothing to hide her fantastic figure. Marcus’s loins stirred as he speculated on the bits of her long legs that were hidden by her skirt. She looked prim and proper and he was hit by the urge to get her dirty and messy.

  It was powerful, bordering on primitive.

  She looked tired but there was an undercurrent, a vibe of tension around her that was almost palpable. Like a fully wound spring ready to unfurl at a second’s notice.

  He’d never met anyone so uptight in his life.

  A large diamond flashed on the ring finger of her left hand. Surely someone getting regular sex couldn’t be this tense?

  ‘I’m Dr Marcus Hunt,’ he stated, burying his left hand deep into his shorts pocket.

  Madeline watched the movement hypnotically, until she became aware that she was staring at a particular part of his anatomy that she should not be staring at and dragged her eyes off him, shocked at her behaviour.

  He found it amusing, she could tell. His grin, barely suppressed, adding a sparkle to those blue, blue eyes. ‘You’re Dr Hunt?’ Mad
dy’s tone found the perfect mix of sarcasm and disbelief.

  She had to get back some control here.

  ‘Yes.’ He swapped the paintbrush to his left hand, wiped his right on his denim-covered buttock and offered it to her.

  She ignored it, her rudeness seeming to amuse him even further. Madeline got the impression that nothing fazed Marcus Hunt.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Madeline Harrington. Dr Madeline Harrington.’

  ‘Oh, right...from next door.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll be neighbours, then.’ The thought, despite the bling on her hand, was immensely appealing.

  ‘Ah, no...I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh?’ Marcus queried, not particularly worried. ‘Problem?’

  ‘Two, actually. One...’ Madeline held up one finger. ‘I object, most strenuously, to you using the title of Doctor. Naturopaths or any other alternative medicine nuts are not permitted to call themselves doctors.’

  ‘They can if they hold a medical degree,’ he stated matter-of-factly. ‘And I’m a homeopath, actually.’

  Madeline blinked. ‘You’re...a real doctor?’

  Apparently not insulted by her frank incredulity, he threw back his head and laughed. The long column of his neck was exposed to her view and, despite her irritation, an errant brain cell dared her to lick it.

  ‘Is that so hard to believe?’

  ‘Quite frankly, yes,’ Madeline admitted. He didn’t look like any kind of doctor she had ever known. Her father had been a doctor, his two nearing-retirement partners were doctors. Simon was a doctor!

  Those men were what doctors looked like.

  ‘I believe there was a second?’ Marcus prompted after some time had elapsed and Madeline hadn’t continued.

  She made a supreme effort to drag her eyes away from his mouth and concentrate on the conversation. ‘Yes. Secondly.’ She cleared her throat, her chin jutting determinedly ‘It will be a cold day in hell before I will allow you to practise this...quackery, this medieval...mumbo-jumbo, right next door to our practice. My partners and I will not legitimise this hocus-pocus by allowing you premises next to ours.’