‘It’s for the best, believe me…’
He frowned and looked at her assessingly. She hadn’t really answered his question. He stepped towards her and put out his hand to pull away a stray tendril of hair that covered her forehead, and she stiffened, willing him to move away again, to be anywhere but in that danger zone of closeness that made her stomach turn over. His hand strayed down her cheek and traced the line of her jaw down to her neck, and involuntarily she turned towards him, her face a picture of misery.
‘Please, Atholl…don’t…’
His hands were on the wall either side of her head, imprisoning her against it so that she couldn’t escape, and his body was nearly against hers as he gazed at her with those clear blue eyes. He was too close—far too close for comfort!
‘Tell me you don’t love me, Terry,’ he said roughly. ‘Tell me now that we aren’t meant to be together. It’s not too late.’
His mouth came down and kissed her full on her lips, gently but possessively, his hands running lightly over the curving fullness of her breasts, turning her insides to liquid and reminding her of just what she would lose when they parted. And he was right—they should have been together, she thought in anguish. His touch became more demanding, his lips plundering hers, teasing them open, his body pressing urgently against her, and she felt her resolve sliding away, starting to respond helplessly to his passion.
Then Max’s horrible note seemed to dance in front of her eyes and she forced herself to think of the danger she was putting Atholl in the longer she was near him. With every ounce of energy and resolve that she had, she twisted away from him and stood by the window, touching her lips where he had kissed them, still feeling them tingle.
‘I can’t get back with you, Atholl…I just can’t,’ she said desperately.
He straightened up and ran a hand roughly through his hair. ‘I’m sorry, Terry.’ He walked back to the desk, his back view slightly hunched as if gathering himself together, and after a few seconds turned round and said slowly, ‘Very well, I shall have to accept it.’ Then after a few seconds he added more briskly, ‘By the way, some man was asking about you last night—said he was an old friend of yours and knew your father.’
A sudden chill of foreboding laid its fingers on Terry’s heart. It had to be Max. There was no one else it could possibly be. So he’d got here already. Thank God she’d moved out of Atholl’s cottage.
She swallowed and forced herself to say lightly, ‘Really? Did you tell him my new address?’
‘I’m not in the habit of giving private information to people I don’t know.’
It was hard to hide the relief in her voice. ‘No, of course not. Did he give his name?’
‘No…I didn’t have a chance to ask him. He was quite tall, fair haired—ring any bells?’
Terry shook her head. ‘Can’t think who it might be. Anyway, he’ll probably find me if he needs to.’ Her heart thumped uncomfortably, a picture of Max and those lazy hooded grey eyes smiling at her flashing into her imagination, and she shuddered. She forced herself to calm down and speak normally. ‘I’ll tidy up my desk, then, and update the notes for the new locum. I’ll, er…see you before I go after tonight’s surgery.’
‘If you want to. I’ll be here until I go to visit my uncle tonight.’ Atholl turned round and went out of the room.
He walked slowly down the corridor to his surgery. Funny how she hadn’t seemed excited that someone from London had come up to see her—someone who had known her father. But, then, Atholl mused, she never talked about her life in London or reminisced about her family. It was as if she had obliterated everything that had gone before her arrival in Scuola.
In the end Terry couldn’t bear to say good bye to anyone. She knew how incredulous they would be that she was leaving when she had seemed to be so happy in her work. Instead, she left a note saying how much she had enjoyed her time with them, but unavoidable circumstances had meant she had to move on urgently, and that she would always remember Scuola and think of it fondly. She also left a short letter to Atholl.
The girls had all gone home, although she knew Atholl was still at the surgery because his bike was outside. She put the notes on the desk in the office and then after a wistful final look around the room she let herself out of the building and walked down to the bed and breakfast, looking around carefully to see no one was following her.
Atholl watched Terry walk down the street from his surgery window, until her slight figure neared the corner. Perhaps it was for the best that she hadn’t come back to say goodbye personally. He sighed and was about to turn away when he noticed a man appearing from a side street and start to walk in the same direction. Nothing unusual in that, except that he recognised him as the man he’d spoken to last night who said he’d known Terry’s father.
He watched as the man caught up with Terry. He must have said something to her because she stopped and turned round, then took a step back before the man took her arm. She seemed to be having a conversation with him and then, with the man still holding her arm firmly, they disappeared round the corner. She didn’t look particularly surprised to see him.
Atholl wandered into the office, his mind preoccupied, slightly edgy. He saw two notes on the desk, one in Terry’s writing addressed to him. He smiled bitterly as he picked it up and tore it open. It wouldn’t be a love letter…
Atholl, please don’t think badly of me. Believe me when I say I’ve never felt so happy as I did here with you. Meeting you was like coming alive again—a complete knockout to the heart. Perhaps I haven’t put my reasons for leaving very clearly. I only know it’s best that we part. I shall never ever forget you, Terry.
He frowned, fingering the note thoughtfully. She was saying that she hadn’t been entirely clear about why she wanted to leave—was that a hint that there was more behind all this than she had told him? The uneasiness he had felt before flickered like a gathering fire through his mind. Something was not quite right about the whole thing. Intuitively he felt she was keeping something back from him.
A sudden wave of determination swept through him. Damn it, he would go and see her at the bed and breakfast, whether that man was there or not, try and question her once and for all about this extraordinary decision of hers. He deserved a fuller explanation than she’d given him.
Mrs Bedowes, the woman who ran the bed and breakfast, answered the door.
‘Dr Brodie!’ she said in surprise. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I wondered if Dr Younger was here. I believe she’s staying with you for a night or two?’
Mrs Bedowes shook her head. ‘Well, no. She’s just checked out, actually. She and her young man just came to collect her things—she’s decided to leave tonight.’
Atholl raised an eyebrow. ‘Her young man?’
‘Oh, quite a charmer he was too. So much in love with her—he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. He said he wished they’d had time to stay longer in such a lovely place as Scuola. Apparently Dr Younger has to do a quick home visit before they go off for a break, so she picked up her medical bag and case.’
‘A home visit?’ repeated Atholl, puzzled. As far as he knew, Terry had finished work and had no home visits planned.
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Bedowes with an indulgent smile. ‘Her boyfriend wants to take her on a little holiday—they’re such a sweet young couple. They were clinging to each other as if one of them might disappear!’
Terry’s boyfriend? Atholl stared at the woman as a sudden extraordinary thought struck him. Was it possible that Max had come back into the picture? Was that why she’d finished things between them, because she’d realised she still loved the man, and knew he was coming to see her?
‘Did…did you happen to catch this man’s name?’ he asked diffidently.
Mrs Bedowes smiled. ‘Oh, yes, but only his first name. He answered his mobile in the middle of talking to me. I heard him say, “Max here.”’
So that was it! Suddenly things
were becoming clearer. Atholl stared at her wordlessly for a second, feeling as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. Why the hell hadn’t Terry told him the truth? Why keep it a secret that she was going back to Max, instead of reeling off all this garbage about not wanting to commit herself so soon after her affair with Max, and that things between himself and her had been going too fast?
She’d pretended that she hadn’t a clue who Max was when Atholl had told her that a man had come to see her. But it had been a lie. She must have known damn well it had been Max but hadn’t wanted Atholl to know.
A mixture of betrayal, rage and deep hurt flooded through him, but with a great effort he managed to control his voice, and said pleasantly enough, ‘How long ago did they leave? I saw them going towards your place ten minutes ago.’
‘Oh, they’ve only just gone.’ The woman pointed up the road. ‘They’re in a blue car—they went up the main road towards the hills.’
‘Thanks!’ shouted Atholl over his shoulder, as he ran towards his motorbike and tried to kick-start it. It sputtered reluctantly into life and he roared off in the direction the woman had indicated. Again he felt slightly puzzled about Mrs Bedowes’s reference to Terry going on a home visit. He tried to think of the patient she might be seeing on this route, thinking that at least it would give him a chance to catch up with her before she disappeared on this jaunt with a man she’d said had caused her great unhappiness.
What a fool he’d been! He should have realised that she was still hankering after that damn Max, but he had to confront her and hear from her own lips the whole truth this time. He was damned if he’d be fobbed off with a load of lies and half-truths.
If she was leaving because Max had come back into the picture, why hadn’t she had the guts to tell him? Atholl felt a knot of anguish in his stomach—he’d thought more of Terry’s honesty than that.
The bike was not performing well—he’d been meaning to strip it down and clean the plugs for some time. Every few minutes it seemed to die on him before surging back into life, and he decided that as he was passing his cottage, he’d stop there and take his car instead.
He was surprised to see that Shona was in the little garden when he arrived, barking her head off. He was sure he’d left the door closed when he’d gone to work. He got off his bike, propped it against the wall and bent down to ruffle Shona’s fur.
‘Have you seen Terry, old girl? And why are you outside?’
Shona wagged her tail furiously, then ran up and down the path, whining and looking back at Atholl. He looked around. No sign of anyone. It all looked very quiet, but Shona was obviously agitated. He followed the dog up the path and went up the step to open the door.
As soon as she felt that hand on her shoulder, Terry knew it was him—Max had caught up with her. She turned round slowly and looked into the distinctive pale grey eyes of the man she’d once thought she loved so much, and whom she’d last seen jumping into a car outside the bank on the day of the robbery. That was the day her father had been found bound and gagged in the office, the day he’d died of a heart attack.
Max had been wearing a balaclava and a tracksuit, but she’d known it was him all right—there was no disguising those unusual eyes of his and the old scar that cut across his eyebrow. She had recognised his accomplice in the get-away car—Max’s brother, Harry, and he hadn’t been wearing anything over his face. They’d screeched off round a corner and she had stood rooted to the spot, immobile with shock, shattered by the realisation that Max Carter was a criminal.
No one else had been in the road—it had been an early summer’s evening and people had finished work and gone home. Terry had managed, with trembling fingers, to call for the police and, by some inner instinct, for an ambulance, then she’d gone and found her father tied up in his own office, obviously gravely ill. She’d tried desperately to massage her father’s heart back to life, although she’d known that it had been too late—her beloved father had died.
In the months that had elapsed since that day, Max and Harry had gone to ground—completely vanished—and the police had said it was most likely they’d managed to flee the country, but they couldn’t be sure. And now here was Max standing two feet away from her and looking at her with a familiar grin—good looking, charming even, but, as she now knew, an evil bastard.
‘Hello, Theresa, surprised to see me?’ he said. ‘You didn’t think I’d catch up with you so soon, did you? Thought changing your name and getting a new hairdo would be enough to keep you hidden?’ He laughed softly. ‘I’m not put off the scent that easily, you know.’
Cold terror gripped Terry’s chest like a band forcing the air out of her lungs, but she looked back at him steadily, her voice coming out strongly, scornfully, belying the fear she felt.
‘I’ve nothing to say to you, Max, except this—you as good as murdered my father and you deserve to be in jail. I’ve informed the police about your horrible note.’
Max frowned, narrowing his eyes. ‘You shouldn’t have contacted the police, darling, not a clever thing to do. That note was between me and you, just to warn you that I need the money—when we’ve had our little talk.’
He took her arm and pulled her with him. ‘I know where you’re staying. I watched you take your cases to that B and B yesterday. Now you’re going to come on a little holiday with me.’
Terry hung back, looking at him defiantly and telling herself what an insignificant-looking man he was. ‘You can’t make me. Anything you’ve got to say to me you can say it here and now!’
He came closer to her his lips a thin line. ‘You know what I want. I need money to get away from here, start a new life.’
‘I’ve no money on me…I can’t arrange it so quickly,’ Terry started to say.
He scowled. ‘I told you to get some. I’ll take you to a bank on the mainland and you can get some out—you doctors are well paid.’
By this time Max had pulled her round the corner and towards an old blue car just past the bed and breakfast place.
‘And how will you make me do what you want, Max?’ asked Terry coldly.
Max put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handgun, at the same time pulling her towards him in what looked like an embrace to any passer-by. ‘Perhaps this will persuade you, darling. Any nonsense and I won’t hesitate to use it on you…or on anyone in our way.’
He meant it, thought Terry, her body shaking as she felt the muzzle of the gun press into her ribs. Max continued to hold her close to him.
‘Before we do anything else I need some of your professional expertise, sweetheart. Harry’s met with a little accident and I want your help in getting him right.’
‘What’s happened to him?’
‘He got a bullet wound through his leg from an…acquaintance. The wound looks a bit black.’
Terry’s mind raced—anything to buy time that might allow her to ring the police. ‘I’ll need to get my medical bag—it’s at the B and B. We’ll have to pick it up—I can’t do anything without that.’
Max frowned. ‘I thought you were a doctor—why do you need equipment?’
‘If he’s got any infection, he’ll need antibiotics. There’s penicillin in the bag…I may need tweezers to get the bullet out.’
Max pondered, biting his lip. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘But you do what I say—we’re lovers, understand?’ Then with a cruel smile. ‘Quite like old times, eh? Keep close to me and don’t say anything you shouldn’t.’
It took only a few minutes to get the medical bag and Terry’s case. Mrs Bedowes, the owner of the B and B seemed unconcerned that Terry was checking out, and soon Max was pulling her back to his car, hugging her close to him. Harry was sitting in the back seat, lolling back and looking ashen, and a stain of blood had spread across his trouser leg. Terry was shoved in beside him and Max gave the gun to Harry.
‘Keep that pointing towards her,’ Max said. ‘Don’t worry, Harry, it’s plain sailing so far. She’ll fix up that leg o
f yours when we’ve got out of here.’
‘It looks as if he’s lost a lot of blood,’ said Terry. ‘I’ll have to look at the wound pretty soon before he passes out.’
‘Well, you’re not looking at it in the village. We’ll go into the hills first.’
Terry lay back in the car seat, her eyes closed. She knew it wasn’t just money they wanted, or for her to look at Harry’s wound—they needed to silence her for ever. She was, after all, the only witness who had seen the robbery, who knew for sure it was Max and Harry that had robbed the bank and caused her father’s death.
The car stopped and she opened her eyes and saw that they’d parked the vehicle in a little copse before Atholl’s cottage: it couldn’t be seen from the road.
‘Come on, darling, out you get.’
Terry was bewildered. ‘Why have you stopped here?’
‘For you to attend to Harry, of course. We know it’s Dr Brodie’s place, but I’ve been monitoring him. Tonight he’s going to the mainland to see his uncle, and he won’t be back for hours. Plenty of time for you to do the doctor bit for Harry and for us to have a coffee before we get going again.’
‘I can’t think why you’re bothering with Harry—you didn’t show such compassion for my father when you left him dying at the bank.’
Max grinned. ‘Harry’s my brother—the only person in the world I can trust.’
There were sounds of a car coming up the road behind them. Terry couldn’t move her arms as they marched her along, but she threw back her head and screamed as loudly as she could. The car swept past, ignoring them.
Max pulled to a halt and turned Terry round towards him, drew back his hand and slapped her hard across the face, the signet ring he had on his little finger catching her cheek and slitting it open.
‘Don’t try that again. The next time it’ll be more painful,’ he snarled.
Terry sucked in her breath, her eyes stinging with tears at the pain, feeling blood oozing down her cheek. They pulled her up the path. Easy enough to kick the door open, and then throw her inside. Shona bounded towards her, barking delightedly and jumping up at her.
Hired: GP and Wife / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal Page 15
