About the Authors

FIONA LOWE is a RITA® and RUBY award-winning author who started writing romance when she was on holiday and ran out of books. Now, writing single title contemporary romance for Carina Press and Medical Romances for Mills & Boon, she lives in a seaside town in southern Australia, where she juggles writing, reading, working and raising two gorgeous sons with the support of her own real-life hero! Readers can visit Fiona at her website: fionalowe.com.

Born and raised on the Wirral Peninsula in England, CHARLOTTE HAWKES is mum to two intrepid boys who love her to play building block games with them and who object loudly to the amount of time she spends on the computer. When she isn’t writing—or building with blocks—she is company director for a small Anglo/French construction company. Charlotte loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her at her website: charlotte-hawkes.com.

Also By Fiona Lowe

Her Brooding Italian SurgeonSingle Dad’s Triple TroubleCareer Girl in the CountrySydney Harbour Hospital: Tom’s RedemptionLetting Go with Dr RodriguezNewborn Baby For ChristmasGold Coast Angels: Bundle of TroubleUnlocking Her Surgeon’s HeartA Daddy for Baby Zoe?Forbidden to the Playboy Surgeon

Also By Charlotte Hawkes

The Army Doc’s Secret WifeThe Surgeon’s Baby Surprise

Hot Army Docs miniseries

Encounter with a Commanding OfficerTempted by Dr Off-Limits

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Reunion of a Lifetime/A Bride to Redeem Him

The Reunion of a Lifetime

Fiona Lowe

A Bride to Redeem Him

Charlotte Hawkes

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09573-0

THE REUNION OF A LIFETIME/A BRIDE TO REDEEM HIM

The Reunion of a Lifetime © 2018 Fiona Lowe A Bride to Redeem Him © 2018 Charlotte Hawkes

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

The Reunion of a Lifetime

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

A Bride to Redeem Him

Back Cover Text

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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

About the Publisher

The Reunion of a Lifetime

Fiona Lowe

They once had a summer of passion...

But is it too late to walk down the aisle?

Lauren Fuller hasn’t seen Charlie Ainsworth since he unexpectedly left Horseshoe Bay twelve years ago and burst their bubble of love. Now he’s back, and working together at her GP practice is torment—their chemistry reminds Lauren how good they were together. And when she learns the tragic truth that drove him away, can it finally reunite them forever?

To Tamara for sharing her heartbreaking journey with Finn.

With special thanks to Madeleine and Cate for the mud story.

CHAPTER ONE

‘IT’S RED DAY.’

‘Red day?’ Dr Lauren Fuller’s hand paused in mid-twist on the yellow lid of a jar of Vegemite. She was minding Shaylee—her parents’ current foster-daughter—while Sue and Ian were up in Melbourne, celebrating their thirty-third wedding anniversary.

‘For reading,’ Shaylee explained. ‘We wrote a real letter with a stamp and everything. Today we’re walking to a big red letterbox. Mrs Kikos says it’s really old.’

Lauren knew the postbox. It dated back to 1890, when Horseshoe Bay had been a popular holiday destination and people sent postcards to tease the folks at home. Now everyone just texted. ‘That sounds like fun.’

She grabbed the toast as it popped up and swung back towards the table, dodging Cadbury, her parents’ aging chocolate Labrador, who had decided he needed to lie right at her feet. After dropping the toast on a plate, she pulled the scrambled eggs off the heat seconds before they boiled. Breakfast at her own house was a much less hectic affair, consisting of fruit and yoghurt, and, if the planets aligned, a quiet online read of the paper.

The eight-year-old girl’s gaze suddenly dropped past her new green and white checked school dress—her pride and joy—before resting on her bare feet. Shaylee mumbled something else about red.

Lauren scooped the eggs out of the pan and dumped them over the toast she’d spread with Vegemite. Her mother had been insistent that Shaylee eat a high-protein breakfast before school to help her with her concentration. Lauren knew that wasn’t the sole purpose; it was as much about warmth, love and a full stomach as it was about concentration. Shaylee had spent far too many years going hungry when her drug-affected mother’s suppressed appetite and muddled brain hadn’t considered food a necessity. ‘Sit up and eat your brekkie and tell me what you just said.’

Shaylee eyed Lauren carefully as she climbed up onto the breakfast stool. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Of course it matters,’ Lauren said with a smile. She’d grown up with a parade of foster-children coming and going in the house and, as hard as that was at times to cope with, if she’d learned one thing, it was that the muttered asides usually contained the most important information.

Shaylee shovelled eggs into her mouth and Lauren waited. The moment the girl swallowed, Lauren said, ‘Hit me with it.’

‘We have to wear red,’ Shaylee said quietly, her head down. ‘But it’s okay. I love my uniform.’

Lauren’s heart rolled over. This little girl had endured so many disappointments in her short life that she automatically prepared for them now. It was odd that Lauren’s mother hadn’t made a costume for her before she’d left for Melbourne—Sue was huge on things like this. Surely the school had sent home a note about it? But that was something to sort out later. Right now, she had...she glanced at the clock and tried not to groan...half an hour to create a red costume before dropping Shaylee off at school and getting to the clinic on time. ‘You eat your eggs and I’ll go and see what I can find that’s red.’

Her first stop was the bathroom. At the back of the cupboard she found four cans of coloured hair spray, all of dubious age. She picked up the red one and shook it. It sounded hopeful, although she hoped it was fire-engine-red or it wouldn’t show up on Shaylee’s glossy black hair. Her second stop was the floor-to-ceiling cupboards in the playroom-cum-teenage retreat. Dragging an old hospital linen bag along the polished floorboards, she walked back into the kitchen just as Shaylee finished her last mouthful.

‘What’s that?’ the little girl asked, clearly intrigued.

‘Sue’s special bag of tricks.’ Lauren pulled open the drawstring and started pitching out items—a pink feather boa, a black ushanka fur hat with a red badge, a green fez, an old handbag, a royal-blue waistcoat... As she added more items to the pile, Lauren found herself silently chanting ‘Come on, red,’ like a roulette player.

Meanwhile, Shaylee was twirling around the kitchen, wearing the Russian hat and a stethoscope. ‘Look, I’m a doctor just like you.’

Lauren glanced at the bright red instrument in surprise. It must have been tangled up in some clothing, because she hadn’t seen it come out of the bag. If anyone had asked her about that piece of medical equipment, she would have said she’d binned it at the end of her first year of uni after replacing it with a utilitarian black stethoscope. Apparently not. It appeared she had abandoned it here and her mother, ever a magpie when it came to the bag of tricks, must have kept it for dress-ups. Lauren had deliberately not thought about the red stethoscope in years.

Twelve years.

Shut up! How do you even know that?

It was too long ago and far too much had happened in her life for her subconscious to instantly calculate the number. Especially as the day she’d bought the replacement black stethoscope had been the day she’d moved on from Charlie Ainsworth. At least that was what she always told herself on the infrequent occasions something made her think back to that heady summer a lifetime ago.

‘Stethoscopes are like wands,’ Charlie had said, slinging a red one around her neck and pulling her towards him before kissing her.

She’d gazed up at him, loving his kind and handsome face. ‘They’re magic?’

‘I wish,’ he’d said in a resigned tone, ‘but no. They do, however, reflect personality and you, Lauren Fuller, are the antithesis of boring old black. This one is bright and vivacious, just like you. This is the one.’

Lauren felt herself grimace at the now tarnished memory and immediately noticed Shaylee’s smile fade. Damn. She banished the mothballed memory back where it belonged and forced a smile as she kept rummaging in the bag. ‘The stethoscope looks great on you and, ta-dah!’ With relief, she shook out a red sequined cape. ‘You can be Super Shaylee.’

‘Yay!’ Shaylee clapped her hands as a look of wonder crossed her face. ‘I’m gonna be dressed in red like the other kids.’

Lauren blinked back tears. Why was it always the simple things that undid her? ‘You’ll be totally red, especially when I’ve sprayed your hair.’

* * *

After dropping a very excited Shaylee off at school, Lauren drove to the café nestled under the Norfolk pines on the sweet curve of Horseshoe Bay. Her usual morning routine was a run along the beach and on Tuesdays and Thursdays she added in a yoga class, but the one constant was coffee. This morning it was just coffee.

‘You missed a spectacular sunrise.’ Ben, the barista and café manager, greeted her with his trademark grin.

And I missed you. Sun-bleached hair and with a surfer’s tan, Ben had moved to the Bay three months ago to run the café. Most mornings as she finished her run, he was walking up the beach with his board tucked under his arm and they always fell into easy conversation. Everything about Ben was easy. This was a new experience for Lauren, because the two men she’d thought she’d loved had turned out to be anything but easy. But that was all in the past and not worth revisiting.

As far as Lauren was concerned, she’d wiped clean her slate of disastrous relationships when she’d returned to Horseshoe Bay two years ago. Determined to learn from her twenties, she was older, wiser and ready to live life on her own terms. The last year had been frantic, most of it spent breathing new life into a busy medical practice that had let the twenty-first century pass it by. Now, with her newly minted decree absolute declaring her officially divorced from Jeremy and with her heart encased in a protective layer of reinforced Perspex—visible but crack-proof—Lauren was finally ready for an easy, straightforward and uncomplicated man.

Truth be told, she was ready for sex. Just recently, she’d been waking up at three a.m. hot, sweaty and aroused, and although she was adept at bringing herself to orgasm, she was ready for someone else to do it. She just didn’t want a relationship with its inevitable breakdown and crippling scar tissue as part of the deal. Ben, with his ‘live for the moment’ and ‘no regrets’ attitude, might just be the solution she was looking for.

The stumbling block was that at thirty she’d only ever had sex as part of a committed relationship. Correction; she’d been committed—Charlie and Jeremy not so much—and she was clueless about how to bring up the topic of a no-strings-attached gig. Of course, she could just use a dating app but the two recent cases on the news where women had lost their lives from swiping right warned her she was safer with someone she knew. But in a town the size of Horseshoe Bay, her options were limited.

‘I was on mothering duty this morning,’ she said, pulling out her purse to pay for her latte.

Ben did a double take. ‘I didn’t know you had a kid.’

‘I don’t,’ she said, checking the Perspex around her heart and not letting her mind travel to a memory that always brought a troubling combination of sadness and disappointment seasoned with an unsettling soupçon of relief. ‘I’m looking after Shaylee while my parents are whooping it up in Melbourne celebrating thirty-three years of wedded bliss.’

‘Crikey.’ Ben’s expression was a priceless combination of respect and horror. ‘I can’t imagine what that would be like. My brain refuses to go there.’

‘I know, right? They got married at twenty-three and are still going strong. It’s terrifyingly impressive.’ So much about her parents and their achievements was impressive that she was often left feeling daunted by her own choices. How did one even start to live up to their high-set bar?

He placed the metal jug under the steam jet, frothing the milk for her brewing coffee. ‘I think I’d find marriage claustrophobic.’

Was this her opening? Come on, be brave. Be a millennial woman like the ones you read about and take what you want. ‘Sexually or otherwise?’

He shot her a quizzical look as if he was testing the lie of the land. ‘A bit of both, really. What about you?’

‘Post-divorce, I’ve had a total rethink.’ She swallowed and forced herself to look him straight in his sea-green eyes. ‘What’s your opinion of friends with benefits?’

‘I’m an enthusiastic supporter.’ He capped her coffee with a plastic sippy top and gave her a grin. ‘And we’ve been friends for a while now.’

‘We have.’ For some reason her heart was just beating away normally: lub-dub, lub-dub. Shouldn’t it be bounding wildly out of her chest at the fact that the gorgeous Ben was on board with the idea of the two of them tumbling into bed?

He handed her the coffee and swept the coins she laid on the wooden counter into the till. ‘Call me whenever, Lauren. I’m looking forward to it.’

‘Great!’ She heard herself saying, sounding far more enthusiastic than she felt. For some—probably antiquated—reason, she’d assumed Ben would be the one to contact her. Yet this way he was letting her call the shots and after two disastrous relationships, wasn’t that what she wanted? Demanded even?

Gah! Perhaps she wasn’t as twenty-first-century evolved or as ready for casual, no-strings-attached sex as she’d thought.

* * *

Charles Ainsworth—‘Boss Doc’ to the islanders, Charlie to his friends and on very infrequent occasions to his family—swore as the lights in the operating theatre flickered. ‘Bert filled the generator, right?’ he asked as he slipped a ligature around a bleeding vessel.

‘No worries, boss.’ A dark eyed man with a bush of frizzy hair gave him the thumbs-up from the door. ‘I fill ’em up. No be in the dark this time.’

‘Excellent.’ Charlie might be in what travel magazines called ‘paradise’—a string of tropical, palm-dotted coral islands floating in an aquamarine sea—but from a medical perspective, he was in a developing country and a disaster zone. During the recent cyclone, he’d had to perform emergency surgery on a boy who had been pierced by a stake that had been hurled into his chest by the terrifying and mighty force of the wind. Mid-surgery, they had predictably lost power, but he hadn’t foreseen the generator running dry or him finishing the surgery with Bert and Shirley holding LED torches aloft.

Just another tough day in paradise but at least the kid had survived and only half of the hospital had flooded. If the Red Cross managed to deliver desperately needed medical supplies today, he might be able to breathe more easily. As it was, air was skimming in and out of the tops of his lungs without going deeper and his body was coiled tight, ready to react to the next disaster. He’d been in a constant state of high alert for two weeks.

It’s been longer than that.

He shook away the thought. Emergency aid work was, by definition, disaster management, and he had the dubious honour of being an expert. Once the powers that be recognised someone with the skills they needed, they locked onto them and never let them go. Not that he wanted to be let go—he lived for being busy. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

He stepped back from the antiquated operating table that even on its highest extension was too low for his height, stripped off his gloves and rubbed his aching back. ‘Wake him up,’ he said to his current anaesthetic nurse, a local islander who had blessedly trained in Melbourne. ‘And keep a close eye on the drainage bottle.’

‘Sure thing, Charlie,’ Shirley said, her teeth a flash of white in her dark and smiling face. ‘You get some sleep now, yeah?’

He laughed; the sound as far removed from jolly as possible. ‘I’m going down to the wharf.’

‘I see your eyes close. You need sleep.’ She gave an islander shrug—the one that implied it will be what it will be. ‘You can’t will the boat to come.’

‘I can try.’ He wasn’t about to explain to Shirley that there was no point in trying to sleep, because sleep no longer came. If insomnia had been a visitor in the last few months, it had taken up residence since the cyclone had hit. For the last two weeks he’d only cat-napped. An hour here, a half-hour there, all squeezed in between medical emergencies, general hospital work and helping the islanders clean up the havoc Cyclone Samuel had wrought on them. Although some aid had arrived, it was going to take months for the replacement of vital infrastructure. Not that he’d be around to see it. By then he would have been moved on, dispatched to another place of need and leading another team.

He walked into the basic change room that all the staff shared and stripped off his scrubs. He was shoving his left leg into his shorts when the room shifted and he shifted with it, banging hard into the old metal lockers and jarring his shoulder. What the hell! Was it an earth tremor? He righted himself and listened keenly for rumbling but all he heard was birdsong. He was no rookie at natural disasters and birds didn’t sing when there were tremors. Nothing sang then; every animal and insect went deathly silent—the anthem of impending doom.

Trying again, he lifted his right leg, aiming it at the leg hole in his shorts. This time silver spots danced in front of his eyes and then the floor shifted again. He flung out an arm to steady himself and sat down hard on the bench seat. Sucking in some deep breaths, he closed his eyes and waited for the floaters to vanish.

‘You okay, boss?’ Bert asked, suddenly appearing in front of him. ‘You don’t look so good. You need a smoke?’

‘Don’t tempt me, Bert.’ Charlie gave him a grim smile. ‘I just need to eat.’ But just the thought of food made him feel queasy, let alone trying to eat any.

Men’s shouts rent the air, sliding in through the open window, and Charlie’s empty stomach fell to his feet. He didn’t understand a lot of Bislama and his French was tourist-competent, not medical literate, but the last time he’d heard a commotion like this they’d found an islander who’d been trapped under rubble for three days. Despite the joy in finding the man alive, Charlie had been faced with the task of amputating the patient’s crushed leg in the hope of saving his life.

‘Grab my medical kit.’ Charlie lurched to his feet, taking a moment for his head to stop spinning.

‘No, boss!’ Bert grinned at him. ‘This good news. Come on.’

He followed Bert’s brightly coloured shirt through the door and down a short corridor until they were both outside and in the glare of a fearless sun. Under the wind-stripped and almost naked palm trees Charlie glimpsed heaven—a group of men and women dressed in fresh and clean Australia Aid uniforms. All of them clutched the distinctive and life-giving red and blue medical packs. At the back of the cluster he recognised the distinctive height of Richard di Stasio—his boss.

Relief carried him towards them, his long strides steady. ‘You lot are a sight for sore eyes. That is, if you’ve brought IV fluids and antibiotics.’

‘Would we dare turn up without them?’ Richard shook Charlie’s hand and his dark eyes did one of those quick head-to-toe assessments that emergency medicos specialised in. ‘You’re looking a bit rough, Charlie.’

He shrugged as they walked inside. ‘It’s been tough. You saw what’s left of the town on your trip from the wharf? Or what’s not left of it, to be more precise. Half the hospital’s out of action and we’ve got limited power. The fuel for the generator’s dangerously low, the sat phone’s dodgy and I’ve got three patients battling septic shock.’

‘You look a bit shocked yourself.’

‘Nah.’ He ran his hand through his hair and suddenly realised it was longer than it had been in years. ‘No more than usual.’

Richard shook his head. ‘You look like you’ve dropped at least five kilos. Possibly more.’

‘The joys of a fish and taro diet. Listen, Richard,’ he said, suddenly gripped by urgency. ‘I’ll happily give you a full report as soon as I’ve administered those antibiotics to my three sickies.’

‘Keith can do that. You’re handing over to him and then you’re getting on the boat to Port Vila and going home.’

No! Every part of Charlie stilled. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. There’s still mountains of work for me to do here.’

Richard sighed. ‘You know the rules, Charlie. First response teams get pulled out after two weeks when second response arrives.’

‘Hell, Richard, you know as well as I do that you’re the first response team, not me. The only reason I’m on Pipatoa is because I came for a few days of diving after teaching the emergency trauma course in Port Vila. Two days after I arrived, Samuel blew up and I got stuck here.’

‘That’s irrelevant. The bottom line is you’ve done the job of first response without the back-up of a trained team. It doesn’t take a medical person to see you’re completely exhausted. God, man, have you slept at all since the cyclone?’

‘I’m fine,’ Charlie ground out. ‘Besides, you’ve got me pencilled in for Ghana next week, right?’

‘That was before you lived through the most savage cyclone to hit the area in forty years.’

‘So?’

Richard’s brows rose at the belligerence in Charlie’s voice. ‘So, HR’s been on my case because you haven’t taken any leave in eighteen months. Now you’ve lived through the cyclone, the psych’s waded in.’

Charlie’s head ached and his gut cramped. ‘I don’t want to take leave. I want to go to Ghana.’

‘Neither of us has a choice in the matter. Even if HR weren’t getting antsy about your accumulated leave, you’re mandated to take time out of the field and attend three post-disaster counselling sessions.’

‘Hell, Richard, I’m not going to get PTSD.’

‘You know as well as I do no one’s bulletproof. The rules exist to protect Australia Aid workers. As an employee, those rules apply to you.’

‘But you’re the boss.’ Charlie hated the frantic pitch to his voice. ‘You can pull strings.’

Richard shook his head. ‘Not this time, mate. Besides, it’s not the end of the world. There are worse times than summer in Australia to go home.’

It was never a good time to go home. Not that he considered Australia home anymore, or anywhere else for that matter. ‘How long am I on enforced leave?’

‘A minimum of six weeks.’

‘What?’ His bark of disbelief bounced off the walls and came back to bite him.

‘Longer if the psych isn’t happy with your progress, but I’m sure you’ll be back in action before Easter.’ Richard gave him a fatherly clap on the shoulder. ‘Look on the bright side. Your family will be happy to see you.’

‘Oh, yeah. They’ll be thrilled,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Any chance the psych will visit me in Bali?’

Richard laughed, completely missing the point that Charlie was deadly serious. ‘Send me a postcard from that joint you summered in as a kid. I’ve always thought it sounded like a place I should take my kids.’

Charlie stared at Richard, stunned that he’d even remembered that conversation—hell, he’d forgotten all about it. He guessed it had taken place about three years ago, on the night of ‘the anniversary’. He’d found himself with a bottle of Scotch and, a little while later, Richard for company. He hadn’t told his boss the significance of the date—hell, he never told anyone that—but to prevent Richard from asking too many probing questions about why one of his best trauma surgeons was uncharacteristically nursing a bottle of top-shelf liquor, Charlie had entertained him with stories about his childhood summers on the coast.

He’d used words to paint pictures of the old rambling house on top of the cliff, the white sandy beach far below that squeaked when the sand particles rubbed together, the seventy grey weathered wooden steps that led down to the sea and the roar of the surf that filled the air with the zip and tang of salt. He’d waxed lyrical about the exhilaration of catching a wave and riding it all the way in to shore.

Horseshoe Bay. He hadn’t thought about the place in years. Despite growing up in the privileged leafy suburbs of Melbourne with every possible advantage, his happiest memories were the holidays at Bide-A-While. He’d spent every long, hot summer there and he and his brother had run wild—swimming, surfing and beachcombing—the sun bleaching their hair white and darkening their skin to honey brown.

When he’d turned sixteen, they added bonfires on the beach and parties to their repertoire. He’d shared his first kiss at Horseshoe Bay. He’d ecstatically given up his virginity in the dunes with—God, what was her name? Other than a flash of white skin illuminated by moonlight, he couldn’t form a picture of her, but then again it had been eighteen years ago. His body sagged as the elapsed years unexpectedly clawed at him.

A memory of luminous almond-coloured eyes ringed by jet lashes bloomed in his mind and he smiled. Lauren. He may not remember the other girl he’d had his first fumbling sexual encounter with, but it was impossible to forget Lauren. She’d been his saving grace in the worst summer of his life. Old regret ached but he was an expert at ignoring it. It was pointless questioning why life threw curve balls and disrupted the good things. Turning away from the melancholy memories of Lauren, his mind darted to find something to soothe his intense disquiet about returning to Melbourne.

Bide-a-While! While he worked out his appointments and organised a real holiday somewhere far, far away from that southern city—one that fitted in between the obligatory counselling sessions—he’d ensconce himself with Gran down at Horseshoe Bay. With its clear views to the horizon, and a solid two-hour drive from Melbourne, it might just be the wide safety buffer he needed between him and his parents.

CHAPTER TWO

LAUREN TOUCHED THE hands-free green button on the car’s console and answered her mobile. ‘Hi, Mum. How was The Langham?’

‘Just gorgeous! But, darling, I’m so sorry about the red costume.’ Sue Fuller’s voice boomed around the car. ‘Apparently, school notes are going out of fashion and I need to download an app. Anyway, Shaylee refuses to take off her costume and Dad and I want to cook you dinner as a thank-you. Can you make it?’

If anyone ever offered to cook for Lauren, she accepted in a heartbeat, because at the end of long and busy days, rustling up the energy to cook often failed her. ‘Dinner sounds fabulous. But fair warning, I missed lunch so I’m starving.’ She flicked on her indicator, slowed, turned left and immediately changed down into first gear as the car took on the extremely steep gravel road. ‘All things being equal, I should be there by six-thirty. I’ve only got one house call left.’

‘Have you seen Anna Ainsworth?’ Sue asked, suddenly sounding more like the district nurse she was than her mother. ‘I didn’t like the look of her leg on Tuesday.’

‘I’m driving to Bide-a-While now.’

‘You’re doing a home visit? Is she okay? She’s one of my naughtier diabetics and in typical Ainsworth style she won’t be told anything.’ Her mother warmed to one of Horseshoe Bay’s favourite themes—the locals’ opinions of the well heeled Melbourne-ites who owned holiday mansions in the town. ‘You’d think that as the mother of an eminent surgeon, she’d be better behaved. Then again, we all know how Randall Ainsworth likes to throw his weight around and how the rules don’t always apply...’

‘Mmm,’ Lauren hummed noncommittally as her mind drifted back to a summer a long time ago. Don’t go there, her subconscious commanded. Do. Not. Go. There.

When Lauren had taken over the Horseshoe Bay practice, she’d been stunned to learn that Charlie’s grandmother had not only left her Toorak home and retired to the house on the cliff but she was now a clinic patient. Not that she’d met Charlie’s grandmother twelve years ago, or anyone else in his family for that matter, just like Charlie had never met her parents—some things were best kept secret.

Horseshoe Bay had two populations—the small, permanent one, and the transient tourist population that swelled the seaside village by thirty-five to one each summer. The relationship between the locals and the tourists was a symbiotic one, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t without its tensions. Stories, some dating as far back as the First World War, cautioned local women about getting involved with tourists. For every positive outcome, there were more than fifty negative ones and most of those revolved around the pocket of big houses high on the hill—the enclave of real wealth.

Growing up, Lauren had absorbed the lesson—have fun with the holidaymakers in the camping ground but don’t get involved with anyone on Shore Road unless you want to be used and then abandoned.

As a teenager, she’d mostly avoided the bonfires at the far end of the beach where the rich kids played, although she had been to a couple, reluctantly dragged along by girlfriends who had dreamed wide and big and had inevitably got hurt deep and long.

She hadn’t met Charlie at a bonfire or even at the Milk Bottle Café where she’d worked that summer—another favourite haunt of the rich kids. They’d met on a grey and humid afternoon when only the keen or stupid surfers braved the elements, pinning their hope on a fabled storm wave and the ride of their lives.

As the two of them had lain on their boards with their eyes glued to the water, they’d chatted. He’d made her laugh and she’d had the same effect on him, and when the edge of the storm front had hit, it had gifted them five amazing waves. They’d ridden them competitively, trying to outdo each other, yet at the same time urging each other on to do their best. Then the rain hit, the wind driving each drop as sharp as the slice of a razor, and caution had kicked in. Once on the shore, Charlie had grabbed her hand and they’d run, taking shelter in a cave.

Sitting at the entrance, they’d watched nature’s picture show of lightning jagging its yellow glow across the horizon, complete with the soundtrack of cracking thunder. After two hours together spent laughing and talking about all sorts of things except themselves, he’d leaned in and kissed her.

She’d been kissed before but never like that. His warm and eager mouth had captured hers, making her body melt like chocolate and sizzle with so much heat she’d expected to combust in a shower of sparks. It had been a defining moment. Then and there, she’d chosen to ignore the little details she’d picked up on during the afternoon, like the fact his surfboard and wetsuit had come from the top end of the range. That his accent had been devoid of diphthongs and that his mention of visiting overseas countries had hinted that travel was such an ordinary part of his life that he didn’t even question it.

Instead, she’d told herself he was just ‘Charlie’ and for the rest of that summer they had spent as much time together as her part-time job had allowed. She’d refused to examine the fact she was keeping him hidden from her family and friends and that he was doing the same to her. Nothing had mattered except the exclusive and private bubble-for-two that they’d inhabited, filled with joy and delight.

And then the bubble had burst.

Twelve years ago. You let it all go, remember? Focus on the here and now.

Unfortunately, the here and now involved treating Anna Ainsworth—a woman she’d never in a million years expected to have as a patient. The families of Shore Road only used the local medical practice if it was an outright emergency and even then the Ibrahims and the Foxworths owned their own helicopters and could fly someone to Melbourne and their own doctor in twenty minutes. But Charlie’s grandmother now lived permanently at Bide-a-While and, given her age, required regular medical attention.

Anna Ainsworth wasn’t the sort of woman who whipped out photos of her family during a consultation and Lauren had never deviated from the professional doctor-patient relationship and asked about Charlie. Up until seeing the red stethoscope the other day, she hadn’t thought about Charlie in a long time and, besides, asking about him would likely only generate questions from Anna about how she knew her grandson. Lauren had kept their relationship a secret this long and there was no reason to admit to it now.

Lauren had never visited Anna at home before but when Lauren matched up the fact the woman hadn’t rung to cancel today’s appointment with Sue’s concerns about her leg, she’d decided a home visit was required. The car crested the hill and there in front of her were the intricate iron gates at the entrance to the Bide-a-While acre. The gates were open and, going by the growth of weeds at the base of the pillars, it would appear this was their normal state these days. ‘I have to go, Mum. Talk soon.’

Lauren navigated the car along the agapanthus-lined gravel driveway, the large and heavy white and purple flowers waving in the breeze, and she gave a delighted gasp when the beautiful and immaculately white-painted Victorian house came into view. She parked adjacent to the glorious wraparound veranda that cast long shadows of welcome shade across the treated red gum boards, and the late afternoon sun turned the corrugated-iron roof into a dazzling silver light show.

She automatically imagined women from a hundred years ago wearing white muslin dresses and men in starched collared shirts sitting in the cane chairs, sipping G&Ts after playing tennis on the grass court. Today the veranda was empty except for an aging beagle, who waddled off his bed and ambled to the top of the five steps. He gave her a half-hearted bark as she hoisted her medical bag out of the boot.

‘It’s too hot for that sort of nonsense, buddy,’ she said, leaning down to rub his ears before she pressed the brass door bell. While she waited for the sound of footsteps, she admired the beautiful red and blue painted glass panels around the door.

‘Dr Fuller? Lauren. Goodness, this is a surprise.’ Anna Ainsworth, still regal at eighty-one, peered at her through her glasses. ‘Do come in, dear.’

‘Thank you.’ Lauren crossed the threshold and found herself standing in a wide hall with deep skirting boards. ‘I was concerned when you didn’t come to your appointment, especially when Mum...’ She smiled and corrected herself. ‘The district nurse was worried about you.’

The elderly woman’s hand fluttered to the base of her throat. ‘I’m so sorry to have worried you. It’s just with everything that’s happened today, the appointment completely slipped my mind.’

Lauren followed Anna into a spacious living room complete with an open fireplace and a mantelpiece filled with silver framed family photos. ‘Is this the best place to examine you?’

‘Why not?’ Anna’s blue eyes, pale with age, sparkled with mischief. ‘It’s a room with a view that’s far more interesting than my leg.’

Lauren laughed and flicked open her bag. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I get excited when I see healthy skin where an ulcer is healing. I’ll start by testing your blood sugar. How’s it been?’

Anna grimaced. ‘Up and down, like my blood pressure. I had the sniffles last week and at my age it seems to put everything out of whack. I find it utterly frustrating,’ she said imperiously, as if the virus was very rude indeed to be causing her problems.

The glucometer beeped. ‘Eleven point two. That’s high.’

‘Oh, that’s just because of the tiny glass of champagne I drank.’

‘Champagne?’ Lauren tried not to sigh and unwrapped the blood-pressure cuff.

Anna leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘There are special occasions in life when celebrations are more far important than a spike in blood sugar.’

‘Like what?’ Lauren asked as she pumped up the sphygmomanometer, deciding it was best to find out exactly what the circumstances were before reading the Riot Act.

‘Like my grandson arriving unexpectedly.’

In her stunned surprise, Lauren only just caught the diastolic blood pressure reading as her heart did an odd skip in her chest. She immediately told herself not be ridiculous. Anna Ainsworth probably had many grandsons and even if this one was Charlie, he probably now came with a wife and two point five kids.

‘I haven’t seen him in over two years,’ Anna continued, ‘so I’m sure you’ll agree that’s very worthy of a few sips of champagne.’

‘Lauren agrees, but Dr Fuller is a little torn,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘Now, let’s look at this leg.’ She slid a bluey under Anna’s calf to protect the couch’s beautiful Australian wildflower print, before slipping on some gloves and carefully removing the dressing. The skin around the small ulcer was angry and two tiny black dots worried her. She carefully debrided them and reapplied the occlusive dressing. ‘That’s to stay in place for a week, Mrs Ainsworth, and I need you to promise me two things.’

‘Oh, dear,’ the woman said, her eyes twinkling again. ‘I’m not very good at keeping promises if they’re dull and boring.’

‘Oh, these are totally exciting, I promise,’ Lauren said. ‘The first is, when you’re sitting down, put your leg up every time. The second is, call me if your blood sugar is higher than eight.’

‘Lauren, dear, I think we have definition disparity about what constitutes exciting.’

‘Not really. If you don’t do those two things, you risk requiring a skin graft and spending a couple of weeks in hospital...’ While she’d been talking, she’d gathered up the dressing waste, rolled it up in the bluey and shoved the contents into a bag. Now she tied it with a flourish. ‘Now, that would be boring.’

‘You doctors,’ Anna grumbled good-naturedly. ‘You do like to win. And I should know, I’m surrounded by them.’

Lauren was about to give in to overwhelming temptation and ask how many Ainsworths were doctors when a tall, gaunt man with a mop of sandy hair and a slightly darker beard appeared in the doorway. Her stomach knotted half in disappointment and half in relief—this grandson wasn’t Charlie.

His entire demeanour—from the tilt of his head, past the slight sag of broad shoulders and all the way down to his wide, bare feet—emanated ingrained and longstanding fatigue. His blue eyes—so like Anna’s and yet disturbingly less vibrant—were glassy and bloodshot. Lauren couldn’t tell if he’d just woken up, was depressed, or if he’d consumed the bulk of the champagne and was, in fact, very drunk.

‘Gran, where do you keep the—? Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise you had a visitor.’

Lauren tensed as the rumbling voice with a raspy edge raised her skin in goosebumps. Stop letting your imagination run wild. You know it’s not Charlie. You’d recognise him instantly if it was. Yet she’d swear there was something about his deep voice that held the vestiges of velvet that had stroked her all those years ago.

He was staring intently at her now—probably because she was staring just as intensely at him. His gaze narrowed as if he was closing out all distractions and zeroing in on her and her alone. Suddenly, the sapphire blue of his eyes, which a moment ago had been pale and insipid, lit up like refracted sunshine on water.

It’s him. Flashes of fire and ice raced through her—hot, cold, hot, cold—until she tingled all over. She didn’t know if she was shivering or sweating, only that her body was alive in a way it hadn’t been in twelve long years. That alone scared her rigid. No, damn it. Just no. Despite not wanting to, her gaze automatically sought his left hand. No wedding ring. So what? I really don’t care.

Anna, seemingly immune to the locked and loaded glance crackling with electricity that currently ran between her GP and her grandson, said, ‘Charles, darling, this is my doctor, Lauren Fuller. Lauren, I’d like you to meet another doctor who is also my grandson, Charles Ainsworth.’

‘Lauren.’ His voice rolled over her name, the tone as warm and as addictive as hot caramel sauce. Then his deeply lined face creased in a smile—an older and wearier version of the smile she’d never been able to completely forget. With a quickness that belied his previous lethargy, he pushed off the architrave and strode across the room, his long legs eating up the distance in four fast strides.

Lauren barely had enough time to stick her hand out in greeting, but he ignored the gesture and was instead dipping his head down towards her as if he was about to kiss her. The bolt on the box she’d labelled ‘Charlie’ and buried deep all those years ago blew wide open. All the hurt and betrayal rose in a spurt of bile, scalding the back of her throat. How dare he think he could just swoop in and kiss her after all this time after what he’d done to her heart?

She instinctively—protectively—took a step back and ducked her head. All the while she kept her hand outstretched as much as a stop sign as in greeting. ‘Pleased to meet you, Dr Ainsworth,’ she said crisply and professionally, as if she was meeting him for the first time at a conference. She mentally dubbed him Charles as extra insurance.

Her brusque manner was a solid entity and it filled the space between them. He rocked back on his bare feet, his smile fading until his lips settled in a firm, flat line. A deep V was carved between his dark eyebrows—their ebony so at odds with the rest of his fair colouring—and then the light in his eyes dimmed and vanished completely. The previous stranger with the almost blank affect was back. ‘Actually, it’s Mr Ainsworth.’

Of course it was. Their time together had been on the cusp of his medical career and Charlie—Charles—had mentioned a vague plan of one day working with his father in cardiology. Unexpectedly seething with an anger she’d assumed had faded and aged into acceptance a decade ago, she jerkily zipped up her medical bag. ‘It’s probably a long time since you’ve dealt with the less exciting aspects of medicine, Mr Ainsworth.’ She hit his title with emphasis. ‘But your grandmother’s blood glucose readings are currently all over the shop. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t offer her any more champagne or cake to celebrate your return.’

‘You’re planning on killing the fatted calf, aren’t you, Gran?’ Charles deadpanned. ‘It’s totally diabetic friendly, Dr Fuller, so we’re all good.’

Unbidden laughter bubbled up inside her, just like it always had when she’d been in his company. The memories of how easily he’d made her laugh and smile—how quickly he could talk her out of a bad mood—circled her, tempting her to follow a well-worn path. It’s an overgrown path filled with briars and weeds.

Lauren cut off the laughter. It morphed into a hard lump sitting uncomfortably in her chest and reminding her how easily he’d broken her heart. Her spine stiffened. She was no longer eighteen—hell, she wasn’t even twenty-four—and only a fool failed to learn twice from her mistakes. She was no fool.

‘Please ring the surgery in the morning, Mrs Ainsworth, and make an appointment to see me next Thursday.’

‘I promise,’ Anna said with a little nod to their previous conversation. ‘But don’t be too hard on Charles, dear. I was the one who suggested the champagne and he’s—’

‘I’ll see you out, Dr Fuller,’ Charles said abruptly.

Lauren had already slung her medical bag over her shoulder and moved to the door. ‘That’s not necessary.’ But his hand was on the small of her back and his heat was swirling through her, stealing both her words and her willpower. Without knowing exactly how it happened, she was standing by the front door and he was standing a foot away from her, studying her as if she were a fascinating scientific specimen.

His lips curved slightly—only this time it looked as if the effort to smile was almost too much. ‘We’ve met before, although the last time you saw me I was considerably younger and I didn’t look quite so...’

Worn out and faded? What on earth had happened to the energetic twenty-three-year-old she’d once loved? But she didn’t want to wonder and she had no intention of asking. Engaging with him would at best achieve nothing and at worst upset her. Desperate to get out of the house and away from the unwanted memories his presence was currently breathing life back into, she reached for the polished brass doorhandle.

‘I find it hard to believe you don’t remember me, Lauren.’

The mild thread of arrogance that underpinned his bemused words acted like a stiff breeze. The angry coals she had banked years ago flared into life. ‘Whereas I find it hard to believe that you do.’

‘Of course I remember you,’ he said softly.

She could almost see his memories in the words, but she couldn’t believe him—didn’t trust herself to believe him. Moving decisively, she was quickly out the door and jogging down the steps to her car, determined not to look back. Fortunately, he didn’t follow her. If she had anything to do with it, this was the first and last time she’d be in conversation with Mr Charles Ainsworth.

* * *

Charlie lacked the energy to run along the beach and was slightly aghast at the fact that Basil, his grandmother’s aged beagle, was walking faster than him. It was as if touching down on Australian soil had drained him of all his vitality. His body felt encased in mud and all movement was an effort. He wanted to blame jet-lag for the fact he woke at two each morning, unable to get back to sleep, but who was he kidding? Vanuatu time was only one hour ahead of Australian Eastern Standard Time, so that excuse didn’t cut it.

Apart from his first compulsory session with the counsellor and a quick visit to see his brother, he’d spent almost no time in Melbourne. Harry was much the same—thinner perhaps than the last time Charlie had seen him but just as quiet. Charlie had sat and told him about being on enforced leave. Harry had listened, his face impassive apart from a muscle twitch near his eye. He’d not offered an opinion, but that was par for the course. Charlie hadn’t expected one.

There was no point lingering in Melbourne so, after leaving Harry, he’d hired a car and driven straight down the coast to Bide-a-While. Now he stared out at the horizon, scanning the calm seas for fins—preferably those of dolphins—and breathed in deeply, willing the salt air to magically invigorate him. With not even the hint of a wave, the bay was empty of its usual cluster of wetsuit-clad surfers and their boards eagerly anticipating the perfect ride.

Charlie vaguely entertained the notion of stand-up paddle boarding, but he couldn’t muster the enthusiasm. It seemed like a lot of effort to climb back up the stairs to Bide-a-While, get the key, open the shed, find the board, pour himself into a wetsuit and finally get out onto the water.

Last night, Gran had suggested he walk into town early and buy coffee and the paper. He knew it was a just ploy to get him out of the house and into the fresh air, because she had a state-of-the-art Italian coffeemaker in the kitchen, plus he thought she still had the paper delivered. Still, he had to admit that being out on the beach as the sun rose beat thrashing about in bed, seeking sleep that never came.

Good old Gran. She’d welcomed his unannounced visit with open arms and thankfully with a distinct lack of questions—for now. He’d caught her studying him every now and then, worry clear in her eyes, and he hated that. He’d tried to reassure her—‘just following the rules, taking some leave and satisfying the shrink that I came through the cyclone with my head intact’—but even he didn’t totally believe his own spin. Cyclone or no cyclone, being back in Australia and without work to keep him busy and his mind full meant the past had a horrible way of sneaking up on him.

It hadn’t taken long for the past to insert itself. Last night, the nightmare he’d thought he’d finally banished had visited, laughing at his naiveté. It turned out it had been languishing in the wings, just waiting for him to land on bright red, Aussie soil before making a grand entrance. During its dormancy, it hadn’t change in shape or form. It was still him and Harry trapped in caves, wells, mines, barrels—any sort of container, vessel or space. They’d fight their way to the entrance, the surface, freedom, and he’d break through and turn to grab Harry’s hand to tug him over the line, only to have his brother pulled away from him at the last moment and vanish in front of his eyes.

The nightmare had released him from its clutches in its age-old way—he’d woken with a start, drenched in sweat, his lungs tight, his chest heaving, and with the sheets tangled around his legs. He hadn’t been able to save Harry in real life so why did he expect to be able to do it in a dream?

Although Gran was yet to grill him on work, it was obvious she was on a mission to fatten him up. Since he’d arrived three days ago, every meal had featured at least one of his favourite foods. As yet, none of them had piqued his appetite. It was still MIA along with sleep. So far, the only event to spark his interest had been meeting Lauren Fuller again.

Never in a million years had he expected to find her still in Horseshoe Bay, let alone working as the GP. During that amazing summer twelve years ago, she’d been high on the excitement of starting her medical degree and he remembered her discussing plans to work in indigenous communities. Horseshoe Bay was the antithesis of a desert community or even an indigenous coastal one. Still, all that talk had been a long time ago and plans could change—his certainly had.

Seeing her again had given him a few rare moments of pleasure and it had pierced the numbness and fatigue he was struggling to throw off. He’d felt more alive in those few minutes than he had in weeks. Granted, the feeling had been tempered by her obvious displeasure at seeing him. It was a reaction that still confused him. Despite closely examining his memory in the early hours of the last two mornings, no matter which way he came at it, his recollections of their time together only ever generated a collage of fun, laughter and sex.

Love.

He immediately shied away from the word. Love only brought pain and when he thought of Lauren that emotion was absent. No, he had a deep and abiding affection for her. She’d helped him get through a tough and difficult time and for that he’d never forget her. More than once over the years he’d regretted having to leave her behind. Back then, staying in Australia had been impossible—that hadn’t changed.

Despite knowing that, it hadn’t been enough to prevent him, in more disconsolate moments over the last ten years, from contemplating what his life might have been like if he’d stayed. Stayed with Lauren. But he knew those thoughts were flights of fancy. Even without the disaster that was his family and the fact they’d both been far too young and on the cusp of their adult lives to make a lifelong commitment, he was too difficult to love.

But all those details aside, the fact Lauren had intimated he’d forgotten her had thrown him. It hadn’t only been excitement at seeing her again that had propelled him across the room to her; it had also been lo—gratitude. It had felt like the most natural thing in the world for him to lean in and kiss her on the cheek. After all, that’s what old friends did, right?

Apparently not. Her unanticipated frostiness had not only shocked him, it had spiked him, denting his enthusiasm and leaving him feeling foolish. He’d immediately fallen back into old Ainsworth habits. In a moment he still regretted, he’d gone for one-upmanship. He shuddered whenever he thought about his supercilious tone. ‘Actually, it’s Mr Ainsworth.’

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out, half expecting a text from his grandmother asking him to pick up something for her in town.

Nice of you to let us know you’re back in the country. I didn’t appreciate being made to look a fool when Alison Petty said she’d seen you after visiting your brother and I told her she must be mistaken. Your mother would appreciate a visit.

His father, he noted wryly, didn’t waste text characters on greetings or sign-offs. Then again, it was no real surprise as he didn’t use them in telephone calls, emails or face-to-face conversations either. Randall Ainsworth, MBBS, FRCS, PhD had little time for pleasantries—after all, he was a very busy man. As for Charlie’s mother appreciating a visit? The jury was still out on that and had been for a long time.

He slid the phone back into his pocket, trying to ignore the unwanted and sticky tug of the complicated web that was his family ties. Visiting either of his parents and pretending that the accusations and angry words had faded into the past was pointless. They still hung in the air as fresh and raw as the day they’d been spoken in the ICU ward by Harry’s bed. He was intelligent enough to know that time would not have improved the odds of a visit going well.

Basil barked, the sound thankfully breaking into his unhappy thoughts and diverting him. Charlie watched in surprise as the dog broke into a run. To be accurate, it was more of a brisk waddle but it was faster than the beagle’s usual snail pace. He glanced along the beach and noticed a woman running towards them. Dressed in bright fluoro, she was impossible to miss.

Charlie set off after Basil, knowing that not everyone loved dogs, even harmless arthritic ones. He didn’t have the energy to deal with an angry resident quoting beach by-laws at him. As he got closer, he noticed the runner’s figure—trim but soft and curvy in all the places that made him appreciate a woman’s body. He felt something shift inside and for the first time in months his libido sat up and took notice. Basil chose that moment to bark again and Charlie laughed, appreciating the dog’s good taste. The noise seemed to penetrate the woman’s concentration and, without breaking her stride, she turned her head towards the sound.

Lauren. Even with her face shadowed by the peak of her running cap, he’d recognise those rich brown eyes anywhere. He raised his hand in a wave and caught her momentary prevarication—she didn’t want to stop. Well, blow that. He wanted to talk to her and find out why she was being so prickly. ‘Morning, Lauren.’

If she wanted to ignore him, she was now stymied by Basil, who was waddling around her feet. She either stopped running or risked tripping over the rotund dog. Charlie decided right there and then that his unexpected wingman was getting a big, fat, juicy steak for dinner tonight. Lauren did an elegant sidestep and then stopped, bent and tousled Basil’s velvet ears. She didn’t look up.

‘Mr. Ainsworth.’

‘You used to call me Charlie.’

‘We’ve grown up, Charles.’

She rose gracefully, her full height bringing the top of her head level with his chin. A memory flashed of her curves resting neatly into his dips—the two of them interlocking like puzzle pieces—and how he’d always rested his chin gently on her hair, breathing in her scent. Apples. She’d always smelt of apples and he idly wondered if she still did.

A sensation akin to peace rolled through him at the memory. Those six precious weeks with Lauren had been a haven from nine months of hell. A temporary but welcome escape from his family life until he’d made the break permanent with a move overseas. ‘Fair enough,’ he said, despite the fact he thought her calling him Charles was unfair. ‘But don’t be surprised if I fail to respond when you call me that. My parents are the only people who use my full name and I rarely respond to them.’

‘Your grandmother introduced you as Charles the other night.’

‘Ingrained social etiquette. Generally, she calls me Charlie or Stupid, depending on what I’ve done.’

Lauren’s lips wriggled as if she was fighting a smile. ‘So, you get called stupid a lot, do you?’

‘Just enough to keep me grounded.’ He shot her a self-deprecating grin, hoping to be rewarded with a full smile. It didn’t happen and it struck him that his disappointment was out of proportion to the situation. Then again, all his reactions seemed to be out of kilter at the moment—they were either way too strong or not strong enough. For weeks he’d been unable to anticipate any of them and not working was making it worse. ‘I’m heading for coffee.’ He nodded towards the café. ‘Any good?’

‘As good as you get in Melbourne,’ she said, stretching out an arm before standing on her right leg and bending her left up behind her.

The action pulled her top tightly across her breasts and he couldn’t help but notice they were slightly fuller than he remembered, not that he was complaining. ‘I’m clueless on Melbourne’s coffee standards. I don’t think I’ve had a cup there in eighteen months.’

Surprise danced across her high cheekbones and her left foot hit the sand. ‘Really? I thought you lived there?’

He saw the curiosity bright in her in her eyes and he seized on it, hoping it was an opening. ‘Let me buy you coffee. We can fill each other in on the last twelve years.’

‘I don’t have all day.’

It was said without an accompanying smile and her resistance crashed into him, wave after wave. If he’d thought he might have imagined hostility when they’d met at Bide-a-While, he was under no illusions now. What confused him was why it existed at all. Although he remembered a lot of arguments that summer, all of them had been with his father and none of them with Lauren. ‘What about coffee and the potted version, then?’

She stood still for a second and then her gaze fell to the sports watch on her wrist. He crossed his fingers behind his back. ‘Ten minutes,’ she said, ‘but let’s go to another café.’

‘I thought you said this one was good, and look...’ he pointed to a bloke with sun-bleached hair who was setting up a sandwich board ‘...it’s open.’

‘The other one’s closer to work.’ In an abrupt action that mirrored her words, she broke into a jog.

‘Come on, Basil,’ Charlie said. ‘We’re going to have to run to catch up.’

* * *

Lauren sipped her latte at the small outside table and blamed running-induced hypoxia for agreeing to chat with Charlie. Charles, Charles, Charles. Who was she kidding? He’d always been Charlie and using the formal version of his name wasn’t enough to keep old memories—good and bad—at bay. Right now, she was banking on the fact that by agreeing to this ten-minute catch-up of the last twelve years she’d be off the hook. Afterwards, she could cheerfully decline any future invitations without appearing rude. To be honest, she was flummoxed as to why he even wanted to do this when he’d been the one to walk away without looking back.

‘So...married? Children?’ she asked, determined to control the conversation. It didn’t prevent her from steeling herself for the inevitable phone photos of blonde-haired, blue-eyed children in private school uniforms. Or a family shot taken at a resort in an exotic location somewhere. When she’d been younger and daydreaming the vision of her life, she’d never anticipated that she’d be the single, childless woman forced to make polite comments about other people’s children. Yet that was exactly what she’d become.

‘Let’s face it, Lauren. You fail at most things so why are you surprised you can’t get pregnant?’ Jeremy’s words wormed their way back despite her attempt to block them out.

‘No to marriage and children,’ Charles said in a tone that gave no hint as to how he felt about the situation. ‘I was engaged once for a bit, but...’ He shrugged. ‘It didn’t work out.’

Why? She was still processing the fact that he was one of a rare species—a single, good-looking, heterosexual male in his mid-thirties—when he added, ‘What about you? Married? Kids? Committed relationship?’

She swallowed as the shame she thought she’d banished came back to bite her. ‘Divorced,’ she said softly.

‘Ah. Sorry.’

‘Yeah.’ She sipped her coffee, not certain if she wanted his sympathy or not. ‘It’s not something I ever thought would happen to me but—’ Shut up. He’s not your friend. He doesn’t need to know.

‘Stuff happens that we can’t always control.’

Her head snapped up at his sombre tone. ‘That sounds like the voice of experience.’

His eyes suddenly widened into inky black discs. He shot to his feet, tossed the light café table sideways and grabbed her roughly, hauling her out of the chair. She slammed hard into his chest and her breath flew out of her lungs. Fear invaded her, stiffening her body and making her blood thunder through her veins. A scream rose to her throat but before it broke out she was slammed onto the ground and Charlie’s body was rolling hers over and over.

CHAPTER THREE

THE TERRIFYING SCREECH of brakes penetrated Lauren’s terror, followed by the high-pitched sound of shattering glass. Shards rained down on her. A car horn blared. The acrid smell of rubber burned her nostrils. Her body protectively stilled, every sense on alert, trying to decode the situation—ascertain safety. She opened her eyes and found herself looking straight up into Charlie’s cornflower-blue eyes, still dominated by high-alert black. His gaze reflected everything she was feeling—shock, relief and an overwhelming sense of urgency.

‘Okay?’ he asked, his voice trembling.

‘I... Yes. I think so.’

‘Thank God.’ He pushed himself to his feet and grabbed her hand. She found her footing amongst the glass and vaguely noticed a rip in her pants.

People ran towards them. A man she didn’t recognise—his face white with shock—gasped, ‘I thought you two were dead for sure.’

‘We’re fine,’ Charlie said, his voice suddenly loud and commanding. ‘We’re doctors. You call the police and ambulance. We’ll check on the others.’

‘Go to the doctors’ clinic,’ Lauren called out, her voice not quite as steady as Charlie’s. She pointed down the street in the direction of the surgery. ‘Tell Lexie I need the AED and the emergency kits. All of them.’

‘Emergency kits. Got it.’ The man turned and ran.

Lauren quickly assessed the devastation in front of her. The rear of a small four-door sedan was protruding from the café and the jagged remains of the huge glass frontage hung over it like stalactites. Her thoughts took the obvious path—were the car’s occupants alive? Horrifying reality cramped her gut. What about the people inside the café? Had the car hit any of the staff or customers?

Charlie, who was already at the driver’s door, looked up as if reading her thoughts. ‘Triage inside.’

She nodded and ran. Fortunately, the door to the café hadn’t buckled and it opened. Steve, the young barista, and another man stood stunned and rooted to the spot, their horrified gazes fixed on the front of the car. Lauren saw a pair of female legs splayed at a rakish angle and protruding from under the car. As she dropped to her knees, she said firmly, ‘Steve. Find me a torch. You...’ she pointed to the second man ‘...do a head count. Tell me who else is hurt.’

Both snapped to attention. ‘On it.’

A phone with the torch app activated was thrust into Lauren’s hand and she crawled under the car. ‘It’s Lauren,’ she said to the woman, having no idea if she was a local or a tourist. Dead or alive. Conscious or unconscious. ‘I’m a doctor.’

The woman didn’t move or make a sound. Lauren’s hand reached for the patient’s neck, her fingers seeking a carotid pulse. It took her a moment but she finally detected a faint and thready beat. Moving forward on her belly, she gained a few centimetres and somehow managed to check the woman’s pupils. Sluggish response to light.

‘Lauren!’ Charlie’s voice called out to her. ‘What have you got?’

‘Head injury and probable internal bleeding. Her breathing’s shallow but I can’t move or see enough to examine her.’

‘We need to pull her out.’

‘What about spinal injuries? Can’t you move the car back?’

‘Too risky. The front of the building might collapse. Here.’ His hand shoved a neck brace at her and she gave thanks for Lexie’s fast arrival with the emergency packs. ‘Put this on her.’

‘I need light.’

‘Got it.’ Charlie’s face appeared and he directed two phones towards her.

Lying on her side, Lauren’s fingers felt thick and clumsy, and while she fitted the brace she agonised over the compromises that always came with triage—save a life but risk exacerbating an injury in the process. ‘Brace on.’

‘Her name’s Celine. Can you support her head while I pull her legs?’

‘I’ll have to come out and go back in at a different angle.’

‘Do it.’ Charlie said. ‘Fast.’

Feeling like a trainee soldier, she wriggled out on her belly before re-entering so her head and Celine’s were next to each other. ‘Okay, but slowly.’

‘Got it. On my count,’ Charlie commanded. ‘One, two, three.’ The distance Celine needed to be moved wasn’t huge but it felt like miles. Lauren concentrated on keeping the patient’s spine in alignment. ‘And we’re clear,’ Charlie yelled. ‘She’s not breathing.’

Lauren rolled out from under the car as sirens blared. Charlie was already doing CPR and she grabbed the automatic emergency defibrillator. Ripping open the woman’s blouse, she quickly applied the electrode pads. ‘Clear,’ she said loudly. Charlie’s hands moved off Celine’s sternum and he held them up as if a gun were being levelled at him. She pressed the shock button. Celine’s body shuddered. Charlie recommenced CPR, counting to thirty before giving the patient two breaths.

‘Stop CPR. Analysing,’ the electronic voice of the AED instructed.

Charlie lifted his hands ‘Look at her trachea. Grab a cannula.’

‘Tension pneumothorax?’ Lauren handed him a fourteen-gauge needle and swabbed Celine’s upper chest. The pressure would be preventing her heart filling with venous blood. With nothing to pump, the heart was a fibrillating mess.

‘I’m hoping.’ Charlie plunged the needle into the skin between the second rib space in the mid-clavicular line and a faint whoosh of air followed. ‘Now we might be able to get her back.’

‘Clear!’ Lauren said loudly again, before depressing the shock button. Her eyes were glued to the liquid display. Thank, God. ‘Sinus rhythm,’ she said, catching the relief on Charlie’s face. ‘Good call.’

He shrugged. ‘We’re not out of the woods yet. You got this? I’ll check on the others.’

‘Sure.’ She inserted an IV and did another set of observations. Although Celine was breathing and her heart was beating, she was still unconscious. Given the trauma she’d experienced, being out of it could be a good thing but the doctor in Lauren knew her sluggish pupil response was a serious concern.

‘Do you need the helicopter, Lauren?’

She looked up at the familiar voice and smiled at her father, who was standing above her in his blue paramedic’s uniform. ‘Yes. Probable head injury and post cardiac arrest. She needs to go direct to The Edward.’

Ian pulled out his phone and made the call while Lauren helped his partner load Celine into the ambulance for the short trip to the helipad. As the ambulance drove away Lauren returned inside. Charlie was splinting a young girl’s leg and Lexie was handing out blankets. Her mother was sticking bright pink sticky notes on people, describing symptoms and seating them in chairs. The young barista was making coffee.

‘Who’s first?’ Lauren asked, ignoring the dull ache all over her body that was probably soft tissue bruising from colliding with concrete.

‘Jake Lawrence. He’s got a nasty cut to his arm. Do you want to stitch it here or at the surgery?’ Sue asked.

‘Here might be better.’ Lauren saw two police officers talking to an elderly man wrapped in a blanket who she assumed was the driver of the car. ‘There’s coffee and people need to stay together and talk so they can start to process it all.’

The next ninety minutes passed in a blur. Her father and his partner returned and transported the two patients with fractures to the hospital in Surfside. The police interviewed people who felt up to telling their version of events and while Lauren stitched wounds, she listened to people’s outpourings of shock and grief.

‘It came out of nowhere. One minute I was paying for coffee and the next... Crash. I thought a bomb had gone off.’

But amidst their trauma the locals’ concerns were for the tourist who’d taken the brunt of the accident. ‘No one expects to be injured when they’re drinking coffee on holiday. Will she be okay?’

‘I don’t know the full extent of her injuries,’ Lauren answered truthfully. ‘She’s got a struggle ahead.’

When there was no one else needing medical attention, Lauren finally came up for air and for the first time fully took in her surroundings. The line of chairs was now empty as people had either been taken to hospital or collected by family and friends. Police tape surrounded the car and blocked the entrance of the café—the blue and white checks declaring it an investigation scene. Steve was sitting with Sue and Lexie, drinking a well-earned coffee.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and glanced up into Charlie’s face. Today he was clean shaven and he looked both familiar and alien. She gave an internal sigh. The square jaw and bladed cheekbones she’d loved to run her fingers over all those years ago remained the same, but his skin was older, lined with whatever the last decade plus had thrown at him. The laughter lines that bracketed his mouth were still there but more defined, and on the few occasions he’d grinned, the dimples in his cheeks still showed. That had both reassured and hurt her.

What was new were the deep lines around his eyes. She got the impression that laughter was not responsible for all of them. His golden hair was darker than it had been at the age of twenty-three and, unlike the neat, short cut he’d sported back then, his current style was dishevelled but not in the fashionable ‘messy look’ way. Strands fell across his high, intelligent forehead, almost poking into his eyes in a jagged and motley manner. Despite that, the hair wasn’t long enough to hide the dark shadows under his eyes and the general air of dispiritedness that dogged him.

Her heart did an unwelcome flip of longing tinged with distress, although she was uncertain whether it was for him or herself. She stopped herself from reaching up and cupping his cheek, despite wanting his warmth to fill her palm and to tell her that his essence was still in there somewhere. But she didn’t have the right to touch him and, more importantly, she didn’t want to touch him.

Reminiscing was like the turn of the tide. On the surface the water looked wonderful and all the good memories enticed her to wade in and throw herself into the experience. But she knew the same jagged rocks that had caused her to flounder once before still lay in wait, ready to plunge deep into her heart. She had no intention of putting her hand up for that all over again.

Trying to shake off unwanted feelings that begged her to only remember the good times, she dropped her gaze and immediately noticed his shirt was ripped and bloodstained. Cuts and grazes criss-crossed his upper arms. ‘Did Mum or Lexie look at these? You’ve probably got glass embedded in your arm.’

‘Just like you’ve probably got glass in your thigh?’

Surprised, she glanced down and realised blood had congealed around the rip in her running pants. She was suddenly aware of a burning sensation. ‘How crazy. I didn’t feel a thing until now.’

He grimaced. ‘Fight and flight response. Adrenaline hides a multitude of ills until it doesn’t. Does this hurt?’ His fingers ran gently across her lower left arm, lingering on a bump.

She flinched. ‘Ouch.’

‘Exactly.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘Sorry. But I think I inadvertently fractured your ulna when we hit the ground.’

‘Don’t apologise.’ The reality of what had happened was slowly starting to penetrate the protective adrenaline. ‘You saw the car heading for us, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ He brushed his hair away from his eyes. ‘I grabbed you out of instinct. I probably gave you a hell of a fright.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You saved my life. Our lives. Thank you.’ She moved to squeeze his hand and gasped as sharp pain circled her. Her entire body stiffened and she didn’t want to take another breath, knowing it was going to hurt like hell.

‘Lauren?’ His gaze filled with concern. ‘What is it?’

‘I think as well as needing an X-ray for my arm I need one for my ribs.’

‘Right, you two,’ Sue said walking over as if sensing something was up. ‘You’ve both put me off long enough but no more excuses. Lexie and I will look after the clinic and the police are taking the two of you to Surfside to be checked out.’

‘That’s not necessary,’ Charlie said firmly. ‘I’m fine. I can drive Lauren to hospital.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Sue folded her arms across her chest. ‘According to Theo, who saw it all happen, we’re lucky both of you are alive. Let’s not push our luck by letting you get behind the wheel of a car just as shock hits and it has you running off the road.’

A look of incredulity crossed Charlie’s face that someone would question his plans. ‘Ms...um...?’

‘Fuller,’ Sue said with a smile. ‘Sue Fuller. I’m the district nurse and Lauren’s mother.’

‘I’m Charlie Ainsworth. I’m a trauma surgeon with Australia Aid and I deal with life-and-death situations all the time.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ Sue said sympathetically, ‘but today you’re part of the accident too.’ She dropped a blanket over the two of them. ‘Sorry but this is our last one. You’ll have to share. Shane, you can take them now.’

‘Sorry,’ Lauren muttered, not sure if her light-headedness was from the ever-increasing pain or the fact she was sharing a blanket with Charlie.

His right side flanked her left and his heat poured into her. It skimmed along her veins in a heady mix of lust and yet at the same time it was familiar and almost comforting. Red-hot pain and logical resistance duelled with visceral longing. Her vision blurred at the edges. The room started to spin. She tried to stay upright but her legs lost strength and as her knees gave way, she sagged onto him. His arm circled her and she flinched. ‘Ribs.’

‘Hell. Sorry.’ He dropped his arm lower across her hip but still held her.

Despite his gaunt frame, he felt solid and secure. Without being aware of exactly how it happened, her cheek was resting on his chest and the steady and rhythmic beat of his heart sounded reassuringly in her ear. As his hand gently stroked her hair she heard him say quietly, ‘It’s okay, Lauren.’

She closed her eyes.

* * *

While Charlie waited for the electric kettle to boil, he looked around Lauren’s kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers, until he found the mugs and teabags. He had no idea how she took her tea—twelve years ago she hadn’t even drunk tea—so he chose a lemon and ginger teabag, figuring that way he didn’t have to worry about milk.

They’d only just returned from the hospital. It turned out Lauren’s father had been one of the paramedics—yet another thing he’d learned about her today—and Ian had driven them home in the rig. The burly man with salt-and-pepper curls had insisted on taking Lauren to her childhood home but she’d objected. ‘Both you and Mum are at work until four so I may as well stay at my place.’

Ian had muttered something under his breath but had driven her to her sandstone cottage. While Lauren had walked down the short path to the front door, Ian had taken Charlie aside. ‘My daughter’s stubborn. But you know as well as I do she’s groggy after the Endone so she can’t be on her own.’

‘I’ll stay with her,’ Charlie had offered immediately, as much for himself as for Lauren.

Something weird and unsettling had happened to him at the hospital when Lauren had been wheeled off to X-Ray. The entire time she’d been gone, he’d been twitchy and jumpy. Flashes of the damn car coming straight at her—at them—had played in a continuous loop in his head, but the moment the porter had wheeled her back to him, the images had stopped. He’d known his thought process of If I can see her she’s safe had been totally irrational, but if it kept the flashbacks at bay, he’d play along.

‘Thank you.’ Ian had pumped Charlie’s hand generously. ‘And thank you so much for your quick thinking and saving her life. You see a lot in this job and...’ The experienced man’s voice had cracked. ‘Well, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, it’s probably a good idea for both of you to be together so you can talk about what happened. Debrief. You know, help with the flashbacks, that sort of thing.’

The kettle pinged and Charlie concentrated on making two mugs of tea. He carried them into the living room where Lauren lay on a couch, propped up on a European pillow and with her eyes closed. He took advantage of the opportunity to study her carefully.

All those years ago it had been her wide smile and enormous eyes that had made him look twice at her, but it had been her laughter that had utterly captivated him. Even before Harry’s accident, no one in his family had laughed quite so enthusiastically or seen the humour in obscure things quite like she did. After that tragic day laughter had been silenced, which was why Lauren had breezed into his life like a breath of fresh air. Now he not only longed to hear her laugh, he craved to have her bestow that easy smile on him again. But before either of those things could happen, he had to find a way in, under or around the hectares of reserve she’d thrown up. Apart from the moment she’d slumped against him in the café and her warmth and softness had dived deep inside him, reviving wonderful memories, she’d held herself aloof in a way she’d not done once during their summer together.

‘Tea?’

She opened her eyes and turned their slightly glazed and out-of-focus attention onto him. Surprise lit their depths to a seductive caramel hue. It was clear she’d forgotten he was there. He hoped she’d forgotten she was mad at him.

‘Thank you.’ Her mouth curved up into a sloppy and happy smile.

‘My pleasure.’ Even though he knew her smile was the result of the narcotic painkiller she’d taken, a lightness washed through him. This was the Lauren he remembered. This was the Lauren he wanted to see more of.

‘You look crazy tall standing there,’ she said with a giggle, and lifted her legs. ‘Sit down.’

He could have sat in a chair but the idea of sitting on the couch with her was far too tempting. As his behind hit the couch cushion, her sock-clad feet slammed across his thighs in the exact way they’d done so many times during that long-ago summer. Back then, he’d loved touching her and he’d taken every chance he’d been offered, along with creating opportunities when chance had let him down. Now, presented with this unexpected happenstance, he wasn’t going to let it pass. It was as natural as breathing to slide his hand down her leg and rest it on her ankle, savouring the feel of her smooth skin silky against his palm. She didn’t object.

Silently, they sipped their tea. After a few minutes she raised her arm, staring at the ultralight cast with child-like wonder and slightly constricted pupils. ‘When I was a teenager, I would have killed for a nightstick fracture. I always envied kids with signed casts.’

‘I’ll sign it.’ He set his tea on the side table and pulled a pen out of his pocket.

‘Will you?’ Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks danced with joyful expectation. ‘What a guy!’ Then she laughed; a throaty, husky sound that spun around him like a cocoon, bringing with it memories of hot and sultry summer nights.

Lauren scooted in closer. The action not only brought her arm across his chest for easy access to sign, it also brought her head closer to his. He breathed in deeply, anticipating the scent of apples, but instead he inhaled a complex scent of the tang of the sea, the zip of citrus and a hint of antiseptic. He braced himself for disappointment but it didn’t come. The sweet adolescent scent had belonged to the younger Lauren and its innocent notes no longer suited the striking woman next to him.

Like him, she’d changed—life did that to a person. If he was honest, Harry’s accident had already changed him before he’d met Lauren all those years ago. He knew he’d used their summer together to take a time-out from the all the pain and heartache of the previous nine months. For a few precious weeks he’d pretended that the accident hadn’t happened and his family’s lives hadn’t been brutally upended. He hadn’t expected to fall in love. It had scared the hell out of him.

He was halfway through decoding the change in her scent—what it may or may not signify—when her heat poured into him in like fire water, streaking through his veins and exploding into every cell. The sweet curve of her behind pressed up against the side of his right thigh and the backs of her own thighs now rested on top of his. His heart pounded hard and fast, carrying her heat and scent around him until it pooled in his lap with an odd mix of yearning and urgency.

Stifling a groan, he closed his eyes and silently named the cranial nerves, trying to reverse the effects of his arousal. It didn’t help that Lauren was wriggling against him as if she was trying to find a comfortable position.

You’re killing me. ‘Stop moving.’

She instantly stilled and he realised he’d barked out the command in the same gruff and terse voice he used in the operating theatre when a patient was bleeding out. He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. It’s just I’m accused of illegible handwriting at the best of times,’ he tried to quip as he struggled to pull himself together. With a trembling hand, he scrawled a message. ‘There you go.’

She pulled her arm back and read out loud, ‘“You’ll be surfing again soon. Charlie.”’ With a sharp intake of breath she moved abruptly back up the couch away from him. When she raised her head, her chestnut brows were drawn down and she was looking straight at him through fully focused eyes. ‘I haven’t surfed in years.’

Stunned surprise broke over him. In the intervening years, whenever he’d thought of her he’d pictured her on her surfboard, eyes shining and racing him to the shore. ‘Why not? You loved it.’

Her nostrils flared and she sucked in her lips as if she was in pain. ‘Are your ribs hurting?’ he asked. ‘Do you need more medication?’

She slowly swung her legs off his, the action stiff and guarded. ‘No. Right now I need to be clear-headed.’

‘Right now you’re better off being pain-free.’

This time her laugh rang out loud and harsh. All the recent softness playing on her face and weaving into her body vanished, replaced by the familiar defensive guard. ‘Tell me, Charles. Why did you break your promise to me?’

Bewildered, he stared at her, seeking clues from her tight expression and her return to the use of his full name. He got nothing. He racked his brain, trying to work out what the hell she was talking about but he came up blank. ‘My promise?’

* * *

Lauren’s heart twisted. He has no idea what I’m talking about. The pain in her ribs and the throbbing in her arm surged back, morphing from a dull ache to sharp, stabbing pain. As the intensity ratcheted up, her logic and reasoning returned. With it came despair. Oh, God, what had she just done? Under the influence of Endone, she’d lost her filter and all her reserve. She’d flirted. She’d snuggled up with Charlie on the couch exactly as she’d done when she’d been eighteen. Only she wasn’t a teenager any more—she was a grown woman who knew how much he’d hurt her.

Why had she asked him about the promise? Especially when he’d just saved her life. Not to mention the most important fact, which was that she did not want to revisit a time that had caused her heartache—a time she’d worked so hard to let go. Hah! Okay, a time she’d thought she’d let go. Obviously, remnants lingered and the speed with which they’d roared back into life when she’d come face to face with Charlie had taken her by surprise. She wished she could hide.

His eyes bored into her. ‘What promise?’

He doesn’t even remember. Old despair sank its teeth into her. More than anything she wanted to stand up and walk away from him, but she didn’t think her legs would hold her. If they gave way again, he’d swoop in and catch her. She didn’t trust herself not to give in and let him cradle her close. When his arms had held her in the café, the unexpected sense of being home had been so strong she hadn’t wanted to leave. The survivor in her knew that emotions like that were dangerous not only to her peace of mind but to her heart—an organ she’d already shored up and repaired more than once.

The only way to protect herself was to restore the distance she’d so carefully placed between them when they’d met at Bide-a-While—the distance drugs had just jettisoned. ‘Ignore me,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m not making any sense. I need to sleep.’

His gaze was too perceptive, roving over her face, seeking clues. ‘I think it’s more likely you’re making absolute sense for once. You’ve been prickly ever since we met at Gran’s. This promise is connected to that, isn’t it?’

She’d forgotten how observant he was and how quick his brain. Perhaps, if she closed her eyes, he might take the hint and leave. Her lids lowered and she shut him out, trying to let sleep claim her.

‘Lauren?’

Damn it. He wasn’t going away. In fact, she’d bet her bottom dollar he would sit there until she told him. She didn’t know which was the worse humiliation; that she’d flirted and snuggled into him or that she’d raised the hurt she’d long associated with him. The answer was simple: it was the latter and now she couldn’t back away from it. A long, bone-weary sigh rumbled out of her. ‘You told me you were coming back.’

‘Coming back?’ Bewilderment skittered across his face. ‘Where? When?’

The fact he had no clue what she was talking about hurt more than her bruised ribs. ‘Do you remember our last night together?’

He was quiet for a moment. ‘I have a strong suspicion I don’t remember it as well as you do. But before I’m accused of something, I want to say with absolute honesty that our summer together was one of the happiest of my life.’

She flinched as his words poured salt on a wound she knew should have healed a very long time ago. She hated that it hadn’t. Hated herself more. ‘Your happiest?’ she scoffed. ‘That’s probably because nothing about that summer was real. We immersed ourselves in each other and hid from the world.’

This time he flinched, as if she’d shot an arrow at him and made a direct hit. ‘Was that so bad? We had a lot of fun.’

‘We did.’ She couldn’t argue that. ‘Then it ended.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Just as we both always knew it would. We were young. We’d agreed...’

The arrow returned, piercing her this time, and she couldn’t hide the hurt. ‘Then why did you move the goalposts at the last minute and tell me that you were only going to London for a year?’ Her voice rose despite her desperate attempts to sound detached. ‘I stupidly waited for you to come back.’

A thousand emotions rose and fell in his eyes until all that was left was guilt and pity. ‘The intern position I had in London was only for one year,’ he said quietly, tugging at his ear. ‘Did I actually say to you, “I’ll be back?”’

She opened her mouth to say a decisive yes but something on his face and in his voice—not regret but perhaps concern—made her hesitate. She rolled her mind back to a time when she’d sat on the enormous picnic rug at the mouth of the cave. She smelt the hot, sweet fat and the tang of salt from their paper-wrapped fish and chips. She heard the raucous squawks of predatory seagulls brawling for prime position, ever hopeful of scoring food. She tasted the syrupy sweetness of passionfruit soda laced with vodka—her favourite beverage that summer—one she’d not tasted since. It had been their last of many picnics together on the beach.

Two weeks previously, they’d spent a day and a night in Melbourne. They’d had dinner in Lygon Street and he’d told her how, when she was studying at uni, this Italian district would be her local shopping strip. He’d shown her all his favourite haunts in and around the uni, making her bubbly with excitement and keen for the next six weeks to pass quickly so she could start her degree. Then he’d taken her shopping and bought her the red stethoscope.

One small purchase—a gift—had changed everything. The moment he’d swung it around her neck and pulled her into him, she’d fallen in love. What had started out as a summer of fun had morphed into friendship and love. Ignoring all the apocryphal stories about doomed holiday romances, Lauren had foolishly allowed herself to weave a fantasy of the two them continuing to be together long after the summer ended. After all, she’d justified, they’d be living in the same city. The university was across the road from the hospital where Charlie had accepted an intern position. Geography wasn’t an issue so why couldn’t they build on what they’d started?

‘Something exciting happened today,’ Charlie said, as she lay with her head in his lap.

She gazed up at him and laughed. ‘The fact you actually beat me into shore?’

He grinned. ‘That was pretty cool, but it’s even better than that.’

Excitement bounced off him, pushing into her and catching her in its web. Had he got the flat he’d applied for? Did it mean he was going to ask her to move in with him? She sat up and caught his hands. ‘Tell me!’

‘I got an offer from London Central. I’m going to do my residency there.’

Her smile froze. All her daydreams shattered, crashing down around her feet in sharp and jagged shards, digging into her skin. ‘London as in London, England?’

‘The very same.’ He laughed, high on the news.

‘Wow.’ The one-syllable word was a struggle to form. ‘That’s...that’s so exciting.’

‘I know, right?’ He pulled her into his lap and kissed her. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

She studied his face. It shone with jubilation and anticipation. The fact this news thrilled him to his marrow eviscerated her. She wasn’t part of this dream of his. ‘I didn’t even know you’d applied,’ she said, forcing herself to sound upbeat.

‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

‘Not even your parents?’ She couldn’t imagine keeping anything that huge from her mum and dad. So how come you’re keeping Charlie a secret?

‘I didn’t want to jinx it,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘I still can’t believe I got accepted. I’m going to have a year in England.’

She wanted to be happy for him, she truly did, but all she could think was that he was travelling seventeen thousand kilometres away from her and she wouldn’t see him for twelve long months. Her world, which had been so vibrant and colourful only a few minutes before, was suddenly charcoal grey. ‘And after London, then what? You’ll come back?’

He smiled and ran his hands through her hair before cupping her cheeks, tilting back her head and kissing her until sensation vanquished all conscious thought.

The memory slapped Lauren and her breath stalled.

No, that wasn’t right.

Charlie had smiled at her and then said, ‘Yes, I’ll be back.’ She conjured up the memory a second time. She saw the smile but the words didn’t come.

Oh, God.

Had she interpreted his smile as agreement? Had she been so desperate to hear the words that she’d imagined he’d spoken them?

No!

She tried again but she still couldn’t hear them. The idea that she’d replayed this memory over and over in her head until her version of the conversation had become her reality horrified her. Worse still was the thought that her desperation a couple of months later, when darkness had descended over her, had cemented the erroneous belief firmly in place. She knew the only thing that had got her through the heartache and misery after her miscarriage had been her belief that he’d return to her. It had sustained her right up until betrayal had sneaked in and taken its place.

‘Lauren.’ Charlie’s voice was careful and controlled. ‘Please understand this has nothing to do with our amazing summer together. The thing is, I would never have promised you that I’d come back.’

For so long she’d been so certain, so convinced and yet now... ‘How can you be so sure you didn’t say it?’

He sighed and the weariness he wore like a coat settled over him. ‘Because London was my ticket out of Australia. I never had any intention of returning here to live. I still don’t.’

Despite his resigned tone, a hint of harshness lingered in the words. She trawled her dusty and obviously faulty recollections, looking for anything he’d said or done during their summer that had hinted he’d wanted to run from his country of origin. She had plenty of moments to draw on of a laughing and smiling Charlie. Of him daring her to race him both on land and sea, and a thousand clips of his eyes darkening to indigo before he kissed her and tumbled her into bed. Happy, joyous, playful memories with no connection to anything outside their precious bubble. Not one clue that anything was amiss.

The reality was they’d mostly avoided talking about the future because it had meant the end of their time together. ‘You did mention a vague plan of working with your father.’

‘Was I drunk at the time?’ But his lip curled, stealing the joke from the words. He scrubbed his face with his hands before looking back at her. ‘Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do. I had no idea you thought I was coming back. You never said a thing, never dropped any clues, and if you had, I would have said something. I mean, hell, did we even trade more than one or two emails after I left?’

Five. We traded five. But she swallowed the words, not wanting to sound even more pathetic than she’d already exposed herself to be. Only a fool carried a torch for a man who had left her and his country without a backward glance.

But his question had been rhetorical and he didn’t pause for a reply. ‘I remember you emailing and telling me about your cohort and your lecturers. How you were trying not to sink under the intense workload and asking me for tips.’ He gave her wry smile tinged with guilt. ‘I was barely keeping my head above water then myself. What’s the statute of limitation on apologies?’

‘Twelve years and one month.’

‘I can just sneak it in under the wire, then.’ He picked up her hand. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your emails. I apologise for any and all hurt I’ve caused you.’ His eyes flickered with something she couldn’t read. ‘Seriously, Lauren. I’m truly sorry.’

His sincerity warmed her. ‘Thank you. I appreciate the apology, even though it seems I was the one to get the wrong end of the stick. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a warmer welcome the other day.’

‘I’m just glad I understand why. I hate the idea you were hurt by this misunderstanding.’

She shrugged and withdrew her hand, not offering the real reason why she’d stopped emailing him or waited out the year. Her surprise pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage was information he never needed to know. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said flippantly, changing the subject. ‘I didn’t pine for long. All the guys in my year were intrigued by my first year of aloofness so I had lots of opportunities to make up for lost time.’

He tensed momentarily before giving her a sideways glance. ‘Good to know. So now we’ve got that all sorted, are we friends again?’

Friends. The feelings his touch had sparked in her today were not the platonic sensations experienced by friends. They told her to run fast and far from the suggestion. But she’d already wrongly accused him of breaking a promise and he had saved her life today. That tilted the scales firmly in his direction. Saying no would be childish and churlish but the idea of being friends with him unsettled her. How could she get around this without appearing ungrateful?

Snatches of conversation played in her head. ‘London was my ticket out of Australia.’ ‘I never had any intention of returning.’ ‘I’m a trauma surgeon with Australia Aid.’

‘I haven’t seen my grandson in two years.’

Bingo! Charlie didn’t live in Australia. She almost punched the air in relief. If she extrapolated details, it sounded like he only ever spent a few weeks a year in the country so he’d only be in Horseshoe Bay for a few days. She could easily be friends with him for a few days every second year.

‘Of course,’ she said, smiling. ‘Friends.’

The grin of pleasure that sent his dimples spinning almost made her regret it.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE FOLLOWING DAY, the pain in Lauren’s arm was a manageable ache, but who knew bruised ribs bit this much? She’d do something as innocuous as putting a plate in the dishwasher and hot, sharp pain would sear her. It made her wonder at how painful broken ribs must be. From now on she would be far more sympathetic when her patients complained of the same condition.

Moving more slowly than usual, her shower and breakfast had taken longer. Although she had no plans to ever admit this to anyone—especially not to her mother—Lauren had needed to sit and rest for a few minutes after the shower. Lexie had texted, All good here. Will drop around some scripts this afternoon for you to sign.

Sue had telephoned to check in on her, saying, ‘Rest. Lexie and I have everything under control. Peter Li in Surfside is happy to see any sickies and we can work around everyone else.’

Lauren had listened to her mother and murmured appropriately so as not to give Sue any clues that she had no intention of staying home. Today was the day Mackenzie Strickland was coming in for her test results and Lauren was determined to be the one to give them to her. The plan for the day was simple—wait until Sue left on her district nurse round and then drive to the clinic, which was why she was now trying not to flinch as she turned the wheel of her car and pulled into her designated parking spot.

Move slowly, she reminded herself as she cautiously got out of the car. She’d driven past the café on her way and had shivered when she’d seen the police tape. Her mind kept going to the question, what if Charlie had been a second slower in reacting? Last night, her sleep had been broken either by the ache of her ribs or by vivid dreams. All had woken her with a start but she wasn’t sure which dream had scared her the most—the one where fear had gripped her as she was thrown to the ground or the one where she’d snuggled into Charlie’s chest.

This was another reason she was better off at work. Sitting at home gave her too much time to think. She didn’t want to think about how close to death she’d come and she didn’t want to think about Charlie, full stop. ‘Morning.’ She stepped into the clinic, using the side entrance.

‘What are you doing here?’ Lexie’s question was terse with surprise. ‘You’re supposed to be resting.’

‘I’ve rested. I’ve come to sign the scripts and save you a trip.’

‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘I wanted to. Also, I know you cancelled everyone but can you please ring Mackenzie and ask her to come in? I don’t want her to have to wait any longer than—’ Voices drifted up the corridor from the direction of the consulting rooms. ‘Who’s here?’

Lexie, who rarely smiled, did exactly that. ‘Charlie.’

‘Charlie? Charlie Ainsworth?’ she asked inanely, her brain stalling.

‘Of course, Charlie Ainsworth.’ Lexie threw her a look that suggested Lauren had lost her mind. ‘Do you think I’d let Charlie Petroni or Charlie Rogers into the treatment room without a staff member?’

‘But Charlie’s not a staff member.’

‘He is this week.’ Again, Lexie looked at her as if she was a sandwich short of a picnic. ‘If you can’t remember that then he’s right about those strong painkillers messing with your concentration. You shouldn’t be seeing patients. Are you sure you should even be driving?’

‘I’m fine,’ she ground out, suddenly cross. Not that she was exactly sure who she was mad at or in which order. Had her parents overstepped the mark and asked Charlie to work at the clinic? No. they wouldn’t do that, would they? Had he just taken it on himself to work here uninvited? Would he be that bold?

The voices increased in volume and then Charlie was ushering Mackenzie Strickland across the foyer and out of the clinic, his smile as broad as the patient’s. White anger, pure and hot, poured through Lauren. How dare you! That was my news to give Mackenzie.

‘Who’s next, Lex?’ Charlie turned towards Reception. ‘Lauren?’ Surprise widened his eyes and raised his brows, along with a flash of something that vanished as quickly as it had come.

He looked different but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. His ever-present weariness still clung to him, lingering in the lines on his face, but the blue on blue of his eyes positively sparkled. A hypnotic energy whizzed around him in an enticing buzz that drew her in and that’s when it hit her. Charlie looked happy.

‘May I please speak with you in my office?’ she said tightly. Without waiting for him to reply, she stalked down the corridor. The moment he was inside the room and the door closed behind him, she said, ‘What are doing here?’

‘Talking to you?’

‘Don’t be a smartarse. Why are you here?’

He sat down in such a casual manner she wanted to scream. ‘I think it’s fairly self-explanatory. You’re crook and I’m a doctor.’

‘You’re a trauma surgeon, not a GP.’

‘I’m still a doctor.’

‘You’re on holidays.’ She caught the flash of unease in his eyes and it quenched her anger, leaving her feeling rattled. ‘You are on holidays, right? A brief visit of a few days?’

‘Actually...’ His fingers tapped out a tune on his thighs ‘...it’s a bit longer than that.’

Her mouth dried. Her heart rate picked up, pumping threads of anxiety through her. She didn’t want or need Charlie in Horseshoe Bay for an extended length of time. She could handle a week. She quickly calculated that as he’d arrived three days ago that meant he only had four left. She could survive four, no problem. Easy-peasy. ‘So a week, right?’

‘I’m here until Easter.’

Six weeks! No. No. No! She sat down before she fell down.

* * *

Charlie watched Lauren’s hand grip the edge of her desk before she skated her chair in close. Granted, he’d been accused by women in the past of missing emotional clues but there was nothing subtle about Lauren’s anger. She seethed with it—its tentacles lashing and whipping him from the moment he’d spied her across the clinic foyer. That she was angry with him was clear. Why she was angry was another matter entirely.

Yesterday, after they’d cleared up a decade-old misunderstanding and he’d apologised, they’d shared a companionable afternoon watching Bogart and Hepburn on TV slugging it out in The African Queen. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat and watched a movie from start to finish without either being interrupted or interrupting himself. But there was nothing friendly or companionable about Lauren now.

Was it pain-induced anger and distress? He’d been surprised to see her at the clinic, especially as the registrar at Surfside Hospital, her parents, Lexie and himself had all told her she needed to take three days off to give her ribs a chance to ease and start healing. She’d appeared to listen and agree and yet here she was, extremely irritable and unhappy. If they had been fencing and she’d been holding a sabre, he’d have been in danger of being run through.

With a brisk and practised move, Lauren clicked on her mouse and her computer screen flickered to life. ‘Please go back to enjoying your holiday.’

Enjoying his holiday? That was an oxymoron. He was more than happy to work. He’d already calculated that if he did two sessions a day at the clinic Monday to Friday—hell, he’d work weekends too—he might just survive the next six weeks of imposed leave. Meanwhile, Lauren’s complexion was tinged with the tight whiteness of pain and he wanted to ease that.

‘Lauren, why are you pushing yourself? No one expects you to work for the rest of the week.’

‘I have patients.’

‘Who I’m more than happy to look after.’ He’d only done two hours’ work so far this morning but already he felt lighter and far more like himself. He loved surgery but he was getting a kick from interacting with patients in a different way. ‘It’s been a bit like old home week. Mr. Colvin remembered me.’

When he and Harry had been twelve and nine respectively, they’d been given the job of meeting the cray boat on the pier. The instructions from their parents had been simple—buy the biggest two. Harry had always winced at the scream when the cray hit the hot water, whereas Charlie had been fascinated by the chemistry of how applying heat to the shell changed it from a dark blue-brown to bright red. It was probably why he’d become a doctor, whereas Harry—His thoughts veered away from all the unfulfilled potential that had been stolen from his brother. The guilt sneaked in anyway.

‘Mr C. brought you a crayfish as a get-well gift. I was going to drop it over to you later but why not take it home with you now?’ Charlie gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Lexie and I have got this. All you need to do is sleep, rest and recuperate.’

‘I’m not asking you to give up your leave.’

‘You’re not. I’m offering,’ he said expansively. ‘After all, it’s what friends do.’

‘No.’ She speared him with a mutinous look. ‘Friends don’t assume.’

Assume? Now she’d lost him. ‘I’m not assuming anything. I deal in facts. Your X-rays prove you’re injured.’

‘Yes, but this is my practice. These are my patients.’

‘Of course they’re your patients, but I can help both them and you.’ He cast around for an example to prove his point and to shore up his position. ‘For instance, Mackenzie Strickland. Her situation wasn’t urgent so Surfside wouldn’t help her and, yes, technically she could have waited until Monday, but given what she’s going through, I was able to ease her anxiety and save you from overdoing things.’ He smiled at her, trying to connect and crack her granite expression. ‘You know, I got as much of a buzz from telling Mackenzie she’s pregnant as I did recently saving a kid’s life.’

Two pink spots burned Lauren’s otherwise pale cheeks. ‘In general practice it’s all about the relationship with the patient. For months I’ve had to give Mackenzie bad news and help her deal with her grief as she experienced yet another miscarriage.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Another lost dream.’

She sucked in a deep breath as if needing to steady herself. ‘The results of her chorionic villi sampling was my news to tell, not yours. You don’t have the right to swan in here and take over without even consulting me. I don’t need your help and I’d like you to leave.’

A thrum of disquiet stirred, underpinned by disappointment laced with worry. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to walk back through the doors of the clinic and face a long day of beachcombing, reading and going crazy. He wanted to work. Needed to work. ‘Surely you can cut a guy some slack for well-intentioned assistance?’

‘It’s not the sort of assistance I need.’

But I need this. ‘I’ll be more consultative, I promise.’

‘Between Surfside, Lexie, my mother, and me working reduced hours, we’re covered.’

Agitation swooped in, pushing out the feel-good emotions of the morning. ‘Why risk falling in a heap from working when you don’t have to? Hell, I’m here. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?’ Damn and blast. He’d meant to sound as if he was doing her a favour but all he could hear was the thread of pleading in his voice.

Her beautiful light brown eyes narrowed. ‘Why does an Australian Aid trauma surgeon on precious holidays want to waste his time working in general practice in Horseshoe Bay?’

‘Hell, Lauren,’ he said belligerently, trying to deflect her. ‘Do you always give people who are trying to help you the third degree?’

‘Only the ones who clearly have something to hide.’

‘I don’t have anything to hide.’

‘Good.’ She pressed the intercom. ‘Lexie, Charlie Ainsworth is just leaving so as soon as you see him exit the building, send in the next patient.’

‘But, Lauren—’

Her finger came off the intercom and Lexie’s voice cut off. Lauren skewered him with a look of icy determination. ‘Enjoy your day.’

His temper frayed. ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

‘Am I? Picture this. Without asking, I stroll into your operating theatre and do the complicated surgery you’ve spent days planning and dreaming about.’

‘I’d welcome it.’

‘Liar. You’d hate it.’

She was right, he’d be ropeable. He sighed. ‘Okay, fair call.’

She gave him a long, assessing look and it took everything he had not to squirm in the chair. Keep it all buried. He matched her with a direct gaze of his own and threw in a sardonic raised brow. She blinked first. Good. Standing slowly, she walked around the desk. As he was still sitting, it was pure power play so he rose and was immediately taller than her.

‘Charlie, what’s really going on?’

‘Nothing.’ He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. ‘Like I said, I was only trying to help you. I should have curbed my enthusiasm.’

She wriggled her nose. ‘I’d understand your help more if we’d had an emergency. What I don’t understand is the help with the mundane stuff that can wait, especially on a glorious blue-sky day with great waves. It’s almost as if you don’t want to be on holidays...’

He gave an ‘as if’ laugh to move her far, far away from the truth.

Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, my, God, that’s it, isn’t it? It’s killing you not to be working.’

Every part of him wanted to deny it but she had him cornered. ‘You’ve got me,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I’m a workaholic. So, really, you’re helping me by letting me work,’ he quipped, and added a big grin for good measure.

She didn’t laugh. In fact, the expression on her face was more aligned with pity than humour. ‘Want to talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’

Okay? What woman ever said that to a refusal to discuss feelings? And yet, twelve years ago, he and Lauren had never talked about their emotions so in a way this ‘okay’ made sense. ‘What do you want me to do next?’ he asked, thinking about the patients in the waiting room.

‘According to the radio, there’s flathead biting off the end of the pier. You might be able to fill your day that way.’

‘Very funny.’

She hit him with an uncompromising stare. ‘Or you can tell me why you’re in Horseshoe Bay when you clearly don’t want to be on holidays. Then I’ll let you see some patients.’

‘I thought doctors were supposed to be caring people,’ he grumbled, trying to hide his anxiety.

‘We are.’ Her hand rested on his arm. ‘But we can also be our own worst enemies.’

He gazed down at her, wanting to lose himself in her clear gaze and kiss her until his mind was blank, but she wasn’t looking at him with anything other than concern for a friend. Damn it. He’d been the one to raise the friend issue. He’d planted that seed. What the hell had he been thinking? Every time he looked at her he wanted to pull her close, hold her tight and breathe in her fresh, sea scent. Who was he kidding? He wanted her naked—under him, over him, with him.

He gave himself a shake and decided the bare bones were all she needed—all he was prepared to give. ‘I got caught in a cyclone.’

‘Oh, God. That must have been terrifying.’

Not as terrifying as being home. ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m fine but Australia Aid won’t put me in the field again until I’ve ticked all the trauma recovery boxes. The thing is, I’m better when I work.’

She tilted her head, her beautiful eyes assessing him, and he got the feeling she saw straight through him. ‘How long since you last had a holiday?’

‘I don’t do relaxation.’

‘I can see that. You look exhausted.’

Frustration bubbled in his veins. ‘Listen, I didn’t come to Horseshoe Bay to get the same lecture I’m getting from Australia Aid.’

‘That says a lot.’

‘Again...’ he breathed in deeply and tried to keep a lid on his temper ‘... I already have a counsellor, so...’

Her brows rose. ‘Prickly.’

He wasn’t touching that but his temper frayed anyway. ‘Can I work or not?’

The cogs of her intelligent mind were reflected in her all-seeing eyes. ‘Until I’m back at work, you can do the morning session and finish at one.’

That’s not enough. ‘It makes more sense for me to do the whole day.’

‘Not from where I’m standing. Do you have any idea how drawn you are? How unkempt you look?’

‘What the hell does that have to do with anything?’

‘It has everything to do with it. A lot of my patients are in better shape than you.’ She sighed. ‘Look, Charlie, I don’t know why you’re fighting your R&R but you need it. My offer’s a four-hour workday for three days and then we’ll review it. Take it or leave it.’

The girl he’d once been able to talk round with flattery and kisses was nowhere to be seen. ‘When did you become such a hardball negotiator?’

She didn’t laugh or smile and she didn’t reply using words—she didn’t have to, it was written all over her face. That’s when he remembered what she’d told him just before the car had careened at them.

Divorced.

He had an unreasonable urge to punch her ex-husband.

* * *

‘Watching paint dry is more exciting than this,’ Charlie grumbled.

‘You have to be patient,’ Shaylee said, her elfin face set in a serious and determined expression. ‘Ian says the fish know if you’re in a bad mood.’

Lauren laughed, loving the way children cut straight through the nonsense. ‘There you go, Charlie. Our lack of fish falls firmly at your feet.’

Instead of rolling his eyes, Charlie grinned at her over the top of Shaylee’s head—all white teeth and sparkling eyes as blue as the sea that lay at their feet. A bolt of pleasure whizzed through her, zeroing in between her legs with a flash of heat, making her thighs tighten and the rest of her twitch. Being friends with Charlie was killing her.

It was Saturday afternoon and they were on the end of the pier, trying to catch dinner. Lauren’s ribs were no longer hurting quite as much and after three days of enforced rest she had a bad case of cabin fever. She’d offered to take Shaylee fishing to free up her parents so they could attend and enjoy an eightieth birthday afternoon tea without worrying about a bored eight-year-old. Lauren wasn’t exactly certain how Charlie had ended up joining them on the pier, especially as he appeared to hate fishing, although she suspected he just hated being still. Was that why he was fighting his R&R? Perhaps she should suggest he do an ecotourism high-adrenaline holiday.

I don’t do relaxation, he’d said. He wasn’t kidding. His line was jiggling up and down in his hand like he had a tremor or a tic. Each day, after his morning session at the clinic, Charlie had called in on her at the cottage and given her a quick handover while he made her lunch. She was positive she hadn’t mentioned the fishing plans to him and yet he’d materialised in the car park just in time to help carry the gear. Why? For a moment she’d toyed with the idea that he’d taken on board her advice to find ways to chill out but, watching him, she knew the idea to be ludicrous.

‘You won’t get a bite if you keep jiggling the rod,’ she said, deliberately glancing away from his seductive smile.

‘I’m creating excitement and anticipation in the fish world by constantly moving the hook.’

She pursed her lips to keep from laughing. ‘Interesting strategy. Want to bet on it?’ Seriously? What are you doing?

His eyes lit up. ‘Fifty bucks?’

‘I was thinking more along the lines of the person who doesn’t hook the first fish fillets the catch.’

‘Let’s take it one step further. The loser fillets and cooks.’

His dimples twinkled at her, making her feel giddy. ‘You’re on, Charlie. I’m so going to win this.’

‘Lauren!’ Shaylee squealed. Her line bobbed up and down wildly.

Charlie shot out his right hand to steady it and Lauren reeled in her own line before scrambling to her feet and kneeling behind Shaylee. ‘Okay, honey, we have to do this slowly.’

‘It’s pulling me,’ Shaylee cried with a hint of fear underneath her excitement.

‘Crikey.’ Charlie tightened his grip. ‘You can’t do this one-handed, Lauren. Reel in my line and I’ll help her.’

She grabbed his rod. ‘Slowly, Charlie. Slowly.’

‘I reckon you’ve caught a brick, Shaylee. Put your hands over mine.’ Charlie played the line, his hands looking large under the little girl’s.

‘Bricks don’t bite hooks, silly.’ But she was gazing up at Charlie as if he was some sort of hero.

Lauren knew that look—a long time ago she’d been guilty of it herself. Now she was wiser. She was never putting a man on a pedestal again. ‘Don’t break the line,’ she instructed—her shame and regret about Jeremy making the words more brusque than necessary.

‘Like that’s my intention,’ Charlie muttered, as he gave the line some slack.

A small crowd of anglers and onlookers gathered around them, many offering suggestions and pondering out loud what Shaylee might have caught.

‘Could be a flathead,’ a tourist offered.

Spiros Papadopoulos rolled his eyes at the ill-informed holidaymaker. ‘Have to be a bloody big one to bow the rod like that. More like salmon or whiting.’

‘What if it’s a shark?’ Shaylee asked, eyes wide.

‘Then we’ll get our picture in the paper.’ Charlie’s excitement matched the little girl’s.

As Charlie followed Spiros’s instructions, Lauren’s gaze fell to the play of muscles on his back, easily seen due to the combination of his current lack of weight and the thin and worn T-shirt. Ever since he’d told her about the cyclone, she’d found herself worrying about him. Being caught up in a natural disaster was bad enough but adding in the car accident made him a prime candidate for PTSD. That was, if he didn’t already have it.

I have a counsellor. But was he telling the counsellor the real story?

Lauren knew smart people were more than capable of using smoke and mirrors to lead counsellors away from the real issue or issues. She had a gut feeling Charlie was doing exactly that to her, let alone a counsellor. Each day at lunch he’d lean casually against the counter and draw her out. ‘Any flashbacks? You sleeping okay? Come on, eat a bit more than that.’

Yesterday, after three days of sitting around doing nothing, she hadn’t been hungry, and after eating half her sandwich she’d handed him the plate. ‘You have the rest.’

He shook his head. ‘Gran’s got lunch waiting for me. I’ll put some cling wrap over this so you can have it later.’

She wanted to believe he ate a late lunch each day with Anna, except the only problem with that was his grandmother was diabetic. If diabetics indulged in late lunches, they risked collapsing. When she added in the fact that Charlie was underweight for his height and breadth, she was certain he wasn’t eating enough. It was the reason that eluded her and brought her full circle back to PTSD.

Or cancer. Or a million other possibilities.

The doctor in her itched to examine him and run a raft of tests. The woman in her wanted to—what? Feed him? Help him? Hug him? Despite trying hard not to want to do anything, she was leaning towards all three.

‘Get a net,’ Charlie yelled. ‘Whatever it is, it’s big.’ He heaved and his back leaned into her—his warmth and enthusiasm giving her a rush.

She grabbed the net and scurried to his left, ready to scoop the flailing fish the moment it broke the surface.

‘Yuk!’ Shaylee shrank back into Charlie. ‘What’s that?’

Charlie laughed. ‘It’s a cracker of a squid, sweetie. It looks yuk but it will taste amazing.’

Lauren caught the prehistoric-looking cephalopod in the net to the cheers of the crowd and plunged it into the bucket to avoid being inked. Charlie stood up and held Shaylee’s arm aloft, as if she was a champion boxer. ‘Shaylee, the squid wrangler.’

One of the anglers sighed. ‘I’ve got a state-of-the-art squid jig and you caught it on a hook.’

His friend slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You gotta give her the luck, bro.’

‘She deserves it,’ Lauren said, thinking about Shaylee’s mother. ‘Hold it up, honey, and I’ll take a photo.’

Charlie helped Shaylee hold what looked to be about a two-kilogram squid. As Lauren lined up the yellow square in preparation for the photo, she read unadulterated joy on both their faces. It struck her that it wasn’t an emotion either of them wore very often. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. Don’t be pathetic...again! ‘Smile.’

‘Ian! Sue!’ Shaylee called after the photo was taken. ‘Look!’

Lauren turned and waved to her parents, who were strolling along the pier arm in arm.

‘That’s a beaut, Shay. Looks like you’ve been having fun.’ Ian winked at Lauren before swinging the little girl around. ‘We’ll be eating well tonight.’

Lauren’s heart rolled. Her father had so much love to give and she was fortunate to be his daughter, even if there’d been times growing up when she’d wished she didn’t have to share him with quite so many other children. She loved her parents, but their well-developed sense of social justice sometimes left Lauren feeling unworthy. Although neither Ian nor Sue had ever said anything, she knew they were disappointed they weren’t already grandparents. Lauren was disappointed for them too. For herself. The sad memory of that long-ago miscarriage suddenly rushed her and one lone tear resisted her rapid blinking and spilled over. She was thankful she was wearing sunglasses.

There was a whirlwind of packing up, of Sue and Ian making a fuss of Shaylee and pumping Charlie’s hand, thanking him for being there to help, and then her parents and Shaylee were in the car, driving away. Suddenly she was standing alone with Charlie under the Norfolk pines.

‘Still think fishing’s like watching paint dry?’

He grinned. ‘I think it’s more like being on call. There’s a lot of boring hanging around waiting and thumb-twiddling and then, wham! An adrenaline rush.’ He gazed down at her, the shadows cast by the sunlight pouring through the tree branches dancing on his face. ‘Of course, the best part of today is that you’re cooking.’

‘Hah! In your dreams. Shaylee caught it.’

His head dropped closer. ‘I reeled it in.’

Her stomach fluttered as his crisp, fresh scent circled her. ‘I netted it to stop it from slipping away.’

‘I see a problem.’ He tucked some strands of her hair behind her ear before his fingers lazily caressed it then slipped along the length of her jaw.

Mini-explosions of delight fizzed in her veins before seizing control of her mind and making all cogent thought difficult. It’s not Charlie making you feel this way, she quickly reminded herself. Ben or any other nice guy would generate the same buzz, because it’s been such a long time since you’ve been touched like this.

Lost in the bliss of his touch, she dug deep to find her voice. ‘You...you do?’ she said huskily.

But he didn’t reply, seeming also to have forgotten what they had been talking about. In an old but familiar way, the blue of his eyes deepened by the second, tugging her towards him as if she were hooked on a line and powerless to resist his pull. A tiny part of her cautioned, Don’t do this, but it held no sway. Curiosity was a far stronger beast. Would he kiss the same way he had all those years ago? Had he learned anything new? She had. She’d learned a lot—not so much about kissing but about men and about herself.

So, really, if she kissed him, it was all about proving the hypothesis that she was now a world-weary woman with eyes wide open, instead of a naïve eighteen-year-old weaving impossible dreams. This kiss was merely an experiment to prove to herself he was just another man.

She wasn’t aware if he lowered his mouth to hers or if she rose on her toes to close the slight gap, but the scratch of his stubble was prickling her cheek as his lips missed the mark. Not a perfect kisser after all, she reminded herself. Yet another faulty memory you’ve attributed to him. Then his hands gently cupped her cheeks, tilting her head, and he angled his mouth over hers—warm, soft lips—in a perfect fit.

A sigh rolled through her but she cautioned herself—she’d be a poor scientist if she allowed the first data to overwhelm her.

His touch was light yet firm, generously giving but with a gentle enquiry—Are you sure you want this? In the pursuit of her own scientific endeavours, she opened her mouth under his and he slowly and leisurely slipped in. It was in sharp contrast to the younger Charlie, who had kissed her long and hard until she’d run out of breath and seen stars. Regret for the enthusiasm of youth tugged at her.

Did he taste different? While she trawled her memory, her tongue was flicking, savouring and dissecting his flavours. Peppermint, coffee and something delicious. What was it? She stroked his mouth again and he suddenly groaned. His arms wrapped around her hips and he pulled her in close until she was flattened against him. Every part of him pressed her from chest to toe, filling every nook and valley.

Heat exploded, blasting her and igniting her desire until it was a raging fireball that melted her into a puddle of delicious and addictive sensations. Charlie’s restrained kiss vanished, replaced by an all-encompassing onslaught that made resistance not only futile but impossible. The squawks of indignant seagulls, the gentle lap of the sea against the sand, the low buzz of traffic and the occasional shouts of children receded. She no longer had the ability to examine, question and deduce.

All that mattered was Charlie’s touch, his taste, and the wondrous feel of him. She rested her cast on his chest and gripped his shoulder for support while her other hand roved through his hair. As their mouths duelled hot, hard and with an intensity that demanded their all, her breath came fast and shallow. Silver spots shimmered and spun behind her closed eyes and she didn’t know if she wanted to passively allow him to kiss her so she could savour it all or if she wanted to take control and dominate him.

His mouth slipped along her jaw, burning a trail of wonder and promise. Without any conscious thought her head fell back, exposing her neck. She craved his touch like a starving woman craved food and she took everything he offered. As he nuzzled her neck, his lips and tongue marking her skin with his touch, his hair brushed her face. The faint scent of cedar and masculine sweat tangled in her nostrils and she dragged in a deep breath, filling herself with it before kissing his hair. His lips reached the top of her tank top and the swell of her breast. He gave a gentle nip.

Her body jerked. Pleasure whipped her from head to toe, ramping up her need to fever pitch. She was no longer human—she was a mass of spinning and whirling elements driven by a yearning that dominated everything and left her panting. Every cell in her body hungered for him, demanding to be fed and filled. She heard a low, animal-like growl but she couldn’t tell if it came from him or her.

Her blood pounded loud in her ears, deafening her, but slowly the insistent buzzing and the shrill and regular ring of a bell penetrated her haze. Gasping, she gripped his head and somehow managed to stutter, ‘Ph-phone.’

Charlie drew back, his chest heaving, and he stared at her with unfocused navy eyes lit with a desire that matched her own. The pull was so strong she almost threw her arms around him again but the shriek of a child broke the spell. She took in their surroundings. They were standing just off to the side of a public car park. Oh, God, who had seen them?

‘You going to answer that?’ Charlie asked hoarsely.

Her trembling fingers pulled her phone out of the pocket of her shorts. ‘H-hello.’

‘Lauren, are you running?’ Her mother’s voice rattled down the line confused and concerned.

‘N-no.’

‘Then why are you out of breath?’

Because I’ve just been kissed senseless. But before she could coordinate her lust-soaked and scattered mind to muster a reply, her mother continued, ‘Are your ribs okay? I hope you’re not overdoing things.’

‘No, Mum. Promise.’

‘Good. The reason I’m ringing is that Shaylee says you and Charlie had a bet about the calamari. Something about the person who didn’t hook the first catch cooks? Anyway, she got very upset when I started preparing the squid and she’s insistent the two of you are coming over to cook it.’

Lauren’s stomach fell as she recalled her and Charlie flirting over the top of Shaylee’s glossy-haired head. ‘The bet was just a joke, Mum,’ she said quickly.

Charlie shot her an enquiring look and she shook her head. Just as she turned away she heard his phone ring.

‘The thing is, darling,’ her mother said firmly, ‘Shaylee believes you were serious. You know how often she’s been let down and how hard Dad and I have been working to get her to trust us. She’s eight, Lauren. She doesn’t understand jokes like that. To her it’s the truth and I really don’t want this to set her back.’

Lauren was spun back in time to her childhood. You’re the lucky one, Lauren. You know we love you. Now, share your toys. Childhood guilt at being asked again to set aside her own needs tangoed with her adult self and she swallowed a sigh. ‘I get it, Mum. I’ll come over.’

‘Thank you.’

She heard the rumble of her father’s voice in the background. ‘But you’re going to have to teach me how to prepare and cook calamari.’

‘You never know, Charlie might be an expert.’

Her mouth dried. ‘Mum, I doubt Charlie will come.’ Especially as there’s no way in hell I’m asking him to a family dinner. ‘He’s in Horseshoe Bay to spend time with his grandmother and we can’t steal him away from her.’

‘Oh, Charlie’s coming, darling, and so is Anna,’ her mother said breezily. ‘Your father’s just spoken to him.’

What? She spun around to see Charlie sliding his phone into his pocket. He gave her a thumbs-up.

Fabulous. Just freakin’ fabulous. She slumped against the Norfolk pine, immune to the rough bark sticking into her and the likely chance of resin staining her clothes. So much for a logical, rational and dispassionate kiss proving she was no longer attracted to him. Her experiment had run off the rails in spectacular style. She’d held nothing back and even if Charlie had been a stranger, not an ex, he wouldn’t have to connect very many dots to know she’d been on fire for him. Wanted him. Had come close to committing public indecency with him. Even a guy without a surgeon’s ego would be strutting like a rooster after such a display.

It took everything she had not to drop her head in her hands and moan. After Jeremy, she was determined never to reveal anything of herself to a man other than superficial and non-important thoughts and feelings. No man was ever going to have power over her again and yet, with one kiss, she’d handed Charlie power on a plate. To add insult to injury, now they had to cook together in the close confines of her parents’ kitchen and under the eagle eye of her mother, who saw everything and missed nothing. If Lauren had any chance of surviving this evening with her dignity intact, there needed to be rules—very clear, concise and rigid rules.

* * *

Charlie had the sudden urge to whistle and, so help him, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d chirped out a tune. His life might be in a tailspin but thankfully some things didn’t change—Lauren Fuller could still kiss. His memory hadn’t failed him: she was as responsive and as generous with her kisses as she’d been at eighteen. The hot and demanding play of her mouth under his, the flat press of her breasts against his chest and the brush of her thigh between his legs had brought dusty memories roaring back to life in vivid, living colour.

He grinned—it had been a hell of a walk down memory lane accompanied by the delicious release of a torrent of feel-good memories. Now those memories tempted him with many more—Lauren, naked and with shining eyes, straddling him. Both of them naked, sweaty and moaning as he slid into her—

The hot blast of desire sent his blood south, making him hard in a way he hadn’t known in a long while. There was no doubt about it. Lauren was still good for him and, going on that kiss, she still wanted him. He planned to put that knowledge to good use so they both benefited. Closing the small gap between them, he pressed his hands against the bark above her head and gazed down at her.

She slowly raised her head and fixed her luminous eyes on him. He’d been expecting to see the same bright lust that had shimmered so brightly in their depths just five minutes ago. But instead of naked need, they glinted sharp and clear, in focus and with businesslike intent. ‘As you know, my parents are expecting us and—’

‘Don’t stress. I get it.’ He tapped his nose. ‘No kissing in the kitchen.’

Relief filled her face. ‘Exactly. Or anywhere in my parents’ house.’ She ducked as he lowered his head to steal a kiss. ‘And no more kissing in public places either.’

‘Spoilsport,’ he teased. ‘Just for the record, I’m totally on board with kissing in private places.’ He waited for her to laugh in agreement, but she swallowed and her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips. It took every gram of restraint that he had not to kiss her.

‘Actually, Charlie, I don’t think us kissing is a very good idea, full stop.’

If he’d anticipated her reply, it wasn’t this. ‘Why on earth not? I definitely got the impression you enjoyed it as much as I did.’

She raised her hand as if she was going to brush his cheek but instead let it drop back to her side. ‘Enjoyment has nothing to do with anything.’

‘Enjoyment has everything to do with it.’ For a second he thought he felt her prevaricate, topple even towards the desire that constantly spun around them, drawing them together. But when she spoke, he knew it had been wishful thinking.

‘Yesterday we agreed that you’re going to continue working one session a day at the clinic. That means, come Monday, we’re working together.’

When she had informed him that she was coming back to work part time next week, he’d almost begged her to let him continue working at the clinic. So, they were both working at the surgery, big deal. No matter which way he came at it, he couldn’t see a problem. ‘But we’re not technically working together. We’re doing opposite sessions.’

‘It still makes us colleagues. Look, I just don’t need the locals gossiping and I really don’t want my parents misinterpreting anything and...’

‘And what?’ He needed all the information so he could debunk it and lead her back to what he wanted—Lauren in his arms and in his bed.

She sighed and embarrassment burned two pink spots on her cheeks. ‘I don’t want them getting their hopes up when we’d only be having fun.’

‘R-r-r-right,’ he said slowly but thinking fast. First up, Lauren clearly wasn’t entertaining a future with him—good.

Really?

Yes!

Second, he knew all about the hopes and dreams parents held for their children. He was also intimate with the vitriol that inevitably followed when hopes shattered and disillusionment and disappointment set in.

He liked Sue and Ian Fuller and he didn’t want to set up any unrealistic expectations either, but kissing Lauren had kick-started a need for her that, if he was honest with himself, despite twelve intervening years, had never really left him. ‘What if I gave up the sessions at the clinic and we keep us secret?’ For a moment she was completely still and then she laughed—a huge, body-rocking belly laugh that shook her, sending her hair bouncing around her face.

Indignation shot through him. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Oh, come on,’ she spluttered. ‘Even you must hear how ridiculous that statement sounds. You’re a workaholic, Charlie. You’re barely coping with afternoons off as it is, let alone filling a whole day.’

It was true. Although he enjoyed Gran’s company, he’d sought out Lauren’s company every day after work to help pass the long hours. God, he’d even turned up at the pier today to fish when he’d overheard Ian chatting to Lexie about it. Still, right up until now, fishing had paid off in spades.

‘And,’ she continued, the laughter completely gone, ‘I’m not a hobby to help you pass the time.’

‘I never intimated that you were.’ Her words—so off the mark—stung but he quickly recovered, pushing down his hurt—the intensity of it surprising him. Stepping back, he said purposefully, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be the perfect guest in your parents’ home.’

‘Charlie...’

But he didn’t want to hear platitudes or excuses—especially ones that wouldn’t change a damn thing. He clapped his hands as he did just before surgery when he was focusing his team. ‘So, we’re cooking calamari. I’ll pick up Gran then meet you there. What’s your parents’ address?’

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS UNSEASONABLY humid due to a storm front hammering Horseshoe Bay and bringing a month’s rain in a day. Like water pounding over the Triptych falls, it thundered on the roof of the clinic, making it hard to hear, let alone think. The moisture-laden air made Lauren’s arm itch like crazy and she was sorely tempted to reach for the plaster saw and break her prickly skin out of its entrapment. Between the rain, the itching of her skin and the needling of her conscience, she was irritable.

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