Read Spring Proposal in Swallowbrook for Free Online

slopes. But best of all there would be the practice and knowing that she was back in the place that had wrapped itself around her and held her close when her world had fallen apart.
    When she came out of the apartment the next morning Hugo was about to pull out of the drive and he wound the car window down to ask if she wanted a lift to the surgery.
    She flashed him a smile but shook her head, ‘No. I’m fine, thank you, Dr Lawrence. I’m still in a state of delight to be back here and will enjoy the short walk.’
    It was true she would, but the main reason she’d refused the lift was because she didn’t want Hugo Lawrence to feel that his reluctant overseeing of her welfare had to continue.
    She was up and running, ready for any challenge that came her way in the new life she had chosen for herself, just as long as she could put on hold the interest he had awakened in her from the moment of their meeting.
    About to drive off, he said as a parting comment, ‘We’ll have to sort out you taking over the spare car at the surgery that I mentioned. Can’t have you without transport, even though you do enjoy walking everywhere.’
    ‘Yes, when you’re ready,’ she agreed obediently, and off he went.
    Hugo’s face was set in solemn lines as he pulled up on the forecourt of the practice. What was the matter with him, he was thinking, fussing over this young doctor to such a degree? Had the time he’d spent looking after the needs of his sister and her children turned him into a control freak? The void he’d lived in for the last eighteen months was opening up and life was going to be good again, if he would let it.
    If Ruby Hollister had turned up smartly dressed and brimming with confidence on Saturday he wouldn’t have given her a second thought, but it was as if she’d appeared in his life for a reason, and of one thing he was sure, it was not going to be as someone to fill the gap.
    She could sort herself out in future. He would keep his distance, and no sooner had that determination been born than he remembered the supper party at Libby and Nathan’s that evening.
    Unaware of his thought processes, Ruby sought him out before the morning got under way and said, ‘I’m on my own today with instructions to ask any of the three of you if I have any problems, but as I’m sure that you must feel you’ve already seen enough of me and my problems I’ll avoid troubling you further and will consult either Libby or Nathan.’
    ‘Sure,’ he said easily. ‘Whatever you’re happy with, Ruby, and by the way, do you still want to know about the patient with septicaemia?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ she said promptly. ‘I want to know about everything and everyone in this place.’ And into the silence that followed came the thought, You in particular.
    ‘Right, then,’ he said briskly. ‘Jeremy Jones is the village postman and I have never seen an infection develop more quickly than the one he’s got. He was sawing up wood for the open fire in his cottage with a rusty saw and it slipped and gashed his leg quite badly.
    ‘Instead of getting it seen to in a proper manner to prevent any complications, he has been bathing it with all sorts of old remedies, typical of an elderly bachelor who thought he knew best, and didn’t.
    ‘He called me out last Friday and I put him on antibiotics immediately with instructions to call out the emergency services over the weekend if it worsened before the medication had a chance to kick in and the dreaded red line of septicaemia appeared.
    ‘Jeremy decided to wait until Monday morning when one of us was available, but before he could get in touch I called to see him on my way here, if you remember, and from then on it was all systems go to get him into hospital. I’m afraid that he might lose the leg through nothing more than his own negligence as he hadn’t taken the medication I’d prescribed.’
    ‘How could he have been so foolish with all the facilities of the NHS at his