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      Sighing, Jason rose from his desk and went to call in the next patient.

      ‘I hope to heaven that’s it, Nancy?’ Jason said at long last, popping his head around the consulting-room door and sighing with relief when he spied the empty waiting room. The clock on the wall now said five to seven. Surgery usually finished around five-thirty and, whilst it sometimes ran late, it was rarely this late.

      ‘Yes, all finished for the day, Dr Steel,’ Nancy returned, in a sighing tone which Jason knew didn’t denote tiredness, but a reluctance to leave the love of her life and go home to an empty house.

      Not him. The practice!

      Nancy had been Doc Brandewilde’s resident receptionist - cum - secretary - cum - book - keeper - cum-emergency nurse for the past twenty years. She worked six days a week—seven, if and when required—and overtime without ever asking for an extra cent. Rising sixty now, she was as healthy as a horse and would probably be presiding over the practice for another twenty years at least.

      She’d been a bit pernickety with Jason when he’d first arrived, till he’d discovered through Muriel that Nancy was afraid he’d fire her, if and when Doc retired, and Jason took on a new partner. Once Jason had reassured Nancy the job was hers for as long as she wanted it, their relationship had improved in leaps and bounds, although there’d been a temporary hiccup when Jason had suggested they get a computer system for the files and the accounts. He’d made the mistake of saying a computer would be more efficient and cut down on her workload. He hadn’t realised, at that point in time, that Nancy didn’t want to cut down on her workload.

      Nancy had gone into an instant panic, then flounced home in a right snip, saying if Jason thought a machine could do a better job than twenty years’ experience, then she didn’t want to work for such a fool. After one day’s mayhem in the surgery, Jason had gone crawling on his hands and knees, begging for her to return. He’d grovelled very well, calling himself an idiot from the city who didn’t understand the workings of a country practice, saying if she could be gracious enough to forgive his ignorance and help him wherever possible, he was sure to get the hang of things in due time.

      After that, they got on like a house on fire, even though Nancy maintained an old-fashioned formality in addressing him as Dr Steel all the time, which sometimes irritated Jason. Still, that seemed to be the way with people in country towns. They held their doctors in high esteem. Put them on a pedestal, so to speak. And while that was rather nice, Jason sometimes felt a bit of a fraud. If they knew his original motives for choosing medicine as a profession, they might not be so respectful.

      ‘Sorry to love you and leave you, Nancy,’ he said briskly, when it became clear she was going to linger, ‘but I have to go upstairs and change.’

      ‘Going out for dinner, Doctor?’

      ‘Yes, that’s right.’

      ‘Where are you off to tonight?

      ‘I thought I might drive over to the coast.’

      ‘Seems a long way to go to eat alone,’ Nancy returned on a dry note.

      Jason opened his mouth to lie, but then decided against it. The people of Tindley would like nothing better than to see their second and much younger doctor safely married to a local girl. Doctors were as scarce as hen’s teeth in some rural areas. They would exert a subtle—or perhaps not so subtle—pressure on Emma, to be a sensible girl and snap up the good doctor while she had the chance.

      ‘Actually, no, I’m not going alone,’ he said casually. ‘I’m taking Emma Churchill.’

      If he’d been expecting shock on Nancy’s face, then he was sorely disappointed. Her smile was quite smug. ‘I suspected as much.’

      ‘You sus—’ Jason broke off, grimacing resignedly. The small town grapevine never ceased to amaze him. ‘How on earth did you know?’ he asked, with wry acceptance and a measure of curiosity. No way would Emma have told anyone.

      ‘Muriel said you were asking about Emma yesterday. Then Sheryl spotted you going through Ivy’s side gate last night. Then Emma dropped in to Beryl’s Boutique at lunch-time and bought a pretty new dress. On top of that, you’ve been clock-watching and jumpy all day. It didn’t take too much to put two and two together.’

      Jason had to smile. Jumpy, was he? You could say that again. He’d hardly slept a wink last night for thinking about Emma.

      ‘And what will the good ladies of Tindley think about such goings-on?’ he asked, still smiling.

      Nancy laughed. ‘Oh, there won’t be any goings-on where Emma is concerned, Dr Steel, so you can save your energy and keep your mind above your trouser belt till the ring’s on her finger. You are planning on proposing, aren’t you?’

      Jason saw no point in being coy. ‘I am…but that’s doesn’t mean she’ll say yes.’

      ‘She will, if she’s got any sense in her head. But there again—’ She broke off suddenly, and frowned.

      ‘If you’re thinking about Dean Ratchitt, then I know all about him,’ he said brusquely. ‘Muriel filled me in.’

      Nancy’s expression was troubled. ‘He’s bad news, that one. Emma was really stuck on him. Always was, right from her schooldays.’

      ‘I hear he’s very handsome.’

      Nancy frowned. ‘Not handsome, exactly,’ she said. Not like you, Dr Steel. Now, you’re handsome in my book. But he has something, has Dean. And he has a way about him with the women, no doubt about that.’

      ‘So everyone keeps telling me,’ Jason said testily. ‘But he’s not here in Tindley, Nancy, and I am. So let’s leave it at that, shall we? Now, I must shake a leg or I’m going to be late.’

      ‘What time did you say you’d pick Emma up?’

      ‘Seven-thirty.’

      ‘Just as well she lives down the road, then, isn’t it? Off you go. I’ll lock up here.’

      Jason dashed up the stairs, stripping as he went.

      Like Ivy’s sweet shop, the surgery was part of an old house which fronted the main street of Tindley. But where Ivy’s place was small and one-storeyed, the house Doc Brandewilde had bought thirty years before was two-storeyed and quite spacious. Doc and his wife had raised three boys in it.

      But they’d always wanted a small acreage out of town, it seemed, and once Jason had expressed interest in the practice Doc had bought his dream place and moved, leaving the living quarters of the house in town to his new partner.

      Jason had been thrilled. He’d liked the house on sight. It had character, like those American houses he’d often seen in movies and which he’d always coveted. Made of wood, it had an L-shaped front verandah, with wisteria wound through the latticed panels, and a huge front door with a brass knocker and stained glass panels on either side. Inside, the ceilings were ten feet high, and all the floors polished wood. A wide central hall downstairs separated two rooms on the left and two on the right. It passed a powder room under the stairs, and led into a large kitchen which opened out onto a long, wide back verandah. The two rooms on the left—which had once been the front parlour and morning room—had been converted into the waiting room and surgery. The two on the right remained the dining and lounge rooms.

      Upstairs, there had been four bedrooms and one bathroom till a few years back, when Doc’s wife, Martha, had brought in the renovators and combined the two smallest bedrooms on the right into a roomy master bedroom and en suite bathroom.

      Jason rushed into this bathroom now, snapping on the shower and reaching for the soap. No time to shave, he realised. Pity. He’d wanted to be perfect for Emma. Still, he wasn’t one of those dark shaven men who grew half a beard by five o’clock in the afternoon. His father had been dark—according to his parents’ wedding photos. But his mother fair. He’d ended up being a mixture of both, with mid-brown hair, his father’s

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