LITMIR.BIZ

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plus his age—late thirties at the most—had not gone unnoticed, a scornful coldness sweeping over those arrogantly handsome features, setting their chiselled beauty into a forbidding concrete.

      ‘How do you do, Miss Richmond,’ he’d said with a frozen formality which had never changed, not once in six months.

      Abby found his chilly aloofness almost amusing at times. What had he thought during those first moments of their meeting? That she’d been bowled over by his brooding sex appeal? Did he believe that she might be harbouring a hidden passion for him, and that if he gave her an inch she would take more than a mile?

      God, it would take more than tall, dark and handsome to bewitch her these days. Her experience with Dillon had taught her well. Oh, yes, the dear doctor had made her silly female heart flutter for a split second, but that was all. She’d quickly learnt to control any further involuntary sexual responses when she looked at him; just as she’d quickly learnt what kind of man lay behind his smouldering good looks.

      He was a machine, not a man. A cold-blooded, cold-hearted robot who worked eighteen-hour days, operating at not one or two, but three hospitals. He even operated on a Saturday occasionally, if his lists for that week were too long to be fitted in to his Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning operating schedules.

      Abby sometimes wondered why his patients set such store by him. It had to be because of his skill, not his bedside manner. He had consultations every Friday afternoon while she was there, giving her plenty of opportunity to study his personality, and she’d never seen him so much as smile at a patient. He would come out of his rooms and call each successive one in with that same sphinx-like expression on his face.

      They were just cases to him, Abby accepted finally, not people. She wouldn’t mind betting that he had never become emotionally involved with a single person he’d operated on.

      Obviously, he never became emotionally involved with anyone, from what she’d just heard.

      ‘There’s no use bullying me about it, Sylvia,’ he was saying in a vaguely bored tone. ‘I’m not going and that’s final.’

      ‘Then more fool you! Any other man would just find someone else to take.’

      ‘Such as whom?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Sylvia was beginning to sound very irritable. ‘You could hire yourself one of those escorts, I suppose.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous. One of my closest colleagues will be there with his wife. Do you honestly think I would show up with an amateur call-girl on my arm?’

      ‘How would they ever know?’

      ‘I’d know,’ he bit out.

      ‘Are you telling me you’ve finally developed scruples where women and sex are concerned? Frankly, I think it’s a perfectly splendid idea, and perfectly suited to your requirements. For the right fee you’d get exactly what you want from a woman and no more,’ Sylvia threw at him tartly. ‘You certainly wouldn’t have to worry about her having designs on you afterwards either. You’d know right from the start that she was only screwing you for your money!’

      Abby’s eyebrows shot up ceilingwards. Sylvia must really be mad to resort to such an unladylike expression. Still, it was rather good to hear Sylvia get the better of her pain of a brother for once. Clearly he was rendered speechless by her acid barbs, if the sudden silence was anything to go by.

      ‘Aren’t you going to say anything more, Ethan?’ Sylvia demanded after a short while. ‘Don’t you dare just ignore me. I won’t have it, do you hear?’

      ‘And I won’t have you telling me how to run my private life,’ her brother returned in an ominously cold voice. ‘Now, go home and leave me be. I have work to do.’

      Abby knew that tone of voice. And clearly so did Sylvia, who emerged from the room looking defeated. Closing the door distractedly behind her, she began walking slowly across the empty waiting room with a genuinely troubled look on her face. She seemed totally unaware of Abby’s presence behind the desk, so deep in thought was she.

      Abby’s clearing her throat brought her head up with a startled gasp. ‘Oh, my goodness, Abby! I forgot you were still here.’

      ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Sylvia?’ Abby offered. ‘You seem a little... upset.’

      Sylvia sighed. ‘No, thanks, but thanks for offering. You’re a sweet girl. I’d better go home and get dinner started. It’s time you went home too, isn’t it? It’s after five.’

      ‘Dr Grant hasn’t finished dictating today’s letters. I’ll have to stay back till I’ve typed them up. You know how particular he is about that.’

      ‘What a slave-driver that man is! Make sure you put down the overtime.’

      ‘Oh, I will; don’t you worry.’

      Sylvia gave her a sharp glance. ‘Are you having money problems, Abby?’

      ‘I’m always having money problems.’ The money she earned from her one day here plus her weekend waitressing job was just enough to make ends meet, with nothing left over for emergencies or luxuries.

      ‘No luck getting a permanent position yet?’

      ‘Unfortunately no.’ Despite spending every spare second and cent having her résumé photocopied and sending it off in answer to every suitable job advertisement. The local unemployment office was getting sick of the sight of her, as well.

      ‘I don’t understand that at all. I would have thought some big flashy company would have snapped up a good-looking girl like you for their front desk.’

      Abby just shrugged. She didn’t want to tell Sylvia the probable reason that her application was passed over most of the time. They obviously took one look at where she’d taken her secretarial course and immediately put her résumé aside.

      Sylvia had never asked for a written or detailed application, naively hiring Abby on just a telephone call and one short personal interview, blindly believing her when she’d said she’d been overseas on a working holiday for a few years and had no recent employment history in Australia.

      Abby had not liked lying to her—she’d taken to Sylvia straight away—but poverty did rather make one desperate. She took some comfort from the fact that the glowing personal reference she’d been able to supply had been the genuine article and not a forgery. Dear Miss Blanchford... Abby was so grateful to her.

      ‘I did get one interview earlier this week,’ she admitted, cringing inside as she recalled the smarmy manner of the man who’d interviewed her. No way would she take that job, even if it was offered to her.

      ‘Oh? Who with?’

      ‘A small car-repair company in Alexandria.’

      Sylvia’s nose wrinkled. ‘Surely you could do better than that.’

      ‘I was hoping to, but times are tough.’

      ‘I’ll ask Ethan to find out if any doctor he knows requires a full-time receptionist,’ Sylvia said kindly. ‘Not that I want you to go. I’m really going to miss you. Ethan will too. He just doesn’t know what a gem we found in you. You’re always so willing to work back. Most pretty young things would be out of here like a shot on a Friday night.’

      ‘I’m not that young, Sylvia.’

      ‘Which is another thing I don’t understand—how you got to be twenty-five years old without some lucky man snapping you up as well.’

      ‘I guess I’m just not the type men snap up,’ Abby said, smiling wryly as she glanced up at Sylvia. Her smile faded when she found that Ethan had come out of his rooms and was standing in the middle of the waiting room watching her, a drily cynical amusement in his cold blue eyes.

      You’re right there, darling, they seemed to say. You’re the type men take to bed, not to the altar.

      Resentment

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