The Doctor's Cinderella. Susanne Hampton

please?’

      ‘Lizzy Jones,’ the young woman said. ‘My boyfriend likes red. He didn’t like red before he was my boyfriend. Now he likes red.’

      Molly smiled at the thought of the young man changing his favourite colour to match his girlfriend’s taste. Young love was so sweet and naive and something to be treasured as it rarely stayed that perfect. When the rose-coloured glasses came off the real man was rarely as perfect as he once seemed. She hoped for Lizzy’s sake her boyfriend remained as lovely as he was at that moment.

      ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Lizzy asked, breaking Molly’s train of thought.

      ‘Um...no, no, I don’t.’

      ‘You should have a boyfriend. It’s nice. You can share lunch and hold hands.’

      ‘I will give it some thought,’ Molly said politely, all the while thinking quite the opposite. Boyfriends, fiancés, they were all the same. They brought heartbreak and disappointment and she was not going back there. Not ever.

      ‘My dad doesn’t know I have a boyfriend.’ Lizzy giggled then covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I will tell him maybe next week or maybe at Christmas.’

      ‘It’s a long time until Christmas,’ Molly told her with her eyebrow arched slightly.

      ‘Mmm...maybe next week. I don’t know.’

      ‘That might be a good idea to let your father know you have a boyfriend. He might like to meet him. I’m sure he’s very nice.’

      ‘Shh,’ Lizzy said with her fingers at her lips and looking a little anxious. ‘You can’t tell when you see him.’

      ‘Don’t worry, I won’t, I promise,’ Molly replied with a smile, wondering if Lizzy’s father was parking the car or running late to meet her. Whatever the case she hadn’t hesitated to reassure the young woman. She had become visibly agitated and needed reassurance that her secret was safe. Molly could see no purpose in announcing to a complete stranger that his daughter had a boyfriend when it might be nothing more than puppy love. And none of her business.

      ‘Okay,’ Lizzy said before she crossed the room and made herself comfortable on a waiting-room chair.

      Molly sensed Lizzy was quite at ease with being in the practice, almost as if it were a second home to her. She checked the appointment schedule. Forty-five minutes had been allocated for Lizzy Jones, which was unusual considering the pace of the morning, and there was no reference to patient notes available online. She wasn’t listed as a new patient but she wasn’t in the records management system either. Molly found all of it unusual and decided she would raise it with Ryan later.

      There were no other patients waiting as they had been running early and the previous patient had just left. Molly glanced up periodically and noticed Lizzy had taken off her overcoat and neatly placed it on the chair beside her. She was happily swinging her legs and glancing around at the paintings on the wall. Sometime in the ensuing minutes while Molly was processing correspondence Lizzy made her way back to the reception desk.

      ‘Are your shoes red?’ Lizzy asked excitedly.

      Molly jumped with the surprise of having the young woman upon her again without warning. Then she cringed at the thought of her mismatched shoes. As a knee-jerk reaction to feeling more than a little self-conscious she placed one foot on top of the other. Quite purposely squashing the solo bow on her left foot.

      ‘Umm...’

      Before she had a chance to finish her reply a deep male voice came from somewhere close behind her.

      ‘Well, Lizzy, I’m looking at them now and they’re definitely not red. Actually, it would appear that Miss Murphy couldn’t quite decide whether to wear blue or black shoes today...so she chose one of each colour and threw in a bow of sorts...but only on one of them.’

      ‘That’s funny,’ Lizzy said with a wide grin that further lit up her happy face.

      ‘Well, funny’s one way to describe it,’ the male voice countered. ‘Another would be odd. Quite literally.’

      Molly didn’t turn. She was only too well aware it was her boss of four hours. The far too perfect Dr Ryan McFetridge. Charcoal-eyed, raven-haired, six-foot-two, sole general practitioner to the wealthy and privileged who happened to need a temp office manager at the same time that Molly needed a job, any job. It was her only option to ensure she and Tommy were not evicted by the week’s end. And that morning as she had stood in the rain watching the bus pull away a tiny part of her had feared that might happen.

      ‘Do you like to mix it up?’ the deep voice continued, bringing Molly back from her unsettling thoughts.

      Molly drew a deep breath, plastered on a smile and spun to face her boss. His perfect smile made the picture even more ridiculous. And made her feel even more self-conscious. She was bedraggled and he was standing so close with his leading-man looks, not to mention a voice as smooth as melted chocolate. She knew the type. He had playboy written all over him. But he didn’t impress her. Not in the least. Molly Murphy had sworn off men...and nothing was going to sway that vow.

      ‘Or was it a case of dressing in the dark?’ he continued as he stepped to the side a little and, opening one of the filing cabinets, began sifting through old hard-copy case notes. After finding what he wanted, he returned his gaze to her but said nothing.

      ‘Actually, you nailed it,’ she responded without expression in her voice or on her face. ‘I did dress in the dark this morning, quite literally.’

      ‘Power outage?’

      ‘Of sorts,’ she replied, not liking the fact he hadn’t broken eye contact. For some unknown reason, despite her showing no emotion, he was unsettling her. It wasn’t his line of questioning. It was his proximity to her. Through his clothes and her own, she could almost sense the warmth of his body. It was as if her own body was adjusting its thermostat to his and she was enormously relieved when he stepped away.

      ‘That would explain a lot.’

      Molly wasn’t sure what the comment alluded to but assumed it was her previously wet hair and clothes. Before she could take him to task on the meaning behind his remark, he popped the patient record under his arm and then asked Lizzy to follow him to the consulting room.

      As the two of them disappeared, Molly was angry with herself. Why the hell was she reacting to him being so close? She should be angry with him but instead she felt a warm wave wash over her and suspected her cheeks might be flushed. She was appalled and surprised.

      Molly had met Ryan briefly when she had first arrived, flustered and rushed. She accepted he was an extremely good-looking man but their meeting had been brief, and from a distance across the office as he’d taken an early arriving patient into his consulting room. She had been more interested in settling into the job with the assistance of the young nurse, Stacy, who was there arranging influenza shots and bloods. Molly just wanted to stay under the radar and unnoticed herself, rather than noticing too much about her employer. But suddenly, now, she had noticed far too much about him.

      The handsome medico was dressed straight from a men’s designer store, the kind of store filled with expensive leather shoes and every imported suit hanging an equal distance from the next on the rack, all covered with shoulder protectors, and assorted silk ties dressing shirts that were housed in open mahogany display cabinets. She knew the stores only too well. A year before, she and her fiancé had been regular customers of them. Her fiancé was quite the clothes horse and she had unwittingly been footing the bill. Ever since, the stores and the people who shopped there had held no appeal to her.

      And there was Dr McFetridge’s elegantly decorated consulting rooms in one of Adelaide’s most affluent eastern suburbs. The leafy side streets were lined with large, opulent, double-storey homes with return driveways and at least three imported cars while Molly’s home had no driveway, which was fine as she had no car to park in one anyway. She had sold it along with her jewellery to cover the bond on her home and buy some simple furnishings.