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‘No, I’m not!’ she retorted immediately, gritting her teeth in stubborn determination.
‘Good girl,’ she heard Marcus telling her with unexpected tenderness as he put the car in motion. ‘It won’t be long now.’
It wasn’t—Marcus was a fast and a good driver—but it was still an agonising ten minutes before he was pulling up in the car park to their excellent local medical centre.
As she reached for the door handle he instructed, ‘Stay there, I’ll get someone to come out to you.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘I’VE got to rest for a week? I can’t possibly do that,’ Polly protested to her doctor after he had examined her, bandaged up her ankle and prescribed some pain-killers. ‘I’ve got a hotel to run.’
‘I’m sorry, but in order to get the bruising down you will have to rest,’ Dr Jarvis persisted.
‘Don’t worry, Dr Jarvis, I shall see that she does,’ Marcus informed him, and, ignoring Polly’s irritation, he turned to her to say firmly, ‘Until that bandage comes off next week, you will be staying with me, Polly.’
‘Staying with you, Marcus? Didn’t you hear what I just said. I’ve got a hotel to run!’
‘Yes, I heard you, and you can run it…during the day…just so long as you do so from a chair. But there’s no way you are going to be able to work a twelve-hour day the way you are at the moment.’
‘And if I can’t, whose fault is that?’ Polly fumed. ‘I’m not the one who called in those wretched people and—’
‘Polly, there’s no point in arguing with me. You are staying with me until that ankle has healed, and if I find that you are overdoing things then…’
‘Then what?’ she challenged him.
‘Then you will be staying with me twenty-four hours a day if necessary,’ Marcus told her softly.
Twenty-four hours a day with Marcus. Polly closed her eyes as she was attacked by a wave of weak longing.
What about Suzi? she wanted to say, but for some reason she just couldn’t bring herself to form the words, to ask Marcus what his soon-to-be wife would think about him moving Polly into the house they were going to share.
Not that Suzi had any need to feel concerned, as Marcus had no doubt made more than clear to her, reassuring her with all those tender words and touches that were the province of the lover.
‘What is it? Is your ankle worse?’ Marcus asked sharply as Polly gave a soft sound of pain at the thought of the loving intimacy Suzi would share with him.
Quickly Polly shook her head before very reluctantly allowing Marcus to guide her back to his car.
‘We’ll stop off at the hotel on the way back so that you can collect whatever you need,’ he told her as he waited to join the traffic.
‘I can’t possibly run the hotel from your house, Marcus. I need to be there on the spot,’ Polly protested, trying desperately to find a way to change his mind.
However, the thin smile he gave her as he slid the car out into the busy main road told her that she had failed even before he replied acerbically, ‘Really? It’s odd, isn’t it, how the hotel has suddenly become so important to you when not so very long ago you announced that it was so important that you intended to leave?’
‘That’s different,’ Polly insisted. ‘At the moment the hotel is still my responsibility.’
‘Mmm…Have you spoken to Bernstein recently, by the way?’
‘Phil? No, I haven’t,’ Polly admitted, adding, ‘He’s away at the moment in the Caribbean.’
‘Yes, I know; Suzi flew out to meet him there.’
Suzi was with Phil! There was really no reason why she should feel so surprised, Polly told herself. After all, Suzi was still working for Phil. But if she was honest she was rather bemused that Marcus, who had made all manner of unfounded accusations about her relationship with Phil, should react so calmly to the fact that Suzi, whom he loved, whom he was going to marry, who was having his child, was with Phil in such an undeniably romantic location.
‘Phil’s secretary told me that he’s due back soon,’ Polly informed Marcus.
‘Yes,’ he agreed coolly. As she swung the car off the road and into the drive that led to the hotel, he said, ‘You can wait in the car, Polly, to save putting any extra pressure on your ankle. I’ll go in and get your stuff.’
Immediately Polly opened her mouth to object, pointing out crossly, ‘I’m not an invalid, Marcus. I’m perfectly capable of getting my own stuff, thank you very much.’
A little to her surprise he gave in, but still insisted that she lean on him whilst he helped her into the foyer.
