LITMIR.BIZ

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was tall and her head was crowned with the most magnificent red hair he’d ever seen. It was curly and looked slightly wild despite her efforts to tame it into a neat bundle at the back of her head. He had a sudden vision of it spread over his chest and he blinked.

      Her emerald-green eyes sparkled above high cheekbones and two luscious lips. Kissable lips. Very kissable lips.

      Her serious, obviously expensive suit did nothing to hide her fantastic figure. He felt his loins stir as he speculated on the bits of her long legs that were hidden by her skirt. She looked prim and proper and he was hit by the urge to get her dirty and messy. It was powerful, bordering on primitive.

      She looked tired but there was an undercurrent, a vibe of tension around her that was almost palpable. Like a fully wound spring ready to unfurl at a second’s notice. He’d never met anyone so uptight in his life. A large diamond flashed on the ring finger of her left hand. Surely someone getting regular sex couldn’t be this tense?

      ‘I’m Dr Marcus Hunt,’ he stated, burying his left hand deep into his shorts pocket.

      Madeline watched the movement hypnotically, until she became aware that she was staring at a particular part of his anatomy that she shouldn’t be staring at. She dragged her eyes away, shocked at herself. She could see that he found her amusing. His grin, barely suppressed, added a sparkle to those blue, blue eyes.

      ‘You’re Dr Hunt?’ she enquired with just the right amount of mingled sarcasm and disbelief. She had to get back some control here.

      ‘Yes.’ He swapped the paintbrush to his left hand, wiped his right on his denim-covered buttock and offered it to her.

      She ignored it. Her rudeness seemed to amuse him even further and Madeline got the impression that nothing fazed Marcus Hunt.

      ‘And you are?’

      ‘Madeline Harrington. Dr Madeline Harrington.’

      ‘Ah…from next door.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll be neighbours, then.’ The thought, despite the bling on her hand, was immensely appealing.

      ‘Ah, no…I don’t think so,’ she stated with just the right amount of disdain.

      ‘Oh?’ he queried, not particularly worried. ‘Problem?’

      ‘Two, actually. One…’ Madeline counted on her hand ‘…I object, most strenuously, to you using the title of Doctor. Naturopaths or any other alternative medicine nuts are not permitted to call themselves doctors.’

      ‘They can if they hold a medical degree,’ he stated matter-of-factly. ‘And I’m a homeopath, actually.’

      ‘You’re…you’re a real doctor?’ Madeline spluttered in disbelief.

      He threw back his head and laughed at the frank incredulity obvious on her face.

      The long column of his neck was exposed to her view and, despite her embarrassment, an errant brain cell dared her to lick it.

      ‘Is that so hard to believe?’

      ‘Quite frankly, yes,’ Madeline admitted. He didn’t look like any kind of doctor she had ever known. Her father had been a doctor, his two nearing-retirement partners were doctors. Simon was a doctor! Those men were what doctors looked like.

      ‘I believe there was a second…?’ Marcus prompted after some time had elapsed and Madeline hadn’t continued.

      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 breathy quality, almost a tremble, making her voice husky. 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 stop him and stopped abruptly at his casual familiarity. No one, but 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. Why did it still have the power to take her breath away?

      ‘The name is Madeline,’ she snapped.

      ‘Maybe. But I think I’ll call you Maddy anyway,’he stated, and enjoyed the glitter he caused in her emerald depths.

      ‘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. Almost a sigh. 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.’

      Madeline glowed triumphantly, having placed her trump card on the table. He smiled back at her, obviously unconcerned.

      ‘Why stop at eviction, Maddy? Why not just burn me at the stake and be done with it?’ he enquired softly.

      ‘Don’t tempt me.’

      Oh, she tempted him all right. ‘What are you afraid of? 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 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 inside her from when she had first spied him on his skateboard.

      She let herself through the front gate of the inner-city terrace house that had been given a recent facelift, as had all the terraces in the area. 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.

      She looked at the gold lettering on the wooden door—Dr Blakely, Dr Baxter, Dr Harrington and Dr Wishart. Strangely, today she didn’t feel the pride seeing her name in gold lettering usually engendered. She felt…disconnected. Unfulfilled.

      She shook her head to clear 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 their patients’ lives and had never considered anything else. And after her father’s death she had grown even more determined to continue his legacy.

      She pushed the door open. There was twenty minutes before closing.

      ‘Madeline! Oh, my God,’ squealed an excited Veronica from behind the front desk. The receptionist jumped from her chair and enveloped 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,

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