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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About the Author
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Copyright
Meredith Webber says of herself, ‘Some ten years ago, I read an article which suggested that Mills and Boon were looking for new medical authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’
PROLOGUE
‘SO I DON’T know what to do!’
Mak stared at his only sister in disbelief.
Never in his life had he heard this strong-willed, determined, driven woman admit such a thing.
‘Have you talked to her?’
Helen shook her head.
‘I’ve written, I’ve sent emails, and heard nothing in reply. I can hardly just go out there and land on her doorstep. What if she shut the door in my face? Besides, it’s impossible for me to get away. Since Dad’s death I’ve been running the business and trying to keep Mum going—you know how she is—the two deaths coming so close together, it’s as if she’s given up living. Look at Christmas—her Christmas productions rivalled the Oscar presentations. Feast and family, that was her mantra. This year she’s doing nothing and when I suggested I do it, she just shrugged.’
Mak was still puzzled. Yes, Helen was busy and, yes, his mother did seem to have understandably lost her zest for life, but did that add up to so much consternation? Wouldn’t time—?
‘There’s also the cousins,’ Helen muttered.
Ah!
He waited for Helen to explain, knowing she would, eventually.
It came with a sigh.
‘The cousins are doing their best to take control of the business and if we lose control of Hellenic, Mum will have to watch all Dad built up go into other hands. She’ll feel as if his whole life was for nothing.’
While Helen paced the office at the top of Hellenic Enterprises city headquarters, Mak considered what he’d just learned. With his father’s blessing, he’d gone into medicine rather than following the parental footsteps into engineering, but as well as Helen, half a dozen of his cousins, children of his father’s sisters, had entered the family firm.
And held shares in it!
He frowned, realising that, although still part of the company, he knew less and less of what went on within it these days, his studies and work leaving him little time to read the company reports. And his father’s unexpected death had left him with a lot of problems to sort out, as he was the executor of his father’s personal estate.
‘Can they take over? I mean, do they have the power to do that—the majority of shares between them? And what would it mean if they did?’
‘They can if they get that woman to vote with them in the extraordinary general meeting they’ve called for January, and the way they are talking they already have her vote in the bag.’
‘You know this for certain?’ Mak asked, aware of the bias Helen felt against ‘that woman’.
‘I’m pretty sure and equally sure money has changed hands. Con was out there just last week, ostensibly to check on the experimental power plant but he’s never been interested in geo-thermal power before.’ Helen hesitated before adding, ‘And there was a rather large item in his expenses, listed as a donation.’
Mak felt himself frowning.
‘Did you ask him about it?’
‘How could I?’ Helen muttered. ‘I shouldn’t have seen the information—not until the next board meeting when we all table our expenses.’
‘You were spying on him?’ Mak couldn’t hide his disbelief.
‘I was not—it was just that Marge, Dad’s old secretary, alerted me to it as she typed up the agenda.’
Which was the same as spying, Mak considered, but that wasn’t the issue right now.
‘Maybe Con really was checking on the power plant, and the donation was just that. After all, he’d hardly bribe the woman with the firm’s money.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t use his own,’ Helen snapped. ‘You don’t know Con like I do—he’s changed since he married for the third time. I reckon his wife keeps her hands on the purse strings. He’s as tight as a—as a you know what.’
Mak considered his easygoing cousin and wondered if the third wife might not be on to something—keeping control of Con’s spending. Was she also behind the push to take over the company? It didn’t seem like something Con, or any of the cousins, would instigate…
‘This is all supposition, Helen. Let’s give Con the benefit of the doubt for the moment. And in any case, why are you worried about a takeover?You’d still be part of the company, probably still CEO, as I can’t see any of them wanting that job.’
‘I wouldn’t stay,’ Helen said, her face pale and her lips tight. ‘I know how they think and the way they see the future. Heaven knows, we’ve argued it often enough in board meetings. If they take over it will be the end of Dad’s dream to produce clean power, for one thing. They see that as someone else’s job or something for the future. Anything experimental is expensive, and there’s no certainty of a return. The cousins want profits that are guaranteed and they want them now which would mean taking the firm in a different direction, looking more towards structural engineering than Dad ever did, and probably merging with a bigger firm.’
Mak understood what she was saying but his mind had snagged on the earlier conversation—at the thought of money changing hands, and Con’s third wife, and manipulative women in general. The juxtaposition had prodded another thought in his mind—a very unwelcome one.
Theo had been shameless in his pursuit of women, casually promiscuous, but he had always been careful, assuring Mak that he always took precautions—that he wasn’t totally irresponsible.
So had this pregnancy been planned—not by Theo but by the woman in question? Had she seen an opportunity to either trap Theo into marriage, or to benefit in some other way?
She’d benefit all right if the cousins gave—or had already given—her money for her votes, benefit at the expense of Helen and his mother, at the expense of his father’s dreams and at the expense of their small family unit, which had always been so tight.
Mak felt anger stir at the thought of a deliberate pregnancy, having been caught up in similar circumstances himself, years ago. Although no one, he was sure, could be as devious as Rosalie had been! However, to be fair, the ‘money changing hands’ scenario was only supposition on Helen’s part. As far as he knew, this woman hadn’t made any move to ingratiate herself with the family—in fact, the opposite was true, which brought another problem in its train. Mak’s Greek genetic heritage was strongly aligned to family values—family made you what you were, and children needed family.
She had a name, of course, the woman, but it was never mentioned in the family—particularly not in Helen’s hearing. Any more than Theo’s reputation as a ladies’ man was discussed in Helen’s hearing. To his sister, her only child had been perfect in every way—handsome, clever, loyal, a loving son and an obedient grandson, following the family tradition by studying engineering—the designated successor to his grandfather, the designated heir to the massive conglomerate of businesses that made up Hellenic Enterprises.
But Theo was dead, killed in a motor vehicle accident that had also taken the lives of three of his friends. Four young people tragically dead because of speed and alcohol, and Mak, who as a top emergency room doctor saw far too many young lives wasted this way, had felt more fury than grief when first he’d heard the news. Grief for his nephew, and his sister’s suffering, had come, but the fury had returned when Mak had learned that Theo had been irresponsible enough to leave behind an unborn child.
A child who would be family…
‘What stage are you at with the exploration teams out there?’ he asked Helen, as an idea that filled him with horror started to form, unwanted, in his head.
‘We’ve found hot rocks close to the surface and although the exploration teams will remain out there, we’ve sent more men in to build the experimental power plant. Now it’s nothing more than pipes and pumps but once we’re satisfied that the rocks are suitable for our needs, we’ll go ahead with a proper set-up.’
‘So, you’ve the first crews, and more men for the power plant and the likelihood that even more men will be going out there shortly. And if a power plant goes ahead, some of those men will be there permanently so families would be joining them. I’d think you must be putting pressure on a lot of the town’s resources but in particular the medical services if there’s only one doctor in town.’
Helen nodded, but it was a vague reaction, and Mak could almost see the cloud of grief that still enveloped her.
‘Helen?’ he prompted, but gently this time.
She nodded again.
‘We are,’ she said, visibly pulling herself together. ‘In fact, Theo suggested the company fund another medical practitioner, if only for the duration of the exploration, but he might have had an ulterior motive—that woman might have been prompting him. The company could certainly afford it but how do we find out if that’s what the town really needs?’
Mak knew how they could find out because there was already a raging argument going on his head. Go out and check on things for himself? No way, he was on study leave, it was midsummer, the temperature would be up in the stratosphere, he had his thesis to complete. On the other hand, the family was important to him and right now it appeared to be falling apart. Helen, on whom he had always relied to keep things running smoothly, was struggling—physically as well as emotionally, he suspected. His mother—well, if ever anyone needed some new interest in her life, it was her and surely a great-grandchild could supply that interest…
He’d have to think about it.
There was no time to think about it.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Helen said, taking the conversation back to where it had started, but now her voice was a feathery whisper, filled with pain and loss. ‘I’ve lost my son and now I’ll never know my grandchild.’
‘I’ll sort it out,’ he heard himself say. ‘I’ll go tomorrow and that will give me the whole weekend to sort out somewhere to stay and introduce myself to Dr Singh.’
CHAPTER ONE
HEADLIGHTS coming up the drive lit up the room, rousing Neena from the comfortable doze she was enjoying in front of the television. Not a patient—at this time of the night, getting on for midnight, patients would go straight to the hospital.
Unless there was an emergency out at the exploration site! No, they’d have phoned her, not driven in.
She eased herself off the couch, aware these days of the subtle redistribution of her body weight. Tugging her T-shirt down to hide the neat bump of Baby Singh, she made her way to the front door, opening it in time to see a tall, dark-haired man taking the steps two at a time, coming closer and closer to her, looming larger and larger.
A tall, dark-haired stranger.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, checking him out automatically in the light shed by the motion sensors above the door. No visible blood, no limp, no favouring of one or other limb, and gorgeous, just gorgeous—tall, black-haired, chiselled features…
Chiselled features?
Had pregnancy finally turned her brain to mush?
And he hadn’t answered her enquiry. He’d simply reached the top of the steps and stopped, his dark gaze, eyes too shadowed to reveal colour, seemingly fastened on her face.
She was beautiful!
Mak had no idea why this should come as such a surprise to him. After all, Theo had hardly been noted for bedding women who weren’t. Had he, Mak, been thinking maybe Theo had been desperate, out here in the middle of nowhere, and settled for someone available rather than stunning? Was that why he was standing here like a great lummox, staring at the straight, slim figure in shorts and T-shirt—staring at a face of almost luminous beauty?
Except that her left cheek was reddened down one side, as if she’d been sleeping against something hard.
Maybe it was the heat, pressing against him like a warm blanket, that was affecting his brain.
‘Are you ill? Injured?’
Her voice was soft, and concerned, not about the arrival of a stranger on her doorstep at getting on to midnight but about the state of his health.
‘No, but you are Dr Singh?’
‘Yes, and you are?’
He had to get past his surprise at seeing her—had to stop staring at clear olive skin and sloe-shaped dark eyes, framed by lashes long enough to seem false; at a neat pointed chin below lips as red as dark rose petals, the velvety red-black roses his mother grew.
‘Mak Stavrou!’ Right, he was back in control again, and had managed to remember his name, but she was still looking puzzled.
‘Mak Stavrou,’ she repeated, and it was as if no one had ever said his name before, so softly did the syllables fall from her lips.
She was a witch. She had to be. Witches had long black hair that gleamed blue in the veranda light. Witches would be able to handle this heat without showing the slightest sign of wilting.
He wiped sweat off his own brow and felt the dampness of it in his hair.
‘The company doctor—you must have received an email.’
The still functioning part of his brain managed to produce this piece of information, while the straying neurones were still looking around for a black cat or a broomstick parked haphazardly in the corner of the veranda.
‘Company doctor?’ she said, shaking her head in a puzzled manner so the long strands of hair that he now saw had escaped from a plait that hung, schoolgirl fashion, down her back, swayed around her face.
‘Check your emails—there’ll be something there.’
‘Check your emails?’ she repeated, the red lips widening into a smile. ‘Out here we have to take into account the vagaries of the internet, which seem to deem that at least one day in four nothing works. The big mistake most people, me included, made was thinking wireless would be more reliable than dial-up. At least with dial-up we all had phone lines we could use.’
Neena paused then added, ‘Are you really a doctor?’
It was an absurd conversation to be having with a stranger in the middle of the night, and totally inhospitable to have left him standing on her top step, but there was something about the man—his size maybe?— that intimidated her, and she had the weirdest feeling that the best thing she could do was to send him away.
Far away!
Immediately!
‘And what company? Oh, dear, excuse me. The exploratory drilling company, of course. They’re staying on. I’d heard that. And they’ve sent a doctor?’
It still didn’t make a lot of sense and she knew she was probably frowning at the man. She tried again.
‘But shouldn’t you be reporting to the site office—not that it would be open at this hour. Who sent you here?’
He shrugged impossibly broad shoulders and pushed damp twists of black hair off his forehead.
‘Nothing is open at this hour. Believe me, I’ve tried to find somewhere. A motel, a pub, a garage—even the police station has a sign on the door telling people what number to phone in an emergency. And it’s not as if it’s that late—I mean, it’s after eleven, but for the pub to be shut on a Friday night! Finally an old man walking a dog told me this was the doctor’s house and I should try here.’
‘It’s the rock eisteddfod,’ Neena explained, then realised from the look of blank incomprehension on his face that it wasn’t an explanation he understood.
‘The Australia-wide high-school competition—singing and dancing. Our high school was in the final in Sydney last week. In fact, they came second, and as most of the parents and supporters weren’t able to travel to Sydney for the final, the school decided to put it on again here—but of course Wymaralong is too small to have a big enough hall, so it’s on tonight down the road in Baranock.’
Disbelief spread across the man’s face.
‘Baranock’s two hundred kilometres away—hardly down the road.’
She had to smile.
‘Two hundred kilometres is nothing. Some of the families with kids in the performance live another hundred kilometres out of town so it’s a six hundred kilometre round trip, but they’re willing to do it to encourage their children to participate in things like this.’
‘You’re not there!’ Mak pointed out, totally unnecessarily, but the smile had disturbed something in his gut, making him feel distinctly uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the heat. He hoped it was the heat.
Whatever it was, his comment served to make her smile more widely, lending her face a radiance that shone even in the dim lighting of the front veranda.
‘Someone had to mind the shop and take in stray doctors. So, if you can show me some identification, I will take you in, and tomorrow we can sort out somewhere for you to stay.’
‘Did I hear you say you’re taking in a stranger?’
A rasping voice from just inside the darkened doorway of the old house made Mak look up from the task of riffling through his wallet in search of some ID.
‘Haven’t you learnt your lesson, girl?’
The girl in question had turned towards the doorway, where a small, nuggety man was now visible.
‘I knew you were here to protect me, Ned,’ she said. ‘Come out and meet the new doctor.’
‘New doctors let people know they’re coming and they don’t arrive in the middle of the night,’ the small man said, moving out of the doorway so Mak could see him in the light on the veranda. A tanned, bald head, facial skin as wrinkled as a walnut, pale blue eyes fanned with deep lines from squinting into the sun, now studying Mak with deep suspicion.
‘I’ve explained to Dr Singh there should have been an email, and I wasted an hour trying to find some accommodation in town. Here, my hospital ID from St Christopher’s in Brisbane—I’m on study leave at the moment—and my driver’s licence, medical registration card and somewhere in my luggage, a letter from Hellenic Enterprises, outlining my contract with them.’
The woman reached out a slim hand to take the offered IDs, but it was Ned who asked the question.
‘Which is?’
A demand, aggressive enough for Mak, exhausted after an eleven-hour drive made even more tortuous by having to change a flat tyre, to snap.
‘None of your business, but if you must know, I was about to explain to Dr Singh that the company has asked me to work with her to evaluate the needs of the community as far as medical practitioners and support staff are concerned. The company realises having their crews and now some families of the crews here is putting an extra strain on the town’s medical resources and the powers that be at Hellenic are willing to fund another doctor and possibly another trained nursing sister, should that be advisable.’
‘Realising it a bit late,’ Ned growled. ‘Those lads have been out there a full year.’
‘But more are coming, Ned, and we will need to expand the medical service.’ The woman spoke gently but firmly to the old man then turned to Mak. ‘We’re hardly showing you the famed country hospitality, putting you through the third degree out here on the steps. Come inside. You’re right about there being no one in town tonight, but even if there had been, there are no rooms to be had at the pub or in either of the motels.’
She paused and grinned at him. ‘Kind of significant, isn’t it—coming on to Christmas and no room at the inn? But in Wymaralong it’s been like that all year. The crews from the exploration teams and the travellers that service the machinery have taken every spare bed in town. You can stay here tonight, and tomorrow Ned can phone around to see if someone would be willing to take you in as a boarder.’
‘Which you are obviously not,’ Mak said, following her across the veranda and into a wide and blessedly cool hallway, rooms opening off it on both sides.
She turned, and fine dark eyebrows rose while the skin on her forehead wrinkled into a tiny frown.
‘Obviously not what?’
‘Willing to take me in as a boarder.’
‘No, she’s not!’ Ned snapped, following behind Mak, right on his heels, ready, no doubt, to brain him with an umbrella from the stand inside the door if he made a wrong move.
The woman’s lips moved but if it was a smile, it was a wry one.
‘You can have a bed for the night,’ she repeated. ‘Tomorrow we’ll talk.’
Then she waved her hand to the left, ushering Mak into a big living room, comfortably furnished with padded cane chairs, their upholstery faded but looking homely rather than shabby. Low bookshelves lined one wall, and an old upright piano stood in a corner, its top holding a clutter of framed photographs, while set in front of every chair was a solid footrest, as if the room had been furnished with comfort as its primary concern.
And the air in here, too, was cool, although Mak couldn’t hear the hum of an air-conditioner.
‘Have a seat,’ his hostess offered. ‘Have you eaten anything recently? Ned could make you toast, or an omelette, or there’s some leftover meatloaf. Dr Stavrou might like that in a sandwich, Ned. And tea or coffee, or perhaps a cold drink.’
Mak looked from the woman to Ned, who was still watching Mak, like a guard dog that hadn’t let down its guard for one instant.
‘A cup of tea and some toast would be great and the meatloaf sounds inviting, but you don’t have to wait on me. If you lead me to the kitchen and show me where things are, I could help myself.’
‘Not in my kitchen, you can’t. Not while I’m here,’ Ned growled—guard dog again—before disappearing further down the hall.
Now her visitor was sitting in her living room, Neena stopped staring at him and recalled her manners.
‘I’m Neena Singh,’ she said, introducing herself as if there was nothing strange in this near-midnight meeting, although suspicion was now stirring in her tired brain. She recalled something the man had said earlier. ‘If you’re on study leave, why are you here? Surely you’re not studying the problems of isolated medical practitioners.’
‘No, but it’s not that far off my course. I’m finishing a master’s degree, and my area of interest is in improving the medical aid offered by the first response team in emergency situations. I imagine in emergency situations out here you’re the first response—you and the ambos. In major situations the flying doctor comes in, but you’d be first response.’
She couldn’t argue, thinking of the number of times she’d arrived at the scene of a motor vehicle or farm accident and wished for more hands, more skilled help, more equipment and even better skills herself. Anything to keep the victims alive until they could be properly stabilised and treated.