HE DIDN’T buy a sports car, needless to say. Instead, when he’d completed the sale he drove back to the surgery in a black four-wheel-drive, and watching him park it on the forecourt from the window of the nurse’s room Julianne sighed.
Their first conversation had been a prickly affair and she couldn’t visualise any future ones being any different. The only thing that would put things right between them would be for her to tell Aaron exactly what had been in her mind on that dreadful day.
It had been more of a teenage crush than a grand passion, but it hadn’t seemed like that at the time, and she’d known that beside her sister’s attractions her own had been almost non-existent.
Living in Nadine’s shadow had become a way of life that she’d had to accept—even their parents had been known to show preference on occasion. While she’d been growing up, whenever her father had called for his beautiful daughter to come to him she’d learned never to go rushing to his side, experience having taught her that it had been Nadine he’d wanted, always Nadine.
When her sister’s ‘latest’ had appeared on the scene, handsome, clever, a catch by anyone’s standards, he had seemed like the prince to her Cinderella, and she had prayed that Nadine would not bring him grief.
In a strange sort of way her prayers had been answered. The ‘grief’ had been there, no escaping that, but to a much lesser degree than if the marriage had gone ahead, and she’d hoped with youthful optimism that Aaron might notice her with Nadine gone.
At the last moment her sister had gone where there had been money, lots of it, and Aaron had been spared the nightmare that life married to Nadine would have been, but she, Julianne, hadn’t come out of it smelling of roses either.
She’d confessed to him how often she’d tried to persuade Nadine not to marry him, but in the midst of his anger hadn’t been able to get the words out to tell him why, and Aaron’s disgust at what he’d seen as her conniving had hit her like a sledgehammer.
When she’d left the vestry after taking time to calm herself he had disappeared and she’d never seen him again until now, when the feelings she’d had for him that had shrivelled and died over the years were seemingly springing back into life.
Aaron was out of the car and striding towards the main doors of the surgery and knowing that she would be on view she moved away from the window and found Helena, the oldest of the nurses, smiling across at her.
‘So is he your type?’ she asked.
‘Is who my type?’ she questioned innocently.
‘Aaron Somerton. I don’t doubt all of the available women will be noticing his arrival in our midst.’
‘So? They will have no competition from me,’ she told her. ‘We knew each other in another life and didn’t get on.’ Turning away, she called in the first of those waiting to be seen by a nurse and it turned out to be her landlord, George, the baker, who had come for his regular B12 injection.
‘The new doctor came into the shop this morning,’ he said while rolling up his sleeve, ‘and I asked him to impress on you that midweek living it up is not a good thing for tired nurses who have been on their feet all day.’
She was bending over him with needle poised, and hissed angrily, ‘You had a nerve, George! I am quite capable of looking after myself. It is his first day with us and you say something like that to him. What was his reply?’
‘Said that you’d only just met and didn’t think the idea would appeal to you.’
‘He got that right! It would not appeal to me. So will you stop fussing over me, George?’
‘Aw, come on, Julianne,’ he protested. ‘You know you’re like the daughter I never had, and I worry about you because you seem so alone. My missus is long gone so I need somebody to look after.’
She was smiling now. ‘Yes, I know. But please don’t talk about me to Aaron Somerton—anyone else is OK but not him.’
‘All right,’ he said, and in went the needle.
His first day at the practice was over and as Aaron drove back to The Falls Cottage beneath the darkening skies of an approaching winter evening the events of the day were going through his mind, and, wrongly or rightly, meeting up with Julianne Marshall, the young nondescript teenage bridesmaid of long ago and now a very attractive woman, was the one uppermost.
Her sister, blonde where Julianne was dark, had been good-looking too, otherwise she wouldn’t have caught the eye of the millionaire who had been so much older than himself, and when he’d been left standing at the altar he had realised the truth of one of his mother’s favourite sayings, that beauty was only skin deep.
When he and Julianne had come face-to-face in the corridor outside the nurses’ room he hadn’t put into words that he knew who she was. He hadn’t needed to. His manner when they’d discussed the patient who’d complained about having the cortisone injection had made it clear enough. It had been while his glance had been on the printout she’d been holding that he’d seen that his surmise that she too would have found herself a husband by now had been wrong. There had been no wedding ring on her finger.
The cottage and the waterfall had come into view and as he pulled up beside them and gave the car a quick glance he thought that it was the first time he’d ever bought a car without some degree of thought, or worked his first day in a new practice with both events barely registering because of a woman, but that had been the case today,
Tomorrow was going to be different, he vowed silently. The bridesmaid of long ago was not going to put him off his stride, no way!
Later that evening Aaron went out for a stroll and ran into Helena Carey, the senior practice nurse, who was out walking her dog.
‘So how did your first day go, Dr Somerton?’ she asked, her frisky boxer straining at its lead.
‘Fine, thank you,’ he replied. ‘Needless to say, it was very different from the surgeries I have worked in over the last few years, but they all have the same end in view, don’t they?’
‘Yes, they do,’ she agreed, and then to his surprise asked, ‘What do you think of the staff at the surgery?’
‘They seem great. Why do you ask?’
‘I thought that maybe you hadn’t hit it off with Nurse Marshall as you seemed to be having a disagreement at one point during the morning. It was unusual as Julianne is held in high regard by everyone at the practice.’
‘Yes, I am sure she is,’ he said calmly. ‘It was just a moment of confusion on both our parts, that’s all.’
‘Ah, that’s good,’ she replied, and went on her way, leaving him to think that the face from the past seemed as if she had a fan club at the surgery. So what? There would be no likelihood of him joining it. He had seen her and her sister in their true colours and was not going to be deceived twice.
That second night he slept better. The sound of the waterfall was no longer disruptive. This time it was a constant, reliable sound that helped him to relax, and no sooner had his head hit the pillow than he was out like a light.
Until he heard the sound of the first of the passenger launches going across the lake at seven o’clock the next morning and then it was a shower, a quick breakfast and off to the practice with what would have been sheer pleasure if it wasn’t for the thought of meeting up again with Julianne.
As he drove along the main street she was there, brisk and immaculate, unlike her appearance of the morning before, and about to get into her car. On impulse he drew level at the kerbside and as she looked up questioningly he said tonelessly, ‘I saw Helena last night down by the lake and she was concerned that we weren’t going to get on with each other, so I thought I’d stop to let you know that during working hours there will be no problems as far as I am concerned, though I’m sure you must realise that if I’d known you were part of the