to face people at some point and there was no time like the present.
‘Gemma.’
He nodded politely to her, seeing the wash of colour that ran up her face. With that silver-blonde hair and flawless porcelain skin, she must find it difficult to hide her feelings, he thought, then wondered why the idea had occurred to him now of all times. He had worked with Gemma for almost three years, ever since she had moved to Dalverston to take up the post of senior practice nurse at the surgery. She and Heather had soon struck up a friendship, so there had been many occasions when they had met outside work, too. However, he had never even noticed her hair or her skin before. How strange.
He turned away, uncomfortable with the way he was behaving. Maybe it had been a shock to be dumped if not literally at the altar but pretty close to it, but did that really explain why his mind seemed to be whizzing off at tangents all of a sudden?
‘Ross, I don’t know what to say apart from the fact that I’m really and truly sorry.’
Ross cleared his mind of all extraneous thoughts when he heard the pain in Matthew’s voice. ‘If Heather had any doubts then she was right to call off the wedding,’ he said quietly, not wanting to add to the older man’s distress. ‘It would have been much worse if she’d gone ahead and regretted it later.’
‘That’s what Heather said.’ Matt sank down onto a chair as though he was too weary to remain standing. He waved Ross to a seat. ‘Sit down. Would you like some tea? There’s some made…’
He went to get up again but Gemma quickly intervened. ‘I’ll get it.’
She stood up, easing around Ross with a murmured ‘Excuse me’. Ross felt a ripple of awareness run through him as she brushed against him in passing, and frowned. How many times had that happened over the last three years? There must have been dozens of occasions when he and Gemma had touched and he’d barely registered it, yet all of a sudden his brain was flashing signals along his nerves, alerting all the muscles and sinews to the fact that there was a young and attractive female in close proximity. And when he thought all his muscles, he meant all too.
He hurriedly sat down, stunned by what was happening to him. All right, so he was a normal healthy male with a normal healthy male’s interest in the opposite sex. However, was it really normal to be experiencing these feelings on the morning of what should have been his last day of bachelorhood?
Confusion clouded his mind so that when Gemma put a cup of tea in front of him he couldn’t even thank her. He took a gulp of the tea in the hope that it would ease the kinks out of his system. Maybe he needed to face up to his feelings instead of bottling them up? After all, he’d been looking forward to building a life with Heather, and to have his plans scuppered was bound to have hit him hard. Although he did feel a certain sense of relief, underneath that surely he was both upset and hurt?
Ross felt a little twinge deep inside him, not quite pain but something similar, and breathed a little easier. Of course he was upset and, that being the case, it was understandable if he was behaving oddly. He dredged up a smile, forcing his body to downgrade the alert from red to amber.
‘I take it that Heather isn’t here?’ he said, addressing himself to Matthew. He was aware in one part of his mind that Gemma had gone to refill Matt’s cup but he didn’t dwell on it. It had no relevance whatsoever to what had happened.
‘No. She left last night, caught the last train to London.’ Matt looked at him in despair. ‘I don’t know what she’s going to do there. I mean, she doesn’t know anyone and she has nowhere to live. London’s a big place. Heaven only knows what could happen to a woman on her own…’
His voice broke and he stared down at the table, overcome by fear for his daughter. Ross wished he could think of something to say, but anything he came up with sounded trite. It was left to Gemma to intervene again. Walking around the table, she laid a gentle hand on Matt’s shoulder.
‘Heather will be fine. You mustn’t worry about her. She’s bright, resourceful and more than capable of looking after herself.’
She smiled at the older man, a smile of such compassion that Ross felt his heart ache with longing. All of a sudden he longed for some of that compassion for himself. He wanted Gemma to smile at him and make him feel that everything would be fine and that someone cared. That she cared. The thought startled him so much that he flinched, but thankfully the other two didn’t notice.
‘You really think so?’ Matt asked desperately and Gemma nodded, her silky pale hair falling over her cheek for a moment before she tucked it behind her ear.
‘Yes, I do. You did a really great job of raising her, Matt, and she isn’t going to go off the rails just because she’s moved to the city.’
Another smile, another gentle squeeze of the shoulder before she moved away; however, Ross’s eyes remained locked on her. He didn’t want to watch her but he couldn’t stop himself. She picked up the cup and brought it back to the table, and once again her hair fell softly over her face as she bent and placed it in front of Matt. Ross felt his breath catch in anticipation as he waited for her to do it again, tuck that silky, satiny lock of hair behind her ear…
His whole body went into spasm as he watched her anchor it back into place. Now he could see the delicate curl of her ear, see how small and pale it looked, almost translucent, like a shell that had been washed clean by the sea. Ears had been just ears to him before. He understood their structure and could have explained in simple terms why they were necessary. However, Gemma’s ear—so delicate, so beautiful—was more like a work of art than an anatomical fact. He could have sat there and studied it all day!
* * *
Gemma sat down at the table, carefully keeping her eyes on her cup. Ross was staring at her and she couldn’t for the life of her understand why. She took a sip of her tea then almost choked as a thought occurred to her: did Ross believe that she’d known Heather had been planning to call off the wedding?
‘I had no idea what Heather was going to do.’ She turned to him in dismay. The worst thing was that she actually felt guilty even though she’d had no idea what her friend had been planning. As far as she’d been aware, Heather had been madly in love with Ross, and he with her.
The thought stung and she rushed on when he failed to answer. ‘It’s true, Ross. I swear, I didn’t know that Heather was going to call off the wedding.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He made a visible effort to collect himself. Picking up his cup, he swallowed some of the tepid tea and grimaced. If there was one thing he loathed it was lukewarm tea.
‘Of course it matters,’ Gemma snapped, suddenly angry with him. The least he could do was to be honest. Surely she warranted that much respect? She almost snatched the cup out of his hand and stood up. ‘Heather didn’t tell me, so if you’ve got it into your head that I knew something was wrong but was holding out on you, you can forget it.’
‘As I said, it doesn’t matter.’
There was an answering bite in his voice which was so out of character that Gemma did a double take. He gave her a tight smile, his blue eyes as bright and as cold as sapphires as he stared at her, and she was more convinced than ever that he did believe she’d had a hand in her friend’s decision. ‘The deed’s done, Gemma, so who knew what and when isn’t relevant. What’s important now is that we sort things out with the minimum of distress for everyone concerned.’
He
