‘Hey,’ he murmured appreciatively, ‘you’re a nurse?’

‘Top marks for observation!’ Jenny snapped, making as if to push past him, but he stopped her.

‘Don’t run away,’ he protested. ‘I feel responsible for your fall, and you’ve ripped your stockings—the least you could let me do is buy you a new pair.’

‘They’re tights!’ she retorted, and then wished she hadn’t because he smiled a very slow smile indeed.

‘What a pity,’ he murmured, ‘Legs like that are wasted in tights.’

Dear Reader,

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

Seize the Day
Sharon Kendrick
writing as Sharon Wirdnam

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In fondest memory of Betty Shore

Contents

Cover

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘I AM quite sure, Mr Fogg.’ There was a pause. ‘Quite sure!’ Another pause. ‘Well, if I do change my mind—you will be the first to know!’ Jenny replaced the telephone receiver noisily.

Men! Why did they treat women like imbeciles? They seemed to think that a woman living on her own couldn’t make a simple decision. Like whether or not to take out a new and very expensive insurance policy. Perhaps now Mr Fogg would finally get the message. Farewell, Mr Fogg, she thought as she pulled her uniform dress over her head, and giggled.

She peeped out from behind the curtain. It was an almost perfect morning. Well, as perfect as you could get for mid-January. The sky wasn’t quite blue, but it wasn’t quite grey either—more the colour of the sea just before the sun came out.

Perfect, and far too nice to be starting back to work on a late duty after two weeks away, she mused as she began to button the dress up.

That was the trouble with holidays, really. You loved them and needed them, and they put you off ever going back to work again! Still, it shouldn’t be difficult to get back into the swing of things—the ward was always busy, especially at this time of the year. Broken bones were very common in winter, when the roads became slippery with ice and snow!

She fastened the starched and frilly collar of her dress with the small white stud and stepped back from the mirror to survey the results. A great improvement on the pale-faced young woman of two weeks ago, she thought. Her face was lightly tanned from using the sun bed and it made her green eyes dazzle. Her thick dark hair was as neat as she could make it. It fell to her shoulders in a glossy mass. Really, the sensible thing would be to cut it, but she didn’t want to. She was sensible about most things, but not about her hair.

She fastened her belt with the intricate silver buckle which had once belonged to her mother. She had followed her mother’s footsteps into nursing and now held the very same post of orthopaedic sister on the ward her mother had run for years. She knew that some people thought it odd that she had never wanted to move to pastures new, to venture further afield, or even overseas, but she had always been perfectly contented with her quiet life and her satisfying job—and what was the point of moving away if you were happy where you were?

She loved the feeling of continuity which came from living in a small, stable community. She felt safe and secure where she was, and security was very important to her.

She glanced at her fob-watch. There was plenty of time to walk down to the village shop before setting off in her car for the hospital. She needed a jar of coffee and some water biscuits, but she wanted to buy some fruit for Mrs Jessop. The old lady with the fractured femur had been on Jenny’s ward for so long now that to the sister she felt like a permanent fixture. She couldn’t ever imagine her going home and, if she was absolutely honest, she was pretty sure that the frail old lady would far rather stay in the bright, cheerful atmosphere of the ward than go home to a cold empty flat.

There was a lightness in her step as she walked along. Despite her earlier feelings of post-holiday laziness, she was looking forward to seeing all the staff again. She had worked with Dr Marlow and Staff Nurse Collins since she had started at Denbury, and she had known them both all her life. She hadn’t told them that she was staying with relatives for her holiday—if people knew that then inevitably there would be phone calls if something couldn’t be found, or if something needed smoothing over. The ward staff tended to think that their sister was indispensable and, much as that flattered her, she knew that a complete break had been what she’d needed.

She had gone to Bristol for the fortnight, to the home of her favourite cousin, Joan. Joan belonged to a health club, and they had spent the two weeks swimming, playing squash and lying on sun beds, and then had promptly ruined all the good work by eating pizza and hot curries in the evening!

She would just have to watch the calories for the next few weeks, she told herself sternly—although her navy uniform dress hung as loosely as it had ever done.

She walked round the small village shop, and had collected together and paid for her groceries when an unusually loud roar startled her, and she looked from side to side, thinking that the sound had come from within the shop.

Consequently, she wasn’t paying attention as she left, and was just stepping out into the sunshine when she collided with a man who was on his way into the shop, momentarily losing her balance.

A strong arm went out to grab her, and she leapt away from it so that she lost her balance completely and ended up sitting on the pavement, the coffee providentially saved, but the oranges rolling off in all directions down the street.

The man was bending down towards her. ‘Here,’ he said in a distinctive deep voice, ‘let me help you.’

There was only one thing worse than making a fool of yourself—and that was having someone witness it, she thought, and for some reason she resented his confident offer of help, and couldn’t miss noticing the twinkle in his eyes as he stood looking down at her.

‘I can manage perfectly well on my own,’ she snapped, moving a leg gingerly and discovering that she had somehow grazed her ankle.

‘Suit yourself,’ he murmured. ‘But at least I can rescue your fruit.’ He began to move away in the direction of the errant oranges, and Jenny picked herself up and began to examine herself for damage.

The gabardine coat was muddy all around the hem—at least that could be quickly brushed off—but where she had grazed her ankle was an enormous hole in her black tights. Now she would have to go home and change them. . .

‘All present and correct, I think.’

She was shaken out of her reverie by the man with the gravelly voice, who was handing her the bag of fruit, and she looked into dark brown eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she said rather tightly as she took the bag from him.

‘My pleasure,’ he smiled.

There was something vaguely unsettling about him, though why she should think that she didn’t know. He was tall and powerfully built, with untidy, dark hair which curled around his ears. She noted that the dark eyes were slightly bloodshot and he looked as though he’d used a blunt razor blade that morning—if at all! If someone had told her that he worked on a building site or at a fairground she wouldn’t have been surprised, and yet the dark eyes looked curiously intelligent, and the deep voice sounded educated.

She noted the old tan leather flying jacket and the faded jeans which fitted him so closely that they looked as if they’d been sprayed on. Seedy, she decided. Definitely seedy, and just a little bit dangerous. . .

Her eyes returned to his face and she saw that he was studying her with amusement, but perfectly at ease, as though he was used to pretty girls standing staring at him.

‘And marks out of ten?’ he queried.

‘I beg your pardon?’ What was he talking about?

‘How do you rate me—on a scale of one to ten?’ he asked lazily.

Rate him! The arrogance of him!

‘You wouldn’t even make it past zero!’ she said tartly, as she realised that he now seemed to be assessing her, and she didn’t like the way he was doing it one bit. Round here, where people knew her, she was treated with deference and respect—and respect was just about the last thing on the face of this man. The nut-brown eyes had narrowed and he was looking at her in an openly appreciative way, which infuriated her.

‘If you would kindly let me pass. . .?’ she said icily, but he had barred her way with an expression of concern on his face. A gust of January wind had pulled at the gabardine coat, and it flapped open to reveal the navy blue of her dress. She saw that she now had his total attention.

‘Hey,’ he murmured appreciatively, ‘you’re a nurse?’

‘Top marks for observation!’ she snapped, making as if to push past him, but he stopped her.

‘Don’t run away,’ he protested. ‘I feel responsible for your fall, and you’ve ripped your stockings—the least you could let me do is buy you a new pair.’

‘They’re tights!’ she retorted, and then wished she hadn’t because he smiled a very slow smile indeed.

‘What a pity,’ he murmured. ‘Legs like that are wasted in tights!’

She was so outraged by his audacity that she was lost for words.

‘Can I run you somewhere?’ he offered, and he gestured with his head to a monster of a motor bike which stood parked a little way up from the shop, and which she assumed had been responsible for the peace-shattering roar earlier.

Inwardly she counted to three. ‘I do not allow myself to be picked up by strangers,’ she said clearly. ‘And I never go out with yobs.’ She lifted her chin. ‘And now, if you don’t mind—you’re in my way.’

To her fury, he had started chuckling at her outburst, and without another word she marched back up the narrow street, knowing that he was standing there watching her, and she childishly wished that they weren’t oranges she was carrying but very large, squashy tomatoes and that she could hurl one directly into the centre of his smug, self-satisfied face!

As it was, she had to dash to get to work on time, rushing back to the house to pull on a new pair of black tights and flushing furiously as she remembered his remarks about stockings. Fancy telling him that she was wearing tights! What had got into her? And what was it about him that had made her react so angrily?

She often met men who were interested in her rather understated beauty—Mr Fogg the insurance salesman, for example!—but she certainly didn’t let them get under her skin in the way that the man on the motor bike had done. Perhaps because most men weren’t as blatant about it as he.

She put her foot down as she sped along the quiet country lanes to the hospital. A police car in a siding contemplated following her, but when Billy Baxter, the young constable, saw it was that cracking-looking young sister from the cottage hospital, he simply flashed his lights and let her drive on.

Jenny gave a sigh of pleasure as she drove up the driveway of Denbury Hospital. It was set in Arcadian splendour amid trees and manicured lawns. Dedicated groups of helpers kept the flowerbeds far brighter and more lovingly tended than any paid gardener would have done, and already, in the shaded area near the entrance porch, she could see the showy cerise blooms of an early camellia.

She saw few people as she made her way along the corridor towards her ward. Visiting didn’t start until three, and all the patients would be lying on their beds after lunch.

All the wards were named after flowers, and Jenny’s was Rose—consequently, all the bed-coverings and curtains were in delicate shades of pink, as Daffodil was furnished in yellow, and so on. She loved the individuality of each ward, and was often thankful that she did not work in a busy general hospital, where uniformity was so important.

She hung up her gabardine in the small cloakroom and quickly clipped on her frilly cap with its myriad tiny pleats. The final banishing of a thick strand of hair which had escaped, and she was ready for anything. She pushed her handbag into the locker and pulled the door shut behind her.

The ward was very quiet, she thought as she walked towards her office, with not a nurse in sight. The girls should have finished getting the patients settled for their post-lunchtime rest and be tidying up by now, but then perhaps they’d had an emergency and the routine had been put behind.

As soon as she walked into her office she could sense that something was different. Indefinable, but disquieting. What on earth was it? There were the usual path-lab forms on the desk, physiotherapy requests clipped on to the board next to the X-ray machine. And suddenly she realised what was wrong: the large red book which always sat in the middle of her desk was missing.

Affectionately nicknamed ‘the bible’, in reality it was just a book used to pass messages on. It had been there longer than she had, and it was invaluable. If Dr Marlow wanted a new type of treatment commenced and she wasn’t around to tell, then he’d write it down in the book. He was always popping into the ward at odd moments, and often she missed him. The red book always sat in exactly the same place and she had never once not known it to be there—but perhaps he was buying a newer version which had more capacity!

She glanced at her fob slightly impatiently. Judy Collins, her staff nurse, should have been here by now to update her and give her a report on all the patients. How unlike Judy to be unpunctual. Whatever emergency they had had, it must have been a bad one.

She idly began flicking through the dietician’s clipboard when the sound of someone entering the office made her look up, and she met the eyes of a complete stranger—someone who was obviously a nurse, but dressed in an alien uniform of white with a navy belt and a paper cap. Her fair hair curled over the collar of her dress and Jenny tutted inwardly.

The girl flashed her a non-committal smile. ‘Hi,’ she said, going to sit down at the desk. ‘Who are you?’

Jenny was so amazed that she opened her mouth then shut it again, but speech returned, and with it an irritated tone in her voice which she couldn’t quite disguise.

‘I might ask you the same question!’

The girl seemed to have registered what Jenny was wearing, and her eyes came to rest on her name-badge. She looked slightly taken aback, but nowhere near as embarrassed as Jenny would have been in similar circumstances.

‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘You must be Sister.’

‘I am indeed,’ answered Jenny. ‘And now perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself?’

‘I’m. . .’ the girl began, but the phone on the desk started to ring. She made as if to pick it up, but one look from Jenny stopped her in her tracks.

‘Rose Ward. Sister Hughes speaking,’ she said smoothly.

‘Oh, Jenny—you’re back! Thank goodness!’

The voice she recognised immediately as that of Sonia Walker, the hospital nursing officer. ‘Of course I’m back, Sonia! What’s the matter?’ She saw the girl in white watching her warily. ‘And where’s Judy?’ she queried.

Sonia’s voice continued to sound worried. ‘I need to speak to you in my office, Jenny. Can you come down immediately?’

‘But I haven’t taken the report yet!’ Jenny protested.

‘This won’t take long. Tell the agency staff nurse that she can go to lunch in about ten minutes, when you’ll be back—but I must speak to you right away.’

‘OK, I’ll be right along,’ Jenny agreed, and as she replaced the receiver she glanced at the fair-haired nurse. ‘Are you an agency staff nurse?’ she enquired.

‘Yes,’ answered the other curtly, ‘I am.’

Jenny nodded. That would explain her uniform. ‘I have to go and see the nursing officer—I shan’t be long. Can you hold the fort until I get back?’

The girl had dead pale skin and her eyes grew fearful. ‘Hurry up, then, will you? I’ll drop if I don’t eat something soon.’

Jenny could believe that—the girl was so thin that she didn’t look as though she’d eaten a proper meal in months, let alone hours. She couldn’t help being a little surprised at the forthright response, though—in hospital it simply wasn’t done to clock-watch. Or at least it hadn’t been the done thing when she had trained—but things were changing all the time, even attitudes in as strict a discipline as nursing.

She smiled as she made her way to the central nursing office, and waited while the secretary buzzed through to Sonia. Moaning about the junior nurses—that made her feel very old!

She was shown into Sonia Walker’s office, and Sonia rose from behind her desk immediately, as immaculate as always in her smart blue dress, but with an anxious expression in her eyes.

‘Jenny!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do sit down. I’m so sorry to have had you come back from your holiday to such sad news.’

Jenny glanced at her, alarmed now. ‘Sad news? What news?’

‘You mean you haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sonia.’

Sonia rested both hands on the desk, her eyes compassionate. ‘There’s no easy way to tell you this—I’m afraid Dr Marlow is dead.’

Jenny’s knuckles whitened as she gazed at the nursing officer disbelievingly. ‘Dead? Harry, dead? But. . . He can’t be. . .’ She stared at Sonia. ‘He was one of the fittest men around.’

Sonia shook her head. ‘I know. It happened so suddenly. He was driving to work. One minute he was fine—the next, gone. It was a terrible shock. The P-M showed that he had a massive stroke—he wouldn’t have suffered.’

Jenny let her head fall into her hands, willing the tears to stop, but unable to do anything to quench them. She had known Harry Marlow for as long as she could remember. He’d worked alongside her mother for years, and then with Jenny herself. He’d eaten his Christmas lunch with them every year, bar the time when he’d visited his sister in Australia. He had bought Jenny the engraved fob-watch, which she still wore, on the day she’d passed her finals.

Sonia moved from behind her desk to place a comforting arm around her shoulder, and handed her a wad of tissues.

Jenny wiped her eyes and blew ner nose. ‘I’m sorry, Sonia,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just come as such a shock. When—when. . .?’

‘It happened two days after you went away. We didn’t know where to reach you.’

Of course, she had left no word. She hadn’t even left a phone number.

‘So the funeral. . . ?’

‘Was last week. I’m so sorry, Jenny.’

So there wouldn’t even be a funeral for her to attend. No occasion for her to pay her last respects to the man who had been almost like a father to her.

‘And Dr Trentham thought it best not to try and trace you—to bring you back from wherever you were to be confronted with a funeral.’

Jenny had hardly been listening, but she raised her head a little. ‘Who?’ The tear-filled, green eyes stared at Sonia, who shifted in her seat a little.

‘Dr Trentham—he’s the new surgical attachment, replacing Dr Marlow. He didn’t think it wise to disrupt your holiday, and I agreed with him. He was right, Jenny. You needed the holiday. Everyone knew how hard you’d been working. What was the point of dragging you back?’

Sorrow, guilt and rage combined to form an icy hand which clutched at her chest. ‘This—Dr Trentham,’ she spat the name out as if it had a bad taste. ‘He had no right to make a decision like that, and I’m surprised that you allowed him to, Sonia.’

‘I wanted to do the right thing—and what he said seemed eminently reasonable at the time. I know you’re upset——’

‘How has Judy taken it?’ she interrupted in a small voice which seemed to come from a long way away.

Sonia looked as if she was about to wring her hands. ‘Judy has left, Jenny. She’s gone.’

Jenny looked blank. ‘Gone? What do you mean—gone?’

‘She’s left. She left when Dr Trentham joined. I think she found all the changes too much. She was only a couple of years off retirement, and I think that——’

Uncharacteristically, Jenny interrupted her nursing officer again, but Sonia Walker could see that the normally cool and efficient ward sister was in a state of shock.

‘Let me get this right.’ She spoke very slowly, as if checking her statement’s veracity while she uttered it. ‘Not only has this new doctor effectively prevented me from attending Harry’s funeral, but he has also made Staff Nurse Collins leave—after twenty years of loyal service?’

Sonia raised her eyebrows a little. ‘I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that. . . Listen, I can arrange for cover for your ward for today. Why don’t you go home and rest? It’s all been a terrible shock for you.’

Jenny had stood up, like an automaton, her eyes unseeing. Sonia sprang to her feet.

‘Jenny—Jenny, dear! Let me get someone to take you home.’

With a huge effort of will, Jenny shook her head. ‘No, honestly. I must get back to the ward; there must be so much to be done. And I want to speak to this—this Trentham man.’

‘Jenny—you won’t do anything foolish, will you? He acted in your best interests——’

‘He doesn’t even know me,’ Jenny pointed out coldly.

‘Yes, I know, but——’ her anxious expression returned ‘—Jenny, I couldn’t bear to lose you as well.’

Jenny managed a small glimmer of a smile, and shook her head emphatically. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Sonia. I’m not going anywhere.’

Sonia appeared gratified by this. ‘And you’re sure you’re up to a late duty?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Jenny with more conviction than she felt. But she could think of nothing worse than retracing her steps to her small cottage, to sit alone and in silence while her mind tried to grasp the enormity of what had happened—that Harry Marlow was dead, and that Judy Collins had been driven away by his replacement. She felt as if all the carefully arranged order and calm of her life was slipping into utter chaos and disarray. She felt like a holidaymaker who saw glorious sand beckoning, and then stood in fear as she realised that it was quicksand.

She clip-clopped her way back to the ward in her neat, shiny black shoes, her slim legs in the sheer black tights. She held her head high, her neck long and elegant, the frilly cap perched neatly on top of the thick, glossy hair and she was oblivious to the admiring glances cast at her by an elderly woman who was visiting her husband.

Inside, however, she felt far from serene, and as she approached Rose Ward she hesitated very slightly. Should she have Dr Trentham bleeped and confront him now? Or better to wait until her anger had subsided and she was more in control of her feelings? And besides, wasn’t unity the most important thing at the moment? She must gather her staff around her now, show all the girls that she was still in charge, that things were going to be all right, and that they could slip back into their trusted and familiar pattern.

She would carry on as normal. She would take a report from the agency staff nurse and then send the morning staff to lunch. She would wait until they returned before giving a full report to the three staff who would be with her this evening, and in the meantime she would go round and see all the patients, check the progress of the ones she knew, and acquaint herself thoroughly with any new ones. And she would give Mrs Jessop her bag of oranges.

She could hear the murmur of voices as she approached her office, and as she drew nearer she could hear that one was most definitely masculine—gravelly and deep—a voice which stirred a vague memory. She stood in the open doorway of her office, watching for a moment. The agency staff nurse was being shown a chart by a man who was obviously a doctor, since he wore a white coat, and Jenny could see the clutter of a bleeper and a stethoscope protruding from one pocket.

All she had time to notice was how wide and powerful his shoulders looked, how tall and just how much bigger he seemed than the sprightly Dr Marlow. Her lip curled very slightly as she observed the dark hair which curled untidily on to the collar of his white coat.

She drew in a deep breath. She wanted her words to him to be biting, and cutting—she could never remember feeling such a raw kind of anger towards someone she didn’t even know. They must have heard her, for they both turned round, the pale staff nurse giving her a kind of non-committal smile again.

And it took some moments for it to register why her heart was thudding away like some primitive drum, why anger and scorn had metamorphosed into total shock.

For no wonder that the deep voice had stirred a memory, because this was no stranger. Nut-brown eyes and untidy hair. The legs were no longer encased in tight fading denim—they now wore dark cords, and these, together with the snowy-white coat he wore, had the effect of making him seem almost presentable.

Her shock was so great that she was unable to tell from his face just what his own reaction to seeing her again was.

Stupidly, she recalled his suggestive comment about stockings, and that became the final straw. The gamut of shocks which she’d had in quick succession since she’d come to work that day proved too much.

She was a fit, healthy young woman, but she knew what was about to happen to her. The strange rushing and hissing sound in her ears; the blurring and retreating of the shapes which stood before her. It had happened to her only once before in her life, and she had been fourteen then.

As her eyes stared at Leo Trentham’s name-badge, she felt her knees buckle beneath her, and, slipping to the cold floor, she fainted.

CHAPTER TWO

IT SEEMED the whole hospital had become a theatre, the floor of Rose Ward the stage. Coming round was exactly like the fainting attack in reverse. Jenny saw a blurred figure, which cleared, then retreated.

She awoke to find herself lying on the office floor, fine beads of sweat on her brow, the top buttons of her uniform dress undone—and Leo Trentham crouched down next to her, his solicitous expression clearing as he watched her eyelids flutter open.

‘Thank God for that!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve often had a dramatic effect on women, but that’s a one-off, I must say!’

‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ she snapped, and tried to sit up, but couldn’t manage it, and, feeling as weak as a kitten, flopped down again.

‘Stay there!’ he commanded, and without further ado he lifted both her feet with one hand, and held them suspended in the air.

‘Take your hands off me!’ she cried, but he did no such thing, a look of amusement merely crinkling the corners of his eyes.

‘Don’t be so melodramatic, woman! Your blood-pressure has dropped into your boots; I’m merely trying to restore your equilibrium.’

The last person in the world to do that, she thought furiously, closing her eyes briefly as she felt her strength returning. When she opened them again she saw that he was staring at her curiously.

‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

She could have sunk her teeth into one of the strong brown hands. ‘How dare you?’ she demanded icily. ‘I’m not married!’

He gave a low chuckle. ‘What a refreshingly innocent remark for the nineties,’ he commented. ‘It may have escaped your notice that a wedding-ring isn’t necessary for that particular act of nature to take place these days.’

‘It is—round here, anyway,’ she muttered. ‘Now, are you going to put my feet down—or am I going to have to scream for help?’

‘Scream away,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘When they come running to see what’s wrong I shall simply tell them that you’re hysterical, and they’ll believe me. I am the doctor, after all!’

‘You’re not my doctor,’ she retorted.

‘On the contrary,’ he fielded smoothly. ’You’re a member of staff who has passed out on hospital premises. As I am the resident doctor, you therefore come under my responsibility. Even if you climbed into a wheelchair and got yourself taken down to Casualty, it’s still me you’d have to see. So shut up for a minute and try sitting up, but leaning against my arm.’

What choice did she have? She had never felt more helpless or more filled with rage in her entire life. And then, as she started to feel normal again, she remembered just why he was here, and why she had passed out like an idiot. Dr Marlow was dead. She stifled a small sniff with difficulty.

‘Hey,’ he said in a ridiculously gentle voice, lifting her chin up very carefully. ‘Are you OK?’

She stared at him, the green eyes suspiciously bright, thinking that she was at a disadvantage sitting on the floor, her head against his arm, her long legs sprawled in front of her. She was in no position to give the overbearing Dr Leo Trentham a piece of her mind.

‘I would be,’ she said coldly, ‘if you’d help me up and into that chair.’

She hated having to be dependent on his strength as he half picked her up and deposited her into her chair behind the desk. She simply must snap out of this lethargy which had followed her faint. She still had a ward to run, a long shift to get through and this man to deal with.

‘I’ve sent Staff Nurse off for some iced water,’ he explained, and just then the pale blonde returned, in her hand a polystyrene cup which he took from her and handed to Jenny.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything.’

‘Drink it,’ he ordered, and watched until she had sipped almost half of it.

She put the cup down shakily. ‘Thank you, Staff. Would you mind telling the evening staff to carry on as normal, that I’ll be out in just a moment? And could you and the rest of the morning staff go to lunch now?’

The other girl nodded. She seemed pleased to leave. ‘Yes, Sister.’

Jenny saw the curiously pale eyes glance once in Dr Trentham’s direction before she closed the office door behind her.

Leo Trentham remained standing at the window, an expression of amusement lifting the corners of his mouth.

‘I seem to have that effect on you, don’t I?’ he remarked.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s just that on the only two occasions we’ve met you’ve ended up on the ground. It gives quite a new meaning to the saying “he swept her off her feet”—don’t you think?’

It seemed that he actually expected her to join in with his laughter. She stared at him coldly, the anger she felt towards him managing mercifully to dispel the tugging at her heart which being back in this office without her late colleague had produced.

‘I can assure you that it would take someone as little like you as possible to sweep me off my feet,’ she retorted. ‘But I’m not interested in bandying around social niceties with you—if you can call your egotistical attempts at conversation that. I just want to get a few things straight.’

He seemed taken aback by her hostile tone. ‘Such as?’

She willed her voice not to have a quaver of emotion in it. Somehow she felt that for him to see her vulnerable would be a disadvantage. ‘Such as why you directed the nursing officer not to recall me from my holiday in order to attend Dr Marlow’s funeral.’

He looked surprised. ‘She asked my opinion, and I gave it. You weren’t related, were you? And you’d only just gone away.’

‘I’d worked closely with him for years!’ She spoke in an unnaturally high voice.

He chose to ignore that. ‘I’d already spoken to some of your staff. They told me how devoted you were to your work, how you worked unpaid overtime if the ward was short-staffed, which it frequently was. One doesn’t meet with that kind of dedication much these days, and I rather liked the sound of you. And I certainly didn’t imagine that you’d look the way you do.’

There was a murmur of appreciativeness in his voice and she was furious. ‘Just stick to the point,’ she hissed at him.

He shrugged. ‘You may or may not agree with me, but I’ve always tended to think that all nurses need their hard-earned holidays. They feel better and then they do their jobs better. Weighing everything up, we thought it better for you to continue with your holiday. I can’t see what the problem is, unless you’re one of these super-women who feel that the ward simply can’t run without their presence. Indispensable is the word, I think.’

‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

He remained unperturbed. ‘Oh, I dare all right. You asked me a question, and I’m giving you an honest answer. I’m just sorry you don’t agree with me. You may be sister of the ward—but I certainly don’t come under your professional jurisdiction.’

She bit her lip. ‘And Staff Nurse Collins? What did she say? She knows me almost better than anyone. Did she recommend that I continue on my holiday, blithely unaware that the man who was almost—like a father to me——’ her voice broke a little at this ‘—was dead?’ she finished in a whisper.

He moved over to her side then, his face soft with sympathy. ‘Hey—I certainly didn’t mean to cause you this much pain. I’m sorry if you think the wrong decision was made. But you know yourself that attending a funeral doesn’t change anything. You still have to grieve. Don’t you think that perhaps you might be misdirecting your grief, and it’s coming out as anger against me?’

‘You can keep your cheap psychoanalysis,’ she said bitterly. ‘And please answer the question—did Staff Nurse Collins agree with you?’

‘Yes,’ he answered quietly. ‘She did.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘Then ask her.’

‘Oh, believe me—I shall. And I shall also ask her why she felt she had to leave so suddenly, but that will be academic, since I feel pretty sure I already know the answer to that one.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’

‘Because she realised that she wouldn’t be able to bear working for an arrogant, overbearing doctor like you, Dr Trentham!’

For one moment there was an answering flash in his eyes, and she thought that he was going to respond with an equally angry retort, but he evidently changed his mind, for he shook his head very slightly.

‘Why don’t you smash a plate or something?’ he enquired mildly. ‘It might make you feel better.’

‘Then I should get out if I were you,’ she said between gritted teeth, ‘because if I do choose to smash something it’s very likely to be over your head!’

‘I’m going, I’m going!’ he said, in mock alarm. ‘Women with green eyes and hot tempers have always terrified me—and, honey, you are one very angry young woman!’

Before she could screech at him ‘don’t ever call me “honey”,’ which she was intending to do, he had slipped quietly out of the door, leaving her sitting there, her cheeks flushed with rage, feeling ever so slightly a fool.

What on earth had made her over-react like that? Why hadn’t she been her normal calm, unflappable self, telling him that his behaviour had been out of order, and would he mind being a little less familiar in future?

In fact, what was it about the man which made her feel such a strong and genuine dislike for him? Apart from the fact that he was overbearing and quite disturbingly masculine. Something about the way he had looked at her when he had made the comment about women with green eyes and hot tempers, as if he would like to. . . She shuddered very slightly.

She had better stop wasting time thinking about him. Roll on Dr Marlow’s replacement, please—the sooner they could get rid of this unconventional locum, the better.

She stood up to straighten her hair and her cap, and to do up the button of her dress. Calm down, Jenny, she urged herself. It was time to get on with the job in hand. She had better have a quick walk around the ward and say hello to all the patients before she gave the report.

Rose Ward, like all the other wards in the cottage hospital, was small compared to those in some large district general hospitals. The hospital itself was unusual in that it had survived its original small state—the current trend to centralise small units into large hospitals had passed Denbury Hospital by, partly because of the vociferous support of the local community, and partly because an extremely wealthy ex-patient had bequeathed his massive fortune to them. An added point in Denbury’s favour was that the surrounding countryside consisted of notoriously impassable hilly areas, which often became cut off during heavy falls of snow—and the powers that be had decreed that it was better to have a hospital which was accessible to all the farms and small villages around, rather than risk patients being marooned in transit to the nearest large DGH.

People often asked Jenny how she could bear to settle in such a God-forsaken part of the country, being so young and so well-qualified, but she simply couldn’t imagine life in a busy town or city. She loved the simple calm of country life—the predictability of seasons merging into the next, not obscured or deafened by the intrusion of inordinate amounts of cars and machines. She liked knowing which hen had laid the eggs she ate! She liked knowing people she had grown up with. And, above all else, she liked continuity and order.

Sometimes she questioned why it was that she never felt the burning desire to marry and settle down, and produce children of her own. There had been overtures, of course, two from young men she’d known all her life, and one from a doctor she had gone out with while she was training. But she had not felt deeply enough about them to want to disrupt the solitary peace of her existence. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that her mother had lived on her own all her life—perhaps she had liked that role-model so much that she was prepared to choose it for herself. And, when you’d spent your whole childhood hearing how awful men were, it tended to influence you a bit.

She was aware that, at twenty-six, she was considered by some of the younger nurses to be ‘on the shelf’, but it rarely bothered her. Indeed, she’d had to cope with so many red eyes and such morose behaviour when nurses’ love-affairs were not going so swimmingly that she often felt glad that that side of life seemed to have passed her by.

She put a new notebook into the pocket of her dress and walked briskly on to the ward, fixing a smile on her face, not wanting the patients to see her upset. She saw an answering lift in many of their faces. She could imagine that many of them had taken the news of Dr Marlow’s death badly, but, as well as that, patients on long-stay wards such as orthopaedics tended to miss Sister when she went away. A simple fact—the ship was without a captain!

‘Afternoon, Sister!’ called a couple of the men. ‘Good to have you back!’

She smiled her response, and went round to each patient in turn, perching on the side of the bed for a brief chat, and writing down in her notebook anything which she should mention to the doctor.

A wave of horror, quickly suppressed, washed over her as she realised that she was going to have to take every single problem to that man. As she patted Mr Walters’s hand and assured him that his fractured neck of femur was healing splendidly, before moving on to the next bed, she vowed that at no time would she let any of the patients or other staff know how much she disliked him. That would be extremely unprofessional, and might even undermine his authority. A clash of personalities was one thing. . .

Unless, of course, she thought with a grim kind of longing, unless he proved utterly useless as a doctor—then she would be perfectly in her rights to register a formal complaint about him.

When she eventually reached Mrs Jessop’s bed she was surprised to see her sitting up in bed knitting, her hair looking smart and newly set, and a brand new fluffy pink bed-jacket covering her thin shoulders.

‘Why, Mrs Jessop!’ exclaimed Jenny in surprise. ‘You look absolutely wonderful—and you’re knitting! I didn’t know you could knit!’

‘Hello, Sister,’ said the old lady fondly. ‘Lovely to see you—and you’re looking bonny yourself.’

‘Tell me what’s happened to you. Have you suddenly learned to knit?’

Mrs Jessop looked bashful. ‘Aw, no, Sister! Years ago, when we lived in Scotland, I used to turn out matinée jackets for every baby in the village. I’d kind of got lazy over the years, sitting in my chair and watching the box. That nice new doctor’s taken me in hand, like.’

Jenny felt her facial muscles freeze. ‘Oh?’

Mrs Jessop sighed happily. ‘Oh, yes. Brought an occupational therapist round to see me, he did.’

‘But we haven’t got an occupational therapist!’

‘Oh, yes, we have, Sister—now! Dr Trentham saw to that! Kicked up a terrible fuss, he did, according to the nurses. Said—what was it he said? Oh, yes—that it was “counter-productive” not to have one, that people got better more quickly with expert guidance. Said that, even if the hospital told him it couldn’t afford one, he knew a girl who would come in an afternoon a week and do it for nothing! Going to start in a few weeks’ time, she is—but she came round to see us all and then got me all this knitting wool. Lovely girl, she is, ever so athletic—used to play tennis at Wimbledon when she was a lassie! Imagine that, Sister!’

‘Imagine!’ echoed Jenny faintly, trying to force some enthusiasm into her voice. She put the bag of oranges into the old lady’s fruit bowl, and, brushing aside her effusive thanks, made her way back up the ward, trying to quell the unreasonable feeling of irritation which was growing inside her.

It all made sense, she knew that. Hadn’t she thought that they should have an OT for years? Hadn’t she politely spoken to Dr Marlow time after time, requesting one? But the kindly, and somewhat elderly doctor had not been in the least dynamic. He had gone into committee meetings and put his case so mildly that none of the board of governors—operating under such tight financial strain already—could believe his arguments that an OT was imperative.

So why did it irk her so much that Leo Trentham had achieved in less than two weeks what she had been coveting for years? She should be glad for the ward’s sake. And yet she felt as though her position as leader was being usurped. What else had he changed while she had been away?

She called one of the student nurses over to her, a happy hard-worker called Daisy Galloway, who was on secondment from Denbury’s sister hospital—the large St Martin’s. Jenny liked her very much.

‘Hello, Sister,’ grinned the girl. ‘You look great! Did you have a good time?’

‘I certainly did!’ Until I became acquainted with our new surgeon, she thought. ‘Will you do the two o’clock drug-round with me?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

They unlocked the trolley from the wall, then unlocked the first section, then the section within which contained the Schedule ‘B’ drugs. Jenny flinched a little when she saw how disordered the latter drugs appeared—bottles dumped haphazardly into the small space, not into the neat alphabetical lines which she favoured. She wondered who was responsible, but she suppressed a small click of disapproval, not wanting to seem overly critical of her staff. There might have been a perfectly good reason for such oversight—an emergency taking place during the drug-round, for example—when all the bottles might have had to be put back quickly and locked, so that the staff could run to the aid of a patient.

With experienced fingers she swiftly realigned the bottles, then glanced up at the student nurse.

‘Do you know why hospitals are so obsessed with neatness and order, Nurse Galloway?’

Nurse Galloway cleared her throat. ‘Er—I think so, Sister.’

‘Yes?’

‘Er—it’s because hospitals are run a bit like the military.’

Jenny laughed. ‘And why do you say that?’

Daisy looked less shy. ‘My dad used to be in the marines, and he told me.’

Jenny nodded. ‘Well, you’re right! Like the services, we tend to have lots of rules, but there are reasons for those rules—we don’t devise them just because we want to make more work for the students, or to be awkward.’

‘Yes, Sister?’ asked Daisy interestedly. She loved Sister Hughes—even though she was a ward sister, you felt you could ask her anything.

‘Well, if I shouted for you to get me something urgently—a drug, for example, and we always kept our drugs in alphabetical order, you’d be able to find it immediately, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘Alternatively, if a patient was having a cardiac arrest and I wanted the defibrillator, it would be of no use to us if the last person to use it had left it lying at the bottom of their ward instead of returning it to the corridor between Rose and Daffodil, now, would it?’

‘No, it certainly wouldn’t, Sister!’

‘There is “a place for everything, and everything in its place”, to quote the old saying, because the most orderly way of doing things is also the most efficient, and we need hospitals to be efficient. Not, of course,’ here she paused and smiled at the junior nurse, ‘that we must ever forget that we are dealing with people first and foremost, and therefore if a patient was depressed or worried about something then I’d expect you to find the time to sit down and talk to them. I wouldn’t bite your head off just because you’d missed a bit of ward-cleaning!’

‘No, Sister,’ said Daisy Galloway, and she tipped two ampicillin capsules into the top of the bottle and showed them to Jenny.

‘And why don’t we tip the tablets on to the palm of our hand,’ queried Jenny, ‘which would be the most natural thing to do?’

‘Because the patient’s drugs don’t want to be covered in the sweat from our hands,’ answered Daisy.

‘Even though, as a nurse, you should make sure your hands are thoroughly clean at all times?’ teased Jenny, and the junior laughed.

Jenny stood and watched while the patient took the tablets before neatly signing the drug chart. They moved along to the next bed, a new admission—a woman of fifty who had come in to have a hip replacement. Her operation was scheduled for the following morning, and she would probably only be written up for routine pre- and post-operative drugs, but Jenny pulled out the drug chart to check.

She bit her lip in annoyance to see that Leo Trentham’s large, untidy signature was scrawled all over it, but what was worse was the fact that he had chosen to write up the drugs in the most lurid shade of violet that she had ever seen.

Nurse Galloway noticed her frown and peered at the chart. ‘That’s certainly unconventional, Sister!’ she exclaimed.

‘It’s an eyesore,’ said Jenny curtly before shutting it swiftly. Why couldn’t he behave a little more responsibly? That kind of behaviour was more typical of a medical student than a qualified surgeon!

As they moved down the ward, Jenny discovered that Dr Trentham also had a penchant for writing in emerald green and turquoise—anything, in fact, other than the usual black or blue. Unconventional? He was that all right.

After the drug round the morning staff returned, and Jenny was given the report by the agency staff nurse.

The girl’s pale eyes glanced at her slyly. ‘Are you feeling better now, Sister?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Staff,’ said Jenny briskly and smiled, her eyes on the Kardex, showing that she wished to proceed.

‘Fancy fainting at the sight of Leo, although I can’t say that I blame you—he’s bloody gorgeous, isn’t he?’

Jenny was not standing for that. ‘I did not faint at the sight of Dr Trentham; I had received some very bad news, and I would prefer it if you refrained from using first-name terms with the medical staff—it confuses the students.’ Her voice was not unkind, but the firmness of it indicated that she meant what she said.

‘Yes, Sister,’ answered the girl sulkily, the emphasis on her title steeped in sarcasm, and Jenny’s heart sank. What was happening today? She seemed to be falling out with everyone. She knew a moment’s longing for the days before her holiday, for the easy camaraderie with Judy Collins and Dr Marlow. But she stifled her sigh. Those days were gone now, and she was going to have to work with these new people, like it or not. She attempted to inject a note of friendliness into her voice.

‘Of course, we can use first names in the office.’

‘Of course.’ The sarcastic reply was one of thinly veiled insolence, but Jenny decided to let it pass.

‘And what is your name, Staff? Doesn’t your agency provide you with a name-badge?’

The pale eyes lacked any warmth. ‘All they provide me with is a cheque at the end of each week—and that’s the way I like it.’

Jenny’s heart sank once more. She hoped that this girl was going to fit in. Most agency staff nurses she had worked with were fine, but she had known of one or two who had very odd personalities, girls who were interested only in the higher rates of pay which agencies provided. Girls who had been unable to find a permanent job elsewhere, for one reason or another. Some had been lazy so that she had had to chivvy them into doing work; they had never found work for themselves—and there was always something to do on a ward—but had had to be asked to do it.

Yet what choice did they have but to employ agency nurses? Nurses were in great shortage and the conditions were to blame. The pay was still appalling compared to many other jobs which required a fraction of the skill which nursing demanded. No wonder that nurses were leaving the health service in droves, to take on boring but highly paid office jobs, their professional qualifications wasted. And other dedicated nurses, such as Ella, Mary and Kingsley—fine nurses she had trained with—had been forced to seek work in Australia, where nurses were respected and highly rewarded, as they were in America and most other countries in the world. Only in Britain were they treated like paupers and second-class citizens, unable for the most part to even manage to buy houses on their meagre salaries.

Jenny smiled again at the moody-looking girl on the other side of the desk. Perhaps she had been a little abrupt—there was nothing wrong with the girl admiring one of the doctors, after all, though ‘bloody gorgeous’ was hardly the way she would have chosen to describe him!

‘So what is your name?’ she asked.

‘It’s India,’ answered the girl reluctantly. ‘India Westwood.’

‘India! What a pretty name! And so unusual.’

There was a slight hesitation. ‘I hate it!’

Jenny gave up. ‘Well, at least it’s not boring, like Jennifer!’ She glanced at the Kardex. ‘Now, then. What’s been happening to the ward while I’ve been away?’

Staff Nurse Westwood gave the report competently enough, although her voice lacked any real warmth when talking about the patients. But then she hadn’t been working there very long, and perhaps it was difficult to become involved when you were doing agency work since you never knew how long you were going to stay in one particular job. She could, in principle, be moved to another ward tomorrow, though Jenny knew that Sonia Walker would avoid this unless absolutely necessary—she attempted to provide some degree of continuity by sending agency staff to the same ward.

When the report was finished Jenny took the Kardex. ‘Thanks very much indeed, Staff. I wonder if you’d like to send the evening staff in to me, and I’ll tell them what’s going on?’ The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up. ‘Hello?’ She listened for a moment or two. ‘Right. I’ll do that. Thanks.’

She looked at Staff Nurse Westwood. ‘Mrs Curran is ready to be collected from Theatre—she’s had a bit of a nasty reaction to the anaesthetic, so I’d like a trained member of staff to collect her. Could you go—and ask two of the staff to move the beds round so that she’s right next to the office? I noticed that it hadn’t been done on my way round.’

‘I didn’t have time to do it,’ answered the blonde defensively.

No, but you had time to stand in the office in close cahoots with Leo Trentham, thought Jenny, but she said nothing. ‘I was just stating a fact, Staff—it wasn’t intended as a criticism. By the way—just before you go could you tell me what’s happened to my red ward-book? It seems to have disappeared.’

‘Oh, that!’ India’s voice was triumphant. ‘We don’t use it any more.’

Jenny had difficulty in keeping her voice calm. ‘Oh? Don’t we? Says who?’

‘Leo—I mean Dr Trentham. He says that those books went out with the ark. He hasn’t thrown it away, though—he’s put it in the top cupboard by the door.’

‘That was exceptionally decent of him,’ said Jenny in a tight voice. ‘You’d better go off to Theatre now, Staff.’

After the door had closed she sat there for a moment, perfectly still, her loud breathing the only sound to be heard in the small office. The red book! The bible of Rose Ward! Stuffed into a dusty old cupboard because some insolent upstart who didn’t even know the hospital properly had deemed that it had ‘gone out with the ark’. Just who the hell did he think he was?

Jenny decided that she would speak to Dr Trentham and give him a few home truths, but she didn’t dare risk having him bleeped just yet; she felt so shaky with anger that she didn’t trust herself not to scream down the phone at him.

She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, and then there was a tap on the door.

‘Come in,’ she called.

It was Nurse Galloway. ‘Did you want us in for report, Sister? Are you all right? You look really shaky!’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’ She was not going to have all the staff thinking that there was something wrong with her. She was not going to appear unprofessional for the first time in her working life.

‘Do come in, girls,’ she spoke calmly, ‘and I’ll give report.’

After report she had him bleeped, and after a couple of minutes the phone rang.

‘You’re bleeping Dr Trentham?’ queried a breathless voice.

‘Yes, is he there?’

‘He’s in Theatre at the moment. He’s operating. Can I give him a message? Is it urgent?’

Of course, he would be operating—how stupid of her to forget. What was happening to her?

‘It’s Sister Hughes on Rose Ward. Could you please ask him to ring me when he has a moment? It’s not urgent.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

But he didn’t ring back, nor did he come to the ward, and she was due to go off duty.

She looked at the clock furiously—it was nine-thirty, and operating finished at six or seven at the latest. She glanced through the Theatre list—the last case had been a simple pin and plate which would have taken half an hour at the most, and she knew that he wasn’t doing an emergency because she would have been informed. He just hadn’t bothered to contact her.

Well, he could learn that his sloppiness would simply not be tolerated at Denbury Hospital. Small it might be—but its standards were as high as anywhere in the country, and someone just ought to point that out to Leo Trentham.

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