He frowned, then said flatly, ‘I don’t believe you. What’s brought this on?’
‘I told you—it’s too soon after my involvement with Max. I’m in a muddle about my feelings.’
‘For God’s sake…’ Atholl got up from the chair and paced up and down, looking across at her in bewilderment. ‘You said Max was a bastard, only wanting what he could get. I’d have thought he was easy enough to get out of your system.’ He stood still for a moment, gazing down at her, his eyes like two blue chips of steel lasering their way into her.
‘I…I can’t switch on and off like that,’ said Terry wretchedly. ‘I need space, Atholl. I want to move from the cottage and lead a completely separate life. In fact…’ Her voice trembled slightly. ‘I think it’s better if I leave the practice. It would be incredibly hard to work so closely with you after what’s gone on between us and then to go on as…as mere colleagues.’
He shook his head, then came round the table and put his hand under her chin and tilted her face to his. ‘What’s gone wrong, darling?’ he asked softly. ‘Only a couple of days ago you and I were in each other’s arms, making wonderful love. We had the most magical night together. I shall never forget it…’
He pulled her towards him and took her face in his hands, kissing her with tender gentleness, then putting his arms around her and holding her so close to him that she could feel his hip bones next to hers, his heart thumping against her breast. God, what she would have given to have told him everything, to have made love to him then and there!
Terry gritted her teeth. She had to be tough, no good being half-hearted about this, although it was like cutting off her right arm. She tried to pull herself away from him, but he held onto her with a grip of steel, looking down at her with his incredible eyes.
‘Don’t tell me Sunday night meant nothing to you, Terry,’ he said huskily.
‘Of course not. I enjoyed it very much Atholl.’
Atholl’s hands dropped to his sides abruptly, and he stepped back a pace.
‘Enjoyed it?’ he exploded, staring at her incredulously for a second, then he sank back into the chair, shaking his head. ‘I thought it would mean more to you than eating an ice cream.’
‘As I said, once I realised I didn’t want total commitment, I decided it was better to finish things promptly. You once mentioned that relationships between doctors didn’t work, and perhaps you’re right—better not to risk it.’
Atholl laughed shortly. ‘For God’s sake, that was a throw-away remark, a joke, sweetheart.’
‘I…I feel I’m not sure about anything at the moment. It wouldn’t be fair to lead you on like Zara did and then let you down.’ Terry’s voice was stony, unemotional. It was the only way she could do it.
‘Don’t bring Zara Grahame into this,’ he said roughly. ‘I thought you loved it here, even before we got together. You told me you loved the people, the countryside,’ he added. ‘And I thought you loved me a little too.’
Terry licked her dry lips, and said nothing. It was too dreadful: she was telling lie after lie. Of course she loved him, more than ever now, and that was why she had to cut herself off from Atholl and any danger she might put him in.
There was a long silence, then Atholl stood up again abruptly, his expression becoming cold and his mouth a grim line. ‘I see. I didn’t realise it was just to be a onenight stand…’
‘No! It wasn’t—it wasn’t anything like that!’ Terry cried. The words dragged out of her. ‘I just need time to think…without being too near you.’
‘You’ve made your mind up pretty quickly.’ His voice was grating. ‘And where do you propose to stay in the meantime before you leave the area? The flat here isn’t ready yet.’
‘I’ll go to a B and B I’ve seen down the road for the time being.’
‘Got it all planned, haven’t you?’
She looked down at the table, trying to control the telltale tears that threatened to engulf her. ‘I think it’s best, Atholl. You wouldn’t want me to be with you unless I was sure, would you?’
‘Of course not,’ he said with cold politeness. ‘You must do what you think fit. I presume you’ll take your things fairly soon, then.’
Atholl walked towards the door, turning round just before he opened it. ‘I take it you’re still working with me here for a little while to give me time to get someone else?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘But the sooner the better—for both our sakes.’
There was bafflement and grief in the look he gave her, and Terry had a sudden urge to run towards him and fling herself in his arms and tell him that she loved him more than anything else in the world, but she nodded wordlessly, aware that if she said anything she would burst into tears. She heard him bang out of the house, shutting the front door with a crash and then driving down the road with a roar of acceleration.
She shook her head helplessly. She’d gone about this all the wrong way. She should have left as soon as she’d got the note, disappeared out of Atholl’s life completely and just written to him later. But she was too selfish, wasn’t she? She needed to try and give him some explanation so that he wouldn’t think too badly of her, so that he would have time to get help with the practice. As it was, he probably despised her for leading him on and then abandoning him.
She ran upstairs to the little bedroom where she’d been so happy and started stuffing her clothes into her suitcase, sobbing her heart out.
What the hell had gone wrong? Atholl changed gear savagely as he accelerated up the road and into the hills, trying to make sense of the conversation he’d just had with Terry. His thoughts flickered back to their lovemaking on the shore of the lake by The Culleens. He could swear that the passion and happiness she’d shown then with him hadn’t been made up. He could, perhaps, understand that she might want to take things slower—their attraction to each other had been like a thunderbolt, unable to keep their hands off each other. But to finish completely? To leave the practice? It just didn’t add up, he thought.
He parked the car at the top of the hill in the little glade he’d taken Terry to on her first day of work, and got out, trying to clear his head in the fresh air. Perhaps, he mused bitterly, he was just a bad judge of women, and he’d learned nothing from his experience with Zara. But deep down he was sure there was something more to this than Terry wanting to take things more slowly. How could she finish a relationship so abruptly when he just knew that what they felt for each other was so strong? His face hardened as he stared unseeingly down at the blue waters of the Scuola Sound. He wouldn’t give up on her yet, not while she still remained on the island. He had to find out what was behind this devastating change of mind.
It was such a beautiful morning as the little ferry made its way to Hersa over the calm Scuola Sound. The sea shimmered in the golden sunlight and a flock of terns skimmed over the water to the side of the boat. Terry leaned miserably against the rail and watched the island come closer, unaware of the beauty all around her, her thoughts completely taken up with the horrible situation she found herself in. It was bad enough that that bastard Max was out there somewhere, hunting her, trying to silence her. Almost worse than that was the fact that she had finished things between her and Atholl and she couldn’t explain to him the true reason why she’d done it.
Atholl was standing at the other side of the deck, his back to her, ramrod straight. He had merely nodded briefly to her when she’d arrived on the quayside. Now he was on his mobile phone and had started pacing up and down, and Terry could sense his restless energy and the anger he felt sparking off towards her.
He put the phone back in his pocket and folded his arms, looking at the wake creaming behind them and smiling grimly to himself. His mother had just informed him she was coming to stay for a few days soon and he could well imagine what she would say if she knew what had happened between him and Terry. ‘She’s out of your league, son. She doesn’t want to be involved with a boy from the Gorbals. I could have told yo
u this would happen!’
Perhaps that was it. His mother would see what he could not, blinded as he was by attraction for Terry. Terry must suddenly have realised that she was hitching herself to someone from a completely different world from his. He gazed stonily over the water, his lips set in a firm line. He wouldn’t have thought it of Terry—she had seemed so fresh, so straightforward—but, then, what did he know about women? He’d made one bad mistake so the odds were that he could easily make another.
And yet…he turned round and looked at Terry standing by the rail, her slender figure looking vulnerable, her short fair hair whipping across her elfin face. He’d thought he’d known her so well—she seemed to be the last person in the world who would be concerned with something as trivial as the background one would come from, and he couldn’t really believe that she felt that about him.
At that moment she turned round and looked at him, and her expression had such pain and sadness in it that he could swear that she still felt something for him. She had been so intransigent about them parting and yet he couldn’t believe that that was what she really wanted.
What was he to do? He couldn’t force Terry to change her mind, but he was damned if he’d just sit back and let her go away without a fight. And he’d find out the cause of this sudden change of heart if it was the last thing he did.
Terry went over to a bench and sat down. It was no good regretting what she’d done—it was the only option that she could see. She had contacted the police and they were aware of the situation, giving her a special number to ring if she felt threatened. It hadn’t made her feel any safer.
They were drawing up to the little dockside now and the ropes had been thrown over the bollards to hold the ferry steady. Atholl was pushing his motorbike down the ramp and Terry followed him, horribly aware that she would have to get on the back of it and cling to him when they rode to the clinic. The last thing she needed was to be as close to him as that, holding onto his muscled body, awakening all kinds of feelings she was trying to suppress.
‘Put this on,’ he said unsmilingly as he handed her a crash helmet.
She took it wordlessly and then climbed onto the pillion seat behind him. He stamped on the accelerator and they whirled off. Terry closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as she pressed against him—so close to him physically and yet already so far from him emotionally. She had hurt him desperately, she knew, and he was angry and frustrated at her inexplicable change of heart. His manner had become cold and distant even now as if to cut himself off from her—and who could blame him? He must feel he hadn’t had much luck with women, reflected Terry miserably.
They stopped outside a small building with the words ‘Hersa Community Hall’ across the front, where a queue of children with parents were going in. Atholl and Terry got off the bike and he propped it up against the wall and took out a bag from underneath the pillion seat.
‘Come on,’ he said brusquely. ‘Let’s get this done.’
There were plenty of children there, some from one of the other tiny inhabited islands near Hersa but who attended the local school. Their parents were all extremely worried and a lot of reassurance had to be given that their offspring were highly unlikely to contract meningitis and that the antibiotics were merely a precaution.
Sitting so close to Atholl and working steadily through their young patients, it would seem to the outsider that there was nothing amiss between them, reflected Terry. Atholl was courteous to her when he spoke, but had introduced her to the parents as ‘Dr Younger, who is just filling in for my uncle for a short time’. When he said that, his eyes caught hers for a second and there was mutual misery in their locked gazes. Terry turned away abruptly to deal with her next small patient, a little boy with a snub nose and freckles.
‘And your name is…?’ she asked him.
‘Jimmy Scott, miss.’ He grinned at her as she gave him the injection, seemingly unaffected by the thought of a needle in his arm. ‘So are you and Dr Brodie sweethearts?’ he asked cheekily. ‘My auntie on Scuola says you make a lovely couple—I’ve heard her tell my mam!’
A posse of children around him burst into a fit of giggles and some of the parents remonstrated with them.
‘Will you hush up, Jimmy?’ scolded his mother. ‘You’re so rude. Do forgive him,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m afraid rumours get round this area very quickly…’
‘It’s quite all right, I’m immune to rumours,’ said Terry, stretching her mouth into a false smile. ‘There you are, Jimmy, you’re all done now.’ Beside her she was intensely aware that Atholl couldn’t have helped but hear the exchange.
‘I hope you’ve enjoyed your time in this area,’ continued the woman politely.
‘Yes,’ sighed Terry. ‘I have—very much.’
The last of the children had been seen and the hall was empty. Atholl started to push the chairs that had been used back against the wall and Terry wandered outside, unable to stand the atmosphere between the two of them in the empty room.
He came out into the sunshine and stopped for a second, taking in her woeful expression and the sad droop of her shoulders. Finishing their relationship evidently hadn’t made her any happier, he thought.
‘Right,’ he remarked. ‘Back to Scuola—and do I take it you’re staying at the B and B tonight?’
‘Yes. You can drop me off there.’
He nodded and got on the bike, and again there was the exquisite torture for her of being so close to Atholl as they flew along the road as she had been on the shores of the lake. Terry gave up trying to lean away from him as they drove along a winding road and allowed herself to squeeze up to his solid body, burying her head in the back of his leather jacket and savouring the warm, masculine smell of him. This would be the last time she would ever be this close to him, she cried inwardly to herself.
When they got off the boat the attractive house that did bed and breakfast was only a few minutes away. Atholl drew to a halt outside it and sat for a minute, waiting for Terry to dismount, then he got off the bike and took off his helmet, his dark hair ruffling in the breeze.
‘I’ll be ringing the agency for an emergency locum this afternoon,’ he said tersely. ‘Hopefully I can get one short term, starting in the next day or two.’
‘Very well. I think it’s for the best, Atholl.’ Terry tried to sound calm and measured, to disguise the little catch in her voice. ‘You’ll let me know when one becomes available.’
She turned and went into the house and Atholl went back to The Sycamores and parked his bike against the wall as he was just going in to catch up on his e-mails. A young man smoking a cigarette and smartly dressed in a casual suede coat and cream cords was standing near the entrance, looking at the brass plaque on the wall that listed the doctors who worked there. Terry’s name had not yet been added, so there were only Atholl and his uncle’s names on it.
‘Can I help you?’ asked Atholl.
The man turned round and smiled. He was good looking in a tough kind of way, but with a hardness about him that reminded Atholl of the kind of youths he used to hang around with in Glasgow, although this man had a veneer of sophistication and polish about him.
‘Thanks. I believe that Dr Younger works here—but I don’t see her name on the plaque. I was hoping to meet up with her.’
‘She has been working here,’ answered Atholl brusquely. ‘But she’s leaving.’
‘Ah…I see.’ The man frowned slightly. ‘And you are her colleague, I take it?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Atholl didn’t elaborate—he felt tired and irritable and not willing to enter into a conversation with a stranger.
‘You don’t happen to know her address, do you? I seem to have mislaid it.’
Some instinct made Atholl wary of giving the man that information. ‘I only know she’s moved from the place she was living in very recently,’ he said evasively. ‘Are you a close friend?’
The young man smiled. ‘Oh, yes, we were very close—and I knew her father v
ery well.’ He flicked his cigarette into the grass verge. ‘Never mind, I’ll catch up with her. As I said, she’ll be expecting me.’
He walked off down the road and Atholl’s gaze followed him. The first hint of anyone from Terry’s background to have surfaced, he reflected as he went into the building, then his mobile phone rang and he answered it, putting the man out of his mind.
CHAPTER TEN
‘I’VE got an emergency locum,’ said Atholl tersely the next day, standing in front of the desk and looking down at Terry. ‘He’s starting tomorrow.’
So this is my last day here, and my successor is a man, Terry thought wryly. Not that she could blame Atholl—he’d surely never employ a woman again! She nodded wordlessly and sighed. The happiness she’d found in Scuola had been so short-lived. If only she could tell Atholl why she was leaving, what the whole background was. Impossible now. His safety depended on her cutting off any connection with him.
She bit her lip and said in a choked voice, ‘Thanks for telling me, Atholl. I…I’m sorry it worked out like this.’
A moment’s silence, then he said softly and unexpectedly, putting his hands on the desk and leaning towards her, deep blue eyes holding hers, ‘So am I, Terry, so am I. You know it doesn’t have to be like this. Are you quite, quite sure you want us to end things?’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
She turned her face away from his, unable to meet his eyes, biting her lip. ‘How do you mean?’ Her voice was edgy, cautious.
Atholl shrugged and said simply, ‘Because everything seemed so right—you, me, the way we worked together. Sweetheart, I’m adding two and two together here and it’s making five—there’s no sense to it.’
His tender voice hung in the room so tantalisingly, just as he had sounded when he had made love to her that wonderful evening by the loch, and it was heart-breaking. Terry took a deep breath and got up from the desk, walking towards the window to get away from his scrutiny.
Hired: GP and Wife / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal Page 14