Chapter 2

Elena’s temples were pounding when the consulting room door closed behind Lady Mint’s ample figure, but she sat down behind her desk and tried to concentrate on the things she still had to do before she could go home to her safe little cottage in the outskirts of the town.

Safe? The word mocked her ruthlessly. How safe was she going to be with Stephan Lynch owning a farm in the district?

Dr Cleave, in his early fifties, emerged from his consulting room half an hour later, and Lady Mint was clinging to his arm as if she was reluctant to let go of the man who had been her doctor and her friend for so many years. She said a tearful goodbye, and Elena had a lump in her throat when she followed the elderly doctor back into his consulting room where he slumped into the leather armchair behind his desk.

‘It’s been quite a morning’, he sighed tiredly, taking off his gold-rimmed spectacles and cleaning them vigorously with his white linen handkerchief before he put them on again, and gestured Elena into the chair. His green gaze settled on her rigidly controlled features and his mouth tightened. ‘I presume you have already heard about the news that Lady Mint has sold her farm.’

Elena stared down at her clenched hands in her lap. ‘Yes, she told me.’

‘I believe you are aware that the new owner of the farm is the same Stephan Lynch you used to know.’

The corners of her soft mouth lifted in a self-depreciating smile. ‘ There can’t be more than one Stephan Lynch in the medical profession.’

‘I imagine that’s true,’ gruntled Dr Cleave, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘You’re not going to do something foolish such as running away, are you?’

‘The reason why I ran away once before no longer exists.’ She replied.

Her grey eyes clouded with memories which still had the power to hurt her to some extent, and Roland got up and circled his desk to place a comforting hand on her shoulder.

‘I admire you for laying your own happiness on the sacrificial alter , but there is such a thing as being the ultimate loser,’ he warned, his fingers tightening on her shoulder as if to emphasize his point. ‘You have been with me for almost three years, and in all this time you have never allowed another man near your heart. You have shut off your feelings so securely that one day, when you chose to open the door to your heart, you might find that it has become rusted, and you will find nothing there worth giving to someone else.’

Her throat was too tight to speak, and she placed her hand briefly over his where it rested in her shoulder as an indication that she had heard and understood what he had said. Dr Cleave and his wife had been good friends, and she appreciated his concern.

It was not quite true that no other man had been allowed to get close to her. There was Theo Allen, whose friendship meant a great deal to her. After her arrival in Mystic Falls she had rejected all advances from the opposite sex simply because she had felt that none of them had matched up to Stephan, and she later found herself admitting to a general lack of interest. Theo Allen had persisted, and he became a friend in whose company she could relax without fearing that he might make certain emotional or physical demands of her.

Elena felt a sudden sense of alarm. She had always imagined herself married and with a family of her own at the age of twenty- seven. The importance of that desire had diminished over the years, and she could almost say that she was content and happy on her own. Was it possible that , as Dr Cleave had said, she was becoming an ultimate loser?

She thrust her disturbing thoughts aside when she left the consulting-room with Dr Cleave and drove herself home in her Red Camry.