She swallowed, trying to let the half-lies she was telling seem light and matter-of-fact. ‘I…I felt it was time for a change. I’ve been living in London since I qualified. I love the outdoor life and it’s been a dream of mine to work in Scotland in a rural area for a long time.’
‘Can’t be easy, leaving friends and family in the South…they’ll surely miss you,’ he remarked, his clear eyes flicking over her searchingly. Her heart began to thump. Did he suspect that there’d been something amiss in her past?
She forced a smile. ‘Oh, I’ve not got much family down there now, although of course I shall miss some things,’ she said. ‘But it’s good to have a change, and I like the idea of being in a small community.’
‘A small remote community. Why choose Scuola—why not the mainland?’
‘When the agency mentioned the job and I looked the place up on the internet, it looked so beautiful—such a contrast to London. And remote sounds rather good to me.’
‘You didn’t want a permanent position?’
‘I thought it would be nice to experience a few jobs and get around a bit, having worked in the same place for a some years.’ And the fact, she thought bleakly, that she had to resist putting down roots, uneasy that the past might catch up with her some time.
He nodded, seemingly satisfied with this explanation. ‘And do you come from a medical family? Are either of your parents doctors?’
She knew the question was casual, a polite enquiry to show that he was interested in her background, but she wasn’t prepared for the tight little knot of distress that formed in her throat or the way her cheeks flamed. She’d developed a kind of protective amnesia where her father was concerned but when something jolted her into thinking about him a powerful image of that terrible day when her world had stopped leapt into her mind—and the knowledge that she could never live again in London without the fear of danger always at her shoulder.
‘No, my mother was a homemaker until she passed away while I was in my teens. And my father had nothing to do with medicine…nothing at all. He was in the financial world,’ she stumbled.
Atholl said very gently, ‘Has your father died too?’
Terry nodded and swallowed, pushing back the memories. ‘Yes…he had a heart attack a few weeks ago.’
‘I’m sorry. It must be a very difficult time for you.’
Difficult enough for her to leave her roots in London, Atholl surmised. He could imagine her background—affluent and comfortable, a girl who probably went to a private school and lived in a pleasant residential area of London. A city girl…just like Zara had been, he reflected bitterly.
He was prevented from asking further questions by the door opening and Isobel coming in bearing a tray with two mugs, a teapot and a plate with some scones, butter and jam on it.
‘Here’s your tea,’ she said brusquely, putting it down on the desk. She looked in her dour way at Terry. ‘You’re not from these parts, then?’
Terry sighed. It seemed that people wanted to know a lot about her, and she wanted to tell them as little as possible!
‘No, I’m not. But it looks a beautiful place—even when it’s pouring with rain!’
Isobel’s stern face softened slightly and she said, ‘Well, I hope you’ll be happy.’ She looked sternly at Atholl. ‘Now, make sure yon lass eats these home-made scones. I’ve heated them up and she must be starving after coming all that way from London.’
Isobel nodded curtly at them both and then went out to answer the phone that was ringing shrilly in Reception.
‘I suspect Isobel’s bark is worse than her bite,’ remarked Terry.
Atholl chuckled. ‘She’s as soft as butter inside, but she’s bullied and bossed Uncle Euan around for thirty years now—she thinks she runs the practice.’
‘And is your uncle very ill?’
‘He’s making good progress.’Atholl sighed. ‘The truth is I think he’ll retire now. He was on half-time before, winding down a bit.’
‘And that’s why you needed someone else to help? Was my predecessor here long?’
A slight tightening of the lips and Atholl’s expression changed. ‘Not very long,’ he replied briefly. He got up from his seat and went over to the table. ‘Now, let’s have this tea, and perhaps we can sort a few things out.’
He handed her a cup and the plate of scones whose lovely warm smell had been wafting tantalisingly across to Terry. Suddenly she realised how very hungry and thirsty she was—it had been many hours since she’d had anything to eat. She took a huge gulp of the hot strong liquid and its warmth surged comfortingly through her, then she bit into the warm scone covered with melting butter and thickly coated with raspberry jam. No doubt about it, Isobel was a wonderful cook.
He smiled as he watched her face. ‘Ready for that, were you?’
‘I’m starving,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t care how many calories were in it!’
The blue eyes flicked over her for a second. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for you to worry,’ he observed shortly.
She noted his brief comment wryly—it was so different from the flowery response she’d have expected from Max, who had scattered compliments about like confetti—especially when he’d wanted something. How he’d loved to flatter. It made her embarrassed to remember how taken in she’d been by his patronising and glib remarks. But she’d learned her lesson now—she’d never be duped by that kind of gushing sentiment again.
She pushed unwelcome thoughts about Max to the back of her mind and put the plate down. ‘Right,’ she said crisply. ‘You wanted to sort a few things out, so fire away!’
He leaned back and folded his arms. ‘Did you mean it when you said you liked the outdoor life? To be frank, you’d be asked to do a lot of things that you wouldn’t do in London. To start with there’s the mountain rescue team that we are part of. You could be called out day or night, winter or summer—it’s not just a hike up the hillside.’
‘Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’ Terry looked at him challengingly. ‘The agency warned me there would be outside duties and I’m prepared for that—it sounds interesting. Anyway, I bet I wouldn’t be the only woman on that team. Surely they aren’t all men?’
‘As a matter of fact they are,’ he said. ‘And we can’t afford to have a weak link in the chain.’
A flash of irritation whipped through her and she sprang up from her chair. ‘Look, I wouldn’t let you down but, hey, if you can’t face working with a woman here please tell me now and I’ll take the next ferry back to the mainland and find a job somewhere else. Let’s not waste each other’s time.’
He looked slightly taken aback at her petite, feisty figure standing rather pugnaciously opposite him, then his face relaxed and he hid a broad grin behind his hand as he stroked his chin reflectively. Terry Younger didn’t mind saying what she felt, although he had a gut feeling that there was more to her story about the real reason she’d left London. She’d seemed vaguely uncomfortable when answering some of his questions.
He knew only too well from his own experience that it was often a seismic event in one’s life that made one up sticks and move to a another location. But it took guts to come up all this way north without knowing anyone and leaving one’s friends behind, and hadn’t she just proved she was no slouch in an emergency? Perhaps, he pondered, she wouldn’t be such a bad choice after all—and where was he going to get another doctor at short notice, just as the tourist season on Scuola was starting? He couldn’t afford to be too choosy, and he’d just have to put up with having a woman to work with, however wary he was after his experience with Zara Grahame, his previous locum.
He twiddled a pencil in his fingers thoughtfully for a second, then, making a sudden decision, stood up abruptly. ‘I don’t think you’d let anyone down, Terry. After all, I’ve just had evidence of it half an hour ago at the accident by the dockside. If you think you can hack it here, I’ll be pleased to welcome you aboard!’
He held out h
is hand, his bright blue eyes smiling into hers, and she almost laughed with relief that he sounded quite happy to work with her after all. An extraordinary tremor of excitement and something else she couldn’t quite define crackled through her as they shook hands. The thought of working with Atholl Brodie was promising an unknown, perhaps dangerous but exciting flight into the future.
She took a deep breath and grinned at him. ‘Thank you, Atholl—and I’ll make sure you never have any complaints that I’m not up to the job, even though I’m a woman!’
‘I won’t ever hold that against you, I promise.’ He smiled. ‘Have you any questions to ask me?’
‘Isobel mentioned something about accommodation difficulties, but the agency said there was a small flat that went with the job?’
‘There’s a flat in the building,’ he admitted. ‘But perhaps you noticed the scaffolding on the side of the house? I’m afraid my uncle let the place go a little, to say the least, and there’s a lot of damp and mould. Your flat’s not fit to live in at the moment.’
‘So where do you suggest I sleep?’ asked Terry lightly. ‘Perhaps a bed and breakfast?’
‘Might be difficult over the next few days—there’s a folk festival on this weekend and the place is booked solid. My suggestion is that you come to my place…’ He hesitated a moment. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit ramshackle and rather basic—we’re in the process of doing it up. To be frank, I didn’t think it would matter if a man was taking the job, but seeing…’
‘I’m a woman?’ finished off Terry wryly. ‘For goodness’ sake, if there’s a bed and a shower somewhere in the building I’ll be perfectly happy.’ She frowned slightly. ‘You said “we” are doing it up. I don’t want to be any bother to your wife…’
‘I was referring to the friend who’s running this outward bound course for boys,’ Atholl said. ‘He’s helping me with a bit of building work and decorating—and the boys are involved too, which keeps them busy.’
‘So do they all live there as well? It must be rather crowded.’
Atholl laughed. ‘Certainly not. I share the house with Shona…she’s a darling and keeps an eye on the place when I’m not there. I don’t know where I’d be without her.’
‘Oh…I see. Are you sure there’ll be room, then, and that Shona won’t mind?’
His eyes danced. ‘Plenty of room, and Shona will be ecstatic, I know.’
Was Shona his girlfriend or some dear old housekeeper? wondered Terry, feeling oddly deflated. Perhaps it was the fact that there would be another person living close to her who would want to know all about her, another person to convince that there was nothing untoward about her coming to Scuola. It would have been nice, she thought wistfully, to have had a place to herself so that she could relax after work and not bother about anyone else or their probing questions into her background. Still, perhaps this arrangement would not last too long.
‘I suggest I take you there now,’ Atholl said. ‘You can have a hot bath and help yourself to whatever you want to eat—at least,’ he corrected himself with a grin, ‘whatever there might be in the fridge. You must be starving.’
‘Won’t Shona mind me rooting around in the kitchen?’
‘Shona will probably join you in whatever you dig out.’ He grinned. ‘We’ll call in at the harbour master’s office for your case—and, don’t worry, we’ll take the Land Rover this time. Even I don’t fancy the thought of balancing a case on the bike.
‘I’m taking Terry to the cottage,’ he told Isobel as they crossed the hall. ‘Forward any calls to me on my mobile. I’ll do all my visits after that.’
Isobel nodded rather dourly. ‘I hope you’ve got some food in.’
Atholl looked at his receptionist rather defiantly. ‘And you’ll be pleased to know that Terry’s going to be joining us in the practice.’
Even though I’m a girl, thought Terry wryly.
Isobel pursed her lips. ‘I hope it works out…’
Terry looked up at him questioningly as they walked out of the house. ‘She sounds very dubious about me working here,’ she remarked.
He shrugged. ‘She a bit of a pessimist where I’m concerned,’ he said enigmatically.
The weather had changed in the time they’d been inside. The dark clouds had been blown away and now an eggshell-blue sky was spreading from the west and lighting up the tops of the hills with pale sunshine. Suddenly the place looked far less forbidding and the hedges and trees that arched across the road as they drove along had a fresh green newly washed quality about them. Atholl pointed out various landmarks and told Terry more about the practice on the journey.
‘You might think that the practice is only big enough for one doctor,’ he remarked. ‘But we look after two islands here—there’s a little ferry that goes over to the smaller island of Hersa. I do a clinic there once a week but, of course, if there’s a real emergency we have a helicopter, which is part of the air sea rescue team.’
‘It sounds very varied. How do you get around on Hersa?’
He laughed. ‘That’s where the motorbike comes in useful. I take it with me on the ferry. There are a lot of patients who live in remote places, not just on Hersa but here as well—it’s useful when they can’t get to see us. And we’re just into the tourist season so the population almost doubles.’
‘What do the tourists do?’
He laughed. ‘Besides fishing, walking, golf and deer stalking? There’s two distilleries to visit and the big hotel has tennis courts and a swimming pool. And then there’s climbing on the mountains you see over there—a very good source of patients,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s amazing the number of naive people who try to get to the top totally without equipment or experience.’
What a contrast to her patch in London, thought Terry. It was almost too much to take in, and she was gradually becoming aware that it wasn’t going to be the sort of quiet country practice she’d imagined.
‘I’ll need to get some transport,’ she said. ‘And I’d rather not borrow your motorbike!’
‘Don’t worry about that—you can use Uncle Euan’s little car. The main thing is to take a map and your mobile—it’s easy to get lost in the hills out there.’
‘It’s all very beautiful.’ Terry peered through the car window at the changing scene in front of them. ‘There must be some wonderful walks—I can’t wait to explore.’
Atholl smiled. ‘There’s so many different walks along the shore and back through the woods and the hills I never tire of them.’ He glanced at her and said in an offhand way, ‘You’d be welcome to come with a small group of us who walk together sometimes if you like.’
Funny how much that suggestion pleased her—she’d been sad for so long that the slightest lifting of her spirits felt almost alien. It was as if a curtain had been drawn apart a little and a small beam of sunlight had filtered through.
‘I’d enjoy that very much,’ she said. ‘Were you born here?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I only came here in the school holidays. I was born and raised in Glasgow.’
‘I believe it’s a lovely city.’
‘I lived in a very deprived area,’ he explained. ‘There’s still a lot of poverty in parts of Glasgow, and my family lived—still do really—in a pretty poor way. Not many advantages to life in the area I was brought up in.’
He’d obviously been glad to leave, thought Terry, whereas she had been so very happy with her life in London until…until it had all crumbled around about her ears and she’d been forced to depart. She sighed and leaned back in her seat, trying to blank out that last vision she’d had of her father as he’d lain dying in her arms and her frantic efforts to save him.
She bit her lip, telling herself firmly that she’d just got to put that episode in her life behind her. All that was finished and done with now.
‘So you won’t go back to live there, then,’ she commented.
He shrugged, a wry smile touching his lips. ‘My family think I should be ba
ck with them. They think I’ve let them down—sort of leaving the sinking ship kind of thing and coming to a better area when I could be of much more use where they live.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘They imagine I’m hobnobbing with lairds and big landowners—well above my station in life!’
‘That’s ridiculous!’ cried Terry. ‘You’re helping your uncle out—and you’re needed here as well!’
He laughed at her response. ‘Nevertheless, perhaps they have a point. The fact is, though, that I needed to get more experience—have a wider take on life. I’d lived and trained there all my life, and I was longing to spread my wings. And once I’d started working here, I fell in love with the place.’
He changed gear and slowed as they turned a corner and drew up in front of a square stone cottage surrounded by a little copse and protected from the road by a small front garden.
‘Here we are—rough and ready perhaps, but it’s home to me,’ he remarked.
The cottage wasn’t very big, but was most attractive, with a Virginia creeper running rampant over the walls and an untidy rose scrambling round the front door. Terry descended from the Land Rover rather wearily and followed Atholl as he went to the front door and opened it.
He whistled as he went into the little hallway, and there was a joyful bark and a large golden retriever came bounding out of the back regions and flung itself at Atholl.
‘Allow me to introduce you,’ he said. ‘This is Shona—she rules the house, I’m afraid!’
Terry looked up at Atholl and laughed, throwing back her head in amusement. ‘And I thought Shona was your girlfriend…’
The sun was streaming through the open door and fell on her raised face, catching the gold light in her hair and emphasising her large amber eyes sparkling up at him with amusement, her lips slightly parted. Looking down at her, Atholl felt slightly stunned. He’d realised she was attractive when he’d first seen her. Now he was suddenly conscious that she wasn’t just attractive—she was damned beautiful, her eyes like golden sherry set in a sweet heartshaped face. It unsettled him, made him nervous, thinking again of tattling tongues in the village, trying to matchmake. He’d had enough of that, thank you. He wasn’t lonely and he didn’t need a relationship with anyone he worked with—not after the last catastrophe.
Hired: GP and Wife / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal Page 3
