The Seduction Challenge Read online

  ‘Well, we could do that,’ Lucy said hesitantly, and Joel looked at her searchingly.

  ‘But you’ve got a better idea?’

  ‘The problem is that those sorts of talks attract mothers who are already very motivated and interested. I think we should cover those issues, of course, but also broaden it out. Cover topics that are more frivolous, more of general interest.’ Lucy realised that they were all watching her, and blushed slightly. ‘Maybe we should cover topics that are more personal.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, one of Fiona’s mothers is a fitness instructor—she could talk to them about getting into shape with small children.’ Lucy bit her lip, wondering whether it was a stupid idea. ‘I mean, I know it’s hard when you’ve got toddlers, but there are exercises that you can do around the home. I also thought we could maybe have some talks on clothes or make-up—something that’s for them.’

  Elizabeth beamed at her. ‘That’s a brilliant idea. They’ll come along for a gossip and to learn something, and while they’re there we’ll talk to them about immunisation.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I can’t think why none of us have thought of it before.’ Elizabeth held up her wineglass. ‘A toast to Lucy. An asset to our practice.’

  ‘Lucy…’ they chorused, and she smiled self-consciously.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you approve, I’ll get together and plan it with Fiona.’

  ‘Ros can help you design some posters,’ Nick said. ‘She’s a genius with the computer.’

  Michael put down his knife and fork and sat back in his chair. ‘So what day are we going to do it?’

  ‘Thursdays,’ Joel said immediately. ‘It has to fit around the other clinics and that seems as good a time as any.’

  They talked through the details and Lucy found herself relaxing and joining in, enjoying the flow of conversation and ideas. The Whittakers were all very bright; there was no doubt about that.

  ‘Mum.’ Sam’s little voice interrupted them in mid-flow. ‘When are we going home?’

  Lucy blushed with mortification but Joel laughed.

  ‘Sorry, old chap. We must have been boring you to tears, but you’ve been so good and quiet there we all forgot about you.’

  ‘The poor child!’ Elizabeth gave a gasp of apology and jumped to her feet. ‘You come into the kitchen with me, Sam, and we’ll see what we can find in my cupboards. I kept lots of toys from when my boys were small.’

  Lucy sneaked a glance at the three powerfully built men who were lounging around the table. She couldn’t imagine any of them as children.

  Joel caught her eye and grinned. ‘I was a cute baby. Want to see the photos of me in the bath?’

  She knew he was teasing her but still blushed, and Nick came to her rescue.

  ‘Why on earth would the girl want to see photos of you in the bath? Disgusting, if you ask me.’

  Joel looked affronted. ‘I was a beautiful baby.’

  Nick looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘They always say that the past is no predictor of the future, and in this case they were obviously right.’

  Richard coughed pointedly. ‘So what’s happening this afternoon? We’ve already bored little Sam rigid. We ought to do something to entertain him.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no need,’ Lucy said quickly, folding her serviette carefully and placing it back on the table. ‘Lunch was delicious, and it was good to chat, but we’ll be off home in a minute.’

  Nick shook his head. ‘You haven’t sampled Mum’s puddings yet.’

  Sam came back with Elizabeth, clutching a huge basket full of toys. ‘Wow, Mum. Look at this train. It’s so cool.’

  Lucy caught Joel grinning and smiled, too. It was nice to see Sam so happy.

  ‘That was Nick’s.’ Elizabeth knelt on the floor next to the child and sorted through the toys with him. ‘Oh, I didn’t know we still had this—look at this, Richard. Your father bought this for Michael on his fifth birthday.’

  Happily involved with the toys, Sam showed no inclination to leave. And once Elizabeth had served dessert, the conversation moved on to the Valentine’s Ball that Elizabeth was planning.

  ‘We’ve sold a hundred tickets,’ she told them proudly. ‘It’s going to be the best night ever and we’re going to make a fortune!’

  Lucy smiled. ‘Who is it in aid of?’

  ‘The lifeboat,’ Elizabeth said immediately, reaching for the cream and pouring some on her pudding. ‘We make a profit on the tickets and then hold an auction and several other things during the evening to make money. Will you come?’

  Lucy shook her head immediately, searching for a ready excuse. ‘I’ve got no one to look after Sam.’

  She’d never been to a ball in her life. Neither did she want to. Especially not a Valentine’s Ball. It would be full of romantic couples, reminding her what a hopeless mess her life was in.

  ‘Maria could look after Sam,’ Michael suggested, helping himself to more pudding. ‘I’m on call, so we’re not going.’

  Maria smiled. ‘I’d be very happy to.’

  Lucy searched for another excuse to avoid telling them the truth. ‘I haven’t got anything to wear.’

  Tina smiled. ‘I own a boutique, remember? And I happen to have just the thing—it would look stunning with your dark hair.’

  Lucy started to feel panicky. She didn’t want to go to a ball. It would be full of loving couples and she couldn’t bear being near loving couples. It just reminded her too painfully of what she and Sam had lost.

  To her relief and surprise, Joel intervened.

  ‘Leave the girl alone,’ he said smoothly. ‘If Lucy wants to go to the ball, she can ask for a ticket. She doesn’t need a fairy godmother. Talking of lifeboats, I gather they had a dramatic rescue last weekend. Three teenagers were swept off the rocks.’

  Knowing that he’d changed the subject on her behalf, Lucy shot Joel a grateful look and listened with interest as the conversation turned to the lifeboat rescue.

  ‘Yeah.’ Nick nodded slowly. ‘They scrambled a rescue helicopter and sent out the all-weather lifeboat. Those rocks are lethal, and unfortunately people don’t realise how quickly the tide comes in.’

  They spent the rest of the afternoon happily chatting and eating while Sam amused himself with the toys Elizabeth had found for him.

  Eventually, though, it was time to leave, and when they drove back to the harbour Sam was fast asleep in the back seat of Joel’s car.

  He scooped the sleeping child into his arms and carried him out of the car and up into Lucy’s flat.

  ‘His bedroom’s through there…’ Lucy gestured down the hallway and Sam shouldered the door open and laid the child on the bed.

  ‘I’ll undress him in a minute.’ She covered Sam with a fleecy throw to keep him warm and turned to find Joel leaning against the doorframe, his blue eyes watching her every move. ‘He had such a great time. Thank you.’

  In the confines of Sam’s bedroom, his shoulders seemed broader than ever and his powerful frame seemed to fill the doorway.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  The darkness created an intimacy that made her heart rate increase.

  Just friends, she reminded herself.

  ‘Come and have a coffee.’

  She pushed past him, ignoring the feel of his hard thighs as she brushed against him.

  Walking through to the kitchen, she flicked on the kettle and smiled at him. ‘I wanted to thank you for rescuing me earlier. Your family were determined that I was going to go to the ball.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Not my sort of thing.’

  There was a slight pause. ‘Not even with a friend?’

  Her eyes flew to his and her heart beat faster. ‘Are you asking me to go to the ball with you?’

  ‘I haven’t anyone to go with.’

  His pathetic expression didn’t fool her and she laughed and gave him a wry lo
ok. ‘You really expect me to believe that, Dr Whittaker?’

  ‘Are you saying you don’t?’ He folded his arms and gave her a sexy smile. ‘All right, then, let’s just say that one has to be very careful who one takes to the Valentine’s Ball. They might get the wrong idea.’

  In other words, he didn’t want some poor woman thinking he was serious about her.

  She shook her head reprovingly. ‘So I’m supposed to be going to protect you?’

  ‘Definitely.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Think of yourself as a bodyguard. You’re going to be guarding my body.’

  She smiled hesitantly, horrified to find herself wondering what his body was like under his stylish clothes. Firm, well muscled, totally male…

  She swallowed and poured hot water onto the coffee. ‘I don’t think a ball is really my scene…’

  ‘You need to go out, Lucy,’ he said quietly. ‘When did you last have some fun?’

  She stood still. She couldn’t remember.

  ‘They have a fantastic live band. We can dance till our feet are blistered.’

  She laughed. ‘And that’s supposed to be a good thing?’

  ‘Don’t you like dancing?’

  ‘Joel, I’m a mother with a child of six.’

  ‘So?’ He shrugged, clearly at a loss to see the relevance of her statement. ‘Since when did having a child stop you dancing? Say yes, Lucy. I guarantee you’ll have a good time.’

  Dancing…

  Suddenly her heart felt lighter than it had for a long time.

  An evening dancing with Joel sounded fun.

  ‘All right.’ She looked at him, still unable to believe that she’d just said yes. ‘But don’t blame me if I tread on your toes.’

  He grinned and picked up his coffee. ‘I’ll wear metal toecaps.’

  She watched him walk out of the kitchen and wondered what she’d just said yes to.

  An evening of fun, that was all, she told herself firmly.

  Joel was right. It was too long since she’d had fun.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TWO weeks later Joel had come to the conclusion that being Lucy’s friend was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

  He’d lost count of the number of times he’d nearly kissed her.

  Foolishly, he’d taken to ambling down to her apartment once Sam was in bed and they’d share a bottle of wine and talk until late in the evening. Sometimes she invited him down at teatime and he played with Sam, gradually getting to know the boy.

  Lucy was slowly relaxing and opening up to him, but that just seemed to make things worse.

  The more he knew her, the more he wanted her.

  But he knew she was enjoying their friendship—needed their friendship—and he had no intention of letting her down.

  Which meant that he had to keep his male urges well under control.

  With a groan he switched on his computer and stared at the screen, acknowledging that he was in big trouble.

  He had a mountain of work to do and all he could think about was Lucy.

  He’d been out with a fair number of women in his time but he couldn’t honestly remember a single one that had interfered with his concentration like Lucy did.

  What was it about her?

  She wasn’t the first woman in the world to have a pretty face and a gentle personality. But she was the first woman to have affected him this strongly.

  And now he needed to talk to her about a patient, which meant another agonising session of trying not to kiss her.

  With a sigh he rose from his desk and left his room.

  He rapped on her door and came straight to the point.

  ‘You did mention that you were trained to do spirometry, didn’t you?’

  Lucy nodded, clearly startled by his direct approach. He could hardly blame her for that. It was customary to say good morning or something similar when you first met a colleague, but he was desperately trying to keep his mind on work and not to look at her soft mouth.

  ‘W-why are you asking about spirometry?’

  Spirometry was a method of assessing lung function and was an important tool for monitoring the progress of patients with asthma or COPD.

  ‘I’ve got a patient who needs it.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘We have quite a few patients who were diagnosed with asthma and then developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—as you know, it’s hard to distinguish one from the other. Who do you want me to see?’

  Joel perched himself on the edge of her desk and forced himself to concentrate on work. ‘Margaret Patterson. She’s sixty-one. She came to see me this morning with a chest infection, but when I had a chat with her she admitted that she has trouble walking as fast as she used to because she gets so breathless, and she can’t hold a conversation and walk at the same time.’

  Lucy tilted her head to one side as she listened. ‘Is she a smoker?’

  Joel grimaced. ‘Fifteen to twenty a day. I listened to her chest and she had some basal crepitations and a wheeze so I’ve given her some antibiotics and asked her to make an appointment with you for spirometry.’

  ‘Would she stop smoking, do you think? We could ask Janice to see her.’

  Janice, the other practice nurse, ran the stop-smoking clinic and she and Lucy worked closely together.

  ‘Well, I’ve suggested it, but I’m not sure if she’ll do it,’ Joel said, a resigned expression on his handsome face. ‘What we really need to find out is whether this is asthma or COPD. It can be pretty hard to distinguish between the two, as you know, but it’s important because the management is different.’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’ Lucy nodded. ‘Has she made an appointment with me?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  He stood up and gave her a brief nod before leaving the room, steeling himself not to look at the swell of her breasts or the curve of her hips.

  Margaret attended for her spirometry testing that afternoon and Lucy started off by talking her through her history. She established that Margaret had no history of chest problems or wheezing illness in childhood, and that she’d been fit and active.

  ‘And what sort of work did you do, Mrs Patterson?’

  Lucy was aware that COPD was associated with some occupations, but as the patient ran through her career history it was obvious that there was nothing that could be held responsible for her current breathing problems.

  ‘Call me Margaret, please. As for having trouble breathing, I only really notice it when I get colds,’ Margaret told her. ‘It doesn’t keep me awake at night, although I do cough in the morning, but I’ve always assumed that was because of my disgusting habit. I don’t really understand why I have to have this test. I’ve had my peak flow measured before. Isn’t that enough?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘What we’re trying to do is work out whether you have asthma or something called COPD. That stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It’s another form of obstructive airway disease and it’s closely related to smoking. A single peak-flow reading won’t really show us if the air flow through the small airways is reduced. What we need to do is measure what we call the forced expired volume in one second—in other words, the amount of air you can blow out after you’ve breathed in deeply.’

  Margaret gave a resigned shrug. ‘All right, then, let’s get on with it. Where do I blow?’

  Lucy smiled. ‘Not so fast. First I need to check your weight, height and blood pressure. I enter some of the data into the spirometer to enable us to calculate the test results.’

  Margaret obligingly rolled up her sleeve and Lucy took the necessary recordings.

  ‘All right.’ Lucy entered the data into the spirometer. ‘Now I need you to hold it…like this… Great.’

  Lucy explained how Margaret should use the spirometer, but as the patient blew into the machine she had an uncontrollable fit of coughing.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Margaret broke off as another fit of coughing took hold of her and Lucy fetched her a glass of
water.

  ‘Here—try this. Don’t worry about it. People often can’t do it when they’ve had a chest infection. What we probably need to do is leave it two weeks to give the antibiotics time to work. In the meantime, I’d like you to record your peak flow several times a day. That will help us decide on the best method of treatment.’

  Margaret sank into the chair and ran a hand over her forehead. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I think I need to talk to someone about the smoking.’ She slumped in the chair, looking worn out and defeated. ‘To be honest, I thought I was too old to give up, but this cough has been awful. I don’t want to have another infection like this one.’

  Lucy was sympathetic. ‘It is really hard giving up smoking, but people do succeed, Margaret, particularly if they’re really motivated. Having a severe chest infection just might be the trigger for you.’

  Mary looked resigned. ‘So what’s the most effective way of going about it?’

  Lucy smiled, pleased that she was even considering it. ‘You need to talk to my colleague, Janice. She runs a stop smoking-clinic and she’s had some amazing successes. Basically, it’s a mixture of counselling in groups, individual sessions and nicotine replacement. She’s done a booklet on it for the practice. I’ll get one for you on your way out.’

  She talked to Margaret for a few more minutes and then walked with her back to the waiting room and found her the booklet. Then she went to find Joel.

  She found him in his consulting room, on the internet.

  He glanced up with a smile as she walked into the room. ‘Where did we get our information before the internet?’

  Relieved that he seemed more relaxed than he had earlier, Lucy walked round behind him so that she could see the screen, watching with fascination as he searched for the information he wanted.

  ‘That’s amazing. I confess I’m not that confident about using the internet,’ she said, her eyes widening in surprise at the quality of the information he’d managed to access. ‘That’s fantastic. Can anyone go on that website? Is it free?’

  He nodded. ‘This particular one is free, but it’s password protected so it isn’t open to the public. I had to register. But there are plenty of good medical websites, and lots of the journals have their own websites with archives that you can search. I can’t imagine wading through books and paper any more.’