Partners by Contract Read Online Free Page B

medical textbook!
    ‘To hell with my knee!’ he blasted.
    ‘I’m trying, Con.’ He didn’t seem to appreciate how hard.
    ‘Trying to do what?’
    Now she knew he was being deliberately obtuse.
    ‘You could at least make an effort!’ she burst out, keeping a wary eye on a stray sheep that had wandered into the road. ‘It’s very uncomfortable, of course.’
    ‘My knee?’
    His flippancy exasperated her. ‘That, too,’ she agreed, refusing to get angry. Anger made you say things you regretted later and she needed to keep a careful guard on her tongue.
    Connor’s lips curled into a derisive smile. ‘ Uncomfortable. You always were good at understatement, Phoebe.’
    ‘By the time you’re fit to come back to work I’ll be gone. When I applied for the job,’ she continued doggedly, ‘I had no idea that you were the partner I was standing in for.’
    ‘And when you did?’
    That was a question she’d been asking herself a lot. The truth was, some masochistic part of her hadn’t been able to resist a glimpse of the new life Con had built for himself. The temptation of seeing where he worked, the people he knew, had been too great for her to resist. Phoebe refused to acknowledge the possibility that subconsciously a little part of her had hoped that this would happen, that deep down she’d wanted to see Connor again.
    ‘Fair question,’ she admitted with a beleaguered shrug.
    ‘An honest answer to a fair question seems reasonable.’
    ‘You wouldn’t recognise reasonable if you fell over it,’ she snapped, forgetting for the moment about keeping her temper. She took a deep steadying breath. ‘I’ve already explained. I thought I’d be long gone before you came back, and when Will asked me to stay a little longer after your accident I couldn’t refuse. With hindsight, of course, I can see—’
    ‘I tried to write to you,’ he interrupted abruptly. The crack in his resonant voice made her startled eyes swivelin his direction. In profile she could see a maverick pulse thumping like crazy in his lean cheek. Her eyes slid as if preconditioned to the firm sensual outline of his lips and her tummy muscles did a lot of squirming.
    With a tiny snort of denial she managed to tear her eyes away and nodded.
    ‘I know.’ She trained her eyes with glassy fixed concentration on the road ahead.
    Connor raked a hand through his blond hair. ‘You must know that I never intended that we lose touch completely...or at all...’
    Aware his eyes were on her face, Phoebe kept her facial muscles still, presenting a bland mask to his searching scrutiny.
    ‘The letters kept being returned unopened. Then you left with no forwarding address.’
    ‘It seemed easier that way.’ Her composed tone didn’t even hint at the hours she’d spent agonising over the decision not to open his letters. ‘You’re the one who said you didn’t want to see me again.’ The bitterness crept, unintended, into her voice and she knew it was unrealistic to suppose he hadn’t heard it, too. ‘And I gave you every justification,’ she added with painful honesty. She didn’t want him to think she was trying to shift the blame.
    ‘You gave me...!’ he snarled. Connor closed his eyes, his chest heaving with the effort to control his feelings. ‘Stop the car, will you?’
    ‘I can’t. I’m already running late.’ If she stopped the car she’d have to look at him.
    ‘What happened was...’ A deep sigh reverberated through his powerful frame. ‘It was in the heat of the moment, Phoebe,’ he rasped.
    The moment was long gone, but the heat remained. A lot of heat! Phoebe, her eyes locked in forward position,didn’t see the colour seeping slowly across the high contours of his cheekbones.
    It had been a few days after Penny’s funeral when Connor had come across her curled up in a foetal ball on a sofa. The room had been dimly lit. She’d stopped crying just long enough to plead with him not to turn on the light.
    If only I