A Savage Adoration

'Christy, my love, you can't know how much I've missed hearing your voice. I

miss you, Christy. Come back.'

She gritted her teeth together. She had always known that David was persistent when there was something that he wanted, but she thought she had made it clear there could be nothing between them.

'I can't come back, David,' she responded coolly. 'My mother is ill and she needs me.'

'I need you. God, how I need you! Come back, Christy…'

Her body had started to tremble. This was too much to cope with coming on top of her clash with Dominic.

'I can't, David.' She took a deep breath. 'And I wouldn't even if I could. I've already told you that. You're a married man. You know how much I like Meryl.'

'Oh, for God's sake!' she heard him swear sharply. 'Listen, Christy…'

Suddenly she panicked. 'No… no… I don't want to hear any more.' She held the receiver away from her, but before she could slam it down she heard him saying furiously, 'I'm not letting you go as easily as that. I want you… and I can make you want me…'

Even with the receiver held away from her, the words were plainly audible. She slammed it down, literally shaking with reaction.

'And that's your boss, is it?'

The shock of Dominic's hard voice coming from behind her made her whirl round to stare at him.

Correctly reading her expression, he added evenly, 'I just came in to say goodnight, on your father's instructions. I didn't mean to eavesdrop. Do you love him, Christy… is that why you've come running home?'

'He's a married man.' She cried out the words desperately, hating him for seeing her like this when she was so weak and vulnerable.

'I see…'

Surely that wasn't compassion she could see in his eyes. She shook her head disbelievingly and heard him say, 'If there's anything I can do to help…'

Eight years ago she had needed his help, but he had rejected her, and suddenly she wanted to throw that in his face, and to tell him that it was his fault she was the person she was now; that it was his fault that she was a twenty-four-year-old virgin with ridiculously unrealistic ideals of love and marriage, but common sense told her that the blame wasn't all his, so instead she stormed past him, saying bitterly, 'Stop trying to big-brother me, Dominic ; I don't need your help, either as a doctor or as a man.'

His face closed up immediately, and she was conscious of an unfamiliar hardness about it, an expression that warned her that he would be a dangerous man to push too hard.

'I'll say goodnight, then.' He paused in the act of stepping past her to the front door and said quietly, 'Just tell me one thing. Was he…' he gestured to the phone, 'the one who taught you to play chess?'

Briefly she frowned. 'No… no… he wasn't…'

What an odd thing to ask her. She was just about to ask him the reason for his question, but he opened the door and stepped through it before she could do so.

'Dominic gone, then?' her father asked, coming into the hall a moment later. 'He's a nice lad. Clever, too.'

Christy's eyebrows rose as she went into his study to collect the coffee cups. 'If he's so clever then what's he doing coming to work here as a mere GP? I thought he would have been better off staying in America?'

'Financially, maybe,' her father agreed, his expression slightly reproving. 'But the Savage men have been general practitioners here for three generations, and Dominic has a tremendous sense of duty. He always did have; don't you remember how protective he always used to be of you? We never needed to worry about you when you were in Dominic's care.'

'I would have thought he had more ambition than to want to spend all his life in Setondale.'

'Oh, he's got ambition all right. He was telling me tonight about his hopes and plans. He wants to try to raise enough money locally to buy and equip a local surgery that's capable of carrying out most of the more common operations. He's seen it done in the States and is convinced it can be copied here, and I think he'll do it, too. There's going to be quite a lot of work involved in raising the initial finance, of course, but I've promised to give him what help I can—oh, and I told him that you'd probably be prepared to take on the secretarial side of things for him. It's a very worthwhile cause, and I'm sure he'll be able to get a lot of local support. After all, it's going on for forty miles to the nearest hospital, and the sort of clinic-cum-operating theatre Dominic plans for Setondale could only benefit everyone.'

Her father's enthusiasm for Dominic's plans made it impossible for Christy to tell him that there was no way she was going to be involved in anything that brought her into closer contact with Dominic. She tried to comfort herself with the conviction that she was the very last person Dominic would want to assist him, but she couldn't help remembering that since his unexpected return he had behaved as though that final annihilating scene between them had simply never taken place. Maybe he could do that, but she couldn't. Every time she looked at him she remembered her humiliation.

Thoroughly infuriated and exasperated by her father's lack of intuition in realising that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Dominic, she carried the coffee tray into the kitchen.

CHAPTER THREE

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