Page 18 of Dr. CEO (The Doctors)

Nathan was the one whose wife or girlfriend wasn’t with him. But he didn’t look like the typical Crompton visitor either. I suppose they were having a family get-together of sorts, but it still doesn’t make sense why Vincent stayed over. Couldn’t he have gone back to London when the rest of the family left?

I’m over-thinking it. Why he was here doesn’t matter.

The crunch of gravel catches my attention and I look up. Meghan is coming toward me, carrying a can of full-fat Coke and wearing sunglasses and a puffer jacket, despite the fact it’s a balmy twenty degrees.

“Hey, sorry about last night.” She hands me a Freddo—a chocolate frog. “Have this. I’ve had two already today.”

“A two-Freddo morning. Must be bad. How’s the migraine?”

“It’s actually fine. I took the medication early, so I’ve escaped lightly. Sorry to drop you in it last night.” She takes a seat on the bench next to me.

My stomach swoops at the thought that I almost missed Vincent entirely. If it weren’t for Meghan and her migraine, we would have been like ships passing in the night. “It wasn’t busy.”

“It was Ilana’s birthday, wasn’t it? Anything interesting happen?”

“What sort of thing?” I ask, then realize I’m being defensive for no reason at all.

“Taylor Swift drop in?”

“If she did, I didn’t notice her,” I reply. “George was in a foul mood. We. . .we had a guy eat in who was staying upstairs.”

“On his own?”

“Yes, I can definitely testify to the fact he was by himself.”

“Up from London?” she asks.

“I guess.” Did he say whether he was staying in London while he was in the UK? He can’t have been staying with family because they left without him. “He was very handsome. Good tipper. Great in bed.” I sigh wistfully as Meghan splutters and chokes on her Coke.

She looks at me as if to ask if I’m being serious. I just shrug.

“I really wish I’d made it in now,” she says. “Did he leave this morning?”

I shrug again. I don’t want her to know I checked the reservations book as I’d left. When I’d gone to leave this morning, he’d pulled me back to bed for a final kiss before I told him I had to go.

He was a great kisser. I want to give up my job and kiss him all day. I can still feel his stubble against my cheeks and his fingers in my hair, hear his low moans that vibrated across my body.

He was a good everything-er.

“There must be something happening to the moon. Or something,” she says.

“The moon?”

“Yeah. Like … you’re having sex, Basil told me he thinks the estate is up for sale. I’m chomping Freddos like they’re edamame beans. Change is afoot.”

Basil was one of the more senior gardeners and a renowned curmudgeon. Every year he thought the magnolia wouldn’t flower, the lawns would never recover from visitors’ footsteps, and at least one of the old oaks in the circle of trees on the far side of the estate would die.

In my twenty years living on Crompton, he had never been right, but it didn’t stop a wind of uncertainty blowing through the staff when Basil started muttering about the estate being sold, which he did from time to time.

“Because you’re overdosing on sugar? And for the record, it’s not like I never have sex.”

“Oh, I forgot how you regularly date. There’s a positive trail of your conquests throughout Cambridgeshire.”

I wince a little at her words. Not because they’re true, or because she’s hurt my feelings … more because my lack of a social life obviously isn’t as inconspicuous as I thought. Truly, though—I don’t need to date. I have everything I could ever want in my life. I don’t need a man. “I didn’t say it was regular, but the fact I had sex last night isn’t reason to think the moon has been thrown out of our orbit or something.”

“Maybe. But do you think Crompton is being sold?”

I try and give an unbothered laugh but end up snorting. “No,” I say, with a dismissive wave. “Of course it’s not. There are always rumors.”

---