A Wife Worth Waiting For by Maggie Kingsley

Author:Maggie Kingsley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

‘HUGH and Malcolm are both ready for the post-surgery debriefing,’ Chrissie declared as she opened Alex’s consulting-room door. ‘Shall I tell them you’ll be along, or…?’ The receptionist’s gaze fell on the folders lying scattered on Alex’s desk. ‘Do you need a few more minutes to finish your paperwork?’

‘Tell them I’m coming,’ Alex replied, hitching a smile to her lips, but she groaned when the receptionist disappeared.

She hadn’t even started her paperwork. For the past hour she’d done nothing but stare into space, and doodle on her notebook, and what had she drawn? Boxes. Dozens and dozens of boxes.

‘Freudian, or what, Alex?’ she muttered, quickly tearing the top sheet out of her notebook, and tossing it into her waste-paper basket, but it didn’t help.

She could still see the boxes and herself trapped inside them.

Savagely she bit her lip. She should never have worn her belly dancing costume that night. She hadn’t needed to, not for the first lesson, and certainly not when she’d known Hugh was going to be there, but when she’d got back to Kilbreckan that night, after meeting Bunty Soutar, some malignant demon had whispered, Put your costume on, put it on, and what had been the result?

‘You look nice,’ Hugh had said when he’d first seen her.

She’d been so disappointed, so hurt, and when she’d danced for him—and she had danced for him, she knew she had—he’d walked away from her, not once but twice, but since then…

Everywhere she went in the surgery he seemed to be there, hovering. Every time she looked up at post-practice meetings, his eyes were on her, thoughtful, pensive, and yet also with something else that made her heart skitter and her pulses race.

But that’s what you wanted, her mind pointed out. That’s why you put on the costume, because you wanted him to realise that you’re a woman, and now he obviously has, what’s the problem?

I don’t want to hurt him, her heart cried, and I know I will. I don’t want to be hurt again myself, and I know I will. I should have thought it through, stayed in my sweatshirt and jeans, remained good old sexless Alex, but I didn’t, and I was wrong.

‘Sorry, Alex, memory like a sieve this morning,’ Chrissie declared apologetically as she reappeared at Alex’s consulting-room door. ‘Hugh says he’d like a word with you after the meeting if that’s OK with you?’

‘Absolutely. Not a problem,’ Alex replied, all chirpily upbeat but when Chrissie disappeared again she groaned again as she got wearily to her feet. ‘You shouldn’t have been drawing boxes, Alex Lorimer,’ she told the empty room. ‘You should have been drawing straitjackets, because that’s where you belong.’

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