The Doctor's Bride by Sunrise

by Josie Metcalfe

  But he had noticed her and had sent her a grin exactly like the one he’d just sent to Hazel, and she’d been utterly captivated.

  The whole of that year she’d spent haunting the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of him, and gradually from an easygoing grin their relationship had graduated through breathless pleasantries to actual conversations while they’d waited for the bus to take them to and from school.

  By the time her sixteenth birthday had come around they’d confided so many secrets and ambitions to each other—including the fact that he was aiming for a career in medicine—but one thing she would always remember was the fact that it had been the day when Adam had kissed her for the first time.

  Then he’d gone away to begin his training and, apart from that dreadful week when he’d returned to support his mother through the wait until his father’s body had been found, then the heart-breaking memorial service that the whole of Penhally seemed to have attended, this was the first time Adam had ever returned to the town of his birth.

  So, why now? she wondered as he and Mike discovered a mutual interest in the mining history of Cornwall. She couldn’t imagine that the beautiful willowy blonde in their wedding photo would appreciate burying herself in a rural place like this. She was definitely a London person and would probably only feel at home in the more pretentiously exclusive corners of the county.

  Well, at least I won’t be called on to socialise with her, she thought, stifling the pang that her lack of choices over her career brought. She would have loved to have become a doctor, too—would have loved nothing more than to have followed Adam through medical school. But it wasn’t to be. In her final year at school her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and there had been no way that she could have countenanced the idea of leaving the last beloved member of her family without support while she underwent the gruelling rounds of chemotherapy, surgery and then more chemotherapy.

  Still, Maggie couldn’t imagine that a GP’s wife would be terribly keen to socialise with a mere paramedic. Not that she saw her profession as inferior, just different. Paramedics were often the first people to see a patient and it was in their hands that patients’ lives rested while they were stabilised for transportation to hospital. Far fewer accident victims would survive were it not for the existence of paramedics. But even though she was proud of what they were able to do for accident victims and of the green uniform she wore, she had to admit that they were still definitely from different echelons in the medical hierarchy.

  She managed to keep herself on the edge of the conversation so that she didn’t draw Hazel’s attention. She certainly didn’t want to make it obvious that she was avoiding speaking to Adam, but just when she was trying to find a way to edge towards the door unnoticed, there was a disturbance somewhere out in the street.

  ‘Nick!’ screamed a woman’s voice. ‘Somebody! Help!’

  ‘That sounds almost like Kate Althorp,’ Hazel said, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, no! There must have been an accident in the boatyard.’

  Adam and Mike were already heading for the stairs, their longer legs out stripping Maggie’s so that she was playing catch-up by the time they reached the reception area.

  ‘What’s the matter, Kate?’ Adam demanded, his eyes already beginning a primary survey of the white, shaking woman in front of him. ‘Where are you hurt? Was it the machinery in the boatyard?’

  ‘It’s not me. It’s Jem…’ She held up her clenched fist and they saw the mobile phone for the first time. ‘He rang me and said that there’s been an accident and they’re hurt.’

  ‘What accident and who’s hurt?’ demanded Nick Tremayne, as he appeared from the direction of his consulting room, a bewildered patient following him into the hallway.

  ‘Jem phoned me,’ Kate said through chattering teeth, her whole body vibrating with the onset of shock. ‘He’s with some other boys. They went exploring and there’s been a rockfall in a mine. They’re hurt.’

  ‘Which mine, Kate?’ Nick had shouldered Adam aside and was gripping her shoulders in both hands now, as though he thought he could force her to hold herself together and concentrate. ‘There are hundreds of the things all over Cornwall.’

  ‘I know that, but I don’t know which one!’ she wailed. Maggie automatically stepped forward when she saw that the woman’s knees were about to fail her, but Nick had the situation in hand, wrapping an arm around Kate and swiftly lowering her onto the nearest chair.

  ‘You’re wasting time, Kate. Stop yowling and think!’ he said sharply, and they all heard her draw in a shocked breath, her dark eyes wide with hurt at his apparently brutal treatment. But his curtness obviously had the desired effect because she was no longer out of control.

  ‘He didn’t tell me which mine,’ she said, tears still streaming down her pale cheeks. ‘And I tried to ring him back but the signal was too weak. You know how poor reception can be around here.’

  ‘Well, what did he say?’ Nick demanded.

  ‘That they were exploring in the mine and…and something…or someone…fell and they’re hurt. Oh, God, Nick, he’s hurt. My baby’s hurt and I don’t know where he is or—?’

  ‘They?’ Nick snapped. ‘Who are they…his friends? Who are his friends? And where were they going to play?’

  ‘They’re…I don’t know…’ She shook her head. ‘Some boys from the school, I think. He just waved goodbye to me and said he’d be back for tea and…and…’ She nearly lost it again but there must have been something in Nick’s face that forced her to hang onto her control. ‘They looked a bit older than him, but he’s so tall for his age… He only got his bike for Christmas and he’s already starting to grow out of it and—’

  ‘They were on bikes?’ Maggie interrupted as an image suddenly leapt into her head, the one she’d spotted through the windscreen of the ambulance of a tangle of brightly coloured bicycle frames half-hidden behind some gorse bushes. ‘Did you say there were four or five of them, all on bikes?’

  ‘Yes! You saw them? Oh, Maggie, where were they? You could have brought them down to the surgery in the ambulance. Surely, if they were hurt, you could have—’

  ‘Kate,’ she interrupted gently, ‘I didn’t actually see any of the boys, but I’m almost certain that I know where their bikes are.’ She turned towards her colleague. ‘Mike, you remember where you had to stop the ambulance when Mr Dinnis…when I had to take care of Mr Dinnis?’ Sometimes patient confidentiality could be a nuisance when you had to be so careful to watch every word. ‘Well, I could see some gorse over the stone wall and there were several bikes there. I couldn’t see how many but there were anything up to half a dozen.’

  ‘Take me there, please!’ Kate demanded, surging to her feet wild-eyed. ‘I’ve got to find my son. He’s all I’ve got left of…of…’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere until we’ve contacted the emergency services,’ Nick said firmly, pressing her back into her seat. ‘We need to—’

  ‘I already dialled 999 and told them Jem was stuck down a mine.’ It was Kate’s turn to interrupt. ‘They said they were going to send emergency services to Penhally…to meet up here, at the surgery…’

  ‘That’s because all our staff have done emergency rescue training…as you know well because you were the one to arrange it when you were practice manager,’ Nick reminded her.

  ‘In the meantime, I could go up the hill with Maggie and Mike and see if we can find out if we’ve got the right mine,’ Adam suggested, and even as Maggie’s brain registered that he’d had a good idea, her heart sank at the thought of being any closer to him than absolutely necessary.

  She was still coming to terms with the fact that he was just as heart-breakingly handsome as ever and that he was for ever out of reach. The prospect of having to work with him on a regular basis wasn’t something she wanted to contemplate.

  In fact, it might be the only thing that could persuade her to move away from her beloved Penhally.

  ‘Good idea, Adam,’ Nick agreed,
even though it was obvious that he would rather be the one in the thick of any activity. ‘We’ll wait to hear from you and lead the rescue teams up to you if Maggie’s right.’

  Maggie saw Mike beckoning her to the ambulance and realised that he’d gone out to take details from despatch of their next callout. If it was another heart-attack victim, like Walter Dinnis, she would have no option but to give Adam directions to the place she’d seen the bikes and leave him to find his own way. She was not in charge of determining priorities when the emergency calls came through and would have to go where she was told.

  ‘That was Dispatch,’ Mike confirmed. ‘They know we’re almost at the end of our shift but they’re telling us to stay on duty here and do whatever we can until they can send out a replacement crew to relieve us.’

  ‘Shall I come with you?’ Adam asked. ‘Or would it be better if I followed you in my own vehicle?’

  ‘It’s your choice,’ Maggie said briskly, grateful that if he were to come with them, he’d have to travel in the back of the vehicle. She didn’t feel as if she was ready for any closer contact until she’d got her emotions a little better under control around him. It would be nice to know something simple…such as whether she loved him or loathed him after the way they’d parted a year ago.

  ‘If you’re coming with us you’ll have to hop in the back and hang on—tight!’ Mike called out. ‘That twisting hill out of Penhally isn’t comfortable at the best of times, and it’s down right evil in an ambulance.’

  ‘I’ll follow you in my car, then,’ he said as Maggie double-checked that the back doors were firmly closed and raced towards the passenger door to climb into the cab.

  Mike was already reversing the ungainly vehicle out of the surgery car park as Adam put the key in the ignition of his car, and when the ambulance driver gunned the powerful engine along the road edging the harbour, with blue lights and siren both going, Adam was surprised to see just how fast he was having to travel to keep up with them.

  A middle-aged car driver tried to dispute priority as they approached the narrow bottleneck of Harbour Bridge but rapidly changed his mind when Mike flipped the head lights up full and drove straight at him. Adam had no difficulty following in his wake but at Higher Bridge they both had to slow down just long enough to negotiate the tight corner onto the narrow bridge with the massive granite parapets—they wouldn’t be going anywhere if they side swiped one of those—and then he could hear the full-throated roar of the engine that told him that Mike was using every ounce of power to pull up the winding road out of the steep-sided valley as quickly as possible.

  Even though it had been years since he’d lived in Penhally, the road was familiar enough that Adam could almost switch to automatic pilot to drive it, his thoughts centred on the woman travelling in the vehicle up ahead rather than on where they were going and why.

  A major part of the reason why he’d signed on as a locum at Penhally Bay Surgery had been because Maggie still lived and worked in the area, but he’d been completely bowled over when he’d come into the staffroom a little while ago and found her standing there, the ultimate professional in her paramedic’s uniform.

  Her new hairstyle had been a bit of a shock, too. A year ago she’d still been wearing it in the same shoulder-length bob that he’d always known, tied back into a shiny dark ponytail for practicality, but he had to admit that the shorter style suited her elfin beauty even better, and high lighted all the colours that went to make her unusual hazel eyes.

  He pulled a face when he replayed the expression on her face when she’d caught sight of him. It certainly hadn’t been warmly welcoming but, then, what had he expected? He’d made a complete mess of things the last time he’d seen her and even though it had been unintentional, he knew he’d hurt her.

  That was another reason why he was back in Penhally…to see if he could persuade her to listen while he explained exactly what had been going on in his chaotic life a year ago, to tell her that he hadn’t deliberately set out to make her go against everything she believed in…that there had been extenuating circumstances that…

  ‘Forget it for now,’ he growled aloud when he saw the indicator signal that the vehicle ahead was going to pull off the road and slowed his own car ready to follow. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it until we find out where these kids are and what kind of help they need.’

  Talking to Maggie, making her understand and, hopefully, getting her to forgive him and let him back into her life was why he was here, but that would all have to wait until he could persuade her to meet up with him after work.

  For now he was going to have to switch his brain into rescue mode and, as hard as it would be, he’d have to force himself to forget that the slender woman up ahead was anything other than a professional colleague.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘SLOW down a bit, Mike. I saw the bikes just up here on the left,’ Maggie said, peering through the gathering gloom in attempt to spot the right clump of gorse bushes over the top of the stone wall, glad that they were nearly there.

  Every second of the journey she’d been over whelmingly aware that the car following in their wake was being driven by Adam Donnelly, the first man she’d ever loved and the one who’d broken her heart a year ago when they’d met up at that course in London.

  He was absolutely the last person she’d expected to see walking into the staffroom at Penhally Bay Surgery at that time of day. She’d been certain that it would be safe…that he would still have been out doing home visits…and her instant reaction to those deep blue eyes had been as visceral as ever.

  She still didn’t know whether she was horrified that she might have to deal with him on occasion while he was a locum in the practice, if she was called out to help one of his patients, or whether she was delighted that he had reappeared in her life again.

  What she did know was that every breath she’d taken in his vicinity had drawn in the unique mixture of soap and man that she’d never been able to forget, and what was worse, when he’d leaned towards her she’d been able to feel his breath on her cheek and even ruffling the hairs of her new, much shorter hairstyle.

  ‘There’s a gateway just a bit further on. I take it that’s the one we’re looking for?’ Mike said as he indicated and swung the vehicle to a stop just beyond where they’d halted a short while ago. ‘Can you—?’ he began, but Maggie had anticipated his request and was already out of her seat, racing to open the gate.

  ‘Are there any beasts in the field?’ he called. ‘Anything that could get out on the road and cause even more problems?’

  ‘Nothing that I can see,’ Maggie replied as she swung the gate wide and found the loose rock that the farmer had obviously left ready for use as a prop. ‘But if you swing wide, we can use the head lights to make certain. Then I can leave this open.’

  The wide swathe of light not only confirmed that the field was empty of any sheep or cows but also flashed across the jumble of bikes behind a sturdy growth of gorse.

  ‘Yes! They’re still there!’ Maggie called. ‘Did you see them?’ She hurried across the short-cropped turf, pausing just long enough to count how many bikes there were.

  ‘How many are there?’ Adam asked, his deep voice startling her as she hadn’t heard him following her across the grass.

  ‘Five, all about the same size so, as Kate said, they’re probably all around the same age. But where’s the mine?’ she demanded, turning in a complete circle. ‘That end of the field is a complete jumble of hills and rocks, a bit like a minitor, but there’s no ruined building with a tall chimney anywhere near here.’

  ‘Well, if it isn’t in this field then it must be in one near here, or they wouldn’t have left their bikes,’ Adam pointed out, and swiftly set off up the steep slope of the field towards the rough ground, his long legs making short work of the distance as he called back, ‘I’ll climb up there and see if there’s anything visible over the next wall.’

  ‘Here,’ Mike said as
he caught up with them. ‘I brought torches and emergency packs, just in case.’

  Maggie grabbed a torch and one of the bags, cross with herself that she’d completely forgotten about their equipment. She’d only jumped out of the cab to open the gate, then had got carried away with the hunt for evidence of the children.

  She was hurrying to keep up with the men’s far longer legs when she tripped over something near a stray gorse bush.

  With a muttered imprecation she bent to see what it was. Probably a broken branch from the last storm, or perhaps from hungry cattle taking advantage of the fact that gorse was one of the few native plants that grew and flowered right through the year. But it wasn’t gorse. It was a piece of a weathered old sawn plank with a very fresh break at one end.

  Maggie swung her torch around, wondering where the other piece had gone, and what a stray plank was doing up here in the first place. There certainly weren’t any buildings that she could see, only the rocky formation in front of her, with the sprawl of dense gorse growing at its foot.

  The beam caught a glimpse of the colour change on several branches that had been scuffed. One had been recently broken, as though some animal had tried to force a way into the bush.

  ‘Not a very hospitable place to want to go,’ she muttered as she peered through the density of the plant’s prickly canopy, but there was definitely nothing there but a big dark shadow. The bushes were thick and vigorous but certainly weren’t anywhere near big enough to hide five youngsters, let alone the ruin of an engine house for a mine.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ she called up to Mike and Adam, marvelling that she had no difficulty discerning which was which even though it was now nearly dark. Mike had the broader, more muscular shoulders, thanks to his regular attendance at a gym, but was several inches shorter than Adam’s leaner, more naturally athletic body.