Snowbound with Her Off-Limits GP by Annie Claydon

Author:Annie Claydon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-08-16T15:17:52+00:00

* * *

The small cafeteria was bursting with people, and Eloise made a beeline for a table that had just become empty, leaving Sam in the queue still with their sandwiches and drinks. When he squeezed past busy tables, avoiding coats that had slipped onto the floor, she was sitting staring at a local paper that someone had left behind on the table.

‘What’s that?’ Whatever it was, it appeared that it was far more interesting than the sandwich and coffee that Eloise had raced here to get.

She lowered the paper. When Sam tried to take it from her she held onto it and he had to give it a little tug before she’d let go.

It was actually a very nice picture—Eloise and him, outside the Grand Elk pub yesterday, her arm curved still from throwing a snowball, and his raised to shield himself. Sam assumed that it was the headline that had prompted the annoyed look on Eloise’s face.

Doctors in snowball fight outside Grand Elk pub, where man lies injured!

His first thought was to shrug it off, the way he always did with anything that angered him. Sam’s second thought was to get in touch with the paper and ask for a copy of the photograph, because it had caught Eloise’s smile and the joyous way that she’d moved when she’d taken one moment to break the pressure of the afternoon. Neither of those were going to help.

‘That’s not the whole story, is it?’

‘No, but it’s what everyone’s going to think.’

And what everyone thought had already hurt her. Sam considered what Eloise’s next course of action might be, and somehow the anger and hurt didn’t seem quite so inappropriate when he felt it on her behalf.

‘We’re not going to apologise for this.’

‘We? I’m the one throwing the snowball.’

‘I’m sure that’s a smile on my face, isn’t it?’ Sam squinted at the picture. The resolution of the image didn’t make it easy to see, but he remembered smiling.

He scanned the short article. It briefly alluded to a man having been taken to hospital, and then added insult to injury by asking readers to send in their own pictures of people taking time off to enjoy the snow.

‘It’s just annoying. There are people here working really hard, staying overnight away from their families so that they can keep the place running. And they don’t even mention that. They pick a picture of me horsing around in the snow.’

‘That’s not your fault. The paper’s misrepresented things.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Do you suppose that Joe Parrish has seen this? He might issue a statement.’

‘And say what? He wasn’t there, and the camera doesn’t lie.’

In this instance it had. ‘Can you do something for me? Let me sort this out.’

Eloise shook her head, taking the paper from him and folding it in half, then throwing it onto the seat beside her. ‘Let it go, Sam. It’s irritating, but it doesn’t really matter. Let’s just rise above it.’

All the things he’d risen above, over the years.

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