“We did make this decision together, Liv,” he reminded her.

“Uh-huh. I’m just not finding this platonic angle as easy to deal with as I thought it would be, that’s all.”

“And you think I am?” Grant pulled his chair closer and took her hands in his. “You think I’m enjoying not being able to make love to you? Do you know how many cold showers I’ve taken in the last week? How often I’ve been tempted to change the rules and just carry you off to some quiet inn for the weekend?”

“Would it be such a mistake to do that, Grant? The time for subterfuge ended the night we pledged to try to resurrect our relationship.”

“Not ‘relationship,’ Olivia,” he said. “What we’re trying to revive is the love. So, yes, it would be a mistake. On the other hand…” He grinned, that devilish, disarming grin she’d never been able to resist. “I’m not made of stone….”

CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin romances. Within two months she changed careers, and she sold her first book to Harlequin in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus a dog and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

The Marriage Experiment
Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

GRANT saw Olivia before she noticed him. Or, more precisely, he saw her legs, because her face was hidden under the brim of a cream straw hat extravagantly ribboned in gold.

He’d have recognized those legs anywhere. Long and lusciously smooth as silk, they’d wrapped themselves around his waist too often for him not to know their every curve as intimately as he knew the back of his own hand.

Still, he was unprepared for his reaction to them again, all these years later. Arrhythmia was something he diagnosed in other people, not himself, and for his heart to behave so erratically at the sight of his ex-wife—or her limbs—was absurd. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been expecting to see her, after all. He had come prepared.

She stood chatting with a guy who looked exactly like the kind of man her father would approve of. Nicely anemic and thoroughly tame. A ventriloquist’s dummy, with Sam Whitfield no doubt literally putting the words into the poor guy’s mouth.

Circling the tail-end of the receiving line, Grant waited until Olivia’s date went off to refill her glass, then came up behind her and, just loudly enough for her to hear him over the buzz of other voices, murmured, “Hello, sweet face.”

She reacted just as he’d hoped she would, spinning around so fast she almost fell out of her high-heeled pumps. “Grant?” she gasped, in a way that would have had him diagnosing respiratory distress if she’d been his patient.

“Olivia,” he replied, working overtime to keep his own breathing under control. From a distance, she’d looked the same as always, but, up close, he saw that she’d changed.

It wasn’t so much that she’d aged. She was still only twenty-eight—hardly in her dotage, after all. But her posture and the tilt of her head as she regarded him told him that not much remained of the eager, insecure girl he’d met and married eight years before. She would have looked at her feet and blushed. Fiddled with her hair or her pearls, and run her tongue nervously over her lower lip. But, recovering herself quickly, this latest model stared back at him as though daring him to blink in her direction.

Blink, hell! He stood there transfixed. She’d always had lovely eyes. Large and luminous, they were that particular shade of hazel able to switch from soulful brown to exotic green practically at will. But since he’d last seen her she’d learned to accentuate them with make-up. Not that she looked painted or anything, but someone had taught her to shape her brows into a more delicate arch, and to emphasize her long, fine lashes with mascara, so that the effect was not merely pretty but distractingly gorgeous. As for her mouth…

He tried to swallow inconspicuously, no easy feat given that his Adam’s apple seemed to have swelled to the size of a watermelon.

Her mouth, he decided, looked like a freshly picked strawberry. Ripe and sweet and delicious. And he found himself remembering the first time he’d kissed her and how she’d tasted of summer and innocence. He couldn’t have sworn to it, but he’d been pretty damned sure his was the first tongue to have slid past those lips and explored that naive mouth.

She obviously wasn’t indulging in similar nostalgia. “How are you, Grant?” she said, her manner, like her voice, as polite and chilled as the French Chablis her father favored.

“Great,” he croaked. “And you?”

“I’m…very well.” Briefly, she pressed her lips together, the way women do when they’ve just put on fresh lipstick. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Well, Justin and I go back a long way, further even than you and I. He wanted me here to help celebrate his wedding and I was happy to do whatever it took to make the day enjoyable.”

“The way you enjoyed our wedding day?”

The irony in her tone caught Grant off-guard, flinging memories at him with such faithful attention to detail that he was forced to question how successful he’d been at closing the door on the past.

A simple garden wedding hadn’t been good enough for Sam Whitfield’s daughter. Hell, no! Nothing but a grandiose church affair would suffice, with the scent of gardenias and lilies suffocatingly heavy in the air.

The pews had been packed, mostly with strangers who’d lifted their noses in the air like a pack of suspicious pedigree dogs investigating the mongrel in their midst. Parked at the altar, Grant had stared at his face, grotesquely reflected in the shine of his new shoes, and wondered what the devil he was doing in that place, with those people, when there were so many other things he’d rather have been doing and so many ambitions remaining unfulfilled.

For one insane moment, he’d debated escaping while there was still time to call his life his own, but no sooner had the thought entered his mind than the organist had paused dramatically, then rolled full bore into Wagner’s “Bridal March” when, in fact, “Send in the Clowns” might have been more appropriate.

Meeting Olivia’s skeptical gaze now, he chose the most neutral reply he could come up with on short notice. “Our wedding was more formal.”

“And you hated every minute of it.”

“Yes,” he said. “All those lilies reminded me of a funeral, but this…” He nodded at the scene around them: at the flower-decked arbor where the bride and groom had exchanged vows, at the swaying lilacs and the linen tablecloths lifting gently in the breeze, at the children racing up and down the lawns. Children had not been invited to the Whitfield-Madison nuptials for fear that they might disrupt things. “This I could have handled.”

“Rubbish! You didn’t want any kind of wedding, and especially not to me.”

“Not true, Olivia,” he said, picking his way through a minefield of truth to find an answer that would be acceptably cordial without compromising his integrity. “You were an unforgettably beautiful bride.”

“And a disastrous wife. Don’t bother denying it, Grant. We both know our marriage was a mistake. We didn’t agree on a single thing.”

“Your memory’s either very short or very convenient,” he said, surprised at how ticked off he was at the way she just shovelled their marriage aside as if it had been of no more consequence than a dust ball. “The sex was magnificent.”

She almost blushed then. Just a hint of peach suffused her pale and flawless skin. But her gaze, like her voice, remained annoyingly steady. “You didn’t need to marry me to have that, though, did you, Grant? You got that after just three dates.”

“You make it sound as though I had my wicked way with a reluctant virgin, when we both know that wasn’t the case. Virgin you undoubtedly were, honey, but the word ‘reluctant’ doesn’t exactly spring to mind when I remember how eagerly you—”

“I was nineteen,” she cut in, a tiny crack marring the surface of her polish at his crass reminder. “Young and innocent enough to believe that love and sex always went hand in hand and were strong enough to survive anything.”

“Anything but your father,” he said, snagging a couple of flutes of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and handing one to her.

The edge in her voice could have sawn through steel when she replied, “Leave my father out of this, Grant.”

“Pity you didn’t feel that way eight years ago, Olivia,” he said, tipping the rim of his glass against hers. “Perhaps if you had, instead of our standing here now exchanging trite unpleasantries, we’d be looking for a way to sneak off and enjoy a little afternoon delight.”

The ventriloquist’s dummy chose that moment to return, thus sparing Olivia having to weather more damage to her image as the perfectly-in-control divorcee facing off with her obnoxious ex. “Oh, I see someone already brought you another drink, Pussycat,” he warbled, his pale blue eyes swinging from her heightened color and fixing themselves suspiciously on Grant. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Henry Colton, a very good friend of Olivia’s.”

It was a combination of things—her snotty hauteur, the man’s proprietary attitude, the “pussycat” business—that stirred Grant to further mischief. “I’m Grant Madison, former lover and ex-husband of Olivia’s.”

“Grant!” Olivia sort of snuffled into her glass and aspirated on her champagne.

Relieving her of the drink, he thumped her gently between the shoulderblades and smiled affably at Henry Colton. “So tell me, Henry, exactly how do you define being a woman’s ‘very good friend’?”

“You don’t have to answer that question, Henry,” Olivia spluttered. “It happens to be none of Grant’s business.”

“It’s all right, Olivia, I’ve got nothing to hide.” Squaring his perfectly tailored shoulders, Henry stretched his neck as if he hoped that would bring his height up to six feet and put him more or less on a par with Grant’s six-two. “We met at the bank. I’m the manager of Springdale Savings and Loan, you know—”

“I didn’t know,” Grant said. “Should I have?”

Olivia shot him a glance, part-pleading, part-loathing. “Please don’t do this, Grant!”

“I’m merely being polite, sweet face,” he said, massaging her shoulder soothingly. Her cream dress was sleeveless and held up by wide straps which dipped to a fetchingly low neckline. Even if he’d wanted to, he could hardly have avoided contact with her warm, smooth skin. “Go on, Henry. I’m fascinated.”

Henry was fascinated, too—at the way Olivia’s ex was openly pawing her. Visibly trying not to stare at Grant’s trespassing hand, he cleared his throat. “She sought me out when she was looking for sponsors for one of her fundraising efforts.”

“Sought you out?” Grant tried to hide his snigger in a cough. Sam Whitfield deserved a medal for the job he’d done on this candidate!

Undaunted, Henry plowed on. “Neither of us was seeking a relationship at the time but…” He looked fixedly at the hand draped casually over Olivia’s shoulder and a spark of something approaching outrage colored his voice. “How shall I put it to give you a clearer picture? There was a meeting of minds, as it were. We connected—strongly—and the rest, as they say, is history. We are an item. It’s as simple as that.”

The only simple thing around here is you, pal! Grant thought, unable to take the man seriously. “Funny how things happen sometimes, isn’t it?” he said. “You think you’ve got life neatly figured out and, wham! In the blink of an eye, everything changes.”

“When the right woman comes along, it’s worth the upheaval,” Henry declared so smugly Grant almost upchucked.

“And Olivia certainly knows how to generate upheaval,” he said.

She didn’t drive her high heel into his foot as she stepped past him but it wasn’t for want of wishing she could. Talk about giving a guy the evil eye!

“Henry,” she purred, sidling up to him and laying a manicured hand on his arm, “would you be a dear and get me a glass of water? Something around here is giving me a headache.”

“Of course, Pussycat,” he meowed back.

She watched as he wove a path among the other wedding guests, a small, serene smile on her face. “What a perfect ass you still are, Grant Madison,” she cooed venomously.

“People don’t change, Olivia,” he said, wondering how long she could keep up with the china doll act, “no matter how hard others try to make them. I’d have thought it was a lesson too well learned for you to have forgotten it, considering how hard you tried—and failed—to shape me to fit your idea of what a husband should be.”

“This might come as a crushing blow to your ego, Grant, but very little of the ten months we spent together is engraved on my memory. The seven years since have been more than enough time to erase you completely. That being the case, your harking back to our marriage is about as futile as sifting through cold ashes in the hope of stirring up a fire. Furthermore,” she finished, giving her facial muscles a real work-out in order to preserve that phony smile, “you surely didn’t come all the way back here just to dig up a past we both know is better left buried.”

“You’re right, sweet face. Autopsies never did hold much fascination for me. I’m far more interested in the living than the dead. So tell me, what’s new with you since we parted company? Do you still live with Daddy? Does he monitor your every move? Is he grooming Henry to become the next Mrs. Olivia Whitfield? And is old Henry good in the sack?”

That wiped the smile off her face! “I have my own place, my own life and, as Henry already made perfectly clear, he and I are just friends,” she spat, splashes of angry color flaring across her cheeks.

“You mean to tell me,” he exclaimed, rearing back in feigned astonishment, “that he hasn’t—that the pair of you don’t—? Olivia, why the hell not? Can’t he manage it? Because if that’s a problem, there’s treatment available that’s rumored to be amazingly successful. Not that I’ve got personal knowledge, you understand, but I do keep up with the medical journals and—”

“Oh, shut up!” she practically wept, her composure collapsing like a house of cards. “Just shut up and go away!”

Since he’d been needling her precisely in the hope of stripping away all the lacquered perfection that made up this new Olivia Whitfield, success should have tasted sweet. Instead, it left a bitter taste on his tongue and filled him with a strange remorse. None of the things he’d thought he wanted—to have the last word, to be the one who walked away and left her standing—were nearly as tempting as the urge to wrap his arms around her and hold her close the way he had in the early days, when love was new and a kiss could work miracles.

Fortunately, a less welcome ghost from the past barreled onto the scene and put paid to any such nonsense. “So it is you,” Sam Whitfield huffed, panting to a standstill in front of him and glaring at him from eyes embedded in too much florid flesh. “I was hoping I’d been mistaken. What persuaded you to slither back into town?”

“Same thing that brought you out from under your personal rock, Sam. Attending a wedding.”

“Is that a fact? And how soon will you be leaving again?”

“Not for quite some time.”

Sam assumed his familiar bulldog stance, legs planted a yard apart, jaw thrust forward pugnaciously. “I wouldn’t have thought even you had the brass nerve to stay where you’re so clearly not wanted. We’ve got a fine, well-staffed hospital here, and we don’t need the likes of you hanging around, so take my advice, Dr. Madison, and go back to wherever it is you came from.”

The chance to inflict a little torture on the man Grant despised above all others was too delicious to squander. Savoring every moment, he said, “But you do need me, at least for a while.”

“What in the name of Hades are you talking about?”

“I’m standing in as Justin Greer’s locum while he and Valerie are away on their honeymoon. I’m going to be in your face every day for the next two months, Sam, running his practice. Naturally, I assumed you already knew that, seeing you’re chairman of the hospital board and a take-charge kind of guy.”

Sam turned faintly purple. “You’re delusional, Madison. I would never sanction any move that allowed you to cross the town limits, let alone set foot inside Springdale General again.”

“Well, gee, Sam, then someone else must have okayed it when you weren’t looking. Maybe you were on the ninth hole with your good buddy John Polsen at the time?”

It was a bone of contention that had lain buried for over eight summers, but it still raised Sam’s hackles. Grant’s internship hadn’t been more than a month old when a freeway accident had swamped the emergency unit with casualties. One of them had happened to be John Polsen and, although his injuries hadn’t been serious, Sam had pulled rank and had him bumped to the head of the line for treatment.

Brash, and as politically naive as they came, Grant had done what no one else had dared do: told the chairman of the board to stick to what he knew best—managing the hospital budget—and to leave the medical decisions to those who could recognize one end of a stethoscope from the other.

The fact that Sam had been indisputably in the wrong hadn’t altered the fact that he’d been publicly humiliated by a lowly intern. The new Dr. Madison had needed to be taken down a peg or two, and Grant had known from then on that he didn’t have a hope of serving his residency at Springdale. From that day forward, Sam had seen to it that Grant always wound up at the end of whatever line he chose to stand in.

Rubbing the man’s nose in the fact that he’d been out-maneuvered yet again by his old upstart of an enemy gave Grant a special kind of satisfaction now. In his view, no amount of punishment he could dole out would ever even the score between him and Olivia’s father. The bitterness ran too deep. On both sides.

“Even with the ink on your diploma barely dry you were an arrogant bastard, and nothing’s changed, obviously,” Sam growled. “It’s no thanks to you that John Polsen didn’t die, the day they brought him into Emergency.”

“Bull, Sam!” Grant said cheerfully. “John Polsen’s like you—too mean to die.”

“Stop it, both of you!” Olivia begged, observing the old warhorse fearfully. “For heaven’s sake, Grant, can’t you see my father isn’t a well man? This kind of strain is bad for his heart.”

Too many sixteen-ounce steaks, after-dinner ports and foot-long cigars are the real culprit in that department, Grant could have told her. But there was a limit to everyone’s tolerance for stress and Olivia had clearly reached hers. Her eyes were dark with worry and she slipped her arm part-way around the old man’s girth as tenderly as a mother. “Don’t upset yourself,” she told him soothingly. “It isn’t worth it. He isn’t worth it.”

“Maybe you should find him a seat in the shade,” Grant offered, a little alarmed himself at Sam’s stertorous breathing and the sweat suddenly popping out on his brow.

The glare she flung at him would have stopped traffic. “I hardly need you to tell me how to take care of my father. In fact, given the circumstances, you’re the last person I’d turn to for advice.”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged and inclined his head at the crowd lined up at a buffet groaning under the weight of lobster mayonnaise, cracked Dungeness crab, prawns in aspic, smoked turkey and roast beef. “But you’d be doing him a favor if you steered him away from all that rich food.”

Not deigning to acknowledge what she surely knew was a sound recommendation, she carted Sam off to a table set in the shade of a grand old oak, and plunked him down in a chair. Shortly after, Henry Colton joined them. What a sight they made, with him fawning all over the old man and practically drooling on her, Sam sitting there like a king holding court, and Olivia, the ever-dutiful daughter, anticipating her father’s every need and waiting on him hand and foot.

Collaring Justin, who happened to stroll past at that moment, Grant nodded at the trio. “Do you see anything wrong with that picture?”

Justin didn’t miss a beat. “Apart from the fact that you’re no longer in it, you mean?”

Grant snorted and muttered a satisfyingly obscene expletive. “I hardly think I’ve been missed! But there’s something sadly lacking in a twenty-eight-year-old woman whose idea of high living is to act as handmaiden to her tyrant of a father.”

“Yeah.” Justin nodded. “So what do you propose to do about it, pal?”

“Me?” Grant grimaced. “Not a blasted thing!”

“Why not? Isn’t that why you really came back to Springdale?”

Incensed, he snapped, “You know very well it’s not!”

But Justin was no more the type to back away from a scrap than Grant himself was. “Come off it, Grant! I agree you’re doing me a favor by covering my practice while I’m away, but would you have been so eager to stand in if it were anyone else—or, more to the point, anywhere else? Admit it, you’ve got another, less altruistic reason for being here. So what’s on that private agenda of yours? Going another ten rounds with Sam Whitfield for the sheer hell of it—or trying once more to wean Olivia away from him?”

An hour ago, Grant could truthfully have declared Sam the hands-down winner. That the situation had changed, however, wasn’t something he was prepared to admit to anyone. Deeming ambiguity the better part of discretion, he merely grinned at Justin and raised his glass in a mocking toast. “Let’s just drink to marriage, pal,” he said. “May the honeymoon never end.”

Up to her neck in bubbles, Olivia lay back in the soaker tub, rested her head against the inflatable pillow, and wallowed in the scented warmth of the water. Gradually, the tension seeped out of her limbs, eased away by a languor that crept along her shoulders and up the back of her neck. Only when a slight ache swept the length of her jaw did she realize she’d been clenching her teeth for longer than was good for her, or them.

Of course, she knew why she’d been coiled tight as a spring. She’d behaved like a complete idiot at the wedding. By now, everyone else in town probably knew it, as well. And the reason could be succinctly summed up in two words: Grant Madison.

To say that she’d gone into shock at first sight of him scarcely began to describe the jolt to her system. Her father wasn’t the only one who’d run the risk of cardiac arrest. She’d felt pretty close to it herself, the way her heart had literally thundered to a stop before resuming an erratic rhythm and banging wildly against her ribs. But that was nothing compared to what had happened later, after the sun had gone down behind the hills and left the garden dappled in purple shadows.

By then, she’d begun to recover from the trauma of coming face to face with her ex-husband, even to relax a little, which was never a good idea around Grant. But he’d seemed more than happy to keep his distance, and when Henry had asked her to dance, she’d accepted. There’d been no reason not to. He was a good, if conservative, dancer, just about all the other guests had been up on their feet, and what better way to celebrate the wedding of two well-known, well-respected Springdale residents than in a turn around the dance floor imported for the occasion?

People had already been talking, of course, even then. Those who’d known Grant in the past hadn’t forgotten him, or his stormy marriage to the chairman of the hospital board’s daughter, and they’d been more than willing to supply the details to those meeting him for the first time. She’d have had to be both blind and stupid not to have noticed the sly glances directed at her, or the way conversation had suddenly stopped whenever she’d come within earshot. If up-staging the bride and groom had been his intent, Grant had succeeded in spectacular fashion.

But Olivia had come a long way since she’d watched him walk out on their marriage. In the seven years since, she’d grown up, and no longer hid behind the high stone walls of her father’s house. So she’d held her head high and smiled determinedly as Henry had swept her around the floor in a precisely correct fox-trot.

If only the music hadn’t changed…if only Henry didn’t feel that jive was something best reserved for leather-clad delinquents….

Sighing, she reached for the loofah and scrubbed languidly at her right leg. If only she’d had the good sense to say no! But Grant had caught her off-guard, stepping in the moment Henry had released her and grasping her by both hands. “Care to show ’em how it’s done, sweet face?” he murmured.

“I really must protest,” Henry began.

“Must you really?” Grant replied with a grin. “And how do you propose to do that, Henry, old sport? Knock my block off?”

Even if he’d been so inclined, at five-ten and only a hundred and seventy pounds or so, Henry was no match for a man of Grant’s build. Comparing the two, Olivia experienced a shocking sense of déjà vu as she recalled the first time she’d seen Grant without any clothes.

Doctors weren’t supposed to be so broad-shouldered or narrow-waisted. They usually weren’t blessed with muscular arms, long, athletic legs, and a chest tailor-made to take a woman’s breath away. They were supposed to be studious and serious and kind and safe and, like Henry, a little bit stooped around the shoulders. And what an M.D. looked like stark naked wasn’t supposed to be the first thing a woman thought about when confronted by him.

Henry, bless his soul, didn’t have a clue about what she was thinking. “Olivia? Do you want me to get rid of this fellow?”

“It’s all right, Henry,” she said, aware that she was mesmerized by Grant’s laughing blue eyes and even more shamefully aware of the sudden rush of moist electric heat dampening her underwear. “I can handle this myself. If Dr. Madison would like to dance, I’m willing to accommodate him.”

Accommodate him, indeed! And far more intimately than Henry could begin to guess! Consigning self-preservation to another time, she let Grant draw her into the seething, insistent tempo of “Proud Mary”, and as if it had been only yesterday, they rediscovered the wordless affinity of two people who knew one another so well that their bodies instinctively interacted as one.

How was it possible for a dance to be so charged with vibrant energy and yet to smolder with such sultry tension? Half the time he sent her spinning away from him, with nothing but the sure grip of his fingers to anchor her. And she let herself go, confident that he wouldn’t lose her, that she wouldn’t stumble, that, eventually, he’d bring her back to him. As he did, drawing her hard and close to him so that their thighs locked and their hips rocked in grinding, hypnotic motion.

Then, when she thought she could bear it no longer and was sure everyone around them knew she was melting for him, he’d fling her away again, turn her so that her spine rubbed against his chest, pass his hand around his waist and offer it behind his back so that, as she swung by him, her arm brushed against him and her fingers wanted dreadfully to drift down and linger on the taut curve of his buttocks.

Oh, he was a devil in disguise, no doubt about it, and she a mindless fool for not putting an end to matters when she had the chance! But, too dazzled to sense the danger, she remained with him and let him draw her into the next dance, a slow, slow number which invited—no, which guaranteed intimacy and full body contact—and he crooned softly in her ear This Guy’s In Love. Words to break her heart, because he’d never really been in love with her.

To hide the sudden pang of regret which blurred her vision, she closed her eyes and dropped her head to his shoulder. He gave a little growl of satisfaction and, folding her hand against his heart, tilted his hips so that she couldn’t possibly miss noticing how thoroughly aroused he was. Which was what it always came back to, with Grant. Sex, sex, and sex. As if that was enough to make her forget the hurt and betrayal he’d dealt out to her.

So, to let him know that she wasn’t about to be seduced again, she reared back and practically shrieked, “How dare you, Grant Madison?”

“Well,” he muttered, obviously chagrined, “it’s not as if I took the damned thing to obedience school and had it trained to perform on command! When a woman presses her nice soft body up against a man, he’s likely to react.”

Too late, she realized that the music had stopped. Had the people closest overheard the exchange? she wondered, appalled. Were the titters and giggles and one or two outright guffaws directed at her, or were they just the normal reactions of people enjoying a wedding party?

Surely they were. But did she comport herself with dignity, as befitting a woman of her position in the community, and simply walk away from Grant Madison and his deplorable behavior? Oh, no, not Olivia Margaret Whitfield! As if they hadn’t already put on enough of a floor show, she hauled off and slapped him across the cheek as a grand finale.

Groaning at the recollection, she drew in a long breath and submerged her head beneath the water, wishing she could drown herself. How would she ever face people again, after such a performance? Worse still, how would she face him, as she’d undoubtedly have to do if, as he’d claimed, he’d be acting as Justin Greer’s locum for the next two months?

CHAPTER TWO

FOR the next two days, Olivia literally hid from the world. Turning off her phone, she buried herself in tasks about the gatehouse, spending Sunday morning painting the powder room at the back of the hall, and the afternoon weeding the flower garden bordering the patio.

On Monday, thanks to the miracle of modern computers, she was able to put in a full day’s work without once stepping outside her front door. But when she found herself actually planning to lie about not feeling well rather than attend a scheduled meeting at Springdale General on the Tuesday, she knew the self-indulgence had gone on long enough.

“Grow up, Olivia!” she muttered. “After Saturday’s wedding debacle, showing your face in public again won’t be easy, but you’ve survived worse.”

An hour later, she wasn’t sure that was true.

“Hear your husband’s back in town,” Ingrid from the deli greeted her, when she stopped by on her way to the hospital. “Hear your father’s fit to be tied about it, too.”

There wasn’t much Ingrid didn’t hear in the course of a week. The little tea shop at the back of her premises was well patronized by local matrons and a hive of gossip, even when there was nothing much to talk about. The return of the renegade Dr. Madison would have made front page news even if he’d come sneaking into town under a cover of darkness. Olivia wasn’t the only one who’d found his slow, sexy smile and hypnotically persuasive voice irresistible.

“I’ll take a jar of black olives, please, and a small carton of the bean salad,” she said stiffly, hoping to nip the conversation in the bud. “And, just for the record, he’s my ex-husband.”

But picking up subtle hints never had been one of Ingrid’s strong points. “Don’t think folks haven’t noticed, hon! There’s a whole flurry of social events suddenly being planned and, as usual, the first one out of the gate is Mrs. Bowles. Just yesterday, she booked me to cater a garden party and let slip that Dr. Madison’s name’s at the top of her list of invitees. And I guess we all know why.” She weighed the salad, slapped a lid on it, and hitched her bosom on the edge of the glass-fronted display case of imported cheeses, a sure sign she was settling in for the duration. “She didn’t shell out the better part of eight thousand dollars to make her daughter presentable just to have her sitting home and withering on the vine, as it were. Now that Joanne’s got the braces off her teeth and shed all that extra weight, Mrs. Bowles is looking to fix her up with a rich husband. And if the car your ex is driving is anything to go by, he’s not exactly on the bread line.”

“I’m afraid I can’t comment on that, since I have absolutely no idea what sort of car he’s driving, nor any interest in finding out.”

“No,” Ingrid said slyly. “I guess you’ve been too busy checking out his other assets. Having second thoughts about the divorce, are you?”

“Certainly not!”

“Probably just as well. From all I’ve heard, he’s a bit more than a woman like you can handle.”

The way Ingrid looked at her, she might have been the offspring of a troll trying to pass for human.

“Thank you very much!” Olivia said, and made her escape. But, instead of heading directly to the hospital, she detoured by way of the park and found a bench in a quiet corner overlooking the river. She needed a few moments to collect herself before running the risk of facing anyone else because, in her present state, she could only be described as a mess.

Why had Ingrid’s last comment hurt so much when it coincided exactly with the conclusion she herself had arrived at years ago? Why did it matter that every eligible woman within hailing distance was setting her sights on Grant Madison, or that invitations were being issued and she probably wouldn’t be receiving any? And why couldn’t she forget how it had felt to be in his arms again, to feel his heart beating beneath her hand?

She knew the answer and it had nothing to do with falling in love again—at least, not with him. It had to do with his all-too-accurate assessment of her relationship with Henry.

She was a woman in her prime. She should be married and pregnant, with one or two children already hanging onto her skirts. She should have a warm, exciting body sleeping next to her in bed each night.

Instead, she had Henry, who’d implied more than once that he was in love with her. But the thought of actually making love with him left her cold, and he fortunately was too much the gentleman to press the point. Unlike Grant….

Unbidden, the memories of that long-ago summer came sweeping back. She’d been just two months shy of her twentieth birthday when they’d met, and to say that she’d fallen in love with the handsome new intern was an absurd understatement. She’d literally tumbled headlong into a passion so hot and intense it had nearly killed her.

On their third date, Grant had rented a boat and they’d spent the afternoon drifting down the river. Because of the heat, she’d worn a white sun dress with nothing underneath but a pair of cotton panties, and he’d worn denim cut-offs and a blue golf shirt. Spreading out her skirt, she’d reclined against the boat cushions, rested her head against one raised arm, and let the fingers of her other hand trail through the water, all the time watching him through half-closed eyes, admiring the play of muscles beneath the smooth tanned skin of his arms and legs, and very much aware that he was watching her.

A few miles past the town limits, he’d steered into a quiet backwater, tethered the boat, and led her up the bank toward a huge old weeping willow. She’d sensed the urgency in him, had seen the smoldering passion in his eyes. When he’d drawn her down beside him in the long, sweet grass, she’d known he wasn’t going to stop at a kiss or two, just as she’d known she wasn’t going to object at his wanting more from her.

Even all these years later, remembering made her blush. How willingly she’d sprawled beside him, with her skirt up around her waist and the straps of her dress pulled down to reveal her breasts, and her underwear hanging off one ankle! How brazenly she’d let him pleasure her, moaning low in her throat as he’d skimmed his lips over the slope of her shoulder and at excruciating leisure taken each pebbled nipple in his mouth! And how trustingly she’d opened to him, her flesh so slick and eager and his so hard and hot and big that the pain as he’d entered her had barely had time to register before it had been thrust aside by raging passion.

Today, the sun shot brilliant silver arrows through her closed eyelids, but that day the light had been the softly diffused green of a tranquil, underwater sort of world. After the loving, she’d lain there for the longest time, waiting for him to say the right words, the only words a woman wants to hear when she’s given herself unconditionally to a man.

Instead, the silence had lengthened and left her wondering if he’d found her a terrible disappointment. When she’d finally found the courage to look at him, he’d been stretched beside her with his head propped up on his hand and a lazy smile on his face. “Hey,” he’d murmured.

Hey, what? she’d almost cried. What does that mean? And what happens next?

What had happened next was that he’d climbed back into his cut-offs as casually as though he was quite used to baring his all in the great outdoors and, glancing at his watch, reached down and hauled her to her feet. “We’d better head back,” he’d said, planting a swift kiss on her mouth. “I’m due at the hospital in another hour.”

There’d been grass stains on her dress, and she’d cried all the way home as aftermath had set in. “Everyone will know what we’ve done,” she’d wailed.

“How?” he’d said. “I’m not planning on spreading the news.”

“They’ll be able to tell, just by looking at me!”

He’d bent over the oars and grinned in that carefree way of his. “You don’t look any different to me, sweet face,” he’d said.

She’d been devastated. How could he appear so untouched by what they’d shared, when she would never again be the same?

Her father had sensed the change in her immediately, and when Grant hadn’t phoned the next day, as promised, had said cryptically, “That’s what you get for giving in to a man like Madison. He’s using you, Olivia, and you’ll live to regret the day you met him.”

True enough, she thought now, dashing impatiently at the tears suddenly stabbing at her eyes. And if she was so determined to revive the past, she’d do well to dig up some less romantic memories, such as the day she’d told him she was pregnant, in the February following their September wedding.

“Oh, damn!” he’d sighed, sinking to the edge of their bed and lowering his head into his hands. “How the hell did that happen?”

As if he hadn’t known!

Better yet, what about the day he learned she’d miscarried? “A blessing in disguise,” he’d said, using his most professional bedside manner. “I know you’re hurting now, but you’re young and healthy and there’s no reason you can’t carry a baby to term when the time’s right. But that time, Olivia, is not now.”

Of course it hadn’t been—at least, not for someone who’d secretly applied to work on a medevac team in the Northwest Territories once his year of internship was up, and who, if he was accepted, would spend at least half his time away from home. But that was the kind of man she’d married—too focused on his own wants and needs to give a hoot about anyone else’s, least of all a wife who’d become a millstone around his neck.

The bitter after-taste of that long-ago time acted like a tonic on her wilting spirits. No longer just Sam Whitfield’s daughter or Dr. Grant Madison’s wife, she was a woman of consequence in her own right and deserving of the respect she’d earned. No one had the power to reduce her life to a shambles, and she would not give credence to the gossip currently circulating by hiding herself away.

Brushing a speck of dirt from the sleeve of her jacket, she rose from the bench and walked purposefully through the park gates and across the road to the main entrance of the hospital.

At that hour of the morning, the main lobby was crowded with visitors, clerks, technicians and other medical personnel, all busily going about their business. Yet more than a few curious gazes followed her as she made her way to the bank of elevators, and Olivia knew that the gossip hadn’t stopped at Ingrid’s Deli. The hospital was buzzing, too, and if she’d had the slightest doubt of that, it was laid to rest the minute she stepped into the boardroom where her meeting was to take place.

“So you haven’t holed up in your little house for the duration,” Daphne Jerome, head of the social committee, greeted her. “My dear, how I do admire your fortitude!”

Since Daphne didn’t admire anyone but herself, her remark could be construed as nothing more than a blatant attempt to get an account, from the source, of what had actually happened on the Saturday. Feigning surprise, Olivia said blandly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Daphne.”

“Why, the reappearance of your unlamented ex-husband, of course! From all accounts, he quite stole the limelight at Justin Greer’s wedding—and you didn’t do so badly, yourself. How did it feel to come face to face with him after all this time?”

“Not particularly exciting. We’ve been divorced for so long, it was almost like meeting a stranger.”

“Really? In that case, I shudder to think how you’d greet a friend.”

Realizing too late the mistake of trying to play Daphne at her own game, Olivia said shortly, “A woman your age ought to know better than to set much store by hearsay, and I frankly don’t have the time to waste setting you straight. Where’s Dr. Harte? I thought that, as head of Cardiology, he wanted to sit in on today’s meeting.”

“Haven’t you heard? He’s been called out of town. And since his next-in-command is Dr. Greer, who happens to be off on his honeymoon, that leaves only his stand-in, and…” Daphne smiled archly. “Well, dear, I see from the look on your face that you’re beginning to get the picture—and just in time, because here he is, in the flesh.”

The small silence which punctuated her announcement probably lasted no longer than a heartbeat, yet it seemed to Olivia that it stretched interminably, during which time everything happened in slow motion.

Grant closed the door and confronted the faces turned expectantly to his. Sparing the room at large a brief, professional smile, he nodded a reply to the murmured greetings and favored her with a pleasant, “Morning, Olivia,” as he took the chair Daphne indicated was his.

Olivia wasn’t quite sure how she found her place, but the relief at being able to sit down before her knees gave way was overwhelming. How had Saturday’s outrageous and irreverent dancing partner metamorphosed into this white-coated stranger with the cool blue eyes and air of distinguished respectability? What had happened to the rebel in blue jeans who’d once stalked the halls of Springdale General and thumbed his nose at those in authority whom he perceived to be fools—most notably her father?

Blindly, she reached into her briefcase for her folder of notes, and wondered what other surprises Grant had hidden up his immaculately starched sleeve. Under cover of uncapping her pen, she sneaked another look at him, half expecting to find him laughing at her for being taken in by so ludicrous a performance. Because surely that was all it was?

But, if so, he wasn’t ready to put an end to it. Instead, he sat listening attentively to the man on his right, nodding occasionally in a serious sort of way and absently polishing a pair of rimless glasses. Add a false beard, Olivia thought, more confounded by the minute, and he’d pass for a college professor!

Someone called the meeting to order and droned on about various administrative concerns. The minutes from the last meeting were read, during which Grant seemed to find staring out of the window vastly more interesting than paying attention to the proceedings.

The social committee’s fundraising efforts came fifth on the agenda, and when, finally, they were opened for discussion, Daphne took the floor. “I’d like to begin by introducing Dr. Grant Madison, who’s here specifically to enlist our support for the Cardiac Unit. Before we get down to specifics, I’ll ask those of you involved in this particular undertaking to identify yourselves, just so that he knows who you are. We’ll start with you, Ms. Whitfield.”

And say what? Hello, I’m your ex-wife, who hasn’t been able to get you off her mind since you marched back into her life three days ago and practically seduced her in front of half the town? Though truthful, such an admission was hardly appropriate.

Olivia’s dismay must have been painted on her face, because Grant cut in before she could open her mouth. “No introduction’s needed. Olivia and I are already well acquainted.”

A titter rippled around the table at that, but soon died when he continued sharply, “And, since I’m sure your time is as valuable as mine, I suggest we forego the social niceties and cut to the chase.”

He scanned the table at large, and although his gaze this time settled on her only briefly, Olivia thought she detected a sympathetic gleam in his eyes. “At your last meeting, Dr. Harte made clear the dire need for new equipment in CCU. You waived making a decision on whether or not to support his request for help in raising the funds required until you’d had time to study the feasibility of such an undertaking. I’m here now as his representative to find out your answer.”

Such a direct approach allowed for little equivocation on the part of the committee, particularly not with his unblinking stare dissecting every face as decisively as a laser beam. Even Daphne squirmed a little, and couldn’t wait to pass the buck elsewhere.

“You’re the one who’s done the research on this, Olivia,” she said. “Are we going to be able to assist, and if so, how?”

“We’ve already pledged support to other departments,” she began, wondering how she’d managed to make her voice sound so calmly confident when her insides were in a total uproar. “And I recommend that we honor those first, but—”

“Which departments, Olivia?” Grant inquired.

“Maternity and the Outpatient Clinic, for a start, but—”

“Their situations aren’t as critical.”

“No, they aren’t. But under the circumstances, I feel that—”

“How you feel isn’t the issue,” he said tersely. “We’re talking about saving lives here. With all due respect, childbirth is a normal function which the female body is superbly designed to deal with, and most deliveries are free of complications—”

“But not all of them, Dr. Madison,” she cut in, any inclination she might have harbored to view him in a more kindly light fast disappearing. “Although you can be forgiven for having forgotten that, since it’s never been an area of particular interest to you.”

For a second or two they locked gazes, and she knew from the faint flush that ran under his skin that he recognized the private condemnation behind her remark. But he recovered quickly and overrode it so thoroughly she might as well have saved herself the bother of airing it. “I don’t wish to be offensive, but you’re scarcely qualified to determine priorities here. The Outpatient Clinic, by definition, is not an acute care facility. Anyone requiring round-the-clock supervision would be admitted to one of the wards.”

She laid down her pen and said very distinctly, “I know.”

“I don’t think you do, since you’re clearly unable to view the matter with any kind of objectivity. You need to consult an expert before you—”

“Dr. Madison,” she interrupted, taking great pleasure in cutting him off for a change, “I don’t presume to tell you how to do your job. I’d appreciate it if you’d afford me the same professional courtesy and not try telling me how to do mine. Now, if I may continue?”

He gave a condescending little smile, as though she were a child he had to humor. “Please do.”

She could have choked him! “Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome.”

Aaagh! Fairly spitting out the words, she went on, “I have completed an exhaustive study of the various proposals put forward by the members of this committee, and it is my recommendation that we divert existing funds to those departments who’ve already appealed to us for help. That would leave us free to direct the proceeds of our next major fundraiser to the Cardiac Unit.”

“Would it, indeed?” he said, in a somewhat more deferential tone. “I see.”

But she was in no mood to be conciliatory when he’d done his best to belittle her in front of her colleagues. “You’d have seen a lot sooner if you’d had the good manners to let me finish a sentence without interruption.”

“I stand corrected,” he said, bathing her in his most charming smile. “Would it be out of line for me to ask how soon this major fundraising event will take place?”

“In August,” she snapped, aware that no one was missing a syllable of their exchange and that to continue the battle of one-upmanship was not only likely to end in defeat for her, but would also add to the gossip already circulating. “At the hospital’s annual carnival.”

“Carnival…? Oh, of course, that day-long shindig culminating in the Sunflower Ball! How could I have forgotten?”

How indeed, since the only one he’d attended had been during those hungry pre-wedding days when they hadn’t been able to get enough of each other, and, while everyone else had been sipping wine between waltzes, he’d whisked her out from under her father’s nose and spent most of the evening making love to her in the rose arbor at the Country Club!

“Very easily, I’m sure,” she said, stuffing her papers into her briefcase as everyone else began drifting toward the coffee urn set up on a trolley at the far end of the room. “But if you care to have your memory refreshed…” she indicated Daphne, hovering expectantly well within earshot “…speak to Mrs. Jerome, here. She chairs the social end of things and I don’t doubt she’d be delighted to fill you in on the details. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Dismissing him with a nod, she slid a sheet of paper across the table to Daphne. “Here’s a list of our latest sponsors, which I’ll leave for you to present to the others when the meeting reconvenes. If any other names come up, you can let me know later.”

“Aren’t you staying for coffee, dear?”

“Not today. I have another meeting to attend.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Grant said.

Plainly disappointed that the circus was over for the day, Daphne said, “What a pity you both have to leave, just when we’re about to take a social break. But I suppose you’d prefer to be alone to catch up on each other’s doings?”

“Not at all,” Olivia said stonily. “Dr. Madison and I no longer share anything in common, at least not on a personal level, so by all means feel free to enjoy his company.”

Deciding that was about as good an exit line as she could come up with, she made a beeline for the door.

He wasn’t about to be shaken off so easily, however. She’d barely left the room before he came striding out after her. “Just a minute, Olivia. You and I need to get a few things straight.”

But she’d had enough for one day, and when she saw the green arrow light up above the polished brass doors of the elevator at the end of the hall, she seized her chance to escape another lecture.

“Some other time, Doctor,” she said breezily, and, sprinting forward, managed to squeeze into the crowded car just before the doors slid shut in his face.

That afternoon, the temperature shot up into the low nineties. Not even the breeze off the river was enough to stir the air, and by the time Olivia got home, shortly after five, her smart linen suit was clinging to her like warm, limp lettuce.

Dropping her briefcase on the hall table, she propped open both front and back doors, flung wide all the windows, and hauled herself upstairs, intent on stripping down to the barest essentials and submersing herself in her swimming pool with all due speed. Add a little background music, a glass of cold white wine, and nothing but the fragrance of the heliotrope growing in pots around her patio to disturb the peace, and perhaps she’d begin to unwind from a day which had never quite recovered from the encounter with Grant.

Stupid, she knew, to let him get under her skin like that, but the way he’d behaved at the meeting had floored her. Though always something of a maverick, the young intern she’d once known and fallen in love with had been the least pretentious man she’d ever met, and had borne no resemblance at all to this morning’s arrogant nitpicker.

But the memory of his remarks, the scornful tone of his voice, his patronizing smile and confident assumption that she’d jump on command if he ordered her to, continued to mock her, even after she’d swum several lengths of the pool and collapsed on a chaise in the shade of a large sun umbrella.

You’re scarcely qualified to determine priorities…you’re clearly unable to view the matter with any kind of objectivity…you need to consult an expert….

“The nerve of him, condescending to me like that, as if I were still the wet-behind-the-ears girl he married!” she muttered indignantly, taking a swig of her wine.

A second later, the glass all but slipped from her fingers as a familiar voice inquired, “Do you often get plastered and start talking to yourself, sweet face? Because if you do, you should be aware that it’s a very dangerous habit to adopt which can and usually does lead to serious and long-lasting consequences.”

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