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'You'll be my bridesmaid, won't you, Fenella?' Ann begged.

With eyes sparkling she replied, 'Of course I will. Anything for a new outfit.'

'And I'm going to ask Max to be best man,' Simon said.

Before Fenella could digest that item of information, someone else knocked on the back door, and when her mother went to open it Max was there.

'Fenella,' he said without surprise. 'I guessed you were here when I saw the car.' He turned to Simon. 'So how's it going, Simon?'

'I'm tired,' he replied, 'but it's wonderful to be home, Max. We've just been telling Fenella that we are going to set a date for the wedding as soon as I'm fit enough to walk down the aisle. Will you do me the honour of being my best man?'

'Yes, if you want me to,' he said immediately. 'I'd be delighted.'

'And my daughter is going to be my bridesmaid,' Ann told him.

'Great!' he said, with what Fenella thought was overdone enthusiasm. 'I'll bet you never expected when you joined our rural community that one day you would be bridesmaid to your mother and
Simon.'

Here we go again, she thought as the colour rose in her cheeks. A reminder that he knows I had him down for the bridegroom...

At that moment they heard frenzied shouting coming from outside by the canal, and Simon said, 'Better have a look what's going on, Max. There's been a couple of young lads fishing out there. I've been watching them from the window.'

Before he'd finished speaking Max was disappearing through the front door and onto the tow-path, with Fenella close behind but not close enough to stop him from jumping into the black waters of the canal, where one of the young anglers was thrashing about.

'Keep still,' she called to the boy as she gathered her wits. 'The doctor's coming to get you.'

'I can't move my legs,' he shrieked. 'They're trapped in the weeds.'

Ann had appeared beside Fenella, dumbstruck at the scene that was unfolding in front of them. 'Ring for an ambulance,' Fenella gasped as she threw off her shoes and stepped out of the long skirt she was wearing. 'Max is going to need help to get the boy free, or he might end up getting entangled himself.'

'I've got you, laddie,' Max told the lad as he reached his side and grasped a waving arm. 'Now keep still while I get a stronger grip on you, then I'm going to try and drag you up out of the weeds.'

He could feel them wrapping around his own legs and thought that it mightn't be all that easy.

'I'll take his other arm,' a voice said from nearby, and he turned to see Fenella's blonde head bobbing around beside him.

'What on earth are
you
doing here?' he snapped.

'Save your breath and pull,' she gasped, vowing that if she didn't drown she would have something to say to him.

He obeyed, and as she did likewise, he and the boy surged free from the weeds. Then, supporting him, one on each side, they headed for the bank where his friend was standing mute with shock.

When they'd heaved him up to safety, Max turned to Fenella, who was hanging on to the canal bank, wet and bedraggled. 'Up you go, and don't ever do that to me again!'

'What was I supposed to do?' she cried seconds later when they were safely out of the water. 'Let you drown? I could tell by the way you had to struggle when we began to pull that you were caught up in the weeds yourself. So what would you have done?'

'Got us out without another life being put at risk.'

As she pulled on her skirt again she was shivering. The thought of a hot bath was tempting, but first they had a young patient to see to.

'The ambulance is on its way,' her mother said as she hurried out with an armful of blankets and wrapped the tearful boy in one of them.

Max nodded. 'He needs to be checked over and his tetanus status looked into, as well as given antibiotics. They'll probably keep him in overnight.' He put his arm around the boy's shoulders. 'You're one of the Copley boys, aren't you? The brother of Callum, who had mumps.'

'Yes,' he said with a tearful sniffle.

'So how did you come to fall in?'

'We were messing about and I lost my balance.'

'Never mind, you're out now,' Max told him consolingly. 'We've rung your parents. If they don't get here before the ambulance they'll meet up with you at the hospital.' He glanced at Fenella. 'I think you'd better go to A and E yourself, just to be on the safe side.'

'And what about you?' she asked snappily, with the memory clear of how he'd greeted her when she'd joined him in the water. 'I suppose you are immune to a minor thing like bacteria.'

'I'll take precautions back at the surgery.'

'Then so will I.'

The ambulance had arrived at the back of the house. They'd heard its sirens on the night air and now it was here. Paramedics were hurrying round to where they were and with the two doctors hovering they gave the boy a quick examination and then took him swiftly to where the ambulance was waiting.

'Come inside, both of you, and have a hot bath,' Ann said when it had gone, 'or you'll be getting pneumonia:'

'No,' Max told her. 'We're both covered in sludge from the waist down. We'll go and clean up at my place after I've picked up something to prevent tetanus from the surgery. Simon and yourself have enough to cope with at the moment, without us bringing part of the canal into the house. But one thing is sure,' he said whimsically, 'we won't be going home in the new car!'

They'd been to the surgery and were now driving to Max's place. When Fenella said that she would prefer to go home to get cleaned up, he shook his head.

'You can go home as soon as you like afterwards,' he told her, 'but first I'm going to inject you against tetanus, and when you've got rid of the dirt I want to examine you to make sure you have no open cuts or scratches that could get infected.'

'I'm quite capable of doing that myself,' she said, thinking that this was not how she'd wanted her second visit to his home to be.

'I promise I won't take advantage of you,' he said teasingly, and because she was miserable, cold and dirty, she burst into tears.

They were pulling up in front of his property and when he'd switched off the engine Max said, 'I'm sorry, Fenella. That wasn't funny. But I do want to make sure you won't have picked up any infection.' He touched her cheek gently.

'The last thing I expected, or wanted, was for you to follow me into the canal. I was horrified when you bobbed up beside me.'

'I don't see why,' she sniffled. 'If you hadn't been around, I would have gone in for the boy the same as you did.'

'But that's just it. I
was
around.'

She was getting out of the car with the blanket that Ann had found for her trailing behind like a train.

'Just give me the injection and point me to the bathroom,' she told him wearily, 'then I'll be off. I'd told Alice Crabtree I would go round tonight but I'm afraid it will have to wait until tomorrow. And weren't you supposed to be keeping Sonya company?'

'Yes. There's still time for that. She won't be going to bed as early as Alice.'

'I thought you were going to her place before you went to see Simon.'

'Yes, I was, and then I thought, no doubt like you did, that he might be too exhausted to see visitors later on.'

He was taking one of the syringes out of its sterile package and wiping clean the place where he was going to inject. 'Now hold out your arm. Then you can do the same for me.'

As he gave her the injection Max said sombrely, 'If circumstances had been different, that boy might have drowned and I would have been called out to examine a body. So I think it should be prayers of thanks all round.'

'Are you trying to say that as gratitude is the order of the day, and I don't dispute that, I should forget that you treated me as if I was some sort of idiot when I jumped in to help you? There wasn't much gratitude around at that moment.'

'So you think I should have been all smiles, do you, and said, "Hello, there, Fenella. Nice of you to drop in."? I was scared stiff that you might end up in difficulties too with all that weed below the water. Then I would have had two of you to deal with.'

When she'd wept he wanted to hold her close, sludge or not, and kiss away her tears, but at the front of his mind all the time was the conversation he'd had with her mother. It had been one of the reasons why he'd refused when she'd asked him in for a coffee that morning, and why he'd spoken as if the practice was more important than her safety when they had discussed her driving the new car.

Because he was a reasonable man, he understood Ann's concerns for her daughter and would hold back for a time, but it wasn't going to be easy with Fenella around all the time, enchanting him, beguiling him.. and misunderstanding him.

They washed off the grime at the same time but in different places. Max used the
en suite
to his bedroom, while Fenella made use of the main bathroom.

There was no sign of Will around the place, for which she was thankful as he would almost certainly view what had happened in a humorous light, especially if he'd been around when they'd arrived wrapped in blankets.

Max was in the kitchen, making a hot drink, when she appeared scrubbed and clean, dressed in a robe that he'd left out for her, which was much too big.

His first words were, 'We're going to have to find you something to wear while I drive you home. Would you consider a pair of Will's jeans and a cotton sweater? My gear will be much too big for you.'

She was feeling better now, as if washing away the smelly mess from the canal had washed away her annoyance at the same time, and when he placed a steaming brew in her hand she was smiling.

'I don't mind wearing Will's clothes as long as they're clean,' she told him, and he laughed.

'I get your drift. He and his mates are a sweaty lot. But have no fear, whatever I come up with will be fresh as the morning dew.'

While she was drinking the hot beverage he disappeared upstairs and when he came down again the clothes he brought with him were eminently presentable.

'These are new, haven't been worn,' he assured her.

'Fine. I'll go and put them on. May I use one of the bedrooms?'

'Yes, of course. Use mine.'

The room was as it had been before, tasteful and appealing, with solid fitted furniture, elegant drapes and huge windows looking out over fields that lay green and peaceful beneath the towering peaks. In the centre was the king- sized bed that had once cropped up in conversation.

She stood for a moment, clutching the borrowed clothes as she gazed around her. Max was out of her league, she thought dolefully. She could no more see him bringing a wet-behind-the-ears junior doctor to live in this place than Alice Crabtree greeting her with a smile.

When she reappeared he tried to keep a straight face. The clothes fitted well enough, but they were men's clothes and there was nothing of the ladette about Fenella. She was curvy, golden...and gutsy, with the vision starkly clear of her appearing beside him in the murky waters of the canal.

At that moment he wished he hadn't been so compliant when Ann had been to see him, but he'd understood her anxiety. Knew how he would feel if the boot was on the other foot and Will fell in love with someone more mature and sophisticated than himself.

For Fenella, who had no knowledge of her mother's early morning visit to the surgery, it was time to go, change into some of her own clothes and wind down. It was the second eventful evening she and Max had been involved in and it was enough. She wanted to get to know him better, but it wasn't working out like that with the affairs of others at the forefront all the time.

'I'm ready,' she said flatly.

'What about cuts and scratches?' he wanted to know. 'Have you checked?'

'Yes, one of my legs is rather gory-looking but they are all surface cuts. It's probably because I took my long skirt off.'

'Take the jeans off and let me see,' he ordered, and she stared at him.

'These are all I've got on.'

'And I'm a doctor, for heaven's sake. If you don't want to take them off, roll the legs up.'

When she'd done that he examined her leg with gentle fingers and Fenella wondered if he knew how much his touch aroused her. Maybe he did, as he was saying briskly, 'I think that some antiseptic cream, along with the injection, should do the trick. I've brought some with me from the surgery as well as the syringes, so do you want to smooth it on yourself or shall I do it?'

'I'll do it,' she said hastily, before she made a fool of herself.

'Right, and then I'll drive you home. In the morning I'll pick you up early and take you to Simon's place to pick up your car. We seem to be spending all our time collecting our vehicles from where we've left them, don't we?'

She wasn't going to invite him in this time, Fenella decided as he drove up the hillside. She'd already done it once earlier in the day and he'd refused. There was no way she wanted another polite refusal.

Would Fenella invite him in? Max wondered. And if she did, was he going to accept the invitation? He was sorely tempted. But all she had to say when she got out of the car was, 'Goodnight, Max. I'll see you tomorrow.' The next thing her key was in the lock and with a quick wave she was shutting the door behind her.

So much for that, he thought wryly as he drove away. Maybe he wasn't in as much demand as he'd thought.

Before Fenella went to bed she rang Alice to apologise for not turning up and was greeted with a sour, 'Think nothing of it. I'm used to folk letting me down.'

'It was unavoidable, Alice,' she said patiently. 'Dr Hollister and I have been in the canal, rescuing a young boy who'd fallen in, and we were pretty grubby when we'd finished, which meant having an injection to prevent tetanus and a shower to get rid of the grime. I've only just got home and felt that it was too late to call on you. I'll come round to see you tomorrow night instead, if that's all right.'

'Yes, that will be all right,' was the stiff reply. 'And what about the boy? Whose child was he?'