Practically Perfect

by Caroline Anderson

  “I’m sorry.” Connie sighed.

  “It’s just getting to me.”

  “I can imagine. Don’t apologize. Just take the pills, drink the drink and go back to bed with a book. You’ll be asleep in no time.”

  She snorted. “I wouldn’t bet on it. I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks, so I don’t imagine you’ll be able to work a miracle with your hot milk and happy pills.”

  Patrick chuckled. “It’s worth a try. What do you want me to do, read you a bedtime story?”

  Make love to me, she nearly said.

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve heard it said a real writer has at least sixty books inside her. Well, I don’t know about that, but I wrote my first book in 1990 and since then I’ve done fifty more. Maybe that makes me a real writer! Whatever, it isn’t easy. Planning each book is like a pregnancy—painful and compelling. But the wow factor when the baby is born makes it all worthwhile!

  Writing romances in a medical setting is a definite challenge—I have to keep up-to-date with what’s going on in the medical world to be able to give enough detail to catch the reader’s interest and give the setting authenticity. This gives me wonderful opportunities to develop the human-interest side of medicine, and I hope gives the books more depth and appeal.

  People often ask me how I find my inspiration, and the answer is I don’t know! It’s always different. Practically Perfect came about because my editor suggested a book set in general practice. I persuaded the father of my daughter’s school friend to show me around his office. It was attached to their house, and the layout triggered all sorts of interesting possibilities, not the least the incident with the prescription drugs cabinet, which led to—no, I won’t tell you. You’ll have to read it! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  All the best,

  Caroline

  P.S. The kittens are mine, now grown up, and Icki is helping me write this by lying on my keyboard.

  Practically Perfect

  Caroline Anderson

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE village was as dark as pitch, the few streetlights long since extinguished. Connie struggled for her purse in the bottomless pit of her handbag and tugged out a few notes for the taxi driver.

  ‘Got any change, love?’ he asked. ‘I’m a bit short tonight.’

  She debated searching her bag again for loose coins and dismissed the idea. The clatter of the diesel engine was rattling the windows in all the houses, and any minute now lights would start to come on.

  ‘Forget it,’ she told him, dredging up a weary smile. ‘Don’t worry about the change. Thank you.’

  ‘Sure? Cheers, then,’ he said with a grin, and she watched his tail lights disappear, taking the clatter with it. The silence of the night settled back around her like a familiar blanket, and she scooped up her luggage, struggled to find her keys with her uncooperative and useless hand and let herself in.

  A wave of fur and slurping tongues assaulted her, and she chuckled and sat down on the bottom step, letting them get it out of their systems. The dogs sniffed her plaster cast curiously, licking her numb, stiff fingers with care, as if they sensed all was not quite well. ‘Good boys,’ she whispered. ‘Now go and lie down.’

  Their tails lashed, and she bumped and trailed upstairs with her luggage, the dogs hopefully in tow.

  ‘Oh, all right, then, just this once,’ she scolded gently, and let them into her bedroom. They were settled on the end of her bed before she’d put on the light, and it took her almost as long to shuck her outer clothes, flick off the light and slide under the covers.

  She’d wash in the morning. She didn’t want to disturb her parents—not in the middle of the night, and not with all the explanations she’d have to give them. She snuggled down, shifting Rolo so her legs could stretch out, and Toby curled up against her side, his head under her hand, and gave a heavy sigh. She fingered the soft tufts of fur on his head, taking comfort from his warmth and presence, and after a few moments she fell asleep.

  ‘What is it, boys? Can you hear something?’

  She pushed herself upright and listened, and sure enough there was a clonk and a thud downstairs, followed by a muffled curse.

  How odd. What was her father doing up at this time—unless he was on call, of course, but she thought he’d arranged night cover and only did the odd bit at weekends now out of hours?

  Still befuddled by sleep, she slipped her legs over the edge of the bed and tiptoed to the door, listening. The dogs whined softly, tails waving, making a draught on her bare legs. ‘Stay,’ she told them, and opened the door, stepping silently out onto the landing.

  Light spilled from the dining room, casting an eerie glow up the walls. There was another thud followed by a string of colourful prose, and she crept to the edge of the stairs and peered over, just in time to see a figure in jeans and a leather jacket disappear through the connecting door to the surgery premises, flicking on the lights as bold as brass.

  A quick frown pleated her brow, and without a thought she sneaked down the stairs, the dogs at her feet, and edged up to the surgery door. More banging, another string of impolite adjectives in a deep, frustrated voice, then silence. She looked around for something to use as a club, and her eyes fell on her brother’s cricket bat in the umbrella stand by the front door.

  Excellent. She tiptoed across the hall and eased it carefully from the stand, testing the grip with her left hand. Good.

  Then she glanced into the brightly lit dining room and her jaw dropped.

  The dresser shelves were empty!

  The silver was gone, the Georgian tea service, the platters, the ladle, the candlesticks—and the carriage clock from the mantelpiece.

  Anger tightened her grip on the club, and without hesitation she went swiftly to the surgery door, slipped through it and edged round the corner. He was in Reception, his back to her, reaching up into the cupboard where her father kept the controlled drugs, and with more courage than sense she crept up behind him. Grief, he was huge! So tall, and the leather jacket was strained taut over those broad shoulders as he rummaged in the cupboard.

  Eyeing a spot in the centre of his thick, dark hair, she raised the cricket bat over her head and brought it down on his skull with a resounding thunk.

  He gave a startled yelp and ducked, his hands flying up to protect himself against further blows, and then before she could move again she found herself grabbed and her left arm twisted firmly up behind her back. Her front slammed into the wall of neatly filed patient notes, her nose wedged somewhere in the Ds, and a powerful hand relieved her of the cricket bat and then turned her round, pushing her down onto the floor.

  ‘Sit,’ he growled, and she sat, awkwardly, peering up into furious grey eyes and wondering if she could reach the panic button under the edge of the desk. The dogs, useless as ever, had failed to come with her, knowing they weren’t allowed into the surgery area. Why couldn’t they have used their initiative for once? He was a burglar, for heaven’s sake—

  ‘Where is it?’ she asked, leaping in yet again where angels would have had more sense. ‘What have you done with it?’

  His brow creased. ‘Done with what?’

  ‘The silver.’

  The scowl deepened. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, young lady, but I think we’ll save your explanations for the police.’ He reached for the phone, one hand gingerly feeling his s
kull.

  ‘Police?’ She stared at him. ‘Why would you call the police?’

  He shot her a jaundiced, disbelieving look. ‘Because a pint-sized, half-naked adolescent has just accosted me with a club and tried to steal the drugs?’

  She glanced down, and hot colour flooded her cheeks. She rearranged her legs, but nothing could make the T-shirt longer or hide the kitten-print knickers which were all she’d had left until she did some washing. No wonder he thought she was a teenager! But drugs—?

  ‘You broke in—you were stealing the drugs,’ she reminded him crossly. ‘And the silver.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘That again. I don’t know anything about any silver, and I have no need to break in. I’ve got the keys.’

  Her eyes widened in shock. ‘Why? What have you done to my father?’

  He stared at her for a moment, his eyes narrowed, searching, and then with a groan he ran his hand over his face and looked at her again.

  ‘Connie?’ he said softly.

  She straightened. ‘How did you know my name?’ she asked, stunned and a little confused.

  ‘So you are the missing daughter?’

  ‘Missing? I’m not missing, I’m here.’ What did he mean—missing? Panic assailed her. ‘Where is he?’ she cried, half getting to her feet. ‘What have you done to my father?’

  He lowered the telephone and sighed. ‘I haven’t done anything to him—I’m the locum. Patrick Durrant. And you’re Connie.’

  ‘Locum?’ Connie’s bravado wilted in a pile of gloop. They must be on holiday—again. ‘Oh, lawks,’ she muttered.

  ‘Lawks, indeed. So, are you Connie?’

  She nodded miserably. ‘Yes—and I suppose I owe you an apology.’

  He snorted. ‘Don’t strain yourself.’

  ‘Well, the silver is missing, and you were rummaging in the controlled drugs, not to mention creeping around in the dark.’

  ‘Hardly rummaging. I’m replacing the stock of dia-morphine in my bag before I forget, and the bulb’s gone in the hall light.’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to take a look at my head, would you? Assuming, of course, that you’ve got over your urge to kill me.’ He felt again, and his fingertips came away covered in blood.

  Connie closed her eyes. She was going to prison, she just knew it. How could she have done anything so crazy? Dear God, she might easily have killed him!

  ‘You don’t look like a doctor,’ she said in her defence.

  He arched a brow, clearly stifling a laugh. ‘And you do?’

  She scrambled to her feet awkwardly, trying not to use her injured arm, and his eyes tracked to it and to her T-shirt, hovering somewhere between her bare midriff and the skinny jut of her hipbones. The silly knickers taunted her from underneath, and she tugged the hem of her T-shirt fruitlessly.

  A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. ‘Why don’t you go and slip into something a little more substantial while I boil the kettle? I think we might both have a little explaining to do.’

  ‘What about your head?’

  ‘It’ll keep,’ he said, and shooed her out. ‘Go on, hop it. Get dressed.’

  She didn’t need to be told twice!

  Patrick studied the empty doorway in bemused silence for a moment. Her scent lingered on the air, the only thing that remained of their encounter—that and the egg on his head. For someone so tiny and delicate-looking, she sure packed a hell of a wallop. His fingers sought out the rapidly rising lump on his head, and he winced and swore again.

  Good job it had been her left arm she’d used. If her right hadn’t been safely tucked up out of the way in a plaster cast, she might have done him some real damage, for all she was so tiny.

  He prodded and winced again, then, easing himself off the edge of the desk, he finished what he’d been doing with the drugs, locked up again, then went through into the kitchen, filled the kettle and switched it on. He took his jacket off, dropped it over the back of a chair, and then he sat down, suddenly woozy.

  ‘Not concussion,’ he muttered, resting his head on his arms. ‘Please, God, not concussion. I hate throwing up.’

  A waft of that scent drifted into his consciousness—not something soft and delicate and flowery and appropriate, but a deep, musky, sensual blend of something exotic and powerful, something totally unsuitable and all woman that sent his pulse rate into warp drive and did terrifying things to his already fragile head.

  He tried to sit up.

  ‘Stay there,’ she ordered, and he felt the delicate touch of her fingers through his hair, sifting, probing, gently checking out the damage. There was something strangely erotic about her touch, about the feel of her fingers in his hair, and he fantasised about being held against her soft, slender body while her hands glided sensuously—

  ‘Ouch! Dammit, be careful!’

  ‘Sorry. I think you’ll live. Let me see your eyes.’

  He lifted his head and stared into twin pools of deep honey brown the colour of autumn. Silky strands of red-gold hair tumbled round her shoulders, skittering into her eyes and irritating her. She scooped it out of the way with an impatient hand, anchoring it behind her ears, and studied his pupils with intensity.

  He studied her with just as much intensity, wondering how his body could react so cheerfully and whole heartedly to her when she’d just minutes before tried to deck him with a cricket bat.

  ‘What?’ Connie demanded, straightening up. ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Was I?’

  She subsided into a chair opposite. ‘I think so. You need ice on that.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. There’s a cold pack in the fridge in the dispensary.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  She went, and he watched her, absorbed by the sexy sway of her slim but definitely feminine hips, the way the jeans hugged her bottom like a lover…

  He groaned and dropped his head onto his arms again. He was jealous of her jeans, for heaven’s sake! How could he be jealous of her jeans? Maybe he should put the cold pack down his trousers.

  ‘You’re losing it, Durrant,’ he growled.

  ‘Losing what?’

  His head jerked up, nearly splitting open, and he groaned again and closed his eyes. ‘Don’t sneak up on me. I hurt too much.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Patrick opened his eyes again and saw the guilt and remorse written on her fine-boned face. Her eyes were huge pools of regret, and her teeth caught her lip and gnawed it anxiously.

  ‘I’m going to live, you know.’

  ‘I know. I just feel…’

  ‘I can imagine. Does it need stitches?’

  She went suddenly still, a curious deadness overlaying the regret. Her voice was stiff and remote. ‘No—or glueing. It’s fine. It’s just a little split.’

  ‘In the bone?’ he asked drily, and her mouth twisted into what might have been a smile.

  ‘No, probably not,’ she said. ‘Lucky for you I’ve broken this, or I would have hit you harder.’ She gestured with her hand. Her right hand. The one with the cast on it. The one she couldn’t stitch with?

  He jerked his head at it. ‘What happened?’

  She looked down at her arm, and her face closed again. ‘I fell,’ she said economically.

  He wondered what she wasn’t telling, and where she’d been for the past two weeks, and why her parents hadn’t known she’d broken it. From the look on her face, there was a lot she wasn’t telling.

  Yet.

  He stood up carefully, taking the cold pack and wrapping it in a clean teatowel before offering it cautiously to his skull. Hmm. Hurt like the dickens, but at least his vision was clearing. All he needed was something to eat and drink—

  ‘Cup of tea?’ he suggested.

  She jumped up and rushed over to the kettle. ‘I’ll do it—you sit down.’

  He did, quite happy to retreat to the chair before he fell over. His head was pounding like a steam hammer, and he felt sick again. He held t
he cold pack over the lump and leaned his arm on the table, watching her as she bustled about with the tea.

  So this was the girl Tom Wright was so proud of—his valedictorian progeny with a brilliant career ahead of her in paediatric surgery. And she thought he didn’t look like a doctor!

  She couldn’t have been any bigger than some of her patients. He wondered if she had difficulty making people take her seriously. Perhaps she always carried the cricket bat as a persuader, to keep people in order.

  A smile touched his mouth and he suppressed a chuckle, just as she spun on her heel and dumped the mugs on the table. ‘Biscuit?’ she offered, and he nodded. Maybe it would settle his stomach, but he doubted it. He somehow thought he wasn’t going to get away with it.

  ‘I can only find custard creams,’ she announced from the depths of the cupboard. ‘Will they do?’

  She pulled herself out, brandishing the packet, and he felt the colour drain from his face.

  ‘I think I’ll pass,’ he muttered, and then everything went black.

  ‘Oh, hell.’ Connie scrambled to her feet and went over to him. Patrick was slumped against the table, out cold, and she wanted to get him flat and raise his feet. She eyed the floor, quarry-tiled and unyielding, and wondered if she’d do him more damage by dropping him on it than by leaving him alone.

  He must weigh nearly twice what she did, and she didn’t fancy her chances of lowering him carefully into the recovery position.

  He took the decision out of her hands by sliding, very slowly and tidily, off the chair and onto the floor at her feet. She caught his head just before it cracked against the tiles, and eased him out straight, the dogs sniffing round and taking too much interest.

  ‘Shoo,’ she told them, then she wadded up his leather jacket under his head and smoothed the hair off his brow. Should she call an ambulance?

  She felt his pulse, strong and regular and about the right speed, and checked his pupils, equal and both reactive to the light, then sat back on her heels. She’d give him another minute. If he still hadn’t come round, she’d call for help. In the meantime—