A Consultant's Special Care. Joanna Neil

She replaced the receiver and waited, but nothing happened.

      The more she thought about it, the more she wondered who the mystery caller could have been. She didn’t know that many men who had deep, sexy voices, and the only one to spring to mind was the last person she would have expected to hear from.

      Surely Richard couldn’t have tracked her down? How could he have found out where she was? Unless someone had unwittingly told him…

      Quickly, she dialled her mother’s number and asked the question that was burning into her mind.

      ‘Do you think there’s any way that he could have found out where I am? You haven’t said anything to him, have you? He hasn’t phoned you?’

      Her mother was calm and unruffled. ‘You know I wouldn’t have told him anything, Abby. I know how important it is to you that you get away from him. I always suspected that there was something strange about him, and I didn’t want him anywhere near you once I got to know him better. I thought his obsession with you was unnatural.’

      ‘I’m sorry. I was just afraid that you might have let something slip, without meaning to.’

      ‘I didn’t. I can’t think how he could have found you so soon—and, anyway, you don’t know for sure that it was him, do you? The caller could have realised that he had made a mistake and that it was a different Abby Curtis he was looking for—someone older perhaps, and that’s why he rang off without speaking. He was probably embarrassed. Or it might have been that the nurse heard him wrong and he had asked for someone with a similar-sounding name.’

      Abby might have known her mother would react like that. She was a sensible woman, whose reasoning was nearly always straightforward.

      ‘You’re probably right. I expect I’m making a fuss about nothing.’ Abby talked to her mother for a minute or two longer, then said goodbye and hung up.

      Her mood was pensive, though. Was she simply imagining things? No matter how Abby tried to brush it off, the thought niggled that the caller might have been Richard. Given that she had told him she didn’t want anything more to do with him, he might well have been messing about, playing silly games with her.

      It was a sad state of affairs, because their relationship had been good to begin with, she recalled. Richard had been sexy, appealing, persuasive, and she had found herself falling for him over the weeks that had passed.

      It had only been later that she had realised there was another side to him, a part of his nature that needed to be in control, to take over, to have everything his way. That was when she had tried to break off the relationship, but her retreat had only made him more possessive, more argumentative, and when the split had finally come it had been fraught with tension. It had been worrying when he had accused her of seeing other men, falsely as it happened, and he had become steadily more resentful and threatening.

      ‘We belong together,’ he’d said, in a way that chilled her to the bone. ‘If you ever try to leave me, you’ll regret it. I won’t let you go, and I’ll not let any other man come near you.’

      And now here she was, several months later, wondering whether even now it was still not finished with.

      ‘Do you think you could go and dream about your love life in your own time?’ Jordan’s voice cut tersely across her thoughts. ‘We’re running an emergency department here, not a sweethearts’ convention.’

      ‘I wasn’t…I mean…I was just called to the phone, that’s all. I wasn’t letting it interfere with my work.’

      ‘Weren’t you? While you were lost in fantasyland, patients have been lining up to be seen. If you can’t keep your mind on the job, you shouldn’t be here at all.’

      ‘I’m allowed to take a break,’ she said, her green eyes flashing him a cool challenge. ‘Just because I choose to take it in a phone booth instead of the doctors’ lounge doesn’t make it any less valid, and I’m still around and ready if a major emergency comes in.’

      ‘If you say so,’ he threw back drily. ‘Looking at you, some might have doubted that.’ He thrust a chart into her hand. ‘The woman in cubicle two has a possible migraine. She, at least, has a reasonable excuse for having a muzzy head.’

      Abby took the chart without another word and went to examine the woman. Insufferable man. What was his problem? Did he think it was his life’s work to provoke his colleagues, or was it just her that he had it in for? She had only met him the previous day and already she was having to bite her tongue for fear of landing herself out of a job.

      Whatever had made her think being part of his team was a rung up the professional ladder? She might as well have tried cosying up to a snarling tiger.