Judy Campbell - Hired: GP and Wife

Was Shona his girlfriend or some dear old housekeeper? wondered Terry, feeling oddly deflated. Perhaps it was the fact that there would be another person living close to her who would want to know all about her, another person to convince that there was nothing untoward about her coming to Scuola. It would have been nice, she thought wistfully, to have had a place to herself so that she could relax after work and not bother about anyone else or their probing questions into her background. Still, perhaps this arrangement would not last too long.

‘I suggest I take you there now,’ Atholl said. ‘You can have a hot bath and help yourself to whatever you want to eat—at least,’ he corrected himself with a grin, ‘whatever there might be in the fridge. You must be starving.’

‘Won’t Shona mind me rooting around in the kitchen?’

‘Shona will probably join you in whatever you dig out.’ He grinned. ‘We’ll call in at the harbour master’s office for your case—and, don’t worry, we’ll take the Land Rover this time. Even I don’t fancy the thought of balancing a case on the bike.

‘I’m taking Terry to the cottage,’ he told Isobel as they crossed the hall. ‘Forward any calls to me on my mobile. I’ll do all my visits after that.’

Isobel nodded rather dourly. ‘I hope you’ve got some food in.’

Atholl looked at his receptionist rather defiantly. ‘And you’ll be pleased to know that Terry’s going to be joining us in the practice.’

Even though I’m a girl, thought Terry wryly.

Isobel pursed her lips. ‘I hope it works out…’

Terry looked up at him questioningly as they walked out of the house. ‘She sounds very dubious about me working here,’ she remarked.

He shrugged. ‘She a bit of a pessimist where I’m concerned,’ he said enigmatically.

The weather had changed in the time they’d been inside. The dark clouds had been blown away and now an eggshell-blue sky was spreading from the west and lighting up the tops of the hills with pale sunshine. Suddenly the place looked far less forbidding and the hedges and trees that arched across the road as they drove along had a fresh green newly washed quality about them. Atholl pointed out various landmarks and told Terry more about the practice on the journey.

‘You might think that the practice is only big enough for one doctor,’ he remarked. ‘But we look after two islands here—there’s a little ferry that goes over to the smaller island of Hersa. I do a clinic there once a week but, of course, if there’s a real emergency we have a helicopter, which is part of the air sea rescue team.’

‘It sounds very varied. How do you get around on Hersa?’

He laughed. ‘That’s where the motorbike comes in useful. I take it with me on the ferry. There are a lot of patients who live in remote places, not just on Hersa but here as well—it’s useful when they can’t get to see us. And we’re just into the tourist season so the population almost doubles.’

‘What do the tourists do?’

He laughed. ‘Besides fishing, walking, golf and deer stalking? There’s two distilleries to visit and the big hotel has tennis courts and a swimming pool. And then there’s climbing on the mountains you see over there—a very good source of patients,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s amazing the number of naive people who try to get to the top totally without equipment or experience.’

What a contrast to her patch in London, thought Terry. It was almost too much to take in, and she was gradually becoming aware that it wasn’t going to be the sort of quiet country practice she’d imagined.

‘I’ll need to get some transport,’ she said. ‘And I’d rather not borrow your motorbike!’

‘Don’t worry about that—you can use Uncle Euan’s little car. The main thing is to take a map and your mobile—it’s easy to get lost in the hills out there.’

‘It’s all very beautiful.’ Terry peered through the car window at the changing scene in front of them. ‘There must be some wonderful walks—I can’t wait to explore.’

Atholl smiled. ‘There’s so many different walks along the shore and back through the woods and the hills I never tire of them.’ He glanced at her and said in an offhand way, ‘You’d be welcome to come with a small group of us who walk together sometimes if you like.’

Funny how much that suggestion pleased her—she’d been sad for so long that the slightest lifting of her spirits felt almost alien. It was as if a curtain had been drawn apart a little and a small beam of sunlight had filtered through.

‘I’d enjoy that very much,’ she said. ‘Were you born here?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I only came here in the school holidays. I was born and raised in Glasgow.’

‘I believe it’s a lovely city.’

‘I lived in a very deprived area,’ he explained. ‘There’s still a lot of poverty in parts of Glasgow, and my family lived—still do really—in a pretty poor way. Not many advantages to life in the area I was brought up in.’

He’d obviously been glad to leave, thought Terry, whereas she had been so very happy with her life in London until…until it had all crumbled around about her ears and she’d been forced to depart. She sighed and leaned back in her seat, trying to blank out that last vision she’d had of her father as he’d lain dying in her arms and her frantic efforts to save him.

She bit her lip, telling herself firmly that she’d just got to put that episode in her life behind her. All that was finished and done with now.

‘So you won’t go back to live there, then,’ she commented.

He shrugged, a wry smile touching his lips. ‘My family think I should be back with them. They think I’ve let them down—sort of leaving the sinking ship kind of thing and coming to a better area when I could be of much more use where they live.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘They imagine I’m hobnobbing with lairds and big landowners—well above my station in life!’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ cried Terry. ‘You’re helping your uncle out—and you’re needed here as well!’

He laughed at her response. ‘Nevertheless, perhaps they have a point. The fact is, though, that I needed to get more experience—have a wider take on life. I’d lived and trained there all my life, and I was longing to spread my wings. And once I’d started working here, I fell in love with the place.’

He changed gear and slowed as they turned a corner and drew up in front of a square stone cottage surrounded by a little copse and protected from the road by a small front garden.

‘Here we are—rough and ready perhaps, but it’s home to me,’ he remarked.

The cottage wasn’t very big, but was most attractive, with a Virginia creeper running rampant over the walls and an untidy rose scrambling round the front door. Terry descended from the Land Rover rather wearily and followed Atholl as he went to the front door and opened it.

He whistled as he went into the little hallway, and there was a joyful bark and a large golden retriever came bounding out of the back regions and flung itself at Atholl.

‘Allow me to introduce you,’ he said. ‘This is Shona—she rules the house, I’m afraid!’

Terry looked up at Atholl and laughed, throwing back her head in amusement. ‘And I thought Shona was your girlfriend…’

The sun was streaming through the open door and fell on her raised face, catching the gold light in her hair and emphasising her large amber eyes sparkling up at him with amusement, her lips slightly parted. Looking down at her, Atholl felt slightly stunned. He’d realised she was attractive when he’d first seen her. Now he was suddenly conscious that she wasn’t just attractive—she was damned beautiful, her eyes like golden sherry set in a sweet heartshaped face. It unsettled him, made him nervous, thinking again of tattling tongues in the village, trying to matchmake. He’d had enough of that, thank you. He wasn’t lonely and he didn’t need a relationship with anyone he worked with—not after the last catastrophe.

He flicked a quick look at Terry’s bent head as she ruffled the dog’s head—the nape of her neck looked slim and vulnerable, her hair curling softly into it. And for a mad moment he imagined bending down and kissing the soft curve of her cheek. He could almost feel the velvety touch of her skin…

He started suddenly, realising that Terry was smiling at him, waiting for him to say something.

‘You’ll find your room upstairs on the right,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s a bit basic, but you can dump your things there, freshen up and then do what you like here while I do my visits.’

‘Sure,’ Terry said. ‘But if you’d like me to come with you I’m very happy to.’

‘No, that won’t be necessary today. Tomorrow will be soon enough to start work,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ll be off, then. See you later.’

He strode out abruptly and leapt into the Land Rover, revving it up and accelerating out of the little drive with a spurt of pebbles. What the hell was he thinking about, allowing himself to even notice what Terry Younger looked like, let alone visualise himself touching her—and more? How much easier it would have been if the agency had sent a man, or even a much older woman to take the job—anyone but a knockout like Terry Younger.

He pictured her elfin face with those large expressive eyes like liquid gold and the crisp fair hair framing her face. The trouble was, he thought, gripping the steeringwheel tightly, he’d been taken unawares when Terry had come along, imagining that she would be a man. He scowled out at the landscape as he drove along. Just because he’d led a monastic life for the past few months, the last thing he needed was the distraction of sexual attraction with a colleague. Then he smiled grimly to himself. A city girl like her would probably not last long in the remote world of Scuola—after all, it hadn’t taken Zara long to find the place was not to her liking.

Terry stood in the doorway, staring after Atholl with a puzzled frown. He seemed to have suddenly become tense, uneasy about something. Was he perhaps regretting offering her the job? She shrugged. It was too late to back out now, and she’d not give up the job without a fight. She bent down to pat Shona, who looked up at her with trusting brown eyes.

‘I’ll show him, Shona,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll not regret having me in the practice—even if I am a woman.’

A DOG barking and the sound of horses’ hooves on the road woke Terry up with a start from a deep sleep. For a moment she panicked, thinking she was back in London, but there was no sound of traffic and no curtains at the window to cut off the light streaming onto her bed. She relaxed back again. Of course, she was in a little cottage on Scuola—about seven hundred miles away from her old home and quite safe. She searched for her watch on the bedside table and squinted at the face with amazed horror. It was nine-thirty—she must have slept for twelve hours.

Gradually the previous day’s events began to unravel through her mind. It had been a day of mixed emotions, leaving her beloved London, meeting Atholl Brodie in the most dramatic of circumstances, then finding out he was the man she was going to be working with.

She lay for a second reflecting on just what kind of a man he was—outspoken, decisive, but probably fair enough in his dealings with people. And, of course, there were his looks…deep blue eyes in a strong good-looking face swam into her mind. She sighed and swung her legs over the bed. Hadn’t she learned that drop-dead gorgeous men had too much confidence, things came too easily to them? She was certainly not about to stray into dangerous emotional territory again—especially in a working relationship. But there was a peculiar little flicker of excitement at the thought of seeing him later.