Partners By Contract

‘I believe in love at first sight!’ she responded in a belligerent, want-to-make-something-of-it manner that made the other women stare—as a rule, serene and unruffled best described the young GP.

How could Phoebe not believe in love at first sight when she’d seen it happen right under her nose? Even now, she still recalled the instant they’d come face to face—the chemistry had been instantaneous. The man who had been her flatmate and close friend for two years had taken one look at her identical twin and been smitten, and Penny, being Penny, hadn’t tried to hide the fact that she’d felt the same way, too.

If you want something, Phoebe, go for it, life’s too short, Penny had been fond of advising her more cautious sister. As it had turned out, it had been all too tragically true in Penny’s case—her life had been too short. The loss of her twin was still like an empty aching hole in the pit of Phoebe’s stomach. It was the sort of ache that you couldn’t prescribe anything for.

Phoebe doubted if either Penny or Connor had even noticed when she’d made some awkward excuse and left them alone—they’d only had eyes and ears for each other. Had anyone asked Phoebe, she couldn’t have told them a single thing about the film she’d sat through three consecutive times that evening. She’d had other things on her mind... Jealousy wasn’t a nice thing, but when the person you were jealous of was your twin it was a million times worse.

‘You?’

Sally’s incredulous response wrenched Phoebe clear of the painful memories. Her lips twitched, it was clear that she was the very last person in the world that Sally had expected support from.

How did the other girl see her? she speculated, for a moment trying to see herself through the young woman’s eyes. Too old, too cold? Maybe she was right on both counts, Phoebe reflected glumly. Compared to Sally, she felt extremely old indeed, and as for the other... A surreptitious glance around the room revealed to Phoebe that the other women were as flabbergasted as Sally by her claim, though not quite so transparently so.

‘I take it you’re speaking from personal experience?’ The irrepressible Grace voiced the question everyone else was aching to ask.

Not at first sight or even hundredth sight, for that matter! It had taken the sight of her twin sister falling very obviously in love to make Phoebe realise that she and Penny had had identical tastes in men—right down to falling in love with the same one! The difference had been that it hadn’t taken Penny three years to figure it out!

Grace’s eyes widened as, improbably, a faint but definite rush of colour heightened the pale, flawless complexion of their cool and collected locum.

‘Why, you dark horse, you. Who is he?’ she teased good-naturedly. ‘Anyone we know?’

Very well, as it happens, Phoebe could have said—but didn’t. Her dismayed eyes passed from one eager, expectant face to the next—it was pretty clear that there was no way they were going to let her escape without her offering up some sort of token explanation.

This is what you get for being enigmatic, Phoebe, she told herself dourly. At least enigmatic had been the way her colleagues had chosen to read her reserved silence on the subject of her love life. Her silence hadn’t been intended to keep a steamy love life private but to hide the shameful fact she didn’t have a love life! In the end all her silence had done had been to fuel their speculation.

‘It didn’t happen to me. I’m a bit slow in that department.’ A fleeting self-derisive smile flickered across her face. ‘But my sister fell in love at first sight,’ she explained quietly, recovering from her brief loss of control.

‘And was it requited?’ Grace persisted.

‘Extremely requited,’ Phoebe admitted, her normally mobile features very still.

Penny had been gone when she’d eventually returned to the flat that first night. Unaware of her presence, Connor had strolled into the living room, his blond hair tousled as if he’d just woken—or just finished making love? Phoebe had shut herself in her room and tortured herself a lot with imaginary details for the rest of that night and many more after that. The first chance she’d got she’d moved out of the flat, not caring if her excuse for the sudden departure had sounded lame.

‘How marvellous!’ Sally sighed. ‘Did they get married?’

‘The child still equates marriage with happy-ever-after,’ the recently divorced Fran Green contributed with a a jaundiced scowl. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

‘Yes, they did get married, Sally,’ Phoebe admitted, smiling at the girl.

Sally shot Fran a triumphant look. ‘And I bet they were blissfully happy! They were, weren’t they, Dr Miller?’

‘Until Penny died, yes.’

There was a painful silence.

‘I’m so sorry, Phoebe...’ Grace looked stricken, she loved a piece of juicy gossip, but she had a kind heart.

‘You weren’t to know,’ Phoebe responded, pinning on her best stoical smile. ‘And it was a long time ago,’ she added in an effort to lessen their collective embarrassment. ‘Now, I’d better get on with my visits or Ellen will be complaining I’m not pulling my weight,’ she said ruefully, rising gracefully to her feet and lifting the grey jacket of her trouser suit off the back of her chair.

‘Talking of which, Sally...’ She nodded tactfully towards the clock on the wall. Phoebe wasn’t the only person that could do nothing right in the critical eyes of the practice manager.

With a flustered exclamation the receptionist shot to her feet.

The other women were still smiling at the ludicrous idea of the industrious Dr Miller malingering. During the weeks she’d been at the practice Phoebe had established herself as a bit of a workaholic, as well as being nice.

Niceness notwithstanding, their practice manager seemed to have taken an instant dislike to her on her return the previous week, and had taken every opportunity to keep her in her place. Even Dr Will Edwards, who wasn’t renowned for his keen powers of observation had been heard to comment on the situation.

‘I reckon she sees you as competition, Phoebe,’ the young receptionist mused halfway to the door. ‘Perhaps she thinks Dr Carlyle will fancy you. Sorry!’ She grimaced and pressed a hand to her mouth. ‘It just slipped out.’

‘You know, I think the girl’s right!’ Fran exclaimed as Sally disappeared.

Everyone automatically looked at Phoebe, taking in her tall graceful figure, her mane of thick glossy hair only a shade removed from pure jet, her clear flawless skin, wide-spaced amber eyes and the mouth that was both sexy and vulnerable. One by one they nodded their agreement.

Phoebe, deeply embarrassed by the scrutiny, turned a pretty pink.

‘Miss Patterson is an excellent practice manager,’ she observed, frantically trying to steer the subject into less personal channels.

‘And a first-class cow,’ Grace supplied cheerfully.

Phoebe, who had a lot of sympathy with this view, was hard put not to echo this sentiment.

‘And she’s going to marry the boss,’ the student added.

‘Who,’ Grace asked, ‘told you that?’

‘Why, she did,’ came the bewildered response. ‘Well, not in so many words, but I got the impression she and Dr Carlyle were...’

You and me both, thought Phoebe, adding a fresh pad of prescription sheets to her bag and trying not to look as though she had anything more than a passing interest in the subject. After all these years, it was nothing to her personally if Connor chose to marry—in fact, she’d be happy for him. She’d concluded that it was just his supposed choice of bride that had been making her feel uneasy.

‘She wishes!’ Fran snorted with a dismissive laugh.

‘Well, they went on holiday together, didn’t they?’ Kate asked, puzzled.

‘There’s together and then there’s together,’ Grace explained. ‘There was a place left in the chalet that madam and her mates were renting in France and she persuaded Connor to go along. I don’t expect she bargained for him busting his knee. A bit of a passion-killer, a ruptured cruciate ligament.’

There was a group wince at the thought of the painful knee injury, feared by all sensible athletes. Not only was it excruciatingly painful when one of the main ligaments supporting the knee tore, there was also a lengthy period of recuperation after the surgical repair.

‘At least he’s had it sorted straight away. These ski resorts generally ship you back home to languish for months on our waiting list. I suppose it helps if you went to school with the surgeon,’ Fran mused cynically. ‘I get the impression our Ellen is a bit miffed because he didn’t want her to stay behind and play Flo Nightingale.’

‘I hate to play devil’s advocate,’ Grace interjected, ‘but it didn’t happen until the last day of the holiday. That gave Ellen ten days...’

‘To do what?’ The student enquired innocently.

‘Use your imagination, Kate,’ came the scornful response.

Phoebe already was, as her churning stomach could have attested.

* * *