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'Yes, I know,' he said quietly, 'but what has it got to do with now?'

'It has made me feel like a lesser mortal, and my mother's fussing didn't help at all, especially as you went along with it.'

Max nodded. 'OK, but I would prefer to continue this discussion that has blown up out of nowhere without you wearing the wig, if you don't mind.'

'All right,' Fenella agreed, and took it off, revealing her own blonde mop lying flat and unappealing against her scalp. 'I hope you realise I'll have to blow-dry my hair before we go if I'm not wearing the wig.'

'Anything as long as you get rid of it,' he said with feeling. 'And getting back to what we were saying, yes, I did go along with your mother's wishes. What else could I do? Tell her to get lost? That I was attracted to you and was going to do as I pleased?'

'So you are attracted to me?'

'I was until I saw you in the wig,' he said laughingly.

'Now you're making fun of me.'

'I'm sorry. I couldn't help it.'

'You haven't answered the question.'

'Of course I'm attracted to you, Fenella!'

'Then kiss me.'

'No. If I do I am lost. I'm your employer, supposed to be a responsible person.'

'You're making excuses.'

'Maybe I am. So are you going to get your hair sorted and then we can get mobile?'

I wonder why I felt that this was a day when nothing was going to go wrong, she thought dolefully as the hairdryer blew her flattened locks back into their usual style. I should have known better.

As they drove down into the village Fenella was thinking that she was a fool. Why hadn't she told Max that she wasn't going after what he'd said? But it was clear that he hadn't seen the occasion as a romantic meeting. He'd seen her as merely someone to go with.

And why didn't she stop to think before she spoke? Knowing the average male, she'd like to bet that there weren't many women who were refused when they asked to be kissed.. .unless the men thought they were downright ugly.

In the seat beside her Max was tuning into her thoughts and telling himself that he must be crazy. No sooner had he decided that he wasn't going to hang back any longer where Fenella was concerned than he was hedging, when every inch of him ached for her.

Asking her to go to the ball with him had been the first step of his new resolve, but he hadn't expected a heart-to- heart the moment he stepped over her threshold. He was so afraid of taking advantage of her vulnerability and her position in the practice that he was losing sight of what it was all about, him being in love with her and her being in love with him.

There was a lay-by ahead and when they reached it he stopped the car.

'What's wrong?' she asked listlessly.

'Nothing that can't be put right,' he said softly. 'Would you mind getting out for a moment?'

'If you insist,' she told him in the same depressed tone.

He took her hand and led her to where a stile led to fields. When they'd climbed over it and were out of sight of the road he took her in his arms and kissed her until her heartbeat was thundering in her ears and her legs were buckling beneath her.

'Will that do?' he asked softly when they drew apart.

'Oh, yes!' she breathed as she looked up at him. 'What made you change your mind?'

He laughed low in his throat. 'I don't know. Maybe I was panicking at the thought that you might meet someone at the ball that you fancied more than me.'

'Do you honestly think that is likely?'

He took her face between his hands and looked deep into her eyes. 'At this moment, no. So come on, Fenella, back over the stile you go before I get really carried away.'

She'd wanted Max to make love to her back there in the field, Fenella thought as they carried on with the interrupted journey. As he'd held her close she'd known that he had been just as aroused as she had, but when it had come to the moment of truth it seemed that the man sitting beside her was not short of self-control and she'd had to be satisfied with that mind-blowing kiss.

Max parked the car in front of the surgery for the lack of anywhere else being available. There were lots of people around, some from the aftermath of the afternoon's crowning ceremony and the party that had followed it. Others were arriving for the ball like themselves, and there were onlookers who were just there to see the floral display that had earned the village the award.

As he held the door for her to get out of the car, he said in a low voice, 'Have you ever slept with anyone, Fenella?'

It was the kind of question that could have been seen as distasteful and intrusive coming from some, but not from him. It was as if he was taking a step nearer to the commitment that she was so ready for. With her heart beating fast, she shook her head.

'No. I haven't.'

He traced the outline of her face with a gentle finger and murmured, 'So I'll be the first.'

'And the last,' she breathed, and knew that she could wait. When Max was ready, he would make her his.

It was a magical evening as she danced the night away in his arms. They held hands when they went in to dinner and toasted each other laughingly with sparkling champagne.

Fenella would have liked it to go on for ever but it was not to be. When a call came through on Max's mobile in the middle of the meal, she saw his face cloud over.

'The police want me to attend a death at a house in the next village,' he told her. 'There are some features of it that need to be examined before they decide if it's foul play.'

'Oh, no!' she cried. 'Can't someone else go?'

'Someone else should be on call,' he said wryly, 'but they tell me that the guy was in a car crash this afternoon and is in A and E at this moment. I'll be as quick as I can, Fenella, and if by any chance I'm not back by the end of the evening, promise me that you'll get a taxi home.'

'Can I go with you?' she asked.

He looked at her with raised brows.

'Why, for heaven's sake? Whatever it is, it will be a depressing experience.'

'It will be a depressing experience if you leave me here on my own.'

'All right, then,' he agreed, 'but don't be surprised if you end up wishing you'd stayed here.'

A tall, commanding figure in dinner jacket and black tie, he took her arm and led her through the throng of dancers into the cool night air.

In a cottage in the next village an old man was seated in a chair by the window, staring into space. A young WPC had just made him a cup of tea and the police officer in charge told Max, 'The old lady has died and her husband is saying that he killed her, but we can't get him to tell us how. The neighbour says she was very ill with Alzheimer's and that he was devoted to her.'

Max nodded. 'OK. I'll examine the body and see what I come up with. This sort of situation is very sad. Where is she?'

The policeman pointed upwards. 'In the bedroom.'

'Fenella is a doctor, too,' he told him, 'and would like to be in on this if you don't mind. She solved a crime for you people the other day and has been bitten by the bug.'

'Not that business about the bull, was it?'

'The same.'

The policeman was smiling. 'That was a fine piece of detective work.'

'Don't tell her that,' Max said, 'or she'll be joining you lot instead of being my right-hand woman at the surgery.'

There were no signs of suffocation, which was the first thing they checked for. No discoloration of the face and neck or blood behind the eyes. The old lady looked peaceful and at rest.

'Who called you out on this?' Max asked the police officer.

'The neighbour,' he was told. 'Apparently she comes in each night to make sure they're all right before she goes to bed. Tonight he took her upstairs, showed her his wife's body and told her he'd killed her. As we knew that you weren't far away, we thought that this was a case for a police surgeon.'

'Where is her medication?' he asked.

'Don't know. We can't find any. When we ask the old man he just shakes his head.'

'I'll have a word with him,' Max told him.

The elderly man was in a state of shock, sitting in silence and twisting his hands together. But when he saw that Max wasn't in uniform he mumbled, 'I did it. I gave her the wrong tablets—mine instead of hers. I wanted her to die. I couldn't stand to see her suffer any longer. So I must have done it on purpose.'

'Show us your tablets,' Fenella said gently, 'and then perhaps we could have a look at your wife's medication.'

They were a popular brand of tablet prescribed for mild blood pressure and were hardly likely to have caused his wife's death. When he produced his wife's medication, which for some reason was stuffed under the cushion that he was sitting on, Max saw that it was a drug used to help memory loss.

'There are no signs of foul play here, just confusion,' Max told the policeman. 'From all appearances, the lady died from natural causes. In view of what her husband is saying, there will have to be a post-mortem, but I would think it will show that her heart just stopped from old age and illness.'

'Do you think he has got Alzheimer's, too?' the officer asked.

'I doubt it. He is probably exhausted and did give her the wrong tablets. That is why he's in such a state, but I doubt they killed her unless he gave her a huge dose, which will show up on the post-mortem. And now, if you don't mind, we'll be on our way.'

'Sure,' the other man replied. 'I can see by both your outfits that your evening has been interrupted. There's a lot going on down the road, I'm told, connected with this Village in Bloom business.'

There was a full moon in the sky when they went outside, and as they stood beneath it Fenella said, 'That was so sad.'

Max nodded. 'It was indeed. And what now? Do you want to go back to the ball?'

'I don't think so. After what we've just seen, I don't feel very festive.'

'So let's go to my place and have a coffee,' he suggested. 'It's been a fantastic day in spite of what is going, on in the house behind us. The flower queen and the party this afternoon, the ball tonight, and Alice smiling all the time.
That
really was something to see.'

As they drove to Max's house Fenella was thinking that it was here at last, the big invite. It had been on the cards once before when she'd been going to stay the night and had marched off when she'd heard about her mother cautioning Max. But she'd put that to one side for tonight and this time if he asked her to stay, she would.

As Max pulled into the drive his phone rang, and when he answered it his expression changed. 'All right, Mary,' he said. 'We'll be with you in minutes.'

'That was John Oakes's wife,' he told her. 'John is full of fluid again and very poorly. If it isn't too late I'm going to suggest that he goes into a hospice. They are wonderful places and have pain control sorted in a big way.'

It wasn't too late, but the two doctors could see that the sick man's condition was worse, so much so that when Max suggested the hospice both husband and wife agreed immediately.

'John needs better care than I can give him now,' Mary admitted tearfully. Her husband said weakly, 'I'll do whatever you suggest, Max, as long as it takes the burden off Mary.'

'I'll sort it first thing in the morning,' he promised, 'and in the meantime I'll give you a stronger shot of morphine to get you through the night.'

'It never stops, does it?' Fenella said as they drove back to Max's house. 'There is always someone needing our services.'

He nodded. 'You've hit the nail on the head there. It takes a big effort sometimes to step back into the mould when we are enjoying doing our own thing, but I would never want it to be said that I wasn't there when I was needed.

'Normally that call from John's wife should have been made to the emergency doctors who cover the hours when surgeries like ours are shut, but what good would it have done? They wouldn't know the patient, wouldn't have been monitoring his illness like I have, and though they're efficient and would do their best in cases like John's, it is their own GP the patient wants to see.'

It had been a long day with an equal mix of pleasure and pain. While Max made the coffee Fenella snuggled down amongst the cushions on the sofa and tried to keep her eyes open. As the drowsiness increased she kept telling herself that she would be mortified if she fell asleep now that they were alone. She'd longed to be with Max in his converted barn and now that she was there, she was falling asleep and couldn't throw it off.

When Max came in with the coffee she had succumbed. Golden lashes lay on her cheeks, reminding him of that other time, and tenderness filled him. He covered her gently with a blanket and went quietly up to bed, content that Fenella was here, in his house, in his life.

When Fenella awoke in the middle of the night she couldn't think where she was for a moment. Then it all came back and she gave a groan of dismay. She'd fallen asleep while Max had been making the coffee, she thought glumly. What must he have thought of that?

Unwinding herself from amongst the cushions, she tiptoed upstairs. He was asleep, lying on one half of the bed, and the empty space beside him was too tempting to ignore. She eased herself gently into it and curled up close against the hollow of his back, still wearing the black ensemble.

The next thing Fenella knew she was waking up to sunlight and Max was towering over her with a breakfast
tray in his hands. 'How's the nocturnal wanderer this morning?' he asked.

'Fine,' she said, rubbing her eyes and wishing he'd stayed in bed so that they could have lain together on awakening.

She wasn't to know that when he'd found her beside him at dawn he'd lain looking at her for ages. The tousled blonde mop, the crumpled black dress...and the mouth that was made for kisses.. .his kisses.

He'd left her side at last and gone downstairs to phone the nearest hospice. It had only been eight o'clock on a Sunday morning, but there'd been someone there, ready to make the arrangements for John Oakes to be admitted.