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The supermarket manager was just opening the doors when Lucy arrived in town. She didn’t know him, but she gave him a nod as she passed through and wrestled with a trolley which didn’t want to leave its pack. Welcoming the chance to focus on groceries, which were delightfully simple compared with everything else in her life, she started collecting the ingredients for a variety of casseroles. The radio blared loudly and she sang along with the music right up to when she presented her load to the checkout. She’d just started placing her items on the black conveyer belt when she jumped at the blast of an air horn and dropped a can of tomatoes.
‘Loud, eh?’ The heavily made-up teenager grinned. ‘That’s Jason saying “G’day”. He always does that when he’s taking a load of sheep to Perth. He does it when he comes back too so Kylie knows he’s safe.’
‘And no one’s ever asked him not to?’ Lucy’s adrenaline surge was fading, leaving her jittery and slightly on edge.
The girl looked at her as if she had two heads. ‘No. You get used to it when you—’
The gut-wrenching sound of the long screech of rubber against asphalt deafened all other noise, followed immediately by the chilling crunch of metal against metal.
Lucy ran. As her feet hit the pavement she looked left, but could only see heat haze shimmering on the road. Then she looked right and gagged. A jack-knifed truck lay on its side along with a four-deck trailer full of sheep. Sheep were everywhere—some standing, some bloodied and bleeding, but Lucy’s eyes passed over them as she saw the driver climbing out of the cabin. She ran to her car, picked up her medical bag and kept running.
When she reached the driver, he was walking in circles, his hands pulling at his hair and blood pouring down his face. ‘Jason? You need to sit down.’ Lucy took his arm and shepherded him toward the kerb, wanting to check his pupils for a concussion.
His unfocused gaze settled on her face. ‘She came from nowhere.’
Lucy didn’t know what he meant. ‘Who’s she?’
‘The other car.’
The other car? She spun around, her eyes searching beyond the truck and the bleating sheep.
‘Lucy!’ Deb, an off-duty nurse from the hospital, ran up to her breathless. ‘Geraldine Carter’s in the other car.’
Oh, God, she couldn’t even see another car and a thousand thoughts ran through her head. ‘Get Dr Rodriguez, ring the police, find someone to stay with Jason and then come and help me.’
As she ran, she heard the scream of sirens in the distance and gave thanks, knowing the police and local volunteer fire brigade would block off the road and sort out the sheep. She rounded the truck and braced herself for what she imagined would be horrific.
She breathed in hard to keep from retching.
What had once been a small hatch-back car was now smashed almost beyond recognition. The impact of the crash had flattened the passenger side of the car before pushing it off the road into the low stone fence of the community park. A woman was slumped forward over the steering wheel, deathly still.
Checking there were no power lines touching the car, Lucy gripped the car door handle and prayed it would open without needing the cutting skill of the ‘jaws of life’. She gave an almighty pull and felt some give so tugged again. Grudgingly, the door opened just enough for her to squeeze in. She put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Can you hear me?’
The woman didn’t move. What had Deb said her name was? ‘Geraldine, can you hear me?’ She heard a moan. ‘I’m Lucy and a doctor and I’m going to help you.’
Airway, breathing, circulation. Lucy pressed her fingers against the woman’s neck, feeling for the carotid pulse. Thready. Carefully, using her hands as a brace, she brought Geraldine’s head into a neutral line. She needed to apply a cervical collar, but to do that she needed to sit her upright. Ideally, it was a two-person job.
Hurry up, Marco.
Airway comes first. She knew she didn’t have time to wait, especially when she had no clue how far away help was from arriving. ‘Geraldine, I’m going to move—’
‘What’s her condition?’
Thank you. Lucy had never been so pleased to hear a Spanish accent in her life and she swivelled her head around in relief. Intelligent, dark brown eyes filled with a host of medical questions gazed at her, backlit with care and concern.
A odd, fleeting half-thought amidst the chaos of the moment made her wonder how it might feel to be the focus of that sort of caring.
She brushed it aside as completely irrelevant. ‘She’s conscious, although only just, and given her pulse rate, probably bleeding somewhere. We need to treat her as a possible spinal injury.’
Marco nodded and tugged on the door which shifted, giving them a bit more room, but they’d need a lot more to get Geraldine out of the car. He turned and yelled to the police sergeant, ‘Graham, we need this door off.’
‘On it.’
Lucy heard Graham on his two-way radio to the fire brigade and then Marco moved in next to her, filling the cramped space with his clean, fresh citrus scent and the welcome support of professional reinforcement. ‘Geraldine, this is Marco. We’re going to carefully sit you up and protect your neck.’
The woman groaned without forming any words.
Lucy continued in triage mode. ‘Marco, you support her mid-thorax and I’ll support her neck. On my count. One, two, three.’
They sat Geraldine up and then without being asked, Marco passed Lucy the cervical collar.
‘This will support your neck, Geraldine.’ She quickly wrapped it into position.
‘Lucy, take this.’
She turned and Marco held out the equipment she needed to attach Geraldine to the Propaq so they could monitor her vital signs. ‘Thanks.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll insert the IV.’
‘Sorry, Geraldine, but I have to rip your shirt.’ The woman’s eyes flickered open and shut again. Lucy tugged at the buttons on the blouse and they came open and she applied the patches to the woman’s skin. A moment later, the machine beeped into life. ‘BP’s low. Two lines would be good.’
‘Oxygen too.’ He shoved the green mask and plastic tubing into her hands and then he returned to his task, his forehead scored deep with worry lines. He quietly reassured a barely conscious Geraldine while his fingers moved up and down her arm seeking a viable vein. He tightened the tourniquet and tried again.
Lucy wanted to watch, wanted to will a vein to appear but she knew it wouldn’t help. Her job was to check Geraldine’s pupils’ reaction to light and hopefully rule out a head injury. They each did their job, working as a team and pooling their body of knowledge as they scrambled to stabilise their patient. They spoke few words, but the ones they voiced locked together to build a synchronicity that flowed between them.
‘IV is in.’
‘Great. Push fluids.’
Marco pumped in a litre of Hartmann’s through the hard-won IV line in a furious attempt to bring up Geraldine’s blood pressure.
Blocking out the bleating of sheep and all other extraneous noises, Lucy moved her stethoscope around Geraldine’s chest. The woman was taking short, shallow breaths and her pulse-ox numbers stayed low despite the help of the oxygen. ‘I think she’s got a tension pneumothorax.’
Marco’s frown deepened. He handed the bag of Hartmann’s to a bystander saying, ‘Hold it high.’
The young man nodded and did as he was asked while Marco passed gloves, antiseptic and a large bore needle to Lucy. ‘Needle decompression.’
Lucy snapped on the gloves and sloshed the brown antiseptic onto Geraldine’s skin. ‘Second intercostal space at the level of the angle of Louis.’
‘Sí. Then gentle traction on the plunger and checking for air bubbles.’
Lucy knew it all, but saying it out loud to a colleague and hearing confirmation always helped. ‘And then an immediate relief of symptoms.’
I hope. Her fingers located the position and she pressed the needle into place, praying the needle wouldn’t block. The beeping of the monitor faded.
‘Beuno, you’re in. Pulse-ox is rising now.’ The relief in Marco’s deep voice vibrated around them, matching her own. ‘Leave the needle open.’
‘Yep, had planned to.’ The rush of a good save flowed through her. Although Geraldine wasn’t out of the woods yet, at least they’d sorted out one big problem.
The sensation lasted ninety seconds.
The sharp and incessant beeping of the Propaq rose again, screaming at them as their patient’s heart rate soared and her blood pressure plummeted. For the briefest moment, Marco’s gaze met hers and she had an overwhelming moment of connection, unlike anything she’d ever experienced with a colleague.
Their words collided as they both yelled out in unison, ‘Jaws of life now!’
CHAPTER THREE
THE emergency helicopter banked and quickly headed south towards Perth, taking the deafening noise of the rotors with it, and exposing the continual bleating of injured and scared sheep. Marco ran his hand through his hair and glanced at Lucy. They’d worked side by side for over an hour and he still had the alluring scent of her perfume in his nostrils. Call him overtired, but he’d swear it was a combination of vanilla and liquorice. At first he’d breathed in deeply, using the scent as a shield when the smell of blood and fear had threatened to choke him. After that, he’d just wanted her scent—wanted it badly, like a smoker needed his next cigarette.
Lucy was staring down at her feet and her smooth and sleek hair fell forward across her cheeks like a curtain, masking her face and masking her emotions. Not that it mattered—even when he could see her expressions, he couldn’t work her out. Today, she’d been a totally different person from yesterday, running the emergency expertly and efficiently, and without any of the high drama and emotion that had been on display in the practice. She knew her medicine and he’d been grudgingly impressed. Given the difficult conditions, they’d worked together well, anticipating each other’s needs as if they’d worked together for years. All he had to do now was think of her in terms of a doctor rather than a woman and his life could return to normal. How hard could that be?
As if she could sense his gaze on her, she raised her head, tucked her hair behind her ears and attempted a smile, only the accompanying tension thwarted it. ‘It’s going to be touch and go, isn’t it?’
He nodded, sharing the exact same concerns for Geraldine. ‘It is, but together we’ve given her a chance. Thank goodness the accident happened in the town because otherwise …”
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘She’d be dead like so many of these poor sheep.’
A team of farmers had arrived to tend to the injured sheep and a shot fired out, the first of many. Lucy flinched before giving a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Obviously I’ve been living the city-girl life for too long.’
He smiled wryly. ‘No one likes to see animals injured. Even the farmers are going to find this tough.’
‘True.’ She tilted her head as if she was sending some sort of non-verbal message to him.
He turned and saw small groups of people gathering, all edging towards them looking slightly stunned and shocked, and needing to talk about what had happened so they could absorb it and put it into perspective. His day, already late starting due to the emergency, just got even busier.
You’ve got a competent doctor standing in front of you so use her.
The thought of how he’d warned her off yesterday loomed large in his mind, but he could no longer deny the fact that he was exhausted and with this disaster he absolutely needed help.
‘Lucy.’ The rest of the sentence stuck in his throat.
‘Yes?’ She shoved her hands into the pockets of her cargo pants and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet as if she wanted to move away and move fast.
He swallowed and forced up the words. ‘Can you examine the driver of the truck for me, please, while I get started on the day’s work?’
Her chestnut brows rose to her hairline. ‘Are you sure you trust me in the clinic?’
He sighed, knowing he should have seen that coming. ‘Based on how you treated Geraldine, I trust your clinical skills implicitly. I appeal to your conscience and ethical standards that you respect the rules regarding confidentiality, and unless you have William’s written permission, you do not look at his file.’
He held his breath, half expecting her to hit him with an Australian expression that said he could damn well work on his own.
Her grey eyes flickered. ‘Fair enough.’
He blinked. ‘Excuse me?’
It was her turn to sigh. ‘Yesterday …” She tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth.
Mesmerised, his gaze dropped, glued to her plump mouth and the flash of white against ruby-red. Heat socked him, rushing into every crevice and he instantly wondered if the visual lushness they promised would be matched by the touch of his lips against hers.
Now isn’t the best time for this.
Horrified that he was lusting after a colleague—especially after he’d just given a speech on professionalism—he dragged his eyes to her face and tried to remember what they were talking about. ‘You were saying?’
She cleared her throat. ‘Yesterday, I was a little bit … strung out. I haven’t seen William in a long time and…’
He thought about his ex-wife, about his parents and siblings and had a moment of understanding. ‘Family can make you crazy sometimes.’
‘You have no idea.’ She lifted her chin sharply in an increasingly familiar action and her hair fell back from her cheeks. ‘As much as I hate to admit it, yesterday you had a point.’
He couldn’t stop the triumphant smile racing across his face. ‘So, you are saying I was right?’
She crossed her arms, but a twitch of her lips softened the rebellious stance and her voice held a teasing air. ‘I could agree with you or I could help you out. You choose.’
An unexpected sense of lightness streaked in under the stress of the last hour, which was layered on top of the permanent tension of his life and his fears for Ignacio. He grinned, enjoying the banter and the fact that she’d made him laugh. His days were divided into being a doctor and being a father, but right now, in this moment he was Marco and that didn’t happen very often. ‘For now, I will take your help.’
‘Done.’ Lucy shielded her eyes and squinted up the street. ‘Looks like Deb’s got the driver in the ambulance so I’ll go with them to the hospital.’ With a quick wave she walked away, dodging stray sheep.
He should have turned and headed towards his car, but he stood watching the seductive swing of her hips and the way the material of her pants caressed the sweet curve of her behind. His fingers flexed into the same shape and his blood descended with a rush to his groin.
‘Marco. Dr Rodriguez?’
Through a fog of lust, he somehow recognised his name and he jerked his head around so hard that he heard a crunch. Emily Blair, a young mother from the primary school, stood staring at him with a slight frown on her face and a disposable coffee cup in her hand. She’d been very kind to him and Ignacio since their arrival, often bringing around food and inviting Ignacio on play dates. Marco knew Emily wanted more out of their friendship, but he didn’t want to offer her more. He didn’t want to offer any woman more because it was easier that way. No one got hurt.
‘Are you okay, Marco? You look a bit …”
Aroused. Turned on. Marco uttered a silent oath and tried to think cold and chilling thoughts. What was it about Lucy Patterson that had him acting like a teenage boy? He mentally started listing off all the bones in the body until his blood returned to his brain and common sense resumed.
Emily pushed the coffee toward him. ‘You don’t look your normal self, but it was a pretty horrible accident. I thought you might need some coffee.’
‘Gracias. This is very thoughtful of you.’ He accepted the cup being careful not to brush her hand with his.
‘Do you need to talk about it?’
Her hopeful expression made him feel like a jerk. ‘I am sorry, but I cannot stay and talk. I need to get back to the clinic because I have patients waiting.’ He started to back away and raised the coffee in a salute. ‘Thank you again, Emily.’
He turned before he saw disappointment line her face.
Three hours later, Marco couldn’t quite believe that he was standing in an empty waiting room. He leaned against the counter and spoke to Lisa, the clinic’s friendly receptionist. ‘I thought there must be something wrong with the computer. There must be more people to see me, no?’
Lisa shook her head with a smile. ‘Not until afternoon clinic starts at two. Don’t look so worried. For once you get a lunch break.’
Yet, based on his patient load over the last few weeks, none of this made sense. ‘But I started late and—’
‘Didn’t Sue tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Lucy Patterson’s been seeing patients all morning.’
As if on cue, he heard Lucy’s musical voice drifting down the corridor saying, ‘Make an appointment with Dr Rodriguez for Friday and by then your blood test results will be back. Meanwhile, David, the most important thing for you is to get some rest.’
A moment later David Saunders appeared at the desk and Marco turned, walking directly to William’s consulting room. Lucy was reaching over the examination table, stripping it of linen and his gaze immediately zeroed in on her bottom. ‘You—’ His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. ‘You stayed?’
She straightened up, tossing the sheet into the skip. ‘I did.’ She flicked out a clean sheet and shot him a smile. ‘I had to hang around for Jason’s head injury checks so I had the choice of catching up on all the celebrity gossip from last year’s magazines or helping you out with your morning list. Didn’t Sue tell you?’
Her smile was doing odd things to his breathing and his pulse. He swallowed before managing to say, ‘No.’
A single line appeared between her brows. ‘Was it the wrong thing to do? I thought you wanted my help?’
He realised between his confusion at learning she was still here and his body’s lust-fest with her cute behind, he was frowning at her. He made himself smile. ‘Sí, I did want your help for the truck driver, but I did not expect you to do more. Thank you. It was very generous of you to stay.’
She shrugged as she smoothed down the paper-protector over the sheet. ‘Not really.’
This woman was a mass of contradictions and just like yesterday evening, he was immediately back to not understanding her. ‘But you came to Bulla Creek to spend your time with William, not to work here.’
She briskly tucked her hair behind her ear, the action defensive. ‘Really, it’s not a problem. I was happy to help.’
And he was very appreciative of it. Appreciative of her. Remembering Lisa’s words about a real lunch break, he said, ‘Can I buy you lunch to thank you?’
‘Oh, God, lunch.’ Her pupils dilated so wide they almost obliterated the grey, and her hand flew to her mouth as if he’d just suggested something completely inappropriate.
Hell, had she noticed him staring at her behind?
No, she had her back to you.
He ran his hand through his hair, wondering if being off the dating scene for seven years and only having one night stands had affected his judgement. ‘Inviting you to lunch, this was the wrong thing to say?’
‘No. It was totally the right thing to say.’ She picked up her bag, grabbed his arm, and started pulling him toward the door. ‘I’m starving. Let’s eat right now.’
The delicious warmth of her hand seeped into him and immediately combined with her enthralling scent. He knew he should resist the tug of that intoxicating pleasure which pooled inside him and that he should press his feet to the floor and refuse to follow her. He knew without a doubt he should pause and question her on why one minute she was horrified by a simple lunch invitation and the next minute she was crazily overenthusiastic.
Knowing and doing were two separate things and he ignored common sense, letting the river of desire that burned in him rule. He allowed himself be led out of the clinic and marched up the street like a teenage boy in lust for the very first time.
The Shearer’s Arms was the oldest building in town, pre-dating the church by a good ten years. A large, rectangular, whitewashed building, it stood at the top end of Main Street with its distinctive red corrugated-iron veranda. Large tables sat under its shade and the regulars could sit and catch the passing breeze while keeping their eye on the activities of the town.
By the time they reached the door, Marco had regained his composure and was determined to reclaim control as the host of the lunch. As he reached for the door handle ahead of Lucy so he could usher her inside, she stopped abruptly and stood staring at the door. ‘Are you okay?’ She looked as if her thoughts were miles away and she didn’t respond. ‘Lucy?’
A slight tremor flicked across her shoulders and she gave him a brittle smile. ‘Let’s go in, shall we?’
He tilted his head and smiled. ‘That was my plan.’
He’d expected a laugh, but if anything she seemed even tenser as she ducked under his arm and walked straight past the sign that said, ‘Please wait to be seated.’
This wasn’t going quite as he’d planned. ‘Lucy.’
She didn’t slow or turn.
‘Dr Patterson.’
Not even the use of her professional name made her pause. Irritation rolled through him like the prickle of a burr. Silently rebuking himself on letting his body overrule his brain, and regretting having issued the lunch invitation, he reluctantly followed her to the furthest corner of the dining room, feeling like a consort trailing behind a queen.
She disappeared behind a partition and he heard her say, ‘Sorry we’re late.’
Late? He rounded the faux-wood panel and came face to face with William.
The elder doctor leaned against his stick and for the briefest moment confusion flitted across his face, followed by regret. Both were instantly replaced by a polite smile, which looked like it needed the muscles to haul really hard to raise the corners of his mouth. He extended his hand and in a voice that was neither friendly nor unfriendly said, ‘Marco.’
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