Mistress Of The Groom. Susan Napier

Collette—she had admitted it wasn’t her real name but ‘guys think it’s sexy’—offered some gratuitous advice.

      She shook her bleached head at the sight of the mangled hand, her crystal earrings clacking with outrage. ‘God, did that guy you were meeting last night do that? One of those, eh? Been there, done that, honey. Take my advice—dump him! And ignore any sob stuff—bastards like that never change...a few drinks and pow! They thump you and make you think it’s your fault.’

      Jane smiled weakly. For all his ferocious temper Ryan Blair wasn’t a physically violent man. He was an expert at more sophisticated forms of intimidation...like kissing!

      ‘You should have used the shoes,’ Collette advised. ‘We don’t wear them just ’cos they make our legs look miles long, you know. A stiletto in the groin can give a man a whole new perspective on life, know what I mean?’

      Jane nodded hastily, suspecting that the ‘we’ to whom Collette referred was a loose street-sisterhood engaged in a profession much more venerable than her own.

      Having cheerfully targeted a few more choice portions of the male anatomy where application of a stiletto could produce instant indifference to the idea of violence and/ or sex, Collette gave Jane the address of the nearest emergency medical clinic. On the back of a dog-eared medical centre card, prominently promoting its STD clinic, she wrote down the numbers of the buses that Jane would have to catch there and back.

      It was the first time Jane had been on a bus since her schooldays, but she was in too much pain to appreciate the novelty. The clinic’s crowded waiting room was also a first for her, and after a long, enervating wait Jane was relieved to be ushered into a bare office where a depressingly bouncy young doctor examined her and diagnosed a broken bone before sending her off to the X-Ray department ‘just to make sure I’m right’.

      ‘What does the other guy look like?’ he chirped forty-five minutes later, when Jane had come back with the X-Ray and he had clipped it to the light box to show her the thin, pale line unevenly bisecting one of the five long bones of her hand.

      A fleeting vision of a dark, handsome face, inky hair and piercing blue eyes made her heart give a nervous skip. Thank goodness the doctor wasn’t taking her pulse. ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘See this?’ He tapped the image. ‘You’ve broken the fifth metacarpal bone—the one that joins your wrist to your little finger—broken it right in the middle. Well, as far as I know there’s only one way to break this particular bone like that—with a blow. Ergo, you hit someone or something with real enthusiasm!’

      ‘Someone,’ admitted Jane, looking at the skeleton of her hand and wondering how such a tiny fracture could cause so much pain.

      ‘Any other injuries?’

      ‘No—I think I just split his lip. He roared like a wounded bull so I don’t think his jaw was broken or anything...’

      ‘I mean to you,’ the doctor said wryly. ‘Was it your husband? What did he do?’

      ‘Oh.’ Jane flushed at his assumption. ‘No, nothing like that...I mean, we hardly know each other. We’re just...’

      The doctor’s grey eyes suddenly sparked with recognition. ‘Just good friends? Hang on a minute.’ He spun aside and walked over to pull a broadsheet newspaper out of the waste-paper basket beside his desk—a national daily. He leafed through the crumpled sections until he found the one he was looking for and smoothed it out.

      ‘I thought I recognised you when you walked in.’

      There were two long photographs side-by-side—one a slightly blurred shot, obviously taken the moment after impact, showing Jane’s left arm at full extension and Ryan Blair, head snapped back, arms flung out, toppling across the restaurant table; the other, horribly crisp and clear, was a close-up of their seemingly steamy kiss in the street.

      Some wag of a sub-editor had headlined the pictures:

      SHE’S A KNOCKOUT!

      And the story underneath was wittily couched as a boxing match... ‘Weighing-in’. ‘seconds out’, ‘round one’, ‘the final bell’...

      Thank God the reporter obviously hadn’t bothered to go very far back in the files, for it was very much a ‘once-over lightly’ piece, dealing only with the tail-end of the Sherwood Blair feud and too full of deliberate boxing puns to be taken seriously.

      As Ryan Blair had predicted there was much sly speculation about business turning into pleasure, but there was no mention of Jane being the veiled woman who had aborted his wedding—probably thanks to the Brandons, whose damage control at the time had consisted of smothering the intriguing, ‘disappearing mistress in the hat’ story with urgent bulletins on the life-threatening viral infection which had caused Ava’s untimely collapse and subsequent withdrawal from society for a lengthy period of convalescence.

      Looking at the picture of herself wrapped in Ryan Blair’s bear-like embrace, her neck arched by the apparent passion of his kiss, her half-open eyes suggesting a dreamy bliss, Jane felt an unwelcome frisson of excitement.

      ‘Right, well...let’s fix that up, shall we...?’ The doctor became all efficiency again, directing her to sit on the edge of the examination table, drawing a wheeled trolley up beside him.

      ‘Do I have to have it in plaster?’ she asked, her heart sinking at the prospect.

      ‘Nope. Not this baby.’ He delicately lifted her hand. ‘It’s a fairly straightforward break so I’m just going to strap it to your ring finger to pull the bone straight while it heals.’

      ‘Just strap it up?’ It sounded too easy. ‘For how long?’

      ‘Probably three weeks.’ He touched her little finger and she winced. ‘Have you taken anything for the pain?’

      ‘Only a couple of aspirin last night...it was all I had in the flat.’

      His eyebrows rose. ‘You’ll definitely need something stronger than that by the time I’ve finished with you. You’re going to have an uncomfortable few days until the local inflammation eases and the healing process starts. I’ll give you an injection of local anaesthetic now and a prescription for painkillers that you can have filled at the clinic pharmacy. They’re fairly strong, so don’t mix them with anything else.’

      The anaesthetic was fast-acting, and Jane could watch in detachment as he tucked cotton wool between her little and ring fingers and firmly strapped them together, covering the adhesive with a short crepe bandage that encompassed her hand, leaving her thumb and other two fingers free.

      ‘That’ll protect the strapping and remind you and everyone else that you have an injury. Try to keep it dry and use the hand as little as possible. Don’t drive or do anything that puts a strain on the blade of your hand—the more you promote movement in the area the longer the bone’ll take to heal. And if the pain gets worse, or you’re worried for any reason, come back.’

      Jane frowned. Her father had been a stoic, but she was a weakling when it came to physical suffering. Perhaps it was something she had inherited from her mother, who had walked out on her husband and child when Jane was only six because—according to Mark Sherwood—‘She didn’t have the guts to make a go of it. Typical woman—would rather snivel and run away than stand up for herself when the going gets tough.’

      ‘Why should the pain get worse?’ she asked the doctor warily.

      ‘The most likely reason is because the strapping is too tight. But...sometimes, if there are complications and the bone doesn’t heal properly, we might have to ask an orthopaedic surgeon to operate. But it’s highly improbable in your case—unless you intend to try for another knockout!’

      Jane ignored this tactless attempt at a joke and studied her hand with its bulky wrapping. ‘Three weeks...’ she said gloomily.

      ‘Look on the bright side—at least it’s your left hand,’ he said.

      Jane