A Father For Poppy. Abigail Gordon

world. Some of the Swiss Alps had actually seemed like the top of the world, but he’d had no chance to explore them because he’d always been too busy fulfilling his contract. He could no longer deny that he had been hoping for a different homecoming, and was plagued by flashes of memory of how things had once been between them.

      In her room just down the corridor Tessa was also remembering when she and Drake had first met. It had been at a hospital staff meeting when he’d come to talk about some advances he had made in his work.

      She’d arrived not intending staying long as her job was in Administration, but had been curious to see the man who was making a name for himself in eye surgery.

      He’d been chatting laughingly to a group of nurses who’d been hanging on his every word as they’d waited for the meeting to begin, and Tess had been struck by dark good looks.

      Having seen her arrive, he’d stepped to one side to get a better look and from the way his glance had kindled she’d known that he’d liked what he’d been seeing. Slim, elegant, with hair the colour of ripe corn, and wearing a black suit with a white silk top, Tessa Gilroy had been used to the appraisal of the opposite sex, but had rarely allowed it to proceed further than that. Her job had taken up most of her time and she’d accepted that.

      But the stranger, tall and straight-backed with eyes of warm hazel and a thick, dark pelt of hair, had seemed different from any man she’d ever met, and when he’d been introduced to her as Drake Melford she’d known why.

      His name had been mentioned frequently in medical circles because he’d been new, different, with a vivid, unorthodox approach that had got results, and she was to find that his attitude towards her would be the same.

      Their only contact on that occasion had been a brief handshake on being introduced, and when the meeting had ended she’d left, leaving him encircled once again by admiring medical folk.

      Her doorbell had rung at six the next morning and she’d found Drake Melford on the step. ‘I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’

      Barefooted in a white cotton nightdress, she nodded and stepped back to let him pass, as if welcoming a man she barely knew into her apartment at that hour was something she did all the time.

      She made a breakfast of sorts and they ate without speaking, eyes locked over every mouthful of food, and halfway through he pushed his chair back, lifted her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

      The first time they made love was rapturous. She was so in tune with his desires and the magic of his presence that it felt as if she had been waiting all her life for him to appear in it.

      For the rest of the time it was slower and more sensual, and when at last Drake lay on top of the silk coverlet with his arms behind his head, he said with a slow smile on his face, ‘Wow! I haven’t felt like this in years, Tessa. You are incredible.’

      It was then that they made the pact, still drowsy with fulfilment but not so sated that they couldn’t think straight.

      They would take it as it came, they agreed. No ties, no commitments, no promises. There would be no babies or mortgages…. An open-ended affair.

      And when Drake got dressed after that last time and slung his things into a couple of suitcases Tessa watched him in mute misery, eyes shadowed, mouth unsmiling. She didn’t speak because there was nothing to say. It had been what they’d agreed from the start … no ties.

      But one of them had discovered that they didn’t want it to be like that any more and it hadn’t been him. She’d fallen in love with him, totally and for all time, and to find him back in Glenminster and part of her working life was going to take some adjustment.

      Whether Drake’s life had changed since then or not, she didn’t know. But hers certainly had, because now there was Poppy. Poppy was the small bright morning star that Tessa had adopted after getting to know her while she’d been in the children’s ward in Horizons. On the strength of that, Tessa had done two of the things that they’d vowed to steer clear of all that time ago: allowed a child into her life on a permanent arrangement and taken out a mortgage.

      She had moved out of the apartment where she’d lived and loved so passionately, bought a cottage built of golden stone not far from the hospital and life had been good again because there’d been love in it. A different kind of love, maybe, but love nevertheless.

      Drake was standing by the window of the hotel room, gazing out to where theatres and restaurants were sending out a blaze of light onto the main street.

      In the background was the everlasting drone of the traffic that would be far more noticeable when daylight came, and was a far cry from the silence of the mountains and the soft white snows of Switzerland.

      But his yearnings weren’t for those. He’d left Glenminster without a second thought three years ago with an easy mind, because Tess had seemed willing enough to keep to the pact they’d made on the night they’d met.

      So why was it, he asked himself, that the moment his contract in Switzerland had come to an end he’d caught the first London flight available to be there for the meeting? And why had he hired a car to take him directly to the place where they’d lived and loved until his ambition had come between them?

      It wasn’t like he’d been expecting Tessa to be all dewy-eyed and panting to take up where they’d left off three years before. If he had, she would have soon put that misconception right when she’d seen him at the meeting and observed him so joylessly that the attention he’d been receiving from everyone else had seemed claustrophobic.

      If she was going straight home in the morning, would she let him give her a lift? he wondered. For all he knew, she might be turning the occasion of the AGM into a shopping trip or a theatre break and he could hardly go knocking on her bedroom door to question her plans after three years of silence and all that had passed between them …

      He had planned on making an early start because he had to find somewhere to live when he got to Gloucestershire. He wanted to be settled into some kind of accommodation before appearing at the hospital in his new role on Monday morning. So it would seem that unless they met at breakfast their first proper encounter would be at work, under the eagle eyes of their colleagues. It was hardly ideal, but they were professionals and they would make the best of it.

      It turned out that Tessa was already in the dining room amongst a smattering of other early risers when he went downstairs at six o’clock the next morning, and before he could give it another thought he stopped by her table and said, ‘I’ve got a hire car and will be leaving shortly. Can I give you a lift to Gloucestershire?’

      ‘No, thanks just the same,’ she told him levelly, in the process of buttering a piece of toast. ‘I have a seat booked on an early train. The taxi that I’ve arranged to take me to the station will be here soon.’

      ‘Are you still at the same address?’ he asked casually, letting the rebuff wash off him.

      ‘No, I’ve moved recently,’ was the curt reply, and then to his surprise she followed up with ‘If you haven’t got any accommodation arranged, there is the house in the grounds of the hospital that the retiring consultant has been living in.

      ‘The property was bequeathed to Horizons in the will of some grateful patient and is now vacant. I’m sure it could be made available to you if you wished.’

      Drake was frowning. ‘I don’t want any fuss, Tessa, I’m here to work.’ He realised his tone had come across perhaps a little harshly, so he added, ‘But I suppose living so near work could be very useful.’

      In truth, he was amazed. After her tepid reaction to his return he hadn’t expected her to do him any favours. He was the one who’d been a selfish blighter all that time ago and anyone observing them now would find it hard to believe they’d been lovers.

      ‘I will most certainly look into that,’ he assured her, dragging his mind back from the past.

      Meanwhile, Tessa’s