Coming Back For His Bride

by Abigail Gordon

  Letting his arm fall away from her shoulders, he said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Izzy. It was just a kiss between friends. Because we are friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘I don’t know what we are,’ she said, gathering up her belongings. ‘I never did.’

  On that sombre note she went, down the stairs, through the surgery and out into the sunny afternoon, and suddenly the weekend that she’d been looking forward to stretched ahead empty and meaningless.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE first week of Ross being in charge of the practice was chaotic, with the decorators working day and night, the new chairs for the waiting room stacked outside in the corridor and the carpet fitter ready and waiting to fulfil his function almost before the paint was dry.

  Any apprehension that Isabel might have felt at the thought of them working together was kept at bay as the new-look surgery appeared out of its chrysalis. To her the pungent smell of paint was like perfume, the noise and bustle of the workmen like music to her ears.

  Every time Ross saw her she was smiling, and that made him smile too as he slotted himself into the running of the practice with a tactful yet determined approach. Any doubts that the staff might have had about him had quickly been dispelled as they’d got to know him. The two practice nurses and three receptionists in particular acted as if his zest was washing off on them.

  One of Isabel’s first patients on the Monday morning was Kate Arrowsmith, now out of hospital and free of the demoralising effects of the drug that she’d been taking.

  As Isabel checked her heartbeat and blood pressure, Kate said wryly, ‘I’ve told my mum that if she as much as gives me an aspirin in future, I’ll have it laboratory tested first. I know she thought she was acting for the best, but what the metoclopromide did to me was the most frightening thing I’ve ever had to cope with. It’s a wonder it didn’t give my dad a heart attack as these days he relies on me to run the farm. And if it had been a serious condition, that would have been me well and truly out of farming.

  ‘Anyway, I’m back, and thanks for helping me, Isabel. I’m told that the dishy guy you had with you when you came to the farm was Ross Templeton, and that he’s taken over the practice. I wasn’t in a state to take that much notice, but when I did manage to keep still for a few seconds I knew he would be a welcome addition to the village’s male population.’

  Looking around her, she went on to say, ‘As for this place, no disrespect to your father, but it did need a facelift and it looks as if this new guy is just the one to do it.’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Isabel said. ‘Ross has worked in the practice before but it was quite some time ago.’

  ‘Really!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘I don’t remember that. It must have been when I was away at agricultural college.’

  ‘Yes, it probably was,’ Isabel agreed, and changed the subject by telling her, ‘You seem fine now, Kate, but I’d like to see you again in a few weeks’ time. Just to make sure that you are back to normal. Have the hospital given you a follow-up appointment?’

  ‘Yes. Stephen Beamish, the neurologist, wants to see me in a month’s time. He’s nice, but not in the same class as Ross Templeton. He said to tell you that he intends stopping by to see you the next time he’s in these parts.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Isabel groaned. ‘When we spoke about the possibility of it being the metoclopromide that might be affecting you, I invited him to call if ever he was passing. It was on the spur of the moment. I wasn’t really serious and now what have I let myself in for?’

  ‘It strikes me that neither of us have time for that kind of thing,’ Kate said, laughing at her dismay. ‘I’m too busy mucking out and you’re fully occupied with this place. But you know what they say, all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.’

  Oh, she was dull all right, Isabel thought when Kate had gone. Maybe not here at the surgery, but there wasn’t much sparkle in the rest of her life. Perhaps she should buy some new clothes, but they would only improve her on the outside. It was what was inside her that needed livening up and she knew that her mind would never have been travelling along those tracks if the man in the consulting room next to hers hadn’t come back.

  * * *

  It was the weekend again and with it had come another opportunity for Isabel to mix with folk that she’d known all her life. The week before it had been her father’s farewell at the surgery. This week there was to be a welcome-home gathering for Ross at the Riverside Tea Shop with an open invitation for anyone to come.

  Sophie had mentioned it during the week. ‘You’ll be joining us on Saturday afternoon, I hope,’ she’d said, when Isabel had called in for her afternoon snack. ‘We’re not opening this place during the day, which will give us the time and space to get ready for a party for Ross.’

  Taken aback, Isabel had remembered vaguely that Jess from the post office had mentioned something of the sort when Ross had first come back, but with so much having happened since she’d forgotten all about it.

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll be there,’ she’d said, trying to show some enthusiasm with the thought uppermost that the majority of the guests would know why he’d left in the first place and would be wondering if there was anything going on between them now. The answer to that question, should it be asked, was no. There was nothing going on, or likely to be. Her passion for Ross was dead, she told herself.

  So why when she’d heard about the party had her first thoughts been about what she should wear, and would she have time to have her hair washed and styled on Saturday morning after the short weekend surgery?

  Second thoughts had followed quickly on the heels of the first and they’d been more in keeping with the person she saw herself as. Ross hadn’t found her attractive before, and she hadn’t really improved. So he wasn’t likely to be bowled over by her charms this time, was he?

  ‘Does he know what you’re planning?’ she’d asked Sophie.

  She had shaken her head. ‘No. We’re telling everyone to keep quiet about it. He doesn’t like fuss, but we’re hoping that he will see this in the spirit that it’s meant.’

  ‘Is my father coming?’

  The older woman had shrugged her narrow shoulders.

  ‘I don’t know if his conscience will let him. Although he has redeemed himself somewhat by asking Ross to take over the practice.’

  Isabel had observed her questioningly.

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘No, you’re not, are you?’ Sophie had replied. She’d gone to serve a customer who’d just come in and said over her shoulder, ‘Perhaps it’s better that way. Paul used you as a pawn to get his own way.’

  As Isabel had driven home the word had kept going round in her mind. A pawn. What had Sophie meant by it? The next time she spoke to her father she would ask him if there’d been other things going on in the background when Ross had left the practice. If there had been, she’d known nothing of them. Her concern had been that the only person who’d ever taken any notice of her had been going out of her life, and she hadn’t been able to bear it.

  * * *

  In the end Isabel decided to wear to the party a black silk top and white trousers that she’d had for ages. Giving the hairdresser’s a miss, she washed her hair with her favourite shampoo and when it was dry she brushed it into a shining bob around the face that she’d always wished had belonged to somebody else.

  The last thing she wanted was for Ross to think she’d dressed up for him, but when she arrived at the tea shop and found that Kate Arrowsmith had discarded her ‘mucking-out’ image and was dressed in an outfit that would have graced the catwalk during London Fashion Week she felt like turning round and going home.

  There was no sign of the prodigal doctor so far. When the door opened again it was her father and Millie arriving, and immediately Sophie’s comments came back to plague her. But it was not the time or the place for raking up old wrongs, she decided, and when someone said that Ross had come into view and would be arriving at any moment, she rel
uctantly joined the crush hiding in the back room and waited for him to appear.

  ‘Aunt Sophie, where are you? What’s going on?’ he called from the bottom of the stairs, having seen the abundance of food laid out in the deserted tea shop and noted the absence of any sign of life.

  It was the cue for the door of the back room to be thrown open, and as half of the population of the village came pouring out, with his mother moving painfully in the forefront, he stepped back in amazement.

  ‘Welcome home, Ross,’ she said in a choked voice. Someone at the back of the gathering said, ‘Aye, welcome to the new doctor. We remember him from before and hope that this time he’s going to stay.’

  Isabel watched Ross’s glance go round the room until it came to rest on her, and she held her breath as she waited to hear what he would have to say. It was as if the rest of those present were receding and there was just the two of them in the old raftered building.

  ‘I never wanted to leave the first time,’ he said evenly, ‘but there were circumstances that made it the wisest thing to do. This time I intend to stay. Nothing and no one will drive me away. Thank you for this warm welcome.’ His glance had shifted to his mother and his aunt. ‘I don’t need to guess whose idea it was.’

  In the pause that followed, her father stepped forward. ‘Ross Templeton was hand-picked by me,’ he said in the flat voice that Isabel knew so well. ‘I wanted to leave the practice in safe hands and couldn’t think of any that would be safer than his.’

  Ross had been smiling before but now his expression closed up, and when it seemed that he wasn’t going to reply to her father’s vote of confidence Sophie said, ‘Shall we start with a toast to the new doctor and the village practice?’

  As there was a surge towards the food and drink Isabel slipped out through the back door. She was wishing she hadn’t come. All those there would have known what Ross had meant when he’d said there had been circumstances that had made it wise for him to leave the village all that time ago. They were circumstances that she alone had created.

  Or, at least, that was what she’d always thought, until the other day when Sophie had described her as a pawn in some game of her father’s and she had wondered what she’d meant. But if that had been the case, why had he asked Ross to come back and just made that speech of recommendation?

  She sighed. Life had been so uncomplicated before and now it was full of doubts and uncertainties. Neither Ross nor her father had thought to comment on the changes she was having to make in her life. Or how she had kept the practice going through the last few months when her father had slowed down to such an extent. It had been like the Ross-and-Paul show back there, with no mention of lesser mortals.

  * * *

  Where the dickens had Izzy gone? Ross wondered as his eyes scanned the room. He hoped she hadn’t gone home after he’d reminded those present of what she’d been like when he’d left, instead of directing their attention to the cool young doctor in their midst.

  Every time he was about to seek her out he was waylaid by someone wanting to chat and he was becoming more on edge with every passing moment. He should have been enjoying this occasion, so thoughtfully arranged by those who loved him, but he was finding it impossible to relax with his concern for Izzy uppermost in his mind. Close behind it was his annoyance at the cheek of Paul West, who was using the occasion to give himself a pat on the back for bringing about Ross’s return to the village.

  If he left the party to go and look for her, it would seem rude, he told himself, and it might upset his mother and Sophie, so he put a fixed smile on his face and stayed where he was.

  When Izzy came striding in through the back door he gave a sigh of relief. She didn’t look too happy but at least she hadn’t gone home and he wished that Kate, who had attached herself to him as soon as he’d arrived, would go and talk to someone else so that he could go to Izzy.

  * * *

  The first thing Isabel saw when she went back to join the party was Kate still monopolising Ross, preening and posing beside him in the glamorous outfit with all the tenacity of a leech. And it didn’t look as if he had any objections as he was making no effort to detach himself from the farm manager’s presence, so Isabel turned to go back outside.

  But this time she wasn’t fast enough. Ross quickly excused himself from Kate and caught up with her as she was lifting the latch.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

  ‘In the back garden. Why?’

  ‘I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘Why would you think that? And would it have mattered if I had?’

  ‘Yes, it would. For one thing, when your father interrupted what I was saying, I was about to remind everyone in there that I wouldn’t be able to cope without you. That you are intelligent, hard-working, reliable and—’

  ‘Do not react to soft-soaping?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that you would have been singing my praises to take their minds off how you’d reminded them of what I was like when you left.’

  ‘My comments were not meant like that at all,’ he told her firmly. ‘They were for your father to digest. Whether they sank in or not, I don’t know, but I am aware of how they must have sounded to you, and I’m sorry, Izzy.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Forget it. Ross. It’s all in the past. Enjoy your party.’ Leaving him still not happy, she strolled across to where Kate was now glowing up at a tall, fair-haired man in expensive casual clothes.

  ‘Meet Stephen Beamish,’ she said, when Isabel joined them.

  ‘The neurologist!’ she exclaimed.

  He smiled. ‘None other. I did say I’d look you up, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did. How did you know I was here?’

  ‘There was no one at your cottage and a farmer who was driving past told me that you would most likely be at the welcoming party for the new GP. So I came here and was invited in, little expecting that Kate would be the first person to greet me.’ His glance was on the outfit. And what a transformation from the last time he’d seen her. ‘But it’s you that I’ve come to see, Dr West, the person who solved the mystery of the metoclopromide.’

  Isabel was only half listening. She was looking to where Ross was still standing by the back door where she’d left him. She didn’t want to talk to this man who’d appeared out of the blue. She wanted to be with Ross, on their own, where she could ask him to explain the real reason for his dislike of her father.

  It couldn’t be that serious, she reasoned, or her father wouldn’t have asked Ross to take over the practice. He’d spoken highly of him earlier, so why were Ross and Sophie hinting that there had been, and still were, undercurrents?

  While she’d been thinking, Kate had sauntered off and gone to stand close by Ross again. Stephen Beamish said, ‘I thought I’d dine somewhere near if I can find a good restaurant. It’s beautiful countryside around here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s delightful,’ Isabel agreed. ‘I would never want to live anywhere else.’

  ‘And that being so, you’ll know all the best restaurants.’

  ‘Yes, more or less.’

  ‘So how about dining with me this evening? Your choice of venue.’

  She was about to refuse, but the sight of Ross and Kate engrossed in each other once more made her change her mind.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ she agreed. ‘The party will be over at about five, which will give me time to go home and change. What time would you want to eat?’

  ‘About seven, if that’s all right with you. I’ll pick you up at your place, and in the meantime I’ll have a look round the village. Maybe see what sort of properties are for sale.’

  ‘So are you not married?’

  ‘Good gracious, no! I’ve never had the time or met the right woman. What about you?’

  ‘I’m single, too. Though I did once meet the right man.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘He’s around. But I was o
ver it a long time ago.’

  ‘Good. So I’ll see you at seven.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  The neurologist was pleasant and smart, she thought when he’d gone, but with Ross back in her life and standing just a few feet away she was already regretting having agreed to dine with him. Yet why not? she reasoned. Her feelings for Ross were dead and buried…weren’t they?

  ‘Kate tells me that fellow is the neurologist you were talking to on the phone that day at their farm,’ Ross said unsmilingly when his limpet-like admirer had gone home to do the milking.

  ‘Yes, Stephen Beamish,’ Isabel said coolly. ‘He’s asked me to dine with him this evening.’

  Ross whistled softly. ‘He doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet, does he?’

  ‘Neither does Kate Arrowsmith if it comes to that.’

  ‘Maybe not, but she hasn’t asked for a date.’

  ‘Give her time. And she won’t be the only one.’

  ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘Don’t you ever look in the mirror?’

  ‘Only to search for grey hairs or to straighten my tie. But getting back to this Beamish guy. What do you know about him?’

  ‘Just that he’s a neurologist at the hospital.’

  ‘Exactly. How do you know that he hasn’t got a wife and family?’

  ‘He says he hasn’t, because he’s never found the right woman.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘Does it matter? Tonight is just a one-off. For all I know, you might have a wife and family tucked away somewhere. Seven years is a long time.’

  Dark brows were rising as he said incredulously, ‘A family? That I haven’t told you about? I know I’m not top of your list of favourite people, but it’s insulting that you could think me so devious. I could have had one. I met someone who would have been only too willing to tie the knot if I’d given her any encouragement, but guess what? She was the daughter of one of my colleagues in the Dutch clinic where I was working, and I didn’t want to go down that road again.’