The Elusive Doctor

by Abigail Gordon

  ‘Eloise and Dad will perhaps look after them.’ And stop pushing me to go! she wanted to cry.

  She wanted to stay. Stepping Dearsley had caught her in its pretty rural web, and even if it hadn’t, the fact that Rob Carslake lived there would have been enough to hold her captive.

  But she’d presumed too much on that score. He was attracted to her. She’d no doubts about that. But he wasn’t exactly falling over himself to do anything about it and she would be a fool if she didn’t move on.

  ‘I’ll come over and see if I can calm your wanderer down,’ she offered, half hoping he would say no, but he took her up on it.

  ‘Yes, do. I think that the poor thing is missing a woman’s touch.’

  As she threw a warm jacket over the pale green mo-hair jumper and tight black trousers into which she’d changed on arriving home, Nina was wishing that Rob would admit that he, too, needed a woman’s touch—such as her own, for example.

  What am I doing here…where I’m not wanted? she thought as she rang his doorbell. I’ve come round on an excuse and I’m amazed that Rob didn’t see it for what it is.

  A grey blanket of weariness, stemming from the day’s toil and emotions, suddenly settled on her and she leaned weakly against the doorpost.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Rob asked when he opened the door to her. ‘You look exhausted.’

  He led her inside and settled her in a chair in front of the fire. ‘Let me get you a drink. Tea? Coffee? Sherry?’

  ‘A sherry might liven me up a bit,’ she said apologetically.

  As he poured the drink Nina looked around her. The flat didn’t look so basic tonight. There was a spruce in the corner, decorated with bright ornaments and coloured lights, and Christmas cards were everywhere, adding their own festive touch to the room.

  Nina wished she could stay there for ever, secure and warm with Rob fussing over her. Perhaps in that moment he was seeing her as a patient.

  She needed treatment, that was a fact. Treatment for the heartache and uncertainty that went with loving him, but he didn’t seem to be tuned into her need.

  As she slowly sipped the drink the heat of the fire was making her drowsy, and she was mortified when her eyelids became so heavy that she couldn’t keep them open. What a state to be in when she had Rob all to herself, she thought as she tried to fight off sleep.

  He was smiling as he watched her go over the edge into oblivion. Flaking out like that was the last thing she would want to do in case she missed something, but it was quite clear that she was worn out and, curled up in front of the fire, fast asleep, his trainee looked young and defenceless.

  Yet somehow Nina looked as if she belonged there in his home. Not because a sparsely furnished flat above a doctor’s surgery was the right habitat for her, but because where one of them was the other needed to be also.

  Rob’s face was sombre in the firelight as he looked down at her. It wasn’t the right time for that sort of thinking. But he knew that he hadn’t given Nina a chance to say her piece.

  For a very good reason…He wasn’t sure that his determination would hold in the face of hearing what she had to say. Just as he didn’t know how he was going to endure life without her if she went off to some far land.

  He bent and picked her up in his arms, handling her as gently as a mother would a child. Walking through into the bedroom, he laid her carefully on top of the bed.

  She stirred and gave a gentle moan, but she didn’t awaken. Covering her with the quilt, he sat beside her and gave himself up to serious thought.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  NINA awoke to find herself lying beneath a strange ceiling. Startled, she lay rigid as she sought to remember where she was. Then she turned her head and saw Rob lying beside her on top of the bedcovers, and it all came back.

  She’d fallen asleep in front of the fire and he must have carried her into his bedroom. Her sigh was heart-felt. They’d spent the night together and she hadn’t even known.

  The weight over her middle was his arm, thrown across her in sleep. Lifting it carefully, she laid it across his chest.

  He was deeply asleep, wearing just a pair of shorts, while she was still in the green jumper and black trousers.

  With her eyes on the face that was never out of her mind, Nina began to strip off. She was desperate for a shower, even though it would mean putting on the same clothes again.

  When she was down to her bra and pants she went to seek out the bathroom, and was about to investigate the shower when she remembered that the night before she’d told her father she was popping out for a few minutes. That had been twelve hours ago.

  She smiled. He would have sounded reveille and she wouldn’t have been there! A good excuse would be needed to explain her absence.

  She could hardly tell him she’d spent the time with Rob Carslake. Maybe she could invent an emergency that had taken up the night.

  ‘All right,’ her father commented when she’d said her piece. ‘I’ll expect you when? Nine hundred hours?’

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed weakly. ‘I’ll be home by then.’

  As she was replacing the phone Nina heard footsteps padding across the bedroom, and before she could beat a swift retreat Rob was there, leaning against the doorpost.

  ‘So you’re awake,’ he said, with the eyes that she’d once likened to winter chestnuts observing her semi-nakedness.

  ‘Er…yes, I am,’ she said with a husky laugh as the moment began to take hold of her. ‘I thought you were still asleep.’

  ‘Obviously,’ he said softly as he moved towards her, ‘but I’m not, am I? I’ve had someone warm and sweet-smelling beside me all night, and the moment she was gone I was lost.’

  This isn’t happening, Nina told herself. I’m not going to find myself in paradise twice. At any moment Kitty Kelsall will be clanking round with her bucket and mop, or Rob will be called out.

  She took a step back, wrinkling her pert nose as she did so. ‘I don’t know about smelling sweet. I’ve just taken off the clothes that I’d been wearing for far too long and was about to have a shower.’

  Rob was laughing. ‘You’d smell sweet if you’d just come crawling out of the manure heap at one of the farms but, as you’re concerned about it, how about us showering together?’

  Her eyes were huge. ‘I don’t believe this is happening. You’re being nice to me. Treating me as if I haven’t got something catching. What’s changed?’

  The laughter left him. There was a look on his face that made Nina catch her breath.

  ‘Last night when you were asleep I realised that you were where you belonged. Here with me. That from now on, where we go we go together. I’d been telling myself that it was the wrong time to tell you how much I love you when I’d only just broken with Bettine, but I’d finally laid that ghost to rest and was ready to move forward when Eloise got the all-clear.

  ‘It was wonderful news, but the timing was wrong again, as the way was then open to you to work abroad as you’d longed to do. But I can’t hold out any longer, Nina. I love you! Adore you! I want to make babies with you and cherish you for the rest of your life. So what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to stay here in Stepping Dearsley until our children are grown and you’re ready to leave the practice. Then we’ll do the other thing…together,’ she said softly. ‘Agreed?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. I don’t have to be a GP for ever. We’ll do as you say. One day, we’ll take our skills to another country where they need us.’

  As they frolicked in the shower, adoring each other’s nakedness, bewitched by the magic the day had brought, Nina gave a gasp of comic dismay.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘My dad! I said I’d be home by nine o’clock. He’ll have me down as absent without leave…and what about Titmarsh? I was supposed to be giving him rehousing counselling!’

  ‘I have a message from one of your expectant mums,’ Rob said when Nina ran out to greet him on Christmas morning.


  ‘Really? Which one?’

  ‘Amanda. She told me to tell you that she’s carrying on with the pregnancy. Apparently, her husband is a joiner and has decided to start his own business which, I’m sure we both agree, is positive thinking for a man who has lost his job.’

  He smiled down at her in the circle of his arms. ‘I told her that we might have some work for him.’

  ‘We might? In what way?’

  ‘Building our own house, maybe?’ he said, and planted a kiss on the end of her nose.

  Her eyes were as bright as emeralds. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. And I’ve got the very thing to hang on the walls.’

  ‘What?’ she asked, with the wonder still on her.

  ‘You remember when we went into the town the other week and I said I had some business to see to?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I wondered what it was.’

  He was opening the boot of his car and he lifted out a big, flat package, loosely wrapped. Handing it to her, he said, ‘I took this to be framed.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He laughed. ‘Unwrap it and you’ll see.’

  ‘It’s me!’ she cried. ‘You’ve painted me! Oh, Rob, I’m not that beautiful.’

  ‘You are to me,’ he said. ‘It was my solace on the long, dark nights when my stupid pride kept me away from you…and now I can’t believe it. I’ve got you both.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5643-2

  THE ELUSIVE DOCTOR

  First North American Publication 2001

  Copyright © 2001 by Abigail Gordon

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