She made a supreme effort to drag her eyes away from his mouth and concentrate on the conversation. ‘Yes. Secondly.’ She cleared her throat, her chin jutting determinedly ‘It will be a cold day in hell before I will allow you to practise this...quackery, this medieval...mumbo-jumbo, right next door to our practice. My partners and I will not legitimise this hocus-pocus by allowing you premises next to ours.’
Marcus stared intently at Madeline Harrington, listening carefully as she laid down the law. Two red spots of colour stained her cheeks and there was a fine tremble husking up her voice. He wondered what it would be like to have her breath trembling against his skin. His loins stirred again and he had to remind himself she was not on the market.
‘And just how do you propose to stop me, Maddy?’
She opened her mouth to lay down exactly how she intended to see that he didn’t practise his faux style of medicine and stopped abruptly at his casual familiarity. No one - no one - had called her that since Abby. Sorrow and pain lanced through her as an image of her younger sister formed in her mind.
Some days it still had the power to take her breath away.
‘The name is Madeline,’ she snapped.
‘Maybe. But I think I’ll call you Maddy, anyway.’
‘You won’t be getting the chance, Dr Hunt. You’re being evicted first thing Monday.’
‘I have a lease, Maddy.’
Madeline laughed coldly even as her insides melted at the way he said her name. Like a sigh. Like a purr. ‘My partners and I own this building, Dr Hunt. Once they discover that a quack has set up shop next door, you won’t last five minutes. Not even your magic wand will be able to help you. Why not leave graciously now? Go perform your witchcraft elsewhere.’
She glowed triumphantly, having placed her trump card on the table but he appeared unconcerned.
‘Why stop at eviction, Maddy?’ he enquired softly. ‘Why not just burn me at the stake and be done with it?’
‘Don’t tempt me.’
Oh, she tempted him all right...‘What are you afraid of?’ he asked. ‘Have you forgotten that Hippocrates was a homoeopath? Surely this world is big enough for both conventional and alternative medicine?’
‘Not in this street it isn’t.’ Madeline turned on her heel, head high, and made for the door.
He chuckled. ‘See you, Maddy.’
She shivered despite the blast of invading heat. ‘Count on it,’ she muttered, and stepped into the street.
Madeline breathed in great refreshing gulps of air as she walked the short distance next door to the GP surgery. She was quaking inside at the confrontation with Marcus Hunt and confused at the nagging sense of longing still crashing around her insides.
There was twenty minutes left to closing time as she let herself in through the front gate of the inner-city terrace house. The practice had been here for almost all of Madeline’s life, her father having bought the row of five terraces before she’d been born and setting up with two other partners.
The practice now took up two of the terraces, then there was the soon to be empty again one next door and the last two were leased by solicitors. They’d all been given a recent facelift, as had many of the terraces in the area.
The gold lettering on the front door of the practice stood out in the sunshine. Dr Blakely, Dr Baxter, Dr Harrington and Dr Wishart. Strangely, today, she didn’t feel the pride seeing her name there usually engendered. She felt...disconnected.
Unfulfilled.
Shaking her head, she cleared the vague feeling of disquiet. Madeline had never wanted to do anything else. Most of the people that she’d been through med school with had been horrified at her lack of ambition. They’d been keen to specialise in the more glamorous areas of medicine. But she had grown up seeing the difference a good general practitioner could make to people’s lives and had never considered anything else.
Her father’s death had made her even more determined to continue his legacy.
Pushing open the door she was met with an excited squeal. ‘Madeline! Oh, my God!’ Veronica, the receptionist, jumped up from her chair and came around the desk to envelope Madeline in an enthusiastic hug.
Veronica was one of the changes that Madeline had made since starting at the practice. Reasons for dwindling patient numbers had been multi-factorial, the new twenty-four-hour health centre in the next block being one, but an aging reception staff unfamiliar and resistant to modern practice management hadn’t helped either. Veronica was twenty-five and a total godsend.
She was bright and perky with a sparkly personality. And the patients adored her.
‘Fine,’ Madeline responded distractedly. Not even Veronica’s enthusiasm could curb her indefinable restlessness. ‘Who’s on today? George, Andrew or Tom?’ she asked, looking around at the empty waiting room.
‘George. He’s at a house call.’
George Blakely, along with Andrew Baxter, had been her father’s partner since the dawn of the practice. He and his wife Mary had also taken Madeline and Abby under their wing when their parents had died within a year of each other in Madeline’s final year of high school.
Thomas Wishart was a newer edition, a thirty-three-year-old father of four, brought in by Madeline a year ago. He was an excellent practitioner Madeline had first met at med school. They had desperately needed new blood to bring in new clients and Thomas, who lived locally, had been perfect.
Both George and Andrew would be retiring in the next five years so it was important to put strategies in place for that eventuality.
Thomas had been an excellent start.
The practice was building back up again and Madeline hoped that it would be thriving when George and Andrew hung up their stethoscopes.
‘Quiet day?’ Madeline asked.
‘Forget that!’ Veronica said, her blue eyes sparkling merrily, ‘tell me all the gossip. I want to know everything!’
‘I went to an international general practitioners’ symposium, Veronica. No gossip to tell.’
Veronica rolled her eyes. ‘In London, Madeline, London! Don’t tell me you didn’t take my advice?’
Madeline smiled. ‘About the rebound sex?’
The younger woman nodded her head vigorously. ‘Those English lads love Aussie girls.’
‘Ahh, it’s not really me, Veronica.’
‘Well, of course it’s not,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘That’s the point. Simon dumps you just before a six-week overseas working holiday. It’s perfect for rebound sex. Perfect.’
Madeline smiled at Veronica’s grab-life-by-the-balls attitude and envied the younger woman. She herself was more tiptoe through life cautiously. One-night stands, rebound sex...she’d been with one guy for ten years.
And, besides, their split was just temporary.
‘I didn’t really fancy anyone,’ she said lamely as Veronica continued to look at her expectantly.
Now, if Marcus Hunt had been there...
‘Madeline,’ Veronica sighed.
‘Hey, no one offered either,’ she said defensively.
‘I don’t reckon that helped.’ Veronica tapped Madeline’s ring with the end of her pen.
Glancing down at the two-carat diamond Madeline was inclined to agree. But it had been part of her hand for four years. Even if it was really over between them, she wasn’t ready to take it off yet.