Sean said to the contrary, he couldn’t think of Keely as anything other than a child and, secondly, he knew he would never, ever find another woman he wanted to marry. How could he after Catherine?
WHAT had she done to deserve it?
Keely Thompson stared in disbelief at the man standing at the front of the lecture theatre.
She always helped old ladies across the road, she fed the birds in winter, she donated time and money to a charity for the homeless, she never told lies and she rang her mother regularly.
All in all she was a pretty responsible citizen and she definitely—most definitely—didn’t deserve to bump into Zach Jordan again. Which proved that people didn’t always get what they deserved, she thought gloomily, shrinking down in her seat and staring at her notepad. They got what they were given, and she’d been given Zach Jordan. Out of the blue, with no warning, and as her boss. Well, not exactly as her boss, but as a senior colleague, which was almost as bad.
When he’d walked through that door to deliver the lecture she’d felt as though she’d been hit by an express train. She’d been expecting one of the junior consultants from the accident and emergency department. She certainly hadn’t expected Zach.
But it was Zach. And as it looked as though she was going to be a senior house officer in the same department as him, she had to come to terms with the fact that he was going to be under her nose. On a daily basis.
She stifled a groan and leaned her forehead on her hand so that he wouldn’t be able to see her face.
So much for her escape plan. She’d chosen the Lake District because it was far away from home. And, most importantly, far away from people who knew her family. She’d needed space. Space and time. Time to think about what she really wanted to do with her life. She hadn’t known that Zach would be here.
Zach, who knew her family almost as well as she did, and on top of that had been present, if not responsible, for the single most humiliating moment of her life. She’d been sixteen and he’d been twenty-four…
What was she going to say to him? How on earth did you greet someone you used to have a massive teenage crush on and hadn’t seen for eight years?
She moved her head slightly and peeped cautiously at the tall, broad-shouldered man standing at the front of the lecture theatre, totally at ease in front of his audience, his presentation style confident and relaxed.
Satisfied that he wasn’t looking in her direction, Keely rested her chin in her palm and allowed herself the luxury of one long look at him. Over the years she’d decided that what she’d felt for Zachary Jordan had just been part of a teenage fantasy, but looking at him now all she could think was that she’d had impeccable taste when she was younger.
The man was lethally attractive. Smooth dark hair swept back from his forehead, sexy blue eyes, a permanently darkened jaw and a body that made women drool. Zach Jordan was a real man in every sense of the word and at sixteen his looks had left her breathless. No other member of the opposite sex had affected her in the same way. She’d spent every minute of every day dreaming about how it would feel to be kissed by him.
He was the stuff of fantasies…
Obviously she wasn’t the only one who thought so if the soft sigh from the female doctor sitting next to her was anything to go by.
‘Wow! I thought doctors only looked like that in American movies. Tell me I’m not going to be working with him every day. I’ll never be able to concentrate. I’m Fiona, by the way.’
Keely quickly introduced herself and picked up her pen. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate either.
She shrank further into her seat as she remembered the way she’d behaved towards him as a teenager. The things she’d said to him. Like the night she’d proposed—
She suppressed a whimper of horror as she recalled that night. How totally humiliating. How on earth was she going to convince him that she wasn’t a dippy teenager any more?
At least she looked different. Her blonde hair was shorter and somewhere along the road she’d grown a chest. And she was twenty-four now, for goodness’ sake. Hardly the child who’d thrown herself at him all those years before. Maybe he would have forgotten all about it.
Staring at Zach was making her insides feel strange so she stared down at her lined pad instead and decided that the thing to do was to concentrate on making notes. It was certainly a better alternative than looking at Zach’s broad shoulders—not that it was guaranteed to keep her mind on her work. There had been at least four occasions at school when she’d been given detention for scribbling ‘Keely loves Zach’ all over her notebook instead of paying attention.
Keely loves Zach…
Only she hadn’t loved Zach, she told herself firmly, tapping her pen on the page as if to emphasise the point to herself. Not really. She’d just been a vulnerable, impressionable teenager and he’d been drop-dead gorgeous and very kind to her. A recipe for emotional disaster when you were sixteen.
She gave herself a mental shake and a sharp talking-to. She didn’t have anything to worry about. She was a completely different person now. A grown woman and a fully qualified doctor about to take up her position as casualty officer in the accident and emergency department. She was long past the age of suffering from childish crushes. All she had to do was keep their relationship professional and prove to him that she was an excellent doctor.
With a determined expression on her delicate features she concentrated hard on that deep, sexy voice, making notes as he spoke about the medico-legal aspects of working in the A and E department, the importance of good note-taking and liaison with GPs.
He was a good speaker, using just enough humour to keep their attention and just enough drama to make his talk interesting. Everyone was paying attention. Especially the women.
‘He’s unbelievable. I don’t think I can work next to that man every day without throwing myself at him,’ Fiona said dreamily, and Keely gave a wry smile. If her brother and sister were to be believed, women had been making fools of themselves over Zach since the minute he’d arrived at medical school, and probably long before that.
And hadn’t she done exactly the same thing herself?
With a sigh her mouth softened into a smile and she remembered the first time her brother had brought Zach home to stay.
It had been love at first sight. On her part at least. Not on Zach’s, of course. By all accounts he’d been used to cool, sophisticated women, and she’d been a smiley, chatty schoolgirl. He wouldn’t have even thought of her in those terms. But still they’d been friends. And maybe they could be friends again—
She pulled herself together to find everyone in the lecture theatre staring at her expectantly.
‘Dr Thompson?’
Oh, help! He’d asked her a question and she’d missed it. She’d been so intent on planning how to make him see her as a mature, qualified doctor that she hadn’t been listening.
Her face heated and
