Kate Hardy
To C.C. Coburn and Cathleen Ross—
hope you enjoy Herod!
‘SHE’S A BONNY LASS, our Bailey,’ Archie said.
Jared’s heart sank at the expression on the coach’s face. Clearly Archie had taken a fancy to the researcher. And Jared had a nasty feeling that this might be a case of the coach’s libido taking over from his common sense.
Allegedly, this ‘bonny lass’ researcher had a system that could reduce soft-tissue injuries among the players. So far, so good—but the figures being bandied about were crazy. In Jared’s experience, when something sounded too good to be true, it usually was. And he could really do without some pretty, flaky girl distracting the players and getting in the way when he needed to treat them. Especially when he’d only just started his new job as the doctor to the youth team of a premiership division football club.
He’d been here before, when a manager’s or player’s head had been turned by a pretty girl, and the outcome was always messy. Worse still, it tended to have an impact on the rest of the team. With a bunch of teenage lads, this could get very messy indeed.
But he kept his thoughts to himself and gave the coach a polite smile. ‘That’s nice.’
Hopefully this Bailey woman would get bored quickly, or her system would be debunked, and they could go back to a more sensible way of preventing soft-tissue injuries—like sport-specific training, after he’d assessed each of the players and taken a proper medical history.
In the meantime, he’d have to grit his teeth and be as polite and as neutral as possible.
‘Bailey—oh, good, you’re here. Come and meet Jared Fraser, the new team doctor,’ Archie McLennan called over from the side of the football pitch as Bailey walked through the players’ tunnel.
Bailey smiled at the youth team’s coach, but she made sure that she stood just far enough away so that Archie couldn’t put his arm round her shoulders. She liked him very much as a colleague—he was at least prepared to listen to new ideas and he’d been more than fair with her on the research project so far—but she really wasn’t in the market for a relationship.
Particularly with someone who was recently divorced and with a lifestyle that really didn’t work for her; that was just setting things up to fail. And Bailey had failed quite enough in her relationships, thank you very much. She wanted life to be simple in the future—full of her family, her friends and her work, and that was enough for her. She didn’t need anything more.
‘Jared, this is Bailey Randall—the doctor whose research project I was telling you about,’ Archie said.
For a moment, Jared looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Then he seemed to pull himself together and gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement. ‘Dr Randall.’
But he didn’t smile at her. Did he not approve of women being involved with a football team? Was he not good at social skills? Or—given that his accent was quite distinctive—was he just living up to the stereotype of the slightly dour, strong-and-silent Scotsman?
It was a shame, because he had the most gorgeous eyes. A deep, intense blue—the colour of a bluebell carpet. If he smiled, she’d just bet his eyes would have an irresistible twinkle.
Which was crazy. Since when did she think so fancifully? Bluebells, indeed.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, giving him her brightest smile, and held her hand out for him to shake.
He gave another brief inclination of his head and shook her hand. His grip was firm, brief and very businesslike. He still didn’t smile, though. Or say any kind of social pleasantry.
Oh, well. It wasn’t as if she’d need to have that much to do with him, was it? Her project—to test a monitoring system to see if it could help to reduce the number of soft-tissue injuries in the team—had been agreed by the football club’s chair of directors. She’d been working with Archie, the youth team coach, at training sessions and on match days when they played at home, and so far the system’s results were proving very interesting indeed.
‘Hey, Bailey.’ John, one of the