Uh-oh. She had a nasty feeling she knew what was coming. ‘I’m staying at The Limes.’
‘I’ve got a better solution,’ Will said. ‘My spare room. If you stay at the cottage, there’ll be a doctor on the premises if I get into trouble, so they’ll let me out.’
Yeah, right.
He grimaced. ‘Mallory, this wasn’t—isn’t—an attempt to seduce you. Sharing my cottage until I’m fit again doesn’t mean I’m expecting you to share my bed or anything like that.’
Her skin heated again. She hadn’t been thinking along those lines at all. Although now he’d mentioned it…No. He might be drop-dead gorgeous beneath the bruising and the plaster, but she wasn’t going to have an affair with Will Cooper. She was going to be sensible this time round, and make sure her working partnerships stayed that way. Work only. ‘I didn’t think you were.’
‘What, then?’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You looked incredibly disapproving,’ he said.
‘Not disapproving…Just that I hope you don’t expect me to be, well, domesticated.’
‘Explain.’
‘I don’t do housework,’ she said quietly.
‘You don’t have to. Mrs Hammond does for me,’ he reminded her.
‘I don’t do cooking either.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Dare I ask what you do do?’
‘Cattle-herding and sheep-shearing—I did them both in Australia in my gap year. Mountaineering—I’m a qualified climber. But cooking and cleaning and laundry, no chance.’
‘That’s fine by me. We’ll live on fish and chips and pizza. Just get me out of here.’
She sighed. ‘OK. I’ll ask if you can go home tomorrow.’
‘Today,’ he said. ‘Please, Mallory?’
When he asked so nicely, how could she possibly resist?
‘Tomorrow,’ Mallory reported back a few minutes later.
‘Tomorrow?’ Will echoed in horror.
‘You can go home after the doctors’ rounds, if they’re happy with your condition. And they won’t budge on that. So unless you have any strings you can pull—and pull fast—you’re staying put tonight.’
He shook his head. ‘But I feel better. Really, I do. I promise to do all my physio, to…to…’
‘Will, you were knocked over by a car yesterday morning.’
‘But it wasn’t at high speed. The driver nearly managed an emergency stop.’
‘“Nearly” being the operative word. The car hit you. Be sensible.’
Sensible? He nearly laughed. If only she knew…‘All right. But tomorrow’s as much as I can take. Anyway, I suppose you need some time to settle in yourself. My keys are in the cabinet there—the one with the insulation tape round it’s the front door key.’
‘Insulation tape?’
‘Quickest way to tell the difference between the front and back door keys. They look pretty much the same,’ he explained. ‘I’ll sort out my spare set for you when I get home.’
‘This is a hell of a risk,’ she said. ‘You don’t know me. For all you know, I could be spinning you a line about working as a GP—I could be a thief or even an axe-murderer.’
He lifted his uninjured hand, spreading the palm in the age-old ‘so what?’ gesture. ‘If it means you get me out of here tomorrow, be my guest. Sell the stereo, take the family silver, do what you like. Just get me out of here.’
‘Be serious, Will.’
‘I trust you, Mallory,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to tell me about what happened with Lindy, but you were honest about it. I knew about it before I offered you the job. And if there was anything else remotely dodgy about you, Nathan would have found out by now and told me.’
‘Do you always make decisions this quickly?’ Mallory asked.
No. He didn’t. He always thought things through before acting, and look what that had got him. Maybe it was crazy, asking a woman he didn’t really know to share his house, but then again maybe it was time he took some risks.
‘Yes.’ Though it wasn’t a complete lie. It was true for now. ‘Keys,’ he reminded her.
She took the bunch of keys from his cupboard.
‘Stay there tonight if you like. Did you tell The Limes how long you were staying?’
Mallory shook her head.
‘Get them to bill me for tonight. And then tomorrow you can pick…’ He stopped. He was rushing ahead of himself, making assumptions. ‘I never thought to ask you. Did you come by car or train? No, scrub that. I don’t even know if you can drive.’
‘I can, and my car’s in the hospital car park right now,’ Mallory told him with a smile.
Will sagged back against his pillows, relieved. ‘Good. Then tomorrow, Dr Ryman, you can rescue me.’
MALLORY checked out of The Limes that evening and settled into Will’s cottage. It was small and functional—and it had no feminine touches, so clearly he hadn’t been living with the girl who’d hurt him. There weren’t any photographs to give her a clue either. The only three in evidence were one of a couple she assumed to be Will’s parents, one of a brown and white Border collie, and one of Will with another man. A man who looked so like him—albeit blond—that he had to be Will’s brother. Both of them were smiling. Will’s full-wattage smile was even more breathtaking than she’d guessed it might be.
And then she noticed where they were. At the top of a mountain.
If Will was a climber, why had he made such a fuss about safety? And a keen climber who was about to have an enforced lay-off would surely have made some remark about wishing they could change places. She certainly would have done.
Something didn’t quite add up.
She shook herself—it was none of her business—and familiarised herself with the rest of the cottage. The kitchen-cum-dining room was again basic but functional—there was bread in the bread-bin, cheese and butter and milk in the fridge, a bowl of fruit in the middle of the scrubbed pine table and the wine-rack was half-full. She pulled one or two bottles out to look at the labels. It didn’t look as if Will drank a lot—but what he did drink was good stuff. Very good stuff, she thought. This was a man with definite tastes. Good taste.
His living room was filled with books and CDs—there wasn’t a television, she noted, though the hi-fi system was a seriously expensive make—and his bathroom was spartan but the water was hot and plentiful. He wouldn’t be able to have a bath until his leg had healed a bit more, but he could probably manage a shower. Though he’d need a plastic garden chair to sit on so he didn’t have to balance precariously on one leg. From the little she’d seen of him, she guessed that losing his independence would be the worst