The Celebrity Doctor's Proposal

She stared at him, drew breath and finally mentally reran the last few sentences. ‘Hold on.’ She lifted a hand as if to ward him off. ‘What did you mean when you said that your dad should have told me you were coming? Tell me he didn’t know you were coming. Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.’

Surely David wouldn’t have done that to her.

He couldn’t …

Sam leaned impossibly broad shoulders against the wall and looked at her, a trace of amusement lighting his blue eyes. ‘He’s been nagging me for more than three months, Riggs. Finally he resorted to emotional blackmail. ‘‘I need this break, Sam, and if I can’t find a decent locum I can’t leave poor Anna.’’’

His imitation of his father was so good that if she hadn’t been so horrified, Anna would have laughed. Instead she gaped at him. ‘Locum? You’re the locum?’ Her voice cracked and all her important bodily functions like breathing and staying upright suddenly seemed threatened. It had to be a joke. ‘You have a sick sense of humour, McKenna.’

He shrugged. ‘Better a sick sense of humour than no sense of humour at all.’ He gave her a meaningful look. ‘Now, enough chatting. You can thank me later.’ He straightened and waved a hand to the cameraman who was still hovering. ‘In the meantime, we have work to do.’

She clenched her fists in her palms. He was implying that she had no sense of humour. He’d always accused her of being too uptight. Of not knowing how to relax. Of planning every detail of her life.

‘What I mean is, there is no way your dad would arrange for you to be the locum,’ she said, her teeth gritted as she spoke. ‘He knows we’d kill each other.’

‘That possibility does exist,’ Sam agreed, stifling a yawn and moving past her with a loose-limbed stride that betrayed absolutely no sense of urgency. ‘However, I reckon that if you stay in your space and I stay in mine, we should just about manage to coexist without significant injury.’

‘Wait a minute.’ She elbowed her way past the cameraman and planted herself in front of Sam again. Strands of dark hair trailed over her face and she brushed them back with an impatient hand. ‘If you’re really the locum, why are they here?’ She glared at the film crew as if they were a disease and he muttered something incomprehensible under his breath.

‘They’re here because I have a job to do,’ he said bluntly. ‘Normally I’d be in London, filming a new series. It seems I’m spending the summer in Cornwall so we’ve had to make some changes to the programme. We’ve had to adapt. You ought to try it some time.’

At that point, the woman who had been hovering at a tactful distance stepped forward. ‘It’s going to be brilliant, Dr Riggs.’ She reached out and shook Anna’s hand. ‘I’m Polly. I’m the producer of this series of Medical Matters. When Sam told us he was going to be working down here, we decided to do a whole series on summer health. It will be fantastic. We can look at taking care of yourself in the sun, first aid—everything families should know before they go on holiday.’

Warm and friendly, she listed her ideas with enthusiasm, and in normal circumstances Anna would have liked her immediately. But these weren’t normal circumstances. And she couldn’t like anyone who looked at Sam McKenna with such blatant adoration.

‘This is a busy practice,’ she said crisply. ‘We work flat out to cater to the needs of the locals and at this time of year our numbers double because of the tourist population. We don’t have time for film crews.’

‘But that’s the beauty of it,’ Polly said cheerfully, ‘Sam already knows the score. He’s used to being filmed all the time. There’ll be very little intrusion, I can assure you.’

‘The patients won’t like it.’

‘The patients will love it,’ Sam predicted dryly, lifting a hand and shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘And if they don’t, they don’t have to take part. They always have the right to refuse to be filmed. But I can tell you now that they won’t.’

‘We’re going to do a variety of different things,’ Polly explained eagerly, ‘a straightforward Medical Matters from the surgery, which is our usual format, but we’re also going to film on location, do some first-aid stuff on the beach—that sort of thing.’

‘It sounds as though you’ve got it all worked out,’ Anna said frostily, her eyes on Sam who simply shrugged. ‘We need to talk, McKenna. And we need to do it now.’

Polly glanced towards the cameraman who was still hovering. ‘Perhaps we should film you discussing it—it might be interesting.’

‘Well, unless you want to film something which needs a warning for bad language and violence, I suggest you switch off the camera and go and have a cream tea in the village,’ Anna said sweetly, her eyes still blazing into Sam’s. ‘You and me. Inside. Now.’

Without waiting for the sharp comment that she knew would come, she turned and strode to the front door, unlocking it and letting herself in. Functioning on automatic, she switched off the alarm and picked up the post, aware that he was behind her.

‘Don’t you have a receptionist any more? What happened to Glenda?’ He peered behind the empty reception area with a frown and she gritted her teeth.

She didn’t need his comments on the way the surgery ran.

‘Glenda is sometimes a bit late,’ she muttered, dropping the post behind Reception, ready for Glenda to sort out when she arrived. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’

‘Late?’ He frowned, his expression suddenly thoughtful. ‘But she used to be the most punctual person in the world. Really dedicated. Why would Glenda be late?’

Anna bit her lip. She’d asked herself the same question a few times lately and she was steeling herself to address the matter with Glenda. But there was no way she was discussing this with Sam McKenna.

‘It’s really none of your business,’ she said coldly, and he gave a dismissive shrug.

‘Fair enough. Just didn’t sound much like the Glenda I used to know, that’s all.’

‘Well, you haven’t exactly been spending much time around here lately and people do change,’ Anna said tartly.

He ran a hand over his jaw, his expression thoughtful. ‘Have you tackled her?’

She gave an impatient sigh. ‘No. No, actually, I haven’t. If you must know, I haven’t had time to breathe or eat in the last few months, let alone sit down and get cosy with the staff.’

His eyes narrowed and his gaze swept her face. ‘That bad, huh?’

She gritted her teeth again and cursed herself for showing emotion in front of Sam. He would waste no time throwing it back at her. ‘Not bad. Just busy. And if it’s all right by you, I’d like to drop the subject now. When I need your advice, I’ll ask for it.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’ He hooked his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and lounged against the reception desk. He had a lean, athletic physique, honed to perfection by his obsession with dangerous sports. ‘You wouldn’t ask my advice if you were hanging off a cliff by your fingernails. You’re so crazily independent, Riggs, that you’d drown rather than ask someone to throw you a lifebelt.’

‘Then it’s a good job I’m not drowning,’ she said coldly, walking through to the reception area and automatically picking up some scattered toys and returning them to the basket. ‘And for your information, I’d take the lifebelt as long as you weren’t the one throwing it. Now, are we going to sort this problem out?’

He shrugged and stifled a yawn. ‘What’s there to sort out? You need a locum. I’m here.’

She straightened one of the chairs. ‘As far as I’m concerned, those two statements are not linked.’

He drew a breath and she lifted a hand to indicate that she hadn’t finished. ‘What I need, McKenna, is a serious doctor willing to do some serious work. What I don’t need is some image-hungry film-star medic with an over-inflated ego which is going to get in my way every time I try and see a patient.’

To her surprise and immense irritation, he smiled. An all-male, sexy smile that tugged something deep in her pelvis.

Damn, he irritated her.

Completely aware of that fact, he straightened up and strolled towards her, a dangerous gleam in his blue eyes as they swept her face. ‘Oh, boy, oh, boy, I really do unsettle you, don’t I, Riggs? Why is that, I wonder?’

‘Do you want a list?’ She backed away, trying to maintain her personal space. ‘And I can’t imagine this is exactly your idea of heaven either. Why did you agree to it?’

His blue eyes glittered. ‘I told you. Emotional blackmail on the part of my father. He was ill. He needed a holiday. He couldn’t find anyone else. That kind of thing. Tugs at the heart.’

‘You don’t have a heart.’

He grinned. ‘Ouch. Been reading my press cuttings again, Riggs?’

‘Hardly.’ Her glance was impatient. ‘The way you run your love life—or should I say sex life—is your business. But the practice is my business. Your dad certainly never mentioned to me that he was having trouble finding anyone.’

Sam gave a careless shrug. ‘Well, the fact is I’m here now. Make the most of me.’

She angled her head and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Excuse me? I’m supposed to be honoured that you’ve graced us with your presence? Let me tell you something, Dr Charm, I’m not at all convinced you’ll know a real patient when you see one. You see, here in real life surgery land, the problems aren’t staged.’

His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘Is that so?’