Dating the Millionaire Doctor by Marion Lennox Read Free Book Online Page A

wanted to talk.’
    â€˜I don’t think I want to talk.’
    â€˜No, but our housekeeper can cook for you, and Rob can make you smile. Rob’s good with people.’
    She looked at him curiously at that. ‘You talk as if you mean you’re not.’
    â€˜I’m not a people person.’
    â€˜Yet you let me soak your shirt.’
    â€˜Sometimes I’m compelled to be a people person.’
    â€˜That sounds like your five-minute date. Like you want to be out of here.’
    â€˜I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ he said, flinching. Hell, he had to figure out how to sound nice.
    But to his relief she was smiling, a faint smile but a smile nonetheless. ‘Yeah, okay, you’re not a people person but you did very well just now,’ she said. ‘I was really grateful for your shirt and you held on manfully. So whether you wanted to bolt or not, the fact is you didn’t and I’m not asking questions.’ She turned and looked down at her camp bed, at the detritus of six months’ camping in this sooty, makeshift home. He could see her indecision.
    â€˜You don’t really want to stay here.’
    â€˜I have Rusty.’ Though Rusty was on the verandah again, staring fixedly at the road. Still endlessly waiting.
    â€˜Rusty can come with you. Stay in the lodge while you figure where to go.’
    She stared down at the camp stretcher again. ‘I’ve been offered a job,’ she said. ‘In a small-animal clinic down the mountain.’
    â€˜Will you take it?’
    â€˜I don’t…I don’t know.’
    â€˜When did you last sleep through the night?’
    â€˜I don’t know that either,’ she admitted, and people person or not, he took her hands in his and held.
    â€˜Tori, you’re in no state to decide anything. Come to the lodge. Let Rob look after you for a month or so.’
    â€˜A month? No.’
    â€˜Okay, come for tonight and take it from there,’ he said hastily. ‘But you need to sleep and you need to start thinking of something other than destruction.’
    â€˜That’s what Barb said when she talked me into five-minute dating,’ she whispered. ‘I need to move on. It doesn’t work. How can it?’
    â€˜Yeah, well, maybe the dating wasn’t a great idea for either of us,’ he said ruefully. ‘Let’s try it another way.’
    â€˜Do you need to move on, too?’
    â€˜No,’ he said blankly. ‘I meant you.’
    She looked up at him then, and another glimmer of a smile crossed her face. ‘Really? It’s only me who’s got ghosts? Why do I get the feeling you’re as strained as I am?’
    â€˜I’m not.’
    â€˜Okay.’ She pulled her hands away and held them up in surrender. ‘You’re staying at the lodge as well?’
    â€˜Until Monday.’
    â€˜You think you can stand my company?’
    â€˜Of course I can.’
    â€˜There’s no “of course” about it,’ she said, still with a touch of humour. ‘One and a half minutes, as I remember.’
    â€˜It was you who walked out.’
    â€˜So it was,’ she said, and suddenly her smile became real. ‘And I can do it again if life gets tricky. But now… Does the lodge have baths?’
    â€˜There’s a spa in every room.’
    â€˜A spa,’ she said, awed.
    â€˜And a heated swimming pool. And beds with so many down-filled pillows you can’t count them. One of Rob’s ditzy blondes did his decorating for him, and I have to say she can’t have been as ditzy as most.’
    â€˜Ditzy?’
    â€˜Rob thinks ditzy equals sexy.’
    â€˜And you don’t?’
    â€˜Um, no.’
    â€˜Well, I’m not even going to go there,’ she said and her smile was still in place. ‘I can’t imagine what woman would have tied you to speed dating for more than five minutes. But look,