Once More, With Feeling

‘I think so,’ she replied, and was amazed at the normality of her voice. Her greedy eyes sought out every tiny detail of his movements as he reached for the coffee-pot. Were his shoulders just a touch broader? Maybe. ‘You’re looking well,’ she added.

He turned towards her, pot in hand. ‘So are you—as lovely as ever.’ His eyes flicked away. ‘You got married again, I gather. I’m sorry to hear you lost your husband.’

Emily thought of Philip, one of the kindest, most generous men she had ever known, and felt a wash of sadness. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

‘You’ve got a son.’ His voice sounded harsh, accusing almost. She ignored it.

‘Yes—James. He’s six now.’

‘Rather young for you to have a full-time job.’

‘I have to live,’ she said, still quiet but defensive now.

‘Yes—I’m sorry, your child-care arrangements are nothing to do with me.’ He sat down in one of the easy-chairs, big hand wrapped round the mug of coffee, and eyed her over the top. ‘So, what do you think of the practice?’

She shrugged. ‘Wonderful. I would have loved working here, I’m sure.’

‘Would have?’

She lifted her shoulders again. ‘Of course. This changes things, don’t you think?’

David was silent, regarding her through veiled eyes. She wished she could read his expression, but, like his looks, that aspect hadn’t changed. She could never read his eyes if he didn’t want her to.

The silence stretched on endlessly, and then finally he spoke. ‘It needn’t change things—not necessarily. We need a woman partner, and you were definitely the favoured candidate. We’re very pushed, and we have been for some time. We need to make an appointment as soon as possible, really. Locums are difficult to come by. In this part of the world they want to work in Exeter or Barnstaple, not sleepy little Biddlecombe.’

His eyes traced her features one by one, then flicked back to lock with hers, their expression still unreadable. ‘As for us—well, after all, it’s been eight years. We should be able to be civilised about it.’

She thought of all the rows, and then of the making up, the desperate depths of passion he had aroused in her. Civilised? Somehow, knowing him, she doubted it.

She glanced around at the tired décorations. ‘I wouldn’t have thought this was your thing. I had you pegged for Harley Street.’

He gave a rude snort. ‘Me? With my rural background and Cornish accent? I wouldn’t smell right—that faint tang of manure that’s so difficult to shift. Besides, I like it here.’

Her shoulders twitched. ‘I just thought—you were such a brilliant doctor. I never expected you to bury yourself in obscurity.’

‘Too good for general practice?’ He snorted again. ‘Was that why you went in for it? Because you weren’t good enough for hospital medicine?’

Her head came up. ‘How dare you? I am a good doctor—’

‘So why bury yourself in obscurity?’

Their eyes clashed for a long while, and then a slow, lazy smile curved his lips. ‘My round, I think,’ he murmured, and his voice curled round her senses and sent a dart of something forgotten stabbing through her body.

She scraped up her ragged defences. ‘I don’t think this will work,’ she said stiffly. ‘We’re fighting already.’

‘Hardly fighting,’ he countered, and she could see from his eyes that he was remembering—remembering the fights, and then the long, slow hours of making up. Sometimes she had wondered if they hadn’t provoked half the fights just for the making up.

The pause stretched on. ‘Give it a try, Emily,’ he coaxed at last. ‘If the others agree, give us six months—a probationary period. We would have had one anyway, whoever the candidate. See how it goes. If it really doesn’t work, then fair enough, but give us a chance.’

Us? she thought. Which us? Us, the practice—or us, you and me, David and Emily, one-time lovers and best friends, with the stormiest marriage on record behind us? And a chance for what? To prove we can work together—or a chance to try again, to breathe life into the corpse of our long-buried love?

‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not sure I’m strong enough to handle it.’

‘There’s nothing to handle, Emily. Eight years is a long time. We’ve changed, grown up, matured. We can deal with this.’

She looked at him, but he was staring out of the window and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Did he still feel anything for her? Possibly. Nostalgia? Fondness? Unlikely, considering the vitriolic row they had had before she walked out.

She could hide behind her widowhood, and Jamie—dear, sweet Jamie, so battered already by his short life. Nothing must hurt him now.

‘I won’t have an affair with you,’ she said, hating to bring it up but needing to make the ground rules clear before they went any further.

He turned towards her then and met her eyes with a level stare. ‘Did I suggest it?’

‘No—but if you intended to the answer’s no.’

His smile was slow and did terrifying things to her heart.

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said softly, and opened the door. ‘Shall we go and have a word with the others?’

‘They haven’t said they want me yet,’ she cautioned him.

He grinned, catching her off guard again with the boyish quirk of his lips.

‘They want you—and so do I.’

The smoky glitter in his eyes made her heart race. ‘David—’

‘As a partner,’ he added softly.

‘No affair,’ she reminded him, conscious of the ambiguity of his last remark.

‘You’ve already mentioned that,’ he said.

It was only later she realised he hadn’t agreed to co-operate—and by then it was too late, because she’d agreed to take the job.

David spent the rest of that day wondering if he needed to have his bumps felt. He must have been nuts to suggest she take the job—just when the nights had begun to seem less long, when his career was on track and his life was ordered and tolerable.

He gave a bitter grunt of laughter. Tolerable? Who was he trying to kid? Emotionally it was a wasteland, a desert crying out for the sweet rain of her love, but would letting her back into his life be anything other than a mirage on the horizon, taunting him with the promise of long, cosy winter evenings by the fireside, followed by slow, lazy nights filled with passion and tenderness?

He dragged his thoughts to a halt, cursing softly as his body throbbed readily to life. Damn her. Damn her for coming back into his life. Damn the coincidence that had brought her back—and damn her for being so shatteringly, sweetly beautiful. All age had added was a soft, womanly maturity. There was no sign of the ravages of childbirth—at least none he could detect, and despite his better intentions he had looked hard enough.

No, she was still his Emily, the woman who had haunted his days and nights for the past eight years, the woman who had taken away his future and left him with nothing but bittersweet memories of a less than perfect past.

He stared out of his surgery window at the hillside opposite, the rolling folds of the valley that fell steadily to the sea two miles away.

It was a beautiful place to live, a place to find peace and tranquillity, if not happiness—until Emily.