And proved that he’d been right to walk away.
He was absolutely not the man for her.
‘Is everything all right?’ Agatha looked at him anxiously. ‘You seem very grim-faced.’
‘I’m fine. Everything is fine.’
And it should have been.
He’d ended a completely unsuitable relationship before it had started. He should have been feeling good about himself. But he was experiencing his first ever attack of conscience.
He’d hurt women before. Plenty of them. And it had never particularly bothered him. He’d always thought it more cruel to let a woman delude herself and spend hours waiting by the phone for a call that wasn’t going to come.
Fast and sharp, that’s how he would have wanted it, so that’s how he’d delivered it.
The difference was that he wasn’t doing this for himself. He was doing it for Flora and there was a certain irony in the fact that his first truly unselfish act was causing her pain. And he was in agony.
Suddenly realising that Agatha was watching him closely, he pulled himself together. ‘Do you have the central heating on at home?’
‘Of course. This is Glenmore.’ Her tone was dry. ‘Without central heating I’d be too cold to sit at the computer.’
‘Try logging on to somewhere warm,’ he drawled, examining her eyes carefully. ‘Mauritius is nice at this time of year. Central heating can make the irritation and redness a little worse. Tear secretion does reduce with age, Mrs Patterson.’
‘So do all the other secretions, Dr MacNeil.’ She gave him a saucy wink and Conner shook his head and started to laugh.
‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. What were you like at twenty, Agatha?’
‘I would have given you a run for your money, that’s for sure.’ She leaned forward, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to walk away from that beach after a night with me.’
‘I have no trouble believing you. All right, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to start by giving you artificial tears to use. It they don’t make a difference, I can refer you to an ophthalmologist on the mainland for an opinion.’
‘Can I contact him by email?’
Conner grinned and sat back down in his chair. ‘I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear from you. Try the drops first. They might do the trick.’ He studied his computer screen, clicked on the drug he wanted and printed off a prescription.
‘You’re a handsome one, aren’t you?’ Agatha gave a cheeky smile. ‘If I’d seen you sixty years ago, you wouldn’t have stood a chance.’
‘Now, that’s a pick-up line I haven’t heard before.’ Conner took the prescription out of the printer and stood up. ‘Try these. If you have no joy, come back to me.’
‘I certainly will.’ She took the prescription, folded it and tucked it into her handbag. Then she stood up. ‘The beach is still nice, you know. If you fancied paying a visit.’
Conner laughed. ‘Get out of here, Agatha.’
‘I’m going. I’m going.’ And she left the room with slightly more bounce and energy than she’d shown when she’d entered it.
* * *
Flora began to wish that Glenmore was larger and busier. After her last humiliating encounter with Conner she was the one avoiding him, if such a thing was possible on an island as small as this one.
She arrived at work, hurried to her consulting room and then straight out on her calls. She didn’t spend time in the staffroom and if she needed a doctor’s advice on a patient, she sought out Logan.
It should have helped, but it didn’t. She felt dreadful.
On the outside she looked as she always had—a little paler perhaps, but pretty much the same. But on the inside…on the inside she was ripped to shreds. She was mortified that she’d misinterpreted his actions and felt foolish beyond words for ever believing that a woman like her—boring Flora—could ever be attractive to a man like Conner.
He was a woman’s dream, wasn’t he?
She might be relatively inexperienced, but she wasn’t blind. Women’s eyes followed him wherever he went. That wicked, careless streak that defied the opinion of society was one of the very things that made him so appealing. He was his own person. As strong of mind as he was of body.