His Christmas Bride-To-Be (Medical Romance) Read online

  Having been looking forward to the time when he could let her get on with it, he’d just made a complete fool of himself and it was not going to happen again.

  Not in the mood for cooking, he made a sandwich and a mug of coffee and settled down by the fire, waiting for the silence of the room to wrap itself comfortingly around him as it always did. But not tonight, it seemed. The events of the day kept butting into his consciousness and he couldn’t relax. The thought uppermost in his mind was that Emma Chalmers was beginning to be a disturbing influence in his life, which was something he could do without. Maybe agreeing to her coming back to the practice was not such a good idea.

  There were other practices equally as busy as theirs that would welcome her with open arms on hearing the details of where she’d spent the last few years. But would she want to work for them? Had he brought Emma home to places she loved only to want her elsewhere?

  The irony of the situation was that he who knew her the least out of the folks at the practice was the one she was having the most to do with. He hadn’t intended it to be like that.

  But recalling Lydia’s veiled comments about Emma’s past hurts and the practice manager’s obvious desire to have her back amongst them, he was going to have to stick to the arrangement he’d made with Jeremy’s daughter while keeping his distance at the same time.

  If Glenn had spent a restless evening, so had Emma. It hurt that he hadn’t let her offer him any hospitality. Not being aware of the chat he’d had with Lydia after she had left him in an emotional state the other day, Emma was unaware that his concerns on her behalf had been brought to the fore again when, on arriving at her house, he had thought that she had been socialising with the practice womaniser.

  Walking slowly up the stairs to bed with the restlessness still upon him, Glenn stood in front of his and Serena’s wedding picture on the dressing table and asked gently of his smiling bride ‘Why couldn’t you have stayed on the beach, you crazy woman?’

  * * *

  The next morning, with Emma’s time her own until a date had been fixed for her to start at the practice, she went to check if the strange flowers were still on the grave beside the ones she’d put there. On discovering that they were, she decided that they were a one-off of some kind, and once faded would not be replaced.

  With that reassurance in mind she went on her way to her next important errand, which was regarding house prices in the area. She came away having surprisingly developed a yearning to stay where she was and create something beautiful out of her house during the long winter months.

  Glenminster was busy with early Christmas shoppers and Emma didn’t want to linger too long anywhere near the practice with the memory of her visit the previous day. So she parked the car and went for a coffee in a bistro on the other side of town, where she sat hunched at one of the tables, drinking the steaming brew and digesting mentally the idea of giving a makeover to the drab place that was still her home and so convenient for the practice.

  Just thinking about the two places made her impatient to be involved with them both. As if Glenn had read her mind, there was a brisk message waiting for her when she got back to ask how about her returning to the practice the following Monday. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity bells of joy rang in her heart.

  She rang back immediately with a reply of just two words, ‘Yes! Please!’ And for the first time since meeting him she heard him laugh.

  ‘That’s good, then,’ he told her. ‘We look forward to seeing you on Monday next, if not before.’ And was gone.

  * * *

  She spent the rest of the day with literature she’d picked up from a local builder while out and about earlier. The ideas suggested for modernising old properties were fascinating, so much so that it was evening before she knew it and Lydia was knocking on her door on her way home from the practice with the news that there were fresh flowers on the grave that hadn’t been there the day before.

  ‘After what you told me yesterday I took a stroll through the churchyard in the lunch hour and there they were,’ she said.

  ‘But I was there myself first thing!’ Emma exclaimed.

  ‘So it must have been after that. When you’d been and gone,’ Lydia reasoned. ‘But why now, when there was nothing like that all the time you were away? I used to put flowers on occasionally but there were never any others already in place.’

  ‘Glenn goes through the churchyard as a short cut, instead of driving there, when he goes to visit old Mrs Benson. He might have seen someone bring the flowers. Shall I ask him?’

  ‘No,’ Emma said uncomfortably. ‘I’ll keep a lookout myself, he has been involved enough with my affairs and I think is weary of the hassle.’ Then she took a leap in the dark. ‘Why does he refer to his life so miserably, Lydia? What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ was the reply. ‘Nothing at all regarding his private life, but what I see on the job is a different thing. Glenn Bartlett is the best head of the practice ever. I’ve seen a few mediocre ones come and go in my time, including Jeremy.

  ‘Which reminds me, Emma, do you have the urge to change your name from the one you thought was yours, considering the heartbreak he caused you, or stay with it to avoid questions?’

  ‘What would be the point of changing it now?’ she asked flatly, ‘I could always change it to my mother’s maiden name, I suppose, but everyone knows me as Chalmers. And as I haven’t a clue what my birth father’s name is or was, I can scarcely change it to that. If I ever found out, that would be the time to decide.’

  ‘Yes, I guess so,’ Lydia agreed, and on the point of departing suggested quizzically, ‘With regard to what I came about, we will have to take turns watching out for the phantom flower-bringer, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It will be someone who is putting flowers on the wrong grave and will realise their mistake sooner or later,’ Emma said firmly, having no wish to discuss the matter further, and when Lydia had gone she picked up the brochures on home conversions once more.

  But her concentration had diminished with the memory of Lydia’s comments about Glenn now uppermost in her mind, and her eagerness to be back working in the practice overwhelmed her. Just seven days to go and she would be back where she’d been happiest amongst those of a like kind, and with her boss, the man who had brought her back to Glenminster. What more could she ask?

  * * *

  Over the next week Emma didn’t hear from Glenn. And as the days passed, with no glimpses of him driving past on his home visits, or signs of him anywhere in the vicinity of the house where he lived the quiet life away from the surgery, Emma found she missed him. So by the time Monday morning came she was surprised how much she wanted to see him again.

  She was to be disappointed. There was no sign of him in the practice building and Lydia met her with the news that Glenn was taking a break and would be back in a week’s time. With a doctor short, her presence would be welcomed by the rest of the staff. As Lydia pointed out the consulting room that would be hers, Emma thought they wouldn’t exactly be tripping over each other when he did put in an appearance, as it was just about as far away from his as it could be.

  But there was no time for wishing and wondering. No sooner had she settled herself and her belongings in the room that was to be hers than patients allotted to her by the receptionists were beginning to appear. She had a warm welcome for those she knew and a cautious approach for those she didn’t, and the time flew with her disappointment regarding Glenn’s absence forgotten.

  But it returned at six o’clock with the switching off the lights and the locking of the doors. As Emma drove home in winter darkness there was the question of why, when Glenn had rung to tell her that she could start back at the practice today and that he would see her then, he hadn’t kept his word.

  Where was he and who was he with? she pondered. None o
f the rest of the staff had shown surprise at his absence so it must have been general knowledge to everyone except her that he would not be there on her first day back to welcome her as promised. But after all why should she know? She was just an additional staff member, a new member of the team, no one of particular importance.

  * * *

  The sea was calm, unbelievably so, but all his memories of it were of a gigantic wall of water sweeping everyone and everything before it into total destruction.

  The rock where Serena had gone to sunbathe still rose majestically out of clear blue water, just as it had done on that day when his life had changed for ever.

  The rebuilding of the hotel where he and Serena had been staying was finished. It had taken three years to make it fit to live in again and the same applied to the rest of the resort that had been their favourite holiday venue.

  At long last he was coming to terms with what he had always felt to be the unfairness of being left to live the empty life that had been thrust upon him. He’d been back a few times since it had happened, looking for solace, for answers that might make his life worth living again, but none had ever been forthcoming. Even the strange friendship with Emma Chalmers, which had come out of nowhere and was pleasing enough in its own up-and-down sort of way, wasn’t enough to take away the pain of loss.

  She had been forced to cope with a loss of her own in the short time since he’d brought her back from Africa, but hadn’t felt much grief as far as he could see.

  He would be flying back home in the next few hours, feeling guilty at having not kept his promise to be there on her first day back at the practice. An early morning news item a week ago had alerted him to the fact that the rebuilding of the devastated holiday resort was complete. And that those who had lived there and lost everything in the disaster were returning in the hope that soon the tourist trade would be back and flourishing.

  On hearing it, Glenn’s first thought had been that he never wanted to go there again. But there had been others that followed it, the most overwhelming one being that he needed to say goodbye to the place, and with it his farewell to the wife he had lost so tragically.

  His father had once given him good advice, unwanted at the time. ‘Let her go, Glenn. Serena wouldn’t want you to live a life of loneliness and grief,’ Jonas had urged, but Glenn had ignored him. It was only today, seeing the sea calm and still, the buildings rebuilt and the gardens back to their previous glory, where there had been carnage, that had finally given him the will to let go.

  * * *

  They were waiting for him at the airport, the parents that he loved, elderly and temperamental but mostly on his wavelength. Typically his father’s first comment was, ‘You left that young daughter of Jeremy’s high and dry on her first day back at the practice. Did you forget?’

  ‘No. I didn’t,’ he told him. ‘It was just that when I heard about the rebuilding on the six o’clock news that morning I knew I had to go. Everything else seemed blurred and vague, and I got the first flight of the day out there. I will speak to Emma in the morning and I’m sure she will understand.’

  ‘And?’ his mother interrupted gently. ‘How did it feel to see it all made good again? Was the rock still there?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ he told her, ‘and it was strange because seeing it comforted me. I felt that at last I could say my goodbyes to Serena.’

  ‘And you’ll have a word with that girl of Jeremy’s tomorrow?’ his father insisted, tactless to the last.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ve said I will, haven’t I?’ he told him as the three of them boarded a waiting taxi. Emma wasn’t going to lose any sleep over his absence, he thought. It was the job she coveted, not a washed-out widower like him.

  * * *

  But the time he’d just spent in a place that would be in the background of his life for ever had been well worth the effort. He was ready to accept what he had been given, make the best of it, and it was a major step forward. It was a pity that his father couldn’t see it that way, instead of fussing about what he saw as letting down a comparative stranger.

  It seemed that he had gone to the practice to pick up a prescription and seen Emma’s expression when she’d discovered that his son was not around on her first morning at the practice, and like an elderly knight of old had taken up her cause. For heaven’s sake, Lydia would have been there to make Emma welcome and young Prentice wouldn’t have been far away, that was for sure.

  When the taxi stopped outside the neat semi-detached where his parents lived Glenn paid the driver and then saw them safely inside before walking the short distance to his own home. On the way he had to pass the drab property that was Emma’s residence and when he glanced across saw that in spite of the fact that it was well gone midnight there was a light on in an upstairs room, and he thought wryly that maybe she had found it easier to find solace than he had.

  She was very noticeable with her long dark hair and big hazel eyes, he thought, and now that she was back in civilisation who could blame her if she found some of the men she was getting to know exciting to spend time with.

  Yet from what little he knew of Emma it was strange that she should already be so close to someone of his gender after so short a time, if that was the case. And he might have thought it stranger still if he had known that Emma was propped up against the pillows all alone, studying builders’ estimates as if there was no tomorrow.

  As for himself, for the first time in ages he slept the moment his head touched the pillow, unaware that Emma’s last thought before sleep had claimed her had been of him and his disappointing absence on her first day at the practice. It had taken some of the pleasure out of her return to work, but not all of it. She had slotted back in again as if she’d never been away and hoped Glenn would approve whenever he came back from where he had disappeared to.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DESPITE THE LATENESS of his return the previous night Glenn was at his desk when Emma arrived at the practice the next morning. Having left the door of his consulting room open, he was watching for her arrival and called her in the moment she appeared.

  Beckoning for her to take a seat, he asked levelly, ‘So how did your first day go, Emma? Was it up to expectations? I had expected to be here, but something completely unexpected took me to foreign parts and I didn’t get back until very late last night.’

  ‘Yes, it was fine,’ she told him, ‘just like old times, only better since having worked abroad.’

  ‘I passed your house on the last lap of my way home,’ he said, ‘and saw that one of your bedroom lights was on at that late hour, so it would seem that you are settling in amongst us satisfactorily.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that,’ she agreed coolly, ‘if you would class leafing through a pile of builders’ estimates as “settling in”.’

  Ignoring the implied rebuke, he said, ‘You mean you’re considering giving your house a face-lift? All I can say to that is good thinking.’

  ‘It will be my Christmas present to myself.’

  He didn’t like the sound of that. Surely Emma had someone to spend Christmas with? It was clear from the funeral that she had no close relatives.

  But it was still some weeks away. There would be time for both their lives to change before then: his because of what had just happened in a faraway place, and Emma’s because by then she would have found new friends and made her house beautiful.

  Any other surmising had to wait as there were voices to be heard nearby, the waiting room was filling up, and as Emma turned to go to her own part of the busy practice he said, ‘I’m here if you have any problems, so don’t hesitate to ask.’

  Glenn watched her colour rise at the reassurance he was offering and wondered if he had hit a sore spot of some kind. Had she thought that he was forgetting her past position in the practice and hinting that her absence ov
er the last few years might have made her less than capable with her own kind?

  If that was the case Emma would be so wrong. There was an air of efficiency about her that showed she knew what she was about, and he wasn’t going to interfere regarding that.

  She didn’t reply to the offer he’d made, just smiled, and as she turned to go to her consulting room he pressed the buzzer on his desk and the day was under way.

  In the early afternoon Glenn had a house call to make at a farm high on a hillside. During the lunch break he went to find Emma with the intention of suggesting that she accompany him to renew her acquaintance with the more rural parts that the practice covered, now bare and leafless in winter’s grip.

  He discovered that she was nowhere around and concluded that she’d gone to do a quick shop somewhere in her lunch hour, until Lydia, observing him finding Emma missing, explained that she was most likely to be found in the churchyard.

  When he asked why, the answer was that her mother’s grave was there, and Glenn was immediately aware of the strange arrangement of her parents being buried in different places, as Jeremy had been laid to rest in the local cemetery.

  Not wanting to question Lydia further, he strolled towards the church and, sure enough, Emma was there, arranging fresh flowers on one of the graves, and he wondered why, as there was an abundance of them there already.

  When his shadow fell across them she looked up, startled, and asked, ‘Have you come to tell me that lunchtime is over?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ he said, feeling a little awkward that he was interrupting something special. ‘I’m driving up into the hills to do a home visit for my next patient and thought you might like to renew your acquaintance with the green hills of Gloucestershire. They’re as beautiful as ever above the Regency finery of Glenminster.