Steph considered these and other options, then wondered why she didn’t just get out of her car and go inside—find out who the stranger was.
Because it meant dashing through the rain and she was sick and tired of being wet.
And if whoever owned the car wanted to leave before her—which was likely as she didn’t leave until after eight—she’d have to dash out again and shift her car.
With grudging reluctance, she started her car again, backed out and parked beside the kerb opposite her front gate. Slightly further to dash, but what the hell. Being wet was minor compared to other problems she had right now.
One of which was sitting on her front veranda, almost hidden among the drying racks and draped laundry.
‘What are you doing here?’ Steph demanded, staring in disbelief at the man who’d sabotaged her thoughts, ruined her sleep and had now invaded her home.
‘Your babysitter told me she wasn’t allowed to invite strangers in without your permission,’ he said, rising to his feet so he towered over her in the limited space left by the washing. ‘And though Fanny acknowledged she had an Uncle Harry, she produced so ancient a photo of me, no one could see the resemblance.’
He gave a small, apologetic smile—an expression so familiar Steph felt her heart cramp with pain.
‘We compromised by me staying on the veranda—because of the rain—until you came home and introduced us.’
Another smile—another cramp.
‘Fanny does seem quite anxious to meet me,’ he said, sliding in under her defences.
Steph stared at him in disbelief.
‘Why are you doing this? Why are you here? What’s going on, Harry?’
Her voice was so full of pain and anxiety, Harry found himself wincing again. What had happened to make her so tense and suspicious?
OK, so they hadn’t parted friends—in fact, she’d vowed to never speak to him again—but she’d always sent thank-you notes for the gifts he’d sent to Fanny, and Steph had never been one to hold a grudge.
He shook his head, realising he had no idea how to answer her—and no inkling of the answers to his own mental queries.
Fanny broke the deadlock. The beautiful child, with eyes so like Martin’s Harry found himself staring at her, appeared in the doorway, the old photo still held in one hand.
‘This man says he’s Uncle Harry!’ she said to her mother, casting a stern look in Harry’s direction as she spoke.
Harry saw Steph hesitate. He’d heard enough of Fanny’s conversation with the babysitter to know Steph had spoken kindly of him to her little daughter. Now she was stuck in a dilemma of her own making—did she throw him out then explain to Fanny why she’d lost her godfather, or invite him in and pretend he was the friend Fanny thought him?
‘He is Uncle Harry,’ Steph said, kneeling beside the little girl and giving her a kiss and a quick hug. ‘He’s just got older so he doesn’t look quite the same as he does in your photo, but if you look at his eyes in the photo and then at his real eyes, you’ll see they’re the same. And his smile…’
She looked up at Harry, her own eyes as cool as ice water.
‘Smile, Uncle Harry,’ she ordered—voice even cooler than the eyes. ‘See,’ she added, turning back to Fanny. ‘It’s kind of like the same smile.’
It was nothing like the same smile, and Harry knew it. He knew the photo Fanny held for comparison, because he had an identical one himself. It had been taken when he’d first realised he loved Steph—loved her as more than a friend—and that love had shone in the smile.
Even though she hadn’t seen it.
CHAPTER THREE
ONCE assured this was her Uncle Harry in the flesh, Fanny took over, inviting him in, taking him into her room to become reacquainted with all the toys he’d sent her over the years, chattering on as if she’d known him for ever.
Which, in a way, she had, Steph realised.
Tracy, too, was obviously impressed by the visitor, apologising for her earlier doubts, offering tea or coffee. If Steph hadn’t been so disturbed by his presence in her house, she’d have laughed at the way the pair of them vied for his attention.
It was almost inevitable that Fanny would invite him to stay for dinner, Steph realised later as she added a tin of tomatoes to the mince she was making up into shepherd’s pie for their meal.
Though not as inevitable that he’d say yes!
What was he doing here?
Why had Harry come back?
She sneaked looks at him when she thought he was well occupied with Fanny’s chatter—saw the slight lines nearly five years had left in his face. Caught glimpses of his brown eyes, glowing with good humour and kindness as he talked to her daughter.
Did he feel a bond with Fanny because he’d seen her born—because he’d held Steph’s hand right through the delivery? Taken Martin’s place because Martin—no, she wasn’t going to follow that particular strand of memory…
Somehow she got through the meal, but when Harry offered to wash up, she knew she couldn’t share the kitchen with him a minute longer.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Tracy and Fanny can help you and I’ll have my shower. I wouldn’t mind getting to work early tonight, I’ve some paperwork to do.’
She whipped away, showered, then, wrapped in a towel, dashed across the hall to her bedroom. Where she surveyed the contents of her wardrobe and sighed.
Jeans and a T-shirt. It’s what you always wear to work, she reminded herself, but tonight she wished she had a new T-shirt or one pair of slightly less faded jeans. Tonight she’d have liked to look—well, attractive…
For Harry?
Or because he’s a man?
She tried to tell herself it was because he was a man and it was normal for the female of the species to preen for men, but she didn’t believe it for a moment. She wanted to look good for Harry, because Harry had always told her she was beautiful.
Though usually the assurances had come when she’d broken up with a boyfriend and had been in need of a confidence boost! Back in the early years of their friendship, they’d shared the highs and lows of their relationships with the opposite sex. Harry and Martin vetting the boys she went out with; she introducing them to girls she knew, giving them advice—from her admittedly limited experience—on how to win a woman…
She peered dolefully into the mirror.
Beautiful?
Bah! As if it matters what you look like, or what Harry used to tell you. What should be occupying your mind is what he’s doing here, and whether whatever it is will impact on the hard-won security of your little family.
She pulled on her oldest pair of jeans and a T-shirt that had a mouse with boxing gloves shaping up to an elephant—a gift from Tracy—then sallied forth, ready to do battle to protect her home and daughter from whatever new threat might be hovering above their heads.
‘Love the shirt!’ Harry said, when his eyes had raked over her and showed more disapproval than admiration.
‘Whatever I wear is covered by a coat anyway,’ she told him, shrugging off his reactions and turning her attention to Fanny.
‘Bedtime for you, kid,’ she said, but the excitement of meeting Uncle Harry in the flesh had gone to Fanny’s head and, in a rare display of contrariness, she argued.
‘What if I read you a story when you’re in bed?’ Harry offered, and, as Fanny’s tantrum turned to smiles, Steph felt her insides knot with a mix of anger and something that could only be jealousy.
Determined not to let it show, she forced a smile, then took Fanny’s hand and led her off.
But hiding her emotions only made things worse, for they seethed and bubbled inside her, so when it was finally time to leave for work, she was so uptight she flooded the car engine and then couldn’t get the wretched vehicle started.
The passenger door opened and Harry poked his head in.
‘Come on, I’ll drive you,’ he said.
‘Don’t bother, I can get a cab!’ she snapped.
<
br /> ‘You’re still as stubborn as a mule, Stephanie Prince!’ Harry said. ‘But you were never stupid. How easy do you think it will be to get a cab in this weather on a Friday night? Besides, we need to talk.’
‘No, we don’t,’ Steph told him, but he was right about the cab situation. Cursing under her breath, she gathered up her handbag and found her umbrella, then clambered out into the rain.
Again!
‘Nice car!’ she muttered as she strapped her damp body into the passenger seat, and sniffed the newness appreciatively.
‘It’s a hire car. I’ve only been back a week—less, really.’
She glanced across at him, backing expertly out of her drive, and wondered at how things had gone so wrong that she and Harry were reduced to such an inane conversation.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked again—though this time she was going to get an answer.
He turned and grinned at her and she felt a tide of emotion swamp over her, so deep and forceful she must surely drown.
‘In the car?’ he teased. ‘Driving you to work. In Summerland? I’ve come to work here—to open a specialist clinic.’
‘Well, you’ve come to the right place,’ Steph retorted, upset because the thought of Harry being permanently in the place she now called home had thrown her into more turmoil. ‘Plenty of wealthy, aging women wanting to look younger.’
The glance Harry cast her way this time had no amusement in it at all.
‘You used not to be bitchy, Steph,’ he said in a voice cooler than the rain beyond the windows. ‘It was one of the things that made you special.’
‘Special enough to be Martin’s wife, but only one of his many women,’ she snapped. ‘Well, that Stephanie’s gone, Harry. I’ve had enough bad things happen to me lately to justify me being the bitchiest woman in the world for the rest of my life.’
Harry tried to speak, but the thought of what Steph must have gone through stopped his breath. And she’d said ‘lately’. Bad things were still happening? Or had happened recently?
Since the terrible night when she’d given birth to Fanny, and Martin had been killed, racing to get to the hospital? Late because no one had been able to contact him. Late because he’d been away, not at the conference he’d used as an excuse but on a stolen weekend with another woman…
‘OK,’ he said at last, ‘I guess that’s up to you.’
Harry glanced at her again, but she was staring out the window, studying the rain as if someone might later question her about its force or wetness. But the shape of her head, visible beneath the short-cropped hair, was beautiful, and he had to grip the steering-wheel more tightly to stop his hand reaching out and his fingers feeling those newly revealed bones.
‘You can drop me in front of the clinic,’ she said, turning away from the window, but only to stare out through the windscreen—determined not to look at him.
‘No, I’ll take you through into the car park,’ he said. ‘I need to park the car. I’m coming to work with you.’
That got her! Steph’s head swivelled so fast it was a wonder she didn’t rick her neck.
‘You’re what?’
‘Coming to work with you,’ he repeated, and made no effort not to sound smug. ‘Friday night—two doctors on duty. I’ve been asked to see how the place runs, so how better to achieve that than by working there?’
‘You can’t do this to me!’ she stormed, her hands curled into such tight fists he knew it was only with difficulty she refrained from pummelling him.
He pulled into one of the doctors’ spaces behind the clinic and turned to her.
‘Do what, Steph?’ he asked quietly.
‘Come back into my life like this. Haunt me this way. Why, Harry? Why?’
She was so distressed he reached out and rested the back of his fingers, oh, so lightly against her cheek.
‘I would never do anything to hurt you, Steph, you must know that. And as for haunting you—I didn’t know you were working in the clinic. Yes, I’d have contacted you, probably tomorrow or the next day. I wanted to see Fanny. Wanted to see you…’
There—he’d said it. But whatever reaction he’d expected it certainly wasn’t to hear Steph laugh.
True, there was an edge of hysteria to the laughter, but she was still laughing.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, shaking her head, then turning to him so he saw the wetness of tears glistening on her sculpted cheek-bones. ‘First, however many years ago it was, fate put us together because of our surnames. Now you’re telling me it brought you here—in a city of thirty thousand people—to the very place I work?’
He wasn’t sure from her tone whether she was pleased or displeased with the machinations of fate, but Harry suspected it wasn’t fate at all, but Bob Quayle who’d brought them back together. And the suspicion rested uneasily on his shoulders.
Once before, he’d kept a secret from Steph—the secret of Martin’s continual and continuing infidelity—and it had cost him her friendship. Now he had another secret to keep. Martin’s father’s secret.
Steph opened the car door and stepped out. She knew Harry must think she was mad, but the tension inside her had been winding tighter and tighter, and when he’d said he’d wanted to see her, something had ripped open.
Harry had wanted to see her…
If he only knew how often she’d felt the same way—how often she’d longed to see him, talk to him, feel the security of his friendship.
His love…
She walked into the clinic, knowing he was following, so aware of him her entire back prickled as if she’d come out in a rash.
And things only got worse.
Friday night began, as it usually did, quietly enough, but at about ten-thirty a woman came in, accompanied by her husband and another couple with whom they’d been at dinner. All four had enjoyed pre-dinner drinks, wine with dinner and a liqueur to finish the evening. While not boisterously intoxicated, they were still relaxed enough to be uninhibitedly noisy.
‘It just happened,’ the husband said, pointing to his wife’s face. ‘We all saw it kind of drooping and now she can’t feel anything.’
The others joined in with descriptions of the woman’s problem, while the actual patient looked far from worried, blaming it on the red wine which she normally didn’t drink.
With difficulty, Steph detached her from the group and took her into a consulting room.
‘I’m just going to touch you in various places to see what feeling you’ve got,’ she told the woman, using first her fingers, then the end of a pair of sharp forceps to find the extent of the loss of feeling in the woman’s face.
‘It looks like Bell’s palsy, a paralysis of the facial nerve.’ She unrolled a chart on the wall, and pointed to the nerve. ‘It can be caused by injury of some kind, or an infection, or maybe compression of the nerve inside the brain.’
‘Like a tumour?’
‘It’s a possibility that you’ll have to rule out,’ Steph told her, ‘but quite often it just happens and we put it down to some infection you were probably unaware of having.’
‘Will it go away?’ the woman asked, pressing desperate fingers to the numb side of her face.
‘It might,’ Steph told her. ‘It’s hard to predict. It can be transient or permanent, it can affect both sides of the face or, as in your case, only one. The main problem is with your eye.’
She held up a small mirror so the woman could see the obvious droop of one side of her mouth and one eyelid.
‘Try blinking,’ she suggested, and was relieved when the eyelid moved, if only slightly.
‘Blinking spreads a sheet of moisture across your eyes, protecting them from drying out. I’ll give you some liquid that simulates tears, and I want you to use it regularly—at least until you’ve seen your own GP and made arrangements to see a specialist to have possible causes ruled out.’
‘But what about my mouth—and my eyelid? What if it doesn’t go away? I don’t want it
to stay that way.’
‘I know there are surgical procedures that can help,’ she said, then realised she had someone on the spot who could explain these far better than she could. She lifted her phone and spoke to Rebecca, who put her through to Harry.
‘My patient is just leaving,’ he said, when Steph explained, briefly, what she wanted. ‘I’ll pop in as soon as I’ve seen him out.’ He was as good as his word, appearing within minutes, then examining the woman’s face and explaining what could be done should the condition prove permanent.
‘So it wouldn’t be noticeable at all?’ she asked, and Steph saw the slight puckering of a frown as Harry considered his reply.
It was a silly thing to go all limp-boned about, but it was so familiar—so Harry somehow—worrying how to say something so it caused the least pain.
‘We can’t work miracles,’ he told the woman, ‘and if the condition is permanent we can’t make the muscles work again, but there is a lot we can do, cosmetically, to fix the slackness.’
He smiled encouragingly and the woman nodded. And though Harry hadn’t given her any really good news, she seemed a lot happier.
Amazing what a smile will do, Steph thought, especially one of Harry’s smiles.
The thought pulled her up—maybe she had become bitchy!
Harry departed and she walked the patient out, realising, as she saw the waiting room, that the usual Friday night mayhem was developing nicely. If Harry Pritchard wanted some action, he’d certainly get some tonight.
By two, the rush had died down. Two teenage girls who’d become ill drinking cocktails had been packed into a cab and sent home; three youths who’d been kicked out of a nightclub then started a fight with a twenty-stone bouncer had been despatched to A and E at the general hospital for X-rays; and a woman who had a child with croup had been comforted with cups of tea while a humidifier had eased the little boy’s terrible barking cough.
With a temporary lull in the patient flow, Steph headed for the tearoom. When she’d first begun work at the clinic, a refrigerator in the room had been stocked with packets of sandwiches, and the staff had been free to help themselves to a snack. But these days—she guessed since the new owner took over—the sandwiches had disappeared and she usually brought her own snack.
The Surgeon's Second Chance Page 4