A Doctor to Remember Read Free Page B

you started to get organised.’
    She smiled. ‘Thanks. That was thoughtful of you.’ She checked the fridge and some of the cupboards and chuckled. ‘This is better stocked than my kitchen back in Hampshire. We were always running out of stuff over there these last few months. I had to write notes to remind myself to shop, because my flatmate was worse than me at organisation.’
    ‘I can see I’ll need to keep an eye on you,’ he murmured. ‘We can’t have you wasting away.’ His glance ran over her and a flush of heat swept along her cheekbones. She was wearing jeans that moulded themselves to her hips and a camisole top that outlined her feminine curves, and she suddenly felt self-conscious under that scorching gaze.
    ‘I…uh…I’ll show you the rest of the house if you like,’ he said, walking towards a door at the side of the room. ‘Unless it’s all coming back to you?’
    She shook her head. ‘It isn’t, I’m afraid.’ She followed him into the dining room, where the furniture followed the design of the kitchen. There was a cream wood Welsh dresser displaying patterned plates, cups and saucers, and a matching table and upholstered chairs.
    ‘The sitting room’s through here,’ Matt said, leading the way into a sunlit room where wide patio doors led on to a paved terrace.
    She glanced around. It was a lovely room, with accents of warm colour and a sofa that looked soft and comfortable.
    ‘I think you’ll find it’s cosy of an evening with the log-burning stove,’ he murmured.
    ‘Yes.’ She had a fleeting image of a woman adding logs to the stove, and a lump formed in her throat.
    ‘Are you okay?’
    She nodded. ‘I guess I’ll need a plentiful supply of wood, then,’ she said, getting a grip on herself. ‘Where did my aunt get her logs from, do you know?’
    ‘There’s a copse on the land—your land. It should supply plenty of fuel for some time to come, but your aunt did a lot of replanting. Anyway, I’ve filled up the log store for you, so you won’t need to worry about that for quite a while.’
    ‘It sounds as though I owe you an awful lot,’ she said with a frown. ‘What with the groceries, the wood and…you mentioned there were animals. I don’t think I’ve ever had any experience looking after pets—none that I recall, anyway.’ Yet no dog or cat had come running to greet them when they’d first entered the house. It was very puzzling.
    ‘Ah…yes. We’ll do a quick tour upstairs and then I’ll take you to see them.’
    There were two bedrooms upstairs, one with an en suite bathroom, and along the corridor was the main bathroom. Saffi couldn’t quite work out the layout up here. There were fewer rooms than she’d expected, as though something was missing, but perhaps her senses were off somehow.
    ‘Okay, shall we go and solve the mystery of these pets?’ she murmured. Maybe her aunt had a small aviary outside. She’d heard quite a bit of birdsong when they’d arrived, but there were a good many trees around the house that would have accounted for that.
    They went outside to the garden, and Saffi caught her breath as she looked out at the extent of her property. It wasn’t just a garden, there was also a paddock and a stable block nearby.
    ‘Oh, no. Tell me it’s not horses,’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t know anything about looking after them.’
    ‘Just a couple.’ He saw her look of dismay and relented. ‘No, actually, Annie mainly used the stable block as a store for the fruit harvest.’
    She breathed a small sigh of relief.
    Fruit harvest, he’d said. Saffi made a mental note of that. On the south side of the garden she’d noticed an archway in a stone wall, and something flickered in her faulty memory banks. Could it be a walled garden? From somewhere in the depths of her mind she recalled images of fruit trees and glasshouses with grapes, melons and peaches.
    They walked by the stable block and came to a fenced-off area that contained a hen hut