of the group on the pavement when she’d seen him approaching.
Autumn was dithering on the edge of winter and the practice was busy with the inevitable flu jabs and the onset of the demand for cold medications and the age-related illnesses that flared up with the approach of the festive season, and Aaron was soon in his stride without any further sightings of Julianne Marshall since their awkward meeting in the reception area that had been followed with the cosy tea and talk time in the surgery kitchen.
But he couldn’t skulk in his room all day, and why should he? On that dreadful day long ago he’d had nothing to blame himself for except maybe being too trusting, and he’d never trusted anyone completely since.
When he went into the corridor after notifying the nurses via email of certain tests he required to be done for his last patient, Julianne appeared with a printout in her hand of the instructions he’d just sent through, and as he observed her unsmilingly Aaron decided that her long legs in sheer grey tights had to be the same ones that he’d seen dashing up the back stairs in the bakery the day before.
Had she known who he was then? Him coming to join the practice would be general knowledge, so she would have been prepared, but to him she was someone totally unexpected who was going to be a constant reminder of a day that would haunt him for ever.
She was waiting to speak to him with dark eyes watchful and no smiles to be seen on the smooth lines of her face.
‘What is it?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Have you got a problem with what I’ve just asked one of you to do?’
‘No,’ she said with outward calm. ‘It is just that your patient is questioning the cortisone injection in the knee that you have given him without warning.’
‘Are you questioning my methods?’ he said coldly. ‘The man’s records show that he was booked in today for that very thing. I haven’t dreamt it up from somewhere. I did tell him what I was going to do, and now I’ve sent him to you for his flu and pneumonia injections at his request.’
‘Yes, so I see,’ she said meekly. ‘Obviously he must have misunderstood about the injection in his knee.’
‘That could be the case,’ he said flatly. ‘If you or he have any further doubts, I suggest you check his records for yourself.’ And without giving her the chance to comment further he went to discuss the matter of where to buy a car from with Nathan, as without transport he wasn’t going to be much use to the practice.
CHAPTER TWO
HE DIDN’T buy a sports car, needless to say. Instead, when he’d completed the sale he drove back to the surgery in a black four-wheel-drive, and watching him park it on the forecourt from the window of the nurse’s room Julianne sighed.
Their first conversation had been a prickly affair and she couldn’t visualise any future ones being any different. The only thing that would put things right between them would be for her to tell Aaron exactly what had been in her mind on that dreadful day.
It had been more of a teenage crush than a grand passion, but it hadn’t seemed like that at the time, and she’d known that beside her sister’s attractions her own had been almost non-existent.
Living in Nadine’s shadow had become a way of life that she’d had to accept—even their parents had been known to show preference on occasion. While she’d been growing up, whenever her father had called for his beautiful daughter to come to him she’d learned never to go rushing to his side, experience having taught her that it had been Nadine he’d wanted, always Nadine.
When her sister’s ‘latest’ had appeared on the scene, handsome, clever, a catch by anyone’s standards, he had seemed like the prince to her Cinderella, and she had prayed that Nadine would not bring him grief.
In a strange sort of way her prayers had been answered. The ‘grief’ had been there, no escaping that, but to a much lesser degree than if the marriage had gone ahead, and she’d hoped with youthful optimism that Aaron might notice her with Nadine gone.
At the last moment her sister had gone where there had been money, lots of it, and Aaron had been spared the nightmare that life married to Nadine would have been, but she, Julianne, hadn’t come out of it smelling of roses either.
She’d confessed to him how often she’d tried to persuade Nadine not to marry him, but in the midst of his anger hadn’t been able to get the words out to tell him why, and Aaron’s disgust at what he’d seen as her conniving had hit her like a sledgehammer.
When she’d left the vestry after taking time to calm herself he had disappeared and she’d never seen him again until now, when the feelings she’d had for him that had shrivelled and died over the years were seemingly springing back into life.
Aaron was out of the car and striding towards the main doors of the surgery and knowing that she would be on view she moved away from the window and found Helena, the oldest of the nurses, smiling across at her.
‘So is he your type?’ she asked.
‘Is who my type?’ she questioned innocently.
‘Aaron Somerton. I don’t doubt all of the available women will be noticing his arrival in our midst.’
‘So? They will have no competition from me,’ she told her. ‘We knew each other in another life and didn’t get on.’ Turning away, she called in the first of those waiting to be seen by a nurse and it turned out to be her landlord, George, the baker, who had come for his regular B12 injection.
‘The new doctor came into the shop this morning,’ he said while rolling up his sleeve, ‘and I asked him to impress on you that midweek living it up is not a good thing for tired nurses who have been on their feet all day.’
She was bending over him with needle poised, and hissed angrily, ‘You had a nerve, George! I am quite capable of looking after myself. It is his first day with us and you say something like that to him. What was his reply?’
‘Said that you’d only just met and didn’t think the idea would appeal to you.’
‘He got that right! It would not appeal to me. So will you stop fussing over me, George?’
‘Aw, come on, Julianne,’ he protested. ‘You know you’re like the daughter I never had, and I worry about you because you seem so alone. My missus is long gone so I need somebody to look after.’
She was smiling now. ‘Yes, I know. But please don’t talk about me to Aaron Somerton—anyone else is OK but not him.’
‘All right,’ he said, and in went the needle.
His first day at the practice was over and as Aaron drove back to The Falls Cottage beneath the darkening skies of an approaching winter evening the events of the day were going through his mind, and, wrongly or rightly, meeting up with Julianne Marshall, the young nondescript teenage bridesmaid of long ago and now a very attractive woman, was the one uppermost.
Her sister, blonde where Julianne was dark, had been good-looking too, otherwise she wouldn’t have caught the eye of the millionaire who had been so much older than himself, and when he’d been left standing at the altar he had realised the truth of one of his mother’s favourite sayings, that beauty was only skin deep.
When
