Specialist In Love

He flung the door open and the first thing he saw was the sight of a very long, very slender leg, clad in faded denim so clinging that he was immediately convinced that the wearer’s circulation would be seriously affected. The shapely thigh became an extremely attractive bottom and in turn a tiny waist topped by the most splendid bust he’d ever seen.

Fergus had been many things in his life, but he had never before been quite so taken aback, and it took a few seconds for it to dawn on him that he was standing staring like an idiot at the curvaceous shape of his new secretary. She was standing frozen into immobility, screwdriver in her hand. In the corner stood a worried-looking fair-haired young man whose huge shoulders and stature marked him out as a born rugby player.

Fergus set his mouth in a grim line. ‘Perhaps you’d care to explain what you’re doing hanging off a step-ladder, Miss Henderson? No, don’t tell me, let me guess! Your local amateur dramatic society is holding auditions for its production of Peter Pan, and you’re just getting in a bit of practice?’

Sarcastic so-and-so! thought Poppy as she carefully picked her way down to his level, peering up at him with a fixed smile on her face.

‘I’m putting up some bookshelves for you, Dr Browne,’ she informed him brightly. ‘Do you like them?’

It was true. He could see symmetrical shelves, four rows of them already in place on one side of the fireplace, and at the same moment he realised that she’d changed his whole office round.

‘What?’ he boomed, so loudly that Poppy took a step back. ‘What have you done with my books?’

Poppy smiled as patiently as if she were dealing with a simpleton. ‘I’ve been sorting them out for you, Dr Browne. Obviously we couldn’t have them lying around in piles on the floor, could we?’

‘Oh, couldn’t we?’ he snapped petulantly. ‘Well, I want a copy of. . .’ He rattled the name of the textbook off quicker than a laser. ‘And I don’t want it next week—I want it now. So either you produce the book within the two minutes I’m giving you, or you find yourself back in the dole queue first thing in the morning!’

Damn cheek, thought Poppy rebelliously as she scurried over to the alcove—she’d never been in a dole queue in her life.

The silence in the office was like a time-bomb waiting to go off. Fergus stood looking out of the window, his back to the giant in the corner, studiously avoiding all contact with him.

Mick Douglas watched as Poppy scrabbled to find the list she’d made of all the volumes. To think he could have been down the pub with his mates, instead of stuck in this chilly room with this hotheaded maniac! The guy needed locking up. Fancy speaking to her like that! Mick sighed. Poppy had a lot to answer for. She had a way of looking at you that made it impossible to refuse her anything, and she had meant it when she’d said that she wanted to put the shelves up, not him. ‘You’re just here in an advisory capacity,’ she had told him grandly. Mick eyed the brooding figure by the window warily. He must be a good twenty pounds lighter, but he’d hate to get on the bad side of him.

Fergus had begun drumming his fingers on the windowsill as the final seconds ticked away, when Poppy gave a great shout of delight.

‘Here we are! Dermatological Disorders Discovered by Professor Donald Jacob.’ She held the book out with smiling eyes, the laughter quickly leaving them when she saw the expression on her boss’s face as he strode over from the window to take the book from her.

‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to step outside for a moment?’ he asked in a deliberately polite voice which did nothing to disguise his ill-humour.

‘Certainly, Dr Browne. I shan’t be more than a moment, Mick,’ she called to her friend. I hope. She had been reading 1984 by George Orwell last night, the bit where they had recited the old nursery rhyme: ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head’. How appropriate that seemed just at this moment, following old Grumpy out into the corridor. ‘Chip-chop. Chip-chop. The last man’s. . .’

‘Miss Henderson?’

‘Dead!’ she blurted out, before she could stop herself.

He frowned. ‘I beg your pardon?’ She realised what she’d said. ‘I’m so sorry, Dr Browne—I was miles away.’

‘Obviously.’

He looked as if he’d spent the morning sucking a lemon—he was so sour-faced, she thought as she waited. He was bound to get rid of her now.

He was about to tell her not to bother coming in tomorrow when he caught a glimpse of such a resigned expression on the na

ve young face that he felt strangely touched. If you took away all the face paint and the fashionable clothes, underneath wasn’t she a girl like any other, trying her best to survive in an increasingly hostile world?

And hadn’t he rather admired the spunky way she had spoken to him on Friday? It was a sad but inevitable fact that the higher up your particular ladder you got, the more distance it created between you and the people around you. He disliked people toadying to him—simpering sycophants who thought that tacking ‘yes, sir’ on to the end of every sentence would make them an instant crony.

Apart from Catherine, he couldn’t remember anyone who had spoken to him as directly as this girl in a long time.

He forced himself to be pleasant. ‘It was good of you to give up your weekend to rearrange my office, but I would have preferred it if you’d consulted me first. . .’

‘I will in future,’ Poppy butted in eagerly.

Fergus sighed. She was like an exuberant young puppy, completely unsquashable. He rearranged the softer expression which had crept over his features and looked down at her sternly.

‘In future, however, you will not bring your boyfriend into my office, not without my permission.’

‘But he’s not my. . .’ she protested, but he shook his head.

‘I’m not interested in your private life, as I hope you’ll be uninterested in mine. And, now if you’ll excuse me, I have an article to write. I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.’

Weakly she nodded, leaning against the wall of the corridor as she watched him walk away, unsure whether to cheer or howl.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9aa1e34e-b275-539b-ad7f-99ddab8c4551)

POPPY arrived punctually at her typewriter at nine o’clock on Monday morning to find the office empty, and she stood in the centre of the room rather uncertainly, unsure of what to do next—she didn’t dare try to alter anything else, not without the permission of Grumpy! And she had decided not to introduce the kettle or any plants until she had a better idea of just how long she would be staying!

One thing was for sure—his office looked a million times better—more spacious and less cluttered. And what was it they said? A tidy room means a tidy mind—maybe the quality of his articles would improve, and then he’d be forever in her debt!

She was bent over her desk, flicking dust off the electric typewriter and ineffectually moving pieces of paper around for something to do, when the door flew open with a crash and she looked up, startled, expecting to see Dr Browne; instead she was confronted by the sight of a girl of about sixteen, her eyes red from crying, her hair flying wildly around her face, and some poorly applied foundation attempting to cover what Poppy could see were angry red spots on her face.

‘Where is he?’ the girl demanded, on a note that sounded as though it could become a sob without very much provocation.

Poppy smiled encouragingly. ‘You mean Dr Browne? I’m expecting him in any time now. Won’t you take a seat?’

The girl flopped into the chair Poppy had indicated, and with trembling hands started fumbling around in her handbag. She pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and had extracted and lit one, exhaling deeply, before Poppy could stop her. The familiar acrid smell of the smoke assailed Poppy’s nostrils and she was filled with a wave of nausea.

She spoke as politely as possible. ‘This is a hospital, you know. I don’t think it’s a very good idea if you smoke, do you?’

The girl stared at her belligerently. ‘I don’t think a lot of things are a good idea—like the fact that I resemble Frankenstein’s monster with this face of mine, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.’ She took another deep drag of the cigarette.

Poppy coughed. The room was filling up with smoke and she couldn’t bear it, and neither, she was pretty sure, would Dr Browne.

‘Please put it out,’ she requested firmly.

The girl’s bottom lip jutted out. ‘Why should I?’

‘Because my uncle died of lung cancer through smoking, and I’d hate to think that you might do the same.’ Her voice shook a little as she said it.

The girl looked up at her, distraught, her eyes filling with tears, and she held the cigarette out helplessly towards Poppy, bursting into noisy, childlike sobs.

Poppy took the cigarette and swiftly ran it under the tap of the sink in the corner, before dropping it in the waste-paper bin. She pulled out a paper handkerchief from her handbag and handed it to the crying girl.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the girl sobbed. ‘I’m a horrible person. But it’s not how he said it would be—he’s got no idea!’

Poppy tried without success to make some kind of sense of the garbled sentence. ‘Who?’ she asked.

‘Fergus,’ sobbed the girl again. ‘He doesn’t know what it’s really like.’