An Unexpected Proposal

There was so much he hadn’t had a chance to say to Maddy

He certainly hadn’t believed her when she’d denied loving him. Even if he had to abduct her and tie her to a chair, he would make her listen. She looked so distant, and he felt completely lost. He could see he was losing her.

“Please, Maddy. Tell me what to say to make it better,” he said, his arms aching to hold her. “I’ve never felt this way before. Never. And it’s because of you. Loving you makes me want things I’ve never wanted before.”

Madeline swallowed a lump of emotion. His voice was husky with passion. The plea in his voice unmistakable. He sounded genuine and, despite the dictates of her sensible brain, her heart was flowering. His earlier declaration of love and his admission that he wanted to have babies with her had been like welcome rain nourishing fragile petals.

But at the same time her brain urged retreat. How could she put her heart out there again? She’d taken a risk with him and his heat and his passion had warmed her all the way through, and it had been fantastic while it had lasted. But could she trust him?

Dear Reader,

Opposites attract. That’s what they say, isn’t it? As a writer, this is a fascinating premise. What if two people, complete opposites in every way, were attracted to each other—does the attraction win out despite the differences?

Out of this foundation, Madeline and Marcus emerged.

Conservative, in control Maddy. A gorgeous, career-focused woman who knows what she wants out of life. A job that she loves and marriage with two point four kids.

And Marcus. The complete opposite. Sexy, flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, thrill-seeking, footloose and fancy-free Marcus. Sworn off marriage for life and perfectly happy to always play “the uncle.”

Then I asked the question—what if? What if I threw them together? What if I gave them two vastly different jobs that were philosophically incompatible: conventional versus alternative medicine? Such a hotly debated topic and one with two very passionate and opposite camps, especially in the guise of Madeline and Marcus.

The only thing these two have in common when their worlds collide is an inexplicable instantaneous attraction.

Marcus is everything Madeline doesn’t want, but all she needs. Madeline is everything Marcus most definitely wants, but does a footloose, fancy-free man really need any woman?

Woohoo! It’s a hot time in an old Brisbane town when these two clash swords. I hope you enjoy their story and rejoice in their triumph over their differences to prove love really does conquer all.

Love,

Amy xxx

An Unexpected Proposal
Amy Andrews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Vicki Williams, homeopath, dedicated professional.

Many thanks for your time and expertise.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

MADELINE HARRINGTON was grateful for the air-conditioning in her car as she pulled up at the roadworks. There was heavy earthmoving machinery blocking the way and as the heat rose in visible waves off the black tar of the road she’d never been more pleased to have an indoor job. The worker holding the stop sign looked hot and sweaty, his skin an unhealthy weathered brown. Skin cancer just waiting to happen, she mused absently.

It was hard to believe, watching Brisbane shimmer in the afternoon sun, that she’d been in the throes of a British winter only twenty-four hours ago. Jackets and gloves and woollen hats. As she’d flown out of Heathrow the temperature had just managed to struggle into positive figures. If London had been a fridge, Brisbane felt like a furnace!

She yawned and shut her eyes briefly as the overwhelming fatigue of jet lag took hold. She sighed as it gathered her into its folds but fought her way out again a minute later. Her eyes felt like they had sand embedded in the lids and she rubbed at them to ease the grittiness. The road blockage didn’t look like it was going to clear any time soon and she sighed impatiently. She wanted a shower. She wanted her bed.

Her gaze wandered to the neighbourhood skate park where teenagers rode their skateboards up and down the curved cement walls. The doctor in her saw all the horrible possibilities but the uncoordinated female admired their skill and lack of fear.

A man entered her line of vision, expertly negotiating the bumps and ramps and shooting up off the wall, his skateboard staying miraculously attached to his feet even in mid-air, and landing again like he was riding a wave instead of unforgiving concrete. He was at least twenty years older than the other riders but somehow managed not to look ridiculous despite the age difference.

He was wearing a raggedy pair of cut-off denim shorts and nothing else. His chest was magnificent, tanned, the abdominal muscles well defined—cut, wasn’t that what it was called these days? He pirouetted perfectly, one end of the board in the air, the other grounded, and her eyes were drawn downwards to his powerful quads that flexed and strained to maintain perfect balance.

She could see the hairs covering his legs were dark brown even from this distance. They matched his colouring. His head, too, was covered with brown hair, short around the back and sides and longer on top. Why isn’t he wearing a helmet? Macho idiot. A smattering of the same covered his pecs and narrowed to a fine trail that disappeared behind the waistband of his shorts.

He looked like the stereotypical bronzed Aussie, at home in the outdoors, kicking a footy or surfing. Except today his choice of wave was concrete instead of water. Maybe he was some kind of adrenaline junkie—any wave would do?

The thought horrified her almost as much as it fascinated her. How would it be to spend your life bumming around skate parks? Or the beach? No responsibilities. No worries. No patients to see. No lives to be responsible for. No beepers. No mobile phones.

Looking at him made her…restless. A feeling that something was seriously missing from her life reared its ugly head and was magnified by the stranger’s utter joy in the adrenaline-charged thrill.

He appeared to be with a little boy who looked about six or seven. His son? There were definite similarities between the two. The boy looked at him with total admiration and the man ruffled his hair as he helped him on his skateboard. He stood back as the boy performed a trick and clapped loudly as he successfully completed it. At least he’s wearing a helmet. The man lifted the boy up on his shoulders and spun him around. The little boy held on and laughed, his head thrown back, the sunshine accentuating his exhilaration.

Madeline felt a weird pull low down in her gut. The man had dimples. He was gorgeous! Pure male. One hundred per cent testosterone. She felt her body responding to his magnetism. The boy obviously loved him and strangely enough that made him even more attractive.

Oh, God! She must be tired. Since when had macho hemen been her type? Spoken for he-men at that? She glanced back at the roadworks, suddenly desperate to get away from this inexplicable transient attraction, but the red stop sign was still stubbornly facing her way. She glanced back at skater boy and found herself wondering what it would be like to be with a man like him.

Despite the unemployed look, there was a presence about him that reached across the fifty-odd metres that separated them. He looked like he knew what he was doing. What he wanted and where he was going. He looked dominant and in command. He laughed again as he jumped back on his board and she recognised something else about him. He looked like he knew how to have fun. To laugh at the world and himself. He looked like he knew how to kiss. How to please. How to pleasure.

She shivered and reached forward to turn the air-con down. Kiss? Pleasure? Where had that come from? OK, it had been a while. It had been seven weeks since she and her fiancé had split up, and several months more since they’d last been intimate. But hell, that had never really been the focus of their relationship anyway and re-establishing the practice had taken up all her time and energy over the last two years. She hadn’t had time for carnal thoughts.

Neither of them had. They’d barely seen each other for months, with her work and his long shifts at the hospital and studying for his exams. Him calling the engagement off in the middle of it all had been just one more thing on her plate. She’d been confused when he’d said he needed time apart. How much more apart did he want? But she doubted it would be permanent—a decade of history was hard to walk away from for ever.

Skater boy laughed again and oozed sex appeal all over the park. It brought her temporarily out-of-order relationship with Simon into sharp contrast. Frankly, she couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, just looking at Simon had made her think sexual thoughts.

She shook her head. Jet lag—that was it. It was responsible for these uncharacteristic thoughts. Sex and sexual urges had never ruled her life. She’d been thrown one too many curve balls to be a free-loving kind of girl. For goodness’ sake! She was a thirty-year-old doctor, she’d seen more naked men in her life than she’d had hot dinners—why should looking at barely dressed skater boy have an effect? Why did his chest and his thighs and his laugh make her want things she’d never wanted before?

A car horn blasted behind her and she looked back to the road to see the sign had been turned to the yellow ‘slow’ side and she accelerated away quickly, grateful for the respite from her jumbled jet-lagged thoughts. She caught a glimpse of the man again in her rear-view mirror and felt the feeling of discontent he had stirred intensify. Damn him. Her life was just fine.

Just. Fine.

Madeline pulled up outside work a few hours later. She’d unpacked. She’d had a shower. She felt slightly revived. But the fog of fatigue still clung to her and she’d known she’d had to get out of the house before she’d succumbed to her bed and the seductive lure of sleep.

It was way too early to go to bed despite her exhaustion. If she went now she’d be awake at three in the morning with no hope of going back to sleep. So a quick catch-up trip into work late on a quiet Saturday afternoon was the perfect diversion.

She noticed the next-door shop, which had been empty when she’d left, was in the process of a fit-out. A painter was admiring his handiwork, putting the finishing touches to the signage on the glass sliding door.

‘Dr Marcus Hunt,’ it read. ‘Natural Therapist.’

Madeline stared at it for a few moments, repeating it over and over in her head until her sluggish brain computed the full implications. She felt the slow burn of rising anger.

‘Over my dead body!’

There was nothing quite like anger to wake you up. She felt it white and hot and burning in her gut. She felt more than awake, she felt alive again. The fog cleared from her brain and the weariness that was deep within her bones dissipated in an instant.

How many patients had she ‘fixed up’ after they’d seen alternative medicine characters? People who had let their conditions and diseases run out of control while some charlatan had used voodoo or a spell book and given them false hope? And then there was Abby.

She’d see about this! She brushed abruptly past the painter, slid back the door and entered the room. She blinked, removing her sunglasses as her eyes adjusted to the dim light in stark contrast to the glare of a summer’s afternoon in the Sunshine State. The chemical smell of paint assaulted her nostrils as she quickly scanned the room littered with boxes and painters trestles.

‘I’m sorry, we’re not open for business until next week.’ A deep, masculine voice drifted towards her from somewhere beyond the clutter of the immediate surroundings.

It resonated around the room and Madeline felt goose-bumps break out on her arms despite the stuffiness of the room. His voice made her think of the guy at the skate park and she gave herself a mental shake.

The man entered from a doorway to the right and leant lazily against the jamb, filling the space easily. She almost did a double-take as skater boy smiled at her and Madeline was pinned to the spot by his laughing blue eyes and boyish dimples.

He was dressed this time. Well, more dressed anyway. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt, completely unbuttoned, revealing that perfectly muscled abdomen. The impulse to touch him, run her fingers down the dark trail of chest hair and watch his abdominal muscles twitch beneath her nails was shocking.

His face was rugged, with a square jaw covered in light stubble. His dimples should have looked ridiculous on anyone older than five but they didn’t. They added to the alluring mix of pure man, giving him a shot of angelic boy.

In his right hand he held a well-used paintbrush and she thought absently that she’d been wrong about his employment status. He did have a job. A painter, or decorator, or something similar. He had some flecks of paint in his hair and the desire to touch them was compelling.

She couldn’t help but compare him to Simon. Physically they weren’t too dissimilar. Her ex-fiancé was a little shorter, a little less bulky, a little paler and his chest hair a little sparser. But there was something intangible about this man, something quite magnetic that frankly Simon just didn’t have.

Simon’s face was pleasant to look at, with a ready smile that put you at ease and oozed nice. Skater boy’s was sexy with a wicked smile that put you on edge and made you forget nice. Simon was your average good-looking guy. There was absolutely nothing average about this man. And in their whole ten years as a couple Simon had never made her body hum like it was right now.

Madeline frowned, confused by her uncharacteristic thoughts. Labourers were not her type. Buff wasn’t her type. Men that knew their way around skateboards weren’t her type. Men with children weren’t her type. What the hell was happening to her?

‘May I help you?’

His voice was rich and deep and barely contained his obvious amusement at her appraisal. She was standing a few metres away but Madeline could feel the caress of the air currents, disturbed by his voice, swaying seductively over her. It was as if he had physically touched her.

She blinked at him blankly, trying to remember why she was there. His amused gaze eventually worked its way into her consciousness and she made an effort to pull herself together. So, the man had a nice body. She’d come to talk to the naturopath, not to ogle the removalist or the decorator or whoever in the hell this man was.

‘Ah…no. I came to talk to Dr Hunt, but it appears he’s not here…so I’ll let you get back to your…duties.’

Marcus smothered a smile, suppressing the urge to throw back his head and laugh out loud. Put in your place, Marcus, old boy! The woman had just looked him over, summed him up and dismissed him as nothing in about thirty seconds flat! What a snob, he thought. What a sexy, beautiful snob.

She was tall and her head was crowned with the most magnificent red hair he’d ever seen. It was curly and looked slightly wild despite her efforts to tame it into a neat bundle at the back of her head. He had a sudden vision of it spread over his chest and he blinked.

Her emerald-green eyes sparkled above high cheekbones and two luscious lips. Kissable lips. Very kissable lips.

Her serious, obviously expensive suit did nothing to hide her fantastic figure. He felt his loins stir as he speculated on the bits of her long legs that were hidden by her skirt. She looked prim and proper and he was hit by the urge to get her dirty and messy. It was powerful, bordering on primitive.

She looked tired but there was an undercurrent, a vibe of tension around her that was almost palpable. Like a fully wound spring ready to unfurl at a second’s notice. He’d never met anyone so uptight in his life. A large diamond flashed on the ring finger of her left hand. Surely someone getting regular sex couldn’t be this tense?

‘I’m Dr Marcus Hunt,’ he stated, burying his left hand deep into his shorts pocket.

Madeline watched the movement hypnotically, until she became aware that she was staring at a particular part of his anatomy that she shouldn’t be staring at. She dragged her eyes away, shocked at herself. She could see that he found her amusing. His grin, barely suppressed, added a sparkle to those blue, blue eyes.

‘You’re Dr Hunt?’ she enquired with just the right amount of mingled sarcasm and disbelief. She had to get back some control here.

‘Yes.’ He swapped the paintbrush to his left hand, wiped his right on his denim-covered buttock and offered it to her.

She ignored it. Her rudeness seemed to amuse him even further and Madeline got the impression that nothing fazed Marcus Hunt.

‘And you are?’

‘Madeline Harrington. Dr Madeline Harrington.’

‘Ah…from next door.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll be neighbours, then.’ The thought, despite the bling on her hand, was immensely appealing.

‘Ah, no…I don’t think so,’ she stated with just the right amount of disdain.

‘Oh?’ he queried, not particularly worried. ‘Problem?’

‘Two, actually. One…’ Madeline counted on her hand ‘…I object, most strenuously, to you using the title of Doctor. Naturopaths or any other alternative medicine nuts are not permitted to call themselves doctors.’

‘They can if they hold a medical degree,’ he stated matter-of-factly. ‘And I’m a homeopath, actually.’

‘You’re…you’re a real doctor?’ Madeline spluttered in disbelief.

He threw back his head and laughed at the frank incredulity obvious on her face.

The long column of his neck was exposed to her view and, despite her embarrassment, an errant brain cell dared her to lick it.

‘Is that so hard to believe?’

‘Quite frankly, yes,’ Madeline admitted. He didn’t look like any kind of doctor she had ever known. Her father had been a doctor, his two nearing-retirement partners were doctors. Simon was a doctor! Those men were what doctors looked like.

‘I believe there was a second…?’ Marcus prompted after some time had elapsed and Madeline hadn’t continued.

She made a supreme effort to drag her eyes away from his mouth and concentrate on the conversation.

‘Yes. Secondly…’ she cleared her throat, her chin jutting determinedly ‘…it will be a cold day in hell before I will allow you to practise this…quackery, this medieval…mumbo-jumbo, right next door to our practice. My partners and I will not legitimise this hocus-pocus by allowing you premises next to ours.’

Marcus stared intently at Madeline Harrington, listening carefully as she laid down the law. Two red spots of colour stained her cheeks and there was a breathy quality, almost a tremble, making her voice husky. He wondered what it would be like to have her breath trembling against his skin. His loins stirred again and he had to remind himself she was not on the market.

‘And just how do you propose to stop me, Maddy?’

She opened her mouth to lay down exactly how she intended to stop him and stopped abruptly at his casual familiarity. No one, but no one had called her that since Abby. Sorrow and pain lanced through her as an image of her younger sister formed in her mind. Why did it still have the power to take her breath away?

‘The name is Madeline,’ she snapped.

‘Maybe. But I think I’ll call you Maddy anyway,’he stated, and enjoyed the glitter he caused in her emerald depths.

‘You won’t be getting the chance, Dr Hunt. You’re being evicted first thing Monday.’

‘I have a lease, Maddy.’

Madeline laughed coldly even as her insides melted at the way he said her name. Almost a sigh. A purr. ‘My partners and I own this building, Dr Hunt. Once they discover that a quack has set up shop next door, you won’t last five minutes. Not even your magic wand will be able to help you. Why not leave graciously now? Go perform your witchcraft elsewhere.’

Madeline glowed triumphantly, having placed her trump card on the table. He smiled back at her, obviously unconcerned.

‘Why stop at eviction, Maddy? Why not just burn me at the stake and be done with it?’ he enquired softly.

‘Don’t tempt me.’

Oh, she tempted him all right. ‘What are you afraid of? Have you forgotten that Hippocrates was a homoeopath? Surely this world is big enough for both conventional and alternative medicine?’

‘Not in this street it isn’t.’ Madeline turned on her heel, head high, and made for the door.

He chuckled. ‘See you, Maddy.’

She shivered despite the blast of invading heat.

‘Count on it,’ she muttered, and stepped into the street.

Madeline breathed in great refreshing gulps as she walked the short distance next door to the GP surgery. She was quaking inside at the confrontation with Marcus Hunt and confused at the nagging sense of longing still crashing around inside her from when she had first spied him on his skateboard.

She let herself through the front gate of the inner-city terrace house that had been given a recent facelift, as had all the terraces in the area. The practice had been here for almost all of Madeline’s life, her father having bought the row of five terraces before she’d been born and setting up with two other partners. The practice now took up two of the terraces, then there was the soon-to-be-empty-again one next door and the last two were leased by solicitors.

She looked at the gold lettering on the wooden door—Dr Blakely, Dr Baxter, Dr Harrington and Dr Wishart. Strangely, today she didn’t feel the pride seeing her name in gold lettering usually engendered. She felt…disconnected. Unfulfilled.

She shook her head to clear the vague feeling of disquiet. Madeline had never wanted to do anything else. Most of the people that she’d been through med school with had been horrified at her lack of ambition. They’d been keen to specialise in the more glamorous areas of medicine. But she had grown up seeing the difference a good general practitioner could make to their patients’ lives and had never considered anything else. And after her father’s death she had grown even more determined to continue his legacy.

She pushed the door open. There was twenty minutes before closing.

‘Madeline! Oh, my God,’ squealed an excited Veronica from behind the front desk. The receptionist jumped from her chair and enveloped Madeline in an enthusiastic hug.

Veronica was one of the changes that Madeline had made since starting at the practice. Reasons for dwindling patient numbers had been multi-factorial, the new twenty-four-hour health centre in the next block being one but an aging reception staff not helping either. Veronica was twenty-five and a total godsend. She was bright and perky with a sparkly personality. The patients adored her.

‘Fine,’ Madeline responded distractedly. Not even Veronica’s enthusiasm could curb her indefinable restlessness. ‘Who’s on today? George, Andrew or Tom?’ Madeline asked, looking around at the empty waiting room.

‘George. He’s at a house call.’

George Blakely had been her father’s partner since the dawn of the practice. He and his wife Mary had also taken Madeline and Abby under their wing when their parents had died within a year of each other in Madeline’s final year of high school.

Andrew Baxter had also been one of the founding partners. Thomas Wishart was a newer edition, a thirty-three-year-old father of four, brought in by Madeline a year ago. He was an excellent practitioner who Madeline had first met at med school. They had desperately needed new blood to bring in new clients and Thomas, who lived locally, had been perfect.

Both George and Andrew would be retiring in the next five years so it was important to put strategies in place for that eventuality. Thomas had been an excellent start. The practice was building back up again and Madeline hoped that it would be thriving when George and Andrew hung up their stethoscopes.

‘Quiet day?’ Madeline asked.

‘Forget that!’ said Veronica, her blue eyes sparkling merrily, ‘tell me all the gossip. I want to know everything!’

‘I went to an international general practitioners’ symposium, Veronica. No gossip to tell.’

Veronica rolled her eyes. ‘In London, Madeline, London! Don’t tell me you didn’t take my advice?’

Madeline smiled. ‘About the rebound sex?’

Veronica nodded her head vigorously. ‘Those English lads love Aussie girls.’

‘Ah, it’s not really me, Veronica.’

‘Well, of course it’s not,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘That’s the point. Simon dumps you just before a six-week overseas working holiday. It’s perfect for rebound sex. Anonymity. Perfect.’

Madeline smiled at Veronica’s grab-life-by-the-balls attitude and envied the younger woman. She herself was more tiptoe through life cautiously. One-night stands, rebound sex…she’d been with one guy for ten years. And, besides, their split was just temporary.

‘I didn’t really fancy anyone,’ she said lamely as Veronica continued to look at her expectantly. Now, if Marcus Hunt had been there…

‘Madeline,’ Veronica sighed.

‘Hey, no one offered either,’ she said defensively.

‘I don’t reckon that helped,’ said Veronica, tapping Madeline’s ring with the end of her pen.

Madeline looked down at the two-carat diamond. It had been part of her hand for four years, and even if it was really over between them, she wasn’t ready to take it off yet. And truth was, it did keep men away. If she counted Simon, that was four people she’d loved and lost, and she wasn’t sure she would be capable of ever loving again. She felt emotionally frigid. Her heart buried in a block of ice.

She glanced at her watch. It was five. ‘Why don’t you go home? It’s time. I’m going to do a bit of catching up, I’ll lock up on my way out.’

‘OK, I get it, I get it. Mind my own business,’ Veronica grumbled good-naturedly as she gathered her stuff. She gave Madeline a quick peck on the cheek and left.

Alone, Madeline walked around the surgery, absently re-familiarising herself with the tastefully decorated waiting area. She checked the appointment book and whistled out loud, recognising quite a few of her regulars. It was going to be a busy Tuesday! Her colleagues had insisted she didn’t start work again until then, to fully recover from her jet lag.

Madeline felt the odd restlessness again and found it difficult to concentrate on the book. She yawned—she was tired but it was still too early for bed. She wandered into her office and sat in her chair. She picked up the various drug company ‘toys’ she kept on her desk to amuse children and opened her drawers, checking she had plenty of prescription pads and stationery.

The checks done, she sat back in her ergonomically designed black leather swivel chair and her tired mind drifted to Marcus Hunt. She saw the flecks of paint in his hair and heard his wicked laugh, and her nipples hardened at the image of his sheer masculine beauty. She’d never met a man who’d had such an instantaneous effect on her. Marcus Hunt was potent. Marcus Hunt was lethal.

Madeline’s gaze fell on the framed photo of Simon. Something else she hadn’t been able to bring herself to dispose of just yet. She remembered Veronica’s pursed disapproving lips. It was all right for her. She’d spent her teens and twenties having a good time, experimenting with men and life, secure in the arms of a loving family. Madeline had spent them reeling from one tragedy to another while trying to study hard and be there for Abby, too. Simon had stuck by her side through all of it.

She traced her fingers over his face. So he wasn’t skater boy but he had a nice smile and despite everything she still loved him. They’d been together for ever—since they’d been twenty. You couldn’t just wipe that love out overnight. And she’d be damned if she’d let some inexplicable attraction to a bit of rough derail her conviction that the split with Simon was just temporary.

She heard the bell ding over the door and was pleased at the distraction. She thought it would probably be George back from his house call so she was surprised to see young Brett Sanders looking as white as a ghost, supporting his very grey, very sweaty mother.

Madeline hurried over. ‘Mrs Sanders, what’s wrong?’ she demanded, quickly assessing the woman’s cool, clammy skin, breathlessness and racing pulse.

‘It’s her indigestion,’ said Brett. ‘I wanted to take her to the hospital but she said she was fine and that you were closer. But she got worse in the car…’ He trailed off, his voice cracking with fear and unshed tears.

‘It’s OK,’ Madeline soothed, sitting Mrs Sanders down next to the emergency trolley near the front desk. It was basic, holding just oxygen, an ambubag, some adrenaline mini-jets and a portable defib unit. She quickly assembled a face mask and placed it on her patient’s face, cranking up the oxygen. She hoped it wasn’t too little too late. Mrs Sanders was in a lot of pain and it was extending down her left arm.

‘Brett, go and ring the ambulance on the phone at the desk. Triple zero.’

Even at seventeen, people in a panic could forget the number that had been drummed into them since they could talk. And Brett Sanders was about as panicked as she’d ever seen anyone.

‘Tell them that your mum is having a heart attack. OK, Brett? Do you understand?’