Authors: Unknown
'Men are more sentimental than women about such things. Don't you think so, Nurse?' Mrs Maddox appealed to Gillian, busily tidying the array of books and magazines that lay on a table by the window.
Glancing round, she met Mark's indifferent gaze. He wasn't interested in her opinion. He wasn't interested in her any more. He had virtually ignored her since that evening at the Country Club. Gillian wondered if she had slapped him down a little too hard. It was much more likely that she had been a very fleeting fancy for a sensual man, forgotten in the excitement of his soon to be announced engagement.
'It depends on the man,' she returned lightly. 'Most of them aren't at all sentimental, in my experience.' Something in her tone implied her doubt that Mark ever indulged in any kind of sentiment. He was a hard man who didn't make allowances, didn't believe in compromise and didn't forgive easily, she thought with a hard little lump of resentment in her breast.
Mark moved from the bed with a slight air of impatience. As he did so, his eye was caught by a colourful box of sweets, still in its cellophane wrapper, that had slipped into view as Mrs Maddox shifted incautiously on her pillows.
He paused.
He looked down at the sweets with a slightly raised eyebrow, visibly annoyed. 'I don't remember that they were included on your diet sheet, Mrs Maddox,' he said coldly.
She flushed like a naughty child caught in mischief. The tone of his voice was an unmistakable rebuke. Her hand moved instinctively to push the box out of sight, faltered, flew to clutch at .her throat in dismay.
'Oh, I didn't mean to eat them,' she said hastily, palpably resorting to an untruth. 'My husband brought them in for Nurse Grant. I was just about to give them to her when you came back.' She caught up the sweets in both hands and thrust them at Gillian who had hurried to the side of the bed at first sign of her distress. 'Here you are, dear! You don't have to worry about dieting with that lovely figure. Just enjoy them!'
Gillian took the sweets with a slightly defiant glance at the surgeon. 'Thank you very much, Mrs Maddox . .'
A nerve was throbbing in his lean cheek. He was very angry. 'I'm obliged to give you the benefit of the doubt, Mrs Maddox,' he said curtly. 'But I shall see to it that your husband doesn't bring in any more sweets—for you or the nurses. We are trying to keep temptation out of your way, after all.' He strode to the door. 'May I have a word. Nurse Grant!' It was not a request. 'Now, if you don't mind,' he added sharply as she seemed to hesitate.
Gillian bridled. But they couldn't indulge in a slanging match before the patient. She smiled reassuringly at the anxious Mrs Maddox. 'I'll be back in a moment ...'
'Oh, my dear! Have I done the wrong thing?' the big woman whispered urgently, catching at Gillian's hand. 'Mustn't I give you presents? Is it against the rules?'
'Nurse Grant!'
Gillian swung round at that peremptory use of her name. He was holding the door open, eyes hard with anger. She flashed him a militant look and walked towards him, fuming at his tone.
Out in the corridor with the door firmly closed and no one else apparently within earshot, she turned on him. 'You'll lose all your patients if you insist on frightening them to death!' she said indignantly. 'You were an absolute pig to that poor woman!'
'That poor woman is eating herself into an early grave. With your assistance, apparently,' he said angrily. 'Sweets! You might as well allow her to swallow poison! What kind of a nurse are you to turn a blind eye to such blatant contempt for my advice?'
Gillian flushed 'I didn't know that she had them,' she retorted defensively.
'It's your business to know! The woman's a fool who can't be convinced that fat can be fatal—and probably will be in her case! Fools need to be protected from themselves and that's part of your job while she's here and in/your care!'
'You don't have to tell me about my duties as a nurse!' she flared, sensitive as always to the least criticism of her Kit's training.
'It seems that I do,' he returned coldly. 'You can't stop her from having visitors. You can see to it that they don't smuggle poison in with them. I shall hold you responsible if Mrs Maddox puts on one more ounce. You won't be surprised to learn that I can influence your dismissal from Greenvale and the improbability of your employment by any other nursing establishment in the country!'
It was savage. Gillian stared, buffeted by the force of the threat, feeling as if a brutal hand had suddenly grasped her by the heart as she met the cold, implacable contempt in the grey eyes.
'Nothing about you could surprise me,' she retorted, with spirit if a little unsteadily. 'I only have to remind myself that you're all the things I most dislike bound up in one person!' She walked away from him, trembling.
Mark looked after her, a tautness in his tall frame, a tension about his handsome mouth. He had wanted to hurt her and he knew that he had done so. But there wasn't the slightest satisfaction in his revenge for rebuffs that he should have been able to shrug off with his usual indifference.
I hate him,
Gillian fumed.
I hate him! How dare he speak to me so!
But, deep down, waves of hurt were rippling through her that someone she had been foolishly beginning to like, to allow into her heart, should prove just as horrid and hateful as she had first-thought. She was disappointed. She had been given an occasional glimpse of the man he could be and then discovered that it was all foolish fancy on her part. Because he was attractive, because he stirred her senses in a way that no other man did, she had been too ready to forget those first and obviously reliable impressions. On her very first day at Greenvale, she had known he was an arrogant, uncaring brute who would trample on anyone's feelings.
Gillian was quick and proud and passionate. She didn't care that a Kit's nurse never exchanged angry words with a highly-qualified and much-respected surgeon within sight and sound of his patients and other members of the staff. She didn't care if he could have her sacked. She didn't want to stay at Greenvale if he meant to persist in treating her like dirt, she told herself, fighting the tears that ought not to be thrusting themselves into her eyes. She didn't mean to let a man like Mark Barlow reduce her to tears, she declared proudly.
She left the offending box of sweets in the nurses' room for the benefit of her colleagues. She didn't want them. She didn't feel that Mrs Maddox was to blame for that sudden spat between herself and the surgeon. He seemed to seize on the smallest excuse to humiliate her, she thought bitterly. He just didn't like her at all—any more than she liked him!
On her way back to Mrs Maddox, knowing that the big woman was probably worrying about the result of the gift she had been forced to make, she met Penny. The older girl glanced at her curiously.
'You seem to have made an enemy out of our Mark,' she said, smiling.
Gillian shrugged. 'I didn't want him as a friend, anyway,' she returned with careful casualness.
'The whole place is buzzing. You aren't wise to row with him where everyone can hear, you know. The powers-that-be don't like friction between the staff.'
'He chose the venue!'
'Did
you two know each other? Before you came to Greenvale, I mean? You don't behave like strangers,'. Penny said lightly.
'I never met him until I came here, I told you.' Gillian didn't want to discuss her reaction to the surgeon. She liked Penny, got on well with her, but had quickly learned that she was indiscreet. Her tongue ran away with her and she repeated confidences before she realised it. Gillian had never been a girl to talk about herself very much. She knew that Penny thought she was rather too reserved.
During the rest of the day, she was aware of a hum of speculation and curious glances. Rising above it, she got on with her work and tried not to think about Mark Barlow. Thinking about him and the way he had spoken, the way he had looked, only depressed her spirits.
He was tinkering with the engine of his Mercedes when Gillian made her way across the car park towards her Mini at the end of the day. She was in a hurry to get home because she was going out with Robin.
Having seen him from a distance, she was careful not to glance at the surgeon as she drew near, her heart welling up with the resentment and pain that she had been keeping firmly at bay since their clash.
As she passed his car, he stepped back from the engine, wiping his hands on an old rag, and saw the slight girl in her green frock and sensible shoes. 'Gillian!' he exclaimed quickly.
She didn't turn. It infuriated her that he had always used her first name as though he had every right to do so. It infuriated her even more that his use of it now implied that he had dismissed their earlier encounter as though it had never happened.
She found that her fingers were trembling so much as she tried to insert the key in the lock that it fell to the ground. She stooped to pick it up, annoyed with herself for her foolish reaction to his unexpected presence in the car park. He had usually left the clinic by this time.
She knew he was walking towards her with the intention of speaking. She wanted to escape before he realised that she was flustered, much too aware of him, dreading another argument. She hated their angry encounters. It seemed that there had been so many of them. Why couldn't they be friends? Why couldn't he like her?
He reached her side as she opened the car door. 'Gillian…'
She glanced at him with dislike. 'I'm in a hurry,' she said coldly.
'Apologising only takes a moment,' he told her quietl
y.
Gillian's hackles rose. 'If you're expecting an apology from me then you're about to be disappointed,' she flared.
He smiled, rather wry. 'Wrong way round.' He hesitated, wondering why he went on wanting this girl with so little encouragement. 'I was too hard on you. I'm afraid I lost my temper. I'm sorry.'
Gillian stared. He was the last man in the world she would have expected to admit to being at fault. 'Oh ...' she said lamely, not knowing what else to say.
'I'm not sure what was actually said at the time,' he admitted, rather rueful. 'Far too much, I daresay. I hope you'll forget it.'
She was troubled by the muddle of her emotions as he stood looking down at her, almost but not quite smiling, almost but not quite friendly. It didn't occur to her that he was finding it very difficult to swallow his pride for the sake of a very unfamiliar feeling for a girl he scarcely knew. She merely thought that he found it very difficult to speak to her with any degree of warmth or liking.
He was an enigma, she thought heavily, torn between a lingering anger and that tug at her heart that was so inexplicable. She didn't understand him at all. She didn't understand what he did to her emotions, turning them topsy-turvy. It was too frightening, too much of a threat to her peace of mind and her hope of happiness with Robin or any other man. Perhaps it was just as well that they weren't friends or ever likely to be ...
She got into the car as though it was a refuge, a sanctuary. Certainly she felt safer with that little distance between them. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands so that she shouldn't be tempted to reach out and reassure him with a forgiving and perhaps betraying touch.
'I'm quick-tempered myself,' she said carefully. It was the nearest she could come to accepting his apology.
He rested a hand on the car roof and leaned down to her. 'Come and have some tea with me,' he invited. 'Then I'll know I'm forgiven. I'll take you to an old-fashioned tea-shop that serves the best cream cakes in the country.'
Gillian's heart thumped. He was the most unpredictable man she had ever known, she thought, shaken by the unexpected warmth of persuasion in his deep voice. How could any girl ever know where she was with him?
'Sorry. I haven't the time,' she said, starting up the car. 'Another day, perhaps ...' She kept her tone very light. She didn't want him to know that she was terribly tempted. She was level-headed enough to realise the dangers in yielding to even the smallest temptation where he was concerned.
He was too attractive. Even when she was hating and despising him and wishing she had never met him ...
Another rebuff—and richly deserved this time, Mark thought wryly, looking after the little Mini with the stubborn, spirited girl at the wheel. She was prickly with a pride that he understood because it burned so fiercely in his own breast, But that understanding didn't seem to be of much help when it came to overcoming it.
For the first time in his life, Mark was utterly at a loss when it came to a woman he had not expected to matter to him so much so soon ...
Gillian let herself into the flat that had quickly become home and unpacked the shopping that she had collected on the way from the clinic, trying not to regret her refusal of a cream tea. It had been an unusual kind of olive branch, she thought dryly. But Mark Barlow was an unusual man.
Thrusting him to the back of her mind, she busied herself about the flat until it should be time to dress for her evening with Robin.
Gillian hadn't seen as much of him as she would have liked, affection revived and memories stirred by their reunion. He was not only a busy doctor in general practice, he was also on several local committees. He was a keen member of the tennis club. He was interested in amateur dramatics and was currently involved in rehearsals for a production at the Civic Theatre. Since coming to live with his uncle in the bustling market town, he had made many new friends and found many new interests.
Gillian wondered if she could fit into his new life if she did marry him—and if there would be any room for her! She didn't doubt that he still loved her. Robin was the kind to love only once and for ever, she felt. She also felt that he managed to be reasonably content without a wife in his life. She might be a very useful asset. She didn't believe she was essential to his happiness. So perhaps she needn't feel too guilty if she decided that she didn't want to spend the rest of her life with him.