by Zee Monodee
She followed in the doctor’s footsteps as he carried Emma out and settled the sleeping girl into the back seat of her Audi Q5. He clicked her seat belt into place just as Margo reached in from the other side of the car to take over the task.
Their shoulders bumped, and they brought their heads up at the same time. Mere inches separated them, and she made the mistake of looking into his face.
Bathed in the soft radiance of the porch lamp that spilled in through the back windshield, his features provided an arresting play of light and shadows. Suddenly seeing him so up close that she could make out the errant eyelash that had fallen on his cheekbone, she froze. Her outer shell remained immobile, while inside, a storm of uncalled-for heat and yearning warred for possession of her brain and senses.
This is a living, breathing man. A handsome, sexy creature in his own right.
The red-hot memo yearned to sizzle its tingling message all through her, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow it.
Jamie Gillespie was a hunk, all right, and at first glance, much younger than her.
Already over the big forty, she didn’t do younger men, or even older ones who’d be less mature than her. She didn’t do men, full stop. Plus she had other matters on her mind. Like the fact that she dreaded the upcoming prospect of turning forty-five, because with it came peri-menopause, and with it, hot flashes, followed by menopause, when many women went mental. Because she faced a dwindling biological clock with every year that passed, one that would be out of commission very soon, the minute she saw a man as desirable, she immediately viewed him as a baby-making machine, even though that had been less and less important over the past few years.
To view Jamie as sexy meant she could clearly picture herself making babies with him. A hot flush crept up her cheeks and stung her skin. She couldn’t—shouldn’t—picture him as anything but the local doctor. Younger men had a raging libido—Stop it!
Further gone than she’d thought, she gave herself a mental slap. Sex didn’t even exist as a possibility, especially not with Emma in her life. She had her child; the biological clock could go to Hell in a hand basket. Let another pregnancy-craving young woman sink her teeth into the handsome Jamie.
But if she could sink her teeth into the flesh of his arse cheeks, run her tongue over the ridges of what surely would be rock-hard pecs and abs—
Margo pinched herself hard and stifled the yelp of pain that tore her from her X-rated fantasies. A man like Jamie was so not right for her ...
In the closed confines of the car interior, she blinked, and the fierce flutter of her eyelids shattered the paralysis that held her body prisoner. She moved, and her hand brushed against his sleeve.
Soft, warm, yielding. Fine merino lamb’s wool. No punk-grunge clothing, for sure.
All the more perilous.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, and wondered if anything but a garbled sound had come out of her mouth. Then she ducked out of the car before he could reply.
She slid into the driver’s seat and waited, without looking over her shoulder, for him to close the passenger door. Once she heard the soft thump, she hightailed it out of there, as if the hounds of Hell pursued her.
In a way, they were. These hounds represented desire and longing, and to Margo, proved the most terrifying of all.
***
At their cottage, luck shone on her side when Emma awoke long enough to shuffle groggily into the house. The girl didn’t make it past Margo’s bed in the curtained-off area beside the kitchen; she fell into a lump on the sagging mattress and into her drug-induced sleep. The tween’s room lay upstairs in the loft, and Margo didn’t have the strength to carry her up.
Jamie Gillespie’s strong arms would’ve been welcome.
She snorted. Here she stood, taken in by a pretty face and a nice pair of broad shoulders. She might need help around the place, but certainly not in the form of a man. The one she had known in her life had brought her complications and distress. She didn’t need to know where Jamie would fit along the spectrum of damage a man could inflict to a woman’s soul.
She trailed her gaze over the close confines of the cottage. From her first glance at the house, outside on the front lawn, she’d seen the structure as a veritable tribute to rural British living, pretty in the greenery of the Surrey borough. Inside, a different story. The cramped space would be perfect for an old woman whose arthritis made it hard for her to move over wide expanses. Accustomed to her minimalist, high-rise penthouse in Chelsea, Margo found herself out of her depths in that dwelling.
After removing her work clothes and changing into a flannel nightgown, she took another turn by Emma’s bedside. The girl lay sprawled on the mattress, lying on her stomach. No way could she squeeze in.
She gazed at the tween. Her delicate features had already lost all baby fat and hinted at the fragile, exquisite bone structure in her lean jaw and slanted cheekbones. With her wide, cupid mouth, thick lashes, and rich auburn curls, Emma was on her way to becoming a total beauty.
Smiling, Margo picked up a brush and ran it through her daughter’s long hair. Emma had always slept on her stomach, even as a baby. Concerned about the sudden infant death syndrome linked with that particular sleeping position, she had done everything possible to get Emma to sleep on her back or on her side, with no luck.
Emma was also a messy sleeper, even all grown up, and the curly locks got tangled if not braided. After twisting the hair and securing it with an elastic band—a task she’d been daft at just three weeks ago—she left Emma to sleep and went to crash on the sofa. She could go to the tween’s room upstairs, but she didn’t want to leave the girl alone on the ground floor.
Once again, she surveyed the surroundings. They had to move. Emma needed a nanny to look after her when Margo had to go to work. Their elderly neighbour, Mrs. May, clearly was in over her head with a headstrong eleven-year-old. A nanny meant some peace of mind. However, it also spelt live-in help. The cottage offered no accommodations for another person, and she craved space and an interior without lace doilies and porcelain knick-knacks on every surface.
The cottage also brought home the remembrance of Edna Milburn, a woman who had hated her with a vengeance. Why else would the old woman have kept mum about the fact that Margo, and not she, would become Emma’s guardian when Cora died?
At the thought of Cora, her throat closed. Her best friend had succumbed to secondary cancer. Margo hadn’t known; Cora hadn’t gotten in touch, either, when she fell sick. Why? After everything they’d shared, why hadn’t her friend told her she had cancer? Picking up a phone couldn’t have been so hard—back then, Margo had still lived in the Chelsea penthouse where the three of them had settled when she’d found a job in London. Cora had severed all ties between them, yet, she’d appointed Margo—and not Edna, her own mother—as Emma’s guardian when she lay in a terminal stage.
Again, why, Margo craved to ask.
So many questions, and no possibility of an answer. Her head swirled with them. Every time she paused long enough to take her mind off a case, Cora would haunt her.
Why? she kept asking ... only to hit a brick wall every time.
Who could afford to dwell on the past? Experience had taught her nothing good came from that. So she shook her head. She had to move on. Emma counted on her.
She picked up her cell and dialled the local real estate agent. She needed a new place, and she needed it fast.
***
Jamie finished clearing the surgery, then got it ready for the next day. Usually, that would be Helen’s task, but his nurse had a sick little boy on her hands, and he’d let her go early.
Hence, the reason he’d been playing babysitter to Emma Milburn when her prickly mother had stormed in.
He shook his head as he made his way upstairs to his living quarters. Margo Nolan. Who was she, really, beneath the power suit, high heels, and straight blonde hair? She wore little makeup on her well-defined, elegant features, and her slender nose hinted a
t an aristocratic lineage. Her deep blue eyes didn’t need mascara and liner to stand out as intense, and that mouth—if she’d bitten those dark-pink lips once more tonight in his surgery, he swore he would’ve grabbed her by the nape of her graceful neck and kissed her.
Down, boy. She might be a total stunner, but his first impression of her also screamed City investor or lawyer, the kind of power-hungry woman who bowled her way through the glass ceiling. Like Catherine, his sister-in-law, a cold fish he despised with all he had.
Until Emma had called out for her mum, and Margo’s face had lost all the frost. Her tense body had relaxed, the fabric of her tailored trouser suit hinting at the rounded curves of her breasts and hips. Suddenly, she’d softened into an unrecognizable facet of the same person.
Intriguing. He knew not much about her, or anyone in the village, for that matter—he’d been here less than a week. Helen had told him Emma used to live with her grandmother. The old woman had passed away some three weeks ago, and that’s when city girl Margo had come over to take care of the tween. Despite the Milburns living there for five years, never once had Margo Nolan come by, or even been mentioned.
Is she that bad a mother?
No, she’d been too concerned about Emma. Something struck him as off, and he itched to get to the bottom of the whole story.
Not to mention that Margo was a very beautiful woman ... Get out of here! No one could embody ‘Ice Queen’ as well as she did, and that kind of frost represented a total deterrent and lust-killer for him ... usually.
Here, too, he wondered if there existed a story.
His father would tell him to drop the Sherlock Holmes act. The thought made him wince and clamp his jaw. The old man never understood how Jamie had needed more purpose in his life than the satisfaction of balancing accounting books. Not that there was anything inherently wrong with accounting; he just hadn’t been made for that. No, his father had never understood that Jamie didn’t want to be a carbon copy of Robert, his elder brother. No successful job in the City for him, and no slick, polished wife who would want to have children, maybe, after she hit forty and took a jump from the highest rung of the stock exchange broker’s ladder.
That was why Jamie had come to this backseat-of-nowhere place in Surrey, to fill in for his Uncle Gordon, after the older man’s mild stroke. Gordon had decided to take a break after serving ‘his’ people for more than forty years.
His phone rang. Jamie fished the cell from his jeans pocket, then chuckled when he glanced at the screen. Speaking of the old codger. “Hey, Gordy!”
“Hello, son.”
Still a childless bachelor and like a second father to Jamie, Gordy had always encouraged him to pursue his dream of studying medicine.
“How’s Cornwall?” Jamie asked. Heavy silence met his question. “Gordy?”
“I’m not in Cornwall.” The reply sounded gruff and muffled.
He frowned and flopped down on the edge of his bed. “Where are you, then?”
Gordon coughed. “South of France.”
“What on Earth are you doing there? Are you alone? You know you shouldn’t be alone, or even travelling, after what’s happened.”
“I’m not alone.”
“O-kaay ...”
That’s strange. Maybe he’s staying with a friend?
“All right, if you have to know, I’m with Grace Sears.”
He blinked. “Your neighbour, whom you loathe?”
Blimey! Grace lived in the same house as Gordon, where Jamie had moved in after coming to Camberry. Once a rambling mansion, the former owners had split the big Victorian in the sixties into a double-fronted dwelling that could be made into one again. Gordon and Grace had clashed ever since she’d bought the other half fifteen years before, and the two shared an acrimonious cat and dog relationship. At least, in public. Could they have been cosier in private?
Jamie shook his head. He shouldn’t think of these two, let alone of them together, in compromising positions. The images would conjure incurable insomnia. “You and Grace?”
“Well, yes, it just happened.” His uncle didn’t speak, but grumbled the words. “Listen, son. I ...” Gordon paused. “I’m not coming back.”
If Jamie hadn’t been sitting, he’d have needed a seat. “Say that again?”
“Son ... Grace and I, we’re going to buy a small vineyard here, and turn the house into a maison d’hôte.” Gordon stopped to take a breath. “Jamie, you’re like a son to me. The practice, if you want it, is yours. The house will also come into your name at my death. And Grace has already put her house on the market.”
“You’re not returning.” He could say nothing else.
Gordon laughed. “For visits, yes. But not back back, you know.”
“I see.”
“Jamie, I know the news comes as a shock. But you would’ve been there for three months, anyhow. See how it goes, if that life agrees with you the way it did for me. Give it a chance, son.”
Easier said than done. He’d come to help Gordon, but also to spite his father. Against his wishes, Jamie had pursued a career in medicine. After his graduation, George Gillespie had wanted him to either work at a hot shot private clinic, or set up his private practice in London, where he’d make a fortune. His bank balance alone had mattered to the older man.
Three months had represented a tryst, a way to garner payback. Any longer would mean a life-altering decision.
A sigh escaped him. “Gordy, what do you want me to say?”
“That you’ll think about it? And yes, too, the estate agent will require your approval before selling Grace’s half of the house. We’ve already agreed on that.”
He brought up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. What could he say, or do? “Fine, I’ll think about it.”
Blimey. What had he gotten himself into?
***
Margo had one foot out the door the next morning, bundling a recalcitrant and foul-tempered Emma towards the car, when her phone rang.
God, no. Not a call to go see another crime scene at barely eight. She’d been to five locations in the past few days, one of which had overly troubled her, along with the whole lab and police force. A child killer stalked the capital city, and she prayed they hadn’t found another small innocent’s body for her to examine.
Her dread eased, and her heartbeat calmed down, when she heard the smooth voice of the estate agent. A prime property, with three bedrooms and a studio above the garage, had just come on the market.
“In the village here?”
“Just on the outskirts. It’s the other half of Dr. Gillespie’s property.”
Jamie? No, not him. His uncle. She really should stop thinking about the handsome young man.
And how did she plan to do that, if she lived in the same house as him?
But then, Jamie Gillespie had mentioned he was filling in for his uncle for only a little while. What harm could it do to live close to the man for a short period? He would leave, sometime.
At this thought, she snorted. She’d become an expert at playing ‘dodge whoever.’ Dealing with police inspectors who all wanted proof of crimes before she’d even looked at the dead body, she’d learned to easily sidestep them and make them bow down to her schedule and work convenience. She hadn’t survived and climbed up in a man’s world and learned nothing along the way.
Jamie might bring out undue wantonness in the heart of her buried womanhood, but after all, he was just a man. She could avoid the sexy doctor just fine. With her job, too, where dead bodies knew no regular office hours’ schedule, she’d be lucky to remember the house’s layout after a month, so little time she’d probably spend there. ‘Home’ represented her morgue.
Emma also required a nanny, and that meant needing another free bedroom. That place, with its self-contained studio, appeared to be a godsend.
“Hold it for me. I’ll come by to see it in the afternoon.”
Okay. On to the other issue if they were to move there—could
Jamie Gillespie be trusted? She wouldn’t put her daughter in any danger, no matter how harmless a person might look. Appearances could be so deceptive.
She pressed another speed-dial number on her phone.
“Patel, it’s Dr. Nolan,” she said when the chief inspector answered. “You owe me after I closed your last case within a day. Off the books, find me everything on Jamie Gillespie. Probably a James Junior, if not literally Jamie. Early thirties, a medical doctor. I need a background check ASAP.”
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