came into view. When she opened the door there was a note behind it.
He was observing her hesitantly as she bent to pick it up, undecided whether he should go and leave her to her private thoughts or offer to stay and keep her company for a while until he was sure she was all right to be left on her own.
Unaware of what was going through his mind, Amelie read the note and exclaimed, ‘Oh, dear! Dr Balfour and his family have been while I was out.’
‘Don’t concern yourself,’ he advised. ‘I spoke to him this morning and he said he’ll call again if he misses you, but for now, Amelie, would you like me to stay for a while or would you prefer me to leave?’
For the first time he saw the sparkle of tears in the blue eyes looking into his, but her voice was steady enough as she replied, ‘I will be all right, thank you. You helped me through a bad moment and I am grateful, but I am sure that you have other things to do.’
As relief washed over him at being let off the hook he said, ‘All right, if that is what you would prefer, but I’ll leave you my mobile number just in case.’
‘There is no need,’ she protested. ‘I will be fine once this day is over,’ and wished she hadn’t been so quick to tell him the reason for her distress. She’d kept the hurt under wraps ever since the break-up with Antoine and would still have been doing so if she hadn’t come across a village wedding.
Leo’s relief at her insistence that she would be all right was short-lived. While he was out dining with Georgina from the boutique and other friends that evening he was on edge, knowing that he shouldn’t have been so quick to latch onto Amelie’s reassurances.
The day she’d been dreading wasn’t over yet and the hurts that life was prone to hand out always seemed to multiply with the coming of the night.
It was as he’d said. She was alone in a foreign land and although he hardly knew her, he did have some degree of responsibility towards her because she was joining the practice on Monday morning and they would be meeting again. On a different level.
The folks he was with were aware of his wandering thoughts and Georgina asked, ‘What’s the matter, Leo? Aren’t we entertaining enough for you tonight?’
He smiled and there wasn’t a woman there who didn’t wish he belonged to her, including Georgina, but she was aware that Leo was not the marrying kind, not where she was concerned anyway.
‘I have got something on my mind,’ he confessed. ‘I’m sorry if I’m poor company.’ He sent an apologetic glance in Georgina’s direction. ‘I need to pop out for a while. If I’m not back when you’re ready to order, you know what I like to eat, Georgina.’ And before anyone could comment he’d gone, striding out of the restaurant with a haste that didn’t go unnoticed.
Ten minutes and once again he was outside the house where Amelie was staying, and when he saw that it was in darkness he was about to turn away when her voice came from behind him.
‘Dr Fenchurch!’ she exclaimed. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again today.’
‘I just came to check that you’re all right,’ he said smoothly, as if he hadn’t been fidgeting on her behalf for the last hour. ‘I’m dining with friends in a restaurant not far from here so thought I’d call to make sure.’
‘That is very kind of you and makes me even more sorry that I unloaded my troubles on to you,’ she told him. ‘But concern yourself no longer. I am fine. I beg you go back to your friends and remember you did give me your mobile number.’ Which I am not going to use, no matter what.
‘I shall have an early night to make up for my exhaustion of yesterday,’ and as he made no move to take the hint, she said, ‘Goodnight to you, Dr Fenchurch.’
He nodded. ‘Goodnight to you too, Amelie.’ At which she opened the door and disappeared from sight and he drove back to where Georgina and the others were waiting.
‘So who was the woman?’ someone asked jok ingly.
He sighed and surprised them by saying, ‘Her name is Amelie Benoir. She’s the French doctor who is joining the practice for a few months. I only met her yesterday and I’m concerned that she is on her own in a strange place where she knows no one except me because Harry asked me to go to the airport to meet her last night. Does that satisfy your curiosity?’ he questioned mildly.
‘Yes,’ the joker said laughingly, ‘and we’ll all be sure to ask for Dr Benoir when we’re sick.’
As he listened to the friendly banter Amelie’s face came to mind, framed by a glossy black bob, with a snub nose and wide mouth. So anyone who wanted glamour and the trappings that went with it would need to look in Georgina’s direction.
It was hard to imagine anyone not being keen to marry the boutique owner except himself, and if anyone should ever ask him why, the answer would be that he couldn’t see her as the mother of any children he might have.
In what seemed like another life he’d wanted Delphine, sweet and bubbly, to give him young ones when the time came, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
They’d met at college, where so many romances began, and had known from the start they’d wanted to be together for always, but his love for her had been rent with an anguish that had ended in despair when she’d been rushed into hospital with a serious undetected heart problem and it had been too late to save her.
The pain he’d felt then had set the pattern for the years to come. It had been something that he never wanted to have to go through again. He was pursued all the time by women and laughed and joked with them, sometimes had the odd fling, but that was it. None of them could bring the kind of joy to his life that Delphine had.
When Amelie had told him that she was all right, it had been partly to reassure him and also because his kindness and concern on her behalf had helped to turn what could have been a ghastly day into a bearable one, and now she was determined that she wasn’t going to lie sleepless and fretting about what might have been.
Antoine Lamont had been a junior doctor at the same hospital as herself. When he’d started paying attention to her she’d thought that the quiet, low-key guy, who had often been on the same shift as herself, had seen her as the right kind for him because she was as average as he was.
Gradually they’d drifted into an engagement with the promise of a white wedding on the very day she’d arrived in Devon with her heart set on a new life far away from the hurts of the previous one.
Her surmise that Antoine had chosen her because she had been the least demanding and overpowering of some of the women he’d known had been shattered when she’d called at his apartment unexpectedly one night in the hospital grounds and found him in bed with one of the nurses, a brassy, auburn-haired creature who was anything but average when it came to looks and curves.
It had been the end of her dream of contentment with a man she could love and trust and the beginning of pain and loneliness because of the deceit of it.
He’d tried to make amends, pleading that it had just been a one-off with the nurse, but she hadn’t wanted to hear his pleas and subsequently Antoine and the girl he’d been in bed with had left the hospital together, leaving her to face the pitying looks of others as best she could.
Yet deep down Amelie
