Assignment: Single Man. Caroline Anderson

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СКАЧАТЬ Dr Giraud’s rich, mellow voice with its merest suggestion of a French accent. Then she thought of the sadness in his house—the loss of his wife, the crippling injury his daughter had sustained in the accident—and wondered if she had enough caring left inside her to do the job properly. Probably not.

      She shook her head. ‘No. I can’t do him and his daughter justice. I need a rest, Jackie. I’ve had enough.’

      And that was it. Five minutes of paperwork, and they were off. She followed his taxi as it wove through the streets of Woodbridge, then they left the town, crossed the river and turned down a track that led through the trees. From time to time she could glimpse the river on her right, then suddenly the trees opened up to reveal his house, and her jaw dropped.

      She certainly wouldn’t be slumming it! The house was nestled in amongst the trees, a long, low curve, single storey except at the end nearest them, where the garage and a few rooms beyond it were tucked underneath, taking advantage of the natural slope. The path rose from the drive, curving round towards the front door in a long, graded sweep, and she pulled up beside the taxi and got out, awestruck.

      It was huge, and yet oddly it blended in, cut into the landscape by the hand of a genius, and below it the river stretched out into the distance towards the sea. Slightly upstream she could see the distinctive shape of the tide mill on the opposite bank, with all the houses and shops of the old town clustered together around it and up the hill beyond.

      Downstream all the little boats bobbed at their moorings, sunlight gleaming off their masts and sparkling on the wind-ruffled water, and she could almost hear the clink of halliards against the masts.

      What a fabulous spot! And she was going to be living here for a while, steeped in the silence of the woodland around them. Amazing.

      She pulled herself together and helped the taxi driver extract the wheelchair from the boot and ease her patient into it. Josh thanked him and paid him what seemed like an extortionate amount of money, and then suddenly they were alone.

      Totally alone. Fran was suddenly aware of how isolated his house was, and how difficult it would be to get help if anything went wrong, but she suppressed the panic.

      She was being silly. Nothing was going to go wrong. He wasn’t going to bleed to death, or he would have done it already. He’d be fine, and so would she. He was well on the way to recovery. All she had to do was get him into bed for a rest.

      ‘Got the keys?’ she asked him, and was met with a blank stare.

      He swore softly under his breath. ‘They’re at the garage, with the car.’

      ‘Is there a spare one here, hidden under a flowerpot or something?’ she suggested hopefully, but he shook his head.

      ‘Not a chance.’

      ‘We’ll have to go and get them, then,’ she said pragmatically.

      He eyed her car with evident disgust. ‘You want me to get into that?’

      Fran felt her anger flare and stamped it down. ‘It may not be what you’re used to—’

      He sighed. ‘I wasn’t criticising,’ he said wearily, ‘I was just wondering how on earth I’m going to fold myself up inside it.’

      Of course. She hadn’t seen him standing up properly, but there was no mistaking the rangy length of his thighs. He was a big man, and her car was a little city car. Still, it was that or sit on the doorstep until she came back with the keys, and as she didn’t know where the garage was, he might have a very long wait. She pointed this out to him, and with a quiet sigh he resigned himself to the struggle.

      Josh ached. Things ached that he didn’t even know he had. Her car was a nightmare, one of those cute little city cars that suited cute little city women, but it hadn’t been designed with a man of his size in mind, and most particularly not one with an external fixator on his leg and umpteen other broken bones. He could kick himself for not having thought about the keys before, but all he’d cared about had been getting home and the keys hadn’t really seemed a high priority then.

      He shifted awkwardly in the seat so he could see her face, and he watched her as she drove. It put her off. Interesting. Her face was more interesting than he remembered, too, not classically beautiful but fine in a very English way. Her skin was a beautiful clear ivory, her hair dark and worn loose, falling in a waving, glossy curtain to well below her shoulders. He had an urge to reach out and touch it, but he thought she’d probably dump him on the road if he tried it.

      She had wonderful cheekbones, and her eyes, a lovely soft grey-blue touched with lilac, spoke volumes. He wondered what had gone wrong and why a woman of her age was taking live-in jobs when she should have been at home with her husband and children or forging a dynamic career in her A and E department.

      ‘Turn left here,’ he said, and reminded himself that her reasons for working for him were none of his business. He should just be grateful that somebody suitable had been available with absolutely no notice. At least, he supposed she was suitable and hadn’t been dismissed for some flagrant conduct. He imagined that she’d been vetted by the agency, but he hadn’t checked. Yet another thing he’d overlooked. That wasn’t like him. It must be the bang on the head.

      ‘That’s it, up ahead on the right.’

      She slowed and turned onto the garage forecourt, and came to a halt. ‘You stay here, I’ll go and ask,’ she suggested, but he shook his head.

      ‘I want to see the car.’

      ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ she said firmly.

      She was probably right but, nevertheless, he wanted to see it and even if he hadn’t, her vetoing it was enough to get him out of the car, with or without her help.

      ‘I don’t employ you to have opinions,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I need a nurse, not a nanny. Get the chair.’

      She opened her mouth to say something, then snapped it shut, got out of the car and slammed the door, then yanked it open again, muttering something under her breath that he couldn’t quite hear. Tipping her seat forwards with a thump, she yanked his wheelchair out of the tiny space behind it and hurled the door shut again with force.

      He suppressed a grim smile. So she had a temper. Even more interesting. It would make his convalescence much less tedious.

      His door was yanked open and she thrust his wheelchair up against the side of the car. ‘I think you’re mad,’ she told him with a directness that bordered on insolence, but he didn’t bother to argue.

      It had occurred to him while she’d been banging about in a temper that, before he struggled out of the car, it would be an idea to check that his own car was actually here on the premises, but now didn’t seem the time to raise that. Anyway, George was coming over, thank goodness, a beaming smile splitting his face.

      ‘Mr Nicholson! Good to see you, sir.’

      ‘Hello, George. I’ve come to pick up some stuff from the car. I take it it’s here?’

      ‘Oh, yes, it’s here. We’ve collected all your things together—they’re in the office. I’ll get one of the lads to find them for you. It’s best if you stay here.’

      Why were they all being so damned protective? ‘I’d СКАЧАТЬ