Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 3 (36 page)

‘Oh, damn, blast and bloody hell!’ she exclaimed as she rounded the corner and cannoned straight into someone coming the other way, sending the folders she was holding clattering to the floor.

‘Language, Nurse Dwyer,
language
.’

It couldn’t be, she thought, feeling her heart give an almighty leap, but as she looked up and met a pair of sparkling green eyes she saw that it was.

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ she blurted out before she could stop herself, and Tom grinned.

‘Decided to stay on for a few more days. Thought I’d let the local garage mend my broken indicator light, make it easier for your physio.’

Pathetic, she thought as she stared up at him, wondering how he could possibly manage to look quite so heart-tinglingly handsome in an old, threadbare blue sweater and a pair of jeans. That was the most pathetic reason for staying on in Penhally she’d ever heard, but she had no intention of calling him on it. Calling him on it might mean he’d give her the real reason, and something told her she was better off not knowing the real reason.

‘I’m afraid Lauren isn’t here,’ she said, getting down on her hands and knees to begin retrieving the files. ‘She’s just gone out on her home visits.’

‘I didn’t want to see Lauren,’ he replied, hunkering down beside her. ‘I wanted to see you.’

‘Me?’ she said faintly.

‘I wondered if you’d like to come out to lunch with me?’

‘Lunch?’ she repeated, and his green eyes twinkled.

‘As in food. A substance which sustains every living thing,’ he said.

‘I know what lunch is,’ she protested. ‘I just…’ Absently, she reached for the last file, just as Tom did, too, and when their hands touched she snatched hers away quickly, all too aware that a disconcerting crackle of heat had raced up her arm. ‘I just…’

‘Is there a problem here?’

Eve glanced over her shoulder to see Nick standing behind her, his expression colder and stonier than she’d ever seen it.

‘No problem,’ she mumbled. ‘Tom…he’s decided to stay on for a few more days.’

‘So I see,’ Nick replied.

‘I was also hoping to entice Eve out to lunch,’ Tom declared. ‘You do allow your staff to have lunch, I presume?’

‘Naturally,’ Nick said, his voice every bit as tight as Tom’s. ‘But it’s my staff’s choice as to who they eat that lunch with.’

And frankly I’d be happier if Eve had lunch with Genghis Khan.

Nick didn’t say those words, he didn’t have to. His whole body language said it for him, and although Eve now knew why the senior partner was being so antagonistic towards Tom, she didn’t need—or want—him protecting her.

‘It’s all right, Nick,’ she said, and for a second she thought the senior partner might actually argue with her, then he nodded and walked abruptly away.

‘What
is
it with that guy?’ Tom demanded. ‘We haven’t seen one another in years, and yet every time we meet it’s obvious he’d dearly like to stick a knife in me.’

‘Personality clash, maybe?’ Eve suggested evasively. ‘Give me a couple of minutes to offload these with Hazel,’ she continued quickly, indicating the folders in her arms, ‘and to change out of my uniform, and I’ll be right with you.’

And it would be only a few minutes, she thought as she
handed the folders to their practice manager. Any longer, and she dreaded to think what Nick might come back and say.

But it wasn’t Nick who was uppermost in her mind when she went into the ladies’ cloakroom to change out of her uniform and saw how flushed her cheeks were, how bright her eyes. She should have looked angry, horrified, because Tom hadn’t left, but the truth was she looked more alive than she had in years, and she closed her eyes to shut out the image.

What was happening to her? Just two short days ago she’d had a life. OK, so maybe it hadn’t been the world’s most exciting life, but she’d had her patients, and Tassie, and she’d been in control and content, and yet now…

She couldn’t still have feelings for Tom, not after all these years. He’d left her without a second’s thought, and though she’d been heartbroken for a long time she’d eventually picked up the pieces of her life, had dated other men. Dammit, she’d even got engaged once.

But you broke off the engagement
, her mind whispered.

Only because I realised it was a mistake, she argued back. That it would be wrong to marry someone, and keep secrets from him. It wasn’t because I still had feelings for Tom.

Oh, really?
Her mind laughed, and she gripped the edge of the sink tightly.

Somehow, some way, she had to pull herself together. Somehow, some way, she had to keep her emotions in check, because she couldn’t go down that road again, Nick had been right about that. Recapturing the past would mean resurrecting it, and she couldn’t do that, not ever.

‘Eve, we were just talking about you,’ Dragan said when Eve emerged from the ladies’ cloakroom to find him and Tom laughing about something.

‘Saying something nice, I hope?’ Eve said lightly, and Dragan smiled.

‘Tom was telling me about his home in Lausanne, and I was
saying he must take you there some time. It’s a beautiful part of Switzerland.’

‘You know it?’ Eve asked, deliberately sidestepping the suggestion that she would want Tom to take her anywhere.

‘I do, indeed,’ Dragan observed. ‘When I was young, my family and I went there a couple of times for holidays before…Before everything changed.’

A shadow had appeared in his eyes, and Eve knew the Croatian doctor was remembering happier times when his homeland hadn’t been torn by war, when all of his family had been safe, and alive.

‘Dragan,’ she began hesitantly, and he shook his head and forced a smile.

‘Sometimes it’s good to remember the past, and sometimes it’s not,’ he said. ‘But you must let Tom take you to Switzerland. It truly is a beautiful place.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Eve said, then added quickly when she saw Tom open his mouth, clearly intending to interrupt, ‘How’s Melinda?’

‘Tired,’ Dragan admitted. ‘Tired of waiting, tired of looking—she says—like a hot-air balloon that’s about to go pop.’

Eve laughed.

‘At least she hasn’t got much longer to go,’ she said. ‘Just two more weeks, and then you’ll be a proud papa.’

‘Do you know whether it’s a boy or a girl?’ Tom asked, and Dragan shook his head.

‘Melinda and I didn’t want to know. We wanted it to be a surprise. And speaking of surprises,’ he added, glancing at his watch, and letting out a muttered oath, ‘if I don’t get my home visits started the only surprise will be me managing to have them finished by midnight.’

‘Brave man,’ Tom observed as Dragan hurried away, ‘coming to the UK, making himself a new life in a foreign land.’

‘It wasn’t easy for him—not at first,’ Eve replied, ‘but then he met Melinda, and…’ She smiled. ‘The rest, as they say, is history.’

‘What I don’t understand is why I keep feeling I know him from somewhere,’ Tom said. ‘I thought the same thing when I met him and his wife at the reception on Saturday, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why.’

And I’m not about to jog your memory, Eve thought as she slipped on her jacket, and led the way out of the surgery. Melinda and Dragan had endured more than enough harassment back in April when their photographs had been plastered all over the newspapers, and they were entitled to some privacy.

‘Where do you want to have lunch?’ she said, deliberately changing the subject.

‘I thought maybe The Grape Seed.’

‘I’m afraid it closed down years ago,’ she replied as they began walking up the road past the surfing and souvenir shops, skirting the puddles left from the thunderstorm that had deluged the village earlier that morning. ‘When Mr Forrest retired, his son didn’t want to take it over, so it became an estate agent’s.’

‘Damn!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘I loved The Grape Seed. Remember when you could choose all those different sorts of salad dishes, like grated carrot mixed with coconut, curried eggs, and pasta salad with tuna, and we thought we were the height of sophistication?’

Eve smiled and nodded, but she wished he’d stop this. She didn’t want to keep dwelling on the past. It was over, gone.

‘We could have lunch at the Anchor?’ she suggested, and he shook his head.

‘Too stuffy. I always feel as though they’re itching to check my pockets for cutlery after I eat there.’

She let out a small snort of laughter.

‘We could just buy some tortilla wraps, and eat them down by the harbour,’ she said, then glanced up at the sky. ‘And, then again, perhaps not. I think it’s going to rain again.’

And it would be yet more heavy rain. The sea might currently be a sheet of near-Mediterranean blue, and the houses and steep roads that made up Penhally Bay might be standing out in sharp relief against the cliffs behind, but she could see another band of black clouds gathering over the cliffs.

‘What’s that café like?’ Tom asked, inclining his head towards it.

‘They do very nice soups, and puddings, and if you want something a bit more substantial—’

‘Lovak!’
Tom exclaimed, coming to a sudden halt in the middle of the pavement. ‘Melinda and Dragan
Lovak
. She’s that European princess. The one who gave up her throne to marry the Croatian refugee.’

Eve sighed. ‘So it reached the London newspapers, did it?’

‘It reached
every
newspaper, Eve.’ Tom shook his head in disbelief. ‘I should have recognised them immediately.’

Eve wished he hadn’t recognised the couple at all.

‘Tom, as far as Melinda is concerned, she’s Mrs Lovak, the local vet, and a soon-to-be mum,’ she said. ‘And as far as Dragan is concerned, he’s simply one of the Penhally doctors.’

‘I can see why,’ Tom observed. ‘I wouldn’t want my past splashed all over the papers. You’d be OK with your blameless history, but me…’ He laughed. ‘I doubt if my bosses would be overjoyed to learn I burned down bicycle sheds when I was at school.’

And he’d somehow put his foot in it again, Tom thought as he saw Eve’s face set. He’d only been making a joke at his own expense, and yet the shutters had quite clearly come down and he could almost feel her physically withdrawing from him.

‘Is Dragan taking paternity leave after his wife’s given birth?’ he continued quickly. ‘I know I would be if I were in his shoes.’

‘Yes, he’s taking paternity leave.’

And that hadn’t helped at all, he realised, seeing her face set
into even more rigid lines.
OK, change the subject
, he told himself.
Talk about something else—somebody else.

‘I met your minister on the way down here—Reverend Kenner,’ he declared. ‘He had his daughter, Rachel, with him. Nice kid. When’s her baby due?’

‘December.’

Which didn’t seem to please Eve any more than his comments about Dragan and Melinda had, he thought with a sigh.

‘Look, I know you’re not happy about the situation,’ he said. ‘Her being only being seventeen, and Gary Lovelace being the father, but I’ve always been a very firm advocate of a woman’s right to choose. She didn’t have to go ahead and have the baby, Eve. She could have opted for a termination, but she didn’t. Her decision, her choice, and I admire her for it.’

Eve clearly didn’t if her complete silence as she led the way into the café was anything to go by, and Tom groaned as he followed her.

Hell, was he always going to be fated to somehow inadvertently say the wrong thing? Maybe he should just have gone back to London this morning, but he hadn’t wanted to leave, hadn’t wanted the last words they’d exchanged to have been remote and distant ones.

And was that the only reason you didn’t want to leave?
his mind whispered, and he sighed.

He wished it was. It would have made things so much easier, but he’d spent the last twenty years of his life trying to convince himself he’d done the right thing only to have that illusion blown straight out of the water the minute he’d seen her again. All it had taken was one smile from her and the great weight that had been lying on his heart for so long had suddenly lifted and the world no longer seemed such a dark and empty place.

But how to tell her this? he wondered as they sat down at a table, and both picked up a menu. How to confess he’d made a mistake all those years ago?

‘Eve—’

‘I’ll have the carrot and coriander soup, then lemon meringue pie, please,’ she told the smiling waitress who had appeared at their table.

‘The same for me,’ Tom said, not bothering to look at the menu. He glanced around at the café as the waitress bustled away. ‘Nice place,’ he continued awkwardly. ‘I’m surprised we’re the only customers.’

‘They’ll be closing at the end of the week,’ Eve replied. ‘They haven’t gone bankrupt, or anything,’ she added. ‘A lot of the restaurants, and most of the craft and gift shops, in Penhally close down at the end of the summer. It’s not really viable for them to stay open over the winter.’

‘Right,’ he said, then cleared his throat. ‘I want to apologise to you for what I said about Tassie yesterday. I don’t know the family—don’t even know the girl—so I spoke out of turn.’

‘Yes, you did.’

Which pretty well finished that as a topic of conversation, he thought.

‘It’s raining again,’ he ventured, as he stared out of the café window looking for inspiration. ‘And the Lanson’s running pretty high.’

‘We had a lot of rain this morning,’ Eve replied. ‘We often do in October.’

And I’m dying a death here, Tom thought ruefully, if we’re reduced to talking about the weather. Hell’s teeth, it shouldn’t be this hard to start a conversation, and keep it going. All he had to do was not mention Tassie Lovelace, Melinda and Dragan Lovak, Rachel Kenner or Eve’s parents, and surely he’d be on safe ground.

‘Dirty Dancing
,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve just remembered the film I took you to see at the old La Scala was
Dirty Dancing
, and you made me see it three times because you had a thing about Patrick Swayze.’

‘It wasn’t so much Patrick Swayze,’ Eve said as the waitress appeared with their soup. ‘It was more…I think I liked the film because it was about trying to fulfil your dreams.’