Return of the Rebel Doctor

His brows arced upwards. ‘Didn’t they have the same qualms about you? You’re not much older than she is, and yet you seemed to come and go as you pleased, and as I recall you were never short of young men wanting to go out with you.’

She shrugged lightly. ‘I guess they thought I was more level headed.’

‘More than likely.’ His blue eyes gleamed. ‘You were always the one to look out for her and try to keep her out of trouble, like that night when we were all partying down by the stream, a group of us lads and some girls?’

She nodded. ‘You’d set up tents. I remember being a bit shocked by that, and a tiny bit jealous. It looked such fun, but there was no way my parents would have let me join you.’

The corners of his mouth tilted. ‘We were planning on sleeping out under the stars. Not that we managed to get much sleep, as I remember.’

‘No,’ Katie said, pushing her soup bowl to one side and starting on her fruit salad. ‘Because you were all busy getting drunk on lager and vodka. There was a bottle being passed round, as I recall.’

‘Some of them were getting drunk,’ he corrected her. ‘Not all of us. Anyway, I’d already told Jessie that she needed to go home before she got into trouble with her parents. I’d offered to walk her back to the estate.’

‘You had?’ She stared at him for a second or two, bemused, before focussing her thoughts once more. ‘She didn’t tell me that. All I knew was I needed to get her home before my father went on the warpath but she was having way too good a time to want to leave.’

He smiled. ‘You read her the Riot Act, and she dug her heels in even further. I’m still not sure what you said to her to make her change her mind.’ He gave her a quizzical look.

She coloured a little. ‘I had to do something. I was worried about what would happen if my father became too stressed—his angina was starting to cause him a lot of problems, and I was afraid for him. I didn’t want to see him in pain or struggling for breath, and that was almost bound to happen if he found out what Jessie was up to. I don’t think she realised how bad things were for him then.’

He nodded, sympathy and understanding coming into his eyes. ‘So what did you do?’

‘I told her I would go home and dump her favourite clothes and all her make-up in the charity bins unless she saw sense.’ She pulled a face. ‘I felt terrible saying that, but I didn’t see any other way out. My dad had already been looking at his watch and making veiled comments, and I’d seen him take some of his medication.’

‘So it was a good thing Josh came to the rescue and offered to take her home…to take you both home,’ Ross commented. ‘I was annoyed with him. I was hoping you might stay with us for a while. After all, you were a couple of years older than Jessie, and I didn’t think that would be a problem for you.’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t do that. For my own peace of mind I had to follow the rules of the house.’ She’d wanted to, though. More than anything, she’d wanted to stay and have Ross put his arms around her and hold her close, but she’d known she couldn’t, not while her father had been getting ready to come looking for them. ‘Anyway, you had that roguish look in your eyes, and I didn’t trust you one little bit, not with my sister, or with me.’

Even now she remembered the wrench of leaving that party. The smell of new-mown grass had been in the air, there had been a lot of laughter and some of the gang had paired up, so there had been a few couples kissing in the moonlight, while others had been dancing to the music from a portable stereo. The temptation of spending time with Ross had been almost more than she’d been able to handle.

‘Mmm. So Josh and I walked you both home. I remember consoling myself with the thought that there would be other times when I might persuade you to sample forbidden fruit.’ His mouth curved as he watched her, a wicked gleam flickering in the depths of his eyes. ‘And I was right, wasn’t I?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ she said, taking refuge in hiding behind her teacup and watching him over the rim. He was right, of course. There’d been another night, another party, when Jessie had been away on a weekend break with a friend’s family, and she had been given permission to sleep over at a friend’s house. Only the birthday celebration that had started out so naively in intent had slipped into something far more intimate, as far as she had been concerned.

The lights had been dimmed, and she had found herself in Ross’s arms, where all thoughts of being her natural, sweet and innocent self had gone straight out of the window. She’d wanted him with an intensity that had made her whole body tremble, and it had only been when her friend’s parents had returned from their night out that sanity had returned. How close she’d come to offering up her body to him had shocked her to the core.

He chuckled. ‘Okay. My lips are sealed. It just struck me that some other young man was after you that night, too. His loss was my gain.’