Role Play

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

ABIGAIL PEARCE was going to marry a doctor. It wasn’t a conscious decision, rather something she had always known and accepted.

What she also knew, after a week in general practice, was that there was no way he would be a GP!

The lifestyle was horrendous. Paper mountains, patients with nothing wrong with them and patients who were clearly dying and had left it too late to do anything, all muddled up with legions of bronchitics and asthmatics —and the whole lot of them tied together with endless miles of tangled red tape!

It didn’t suit Abbie’s chaotic and ephemeral mind at all, and as she drove towards the surgery on that lovely August morning she felt the now familiar panic tightening her chest. What would she do if someone came in and she wasn’t sure about her diagnosis? For the first time in her life there wasn’t someone else to ask, a registrar to fall back on at a moment’s notice.

Not that she was really alone. There were other doctors in the practice, she was hardly single-handed, but the senior partner Dr Williams was off sick with a bad back, Dr Patel didn’t seem inclined to be over-friendly towards her, and Dr Chandler was on holiday. Only Peter Sargent had been welcoming, and Abbie was fairly sure it was because all his ‘heartsink’ patients had transferred themselves to her within the first thirty seconds, or so it seemed.

And her heart was sinking, too, at the thought of the rest of the year yawning away ahead of her like something out of a horror movie. It wasn’t going to be improved by the fact that she was late, either.

Her inventive mind busily working on excuses, she swung into the car park and skidded to an undignified halt. There was a red sports car — well, it had been once, about thirty years ago, she thought disparagingly—abandoned across the entrance, the roof down and Tina Turner blaring forth from the open cockpit. She had nearly hit it — not that she would have done it a great deal of harm, when all was said and done, but her own could have sustained considerable damage ——

A car tooted furiously behind her, and she inched forwards until she was nearly touching the muddy bumper. What a heap!

And blocking her space. She climbed out and locked her car, checking to see how far out into the road it was hanging. Not very. She might just get away with it until whoever owned it moved the horrible relic.

She squeezed past the front of the car, smearing mud on her jacket as she went, and ran up the steps into the office at the back of the surgery where the practice meeting was drawing to a close.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she apologised, scattering her smile among the assembled company. ‘Some yob’s abandoned a heap of scrap in the car park and I couldn’t get in.’

‘Ah.’

Her eyes swivelled to the owner of the voice, and as their gazes locked a tiny quiver of something unfamiliar curled around her throat and tightened.

She watched, mesmerised, as the stranger unravelled his long legs and stood up, the soft battered leather of his jacket tugging over his broad shoulders as he pushed the chair in, sending her pulse rocketing; confused, she dropped her eyes and they lingered over lean hips and long, long legs in faded denim jeans that hugged his body intimately, finally crumpling to a halt at the ancient trainers on his feet.

She relaxed with a tiny sigh of relief. He looked for all the world like an overgrown college student — or one of her brothers, she thought absently, and then found herself trapped again by those extraordinary blue-gold eyes.

He was laughing at her, aware of her minute inspection of his person and supremely, masculinely confident that he would have passed muster. As he returned the compliment with a quick, appreciative once-over, all her muscles leapt to attention again, and she felt the heat rising from her toes upwards until she flushed almost guiltily.

‘I’ll move it.’

His voice was rich and deep and gravelly, and completed the process of cerebral disintegration that had started the second she clapped eyes on him. ‘What?’ she said absently.

‘The car.’

She gathered her scattered thought-processes rapidly. Oh. It’s yours, then,’ she managed inanely, and to her disgust and humiliation her voice sounded breathless and far-away.

His smile was brilliant, teasing, wicked. ‘ “Heap of scrap”,’ he said softly. ‘Is that any way to speak of my charger, when I’ve come dashing back from my holiday like a knight in shining armour to rescue you from the clutches of my colleagues? Not to mention calling me a yob!’

‘Oh, God,’ she mumbled under her breath, and felt the heat rising in her cheeks. Had she really said all that?

He shrugged away from the table and held out his hand. ‘You must be Abigail Pearce. Leo Chandler — yob, doctor, knight in shining armour — at your service, ma’am.’ His hand was warm and dry and firm, engulfing hers and making her feel unexpectedly feminine and fragile. She was stunned at the shock-wave that rippled up her arm from the brief contact, and as soon as she could she whipped her hand away and tucked it into her pocket.

He smiled knowingly. ‘I’ll move the “heap of scrap”.’

And with a grin he sauntered out through the door and left her standing rooted to the spot, her mouth hanging slightly open.

A slight noise behid her brought her back to reality with a bump, and, snapping her mouth shut, she turned back to the others.

‘Oh, God,’ she repeated, and slumped against the wall.

Peter Sargent chuckled. ‘That’ll get you off to a flying start — good job he doesn’t take offence easily.’

Abbie was still feeling thoroughly rattled by the encounter, and she was sure it showed. To escape from Ravi Patel’s knowing black eyes, she went back outside to move her car just as Leo Chandler loped up the steps.

‘There you are,’ he said with that spectacular grin. ‘Plenty of room now, even for you. Oh, by the way, Dr Pearce, we need to have a chat some time. Colin’s asked me to take over your training until he’s back, so we could do with sorting out a few things. Coffee suit you?’

‘That’ll be fine,’ she mumbled, stunned again by the amazing eyes. Or was it the man behind them?

She climbed into her car, over-conscious of his lazy scrutiny, and crashed the gears. What on earth had got into her? She was twenty-seven, for goodness’ sake — she’d survived all her brothers’ friends, and the endless stream of available men at medical school — why this particular man, and why now of all times? He was a shocking flirt, too, a superficial, womanising tease, not at all the sort of man she had in mind.

So why the damage to her pulse-rate?

Must be a virus, she thought with the last vestige of humour, and, crunching the gears again, she eased into the tiny space he had left her and struggled out.

‘Poor little car,’ he murmured as she reached the top of the steps.

‘You put me off,’ she said crossly, and then was angry with herself for giving it away.

His grin broadened. ‘Interesting.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ she replied as coolly as she could manage, and, sucking in her breath, she squeezed past him through the gap.

Or she would have done if he hadn’t moved his arm up to block her path.

She came to a dead halt, her breasts pressed against his well-muscled forearm, her heart doing a tango against her ribs.

‘Don’t forget our date.’

She stepped back and looked up into his eyes, bewildered by his words and by the flood of sensation that was swamping her. ‘Date?’ she said weakly.

‘Coffee — to talk about your training programme.’

‘Oh — yes, of course.’

‘You’re blushing,’ he said with evident amusement, and she felt the colour deepen.

‘Rubbish, it’s hot. Excuse me, I have a surgery …’

‘Ah, yes.’ He moved out of her way, almost reluctantly, and she felt his eyes on her until she reached the door at the far side of the office.

And not only his eyes. Ravi, too, was watching her, her sloe eyes intent, accusing.

So that’s the way of it, Abbie thought. Well, I’m no threat to you, Ravi, dear. Have him, and welcome.

She shut her surgery door behind her with relief.

It was short-lived. The second her last patient exited the surgery, Leo Chandler was in, two cups of coffee balanced in one hand, a file in the other.

‘What kept you?’ she asked drily.

He grinned his appreciation. ‘Me?’ he murmured innocently. ‘I’ve been dangling around for ages while you built relationships with your patients. “Good morning, that looks nasty, have a bottle of pills, goodbye.” ’

She sighed and leant back in the chair, lifting the heavy mass of red-gold hair that tumbled in cheerful profusion over her shoulders. Her neck was hot — really she should have worn it up, or at least tied back, but she had been on the drag ——

‘Why were you late, by the way?’ he asked as if he read her mind. ‘I mean, pulling up behind my “heap of scrap” must have taken you — oh, thirty seconds? At the outside.’

She sighed again. Clearly that remark was going to haunt her forever more. ‘Time isn’t my absolutely best thing,’ she confessed with a rueful grin.

‘You don’t say.’ He handed her the coffee and sprawled in the chair beside her desk, long legs stuck out in front, his cup balanced precariously on his belt-buckle. He had changed into a pair of cool cotton trousers and a soft, stone washed shirt, the cuffs turned back to reveal the scatter of fine golden hair that dusted his wrists and forearms. The trousers were much less conspicuously masculine than the jeans had been, and yet —— She looked away, her cheeks heating again.

Her embarrassment wasn’t eased by his evident enjoyment of it.

‘So,’ he said suddenly. ‘Your training. Done any role-play exercises before?’

She groaned and rolled her eyes. ‘Role play?’

‘Mmm. Doctor, doctor, I think I’m a pair of curtains. Pull yourself together, man. That sort of thing.’

She giggled despite herself. ‘Not for years. Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Because it can be very useful for exploring the unsolved mysteries of doctor-patient relationships.’

He shifted in his chair, and swung his eyes away from her, suddenly awkward.

‘Before we get on to that, there’s something I wanted to ask you about — something personal.’

Her heart tightened in anticipation. Not that date he had teased her with, surely? But what else …?

‘Ask away,’ she prompted.

He was silent for a second, then he spoke in a rush, his voice strained. ‘I’m having problems — personal problems. Well, sexual problems, I suppose. I’m — I think I’m impotent.’

She laughed. She didn’t mean to, but the idea of the man in front of her having any kind of sexual problem at all was just absurd in the extreme.

He met her eyes, his own reproving. ‘Tut-tut. You aren’t supposed to laugh, you’re supposed to ask me when it started, how many times it’s happened, if it’s always the same pattern, if it’s only when I’m with a partner or ——’

‘All right, all right!’ She threw her hands up in the air in an attitude of surrender, and tried to school her expression. ‘You just caught me unprepared.’

‘And would you be prepared if someone came up to you and said something like that in a supermarket, or in a restaurant?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! They wouldn’t ——’

‘Oh no?’ He leant back and shook his head. ‘Don’t be too sure. I was in the bar at the squash club last winter and someone came up to me — total stranger — and asked me what he should do about his genital warts. I told him to see his GP, and he said I was his GP, and what should he do?’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Come and see me at the surgery. What else? If you give advice when you can’t make an examination, then you could be in deep legal trouble. Once you’ve started to give any advice at all, you’ve assumed responsibility for the treatment and the repercussions could be phenomenal. Now, about my sexual problems ——’

She laughed again.

He gave her a reproachful look. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Dr Pearce. I thought you might have some new perspective on it that might help me.’

‘You’re ridiculous,’ she told him bluntly, trying hard not to blush. ‘The only sexual problem you’ve got is finding time for all those opportunities in your hectic schedule, I have no doubt.’

He grinned. ‘I’m flattered.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be a compliment,’ she said severely, squashing the urge to laugh.

The grin widened. ‘Listen, little lady, with my problem I’ll take what I can get.’

‘Yes, well, just make sure it isn’t something nasty.’

‘Like Ravinda Patel?’

Her head flew up and their eyes clashed in the sudden silence. ‘I thought …’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Ravi’s interested in me, but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve never given her the slightest encouragement.’

‘That’s not how it looks.’

He shrugged. ‘Ravi’s got expressive eyes. You’ll have to trust me.’

Abbie wasn’t sure she dared. Instead, she changed tack. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

‘Because the internal politics of any closely knit working community are very sensitive — I just wanted you to know the truth.’

‘How do I know it’s the truth? How do I know you aren’t the world’s most monumental flirt who’s seen a new toy to play with?’

‘Me?’ His expression of injured innocence had to be seen to be believed. Only the wicked twinkling of his extraordinary blue-gold eyes gave him away.

‘You, Leo Chandler,’ she said firmly, and quelled the urge to laugh. ‘Anyway, all that besides, what good is role play going to do? We just end up making fools of ourselves and learning nothing we couldn’t learn by any other more conventional means.’

‘Does that worry you? Making a fool of yourself?’

She shifted awkwardly. How did he know that? ‘I like to be in control of a situation,’ she compromised.

He laughed. ‘In general practice? No way. You want pathology if you want control. Dead people don’t do anything unexpected. Live people, now …’ He shot her a sideways look. ‘I have to go out on some calls — come with me. Part of your education.’

‘Only if we can go in my car,’ she said quickly.

He grinned. ‘Mine not good enough for you?’ he teased.

She felt herself flush, ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that, but it is a little — well — unconventional?’ she tried.

He grinned. ‘So she is. I’m only using her while my incredibly boring and middle-of-the-road Volvo is being serviced. Topsy usually only comes out on high days and holidays.’

‘Topsy?’ she said incredulously. Not since her brothers’ youth had she heard of a car with a name. ‘Why Topsy?’

He shrugged expressively. ‘Because of the servicing and repair bills, which, like Topsy, just grow’d and grow’d.’

She laughed softly. ‘I’ll bet. Look, I’m sorry if I was rude. It’s nothing personal, I’m just not into retro-motoring.’

He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Most women think she’s wonderful.’

‘Yes, well, I’m not most women,’ she told him repressively.

He shot her an odd look. ‘No, you’re not, are you?’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘Pity, it could have been fun. Ah, well …’ He uncoiled his legs and stood up, suddenly almost oppressively large in the small room, and ambled towards the door, whistling softly.

She glared at his departing back, and was treated to the disturbing sight of his neat little bottom and long, lean legs striding casually down the corridor, the soft cotton of his trousers tugging and easing, outlining his firm, muscular thighs with every stride.

He turned at the end and caught her watching him, smiling knowingly at her blush.

‘Coming?’

She went — against her better judgement — in Topsy. The car was in distinctly average condition, and she handled, as he put it, ‘like a bitch’, which did nothing for Abbie’s nerves. Nor, frankly, did his proximity in the little car. It was, quite simply, nothing like big enough to keep her as far away from his long, rangy body as she would have liked to be, and every time he changed gear her leg muscles contracted to pull herself further away from him.

Predictably, he noticed. ‘Why are you trying to climb out of the door?’ he asked casually.

She forced herself to appear relaxed. ‘I wasn’t — I was just trying to keep out of your way.’

He shot her an evil grin. ‘Don’t worry on my account,’ he told her, and she gave him a dirty look and turned away to stare fixedly out of the side-window, anchoring her hair firmly with one hand to stop it from flying in her eyes.

It was a mercifully short drive, thankfully, through the leafy little Suffolk town of Brocklingford to the house of his first patient.

She was a girl of twelve who suffered from autism, a disorder of behaviour affecting the ability to communicate, where everything said was taken literally — not only words, but tone and movements. Nothing emphatic, nor over-demonstrative, and certainly no physical contact that was a demonstration of affection, Leo told her, because the other and most noticeable feature of autism was an inability to form any relationship or interact normally with another person. It also involved repetitive behaviour patterns, and frustration of those patterns almost inevitably led to major tantrums.

Maxie, she was told, was not severely autistic but had ‘autistic features’ — meaning, in her case, the lack of social communication skills, and repetitive behaviour coupled with the classic shocking temper. However, she was very gifted musically and also highly intelligent, which was quite unusual.

Abbie was interested, never having had an autistic patient, but she was quite unprepared for the level of literal thinking she was to find.

Maxie’s mother greeted them at the door and told them that she had refused to stay in bed. Leo grinned, unsurprised, and followed the woman through to the back of the house.

The girl was pretty in a plain sort of way, but very distant. She was sitting in the dining-room, playing the pino with exquisite sensitivity.

‘Hello, Maxie,’ Leo said softly.

She stopped playing abruptly and looked at him with no interest at all. ‘Dr Chandler. Why are you here?’ she asked tonelessly.

‘Your mother said you hadn’t been feeling well.’

She turned away, avoiding eye contact. ‘Yes. I’ve got a headache now. Who’s that with you?’

‘Dr Pearce. She’s going to be with the practice for a year. May I have a look at you?’

She turned back again. ‘Can’t you see me?’

At first Abbie thought she was being cheeky, but then realised she had interpreted Leo’s remark quite literally.

‘Yes, but I need to look at your eyes and ears and throat with an instrument, and measure your blood-pressure with another, and then perhaps ask you some questions about your diet.’

‘I’m not on a diet.’

‘The food you eat every day is your diet. We talk about being on a diet when we really mean a reducing diet.’

‘Oh.’ She turned away again. ‘All right.’

‘Could you come over here?’

She stood, her movements wooden, and walked over to him. He looked into her eyes with the torch, then checked her ears and took her blood-presssure and temperature.

‘You’re a bit hot.’

‘It’s sunny.’

‘No, inside. You’ve got a raised temperature — I think you might have a mild virus that’s making you feel ill. May I feel your neck and under your arms?’

She nodded, and he kept his touch to the minimum. Even so, Abbie could see her shrinking.

‘Your glands are up — I think you might have glandular fever. Have you had a sore throat recently?’

‘You did have one last week,’ her mother put in, and Maxie nodded again.

‘It was very sore — it still hurts.’

‘May I see?’

He shone his torch down her throat and nodded.

‘Yes, it looks like a mild case of glandular fever, for which the treatment is rest, rest and more rest. Early nights, not too much activity, and take things easy for a while — maybe even a month. OK?’

Her mother nodded and smiled. ‘OK. I had it when I was sixteen, so I can remember what it’s like. We’ll have to have some early nights, I think.’

Leo smiled, but Maxie turned back to the piano. ‘I don’t want to rest. Goodbye, Dr Chandler.’

She began to play again, loudly, and her mother shook her head and led them out into the hall, closing the door.

‘She really ought to rest, you know,’ Leo said seriously.

‘I know. I’ll do what I can, but she’s better off playing the piano than working herself up into a steaming tantrum over it until she collapses with exhaustion.’

‘Does she do that?’ Abbie asked, amazed that the calm, almost monochromatic child they had just witnessed could throw a tantrum.

Mrs Clarke rolled her eyes. ‘Does she ever! You’ve seen her, haven’t you, Dr Chandler?’

‘Oh, yes — it’s spectacular. She’s only calm when she’s getting her own way, but she’s as stubborn as a mule. Any attempt to coerce her and she flips. Still, you manage her very well.’

The mother shrugged. ‘I don’t really. We achieve a sort of peace by letting her do things her way. Anything else is cataclysmic! It took some time to learn how to deal with her, and years after that before I could undo the harm I’d done with hugs and cuddles and abortive attempts at discipline.’

Leo nodded. ‘The school seems to have helped.’

‘Yes — me as much as her. It gives me a break from her but the holidays are just as difficult as ever.’

Leo laid a large, comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘You’re doing a grand job — don’t lose heart.’

The mother gave them a weary smile. ‘Thank you. It helps to hear it.’

As they drove away, Abbie turned to Leo and shook her head. ‘How does she cope?’

‘How does anyone cope? There but for fortune and all that.’

‘Why didn’t you take a blood sample to check for mononucleosis?’

He shot her a grin. ‘Because Maxie doesn’t like needles, and when Maxie doesn’t like something she says so — loudly! Anyway, there’s no point. Whatever she’s got, a few weeks of taking it easy will knock it on the head, and if it doesn’t we can deal with it then. Now, we’re going to see the rest of my patients, and on the way back to the surgery we’re going to pick up some lunch and eat it by the river.’

‘Um — do you need me with you?’

He glanced at her, his eyes twinkling wickedly. ‘Well, now — there’s need, and there’s need. What’s the problem?’