His Marriage Ultimatum. HELEN BROOKS

which was habitual. It had been a long time since he had felt such a strong sexual attraction for a woman he didn’t know, and he wasn’t altogether comfortable with it. He preferred his relationships to be fully under his control from beginning to end. At thirty-six years of age he was long past the stage of blind desire.

      He took a physical step backwards as he said, ‘I tell you what, prove or disprove my gut feeling about you. Okay? If you don’t ring I’ll put it down to experience and no hard feelings. But I’m already late for an important appointment and I have to go.’

      ‘Oh, right.’ He had taken her aback and she realised it was obvious from the slight smile touching the corners of his mouth. She hated the satisfaction it undoubtedly gave him as much as she objected to the mocking expression in his eyes. It would serve him right if she didn’t ring, she told herself angrily, her lips closing into a tight line. He clearly expected the whole human race to dance to his tune. One or two of her mother’s husbands had been men of the same ilk, and she had often thanked God her own father was different.

      ‘That’s settled then.’ He smiled, a confident, I-don’t-care-what-you-do smile that caused every muscle in her body to clench. ‘Goodbye, Miss Fox.’

      Miss Fox? Where had the Liberty gone? She was so busy dwelling on that she didn’t realise until much later he must have taken the trouble to look at her hand to determine the absence of a wedding ring. ‘Goodbye,’ she said hastily as he began to turn away. ‘And thank you for being so reasonable,’ she called somewhat belatedly as he strode away.

      ‘Reasonable is my second name.’ It was tossed over his shoulder and he didn’t turn his head; nevertheless she could tell he was smiling again by the tone of his voice.

      She had been a source of constant amusement to the man, she thought irritably, before immediately feeling a pang of conscience. Most people in his position would have been extremely irate to say the least, if not downright hostile. He had been courteous and pleasant despite the fact she had caused the accident which had now delayed him for some important appointment or other.

      So why had she felt such immediate antipathy towards him? she asked herself, climbing back into the car and relaxing in the driver’s seat with a small sigh as she shut her eyes for a moment. She wasn’t normally like this. She prided herself on the fact that she could get on with anyone. Well, anyone except her mother, she qualified silently.

      As her mobile phone began to ring she forced herself out of the reverie, reaching for her bag and checking who it was before she answered. Dad! If there was one person in all the world she wanted to speak to right now, it was her father. He had always been her mainstay; her anchor and comforter when she was young and her best friend and bulwark as she had grown.

      Despite being a single parent when Miranda had left them both for the financier when Liberty was just three years old, he had juggled a demanding job as a GP with being mother and father to a small toddler who had been thrown utterly at sea by her mother’s desertion. And never once had he indicated by word or action that she was a burden or that having her around curtailed his chances of meeting someone else. He had always been there for her, always sensing if she needed him.

      ‘Dad?’ She found she was biting back the tears as she spoke into the phone.

      ‘Hi, Pumpkin.’ The familiar voice was balm to her soul. ‘Fancy eating with the old man tonight?’

      ‘Tonight?’ She was surprised. They always had Sunday lunch together, cooked by her father’s housekeeper, Mrs Harris—a grim-looking individual with a heart of gold who had done her own share of bringing Liberty up—but today was Thursday. ‘I’d love to,’ she responded after an infinitesimal pause. ‘I’ve just bumped the car so seeing you would be a perfect pick-me-up.’

      ‘Are you all right?’

      The concern in his voice warmed her heart but made the tears begin to prick the back of her eyes again, and she had to clear her throat before she could say, ‘I’m fine, Dad, really. It was my fault. I didn’t check my mirror and caused some poor guy to clip my rear but he was very good about it. I’d just called to see Mother.’

      ‘Ah.’

      He didn’t need to say anything else; her father knew better than anyone how such meetings affected her equilibrium.

      ‘What time do you want me at the house?’ she asked, forcing a bright note into her voice so he would know she really was okay.

      There was the briefest of pauses and then he said quietly, ‘I wasn’t planning to eat at home tonight. The thing is, I’d like you to meet someone and I thought a slap-up meal somewhere might be nice.’

      Liberty held the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a second. In spite of the quietness of his voice there had been an underlying excitement there too. ‘Someone?’ she asked carefully as she placed the instrument back to her face.

      ‘An old friend. No, not really an old friend.’ Another pause, longer this time. ‘I don’t know if you remember Joan Andrews. She worked at the practice for a time when you were about seven or eight.’

      ‘Yes, I remember Joan.’ She had been the practice nurse, a small, homely body with apple-red cheeks and a wide smile. Liberty seemed to recall Joan and her husband had emigrated to Australia or New Zealand, she couldn’t remember which. ‘I thought she lived abroad?’

      ‘She did. They did, her husband and Joan. The thing is…’

      As his voice trailed away again, Liberty’s heart began to race slightly. He’d said ‘the thing is’ twice in the space of a minute; something was afoot. What was the thing? She asked just that but her father didn’t reply to this directly. Instead he said, ‘Joan’s husband was an alcoholic; that was one of the reasons they emigrated. He had a brother out there who owned a large farm and was prepared to take Joan’s husband on as manager. She was hoping it would be enough for him to give up the drink.’

      ‘Was it?’ She wasn’t quite sure why they were discussing Joan’s husband.

      ‘For a time, then he started drinking worse than ever. She stayed with him till the end. It was his liver that finally gave out.’

      ‘Right.’ She waited for the rest of it.

      ‘We fell in love, Liberty, all those years ago. Hard to believe more than two decades have passed. We never did anything about it, of course—she had her husband and she wouldn’t have abandoned him, it’d have been the death of him, and I—’

      This time she spoke into the pause. ‘You had me to look after,’ she said softly.

      ‘You weren’t an issue; Joan adored you,’ he said quickly. ‘She couldn’t have kids of her own; her husband had a motorbike accident just after they were married and the result was that all that side of their marriage was null and void. That’s what started him drinking apparently, poor devil.’

      Liberty found she didn’t know what to say. She’d had no idea her father had ever felt that way about Joan or Joan about him, but then she had been a mere child at the time. She tried to keep her voice normal when she said, ‘When did you meet her again?’

      ‘Two days ago. She just walked into the surgery.’ The lilt in his voice was back. ‘Her husband died three months ago and she’s been busy putting her affairs in order but now she’s back in England for good. She said she was making contact with old friends but as soon as we saw each other again we knew we felt the same. Absence really had made the heart grow fonder.’

      She could hardly take it in. Her father carrying a secret love in his heart all these years? But it explained a lot. He was a very handsome man with the added allure of being a doctor; she had seen women making goo goo eyes at him over the years. But he’d never been interested and now she knew why. Joan Andrews. She shook her head slowly in amazement.

      ‘I’m glad for you, Dad.’ And she was, she really was, in spite of the selfish little pang her heart had given at the knowledge that she wouldn’t be the number one person in his