‘I shall have an early night to make up for my exhaustion of yesterday,’ and as he made no move to take the hint, she said, ‘Goodnight to you, Dr Fenchurch.’
He nodded. ‘Goodnight to you too, Amelie.’ At which she opened the door and disappeared from sight and he drove back to where Georgina and the others were waiting.
‘So who was the woman?’ someone asked jok ingly.
He sighed and surprised them by saying, ‘Her name is Amelie Benoir. She’s the French doctor who is joining the practice for a few months. I only met her yesterday and I’m concerned that she is on her own in a strange place where she knows no one except me because Harry asked me to go to the airport to meet her last night. Does that satisfy your curiosity?’ he questioned mildly.
‘Yes,’ the joker said laughingly, ‘and we’ll all be sure to ask for Dr Benoir when we’re sick.’
As he listened to the friendly banter Amelie’s face came to mind, framed by a glossy black bob, with a snub nose and wide mouth. So anyone who wanted glamour and the trappings that went with it would need to look in Georgina’s direction.
It was hard to imagine anyone not being keen to marry the boutique owner except himself, and if anyone should ever ask him why, the answer would be that he couldn’t see her as the mother of any children he might have.
In what seemed like another life he’d wanted Delphine, sweet and bubbly, to give him young ones when the time came, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
They’d met at college, where so many romances began, and had known from the start they’d wanted to be together for always, but his love for her had been rent with an anguish that had ended in despair when she’d been rushed into hospital with a serious undetected heart problem and it had been too late to save her.
The pain he’d felt then had set the pattern for the years to come. It had been something that he never wanted to have to go through again. He was pursued all the time by women and laughed and joked with them, sometimes had the odd fling, but that was it. None of them could bring the kind of joy to his life that Delphine had.
When Amelie had told him that she was all right, it had been partly to reassure him and also because his kindness and concern on her behalf had helped to turn what could have been a ghastly day into a bearable one, and now she was determined that she wasn’t going to lie sleepless and fretting about what might have been.
Antoine Lamont had been a junior doctor at the same hospital as herself. When he’d started paying attention to her she’d thought that the quiet, low-key guy, who had often been on the same shift as herself, had seen her as the right kind for him because she was as average as he was.
Gradually they’d drifted into an engagement with the promise of a white wedding on the very day she’d arrived in Devon with her heart set on a new life far away from the hurts of the previous one.
Her surmise that Antoine had chosen her because she had been the least demanding and overpowering of some of the women he’d known had been shattered when she’d called at his apartment unexpectedly one night in the hospital grounds and found him in bed with one of the nurses, a brassy, auburn-haired creature who was anything but average when it came to looks and curves.
It had been the end of her dream of contentment with a man she could love and trust and the beginning of pain and loneliness because of the deceit of it.
He’d tried to make amends, pleading that it had just been a one-off with the nurse, but she hadn’t wanted to hear his pleas and subsequently Antoine and the girl he’d been in bed with had left the hospital together, leaving her to face the pitying looks of others as best she could.
Yet deep down Amelie thought she might have had a lucky escape and accepted that maybe she’d been more in love with the idea of getting married than with the man in question. But as she lay beneath the covers in the master bedroom of the big house that she was going to be rattling around in, she knew that the hurt of rejection had still been there when she’d seen the bride arriving at the church for her wedding that day, and it had been the same man who had met her at the airport who’d helped her to cope with it.
So far Leo had only seen her at her worst. On Monday morning she intended that he was going to see her at her best, with the ups and downs of her arrival in Bluebell cove blotted out.
If there was one thing that she never wanted to appear as, it was needy. With her parents always at the other side of the world, she’d had to fend for herself since her early teens and maybe that was why Antoine had seemed like a calm oasis in her often chaotic life, but he’d turned out to be just the opposite, and with that thought in mind she turned her head into the pillow and slept.
Sunday was uneventful except for a visit from the Balfours, Harry and Phoebe, with their toddler, Marcus. The senior partner asked if she was happy with her living arrangements and said to let him know if she had any problems with regard to that or anything else.
‘I’m aware that you’ve already met Leo,’ he said, ‘and the rest of the staff will be looking forward to meeting you on Monday morning, Amelie.’
‘Yes, I’ve met Dr Fenchurch,’ she replied. ‘I feel I may have interrupted his weekend as I seemed to be everywhere he was.’ She wondered if the man in question had told his partner at the practice about her unsuccessful attempt at matrimony.
She hoped not, though she hadn’t asked him to keep it to himself, but if he had respected her privacy it would be a stick to measure him by and she was already intrigued by him.
The Balfours didn’t stay long, but it was time enough for her to discover a couple of things about them: one, that they were deeply in love and both adored the child; and, two, that she liked them and hoped that Dr Balfour would be as pleasant to work for at the practice as he was outside it.
Monday morning saw Amelie poised and ready for action, dressed in a smart white blouse, short black skirt, and with her smooth ebony hair straight and shining around a face that was alight with anticipation.
She’d made up carefully, paying special attention to her eyes, which she felt were the best feature of a nondescript face, and when she stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom she felt that she’d done her best with what nature had given her because there was nothing wrong with her bone structure and the flesh on it, yet when she thought about a certain brassy red-headed nurse with breasts like balloons she did have her doubts.
Leo was emerging out of the private entrance to the apartments as she appeared on the practice forecourt and strode purposefully towards him, carrying a leather briefcase. She looked different again, dressed smartly as she was, from the dishevelled woman at the airport and the bikini-clad swimmer on the beach.
‘Good morning, Dr Fenchurch,’ she said as he fell into step beside her. ‘It has come. The day I am to be part of your medical centre.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ he replied as he held open the main door of the surgery for her to go through. ‘I hope you won’t be disappointed in us.’
She smiled up at him. ‘It is more that it should be me who does not disappoint you and Dr Balfour. When you met me at the airport it was what I saw in your expression…disappointment.’
Surely it hadn’t been so obvious? he thought. It had been because he’d picked out the wrong woman to be her that the difference had seemed so great.
He didn’t deny it. Instead, he said, ‘It was very rude of me if that was how I appeared, and you are certainly proving me wrong so far. I hope that your first day is a good one, Amelie. Harry is already here and waiting to see you in his consulting room.’
‘They came to see me yesterday. Dr Balfour and his family were most kind. I wondered if perhaps you had told them about my cancelled wedding.’
For the first time since she’d met him she saw Leo’s pleasant manner chill as he told her, ‘Certainly