man she’d been going to marry, which made him wonder if she really had written him out of her life.
When he woke up the next morning he could smell bacon grilling and when he went downstairs Kate was setting the table for breakfast.
‘My turn,’ she told him as toast popped up in the toaster and the kettle came to the boil.
‘So am I to take it that you are feeling better?’ he asked.
‘Mmm. Much. I’m going to start unpacking when we’ve had breakfast and I’m going to put the washing machine on, so if you have anything that needs washing, leave it out.’
‘And what are you going to do after that?’
‘Take a wedding dress to the charity shop in the village.’
‘Surely someone else could do that for you. It’s bound to be painful. I’ll take it for you if you like.’
She was staring at him in amazement, unaware that for him it would not be the first time. But on a previous occasion the dress hadn’t been despatched with such haste and it had been returned to the shop from where it had been bought.
‘I can’t let you do that,’ she protested. ‘Mrs Burgess, who’s in charge of the place, would have it on the grapevine almost before you’d left the shop that you had brought in a wedding dress. What interpretation she and her helpers would put on that, I shudder to think.’
He was laughing. ‘So why don’t we set them a puzzle?’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Sure I’m sure, but are you sure that you and what’s his-name, Craig, aren’t going to get back together?’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ve learnt my lesson. From this day forward I will only ever marry someone who can’t live without me, and I can’t live without him. And if I never find him I’ll stay single. I think I was in love with love more than I was with Craig.’
‘So where is the dress?’
‘Upstairs in a big box. I’ll go and fetch it.’
He must be insane, Daniel thought wryly after she’d gone to get it. Offering to take her brand-new wedding dress to the second-hand shop. It would be like turning the knife in him again, and what would Ruth think when she came home? That he ought to mind his own business. Or that he should have suggested to Kate that she sell it, being currently unemployed.
Why was he getting involved in her affairs anyway? They’d only met the previous day and hadn’t exactly hit it off to begin with. He had enough to concern himself about without worrying over a jilted bride. Running the practice and keeping an eye on the builders working on his house down by the river, for a start.
But there was something about Kate that was reaching out to him and it wasn’t because she was his type. Far from it. Lucy had been his type, but the after-effects of a brain tumour had taken her from him only days before their wedding, so he did understand how it felt to have one’s future wiped away. In his case it had been the cruel fates that had broken his heart, not a cheating partner.
Kate was back with the box that had the dress in it. Ashen-faced but determined. As he took it from her she said, ‘Thanks for taking it. I seem to have been putting on your good nature from the moment we met, and I know I’m pushing it, but I wonder if I could ask one more favour of you.’
‘It depends what it is.’
‘From what you were saying last night, it appears that you could do with another doctor in the practice. I have worked there before, and I do need a job.’
As soon as the words were out she wished she could take them back. His expression said it all. She was pushing it. Pushy was how she was coming over to him. She could tell.
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he said levelly. ‘It is something I’ve been considering, but I’m not sure if I’m quite ready to act on it.’ And carrying the big cardboard box in front of him, he went and got into his car and at the bottom of the drive pointed it in the direction of the charity shop.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN he’d gone, Kate slumped down on to the sofa and gazed bleakly into space. Whatever had possessed her to ask such a thing of him on such short acquaintance? Had she expected him to jump at the chance of employing her when he had no way of knowing how proficient she was?
Having worked in the practice in the past, she had the experience, but Daniel hadn’t seen her in action. It wouldn’t be easy to look him in the eye when they next met. She’d been on the receiving end of his good nature since the moment he’d found her on the carpet in front of the electric heater. He’d even offered to take the wedding dress that she hoped never to see again to the charity shop, and now he must be thinking she was taking advantage.
The day stretched ahead, long and miserable, and she wished her mother was home to offer comfort.
That was a bolt from the blue! Daniel was thinking as he drove towards the main street of the village, Ruth’s daughter asking to be taken into the practice. It had taken him by surprise and he’d fobbed her off, thinking as he did so that Kate wasn’t backward at coming forward. He supposed that her life was in turmoil at present and she was seeing a job at the practice as a means of sorting out one part of it at least.
But when he took someone on it was going to be done properly with an in-depth interview, references and the rest. Not after a cosy little chat with his landlady’s daughter. And if she was the right person for the job, then he would hire her. However, he also knew that the thought of working with Kate had unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.
After he’d lost Lucy he had decided that love and pain walked hand in hand and he couldn’t go through that terrible kind of loss ever again. It was a defeatist attitude. He knew it. But it was why he steered clear of women and relationships. He didn’t want Kate becoming any more entangled in his life than she was already.
The charity shop where Mrs Burgess ruled the roost was looming and, parking outside, he picked up the big cardboard box and went in. When he laid it on the counter and opened the top flaps of the box, there was a flurry of interest amongst staff and early morning customers alike, and someone said, ‘It’s beautiful. Just look at the lover’s knots along the scalloped hemline. Who did it belong to?’
‘An acquaintance,’ he explained, having no desire to depart from the truth.
‘It looks as if it’s never been worn,’ someone else said, and he shrugged noncommitally and wondered if Kate was making a mistake in getting rid of it so fast, though he understood that the dress was a reminder of how her hopes and dreams had been shattered.
Leaving them still admiring it, he drove to the surgery, intending to forget the jilted bride for a while as he concentrated on the needs of his patients.
As he was passing through Reception Jenny collared him, wanting to know how Kate was. ‘Improving,’ he told her. ‘But I’ve told her to stay put and keep warm.’
Later on in the morning Mrs Giles brought her young son in for Daniel to see. The child was jerking his neck uncontrollably and his mother said anxiously, ‘I’ve
