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  THE LIFE SAVER

  Lilian Darcy

  Gorgeous Dr. Ripley Taylor is a lifesaver in more ways than one. Not only as a doctor, but also to his fellow doctor Jo Middleton -- he helped her out of her king-size rut (all work and no play, TV dinners with her cat) and revitalized her love life!

  Now that Rip is single, and surprisingly interested in her, the attraction is mutual, and is snowballing into a passionate affair.

  Then Rip's ex-wife appears on the scene, and Jo wonders whether she has their relationship all wrong. Rip will do anything to make her believe that it couldn't be more right....

  CHAPTER ONE

  When Dr Ripley Taylor observed seventy-six-year-old Thornton Liddle commence his lumbering journey from the side door of the new pharmacy to his beat-up old pick-up truck parked in back of the Harriet Professional Building, then pause beneath a still bare-branched maple tree for the stealthy lighting of a cigarette, he reflected on how difficult it was for even a grown man to smoke in secret without getting caught out.

  Sure, you could sneak around to the back of a building, shrink the window of potential discovery down to bare minimum by puffing like crazy four times a minute, and even hide the offending cigarette behind your back when you were sprung, but the little ribbon of blue smoke rising just beyond your shoulder still gave you away.

  Assuming the interloper's eyesight was good enough, of course.

  'Doc...' said Thornton Liddle, his rheumy eyes crinkling in a smile.

  He sounded cheerful, and more hale and hearty than any man of his age had any right to be, given his diet, habits and lifestyle. He'd come in with a chest infection that morning, and Rip had prescribed antibiotics, which Mr Liddle confidently expected to restore him to full health by the time he made a follow-up visit in a week or so. The medication would probably do exactly that, too. It really wasn't fair.

  'Didn't see you there,' the elderly man went on. 'You should be standing in our nice Vermont spring sunshine, not huddled over there in the cold. Take a whiff of that air! Blowing in all sorts of fresh ideas. Happens with the change of season. Myself, I was just thinking I'd like to... um...'

  He stopped, realised what he had in his hand, gave a guilty grin, dropped it on the ground with only the first half-inch turned to ash, and ground it out beneath his heel.

  'Just taking a couple of puffs,' he promised, as eager to please as a little boy. 'Working on stopping. Wife won't give up going on at me over it. Says I'm on my last carton, or else. Honest, and I know she's right, because I've read the information leaflets, and I see the TV commercials.'

  'That's good, Mr Liddle,' Ripley said. 'A good effort. I know it's hard when you've been a forty-a-day man for fifty years.'

  Now, please, get in the car, because I think my fingers are about to start burning.

  He held his breath.

  'Better be getting home,' the old man said.

  'Yes, and give Mona my best, won't you?'

  Both husband and wife had been Rip's patients for more than six years, since he'd joined the two-doctor Harriet Family Medicine Center, Duchesne County, Vermont, as the junior family practice specialist. He was the senior partner in the practice, now.

  'Will do,' Thornton agreed.

  'See you soon, Mr Liddle.'

  Hot ash fell into Rip's palm and he dropped his burned-down cigarette in time to lift a hand and wave at Thornton, who had climbed into his pick-up and coaxed the old engine into life. Rip didn't dare use his foot to snuff out the final curl of smoke emanating from the butt, because it was such a tell-tale movement, and any second now Thornton would wheel his vehicle around in the direction of the parking lot exit and Rip, his foot and his cigarette would be in the old man's direct line of sight.

  The big, unwieldy vehicle made an inefficient turn, one tyre bumping the circle of concrete that protected the base of a shade-giving tree. Thornton headed for the road a little too fast, then came to an abrupt halt as another car went by just as he was about to zoom out into the far lane. No more cars coming. The vehicle jerked forward again.

  Ah, at last Mr Liddle had gone, and Rip was safe.

  Safe from discovery, replenished with nicotine, and totally disgusted with himself.

  Of all his patients, he would least have chosen to be almost sprung by Thornton Liddle, who didn't need his doctor to be setting a bad example in the lifestyle department, and who really couldn't defy the odds on a smoker's health risks for much longer. His chest infections were getting more frequent, and he was taking blood-pressure medication and a strong diuretic. He was significantly overweight, and congestive heart failure had become a likely scenario.

  Some people might argue that, at seventy-six, Thornton Liddle had earned the right to slowly kill himself any way he chose, but Rip happened to know that his pension would cut out at his death, leaving his wife, aged a healthy sixty-seven, with an income on which she couldn't survive, and a cool-headed daughter-in-law who'd already announced that she didn't have spare room, time or money enough to give her husband's mother a home.

  If Mr Liddle's eyes hadn't been almost as bad as his clogged-up chest—with his sight and reaction times the way they were, he shouldn't still be driving, but that was a different issue—the old man would have caught his family doctor out in a flagrant case of the pot calling the kettle black.

  Actually, disgusted didn't begin to encompass how Rip felt.

  His scalp tingled, his chest felt tight, his heart was as heavy as a stone. He didn't want to be this person—the kind of doctor who couldn't take his own advice, and the kind of man who kept on picking over the past and punishing himself for something that, rationally, wasn't by any means all his own fault and anyhow was over and done with now, because he had the signed and sealed divorce papers to prove it.

  His next patient was undoubtedly waiting. He'd been gone too long already. He'd tried unsuccessfully twice last year to stop smoking. 'And that, Ripley Edward Taylor, was your very last cigarette,' he muttered.

  This was exactly what he'd said to himself eight years ago, at age twenty-eight, when Tara had convinced him to give up, and for seven years after that—until his and Tara's divorce last year—he'd succeeded in avoiding the evil stuff. That first time, however, he'd given up for love, which was surely a much more powerful motivation than...than...

  What was motivating him now?

  Oh, yes. That's right. Guilt.

  More than guilt, he thought, but couldn't put a finger on his reasons right at the moment.

  Spring?

  Mr Liddle had talked about changes in the air, coming with the change of season.

  Maybe there was something sound in the theory.

  Rip took the offending, wonderfully aromatic packet out of his back pocket, and didn't have to count to know that there were still about fifteen cigarettes left in it. He could tell by the weight. Fighting the deluded conviction that it was a terrible waste of good tobacco, he tossed the packet into the open dumpster behind the Harriet Cafe, slipped in through the back door of the professional building and waited for the withdrawal symptoms to kick in.

  'You are in a foul mood, Ripley,' his junior partner Dr Josephine Middleton told him at a quarter to seven that evening.

  'No, I'm not,' he answered, but he knew she was right.

  He wasn't going to tell Jo yet that he'd given up smoking. He didn't want to give her any ammunition. Not when she looked as if she herself could travel the distance between here and a foul mood in about a minute and a half. He'd read something like that on a T-shirt once, only it had been phrased more succinctly, thanks to the use of a five-letter B-word rhyming with 'witch' that he would never apply to Jo Middleton, even at his and her mutual worst.

  'I'm not going to argue,' she said.
/>   'Which is an argument, Jo, because the subtext is sticking out a mile.'

  'Can we get on with this?'

  'With what?'

  'With our discussion on whether we're going to switch pathology labs.'

  'I thought we'd decided to hang fire for a couple more months, keep a closer eye on their statistics and make a more informed assessment then.'

  'That's what you suggested. It's not a decision.'

  'So you don't agree?'

  'There have been two results lately that I'd have expected an immediate phone call about, not just a written report in the mail, and the lab's waiting times on some of its cytology tests have blown out by a week or more in the past year, I'd say.'

  'You've done the figures on that?'

  'No, I'm going with my gut feeling, and I think we should vote with our feet.'

  'Sorry, but I don't work that way.' Ripley stood up, fighting with himself not to open the second drawer of his desk, where, going with his own gut feeling, he was pretty confident he might find a crumpled cigarette packet with a couple still left in it.

  'So we're locking up? We're done?' She sounded very impatient.

  He sat down again. He had a headache, and realised that every muscle in his face was tight. He should have gone up to Stowe for some spring skiing on the weekend. Jo had been on call, so he'd been free. Translation—without an excuse. And yet he hadn't gone, the way he hadn't gone on several other occasions over the winter, even though he knew it did him good to get out there on the mountain, speed beneath his feet and cold air in his lungs.

  The sense of disappointment in himself didn't improve his mood.

  He let out a rasp of breath. 'No, OK, we need to at least make a decision on when and how we're going to make a decision, don't we?'

  'If you're going to start talking like a politician, we should definitely leave this until tomorrow.'

  'No, you wanted something now, let's get to something now.' He felt stubborn suddenly, at sea as to what she really wanted, irritated up to his aching eyeballs.

  He liked Jo enormously. She was the kind of practice partner he could utterly rely on. She matched him in her capacity for work, her attention to detail and her willingness to wash out her own coffee-cup. She even cleaned the microwave occasionally. Ninety-five per cent of the time, they got on so well that he didn't have to think about her, and that had really helped over the past eighteen months when all he'd been able to think about in any spare moment had been the divorce.

  Why hadn't he seen it coming? Why hadn't his commitment to their marriage been enough? Why couldn't Tara have talked about what had been wrong earlier, so they might have had a chance at fixing it? And what the hell had she seen in Trent Serrano? The man had to be a symptom of the problem, surely, and not its cause. Therefore, what should Rip himself have done differently?

  'OK,' Jo said. 'I'm giving this five more minutes.'

  Because it was ten to seven, and if she didn't get out of here in five minutes, she'd miss the start of...

  What day was it?

  Tuesday.

  What show was it vitally important for her not to miss on Tuesdays at seven?

  She couldn't remember, but she knew there was one, because she'd debated setting her DVD to record it before she'd left the house that morning, but had decided it wasn't necessary since by seven she'd definitely be home.

  Only at this rate, she wouldn't be.

  And dealing with Ripley Taylor in one of the worst moods she'd seen him in for a long time did not count as an appealing alternative. Normally, she would have found one of their rare disagreements stimulating. He was good to argue with, because he always kept his sense of humour. Today, however...

  If he thought she hadn't noticed he was trying to give up smoking again, boy, was he kidding himself!

  'Get some figures down on paper, Jo,' he said. 'Tell me I'm pulling rank if you like, but I'm really not going to switch labs without some cold, hard stats in front of me. I'm a scientist. I'm not a damned crystal ball gazing, intuitive...' he cast an absent-minded, irritable look in her direction—specifically, at her hair, which to be honest wasn't in its best ever mood either—then finished, '...witch.'

  'Right. OK. Stats,' she said, while thinking, Witch?

  Ripley didn't look all that spectacular himself, if she studied him closely and decided to be unmerciful about it.

  There were some silver threads in his dark hair, and some deepening lines around his eyes and mouth. His skin had a natural light olive tone, but he didn't spend enough time out of doors—or hadn't lately, anyhow—so you'd hardly detect it, and especially not in the fluorescent light of his office. He looked washed out. Even his strong shoulders looked a little less square than they used to, and his cognac brown eyes were tired.

  She felt a momentary pang of concern for him, and then her anger came back. He was holding her up, he was about as charming as a bull at a rodeo, he'd just called her a witch without even realizing it apparently, and still somehow she felt tender towards him? Just how much of a pushover was she prepared to be here?

  No, thank you!

  It was six minutes to seven.

  'Then and only then we'll talk again, all right, Jo?' he said, his tone clipped. 'Now, if there's nothing else...?'

  As if she had been the one who'd held him back with a circular discussion, not the other way around, when she really, really did not want to miss.. .whatever her show was.

  'There's nothing else,' she said, and was out the front door, still fuming about that word 'witch' before it even occurred to her that she'd just left Ripley to lock up without so much as an 'Is it OK if I leave you to lock up?'

  He'd routinely been the last one to head for home almost every night since Tara had left him so Jo had taken his locking up for granted, but that was no excuse. She sighed, thought about going back in, actually paused on her way towards the car, then remembered the 'witch' line and the start of her Tuesday show, and left him to it.

  Got home with seconds to spare.

  Raced in the door.

  Switched on some lights.

  Almost tripped over the cat.

  Grabbed the TV guide, tore a page while flicking through it, found the day and the time, found the show, which she'd highlighted at the beginning of the week in pink highlighter pen...

  Oh.

  Her current third favourite crime show, with that tell-tale little 'R' in the listing that showed it was a repeat. She hadn't noticed that, either the other day while highlighting or this morning while trying to decide whether to record.

  Her heart sank, and she muttered to the printed page, 'Excuse me? Are we not in a ratings period right now?' But she turned the TV on anyhow.

  Miffy miaowed and rubbed her sleek black side against Jo's leg. She was hungry and wanted her dinner.

  So did Jo.

  Eggs on toast suggested themselves as the most likely option, the way they suggested themselves at least twice a week. The other nights she usually messed around with some pre-packaged meal that she would sometimes attempt to improve by, say, adding mushrooms. Mostly, it didn't work. When her grandmother Mamie had been alive, Jo had cooked a lot more—cooked for real and with pleasure, instead of messing around, because Mamie had enjoyed her food and had given lots of compliments on Jo's cooking— but it didn't make sense to do that after a long day when you were only cooking for one.

  She gave Miffy her dinner, then wandered back into the little entrance hall to dump her purse on the hall table. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, and the first word that sprang into her mind, sadly, was exactly the one that Rip had used.

  Witch.

  She shouldn't be angry with him.

  He was right.

  She did look like a witch.

  A relatively young and robust witch, true, at thirty-four, but with all the hallmarks of serious archetypal witchiness latent in her appearance...and in her lifestyle. Eccentric spinster living alone with a black cat, talking to herself, fixat
ed on a personal calendar marked by television shows instead of the more traditional lunar cycle, and prone to making experimental potions involving mushrooms and frozen TV dinners in the kitchen.

  'Josephine,' she told the mirror, 'you are in a rut.' She stared at her reflection for several minutes, as the full truth of this statement struck home.

  Oh, lord, was she ever in a rut!

  She'd known it somewhere in her heart, but she hadn't seen it. She'd stubbornly insisted to herself that her life was smooth and safe and that she was content. She had an older sister in Connecticut whom she spoke with every week on the phone and saw several times a year. She had active, happy parents, who had a serious travel addiction, on top of her father's business basing him in places like Singapore and Tokyo for extensive stretches. Mom and Dad brought her interesting stories and souvenirs from all corners of the globe at regular intervals, and this old house of Mamie's would be a veritable treasure trove soon. She had a satisfying career, with co-workers she both trusted and liked.

  All the same, it wasn't enough, and she was in a rut.

  It had begun through no fault of her own three and a half years ago when dear Mamie had had her first stroke, while Mom and Dad had still been in Singapore. By the time Mamie had died eighteen months later, aged eighty-five, Jo had been pretty strung out—emotionally and physically exhausted, really—after taking care of her as well as holding down a demanding professional job, and the rut had gotten deeper.

  She'd probably needed the rut then. For a while. Even when she'd first arrived in Vermont to join the practice and live with her grandmother, she'd probably still been dragging some baggage from the awful break-up with Jack in their final year of family practice residency. Even if you only looked at Mamie's death as the cause, however, two years had gone by now.

  The hair was only a symptom, but what a symptom! She was way overdue for a trim, so she'd been scraping it back info a ponytail lately, but the ponytail was too bushy, and sometimes a strand would catch and pull so she'd pull the elastic out without even thinking about it.