A Man To Tame - Rachel Lindsay (Roberta Leigh) Read Online Free PDF

‘You've got to be joking.'
    ‘Then why did he want to get rid of
me?'
    'Only for the reasons he gave you.
The company has never employed a woman doctor and most of the men won't like
it.'
    'I could wear a moustache.'
    'On you it would look beautiful!'
    She laughed and, hearing the sound,
knew it was the first time she had felt amused since she had arrived here.
Somehow it did not augur well for the future and she wondered at her temerity
in standing up to Joshua Howard. But she couldn't back down now, nor would she
give him the opportunity of dismissing her. She would not only have to tread
carefully; she would have to tread with super care.
    The surgery was the most up-to-date
Kate had seen since leaving hospital. It held everything an ambitious general
practitioner could desire, plus several pieces of equipment one normally found
in a hospital.
    ‘
Mr
Howard spares no expense to get the best,' she commented.
    'He never does. That's his motto—in
the long run the best is cheap.'
    She wondered if he applied this to
everything in his life and knew a sharp curiosity to see his home and wife.
Whatever she looked like, in character she would have to be docile, of that
there was no doubt.
    Kate sat down at the desk and moved
experimentally in the swivel chair. It was reassuring to see all the
instruments around her and the examination couch with its red blanket folded
neatly at one end. This was the world she knew and the people who came into it
were ones she could help and feel a sense of relationship with; unlike the
tough, incisive man with whom she had spent the last couple of hours. She would
never be able to feel at home with him.
    'At last you've come into your
own,' Dermot Kane commented, and she whipped round in her chair to see him
watching her.
    ‘You mean I now look like a
doctor?'
    'Still a most
unlikely one. You're so fragile.'
    'I wield a mean scalpel!'
    ‘Don't get your knife into me,' he
said in mock alarm, and opened the door of the surgery. 'Come along, Mr Howard wants me to take you home and get you settled
in.'
    'I was under the impression I would
be living in lodgings,' she said carefully.
    ‘Not unless you want to. You're
taking over Dr Morris's house. He's the chap you're temporarily replacing.'
    'I see. I had assumed he would
still be living in his home.'
    '
He's
convalescing in Australia by courtesy of Howard
Engineering.'
    ‘Mr
Howard is very generous.'
    ‘He is,' Dermot Kane replied.
'You'll find that out for yourself.'
    Kate didn't think she would, but
followed the young man to the entrance hall.
    'I haven't yet met the nurse,' she
said as they walked to the ear.
    'I expect she's in the factory
tending to some minor injury.' He held open the door of the station wagon and
within a moment they were travelling through the trading estate towards the
town. On the outskirts of it, in a crescent-shaped road whose front gardens
looked on to a rectangular green and whose back gardens gave on to a view of
the hills, the car came to a stop.
    The last house at the end,' Dermot
Kane said, and Kate jumped out eagerly and looked at her home-to-be. It was one
of a row of whitewashed houses, square and snug with prim little windows and a
narrow blue-painted front door.
    'It's beautiful,' she said with
pleasure.
    There was no comment and she
understood why, when she stepped into the hall, for the interior was dark and dingy
and held the minimum of furniture?
    ‘Dr
Morris seems to have gone in for brown,' she said, staring
at the paintwork and the ugly brown armchairs.
    ‘He didn't bother much about his
creature comforts,' Dermot Kane agreed, ‘but I'm sure Mr
Howard won't have any objection to your changing things. If you give me a list
of what you would like altered, I’ll put it in hand
right away.'
    'No, thanks,' she said hastily,
unwilling to be beholden to Joshua Howard for any favours.
    'It's no bother,' came the reply. 'I'm here to see you are comfortably
settled.'
    'I'm sure I can manage,' she