Questions of Trust A Medical Romance - By Sam Archer Page 0,63

okay guy, Tom Carlyle. No, you’re more than an okay guy.’ She lifted her eyes to meet his again. ‘You’re a quite wonderful guy.’

He watched her eyes, absorbed by how even in spite of her exhaustion they sparkled.

Tom opened his mouth, to say he was sorry. Sorry he’d got her involved in all of this in the first place. Sorry he’d been unappreciative of her help. Sorry he’d kept his feelings for her under wraps instead of shouting them from the rooftops. And he wanted to thank her. Thank her for her loyalty, her doggedness, her brilliance. Her kindness, and her compassion, and her grit.

And as he opened his mouth he saw her lips part, because there were things he knew she wanted to say too. That she shouldn’t have interfered, should have respected his wishes to handle his problems on his own… a catalogue of other things. None of which, really, mattered at all now.

They spoke at the same time, but there were no sorrys, or thanks, or anything of that sort.

What they each said, at the same time, was: ‘I love you.’

***

Chloe traced a fingertip down Tom’s profile, across the smooth, almost unlined plain of his forehead, down the slight curve of the bridge of his nose, across his closed lips, over the bump of a chin with its hint of stubble.

She returned her fingertips to his lips, and they parted a fraction, then swelled in a gentle kiss.

She was snuggled against him on the couch in his living room. It was a Saturday evening, and the detritus of a home-cooked meal lingered on the table. It needed clearing away, but not now.

It was a first for them. Their first proper date, for one. And the first occasion on which they had time to spend with one another, just the two of them, without fear of disturbance. Jake and Kelly were back at the cottage, under the care of Mrs McFarland. The older woman had been all too eager to babysit the pair. It was something she’d been offering to do for weeks now, ever since she’d… well, ever since Tom and Chloe had stopped pretending to anyone.

‘Ask Dr Carlyle what young Kelly will have for breakfast,’ Mrs McFarland said that afternoon.

Chloe replied hastily, ‘Oh, no, no, don’t worry. He’ll pick her up later. I’ll be back too. I’m not staying all night.’

‘But why ever not, dear?’ said her friend, innocently enough but with a wicked glint in her eye. Chloe laughed, exasperated.

Now, she nuzzled closer to Tom, relishing the warm aroma of his neck above the collar of his casual shirt, the heavy feel of his arm around her shoulders. He drew her against him and she felt his fingertips beneath her chin. She let him tilt her head back so that her face was lifted to his.

Their lips met, exploring delicately at first, then probing with increasing urgency. Chloe’s teeth pressed against his and she slipped the tip of her tongue between them. His own tongue responded to hers, wrestling it playfully. A slow, fierce heat began to spread from deep in Chloe’s belly in all directions, upwards to her breast and down into her loins, triggering a tingling in the most intimate parts of her.

She drew back, wanting to devour him and yet wanting to gaze at him at the same time. His face, so handsome and affable, had a relaxed purity about it that she’d noticed when she’d first met him, though she’d denied herself awareness of it then. It had disappeared, that look, in the terrible weeks of the early summer; but now, a month after the culmination of the saga, with Rebecca gone to France with her man and Tom back in public esteem, the Pember Valley News having had to publish a humiliating apology once the woman calling herself Sabrina Jones had admitted she’d told a pack of lies about Dr Carlyle… now, that serenity was back in Tom’s features.

If Tom had changed, Chloe thought, she’d been transformed. Not physically, but in so many other ways. In the last three or four months, she’d learned about country ways. She’d learned that nosiness wasn’t confined to fussy ladies of a certain age. She’d learned about the extremes to which obsession and a sense of grievance could drive a human being.

She’d learned that not all doctors were incompetent, or arrogant, or malicious. Probably not the vast majority of them.

She’d learned that trust was something that cut both ways.

She gazed into Tom’s eyes, and