Doctor On Her Doorstep

Doctor On Her Doorstep
Annie Claydon

The stranger who loves her. Jenna’s spent her life being overlooked, so when she arrives home to find an unbelievably gorgeous man on her doorstep she assumes he’s looking for someone else. But Dr Adam Sinclair is here for her – this delectable stranger is her new lodger!Wrestling with emotional wounds from his past, Adam doesn’t expect to find himself so sharply drawn to his beautiful, guarded landlady. Floored by her compassion, he feels the barricades around his heart crumbling. Yet even now, allowing Jenna into his heart might be the hardest thing he’s ever done…

If she’d stayed still, quiet, then maybe he could have resisted her.

But he felt her fingers on his jaw, gently brushing the night’s stubble. Then she whispered his name and ripped every last thread of his resolve to tatters. His hands found her waist and she slid onto his lap. He kissed her, heat banking and flaring in his chest until his head began to swim.

If the first kiss could be explained away as a heat of the moment thing, the second trashed that particular excuse. They both knew exactly what they were doing. Her gaze was locked with his and he heard her murmur his name, felt her lips against his in a smile.

Adam poured everything he had, everything he was into the kiss, letting the long, slow beat of their passion take him.

Dear Reader

When I was planning this book, one of the things I pondered long and hard was where to set it. I wanted somewhere exciting, interesting, possibly a little challenging. Romantic, definitely. And although I’ve been to many places that would answer that description exactly, none of them quite seemed to fit the bill as the backdrop for this story.

The answer turned out to be in the very last place that I thought of looking: quite literally, right on my doorstep.

Like many big cities, London is a place of shifting populations. People come from all over the world—as tourists, to study, or to work—and Dr Adam Marshall is one of those people. He’s in London for a month, and soon he’ll be moving on.

Dr Jenna Weston knows just what it’s like to be left behind. She’s promised herself that she’s not going to allow her future to follow the pattern of her past, and that if she opens her heart again it’s going to be to someone who’ll stay with her. So right from the start Adam’s completely wrong for Jenna—despite the fact that his good looks and charm set her pulse racing.

Thank you for sharing Adam and Jenna’s story with me. I loved writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it. I’m always delighted to hear from readers, and you can e-mail me via my website at www.annieclaydon.com

Annie

About the Author

Cursed from an early age with a poor sense of direction and a propensity to read, ANNIE CLAYDON spent much of her childhood lost in books. After completing her degree in English Literature, she indulged her love of romantic fiction and spent a long, hot summer writing a book of her own. It was duly rejected and life took over, with a series of U-turns leading in the unlikely direction of a career in computing and information technology. The lure of the printed page proved too much to bear, though and she now has the perfect outlet for the stories which have always run through her head, writing Medical

Romance for Mills and Boon. Living in London, a city where getting lost can be a joy, she has no regrets about having taken her time in working her way back to the place she started from.

Why not check out Annie’s fantastic debut?

ALL SHE WANTS FOR CHRISTMAS

Also available in eBook formatfrom www.millsandboon.co.uk

Doctor on

Her Doorstep

Annie Claydon

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

There are so many people to thank.

My family and friends, who believed in me

with such certainty that sometimes I feared for their

sanity. The talented and lovely Medical Romance

writers, who have welcomed this new recruit to

their ranks with such warmth and kindness.

And last (but not least) the editorial team at

Harlequin Mills & Boon, especially Lucy Gilmour, who

has guided me with insight, patience and good humour

every step of the way. My heartfelt thanks to you all.

CHAPTER ONE

JENNA had been longing for this moment. She slid her car into the parking space outside the rambling Victorian house that had once been her family home and killed the ignition. A shower and a pizza were waiting for her inside and nothing now stood between her and the solitary, relaxing evening she had promised herself.

There was something, though. Someone to be more precise, and he was sitting on the steps, in the shade of the wide arch of the porch, his elbows propped on his knees, legs stretched out in front of him. His demeanour said he was waiting for someone, and since that someone was unlikely to be her, he must be another of Janice’s endless stream of boyfriends.

It was a shame, but she couldn’t do anything about it. Janice had moved out of the ground-floor flat three weeks ago, and if she hadn’t seen fit to share her forwarding address with him, then Jenna certainly wouldn’t. The best she could do for him was to take a contact number and promise to pass it on.

Okay. This won’t take long. Pity really. She didn’t like giving people the brush-off and there was something about his relaxed pose that said he was someone you’d like to spend time with. Jenna hauled the two heavy shopping bags out of the boot of her car and manoeuvred her way through the front gate, kicking it closed behind her, rather harder than she had meant to. The low sun dazzled her, and she was halfway down the front path before she could get a proper look at the stranger.

He looked like a rock star. Distressed leather jacket, jeans and boots. Light brown hair streaked with gold, which was just long enough to slick behind his ears, and the kind of tan you didn’t get from a two-week Easter break. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses but the tilt of his head indicated that he was watching Jenna as she walked towards him and dumped her shopping bags at his feet.

‘Hello. Can I help you?’

‘I’m looking for Dr Weston.’

‘Oh! That’s me.’ Something crawled up Jenna’s spine, and she wondered whether a bug had got into her shirt. A bug that was somehow making her fingertips tingle as well.

‘I’m Adam Sinclair. Dr Greene told me he’d mentioned my name to you.’ His accent was English, but he’d obviously been in America for a while. Mid-Atlantic. Rolling between the familiar, cut-glass consonants of home and a heart-stopping drawl.

‘He said …’ Jenna gulped back the words. It wasn’t tactful to repeat what Rob Greene had said in his email. ‘I thought you weren’t going to arrive until next weekend.’ Jenna’s reflection stared back at her from the dark lenses of his glasses.

He seemed to realise that the sunglasses were unnerving her and he pulled them off, hooking them into the open neck of his shirt. ‘I flew in from America this morning, and I’m driving down to Exeter tonight for the week. I thought I’d swing by and try to see you on the way.’

His tawny gaze looked as if it had been kissed by the same sun as his hair and was a hundred times more unsettling. Jenna fixed her eyes on a point somewhere between the bridge of his nose and his hairline and issued a mental instruction to pull herself together. ‘That’s something of a detour. North London’s not exactly on the way from Heathrow to the M3.’

‘Well, I did say swing. Implies an arc.’ He shrugged off the twenty miles of crowded roads as if they were a minor obstacle. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘No.’ Jenna didn’t move. It wasn’t really a problem. He just wasn’t quite what she’d been expecting. To be absolutely honest, she wouldn’t have known how to expect someone like this, appearing out of nowhere, on her doorstep.

‘I should show you some ID.’ He’d mistaken her bewilderment for mistrust, and pulling his wallet out of his jacket pocket he opened it and handed it to her. Credit cards. A Florida driving licence. A photograph of a woman. Jenna closed the wallet and handed it back.

‘Thanks.’ She reached for her bags of shopping, but he got there first, picking them up as he got to his feet. ‘You’d better come inside.’