The Doctor's Rebel Knight by Melanie Milburne Page B

his ebullient personalityon show. ‘This boy here looks like he needs a run. I’ll be back in ten.’
    ‘Right…’ Fran said, wondering why her heart was playing leapfrog as she watched him leave the house, with Rufus bounding excitedly at his side.
    ‘Stop it,’ she said in an undertone, turning towards the bathroom. ‘Stop it right now. You’re not yourself right now. You don’t even know what you want to do with your life, much less who you want to spend it with. Just stop it.’
    Jacob didn’t need to find a ball to throw. Rufus did that part for him, coming up to him with it in his smiling mouth, his plumy tail slashing from side to side in glee. Jacob grimaced as he took the slimy and ragged tennis ball from the dog’s mouth, and then threw it as far as he could, watching as the mutt bounded off, ears flapping as the ball rolled down the embankment into the wild part of the garden.
    The sun was still warm and another storm seemed to be brewing. He could feel the tension in the air, or maybe he was kidding himself. Maybe it was the tension he could feel in his body every time he was near the little pint-sized blonde doctor who didn’t want to be a doctor any more. Apart from the near disaster at the Pelleris’, Fran had handled Candi’s emergency with the sort of calm competence this town needed. She was exactly what Pelican Bay needed. Hell, maybe she was exactly what he needed right now.
    But did he really want to get entangled with a woman who was prepared to throw away her career on a whim? As far as he was concerned, a broken leg sustained while on a skiing holiday was no excuse for walking away from a profession that was in such demand these days. A huge amount of public money had been invested in her education, and for her to walkaway from it seemed almost criminal. But maybe she was one of those shallow types, a member of Generation X or Y or whatever it was called these days, who wanted to flit from place to place on a permanent holiday, not unlike his ex, Melissa. He didn’t know much about Fran’s background but he could see there was no shortage of money. She drove a top-end car with all the safety features, and her clothes were high-street fashion—and she wore them well, he had to admit. She wore a bikini and a sarong even better. He could still see her sexy figure in that filmy shroud—the image was burned at the back of his eyeballs. Every day since, he had dreamed of peeling it off her to reveal what was underneath.
    Rufus came back with the ball in his mouth, his tail wagging proudly.
    ‘You want me to throw this again?’ Jacob asked.
    Rufus dropped the ball and, wriggling his back end, barked in reply.
    Jacob smiled and, bending down, picked up the salivasodden ball and threw it down the pathway to the beach. ‘Go get it, boy,’ he said, and then, taking his own advice, turned and went back to the house.
    Fran looked at herself in the mirror and grimaced. A quick shower had removed the dust and grime but it had done nothing about the shadows under her eyes. Her hair was in limp strands over her back and shoulders, but it would take at least twenty minutes to dry it.
    Hmm…Twenty minutes with a hand-held hairdryer when she could be spending the same time with the best-looking man she had seen since…well since for ever. Anton Leeton, her expart-time boyfriend, was no billboard model but he was certainly no reason to reach for the soothing eyedrops either.
    In the end Fran came out dressed in one of her sister’s sundresses. That was one of the best things about having a sister, especially a recently pregnant one who had a whole wardrobe of designer clothes that were currently useless.
    Jacob turned to face her as she came in, his eyes sweeping over her in a blood-heating manner. ‘Wow, that was a quick change,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise the same transformation but if I could at least remove your sister’s dog’s saliva from my hands I might be able to turn myself into