to explain to Doris that it was palatial compared to some of the places she’d lived in? ‘And now I’ve met the neighbour and he’s such a sweetheart.’
‘He is nice,’ Doris said, but she’d caught the tone of Ally’s voice and she was starting to sound dubious. ‘You two don’t sound as if you’ve started off on the right foot.’
‘She threw blue paint at my feet,’ Darcy said.
‘I’m sure she didn’t.’ Doris looked from one to the other—and then to Ally’s ladder. ‘You know, that doesn’t look all that safe to me, love.’
‘Just what I was saying.’ Darcy sounded almost triumphant.
‘Tell you what.’ Doris was clearly thinking on her feet. ‘The fleet’s in at the moment. Old Charlie Hammer’s funeral’s this afternoon so the fishermen can’t go out until they see him buried. And everyone’ll be sober until the wake. Why don’t I send a few of the men up here to finish your painting for you, dear? And anything else you might need doing. You know we all respected your grandpa, and everyone’ll be so pleased you’re back. And a doctor, too.’
‘She’s a masseur.’ Darcy was starting to sound a little desperate and Ally gave him her nicest, pitying smile.
‘Doctors can be massage therapists, too,’ she told him. ‘And massage therapists can be doctors.’
‘Are you telling me you seriously plan to make a living in this town?’
‘Of course.’
‘No one will come.’
‘I will,’ Doris said soundly. ‘I like a little massage. Not that I’ve ever had one, of course, but they sound nice. I was telling Henry only the other night that a rub would do me the world of good. Not like those tablets you have me on, Dr Rochester. I’m sure you’re doing your best, but Dr Westruther’s granddaughter… Ooh, I’m that pleased. And I’m sure Gloria will come as soon as she knows about you—her arthritis is something terrible—and my Beryl, and…everyone. I’ll just go and spread the word. It’s wonderful, that’s what it is. It’s just wonderful. Come on, Chloe.’
And with a tug on the unfortunate poodle’s leash, she sailed away to spread the word.
Dr Darcy Rochester was left staring at Dr Ally Westruther. Speechless. While she stared at him and tried to decide where to go from there.
‘You know, you’d really better go and take that paint off,’ Ally said finally. ‘We don’t want you to stay blue for ever, now, do we?’
‘You’re a local?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re really setting up for massage.’
‘That seems to be the intention.’
‘That’s fine,’ he said bluntly. ‘But take the “Doctor” off the sign. It’s misleading.’
‘Why is it misleading?’
‘I’m the town’s doctor.’
‘And you don’t want anyone else invading your territory?’
‘If anyone else wanted to invade, I’d be putting up the white flag before the first shot was fired,’ he told her. ‘Do you have any idea how big this district is? I’m run off my feet. But you’re not going to help.’
No, she thought bleakly. She wasn’t. But she may as well reassure him that she wasn’t pretending to practise medicine.
‘If anyone arrives with broken legs or snakebite, you can be sure I’ll send them to you,’ she told him. ‘As I hope you’ll send anyone with muscle soreness to me.’
‘You expect me to refer people to you when you call yourself a doctor?’
‘Don’t be elitist.’
‘Don’t indulge in deception.’
‘I’m not!’
‘Look, Ally…’
This was going nowhere. ‘I have work to do,’ she told him. ‘Your paint is drying.’
‘You can’t do this.’
‘Watch me.’ She sighed. ‘You’re just upset because my sign is bigger than yours.’
‘Some of us have ethical standards.’
‘Well, bully for some of us,’ she snapped. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a sign to write and I’ve just decided it needs work. It needs to be bigger.’
He stared at her for a long moment. But there was no more to be said. They both knew it.
Finally he turned and stalked up to his surgery door. He disappeared, slamming the door behind him.
He left blue footprints all the way.
Ally was left staring after him. What to do now?
Nothing, she told herself. There was nothing she could do. Just get on with it.
‘Whoops,’ she said again. She took a deep breath—and then grinned into the morning sun. Whether she had Darcy Rochester’s approval or whether she didn’t, she was home again and nothing and no one was going to interfere with her happiness.
CHAPTER TWO
THROUGHOUT the next few days Darcy worked on as if she wasn’t there. Well, why not? What did a massage therapist have to do with him?
Nothing.
The fact that the entire population was talking about her was none of his business either.
At least he had work to distract him from a woman who was dangerously close to being distracting all by herself.
In truth, he’d seldom been as busy as he was right now. The fine autumn weather broke the afternoon of Charlie Hammer’s funeral, meaning the fishing fleet couldn’t leave port. The town’s fishermen decided en masse that if they were in port anyway they may as well kill time getting their assorted ills seen to, swelling his already too-long patient lists.
Then the little community in the hills above the town—alternative lifestylers who didn’t believe in getting their children immunised—were hit by an epidemic of chickenpox. As he had three kids with complications and parents who agonised and discussed ad nauseam every treatment he advised—and then refused to let him treat them anyway—he was going quietly nuts. But going nuts wasn’t on the agenda. If he stopped calmly discussing treatments with these parents, if he stopped negotiating that at least they keep track of fluid balances—if he lost his cool—then these kids wouldn’t make it to be insurance salesmen or astrophysicists or whatever else kids of dyed-in-the-wool hippies became if they survived childhood.
Then there was the added complication of the entire town trooping by to see Ally’s much talked-of new premises. While they were there, they remembered they may just as well pop next door to the doctor’s surgery and make an appointment to have their sore elbow seen to, or talk about Mum’s Alzheimer’s—and see for themselves just how Dr Rochester was taking this new arrival.
Doris Kerr had obviously spread the fact that Darcy hadn’t reacted with pleasure to Ally’s arrival. His reaction had gone down like a lead balloon. Every single patient commented on the hive of industry next door to his surgery. Many of the long-term town residents—those who remembered Ally from childhood—took pains to tell him how wonderful it was that a little girl they’d clearly held in affection had finally come home.
And their message was clear. ‘Don’t mess with Ally Westruther. Even if her sign is bigger than yours.’
Fine. He wouldn’t mess with Ally Westruther. He didn’t want to think about her. But not thinking about her was impossible, too.
Even among his staff… Betty, his receptionist, got