His Christmas Bride-To-Be. Abigail Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ tomorrow morning and will close at twelve, it being Saturday. So can I help you at all?’

      ‘Er, no, thank you, I’m fine,’ she told him, taken aback by his manner and sudden appearance.

      ‘Good. I haven’t a lot of time to spare,’ he explained. ‘I just came back to pick up some paperwork, and after that have to be ready at any time to welcome back the prodigal daughter of our late head of the practice, which is a bind as I have a meal to organise when I get in.’

      Emma was observing him wide-eyed. He was no one she recognised from the time when she’d been on the staff there and she thought he was in for a surprise.

      ‘I have no idea who you are,’ she told him, ‘but obviously you’re connected with the practice, so maybe I can save you one of the chores that you’ve just described. My name is Emma Chalmers. Does it ring a bell? I’ve returned to Glenminster to take possession of the property that my … er … father has left me and to find occupation as a doctor should I decide to stay.’

      As he observed her, slack-jawed with surprise, she turned and began to walk back the way she’d come.

      It was nine o’clock when the doorbell rang and Emma went to open the door cautiously because her knowledge of neighbours or local people was scant after her absence, so she slipped the safety chain into position before fully opening the door to her caller.

      It was him again, the bossy man in the overcoat, on the doorstep and as she surveyed him blankly he said, ‘You will guess why I’m here, I suppose.’ She shook her head.

      ‘I’ve come to say sorry for being such a pain when we met earlier. My only excuse is that I have my father living with me and he likes his meals on the dot as eating is one of his great pleasures in life.’

      ‘Er, yes, I see,’ she said, ‘but why were you, as a stranger, going to be the one who welcomed me back? Surely there is someone still there who remembers me?’

      ‘Possibly, but I am filling the slot that your father left and so was chosen to do the honours. Everyone will be pleased to see you again, I’m sure.’

      ‘Hmm, maybe,’ she commented doubtfully, with the thought in mind that there was still the matter of the missing wife to be sorted.

      ‘We had a message from Jeremy’s lawyers a couple of days ago,’ he explained, ‘to say that you would be arriving tomorrow, so back there when we met it didn’t occur to me that you might be already here and installed in this place … which isn’t very palatial, is it?’

      Emma ignored the comment and said, ‘I was fortunate when I arrived to find that the kind person with amazing foresight who had switched on the heating had also filled the refrigerator, as I was both cold and hungry after the journey and the change of climate.’

      He was smiling. ‘Lucky you, then.’ Seeing her amazing tan, he asked, ‘How was Africa? I’m told that is where you’ve been. I’m behind on practice gossip as I’ve only taken over as head of the place since your father died.’

      ‘It was hot, hard work, and amazing,’ she said, and couldn’t believe she would be sleeping in the house that she had never wanted to see again after the night when Jeremy had removed the scales from her eyes in such a brutal manner.

      Her unexpected visitor was turning to go and said, ‘I must make tracks.’ Reaching out, he shook her hand briefly and said, ‘The name is Glenn Bartlett.’

      Taken aback by the gesture, Emma said, ‘Where do you live?’

      ‘In a converted barn on the edge of the town.’

      ‘Sounds nice.’

      ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that,’ he replied without much enthusiasm, and wishing her goodbye he went.

      Driving home in the dark winter night, Glenn Bartlett thought that Emma Chalmers was nothing like her father if the big photograph on the practice wall was anything to go by. Maybe she’d inherited her dark hair and hazel eyes from her mother, although did it really matter?

      He was cringing at the way he’d called her the ‘prodigal daughter’ as he knew absolutely nothing about her except that she was Jeremy Chalmers’s only relative, from the sound of things, and his moaning about how busy he was must have sounded pathetic. Would Emma Chalmers have wanted to hear the gripes of a complete stranger?

      Yet they were true. Unbelievably, he’d made time that morning to switch the heating on for her, do a dash to the supermarket to fill the empty fridge in the house that she was coming to live in, and put a slow casserole in his oven for his and his father’s evening meal.

      Back where he had left her, Emma had found some clean bedding in one of the drawers and was making up the bed that had been hers for as long as she could remember, while at the same time remembering word for word what the stranger who had knocked on her door had said.

      It would seem that, apart from the father that he’d mentioned, there was no other immediate family in his life, and where had he come from to take over in Jeremy’s place? Whoever he was, he’d had style.

      The next morning she awoke to a wintry sun outside her window and the feeling that she didn’t want the day to get under way because she had little to look forward to except the visit to the law firm in the late morning. Her instinct was telling her not to expect any good news from that, except maybe some enlightenment regarding the missing wife.

      When she arrived there she was told that Jeremy’s car was hers for the taking in the scheme of things. She felt that explanations were due. It seemed that the man sitting opposite her in the office of the law firm was not aware that she wasn’t a blood relation to the deceased until she explained, and when she did so Emma was told that under those circumstances she wasn’t entitled to any of his estate, except the house, which he had willed to her when her mother had been alive.

      ‘The car was all that he had left,’ the partner of the law firm went on to say. ‘There were no financial assets. It would seem that our man Dr Chalmers was something of a high-flyer.’

      It was at that point Emma asked if he had married again, as that was what he had been contemplating, and if so his new wife would be his next of kin.

      Observing her with raised brows, he said, ‘Dr Chalmers didn’t remarry, as far as we are aware. Maybe his sudden death prevented him from accomplishing such a thing. So if no one else comes forward to claim the car, it will be yours if you want it.’

      Emma left the office feeling weary and confused about life in general.

      A time check revealed that the practice building only minutes away would still be open and she decided to stop by and say hello to whoever was on duty, admitting to herself that if Dr Glenn Bartlett was one of them it would be an ideal moment to see him in a different light after being taken aback by his unexpected visit the night before.

      He wasn’t there, but there were those who knew her from previously and in the middle of carrying out their functions either waved or flashed a smile across until such time as they were free to talk.

      As she looked around her Emma was aware that the place had been redecorated since she’d last seen it. The seating and fabrics were new and there was an atmosphere of busy contentment amongst staff that hadn’t always been there when Jeremy Chalmers had reigned.

      ‘Emma!’ СКАЧАТЬ