There were three of them—Barney, who lived with his family in Herefordshire, himself in the middle and then Simon, conceived rather late in his mother’s life.
And now, with both their parents dead, he had his younger brother living with him until such time that he could afford a place of his own.
Simon was untidy and irresponsible about everything but his job, which he adored, and Blair forgave him most things because of that.
At thirty-five, he never seemed to have the time to do anything about his own unmarried state. As senior partner in a thriving group practice, he was kept well occupied and then there was his function as police surgeon to fulfil. Yet he was aware that if the right person came along he would make time.
There’d been Andrea of course. The manipulator. Sweet, clinging and dangerous. When he’d resisted the advances of the trainee GP who’d come to them for experience, and had made it very clear that he hadn’t been interested in her, she’d tried to ruin his reputation by spreading rumours of malpractice, but it hadn’t worked. Blair had been known for his integrity and he’d sent her packing.
The aftermath of the Andrea affair had been that ever since then when he’d taken a woman GP into the practice, either trained or in training, he’d been wary.
There would be a vacancy coming up in two weeks’ time. One of the partners was moving south to be near his wife’s relatives.
Blair had only found out a couple of days ago and hadn’t been over-pleased at such short notice, but as there was sudden illness involved on the part of the man’s in-laws he’d had to accept the inevitable with good grace.
Interviews would be taking place in the next few days and as he climbed thankfully into bed the vision of bright hazel eyes and a very kissable mouth came to mind. What was it that Imogen Rossiter had said? If he heard of any vacancies in local practices she would be obliged if he would let her know.
He couldn’t see himself doing that. Not with regard to his own practice anyway. From what he’d seen of her on short acquaintance, the captivating daughter of the chief constable would make the departed Andrea seem positively meek.
Yet with all that bounce and style he didn’t visualise Imogen developing a fixation for him. She would be looking out for younger fish to fry.
In spite of the fact that she’d been quick to point out that she was trained and ready to take up work in a local practice, he’d like to bet that it was only recently that she’d been able to say that. If she was a day over twenty-seven he would be surprised.
As he closed his eyes for a quick catnap before morning surgery he thought drowsily that the pedantic chief constable seemed an unlikely parent for her.
Brian Rossiter was one of his patients and on the few occasions that their paths had crossed he’d struck him as being a rather boring control freak. Which was probably the reason for his daughter’s lack of enthusiasm when he’d asked her if they were related.
Where had she been, though? He hadn’t even known that the fellow had a daughter. But if she didn’t fit into the mould he’d made for her he supposed that Rossiter wouldn’t be advertising the fact.
It almost made him feel like asking her to come along to be interviewed for the vacancy at his practice. But before he could make a decision on that, sleep had claimed him.
The idea was still there as Blair took morning surgery and he told himself that was the only reason he was considering it…because Brian Rossiter was a pain. It wasn’t because for the first time in years he was attracted to a woman. No. It definitely wasn’t that.
He rang Imogen at midday after looking her number up in the phone book and was answered by a sleepy voice that had none of the nocturnal vibrance that had so entranced him.
‘It’s Blair Nesbitt here,’ he announced crisply.
‘Who?’ she asked on a yawn.
‘Blair Nesbitt, Imogen. We met only hours ago. Surely you haven’t forgotten.’
There was silence for a moment and he visualised her pulling herself up on the pillows and raking a hand through her dark mop.
‘No. Of course I haven’t forgotten,’ she said in slow surprise. ‘You don’t let the grass grow under your feet, do you?’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ he asked with raised brows.
‘That you want to see me again. That’s what usually happens between the sexes, isn’t it?’ she asked flippantly.
‘Huh! I’m afraid that you’re presuming too much,’ he replied, trying not to laugh. ‘I’m ringing to say there’s a vacancy coming up in the practice where I’m senior partner and I’m interviewing in the near future if you’re interested.’
‘Oops!’ she said unrepentantly. ‘Serves me right for jumping in before I’d heard the full story. I don’t suppose that I’ve improved my chances.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ he agreed blandly, ‘and don’t think that because you’re related to the top brass it will make any difference as far as I’m concerned.’
He had a feeling that would get to her, and it did.
‘If you think I would try using my father’s name to get on in the world, you are very much mistaken,’ she hit back frostily.
‘Good. So now we understand each other. Getting back to the reason for my call, do you want to be considered for the post?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Of course I do. Give me a place and a time and I’ll be there.’
‘Tomorrow at one-fifteen at the Sycamores practice.’
‘That’s strange. I went to school with one of the receptionists there and I asked her a couple of weeks ago if there were any vacancies, but she said no.’
‘That would have been so at the time, but one of my partners is having to move in a hurry and we’re going to be doing some reshuffling. And now I have to go as I’ve got a list of house calls here in front of me. So I’ll see you tomorrow then.’
‘Yes, Dr Nesbitt,’ she said meekly.
‘There’s no need to be servile because of your mistaken presumptions,’ he told her with the urge to laugh coming over him again. Hoping that he’d taken the wind out of her sails for a second time, he rang off.
And if that wasn’t the craziest thing he’d done in a long time he didn’t know what was, Blair thought as he set off on his rounds.
If Imogen had been half-asleep before, she wasn’t now. Her mind was in overdrive. Would Blair take her on? And if he did offer her the position, did she want it?
Every moment of their meeting the night before was clear in her mind. She’d felt instinctively that he was interesting and different from other men she’d met.
He had a craggy sort of face and a manner that said he would stand no messing around. And with that thought in mind she began to debate what would happen if he offered her the position and then had to be told she was pregnant.
She’d always told herself that if this ever happened to her…an unwanted pregnancy…she would have a termination. Yet the moment she’d made the mind-blowing discovery she had known that there was no way she could even contemplate it.
So, with this other thing that was happening in her life at the moment, Blair would have to know if there was any chance of her becoming part of the Sycamores Practice.
As she tried to ignore the nausea that was becoming a regular part of each morning, Imogen eyed herself in the mirror.
Don’t cross your bridges before you get to them, she told the white face staring back at her. Blair might already be having second thoughts after the boob you made. And how will you feel if he is? Mildly disappointed? Philosophical? Or, more like it, mortified because you want to get to know him better?
When Blair told his two partners that they would be interviewing the chief constable’s daughter as a possible addition to the practice, there were expressions of surprise.
‘And so where did you meet Imogen Rossiter?’ Andrew Travis, an elderly widower and golfing fanatic, asked with a smile. ‘I didn’t know she was back in these parts.’
Bill Robertson, who was ab
out to take himself and his young family off to the southern counties, nodded his approval and commented that a lot of the women patients preferred having their own sex to treat them and that it was some time since they’d had a woman doctor in the practice.
‘Yes, well, we’ll have to see how she comes across during the interview,’ Blair said casually, with the memory of a challenging hazel gaze in an unforgettable face in mind. ‘You might not think her suitable.’
‘Your opinion is more important than ours,’ Andrew pointed out. ‘I’ll be retiring soon and Bill here is going anyway, so it will be a case of who you want to help run the practice, Blair.’
With that the subject was dropped—to be revived the next day when the three of them gathered in his consulting room to await the arrival of the interviewee.
When Imogen was shown into the room by one of the receptionists Blair’s eyes widened. This was not the dazzler of two nights ago. She looked pale and subdued and he immediately thought that maybe she’d been on some sort of high on that other occasion and this was the real Imogen Rossiter. If that was the case, there would be none more disappointed than he.
She perked up during the interview but the sparkle was still missing. Yet it was Imogen Rossiter’s qualifications they were concerned with, not her charm, or lack of it, he told himself. There was nothing wrong with her track record. She’d studied medicine at a London college, had got a first-class honours degree and had done her GP training with a practice in the Midlands.
He’d known she would be good. It had been there in her manner, and if today’s less buoyant approach was disconcerting, what did it matter?
Blair wasn’t to know that Imogen had spent the last twenty-four hours wrestling with her conscience, trying to decide if she should tell the three doctors that she was pregnant, though she knew she wasn’t obliged to. They would know soon enough anyway, she’d kept telling herself. More to the point, she needed to be positive in her own mind that she could carry this job through her pregnancy. She had to, she needed to.
She’d never slept around until that night spent with Sean, and had never dreamt that a pregnancy would be the result. She would have liked to have been able to make the choice between marriage and single parenthood, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
Now he was gone and the knowledge that the tiny foetus inside her was going to be fatherless wasn’t easy to come to terms with. But, she kept telling herself, she would have enough love for both of them. Her baby wasn’t going to suffer because of the circumstances of its conception.
In the end she’d decided that she would let the interview take its course. There would be time enough to tell Blair later if she got the job.
The moment they’d had eye contact again Imogen had known how much she wanted to be part of the practice, and that had been something else to take away her usual poise.
Blair was getting to his feet and holding out his hand. His grip was firm and, she hoped, reassuring. Yet he was saying with a smooth sort of finality that did nothing to raise her hopes, ‘I’ll be in touch during the next few days. We still have a couple of people to interview.’
She flashed him a tentative smile and again he wondered what had happened to the woman he’d met in the police station, as the one standing in front of him, murmuring her polite goodbyes, was nothing like her.
As she drove home Imogen was coming out of the stupor that had overtaken her during the interview. What on earth had possessed her to be so negative, she thought furiously, when she was nothing like that normally?
If it was her condition, it would have been better to come clean there and then as she wasn’t going to be of much use in a busy practice in that sort of state.
Yet she knew that it was more mental than physical. She’d felt during the interview that she was being swept along by a strong current, that her hopes and aspirations had been taken out of her control. She would be devastated if she didn’t get the job. Because without it there would be no Blair Nesbitt in her life.
CHAPTER TWO
‘AND so did you not want to stay with the practice in Birmingham where you’d trained?’ Blair had asked at one stage of the interview.
‘No,’ Imogen had told him. ‘I wanted to come back to Manchester. It’s the area I know best. My roots are here.’
It was only partly true. She’d wanted to leave Birmingham because that was where she’d met Sean. There were too many upsetting memories connected with the place. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. Not at this stage of their acquaintance anyway.
And now all she had to do was wait until she heard from him, and if it was a thumbs-down then she would have to look elsewhere.
When she got back to the apartment there was a message from Celia on the answering-machine to ask if she would like to dine with the newly-weds that evening.
‘Your dad says we’ve hardly seen anything of you since the wedding,’ she said when Imogen rang back, ‘and you know he does miss you.’
‘Only because he likes to boss me around,’ she replied.
Her new stepmother laughed.
‘It’s the job that makes him like that. You know what the police force is like. Yes, sir! No, sir! So you’ll come, then,’ she wheedled.
‘Yes, of course,’ Imogen agreed. ‘If only to see you.’
She was thinking that this visit would be a good idea as the pregnancy wasn’t showing yet. Afterwards she could leave it for a few months before she saw them again and by then her father would have no choice but to accept the situation.
One thing that might make it easier for him to adjust to the idea of her becoming a single parent was the fact that the baby’s father was dead. There would be no need for him to go rampaging off to Birmingham to insist that Sean do the honourable thing.
Strangely, at this moment she was more concerned with what Blair would think about her circumstances than what her father would have to say.
‘And so what have you been up to lately?’ her father asked in his best interrogatory tone as they faced each other across the dining table.
‘Not a lot,’ she told him smoothly.
‘Have you found yourself a job?’
‘I’m hoping to be taken on at a local practice. I went for an interview this morning…and I’ve been put on the police surgeon rota.’
‘I see. No one has informed me of that fact.’
Imogen laughed. ‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they? Surely such minor matters aren’t brought to your attention.’
He was observing her beneath bushy brows with piercing blue eyes that were softer when he looked at Celia, but were still judgmental with everyone else.
‘Not when it concerns my daughter.’
‘Yes, well, that wasn’t mentioned,’ she responded airily, and saw Celia hide a smile.
He ignored the comment and went on to ask, ‘And which practice is it that you have been interviewed for?’
‘The Sycamores.’
‘Really! I’m a patient there. I changed doctors recently. Blair Nesbitt is my GP.’
Imogen’s spirits sank to zero and then bounced quickly back. The last thing she’d expected if she was taken on by Blair was to be coming across her father during surgery hours.
It wasn’t the done thing for a doctor to treat a family member so she wouldn’t have that prospect facing her. Either Blair or Andrew Travis would see him if he should require a consultation, and in any case her father would rather take his ailments to the local greengrocer than have to discuss them with his difficult daughter.
Celia was tuned in to both their minds and, putting an affectionate arm around the straight-backed figure beside her, she said with a smile, ‘Then if Imogen joins the Sycamores practice it will be a double bonus whenever you need to seek medical advice, darling. The admirable Dr Nesbitt will be there to advise you on your health and you’ll be able to have a nice chat with your daughter if she isn’t too busy.’
He smiled back at her with real affection and Imogen thought
without rancour that it was good to know that someone could get through to the old tartar.
She was too much like her mother for them to ever be compatible. A free spirit who wasn’t chained to respectability was how he saw her, and when he discovered that she was carrying a child, that opinion wasn’t likely to change.
When the buzzer sounded at Imogen’s apartment a couple of days later, she was in the bathroom, retching.
It was eight o’clock in the morning, she thought weakly. Who on earth would be calling at this time? When she checked the intercom audio-visual system her jaw dropped in dismay. Blair Nesbitt was standing outside the apartment, checking the time on his watch and tapping his foot impatiently.
After she’d told him to come up and had released the locks on her door, she forced back the nausea and hurried into the bathroom.
She knew that she looked a sight without checking in the mirror. The moment she’d opened her eyes she’d felt queasy, and without even putting a brush through her hair, had gone into the bathroom in the same naked state in which she’d slept.
There was a white towelling robe hung up behind the door and, grabbing it, she flung it on and reached for a hairbrush, but the doorbell was already ringing. Blair was outside on the doormat.
‘Good grief!’ he exclaimed without preamble when she opened her front door. ‘Where were you last night? Clubbing?’
‘I suppose that means I’m not the choicest sight you’ve seen this morning.’
‘Correct. You’ll have to be up and about earlier than this when you’re taking morning surgery.’
She’d been about to straighten out her tangled mop but the comment had brought her to a standstill and now, with the brush suspended above her scalp, she was observing him with widening eyes.
‘Are you speaking in general terms?’ she asked. ‘Or are you the bearer of glad tidings?’
‘I don’t know about it being glad tidings,’ he said drily, ‘but, yes, the position is yours, if you want it.’
She was perking up by the moment, her rumpled appearance forgotten.
The Pregnant Police Surgeon Page 2