A Very Special Proposal. Josie Metcalfe

      With a strange sense that fantasy and reality had just become inextricably entwined, Amy’s heart almost forgot how to beat

      It felt almost as if she was turning in slow motion until she finally faced the man who’d been standing behind her.

      There was a weird feeling of inevitability as she looked up into those newly familiar dark eyes, but it wasn’t until she caught sight of that sleek dark hair that the pieces fell into place.

      Zach was a doctor? In her hospital?

      Dear Reader,

      How many times have we daydreamed about the people we went to school with, wondering about the girl who never looked anything but perfect and the gorgeous boy who didn’t even give us a second look? Have they led a charmed existence or are they now overweight, balding…just as ordinary as the rest of us?

      How about the bad boy? The one with the attitude and the leather jacket who rode a forbidden motorcycle.

      I don’t have to wonder about him because I married the dark-haired, dark-eyed bad boy who showed me how to hold on tight for my first pillion ride, and have spent years discovering that bad boys can be very, very good.

      Amy never saw Zach again after they left school and has always wondered what happened to him. Their teachers had predicted that he would end up in prison…or worse…but he’d stolen her heart when they were partnered in the labs at school. She’s never forgotten him, even though she’s now a successful E.R. doctor.

      And now, here he is, far from being the failure everyone had predicted, but a doctor, too, and the effect he has on her heart is more potent than ever.

      Her parents are still warning her against him, but this time Amy is determined to take a walk on the wild side.

      I hope you enjoy taking the journey with Zach and Amy as much as I did writing about it.

      Happy reading!

      Josie

      A Very Special Proposal

      Josie Metcalfe

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CONTENTS

       COVER

      Dear Reader

       TITLE PAGE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       COPYRIGHT

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘DID you see that programme on TV last night?’ Amy heard one of the junior nurses ask her friend as they chatted together during their break. ‘It was all about these people who had gone on the internet to look up their old friends and classmates.’

      ‘I caught part of it,’ her friend agreed. ‘The bit when they were saying how many marriages were ruined by people meeting up with their first loves.’

      ‘I can’t imagine having that problem with my first love,’ the first voice said with a laugh. ‘He was called Alex…something-or-other. I think he stopped growing any taller when he got to twelve—just when I started to put on a growth spurt. By the time we left school, I was head and shoulders above him even though he weighed twice as much as me.’

      ‘Perhaps it was kissing you that stunted his growth?’ teased a third voice, but, although she was smiling at their nonsense, Amy tuned out their conversation at that point, suddenly wondering how many of her old classmates were still around the area. She certainly hadn’t kept in touch with any of them, not once she’d left to go to medical school, and then she’d married Edward and their lives had been far too full of work-related social events—chances for her ambitious husband to ‘network’ with the movers and shakers in cardiothoracic surgery—to have had time to keep up with the people she’d known at school.

      It had only been fairly recently that she’d returned to the area, after she’d lost Edward, and she hadn’t really been interested in looking up old acquaintances…hadn’t been interested in any sort of social life at all, if she was really honest.

      Would any of the people she’d once known have signed up with one of those internet sites—presuming she ever worked out how to get into them? Her intermittent use of the internet was usually reserved for the same few sites devoted to medical matters, researching protocols for emergency treatment and checking the most recent drugs and their efficacy and contra-indications.

      Anyway, even when she had lived in the area she hadn’t known many people; even her classmates. She’d spent her last three years at school with her nose pressed firmly in her study books, determined to win a place at medical school. She’d allowed herself absolutely no time to think about boyfriends or…

      Liar! a little voice in the back of her head accused. There had been one boy…young man, really, at nearly eighteen years of age…who’d done more than catch her eye.

      ‘Zachary Bowman,’ she whispered under cover of the surrounding chatter. She felt the same twist of guilty pleasure deep inside that had scared her so much when they’d been teenagers assigned to the same bench in the science labs. It had happened every time she’d seen his profile outlined against the tall stark windows or had dared to meet his serious dark gaze…even when their elbows or shoulders had brushed innocently as they’d reached for a flask of reagent during an experiment or noting down their findings.

      He’d been every teenage girl’s fantasy of ‘tall, dark and handsome’ with an extra dash of ‘dangerous’ thrown in for good measure. She could still remember that his brown eyes had been so dark that they’d appeared as black as his hair, and as for that hair, it had been unruly, with a rebellious natural curl that had made her hands tingle with the urge to stroke the heavy weight of it back off his forehead to see if it was as silky as it looked.

      ‘The forbidden romance that never was,’ she murmured wryly, remembering that, apart from one notable occasion, they’d barely exchanged a word outside the classroom or the library. And that occasion was definitely better off being forgotten, if the heat of revisited embarrassment climbing her cheeks was any indication.

      Except she’d never really forgotten him, even though so many years had passed. Sometimes, months had gone by and any thoughts of him had been buried under the everyday load of a stressful job and a relatively high-profile marriage. But, still, she’d wondered what would have happened, whether her life would have been very different if she’d only had the courage to…What was the phrase? Take a walk on the wild side?

      Wild? Amy Willmott, née Bowes, the original over-achiever?

      Suddenly she had a disturbing insight into how her life must look to others and she almost laughed aloud.

      In comparison with her, plain boiled rice