Free Spring Proposal in Swallowbrook by Abigail Gordon Page A

‘There might be a way round it.’
    ‘Mum, we both know that there isn’t, don’t we?’ she’d said, ‘and in any case the attraction is all on my part. Hugo seems intent on keeping things strictly business, so there really is no need to worry about my feelings for him.’

CHAPTER FIVE
    A S THE night of the practice manager’s farewell approached spring was settling upon Swallowbrook in all its fresh delight, with new lambs in the fields of the surrounding farms, green shoots on the branches of the trees, and the fells had lost the gaunt look of winter.
    The cafés and shops were filling up with early visitors, the village was alive again, and the magic of it was helping Ruby to count her blessings and be sensible by keeping out of Hugo’s way other than at the practice, which wasn’t too difficult as he was thinking along similar lines.
    Yet it wasn’t blotting out his curiosity about her, or slowing down the racing of his pulse when she was near. He knew he could take his pick of several attractive women locally who were free agents if he wanted to, and that to keep Ruby on the fringe of his life was the right thing to do, but neither solution appealed to him because those moments beside the lake when he’d kissed her kept coming back. How her eyes had been wide with wonderment as she’d looked up at him from the circle of his arms, and how he’d managed to control the desire she’d awakened in him and had merely brushed his lips against hers.
    The leaving event was to take place at the hotel where Hugo had taken Ruby to eat that night straight from the surgery. It would be the second retirement from the Swallowbrook practice in recent months with John Gallagher having stepped down not long before, and Gordon was planning a big affair.
    Although an elderly bachelor, he had many friends and a scattered family who would all be coming for the occasion, as well as all the surgery staff and the local chemist.
    The invitations asked that guests and their partners should wear evening dress, reminding Ruby that whilst she had the dress, she’d no one to escort her. The obvious solution was not to go, to send her apologies with some sort of believable excuse, as she wouldn’t know anyone if she did go, apart from the folks at the surgery, and they would be with husbands and wives or partners.
    She knew that Libby and Nathan were having to take Toby with them for lack of a reliable childminder and suggested that she would look after him if they wished as she was too new to the village as it was now to fit in well with those present at the retirement party, and Hugo, according to surgery gossip, was bringing one of the medical reps who’d been invited.
    They were reluctant to accept her offer at first, but she insisted that it would be a pleasure, which was true compared to being the odd one out at the gathering, so it was arranged that she would go to the cottage across from the surgery at seven o’clock on the evening of the event and take care of Toby.
    She would enjoy looking after him, she was thinking as she drove down to the cottage on the night of the party, and it would take her mind off Hugo and the medical rep, who was glamorous and glossy and would be a perfect foil for his dark attractiveness.
    She was unaware that taking the rep to the party was something that Hugo had been loath to do, but Bryony Matthews had told Libby that she would love to come if she could sit next to him, so he’d reluctantly agreed to do the honours.
    Reluctant because he’d been intending asking Ruby if she would be his partner. He had wanted to allow himself the treat of spending the evening with her. Just being with her at the surgery was beginning to feel like not enough. He kept telling himself it was crazy with them living so close, yet seeing so little of each other out of surgery hours.
    He was coming to terms with her presence in his life, aware that she was different from other women he’d met, with none of the