His Christmas Bride-To-Be. Abigail Gordon

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      Glenn finished his drink and, rising from his seat, told those of his companions who were nearest that he was leaving, going home to enjoy the peace that his father’s departure had restored.

      Emma was still on the dance floor in her partner’s arms and as she glanced across he waved a brief goodbye and was gone.

      Back home he sat in silence, gazing out into the dark night with the memory of Jeremy Chalmers’s last moments on the golf course starkly clear. He’d known him before stepping into the vacancy that his passing had left.

      The then head of the practice and his father had met at university. Jeremy, who had been on the point of retiring, had invited his friend’s son, also a doctor, to stay for the weekend to familiarise himself with the running of the practice with a view to taking over as his replacement in the very near future after the necessary procedures had been dealt with.

      They’d gone for a round of golf after lunch at the club and while on the course Jeremy had suffered the heart attack that had proved fatal. In intense pain he had managed to gasp out his last request and he, Glenn, working on him desperately as he’d tried to save him, had been stunned when he’d heard what it was.

      ‘I have a daughter,’ he’d croaked between pain spasms, ‘and I upset her gravely some years ago, so much so that she left to go where I don’t know, except it wasn’t in this country. Emma is a doctor and most likely has gone to one of the hot spots where they need as many medics as they can get.’

      ‘Bring her home for me, Glenn, back to where she was happy until I told her some unmentionable things about me.’

      His lips had been blue, his eyes glazing even as the sound of an approaching ambulance could be heard screeching towards them, and his last words had been, ‘Promise you will?’

      ‘Yes, I promise,’ he’d told him gravely, and then his father’s friend had died.

      Now, sitting sombrely in the attractive sitting room of the property he’d bought on the occasion of taking over the practice, Glenn was remembering the time and effort he’d put in to discover the whereabouts of the missing daughter. He was upset to think that he hadn’t tuned in to who she was outside the surgery the night before.

      Fortunately he’d made sure that the house that had been her home previously was warm and habitable a day early and had had food in the refrigerator. Then had gone the extra mile by suggesting that the folk from the practice make her welcome with an evening in one of Glenminster’s high spots.

      Now just one thing remained regarding his promise to her father, and when that was done maybe he would be able to have a life of his own once again. The task of locating Emma Chalmers had been mammoth.

      He would be there for her at her father’s funeral and once that ordeal was over he was going to step aside and let her get on with her life. The same way he intended to carry on with his own, which was empty of womankind and was going to stay that way.

      Drawing the curtains across to shut out the night, he went slowly up the spiral staircase that graced the hallway of his home and lay on top of the bedcovers, his last concern before sleep claimed him being the stranger that he had reluctantly taken under his wing.

      What was her story? he wondered. Had she been close to Jeremy and they’d rowed about something that had made her go off in a huff? From what he’d said in his dying moments, it had seemed that Jeremy had been the reason for Emma’s departure and whatever it had been he’d had cause to regret it.

      Since coming back to her roots she had never mentioned him, which was not a good omen, and what about the mother that she’d lost not so long before her hasty departure? What sort of a marriage had she and Jeremy had?

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