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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Dear Reader
About the author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Preview
Copyright
Dear Reader
After eighteen books this is my first ‘friends become lovers’ story. I’m not sure why I’ve never tackled this one before, because as far as storylines go I’m a bona fide fan! The angst and the yearning in these plots are so tangible you can feel them seething around you as you read.
Poor Lawson and Victoria are no different. Not only have they known each other for twenty years, having formed a dynamic and vital paramedic partnership on their small island community that neither want to jeopardise, Vic is counting down the days until she leaves the island for foreign shores. And then there’s Matilda—Lawson’s eight-year-old daughter. Victoria has spent the last seventeen years raising her twin brothers after their mother’s tragic death—she yearns for a freedom that she’s never known. She certainly has no plans to be a mother—ever.
But sometimes fate has other things in store, and Victoria and Lawson are about to discover that some things just can’t be denied. It’s a bumpy ride, but one that will be well worth the bruises.
I hope you enjoy.
Love
Amy
Amy Andrews has always loved writing, and still can’t quite believe that she gets to do it for a living. Creating wonderful heroines and gorgeous heroes and telling their stories is an amazing way to pass the day. Sometimes they don’t always act as she’d like them to—but then neither do her kids, so she’s kind of used to it. Amy lives in the very beautiful Samford Valley, with her husband and aforementioned children, along with six brown chooks and two black dogs. She loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a line at www.amyandrews.com.au
I dedicate this book to one of the most talented writers I know, and the woman who knows me better than any other—my amazing sister, Roslyn. I carry her heart in my heart. As she does mine.
Chapter One
AN EARLY morning sea breeze caught the sleeve of Lawson Dunlop’s paramedic overalls as he sat on the wooden picnic table devouring a bacon and egg roll from the nearby twenty-four-hour cafe. His booted feet were evenly spread and braced on the seat. His elbows propped on his powerful quads. His lean torso angled forward.
The first rays of sunlight reached across the ocean to illuminate the island and in the half-light the water in the passage was a deep velvety blue. The surface was still, millpond still, yet to be fractured by the activities of the day.
Already a steady stream of workers in their cars trundled over the bridge heading to the mainland and Brisbane, one hour’s commute away. A few eager fishermen, their lines hanging over the side, paid no heed to the daily island exodus as the cars rumbled past them.
A gull wheeled and cried overhead as Lawson’s gaze tracked the path of a nearby pelican waddling up the narrow strip of sand ceded by the tide. The breeze blew a faint tang of salt towards him and he inhaled deeply, enjoying the serenity of island life and the respite from a long and busy night duty.
A rustle beside him disturbed the peace and he turned to look down at his partner of five years sitting next to him in much the same fashion, their thighs almost touching. She was also making short work of her breakfast, which at least meant he could enjoy the scenery in silence. Eating was about the only time Victoria Dunleavy was ever quiet.
Vic inhaled, also admiring the view. ‘Don’t guess I’m going to get this in London,’ she said around a mouthful of burger.
Lawson shook his head. ‘Nope.’
‘Did I mention it’s ninety days?’
‘Yep.’ Once or twice.
‘Nine. Zero. Then I’m out of here. Gone-ski. Vamoosed.’ She ignored the way her gut clenched at the thought of being so far away from her beloved Brindabella Island. It was way past time for her to fly the nest.
‘Uh-huh.’
Lawson took another bite. He’d miss his partner. In a strictly professional way, of course. Good partnerships were rare and, in their line of work, vital. He wasn’t looking forward to having to build a rapport with someone else. He’d miss the synergy that flowed effortlessly between the two of them.
‘I’ll miss the twins. And Dad, of course.’ The thought of leaving her family struck like an ice pick to her heart as she sat and absorbed the scenery already embedded in her DNA. She was twenty-six, for crying out loud. It was time!
Lawson could hear the wistfulness in her tone and immediately felt selfish for thinking of himself and the impact her leaving would have on his workload. Victoria deserved this. She’d sacrificed a lot for her family and now the twins were grown she was free to get out and explore the world. As he’d done.
‘The twins will be at uni when you leave and probably too busy chasing girls to notice,’ he hastened to assure her. ‘Bob will be fine. Go and see the world. Sow your wild oats.’
Lawson was surprised at the catch in his chest as the old-fashioned saying pinged a nerve ending or two—the thought of her with the opposite sex not sitting well.
Vic nodded. He was right. Of course he was. Still, every now and then, the decision to leave her family, leave the island and everything she’d ever known and loved, had the power to stop her in her tracks.
It was the right decision, the only decision, she just hadn’t realised how hard it was going to be. A year ago when she’d booked the ticket it had been a long way off but with ninety days to go it was suddenly looming. And it was disheartening to think her departure might barely be noticed.
They finished their breakfast in companionable silence. Lawson checked his watch as he screwed up his paper bag. Six-thirty. Another hour and a half before they knocked off. He should just make it home in time to see Matilda before she left for the day.
Victoria was quiet beside him, unusual to say the least but he knew it wouldn’t last long. He’d known her since she was a skinny six-year-old and he’d been fortunate enough to be partnered with her father as a rookie paramedic. She’d been a chatty kid and nothing much had changed over the years.
‘I’ll be missed too, right?’
He glanced at her pensive face as she stared out over the water, attuned to the slight trace of doubt he heard in her voice. ‘Of course.’
Very few people got to see this side of his partner. To the outside world she was capable Victoria Dunleavy—dedicated daughter, big sister/surrogate mother and ultra-professional paramedic. But having known her for ever and having sat in a vehicle with her four out of seven days a week for the last five years, he’d been privy to the other Victoria Dunleavy. The one nobody got to see. The one who’d had way too much responsibility thrust on her long before she should have and wasn’t always certain of herself.
‘Ryan and Josh and your dad will miss you desperately,’ he assured her. ‘And everyone at the station. I know for a fact that Matilda will miss you like crazy.’
Vic chewed her last mouthful very carefully. So, her brothers would miss her, her father would miss her, her colleagues would miss her, even his eight-year-old daughter would miss her. But what about him? Would he miss her?
The fact that he hadn’t included himself was a little depressing. Vic had had a crush on her partner for as long as she could remember. Given that he’d known her for ever and there was a twelve-year age difference, she’d never expected it to be reciprocated. After all, it was just a harmless crush on an older man who’d been a family friend for ever and her mentor for the last five years.
Things like that happened all the time. It wasn’t as if she was in love with the guy. But surely, surely, he’d miss her too? She scrunched up her packet and turned to him. ‘What about you, Lawson? Will you miss me?’
Lawson gave her a startled look. Her steady whiskey gaze held him captive and he was struck again by that look he sometimes saw in it. He wasn’t sure what it was but it was frank and seemed to reach right inside him.
He nodded and looked back out to sea. ‘Of course. I’ve spent five years training you to do things my way. Your father will probably stick me with a newbie straight out of the academy.’ Bob Dunleavy, his old mentor and her father, was Officer-In-Charge of Brindabella Station. ‘Now I’ll have to start all over again with someone else.’
Vic realised she was holding her breath and she let it ease out slowly. Of course. He would miss her as a colleague. Her skills, their teamwork, their synergy. Why had she expected anything else? He’d never been anything other than one hundred per cent professional with her.
Which only proved further how badly she needed to get away from the island. She needed to broaden her horizons, both personal and professional. She needed to experience a variety of working environments, be exposed to different ideas, meet new people. Including men.
Every boyfriend she’d dated had suffered in comparison to Lawson. It wasn’t that she meant to compare or even realised she was doing it half the time. It just happened. Somehow, they’d all been a little lacking. Perhaps if he was out of her life, the silly crush would be forgotten and another man might just stand a chance.
Quite why she felt the way she did was a mystery. It wasn’t as if Lawson had ever given her any encourag ment. Or ever treated her as anything other than Bob’s daughter. Just another paramedic at the station.
It wasn’t even as if he were the best-looking man she’d ever known. On the contrary—she’d been out with some exceedingly good-looking men. Lance Coulter in particular had been so sexy she’d been the envy of the entire island. Everyone from teenagers to grannies had swooned over the locum island doctor.
But there was something about Lawson Dunlop that was compelling. He certainly wasn’t classically goodlooking. In fact the features of his face taken individually could best be described as interesting. A freakishly square jaw line, crooked nose and deep furrows lining his brow and around his eyes and mouth.
His eyes were grey. Nothing special. Except they could look warm like the soft folds of a cashmere jumper when he was calming a frightened patient or ominous like a storm-ravaged sea when stupidity caused needless carnage. His hair was dark brown and worn severely curtailed in a closely cropped fashion—not stylish or fussy. Just functional. No nonsense.
And then there was his scar. The one he never talked about. A thin white blemish that slashed from just beneath his nose down through both lips and ploughed a furrow in the stubble covering his chin.
She’d heard mountains being described as craggy and it was the best adjective she could come up with that suited his face. His height also leant to this appearance. He was well over six feet, his broad shoulders seeming to occupy all the space around him.
He certainly loomed above her, making her feel strangely fragile. Which was utterly ridiculous. She might have been petite but she was no dainty flower. She was strong, a requirement of her job, and most definitely robust.
An insistent beeping noise interrupted her thoughts, for which she was most thankful. They simultaneously reached for their pagers. Lawson pulled his off his belt first.
‘Forty-four-year-old female. Chest pain. Borilla Avenue.’
Vic nodded, her brain already switching from her personal life to work mode. ‘Let’s go.’ She vaulted off the table, landing cat-like on her feet, eager to banish the doubt demons and throw herself into what would hopefully be their last job before they clocked off. She headed for the nearby ambulance, not bothering to look back.
Lawson followed her, his gaze drawn to the bob of her auburn ponytail and the way her neat little frame fitted snugly into her navy paramedic overalls. He’d been doing that more and more lately. Noticing how her uniform clung to the contours of her bottom and how the functional government-issued belt she wore at her waist cinched her in, emphasising her curves.
Curves? Up until about a year ago he hadn’t even noticed she owned curves.
What the hell was the matter with him? He’d known her since she was a six-year-old in pigtails. He had no business noticing how much of a woman she’d become. How her wide-set eyes were balanced by the fullness of her lips. Or how those cute cherubic cheeks and dimples she’d had as a kid were just plain sexy twenty years later. It was just…wrong.
He banished them from his head and put his mind firmly to the job.
A few hours later Vic was in the depths of a sleep so deep that it took several insistent bangs on her bedroom door to drag her back into consciousness. She surfaced from the pillow she had jammed over her head and yelled, ‘What?’ in the general direction of the door.
Her brothers were in their senior year at high school and were currently in their exam block, which meant unless they had a test they didn’t have to be at school. This afternoon they had a biology paper and were supposed to be using the morning to cram for it.
‘Ryan’s cut his finger.’
Vic’s heavy lids battled to stay open. She’d worked her tail off last night and she was dog-tired. ‘Stick a Band-Aid on it,’ she grouched, placing the pillow back over her head.
‘I think it needs more than that.’
Vic sighed and threw the pillow away as the hesitation in Josh’s voice nagged at her gut. It had to be reasonably bad—both brothers knew a fate worse than death awaited them for trivial interruptions to her post-night-duty coma.
She looked at the clock. She’d been asleep for two hours. No wonder she felt like hell—those first few hours were always the deepest.
She opened the door and a blast of heat pushed into her air-conditioned bedroom. She looked up at her brother towering over her. She was barely five one; everyone towered over her. He was as blond as she was olive, the twins taking after their mother, whereas she had inherited the darker Dunleavy colouring.
‘There’d better be blood.’
Josh swallowed. ‘Oh, there is.’
Vic followed feeling weary to her bones but not overly concerned. She knew non-medical people often misjudged blood loss and that a small amount of the red stuff could often look like a massacre.
Her eyes felt gritty as she entered the kitchen unprepared for the sight that greeted her. For a brief moment she wondered if Ryan had been shot. Blood was splattered on the bench and congealed on the floor tiles. Her brother was standing at the sink, his wrapped hand hovering above the stainless steel.
‘Bloody hell, Ryan.’ Vic, suddenly very awake, flew across the kitchen. A metallic aroma wafted around her as she disturbed the warm air currents and she half slipped in a patch of smeared blood. ‘What on earth did you do?’
‘I told you not to wake her,’ Ryan said, turning accusing eyes on his brother. ‘I said to get some Steri-Strips.’
Vic unwrapped the wound carefully. The blood-soaked tea towel dripped into the sink. She somehow didn’t think Steri-Strips were going to do the job. ‘What happened?’ she asked, her heart slamming in her chest as her suddenly razor-sharp thought processes calculated his estimated blood loss.
Ryan didn’t look at her and a moment passed before Josh spoke. ‘The knife slipped when he was cutting through his shoe.’
Vic glared at Ryan, always the more daring of the twins. ‘Your shoe?’ she demanded.
He shrugged and winced as her unwrapping became a little rough. ‘They were an old pair.’ When Vic glared at him he hastily added, ‘The ad said you could do it with those knives.’
Vic shook her head, not sure how Ryan had ever made it to almost eighteen alive. This had to go down as the winner in the annals of dumb Dunleavy males. ‘I bet it also said not to try it at home.’
She finally uncovered the wound. Ryan’s middle finger appeared deeply lacerated, holding on by not much more than a thread. ‘A Steri-Strip?’ she said incredulously. Ryan shrugged. ‘How long ago did this happen?’ she asked.
‘About twenty minutes ago,’ Josh answered, his voice small.
Twenty minutes ago? No wonder it looked as if a massacre had taken place in the kitchen. Vic valiantly tried to recall her anatomy lessons and picture the blood supply to the hand.
What the hell they thought they were going to accomplish with a thin, weak, sticky strip she had no idea. Were they going to lasso the finger back in place and go back to watching television while Ryan slowly exsanguinated? Would she have woken to find him near death?
She shuddered at the thought. Losing her mother at the tender age of eight had been devastating. Losing one of the twins would be a blow neither she nor her father would ever recover from.
‘It’s practically severed. It’s going to need more than a bloody Steri-Strip. It’s going to need surgery.’
She shook her head at her brother. ‘Joshua,’ she said urgently, twisting Ryan’s bloodied hand upright, encircling his wrist with her thumb and forefinger to form a tourniquet. ‘Get me some clean tea towels and bring me the phone.’
Josh delved in the nearby drawer, pulling out the requested cloths and shoving them at his sister. He stalked from the kitchen and returned shortly after with the phone. Vic was re-covering the wound. He thrust it at her.
She rolled her eyes as she deftly wound the makeshift bandage in place. ‘Ring the station for me.’
Josh paled as he punched in the numbers. ‘You want me to tell Dad?’
‘No. I’ll tell him.’ She finished with the wound and tied a clean dishcloth firmly around Ryan’s wrist to stem the flow of blood to the wound.
Josh held out the phone to her. ‘Dad’s not there. It’s Lawson.’
Vic frowned. What the hell was Lawson still doing at the station? They’d knocked off over three hours ago. Vic reached for the phone. ‘Hold on a sec,’ she said into the receiver.
She directed Ryan to a nearby chair and pushed him into it. ‘You,’ she said to Josh. ‘Hold his arm up above his head like this.’ She supported her brother’s arm in the air and Josh took over.
‘Lawson?’
‘Victoria.’
Apart from her mother, Lawson was the only person who’d ever called her by her full name and, as much as she grouched about it, secretly she adored it. As a six-year-old it had made her feel very grown up and today, with her brother’s blood drying on her hands, it gave her an added dash of courage.
‘Why are you still there? Where’s Dad?’ she said, staying close to her brothers.
‘He had some meeting in Brisbane to attend. I’m covering for him until he gets back. What’s wrong?’
‘Ryan’s practically severed his left middle digit. I could drive him to the hospital myself but I really think he needs a medical professional with him while I drive. Is there an ambulance free?’
Lawson, well used to Ryan’s litany of injuries, didn’t even bat an eyelid. ‘How’d he do that?’
Vic sighed. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’
Lawson grinned. ‘Is it haemorrhaging much?’
‘It has been. I’ve controlled the bleeding now though.’
‘Nine sixty’s available. I’ll call it in to Coms and be at your place in a few minutes.’
Vic hung up the phone. ‘Lawson will be here in three.’
‘I’m sorry, Vic, I—’
She slashed her hand through the air, bringing Ryan’s apology to an abrupt halt. ‘Don’t talk to me. Just be quiet.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t,’ she snapped.
Now the emergency was under control and she was away from sickening amounts of her brother’s blood other feelings flowed. Disbelief, anger, relief. She allowed herself to be a sister for a moment.
‘I can’t believe I raised you. How bloody stupid,’ she said to Ryan. ‘How am I supposed to go off to the other side of the world when you two are still acting like children? Hell, even little kids know not to play with knives. You’re nearly eighteen, for crying out loud. You’re supposed to be mature. Responsible. You’re supposed to be studying for your biology exam.’
‘Vic—’
‘I said don’t talk,’ she snapped again. Ryan was looking pale and she guessed from his blood loss he was a little shocked. The what-ifs were starting to circle.
‘I’ve worked all night, for Pete’s sake. All you had to do was let me sleep and be uninjured until I woke up. Is that too much to ask?’
Ryan and Josh looked at their feet and shook their heads. ‘Dad’s gonna have a fit,’ she continued. ‘Do you think his blood pressure can take this?’ Their father was borderline overweight and on medication for his hypertension. They both shook their heads again. ‘I swear you two are going to be the death of him.’
Moments passed in silence while she took stock. Ryan’s face was twisted into a permanent wince and she felt a momentary streak of sympathy. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Yeah.’ Ryan grimaced.
The streak fizzled as quickly as it had arrived. ‘Good.’
She pushed some hair off her face and realised her hand was shaking. The sound of a distant siren reached them and Vic had never heard a sweeter noise. Not that she thought Ryan was about to expire from blood loss, but he had lost a good amount of the red stuff and would definitely be anaemic. She wouldn’t be surprised if he required a transfusion.
And had Lawson been much longer she might well have succumbed to the urge to do something drastic to prevent him from doing anything else so overwhelmingly stupid again.
She put her hand under Ryan’s elbow and urged him up. ‘Come on. Walk. We’ll meet Lawson out the front. Keep your arm above your head.’
‘ Jeez, Vic, is your bedside manner always this good?’ Ryan grouched as he stumbled beside her.
‘No. I reserve this treatment for too-stupid-to-live teenagers.’
Lawson pulled up at the Dunleavy residence, a place he’d been to hundreds of times since he’d taken up residence on the island. He killed the siren at the same time the trio reached the driveway and jumped down from the cab. Striding around the back, he opened the doors as Victoria and her brothers appeared at the rear.
He took one look at a worried Joshua, an obviously chastised Ryan and a thunder-faced Victoria and made an executive decision. ‘Why don’t I look after Ryan in the back and you go and get cleaned up, put on your uniform and drive us in?’
Vic was about to argue when she noticed Lawson’s eyes taking in her attire. Amidst the crisis she’d forgotten that she was in her pyjamas. Not that there was anything indecent about them—they certainly covered more than a lot of clothes did these days.
Brief silky boxers with high scooped-up side seams and a shoestring-strapped grey singlet that didn’t quite meet the waistband of her shorts. But it was perhaps the blood that was most off putting.
She gave Ryan one last big-sister glare. ‘Fine. I’ll be ten minutes.’
Lawson tried really hard not to look as she walked away. She was his partner, for crying out loud. He’d seen her out of uniform hundreds of times. Hell—he’d seen her in a bikini! But he’d already noticed the way her bed-rumpled hair hung loosely around her face and the slight chest bounce as her unfettered breasts had jiggled against the taut fabric of her shirt. The desire to look a bit more was strangely compelling.