‘Really?’
‘Ally…’ He took a step toward her and she moved so she was halfway out the door. It was a practised technique, he saw suddenly. She gave massages in the main street during business hours, and if a patient made a threatening move toward her she only had to step outside. And here she was, stepping outside.
‘I am not threatening you,’ he told her.
‘No,’ she said encouragingly. ‘You’re not. But I have another patient booked in ten minutes and I need to clean the room. Can you leave?’
He was making a fool of himself. He took a deep breath. In the last hour and a half his world had tilted and he had no clear idea how to straighten it.
Get out of here and think about it, he told himself. Get away from her smile. From the feel of her. The scent of her.
Help.
Deep breath here.
‘I’m sorry.’ He managed a rueful smile and stepped out, into the day. Breaking the forced intimacy of the little sunlit room. He walked down the steps and then turned to look back at her.
‘That was an inappropriate time to ask,’ he told her. ‘Stupid. But this massage was a one-off. From now on we’re professional colleagues.’
‘Are we?’
‘Of course we are. And there’s lots of professional issues we need to talk over.’
‘I’m not practising medicine.’
‘I might need to rethink my position that massage isn’t medicine,’ he told her. ‘I can think of at least a dozen people in the district who could really benefit from this, and there’s many, many more who’ll love it.’
She raised her brows as if she was politely incredulous.
‘Come out with me tonight and talk about it,’ he urged, but her look of polite incredulity didn’t change.
‘I don’t date clients.’
‘Ally-’
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, and her smile was rigidly formal. It was strained, he thought, and decided that maybe she wasn’t as much in control as she made out to be. But their conversation was over.
‘Good afternoon,’ she told him, in a voice that was as rigidly impersonal as that of a receptionist in any mainstream medical centre.
‘I need to check your foot.’
‘My foot’s fine.’
And before he could respond, she’d retreated, closing the door behind her.
‘Hey, Doc…’
There was a call from next door. He turned to find Harold Pipping waving to him from the door of his own consulting room.
‘Hey, Doc, I gotta appointment at two but I came early,’ the old fisherman told him. ‘I thought… I got an ingrown toenail and I figured if I came early you might have time to cut it off.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
HOW was a girl supposed to go back to work after that?
Thankfully, Ally’s training had been comprehensive and thorough-so thorough that she was able to turn herself onto autopilot without much trouble. Thankfully also, the four massages that had been booked for the afternoon were all for healthy adults. The head of the Rotary Club, Fred, was first in line. Then his wife, Myrtle. Following on was Elaine, the local pharmacist-who closed her pharmacy for an hour to get her massage-and finally Hilda, the head teacher of the local primary school, who came at the end of her day’s teaching.
She was being assessed, Ally decided as she petrissaged Hilda’s leathery skin. These four were a representative sample of the town’s elders, and she knew that if she made them happy it was tantamount to having a certificate saying, ‘Dr Ally is respectable.’
She was incredibly grateful, but as she eased their knots of tension, warmed their muscles and made them relax so deeply that sleep that night was almost assured, her mind kept wandering to Darcy.
To the feel of him. To his smile. To the look of confusion in his eyes as he’d asked her out and she’d refused.
Did he realise what he did to her? she wondered. And decided he couldn’t. He mustn’t. She was here with a goal, and that goal certainly didn’t involve the local doctor. To give up all she’d given up, and then calmly walk into a relationship with a doctor who practised medicine in this town-who lived in her grandfather’s house… No.
Should she have even come back here? Who knew? But as she bade an effusive Hilda goodbye, having first booked her another appointment for the same time next week, she knew the reception she was getting was mostly because of her background. People were eager to help, and they’d be eager to help her mother as well.
She bit her lip. How long?
Maybe not so long. She counted her takings and thought maybe it wouldn’t be very long at all before she could rent somewhere decent and hire someone during the day for the times when her mother couldn’t be alone.
She walked upstairs, conscious of the fact that she was bone weary. Five long massages in an afternoon was probably one too many, but the thought of how much she’d earned more than made up for aching muscles.
At least she had food. The revellers of the morning had left plates of leftovers. Betty had offered to throw them out and Ally had said-with dignity-that she’d dispose of them herself.
Which was just what she was doing, she thought, collapsing into her window chair and wrapping herself around a cold sausage roll. It wasn’t great but it was food and it was free.
The phone rang.
‘Go away,’ she told it, but it kept ringing. Maybe it was someone wanting an appointment so she heaved herself out of her chair-with a groan-and answered.
‘Ally.’
‘Darcy.’ She was straight into defence mode and he heard it.
‘There’s no need to put up the armour.’
‘Isn’t there?’
‘No. I saw your light go out downstairs.’
‘It happens,’ she said cautiously. ‘At the end of the day I turn my light off. I bet you do, too.’
‘So, have you rethought dinner?’
She eyed the receiver. She eyed her sausage roll-and took another bite. Three fast chews and it was down.
‘I’ve eaten,’ she told him.
‘You’ve eaten dinner?’
‘Yep.’
‘Your light only went out three minutes ago.’
‘I’m a fast eater. Good night, Darcy.’
‘This is crazy. There’s a great little place around the headland-part of the Nautilus Resort. They have a five-star menu.’
She eyed another congealed sausage roll. ‘I’m eating five-star food right now.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Nope. I’m eating premium beef in a crisp wrap of melt-in-the-mouth pastry.’ She looked at the ketchup container in the middle of the plate where sausage rolls had been dunked this morning. The sauce had bits of broken sausage roll floating in its murky depths.
She lifted another roll and dunked.
‘With gourmet sauce on the side,’ she told him. ‘It’s magnificent.’
‘You cooked that in three minutes?’
