The Real Fantasy Read online

  What had he done?

  About the Author

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright

  What had he done?

  Matthew watched from the attic as Linsey climbed out of her car, stretching her long, slender legs and shaking her hair out of her eyes. She looked hot and cross, he thought, and incredibly beautiful.

  Damn. If those jeans fitted her any tighter they’d cut off her circulation. She opened the trunk of her car and bent over, treating him to an inviting curve of taut bottom.

  He groaned and dropped his forehead against the glass. She was going to drive him crazy.

  Caroline Anderson’s nursing career was brought to an abrupt halt by a back injury, but her interest in medical things led her to work first as a medical secretary, and then, after completing her teacher training, as a lecturer in Medical Office Practice to trainee medical secretaries. She lives in rural Suffolk, England, with her husband, two daughters, mother and assorted animals.

  The Real Fantasy

  Caroline Anderson

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

  MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  PROLOGUE

  ‘How about this? “Busy general practice in bustling seaside town close to Lymington offers year’s post to trainee”—blah, blah—“ten minutes from the beautiful countryside of the New Forest” et cetera, et cetera.’ Tricia brandished her toast at the view through the window of the concrete tower block opposite. ‘Beats this dump. Why don’t you apply?’

  ‘Lymington?’ Linsey wrinkled her nose and scraped her long blonde hair back from her face. ‘Funny things happened to me in Lymington. I’m not sure I want to go back—it wasn’t my lucky place, really.’

  Tricia’s delicately pretty face screwed up with remorse. ‘Oh, Lord, yes, you nearly drowned. Sorry. Forget it.’

  ‘I fell off a boat into about five feet of water,’ Linsey said drily. She leant back in the chair, arms raised above her head, and twisted her hair into a knot at her nape. Murky, weedy water, covering thick, clinging mud that had nearly claimed her life. If he hadn’t been there—

  She released her hair and it fell, slithering down her back like golden rain. ‘It was no big deal,’ she lied.

  Tricia eyed her sceptically. ‘If you say so. Still, you’ve got to train somewhere and it sounds nice. Why don’t you apply? Perhaps you’ll meet your mystery doctor again,’ Tricia teased gently.

  Linsey’s mouth lifted at one corner in a reluctant smile. ‘Unlikely. He wouldn’t still be there—not after eight years.’

  Tricia sank neat, even teeth into her toast and looked across at her friend. ‘Why not?’ she mumbled.

  Linsey shrugged. There was no reason—no reason at all. Lots of doctors built up their practices in one place and stayed there for the whole of their professional lives. There was no reason at all to suppose that her mystery rescuer would be any different. The thought had a certain appeal...

  Linsey’s nose wrinkled again, but she reached across the breakfast table and plucked the professional journal out of her flatmate’s hand. ‘Where’s the ad?’

  The toast waved again. ‘There—middle of the page.’

  She turned her eyes to the advert. Tricia was right. The New Forest, with or without her mystery doctor, had to be better than the outskirts of Birmingham, especially for her with her love of the sea.

  There were days, working here in this landlocked community, when she thought she’d die for want of the screaming of the gulls and the tug of the salt wind in her hair. She hardly ever sailed any more, but she loved to. Perhaps she’d have a chance, if she got the job.

  She slid back her chair, then, scooping up the journal in one hand, she wandered out of the kitchen into the sitting room and curled up on the saggy old sofa, her long legs tucked up, bare feet under her bottom. Tricia followed her, plopping down beside her on the ancient sofa, her diminutive figure hardly denting it.

  Delicate, almost fragile beauty as she was, Tricia had all the tenacity of a pit bull terrier. ‘Going to apply?’ she persisted.

  Linsey shrugged again. ‘I might.’ She glanced at the date on the magazine, then at her watch. Today’s, and if she moved fast she might get the letter in the post before she had to be at the hospital. She was on duty this weekend and if she didn’t apply now she’d miss the boat. She had a copy of her CV and a letter of application ready in her computer. All she had to do was add the specifics of the job, juggle the wording a little to suit the occasion, print it and bung it in the post. ‘Yes, I think I will.’

  It took ten minutes. They drove to the postbox in Linsey’s car because it was the only one with petrol in it, posted the letter of application and went on to the hospital, arriving in the nick of time.

  They parted in the car park, Tricia for Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Linsey for Accident and Emergency. As she walked in, an ambulance screamed up to the entrance and within seconds the trolley was bowling through the doors, a paramedic working furiously to resuscitate someone while another ambulanceman ran alongside with a breathing bag.

  ‘Catch,’ Linsey said to the receptionist, threw her coat and her tote bag and followed the trolley down the corridor to Resus at a run. ‘I’ll take over,’ she told the paramedic, and her hands slid over his, picking up the rhythm immediately.

  ‘Intubate, please. Let’s get some monitor leads on here fast as well.’ She turned to the paramedic. ‘Right, do we have any history?’

  Flung head first into the grim reality of life and death, Linsey didn’t give Lymington, her mystery doctor or the letter another thought.

  ‘This one sounds good.’

  Matthew Jarvis ran his eye over the profferred application letter, scanned the CV and frowned.

  ‘What now?’ Rhys growled.

  He shrugged evasively. ‘I’m not sure we want a woman.’

  The big man sprawled across the sofa sighed with exasperation and stabbed his hand through tousled black hair, not for the first time. It had already suffered considerably throughout the sifting process they were engaged in.

  ‘Matthew, we need a woman,’ he said patiently. ‘With Rosie retiring, we have to replace her with a woman. If we get a sufficiently good trainee, we could take her on. We’ve agreed that. Most of the others we’ve pulled out have been women. Why pick on this one to turn into a misogynist?’

  Matthew grinned involuntarily and glanced down, a frown gathering on his forehead again. It was the name of the applicant that put him off, but he could hardly tell Rhys that without sounding like a totally off-the-wall nut case. He made himself read the letter again, and finally set it down on the miserably deficient ‘maybe’ pile. They really didn’t have a great deal to choose from, he admitted wearily to himself, and hers was the last letter—and the best.

  ‘OK, we could look at her,’ he conceded.

  Rhys unravelled his legs and stood up. ‘Thank God for that. Right, I’m going home, such as it is. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll go over them all again and draw up an interview list from that bewildering selection.’ His mouth tilted in a wry smile and, with a waggle of his fingers, he left.

  ‘Such as it is’. Matthew watched through the window of the little sitting room at the back of the practice as his friend and colleague went
out to his car, started it up and drove off. Was his home life falling apart still? Rhys and his wife had had a rough patch before the third baby had come along. Matthew didn’t suppose another batch of sleepless nights and postnatal depression was helping either of them. He made a mental note to pay Judy a social call one day, just to check up on her. He turned back to the table and picked up the top letter again.

  Linsey Wheeler. Unusual spelling. It was that, of course, that had set off alarm bells.

  The only other Linsey he had known had had a catastrophic effect on his life, quite literally. One chance encounter had changed the course of history for ever.

  A twinge of guilt and remorse plucked at him yet again, but he suppressed it. He had to move on.

  And that reminded him...

  He reached for the phone, jabbed in a number and leant back in the chair, the letter still in his hand. ‘Jan—I’m sorry. I’ve been held up at the surgery.’

  The voice at the other end was resigned. ‘That’s OK, Matthew. I understand.’

  He felt another twinge of guilt and remorse, this one from a different source and touched with irritation. If only she’d yell at him, rant a bit, act as if she cared.

  But he didn’t want her to, of course. What he wanted was her indifference, so that his own went unnoticed.

  His conscience prickling, he arranged to ring her in a few days, then hung up the receiver and turned his attention back to the letter.

  Linsey.

  His eyes lost focus, gazing far into the past—so far that fact and fantasy had blurred at the edges.

  She had had beautiful hair. That had been the first thing he’d noticed about her. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off it. Long, golden, falling around her shoulders like a glossy curtain, slithering over one arm as she turned her head and met his eyes.

  Green eyes. Jade-green, the colour of a tropical sea, crystal-clear and pure, not the murky, greasy sea he had plucked her from just moments later—the sea that had nearly claimed her life.

  A shudder ran through him. If he hadn’t been there, she might have died.

  And Sara would be his wife.

  CHAPTER ONE

  LINSEY felt marvellous. The sun was shining, the gulls were screaming overhead and the salt-laden wind was tugging at her hair. Standing on the waterfront near the Royal Lymington Yacht Club, listening to the gulls and the rhythmic slap of the rigging against the masts as the boats rocked at their moorings, she felt as if she’d come home.

  She looked over to the right, to the place where she had nearly drowned, and felt nothing. Good. She had been worried that it might unsettle her, but it didn’t. It had all been over so quickly—all except the image of those astonishing gun-metal-grey eyes, the colour of a stormy sea.

  She could still see his eyes as he’d bent over her, smoothing her hair back from her face, the gesture unexpectedly tender.

  ‘Who are you?’ she’d asked, her voice croaky and hoarse with the swallowed water, and he’d smiled like quicksilver.

  ‘My name’s Matthew. I’m a doctor. You’re all right now; just rest for a moment. They’ve called an ambulance.’

  ‘Stay with me,’ she’d begged, hanging on his arm, and so he had, his fingers laced with hers, his other hand smoothing her hair rhythmically. His voice had been deep and soothing—a reassuring murmur that gradually replaced the thunder of her heartbeat as it steadied.

  Then the ambulance had come and whisked her away, but the look in his eyes had stayed with her, warming her chilled body and dissolving her fear.

  He had visited her that evening, just briefly, bringing her flowers and refusing to stay.

  ‘My fiancée’s waiting,’ he’d said, and she’d felt a crazy and irrational disappointment.

  The following morning her parents had taken her home from the hospital, none the worse for her ordeal and only slightly sorry to miss the end of her sailing holiday.

  She had never seen him or heard from him again, but she had never forgotten him, or what he had done for her.

  She turned now and headed back towards her car, parked nearby in one of the quiet streets. Her interview was in half an hour, and she had to find the practice yet.

  She followed the signs through Lower Pennington to Milhaven, and then turned down a quiet, leafy road off the high street. About halfway along, amongst the dentists and the orthodontists and the premises of other GPs, she found the surgery.

  ‘Drs Jarvis, Farmer, Williams and Wilson’, it said on a shiny brass plate on the gatepost. A big, double-fronted Edwardian semi-detached house with tile-hung elevations, it was welcoming and friendly, with colourful hanging baskets and pots by the front door to welcome patients. There was parking for them in what had been the front garden, and a sign pointing round the back said, ‘Parking For Surgery Staff Only. Please Keep Clear.’

  According to the letter in Linsey’s bag, there were three men and one woman in the practice, with two nurses, a practice manager, two receptionists and a part-time accountant as well as the district nurses and midwives, chiropodist, dietician and physiotherapists attached to the practice, and the trainer was Dr J M Jarvis.

  She eyed the parking space at the front, then the sign pointing to the back. The surgery was obviously still busy, judging by the number of patients’ cars. She drove down the back, parked in the space labelled ‘Visitor’ and headed towards the front door.

  As she did so a head appeared at one of the windows on the ground floor in what looked like a little extension. ‘Dr Wheeler?’

  She stopped. ‘Yes?’

  The face smiled. ‘Come on in through the back door. It’s open.’

  She did as instructed and was greeted by the smiling face, this time attached to a plump, maternal body.

  Her hand was warmly shaken. ‘I’m Suzanne White, the practice manager. Come on in. The doctors are still busy in surgery at the moment, I’m afraid, but they’ll be with us soon. Can I get you a cup of coffee while we wait for them?’

  ‘Oh, please. That would be lovely after my journey.’

  She followed the short, plump woman through into the kitchen. ‘Have a seat, Dr Wheeler,’ Suzanne suggested, and Linsey made herself at home at the kitchen table. The coffee was real, from a filter machine, and smelled wonderful. Suzanne set two mugs on the table and pulled out the chair opposite; then, seated, her dumpy hands wrapped round her own mug, she chatted cheerfully.

  ‘Find us all right? It’s quite easy.’

  ‘Yes, no problems. The directions were excellent.’ She had guessed that the directions were from Suzanne, and, judging by the slight warmth in the woman’s face, Linsey thought she was right. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to be on the right side of the practice manager, she reasoned, quelling the little wriggle of guilt.

  ‘It gets a bit easier as the season comes to an end. The tourist traffic can make it all a bit confusing. Summer is usually the worst, of course. Do you know the area?’

  ‘Only slightly. I had a sailing holiday here once, years ago.’

  ‘Ah, a nautical type. Do you still sail?’

  Linsey shook her head and smiled. ‘No. I haven’t had much chance in Birmingham. I’d like to start again, though, and I love to be near the sea.’

  ‘Oh, so do I. I can’t go on it, mind—I get as sick as a parrot just thinking about it; but there’s something about the atmosphere—nothing else is quite like it, and nothing can take its place for me, summer or winter.’ She sat back, her smile warm and relaxed. ‘So, when did you decide you wanted to be a GP?’

  Linsey sensed she was being interviewed now, but it didn’t matter. The answer to this question was easy.

  ‘Eight years ago—down here, actually. I met a doctor under rather fortuitous circumstances.’ She gave a little laugh. Talk about understatement. ‘Anyway, I was eighteen, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and because there’s nobody medical in my family it just hadn’t occurred to me. It did then, though, and I realised it was the least I could do.’r />
  Suzanne’s brow creased. ‘The least you could do? In what way?’

  Linsey shrugged slightly. ‘I owed him my life, quite literally, and training as a doctor was the only way I could think off to repay the debt—put something back in humanity’s pot, if you like. It all sounds a bit melodramatic and crazy, doesn’t it, really? But at the time it seemed quite logical!’

  Suzanne laughed. ‘I’m sure it was, and it’s as good a reason as any for going in for medicine. I’m sure a lot of people have weaker reasons.’

  ‘I’m sure too,’ Linsey agreed, thinking of some of the people she had trained with. ‘Anyway, that was what I ended up doing, and thank God I did, because I discovered that I love medicine and I can’t imagine doing anything else. I just wish I could thank him. I owe him more than I can ever say. I really didn’t want to drown!’

  ‘Drown?’ Suzanne’s eyes widened. ‘I thought he’d detected some insidious disease or something!’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Linsey laughed. ‘I haven’t had a day’s illness in my life—well, apart from breaking my leg as a child. No, he pulled me out of the river.’

  ‘The river?’ Suzanne’s eyes widened even further. ‘Good gracious. Tell me more about this rescue. It all sounds terribly dramatic.’

  Linsey laughed softly. ‘It was, for a few short seconds. I’d had a bit to drink and I fell off a boat. He fished me out of the river at Lymington.’

  ‘I see what you mean about fortuitous! He really did save your life.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I wasn’t joking. I suppose any good swimmer could have got me out of the water and any first-aider could have revived me, and there were plenty of people there, so if it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else. That’s not the point, though. He made me think about medicine as a career, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  A snort behind her made her turn, and she looked up—and up—at a tall man with dark hair and laughing grey eyes. ‘Clearly you’ve not been in medicine. long enough. Still, you’re just starting. Perhaps in a few years you’ll be jaded like the rest of us. I take it you’re Dr Wheeler? I’m Rhys Williams. The others will be along in a tick, I expect, barring earthquake and civil commotion.’