Ten minutes later Gemma left the house, shivering as the chill of a frosty December morning hit her. She hurried to her car, groaning when she discovered the windscreen was covered with ice. She wasted another couple of minutes clearing it away and her fingers were frozen solid by then, the tips of them turning pink with cold.
She slid into the driving seat, cranking up the heater to its highest setting, not that there was much hope of any warmth just yet. Still, at least it provided her with the illusion that she might soon start to defrost, although maybe the chill she felt didn’t stem solely from the weather. It was the thought of how upset Ross must be that was making her feel so cold. He must be devastated—completely devastated!
Gemma’s breath caught on a sob but she forced it down as she headed towards the centre of Dalverston. Heather lived with her father on the far side of the town and Gemma had to brave the traffic to get there. Normally, at this time on a Saturday morning the roads would have been fairly clear, but with Christmas a couple of weeks away, there was already a build-up of cars and that delayed her. By the time she reached the house, she was so tense that she was trembling. She parked in the drive then hurried to the front door and rang the bell. Matthew Thompson, Heather’s father, greeted her with a weary smile.
‘I take it that Heather’s told you she’s called off the wedding?’
‘She pushed a note through my door. I found it on the mat this morning when I got up.’
Gemma followed him into the house, shivering appreciatively as a blast of warm air hit her. Matthew led the way to the kitchen, obviously expecting her to follow him. Picking up the teapot, he offered it to her and she nodded.
‘Please.’
He poured them both a cup of tea and placed them on the table by the window. Gemma frowned when she saw that his hands were shaking. Heather’s decision to cancel her wedding must have been a shock for her father too.
‘Did Heather say why she’s decided not to marry Ross?’ Gemma asked as they sat down.
‘No. She just said that she’d realised it would be a mistake.’
Matt’s whole bearing seemed to have altered overnight; he appeared years older that morning. It was upsetting to see him looking this way when Gemma had always thought how full of life he usually was. He ran the busy general practice where she worked as one of the practice nurses with the vigour of a man half his age, but he looked grey and gaunt as he sat there, sipping his tea.
‘Is Heather here?’ she asked gently, not wanting to add to his distress by pressing him for answers.
‘No. She left last night, caught the last train to London, in fact.’ Pain darkened his eyes. ‘I should have realised she had doubts about getting married and made sure it was what she really wanted instead of adding to the pressure she felt to go along with it.’
Gemma looked at him in surprise. ‘It was Heather’s decision to marry Ross. Nobody pushed her into it.’
‘Maybe.’ Matthew gave her a grim smile then looked round when the doorbell rang. ‘Excuse me. I’d better see who that is.’
Gemma drank some of her tea after he left the kitchen. It seemed her trip had been a waste of time if Heather wasn’t here. She had no idea what she should do now, or if there was anything she could do. Going to see Ross was out of the question, of course. He would be far too upset to see her.
The sound of voices made her glance round and she felt her heart leap when she saw the two men coming along the hall. Matthew was tall but the man with him topped him by a couple of inches. In the wintry light filtering through the kitchen window, his skin gleamed like burnished gold, the perfect foil for his startling bluer-than-blue eyes.
Gemma felt a shudder run down her spine, then another until it felt as though her whole body was quaking. She had tried so hard to ignore these feelings, tried and, to some extent, succeeded too. Every time she’d found herself reacting to the sight of him, she’d reminded herself of all the reasons why it was wrong: he was her best friend’s fiancé; he wasn’t interested in her; he definitely wouldn’t find her attractive—especially if he saw her naked.
All those points still held good. Maybe the first one was in doubt but weddings had been called off and rescheduled before, and there was no saying this one wouldn’t be either. However, the second two points were as valid now as they had always been. Ross wasn’t interested in her and he most definitely wouldn’t find her attractive in bed. No man in his right mind would.
Gemma knew there was no hope wishing she could have a chance to win Ross’s love, but that didn’t stop the tingles, the shivers, the mini-earthquakes that were assailing her as he came into the room. Her head understood the truth, but her heart was deaf, dumb and blind to it, steadfastly believing that if she loved Ross enough from afar, one day he might learn to love her in return.
CHAPTER TWO
ROSS ground to a halt when he spotted Gemma sitting at the table. He hadn’t realised there was anyone else in the house and for a moment he was tempted to beat a hasty retreat. However, he would have to face people at some point and there was no time like the present.
‘Gemma.’
He nodded politely to her, seeing the wash of colour that ran up her face. With that silver-blonde hair and flawless porcelain skin, she must find it difficult to hide her feelings, he thought, then wondered why the idea had occurred to him now of all times. He had worked with Gemma for almost three years, ever since she had moved to Dalverston to take up the post of senior practice nurse at the surgery. She and Heather had soon struck up a friendship, so there had been many occasions when they had met outside work, too. However, he had never even noticed her hair or her skin before. How strange.
He turned away, uncomfortable with the way he was behaving. Maybe it had been a shock to be dumped if not literally at the altar but pretty close to it, but did that really explain why his mind seemed to be whizzing off at tangents all of a sudden?
‘Ross, I don’t know what to say apart from the fact that I’m really and truly sorry.’
Ross cleared his mind of all extraneous thoughts when he heard the pain in Matthew’s voice. ‘If Heather had any doubts then she was right to call off the wedding,’ he said quietly, not wanting to add to the older man’s distress. ‘It would have been much worse if she’d gone ahead and regretted it later.’
‘That’s what Heather said.’ Matt sank down onto a chair as though he was too weary to remain standing. He waved Ross to a seat. ‘Sit down. Would you like some tea? There’s some made…’
He went to get up again but Gemma quickly intervened. ‘I’ll get it.’
She stood up, easing around Ross with a murmured ‘Excuse me’. Ross felt a ripple of awareness run through him as she brushed against him in passing, and frowned. How many times had that happened over the last three years? There must have been dozens of occasions when he and Gemma had touched and he’d barely registered it, yet all of a sudden his brain was flashing signals along his nerves, alerting all the muscles and sinews to the fact that there was a young and attractive female in close proximity. And when he thought all his muscles, he meant all too.
He hurriedly sat down, stunned by what was happening to him. All right, so he was a normal healthy male with a normal healthy male’s interest in the opposite sex. However, was it really normal to be experiencing these feelings on the morning of what should have been his last day of bachelorhood?
Confusion clouded his mind so that when Gemma put a cup of tea in front of him he couldn’t even thank her. He took a gulp of the tea in the hope that it would ease the kinks out of his system. Maybe he needed to face up to his feelings instead of bottling them up? After all, he’d been looking forward to building a life with Heather,