‘Possibly.’ Elizabeth gave a womanly smile and checked her lipstick. ‘But I don’t think so. Now, that’s our flight they’re calling. Are you ready?’
David cast a glance through the window again but Anna’s car was long gone. ‘There are going to be fireworks in Cornwall tonight,’ he muttered, and his wife clipped her bag shut and gave him a little push.
‘Then it’s just as well we’ll be in Switzerland. Now, stop worrying. Everything is in place and we can do no more. We have to leave the rest up to fate and the chemistry that has always been there between those two. Oh…’ She gave a smug smile. ‘And then there’s the whole of the village, of course. I’m sure they’ll be only too happy to give fate a helping hand.’
* * *
Anna drove home, mentally listing all the urgent jobs that had to be done. Too many jobs, not enough time.
She just hoped the locum was a good swimmer because he was going to be thrown right in the deep end with no buoyancy aid.
The sun blazed down on the car, the sea sparkled and Anna turned up the volume on the radio. Cornwall in the summer might be a crazy place to work but it was a beautiful place and she’d never want to live anywhere else. She smiled and the smile lasted for the time it took for her to pull up outside the surgery.
She was met by a film crew and her smile went out like a light.
For a moment she just sat in her little car and stared at the big van and the cameras and then finally she opened the door and ventured outside.
‘Are you Dr Riggs?’ A man with a microphone scurried over to her and she nodded.
‘Yes. Is there a problem? What’s going on here?’
‘Just hold it right there.’ The man held up a hand to halt her movement and gestured to the cameraman. ‘We want to get some footage of you greeting Dr McKenna. Wait just a moment…’
Footage? Of her greeting Dr McKenna?
To the best of her knowledge, she’d just waved Dr McKenna off at the airport and there was only one other Dr McKenna that she knew of, and he wasn’t…
She glanced at the film crew again and shook her head in denial.
Oh, no. No. No. David wouldn’t have done that to her. He couldn’t…
Ignoring the man’s plea for her to stay put while they prepared to shoot, she slammed her car door and stalked across the small car park towards the group of people gathered by the entrance, a suspicion growing inside her.
‘McKenna?’ She growled his name like a threat and the people moved to one side. But she had eyes only for one person.
Cool blue eyes swept over her and his mouth tilted slightly. ‘Riggs. What an unexpected pleasure.’
He was as handsome as the devil and his arrogance drove her nuts.
‘Unexpected?’ She slammed her hands on her hips and glared at him. ‘This is my surgery, McKenna, so how can my presence here be unexpected? What is unexpected is the fact that you’re standing outside it. You’d better have a damn good reason for causing a disturbance.’
He lifted a dark eyebrow in that lazy, careless way that always drove her mad. ‘Nice to see you haven’t changed. I have to confess that I thought you’d leg it once my father told you that I was coming,’ he drawled. ‘Never thought you’d show up to greet me. I’m flattered, Riggs. And touched. I obviously mean more to you than I thought.’
‘Greet you? I’m not greeting you, and you need to move yourself and that van…’ she stabbed a finger towards the offending vehicle, her dark hair swinging over her shoulders as she turned her head ‘…from my car park before I have it towed away. I have a surgery starting in an hour and at the moment there is no room for my patients.’
‘Our patients,’ he corrected her mildly, not moving an inch, ‘and you’re going to have to learn not to swear while the cameras are here. You’d be amazed how little it takes to get complaints from viewers. They like their doctors wholesome and clean-living. No sex or swearing.’
She opened her mouth to make a sharp observation about his reputation for the former and then stopped herself. It wasn’t worth it. She really didn’t care about his sex life. And anyway, something he’d said was jarring inside her head.
She stared at him, drew breath and finally mentally reran the last few sentences. ‘Hold on.’ She lifted a hand as if to ward him off. ‘What did you mean when you said that your dad should have told me you were coming?
Tell me he didn’t know you were coming. Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.’
Surely David wouldn’t have done that to her.
He couldn’t…
Sam leaned impossibly broad shoulders against the wall and looked at her, a trace of amusement lighting his blue eyes. ‘He’s been nagging me for more than three months, Riggs. Finally he resorted to emotional blackmail. “I need this break, Sam, and if I can’t find a decent locum I can’t leave poor Anna.”’