Read Resisting Her Rebel Doc for Free Online Page B

to climb over the wall and steal the apples from the orchard, until one day old Mr Martin caught us. We thought we were in big trouble, but he surprised us. He invited us into the house, gave us cookies and milk, then sent us on our way with a basket full of fruit.’
    ‘He was a kind old man.’
    ‘Yes, he was.’ He showed her into the kitchen and she looked around in wonder.
    ‘You’ve obviously been busy in here,’ she said admiringly. ‘This is all new, isn’t it?’
    ‘It is. It’s the first room I worked on. I looked into different types of kitchen design and decided I wanted one where there was room for a table and chairs along with an island bar. This way, I can sit down for a meal and look out of the window at the garden; or if I’m feeling in a more casual mood, I can sit at the bar over there and have a cold drink or a coffee or whatever.’
    She smiled. ‘I like it, especially the cream colour scheme. You have really good taste.’ She studied him afresh, surprised by the understated elegance of the room.
    ‘Good taste for a rebel whose idea of fun was to spray graffiti on any accessible wall?’ He laughed. ‘I’ll never forget that day you let rip at me for painting fire-breathing dragons on your mother’s old barn. You handed me a brush and a pot of fence paint and told me to clean it up.’
    ‘And you told me to forget it because the barn was old and rotting and ready to fall down—but later that night you came back and painted the lot.’
    His brow lifted in mock incredulity. ‘You mean, you’ve known all along who did it?’
    She laughed. ‘I never thought you were as bad as people said. I knew there was a good person struggling to get out from under all that bravado.’ She’d understood him, up to a point, knowing how much it hurt to lose a parent. She’d turned her feelings inwards but back then Brodie had become more confrontational and forcefully masculine.
    Smiling, he filled a blender with slices of apple and watermelon and added ice cubes to the mix. He topped that with the juice of a lime and then whizzed it up. ‘That looks ready to me,’ he said, eyeing the resulting juice with satisfaction. ‘We’ll take this outside, shall we?’
    She nodded and followed him through the open French doors on to a paved terrace where they sat at a white wrought-iron table looking out on to a sweeping lawn. This was part of the garden that he had tended to, with established borders crowded out with flowering perennials, gorgeous pink blossoms of thrift with spiky green leaves alongside purple astilbe and bearded yellow iris.
    He poured juice into a tall glass and handed it to her. ‘I hope you still like this as much as you used to.’
    She put the glass to her lips and sipped. ‘Mmm... It’s delicious,’ she said. ‘Thanks. I needed that.’
    ‘So, what’s been happening with you over the last few years?’ he asked, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his long legs. He glanced at her ringless left hand. ‘I heard you were dating my friend, Matt, until recently.’
    She pulled a face, bracing herself to answer him. ‘Yes, that’s right. We were going to get engaged,’ she said ruefully. ‘But then things went wrong. Disastrously wrong.’
    It was still difficult for her to talk about it but at the hospital where she had worked with Matt everyone knew the situation and it had been virtually impossible to escape from the questions and the sympathy.
    He frowned. ‘I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me what happened? Do you mind talking about it?’
    ‘It still upsets me, yes.’ She hesitated. ‘He met someone else.’
    Brodie studied her, his eyes darkening. ‘I knew about that but I never understood how it came about. Matt and I haven’t seen each other for quite a while. Was he looking to get out of the relationship?’
    ‘No...at least, I don’t think so.’ She thought about it and then took a deep breath. ‘It started about a year and a half ago. My cousin