Questions Of Trust: A Medical Romance

by Archer, Sam

  ‘I mean… I know you’ve told me how she is,’ chloe said. ‘But – how is she? Otherwise?’

  He gave a weary shrug. ‘She’s not great,’ he said. ‘Rebecca’s a troubled woman. As you know only too well, Chloe. She’s going to need to get help after all this. I think she knows it. We had a bit of a heart-to-heart, though she wasn’t really in the best state to talk about things like that.’

  ‘Do you think she did it deliberately? Jump in front of that car?’

  Again he raised a shoulder. ‘Who knows? Only Rebecca. And even she probably isn’t certain.’

  ‘Is her man coming?’

  ‘Andrew? Yes, he’s on his way. He’s been abroad in the Middle East on business but he’s flying in. He’s an okay guy, even if he did run off with my wife. He’ll be a good source of support for her.’

  Tom realised he must have been lost in thought, because he became aware that Chloe had been watching him for some time. Her elbow was propped on the table top, her chin resting on her hand. The faintest of smiles touched her lips.

  ‘What?’ he grinned, all at once as self-conscious as an adolescent.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she murmured. ‘Marvelling, actually. After everything, after all that’s happened, even right up until this afternoon… you had every reason to hate Rebecca. And yet you’re still concerned about her. You still saved her life.’

  ‘I couldn’t very well let her die there on the road,’ he said. ‘I am a doctor, after all. I took an oath.’

  ‘I know. Of course you had to do what you did. I understand that. It’s just…’ She broke off, looked down, almost shyly. ‘You said this Andrew’s an “okay guy”. Well, you’re an okay guy, Tom Carlyle. No, you’re more than an okay guy.’ She lifted her eyes to meet his again. ‘You’re a quite wonderful guy.’

  He watched her eyes, absorbed by how even in spite of her exhaustion they sparkled.

  Tom opened his mouth, to say he was sorry. Sorry he’d got her involved in all of this in the first place. Sorry he’d been unappreciative of her help. Sorry he’d kept his feelings for her under wraps instead of shouting them from the rooftops. And he wanted to thank her. Thank her for her loyalty, her doggedness, her brilliance. Her kindness, and her compassion, and her grit.

  And as he opened his mouth he saw her lips part, because there were things he knew she wanted to say too. That she shouldn’t have interfered, should have respected his wishes to handle his problems on his own… a catalogue of other things. None of which, really, mattered at all now.

  They spoke at the same time, but there were no sorrys, or thanks, or anything of that sort.

  What they each said, at the same time, was: ‘I love you.’

  ***

  Chloe traced a fingertip down Tom’s profile, across the smooth, almost unlined plain of his forehead, down the slight curve of the bridge of his nose, across his closed lips, over the bump of a chin with its hint of stubble.

  She returned her fingertips to his lips, and they parted a fraction, then swelled in a gentle kiss.

  She was snuggled against him on the couch in his living room. It was a Saturday evening, and the detritus of a home-cooked meal lingered on the table. It needed clearing away, but not now.

  It was a first for them. Their first proper date, for one. And the first occasion on which they had time to spend with one another, just the two of them, without fear of disturbance. Jake and Kelly were back at the cottage, under the care of Mrs McFarland. The older woman had been all too eager to babysit the pair. It was something she’d been offering to do for weeks now, ever since she’d… well, ever since Tom and Chloe had stopped pretending to anyone.

  ‘Ask Dr Carlyle what young Kelly will have for breakfast,’ Mrs McFarland said that afternoon.

  Chloe replied hastily, ‘Oh, no, no, don’t worry. He’ll pick her up later. I’ll be back too. I’m not staying all night.’

  ‘But why ever not, dear?’ said her friend, innocently enough but with a wicked glint in her eye. Chloe laughed, exasperated.

  Now, she nuzzled closer to Tom, relishing the warm aroma of his neck above the collar of his casual shirt, the heavy feel of his arm around her shoulders. He drew her against him and she felt his fingertips beneath her chin. She let him tilt her head back so that her face was lifted to his.

  Their lips met, exploring delicately at first, then probing with increasing urgency. Chloe’s teeth pressed against his and she slipped the tip of her tongue between them. His own tongue responded to hers, wrestling it playfully. A slow, fierce heat began to spread from deep in Chloe’s belly in all directions, upwards to her breast and down into her loins, triggering a tingling in the most intimate parts of her.

  She drew back, wanting to devour him and yet wanting to gaze at him at the same time. His face, so handsome and affable, had a relaxed purity about it that she’d noticed when she’d first met him, though she’d denied herself awareness of it then. It had disappeared, that look, in the terrible weeks of the early summer; but now, a month after the culmination of the saga, with Rebecca gone to France with her man and Tom back in public esteem, the Pember Valley News having had to publish a humiliating apology once the woman calling herself Sabrina Jones had admitted she’d told a pack of lies about Dr Carlyle… now, that serenity was back in Tom’s features.

  If Tom had changed, Chloe thought, she’d been transformed. Not physically, but in so many other ways. In the last three or four months, she’d learned about country ways. She’d learned that nosiness wasn’t confined to fussy ladies of a certain age. She’d learned about the extremes to which obsession and a sense of grievance could drive a human being.

  She’d learned that not all doctors were incompetent, or arrogant, or malicious. Probably not the vast majority of them.

  She’d learned that trust was something that cut both ways.

  She gazed into Tom’s eyes, and as if reading her thoughts he murmured, ‘Enough. Enough waiting.’

  His hands slipped to the hem of her shirt and swept it up and over her head. She’d put on a half-cup bra, something she’d never worn once since coming to Pemberham, and now she enjoyed the look of delight in his eyes as he gazed at her breasts, pushed up and half-exposed. In turn she grabbed at his polo shirt and pulled it up and off. His chest was lightly muscled, smooth with the faintest sprinkling of hair, his belly flat and taut.

  Chloe rose on to her knees on the sofa, unclasping her jeans and pulling down the zip, then wriggling her hips to peel the denim down. As she leaned forward to kick the jeans off her legs she grasped Tom’s belt buckle and unfastened his own trousers, pulling them down. Beneath his boxer shorts the evidence of his arousal swelled towards her.

  Their bodies joined, her arms winding tightly around his neck, his around her waist, and their mouths met hotly once again. His hands swept up her back and scrabbled with the clasp of her bra. He threw the wisp of lace aside and grasped her back with his flat hands, pressing her closer and ducking his head so that his lips and tongue could flick and suck at her risen nipples. Chloe moaned, long and deep in her throat, urging her body at her lover, wrapping her thighs around his waist and thrusting her pelvis against his stomach.

  Somehow with one hand he managed to pull his shorts down, and Chloe felt him engorged against her belly. She loosened the grip of her legs on his waist so that he could slip her panties down her thighs. His hands grasped the globes of her bottom and she lowered herself on to him, both of them groaning as they joined. Tom sank so that his back was propped against the back of the sofa and Chloe moved astride him, rocking at first with a controlled rhythm but, unable to help herself, increasing the pace as the pleasure mounted within her until she reached her peak and heard herself cry out, his own climax melding with hers so that they were fused in a moment of extreme, surpassing joy that seemed eternal.

  Afterwards, as they lay languidly on the sofa, her hair a curtain over his face, his hand slowly, exquisitely stroking her naked back, Chloe closed her eyes. She had
a sudden vision of Mark, his face looking down at her from some undefined point. She’d had a vision like this many a time in the last year, and usually it was accompanied by a small storm of emotions: anger, and regret, and longing, and intense guilt, and the terrible sadness of recognising that happiness was gone forever.

  This time, there was none of that. This time, Mark’s appearance brought her a sense of profound peace. Love, too, and the bittersweet ache of loss; but peace, too. And for the first time, she noticed Mark was smiling.

  Goodbye, my love, she said silently. I’ll always love you. And now I love another. It is possible, you know.

  Presently Chloe began to shake slightly. Tom swept her hair aside with his hand and peered into her face.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he grinned, amused but puzzled.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she said. ‘How long did it take us to get together? And how long has it been since we… well, we first decided we wanted to be with each other? And now here we are, alone together for the first time, and we still haven’t quite made it to the bedroom.’

  He kissed her, long and playfully, on the mouth. ‘There’ll be plenty of opportunity for that later.’

  ‘Promise?’

  Tom smiled.

  ‘Trust me,’ he said.

  THE END

  AFTERWORD

  Thanks for reading Questions Of Trust – I hope you liked it. Needless to say, all the characters are fictional; but all fiction’s drawn from life, to some extent, and so inevitably aspects of people I know or have met have crept into my characters.

  If you’ve enjoyed this book, you might like to try my first romance novel, St Matthew’s Passion, also available for Kindle from Amazon (see next page for details).

  And if you’d like to get in touch with me, please do: samgarcher@gmail.com.

  Finally, I’d be most grateful if you’d consider leaving a review of Questions Of Trust on Amazon. Reviews get books noticed, and are useful to us authors in their own right. Many thanks!

  Sam Archer

  ALSO BY SAM ARCHER FOR KINDLE

  ST MATTHEW’S PASSION

  A Medical Romance

  A novel about romance, about passion, and about the choices a man and a woman are forced to make between love and their careers

  Melissa Havers is one of the brightest rising young stars in the ultra-competitive world of trauma surgery. When she lands a position at the prestigious St Matthew’s Hospital in London, she’s determined to beat the odds as a woman and become the best in her field.

  But Melissa didn’t expect her boss, Daniel Finmore-Gage - Fin, as he’s known, and the most brilliant surgeon in the city - to have quite such an impact on her from the start.

  And she certainly didn’t expect to fall in love with him.

  Fin, though, has his reasons for not returning Melissa’s feelings. He’s been married before, he’s too professional to abuse the authority he has over her - and he harbours a dark secret which he can’t reveal to Melissa, and which has made him vow he’ll never put anything before his work.

  Not even love...

  As the powerful forces which bind these two strong, vital personalities threaten to disrupt the very functioning of the service to which they’ve both dedicated their professional careers, a crisis occurs which will test not only the bond between them, but also their commitment to the lives they’ve chosen for themselves.

  Breathtaking in its suspense, and heartbreaking in its portrayal of a love affair that appears at once inevitable and doomed to failure, St Matthew’s Passion is a thrilling novel by a practising doctor which blends authentic specialist medical detail with a universal story of the complexities of the human heart.

  Amazon US

  Amazon UK