An Unexpected Proposal

Neither of them had. They’d barely seen each other for months, with her work and his long shifts at the hospital and studying for his exams. Him calling the engagement off in the middle of it all had been just one more thing on her plate. She’d been confused when he’d said he needed time apart. How much more apart did he want? But she doubted it would be permanent—a decade of history was hard to walk away from for ever.

Skater boy laughed again and oozed sex appeal all over the park. It brought her temporarily out-of-order relationship with Simon into sharp contrast. Frankly, she couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, just looking at Simon had made her think sexual thoughts.

She shook her head. Jet lag—that was it. It was responsible for these uncharacteristic thoughts. Sex and sexual urges had never ruled her life. She’d been thrown one too many curve balls to be a free-loving kind of girl. For goodness’ sake! She was a thirty-year-old doctor, she’d seen more naked men in her life than she’d had hot dinners—why should looking at barely dressed skater boy have an effect? Why did his chest and his thighs and his laugh make her want things she’d never wanted before?

A car horn blasted behind her and she looked back to the road to see the sign had been turned to the yellow ‘slow’ side and she accelerated away quickly, grateful for the respite from her jumbled jet-lagged thoughts. She caught a glimpse of the man again in her rear-view mirror and felt the feeling of discontent he had stirred intensify. Damn him. Her life was just fine.

Just. Fine.

Madeline pulled up outside work a few hours later. She’d unpacked. She’d had a shower. She felt slightly revived. But the fog of fatigue still clung to her and she’d known she’d had to get out of the house before she’d succumbed to her bed and the seductive lure of sleep.

It was way too early to go to bed despite her exhaustion. If she went now she’d be awake at three in the morning with no hope of going back to sleep. So a quick catch-up trip into work late on a quiet Saturday afternoon was the perfect diversion.

She noticed the next-door shop, which had been empty when she’d left, was in the process of a fit-out. A painter was admiring his handiwork, putting the finishing touches to the signage on the glass sliding door.

‘Dr Marcus Hunt,’ it read. ‘Natural Therapist.’

Madeline stared at it for a few moments, repeating it over and over in her head until her sluggish brain computed the full implications. She felt the slow burn of rising anger.

‘Over my dead body!’

There was nothing quite like anger to wake you up. She felt it white and hot and burning in her gut. She felt more than awake, she felt alive again. The fog cleared from her brain and the weariness that was deep within her bones dissipated in an instant.

How many patients had she ‘fixed up’ after they’d seen alternative medicine characters? People who had let their conditions and diseases run out of control while some charlatan had used voodoo or a spell book and given them false hope? And then there was Abby.

She’d see about this! She brushed abruptly past the painter, slid back the door and entered the room. She blinked, removing her sunglasses as her eyes adjusted to the dim light in stark contrast to the glare of a summer’s afternoon in the Sunshine State. The chemical smell of paint assaulted her nostrils as she quickly scanned the room littered with boxes and painters trestles.

‘I’m sorry, we’re not open for business until next week.’ A deep, masculine voice drifted towards her from somewhere beyond the clutter of the immediate surroundings.

It resonated around the room and Madeline felt goose-bumps break out on her arms despite the stuffiness of the room. His voice made her think of the guy at the skate park and she gave herself a mental shake.

The man entered from a doorway to the right and leant lazily against the jamb, filling the space easily. She almost did a double-take as skater boy smiled at her and Madeline was pinned to the spot by his laughing blue eyes and boyish dimples.

He was dressed this time. Well, more dressed anyway. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt, completely unbuttoned, revealing that perfectly muscled abdomen. The impulse to touch him, run her fingers down the dark trail of chest hair and watch his abdominal muscles twitch beneath her nails was shocking.

His face was rugged, with a square jaw covered in light stubble. His dimples should have looked ridiculous on anyone older than five but they didn’t. They added to the alluring mix of pure man, giving him a shot of angelic boy.

In his right hand he held a well-used paintbrush and she thought absently that she’d been wrong about his employment status. He did have a job. A painter, or decorator, or something similar. He had some flecks of paint in his hair and the desire to touch them was compelling.

She couldn’t help but compare him to Simon. Physically they weren’t too dissimilar. Her ex-fiancé was a little shorter, a little less bulky, a little paler and his chest hair a little sparser. But there was something intangible about this man, something quite magnetic that frankly Simon just didn’t have.

Simon’s face was pleasant to look at, with a ready smile that put you at ease and oozed nice. Skater boy’s was sexy with a wicked smile that put you on edge and made you forget nice. Simon was your average good-looking guy. There was absolutely nothing average about this man. And in their whole ten years as a couple Simon had never made her body hum like it was right now.

Madeline frowned, confused by her uncharacteristic thoughts. Labourers were not her type. Buff wasn’t her type. Men that knew their way around skateboards weren’t her type. Men with children weren’t her type. What the hell was happening to her?

‘May I help you?’

His voice was rich and deep and barely contained his obvious amusement at her appraisal. She was standing a few metres away but Madeline could feel the caress of the air currents, disturbed by his voice, swaying seductively over her. It was as if he had physically touched her.

She blinked at him blankly, trying to remember why she was there. His amused gaze eventually worked its way into her consciousness and she made an effort to pull herself together. So, the man had a nice body. She’d come to talk to the naturopath, not to ogle the removalist or the decorator or whoever in the hell this man was.

‘Ah…no. I came to talk to Dr Hunt, but it appears he’s not here…so I’ll let you get back to your…duties.’

Marcus smothered a smile, suppressing the urge to throw back his head and laugh out loud. Put in your place, Marcus, old boy! The woman had just looked him over, summed him up and dismissed him as nothing in about thirty seconds flat! What a snob, he thought. What a sexy, beautiful snob.

She was tall and her head was crowned with the most magnificent red hair he’d ever seen. It was curly and looked slightly wild despite her efforts to tame it into a neat bundle at the back of her head. He had a sudden vision of it spread over his chest and he blinked.

Her emerald-green eyes sparkled above high cheekbones and two luscious lips. Kissable lips. Very kissable lips.

Her serious, obviously expensive suit did nothing to hide her fantastic figure. He felt his loins stir as he speculated on the bits of her long legs that were hidden by her skirt. She looked prim and proper and he was hit by the urge to get her dirty and messy. It was powerful, bordering on primitive.

She looked tired but there was an undercurrent, a vibe of tension around her that was almost palpable. Like a fully wound spring ready to unfurl at a second’s notice. He’d never met anyone so uptight in his life. A large diamond flashed on the ring finger of her left hand. Surely someone getting regular sex couldn’t be this tense?

‘I’m Dr Marcus Hunt,’ he stated, burying his left hand deep into his shorts pocket.

Madeline watched the movement hypnotically, until she became aware that she was staring at a particular part of his anatomy that she shouldn’t be staring at. She dragged her eyes away, shocked at herself. She could see that he found her amusing. His grin, barely suppressed, added a sparkle to those blue, blue eyes.

‘You’re Dr Hunt?’ she enquired with just the right amount of mingled sarcasm and disbelief. She had to get back some control here.

‘Yes.’ He swapped the paintbrush to his left hand, wiped his right on his denim-covered buttock and offered it to her.

She ignored it. Her rudeness seemed to amuse him even further and Madeline got the impression that nothing fazed Marcus Hunt.

‘And you are?’

‘Madeline Harrington. Dr Madeline Harrington.’

‘Ah…from next door.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll be neighbours, then.’ The thought, despite the bling on her hand, was immensely appealing.

‘Ah, no…I don’t think so,’ she stated with just the right amount of disdain.

‘Oh?’ he queried, not particularly worried. ‘Problem?’

‘Two, actually. One…’ Madeline counted on her hand ‘…I object, most strenuously, to you using the title of Doctor. Naturopaths or any other alternative medicine nuts are not permitted to call themselves doctors.’

‘They can if they hold a medical degree,’ he stated matter-of-factly. ‘And I’m a homeopath, actually.’

‘You’re…you’re a real doctor?’ Madeline spluttered in disbelief.

He threw back his head and laughed at the frank incredulity obvious on her face.

The long column of his neck was exposed to her view and, despite her embarrassment, an errant brain cell dared her to lick it.

‘Is that so hard to believe?’

‘Quite frankly, yes,’ Madeline admitted. He didn’t look like any kind of doctor she had ever known. Her father had been a doctor, his two nearing-retirement partners were doctors. Simon was a doctor! Those men were what doctors looked like.

‘I believe there was a second…?’ Marcus prompted after some time had elapsed and Madeline hadn’t continued.