Scandal in Sydney

Sydney Harbour

Hospital:

Lily’s Scandal

Marion Lennox

Sydney Harbour

Hospital:

Zoe’s Baby

Alison Roberts

Sydney Harbour

Hospital:

Luca’s Bad Girl

Amy Andrews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lily’s Scandal

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sydney Harbour Hospital: Zoe’s Baby

About the Author

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

Extract

Sydney Harbour Hospital: Luca’s Bad Girl

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lily’s Scandal

Marion Lennox

With thanks to the fabulous Alison Roberts—a gorgeous friend who wears truly awesome boots! And to the rest of the authors in this series—you’re brilliant to work with and I love you all.

Aussie and New Zealand authors rock!

CHAPTER ONE

LUKE WILLIAMS had been operating since dawn. All he wanted was bed. Instead he was coping with stinking tallow, teenage hysteria and the director of surgery and the representative of the founders of this hospital thinking pistols at dawn.

‘You said multiple burns. Four children. I’ve spent most of the night with a kid with a collapsed lung, and you wake me for this …’

Luke’s boss, Finn Kennedy, the taciturn head of surgery at Sydney Harbour Hospital, was practically rigid with fury, but Dr Evie Lockheart, emergency physician, was giving it right back.

‘I was told four children fell into a vat of boiling tallow from the meatworks. You think that’s not worth getting you and Luke down here? I wanted the best.’

‘Luke has other things to do as well. Like sleeping. And boiling? It must have been barely warm. You should have checked.’

‘And waste precious time? Pull your head in, Kennedy.’

Luke sucked his breath in at that. These guys were powerhouses in this hospital. Evie Lockheart, of Endowing-the-Hospital-with-Serious-Money Lockheart fame, and Finn Kennedy, the Do-Not-Cross Director of Surgery, had personalities to match their egos. Powerful intellects, serious commitment, serious … conflict. Conflict getting worse.

Could he back away?

No.

School holidays. A meat-processing operation out in the suburbs, with inadequate security. Four teenaged boys, fifteen or sixteen, egging each other to walk the plank—on rollerblades!—over a two-thousand-gallon vat of tallow being rendered down.

They were lucky the heat had only just been turned on. They’d fallen into the equivalent of a bath that was a bit too hot.

Through the office window, the kids and their frightened parents looked a pool of misery. The stench was unbelievable, but it could have been much worse. A pert little blonde nurse was swabbing tallow from one kid’s legs, exposing only minor scalding.

He couldn’t leave, he decided, not until things had calmed down. Meanwhile he had a choice. Join in the fight. Look at the kids. Look at the nurse.

This was a no-brainer.

The woman was cute, he thought, even in her ER scrubs. Her blonde curls were wisping from under her cap. As he watched, she tucked them back in, and then glanced through the window.

He caught her gaze and saw laughter, quickly suppressed.

She’d be seeing the conflict, he thought, even if she couldn’t hear it. Was she laughing at these two? Not a good idea, he told her silently. Laughter would be really unwise right now, even for him, and he’d been working here for nearly ten years. He fought—quite hard—the urge to smile back.

He also fought the urge to hold his nose. This stink was permeating the whole floor.

‘The gastro outbreak has given us nursing shortages through the whole hospital,’ Evie was snapping. ‘I didn’t have the nursing staff to clean and check each of these boys before calling you. Possible burns, possible major trauma, it’s my job to call for back-up.’

‘They’re not traumatised,’ Finn snapped back.

But they were, Luke conceded, looking through at the very-sorry-for-themselves kids. It looked to him like their parents had initially been terrified and then expressed shock in the form of anger. He’d seen it time and time again in this job, fright finding vent in fury.

A couple of the kids had been crying. Tough teenage boys, scalded and scared … They should do a bit of reassuring.

But first he needed to defuse the battle of the Titans. How to stop World War III without accidentally escalating it?

‘You think your power gives you the right …’ Finn Williams was growling to the Lockheart heiress.

Luke gave an inward groan and thought, Here we go.

The little blonde nurse had disappeared into the storeroom. Good idea, he thought. Could he follow?

Not so much. Finn was his direct boss. Evie was the granddaughter of the founder of this place.

If he valued his job he needed to stick around while these power-mongers tore each other’s throats out.

In truth he wasn’t so worried about his job. As head of the plastic surgery team at the Harbour his credentials made him pretty much unsackable. But as well as being his boss, Finn was also his friend, or as much of a friend as either of them wanted. The last few weeks, he’d watched Finn’s perennially short fuse grow even shorter.

Finn and Evie had sparked off each other from the moment they’d met. As a junior doctor, Evie had dared query one of Finn’s decisions. She’d been wrong, she’d apologised, but Finn had mocked her family’s right to power, and their relationship had been … interesting ever since. But now, even for Finn, his anger was over the top.

It was messing with staff morale. It was also worrying, and Luke didn’t like being worried. Luke Williams was a man who held himself apart. He didn’t get close to people.

He was worrying now about his friend.

And through the window …

He hadn’t seen this nurse before.

Pretty. Great eyes. They were a blue that made you feel like diving into clear, sunlit water on a hot day. It must be her first night on the job, he decided. He would have noticed those eyes.

Where was she?

Maybe she’d gone to get a hose.

‘There may well be second- or third-degree burns under that mess,’ Evie was saying, almost hissing her anger.

‘There’s no sign of shock. All they need is a good wash.’

‘And then assessment,’ Evie snapped. ‘So then I’ll call you back?’

‘You won’t need to call us back. I’m guessing first-degree burns at worst.’

‘Could we find out?

It was Blue Eyes, out of the storeroom, popping into their private war with her arms full of plastic. ‘Sorry,’ she said, blithely, as if she hadn’t noticed any anger. ‘I know it’s not my place but I’ve spent the last couple of years working in a country hospital where all staff step in at need. I’m thinking we have four kids here, and four medics if you count me. How about we all put on protective gear, get each of these guys in a shower cubicle and do an individual check for any burn that needs attention? Split up the work from there.’

Whoa. Luke’s jaw practically hit his ankles. Did she know who she had here? Only three of Sydney Harbour Hospital’s most influential doctors. Head of Surgery. Head of Plastics. Member of the Lockheart family.

She wasn’t wearing the Harbour uniform. She was an agency nurse?

She was holding out the protective gear as if she was expecting them to take it.

But … What choice did they have? There were no nurses spare. The gastro outbreak had badly affected the hospital, plus there’d been a brawl early in the night; he’d seen it on his way off duty. Drunk casualties. That meant intensive nursing, guys who’d been stitched up but who were still affected by alcohol.

So Evie had been left with one lone nurse and four filthy kids with possible burns. An emergency department full of hysterical patients, parents and stink. No wonder she’d called for help, even if she’d called for help a bit high up the food chain.

Maybe the nurse was right, this was the fastest solution. And, besides, those eyes …

‘I’ll take the beefy one with the scowl,’ he said, taking a set of waterproof gear.

Evie gazed at him, speechless. ‘You …’

‘You called me,’ he said mildly. ‘I assume you need me.’ He grabbed another waterproof set and tossed it to Finn. ‘It’ll do us good,’ he said. ‘Bit of stress release. You want to take the little guy with freckles?’

Finn caught the waterproofs. Looked flabbergasted.

‘I’ll do the skinny one,’ Blue Eyes said, and handed the last set of overalls to Evie.

There was a moment’s pregnant pause. Very pregnant.

Blue Eyes calmly hauled on her waterproofs, then bent and started putting on boots.

She had wispy blonde curls on the back of her neck, Luke thought. Cute. Really cute.

Was that the reason he hauled on boots as well?

No. This was sensible. He didn’t succumb to testosterone when it came to cute, not any more, but this place was clogged with stinking kids. They all needed checking, there were no nurses free and this way … Blue Eyes had it right, in the time they spent arguing they could get them checked and out of here.

‘I’ll ring the cleaning staff and tell them we need this place cleared while we’re showering,’ Blue Eyes said, now clad all in waterproofs. She tugged open the door, allowing contact between doctors and patients. Before she even had Finn’s okay.

‘Ross, you go with Dr Williams, Robbie, you’re with Dr Lockheart, Craig, you’re with Mr Kennedy and, Jason, you’re with me,’ she said. She turned to the parents. ‘Could you leave the kids with us? They’re in the best of hands; we have the most senior doctors in the hospital working with them. We’ll clean them, check there are no problem burns and then get them back to you. Maybe you could find an all-night supermarket and pick up some loose clothes. Is that okay with everyone?’

But before they could answer they were interrupted. ‘Excuse me …’ The night receptionist edged into the emergency area like a scared rabbit. Of course she was nervous, Luke thought. Everyone in this hospital was nervous around Finn Kennedy, and for good reason. ‘The police are here,’ she ventured, and before she could say more two cops pushed past her.

Uh-oh. They hadn’t realised, Luke thought with grim humour, that they’d just entered Finn Kennedy territory. Facing gun-toting drug dealers might be safer.

‘These youths are facing charges of breaking and entering,’ the older policeman said, looking at the boys as if they were truly bad smells. ‘The orderly outside said they don’t seem badly injured. Can we get the paperwork out of the way so we can get on with our night’s work?’

Uh-oh, indeed. Luke held his breath. Finn’s fuse, already short, was suddenly down to the core explosive, and he had a target.

‘Breaking and entering?’ His voice was icy.

‘That’s right, sir.’ The cop still didn’t see the danger—but here it came.

‘These kids have fallen into exposed hot fat,’ Finn snarled. ‘A life-threatening hazard to anyone who comes near it. An unsecured environment. Unlocked windows. You know as well as I do that a simple padlock on a closed door doesn’t begin to cover such a risk. Breaking and entering … You can tell whoever’s thinking of pressing charges that he can go back to whatever stinking worm-hole he crawled from and expect a visit from Occupational Health and Safety, with lawyers following. These children are traumatised enough, and you’re adding more. Now get out of this hospital before I phone someone with enough clout to have you thrown out.’

Then, as the cops backed out with astonishing speed, he turned to Luke. ‘What are you waiting for? Get those waterproofs on and get these kids clean. Do what the nurse says. Now.’

The really good thing about being a nobody was that it didn’t matter whose toes you stood on. You were still just a nobody.

These guys were all big-wigs. Lily knew it, but she’d watched the outburst of sound and fury with dispassion, not really fussed if the anger turned on her. What was the worst that could happen? She’d move on.

There were other hospitals. Her credentials were good. She could go somewhere else and be anonymous all over again.

The feeling was extraordinary. She felt like she was floating, light and free. She’d escaped.

She’d return eventually to Lighthouse Cove, the tiny community that judged her mother and who judged her. She knew deep down that this was a momentary escape. A promise was a promise. But right now her mother was in the middle of a dizzying affair with the local parish vicar, the whole town was on fire with gossip and Lily was staying right here, in nice, anonymous Sydney.

She was a bank nurse, employed by an agency. She was sent where she was needed, so if she stood on toes, if she wasn’t needed, if these Very Important Doctors decided they wished to dispense with her services, then so be it.

She practically chuckled as she led Jason into a shower cubicle and along the line of cubicles three Very Important Doctors followed her lead.

Two of them looked grim. The other … not so much. He was the head of plastic surgery, she gathered. Luke Williams looked lean and ripped, hovering above six feet, with sun-bleached brown hair and deep green eyes that glinted with repressed laughter. Very repressed, though. She caught his gaze and she could have sworn he was laughing, but he averted his eyes fast. It wouldn’t do to laugh out loud.

There wasn’t enough laughter in her life, she thought, and she needed it. But she’d taken the first step, and it had felt good to exchange her first attempt at laughter in her new job with a doctor as hunky as Luke Williams.

There’s an inappropriate thought, she chided herself, but she was still smiling inwardly.

‘Will this hurt?’ Jason quavered, and she gave him a reassuring smile.

‘I suspect mostly just your pride. We need to get those clothes off. Are you hurting?’

‘Stinging,’ he admitted. ‘A bit.’

The meatworks proprietor should have washed them straight away, Lily thought, growing serious. If the tallow had been really hot, they’d have been facing a nightmare. The owner of the meatworks hadn’t checked. He’d simply threatened them with police and they’d fled. Their parents had brought them straight here, with hot tallow still intact. If it had been boiling it would have kept right on burning.

They’d been so lucky. Apparently the vat had only just started warming. The boys had climbed in through a high window, seen huge planks laid across to skim off impurities and dared each other to rollerblade across. The stupidity left Lily breathless. She’d heard the outline. One kid falling, clutching his mate as he fell, both grabbing the planking, which had come loose, tumbling their mates in after them.

Lily turned the shower to soft pressure, skin temperature. She put Jason’s hands on the rails and produced scissors.

‘Just to my knickers,’ Jason whimpered.

‘There’s nothing I haven’t seen,’ Lily told him. ‘If you’ve burned anything personal, you’ll need it fixed.’

Another whimper.

‘There’s nothing to this,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘These jeans are going to stink for ever so we might as well cut ‘em off. So … rollerblading over steaming tallow. Quite a trick. How long have you been blading?’

‘A … a year.’ The water was streaming over the kid; his clothes were falling away and so was the muck that was covering him.

‘You any good?’

‘Y-yeah.’

‘So of the four of you, who does the neatest tricks?’

Luke was in the next cubicle. He was scissoring clothes from his own kid. Ross had been blustering when Luke had first seen him, whinging to his parents that it wasn’t his fault, that his ‘expletive’ mates had pressured him to do it, Craig had pushed him, his dad should sue.

Under the water, with Luke scissoring off his clothes, he calmed down. His legs were scalded. They were only first-degree burns, though, Luke thought, little worse than sunburn. He’d sting for a week but there’d be little long-term damage.

He’d been swearing as Luke had propelled him under the shower, but when Luke had attacked with scissors … the boy had shut up. ‘We need to check down south,’ Luke had told him. ‘Check everything’s still in working order. Steamed balls aren’t exactly healthy …’ Luke wasn’t reassuring him just yet. He liked him quiet, and, besides, with him quiet he could hear the conversation in the next cubicle.

‘I’ve been blading since I was twelve,’ Blue Eyes was saying.

‘Girls can’t blade.’ That was her kid—Jason.

‘You’re kidding me, right? I suspect you’ll need to come back in a week or so to make sure these scalds have healed. You bring your blades; I’ll organise time off and I’ll meet you in the hospital car park. Then we’ll see who can’t blade.’

Luke blinked. An assignation …

‘What, you can blade fast?’ Jason had been shakily terrified but Blue Eyes had him distracted. He sounded scornful.

‘Fast?’ Blue Eyes chuckled, and it was a gorgeous chuckle. ‘I do more than fast. I do barrel rolls, grapevines, heel toes, flips, you name it. I’m no gumbie, kiddo.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Would I kid about something like blading? My skates were the most important thing in my life for a long, long time.’ Blue Eyes suddenly sounded serious. ‘It took my mind off other things and I loved it. I can’t say I ever bladed over tallow, though.’

‘I bet you could.’ There was suddenly belief—and admiration—in the kid’s voice and Luke found himself agreeing. If this slip of a girl could get Evie and Finn to don waterproofs and wash off tallow, she might be capable of a whole lot more.

He wanted, quite badly, to explore the idea.

Bad idea.

She was an agency nurse. Her uniform told him that. She was one of the casual nurses employed to fill gaps at need in any hospital in the city.

After tonight he might never see her again.

But … she’d made an assignation with Jason in a week. That might mean the agency had positioned her here for more than a night.

She had a great chuckle.

No. Beware of chuckles. And blue eyes. And twinkles.

He thought of Hannah.

He always thought of Hannah. Of course he did. Her memory no longer evoked the searing pain it once had, but instead was a basic part of him, a knowledge that he’d messed with the most precious thing a man could be given. The emotions that went with the sort of involvement he was briefly considering with Blue Eyes were gone. They were left behind in a bleak cemetery with what was left of his wife and his little son.

‘Me balls …’ Ross whimpered. ‘They gunna be okay?’

‘They’re gunna be fine,’ he told the kid he was treating. ‘They’re a bit pink but they’ll live to father sons.’

‘I don’t want to father kids!’ The thought was obviously worse than hot tallow.

‘No,’ Luke said soothingly. ‘I guess you don’t, but one day you might. Meanwhile everything’s in working order for when you want them to do what they’re meant to do. For when your chance in life happens.’

Ross and Jason were sent home. Robbie and Craig were admitted. They’d been in the centre of the vat. It had taken them longer to get out, which meant they had patches of second-degree burning. No full-thickness burns, though. Evie took them in charge, patching them up before admitting them. Luke somehow found himself doing the paperwork while Lily gave Ross and Jason’s parents instructions on how to deal with minor scalds.

She then headed off to fill in a police report. Finn might have moved on, but Luke heard Blue Eyes asking questions, getting the boys to sign statements, and he knew because of her the open vats would be covered and there’d be no prosecutions of kids who were just being … kids.

Lily was some nurse.

She wasn’t your normal agency nurse. Most agency nurses were looking for a quiet life. They were mums with small kids who worked when they could find someone to care for their children. They were overseas nurses, funding the next adventure. They were older women who worked when grandkids and aching legs permitted, or they wanted funds for a few retirement treats.

Lily, though, didn’t seem to fit any of these categories. She was in her late twenties, he decided, nicely mature. Competent. She had the air of a nurse who’d run her own ward, and who didn’t suffer fools gladly. And the way she’d talked to Jason … She didn’t sound like a young mum, wearily getting the job done.

He badly needed to get to bed. He had a full list in the morning. He shouldn’t be awake now, but first … First he finished the paperwork and casually dropped by Admin. And while he did he just happened to retrieve the fact sheet that had been faxed through with the notification that Blue Eyes had been allocated to work at the Harbour.

Blue Eyes.

Lily Maureen Ellis. Twenty-six years old. Trained at Adelaide. Well trained. He flicked through her list of credentials and blinked—hey, she had plastics experience. She was trained to assist in plastic surgery.

Plus the rest. Intensive care. Paediatrics. Midwifery. He knew the hospital she’d trained in. This woman must be good.

According to the sheet, she’d left Adelaide two years back to run the bush nursing hospital at Lighthouse Cove. He knew Lighthouse Cove. It was a tiny, picturesque town less than an hour’s drive from Adelaide.

Fishing, tourists, pubs and not a lot else.

So what had driven Lily Maureen Ellis to pack up and leave Lighthouse Cove and put her name down as an agency nurse in Sydney?

Maybe she was following a man.

Maybe he needed to get some sleep.

‘Why the hell aren’t you in bed?’ It was Finn, scaring the daylights out of him—as normal. The Harbour’s Director of Surgery had the tread of a panther—and night sight. Word in the hospital was that there was nothing Finn didn’t know. He knew it before it happened.

‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ Luke managed back, mildly. ‘Have you been giving Evie more grief?’

‘I haven’t …’

‘Yeah, you have,’ he said evenly. ‘You’re tetchy, and you’re especially tetchy round Evie. What’s eating you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Headaches? Sore arm?’

‘Why would I have headaches?’

‘Beats me,’ Luke said mildly. ‘But you keep rubbing your head and shoulder, and if anyone puts a foot wrong …’

‘Dr Lockheart had no business waking us up,’ Finn growled.

‘She had four potentially serious burns and one agency nurse. Cut her some slack.’

‘She drives me nuts,’ Finn said, taking the fact sheet. ‘So this is the girl handing out waterproofs.’

‘She’s got guts.’

‘I’m sick of guts,’ Finn said. ‘Give me a good pliable woman any day. So why are we reading her CV?’ He raised an eyebrow in sudden interest. ‘Well, well. It’s about time …’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Hannah’s been gone for four years now,’ Finn said, gentling. ‘A man can’t mourn for ever.’

‘Says the whole hospital,’ Luke said grimly. ‘It’s driving me nuts.’

‘So have an affair.’ He motioned to the CV. ‘Excellent idea. Get them off your back. Get a life.’

‘Hannah didn’t get a life.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘So whose fault was it?’ he demanded, explosively. ‘Fourteen weeks and I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’

‘You were working seventy hours a week and fronting for exams. Hannah knew the pressures. She was also a nurse and she knew her way around her body. To lock herself in her bedroom and suffer in silence at fourteen weeks pregnant … She was fed up that you were caught up in Theatre. It still smacks of playing the martyr.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Speak ill of the dead? I say it like it is. If one stupid act of martyrdom stops you from getting on with your life …’

‘I don’t see you getting on with your life.’

Finn stiffened. Finn was his boss, Luke conceded, but their relationship went deeper. He knew as much of Finn’s background as anyone did. Finn had a brother who’d been killed in combat. He’d been wounded himself. There’d been a messy relationship with his brother’s wife, then a series of forget-the-moment flings.

Was he about to throw those in his boss’s face? Maybe not. Not at two in the morning, when they were both sleep deprived—and when a cute little blonde nurse had suddenly appeared in the background behind Finn. Waiting for an opportunity to break in.

‘Don’t make this about me,’ Finn snapped. ‘Meanwhile, you …’ Finn waved the folder. ‘An agency nurse, ripe for the picking. That’s what you need. A casual affair and then move on.’

The blue eyes widened.

Luke stifled a groan.

‘Excuse me, doctors,’ the Agency-Ripe-For-The-Picking nurse said, in a carefully neutral voice. ‘The paging system doesn’t appear to be working down here. Dr Lockheart has asked me to find you, Dr Williams. Not you, Mr Kennedy. Dr Lockheart’s words were, “Keep that man out of my department at all costs”. But a child’s been admitted with facial injuries from dog bites. Dr Lockheart says to tell you, Dr Williams, that this is serious and could you please come now.’

CHAPTER TWO

JESSIE BLANDON was headed for Theatre—if he made it that far.

He was four years old. He’d woken in the middle of the night, needing his mother, the bathroom, something. He’d stumbled through the living room. His mother’s boyfriend’s Rottweiler had been on the couch.

As far as Lily could see, he’d lost half his face. Or not completely lost; it was hanging by a flap. How he’d not bled to death, she didn’t know.

Lily didn’t have time to think about what she’d just overheard. She flew back to Emergency with Luke.

‘Tell me,’ he snapped as they strode down the corridor at a pace practised by most emergency medics. Never run in a hospital. Walk—exceedingly fast.

She outlined what she’d seen and Luke’s face grew grim.

‘Dogs and kids,’ he muttered. ‘No matter how trustworthy … Hell.’

It was hell. Lily had seen the mother and her boyfriend as the ambulance had wheeled the little boy in. They looked shattered. This would be a great goofy dog, she guessed, normally quiet, startled from sleep into doing what dogs were bred to do. Attack and defend.

How good was this man beside her?

She was about to find out.

She’d not dealt with a case like this at Lighthouse Cove. For the last two years, in her tiny hospital, any serious case had been transferred to Adelaide. Still, she had the training to back her up. Those long years, travelling back and forth from Lighthouse Cove to Adelaide Central, struggling to do her training yet still support her mother, they’d been hard but they’d provided her with skills, so that when Luke Williams said, ‘You’ve done plastics, you trained with Professor Blythe? You’ll work with us on this?’ she could nod.

But she wasn’t nodding with confidence that they’d save the little boy. He was desperately injured. She was only confident that she could back up this man’s skills.

If he had the skills.

He did.

To say she was impressed with Luke William’s professionalism was an understatement. This was a life-and-death emergency. Every minute they wasted meant this little boy had a smaller chance at life, yet Luke exuded calm from the moment he saw him.

First and foremost he made sure Jessie was feeling no pain. He had an anesthetist there in moments and Jessie was placed swiftly into an induced coma. He assessed what needed to be done. He gave curt, incisive directions with not a word wasted. He even found a moment to talk to the couple outside.

‘Things are grim,’ he told them. ‘There’s no way I can assure you your little boy will be okay. I don’t know. No one knows. But he’s in the best of hands, and we’ll do everything we humanly can to save him. Meanwhile, I want you to ring a reliable friend and ask them to bring in Jessie’s favourite things, a bear maybe, his blanket from his bed? Reassuring stuff. The paramedics will have informed the police. Tell your friend not to go near the house until he’s sure the police have the dog under control.’

‘The dog’s a pussy cat,’ the man said, brokenly.

‘No,’ Luke said grimly. ‘He’s a dog. And your son …’ He closed his eyes for a fraction of a moment and when he opened them Lily saw something behind his eyes that looked like pain. ‘Jessie,’ he said. ‘It’s up to us now to see if we can save your Jessie.’

She’d come on duty tonight as an unknown nurse, expecting to be treated as very junior. In fact, she’d kind of wanted to be junior. Anonymous. Working steadily in the background, a tiny cog in a big wheel, disappearing as soon as she was off duty, coming on duty tomorrow on another ward, knowing no one, no one knowing her. Bliss.

What she hadn’t expected was to be part of a close-knit, highly skilled team, working desperately to save one little life.

That weird conversation she’d overheard in Admin was put aside. For some reason Luke had been checking her credentials. Whether the conversation between Finn and Luke should have the pair of them up before the medical board for sexual discrimination was immaterial right now. What was important was that Luke knew she was up to the job in hand and he let the rest of the team know it. The hospital was desperately short-staffed, so she was no doormat, standing in the background. She was scrub nurse, working with every ounce of her knowledge and skill.

They all were.

The child’s face had been torn from chin to forehead. A vast flap of skin and flesh was hanging from his cheek. Among the blood and mess, they could see bone.

His eye socket, his nose, the side of his mouth … Unspeakable damage …

But the flesh hadn’t been ripped away entirely. If Luke had the skills he might … he must …

The alternative was unthinkable. If the flap couldn’t be replaced, this little boy would be facing years of grafts, even a face transplant. A life of immuno-suppressant drugs. If he lived.

The alternative was that Luke sorted this mangled mess and teased it all back into place. That he keep the flap alive, re-establish blood supply, leave nerves undamaged …

A miracle?

No. Pure skill.

Her initial impressions of the man were that he was … okay, a womaniser. He’d been laughing with her. Eyeing her appreciatively. Talking with the director of surgery about her in that way …

Now every speck of concentration was on what he was doing. Jessie’s face was an intricate jigsaw puzzle that had to be fitted together before the blood supply was compromised. Every tiny torn piece had to be sorted, cleaned, put into careful, cautious position.

The nursing team of the hospital might have been hit by gastro but there was no hint of understaffing now. This was priority one, a child’s life. Luke was assisted by a surgical registrar, a paediatric anaesthetist, two scrub nurses and two junior nurses. All were totally focused.

And in their hands was a little boy called Jessie. Redheaded. Freckled on the tiny part of his face that wasn’t damaged. He was intubated, heavily anaesthetised. He’d been lucky he hadn’t drowned in his own blood.

Every person in the room was totally tuned to what they were doing. This was the most important job in the world, saving a child’s life … piece by piece …

Lily thought briefly of a case she’d worked on three years back. A professor in Adelaide, trying to save a man’s lips. Problems with drainage afterwards. Like Luke, the professor’s total attention had been caught in what he was doing, but afterwards he’d talked through what might have helped.

She turned to the closest junior nurse.

‘Slip out and find Dr Lockheart,’ she said. ‘Tell her we may need medical leeches. Tell her priority one.’

‘I don’t have authority …’ the girl said, casting a worried glance at Luke, but Luke’s attention was all on what he was doing. He might not have the head space to think beyond his current actions, Lily thought.

The anaesthetist, the registrar, the senior scrub nurse were totally focused as well.

‘Just say leeches are needed urgently,’ she told the nurse. There was no need to say the agency temp had ordered them. ‘Be it on my head if they’re not.’

And it would be her head, too, she thought. Leeches were kept in only a few medical facilities around the country. Her order might well involve helicopter, urgency, cost.

So sack me, she thought grimly, and went back to what she was doing. Elaine, the senior scrub nurse, needed to back off a little; there was only so long that she could hold the suction tube steady, that her fingers would do as she bid.

Luke’s fingers didn’t have a choice, they had to keep going.

‘Lily, move in,’ Luke growled, and he’d sensed it too, that the older nurse was faltering.

She moved in and kept on going.

Two hours later her decision was vindicated. The flap of skin was finally closed around the nostril and left lip. Luke was working under the little boy’s eyelid but he rechecked the lip and swore.

‘The blood’s coagulating,’ he said. ‘I need drainage. Hell, I didn’t think we’d get this far.’

‘We have leeches on hand if you can use them,’ she said diffidently, and the nurse in the background was already unfastening the canister.

‘How the … ?’ Luke was momentarily distracted. ‘Did Dr Lockheart order these?’

‘Lily did,’ the junior said, and grinned, the atmosphere in the theatre lightening as the outlook improved. ‘She’s not bad for an agency temp, is she?’

‘Not bad at all,’ Luke said, and caught Lily’s gaze and held, just for a moment, a fleeting second, before he went back to work.

Lily went back to work, too, but she was flushing under her mask.

Not bad at all.

His glance had unnerved her.

Luke Williams was a womanising surgeon, she told herself. She was here as a temporary nurse, knowing no one, wanting to know no one.

But his gaze …

It did something to her insides. Twisted …

She didn’t have time for anything to twist.

Work. Anonymity. Just do what comes next.

At five in the morning she was totally drained.

‘Go home,’ Dr Lockheart told her. ‘We’ve thrown you in at the deep end tonight. I know you’re not off duty until six but no one’s expecting anything more of you now.

‘And if you’d like to change agency nursing for permanent nursing at the Harbour, you’d be very, very welcome,’ Elaine said warmly. ‘Dr Williams is already asking that you be made a permanent member of the plastics team.’

‘I don’t want to be a permanent member of anything,’ she said wearily, and went to change and fetch her gear from her locker.

Home.

Problem. She didn’t actually have a home. Not until ten o’clock.

She’d arrived in Sydney yesterday, fresh from her mother’s dramas, wanting only to escape.

Her mother was, even by Lily’s dutiful daughter standards, an impossible woman. She drifted from drama to drama, and the small town they lived in had labelled her as trash, for good reason. She wasn’t trash, Lily thought. She was … needy. She needed men. And in between needing men, she needed Lily.

This last fling, though, had pushed the townspeople to the limit. It had pushed Lily to the limit. Two days ago—had it really been only two days ago?—the wife of the local vicar, a woman who was also the head of the hospital board, had stormed into Lighthouse Cove hospital and slapped her. As if her mother’s actions were Lily’s fault.

‘Get your mother away from my husband. You and your mother … She’s a slut and you’re no better. She needs a leash! You think you can be a respectable nurse in this town while your mother acts as the town’s whore?’ She’d slapped Lily again. A couple of patients’ relatives had had to pull her away and she’d collapsed in shock and in fury. Lily had caught her as she’d fallen, stopped her from hurting herself, but there had been no gratitude. No softening of the vitriol.

Why would there be?

‘Get out of my sight,’ the woman had hissed as she’d recovered. ‘Get out of our hospital. Get out of our town.’

She’d had no right to sack her. It was her mother who’d played the scarlet woman, not her.

But in a tiny town distinctions blurred.

She’d sat in the nurses’ station with her stomach cramping, feeling sick, knowing she couldn’t live with this stress a moment longer. She was being unfairly tarred with the same brush as her mother, and she knew she didn’t deserve it. But it was a small town and so far she’d always stuck up for her mother … that couldn’t go on.

On the way home she’d stopped to buy groceries. Walking into the general store had been a nightmare. Shocked, judgmental faces had been everywhere.

The Ellis women.

Then she’d tried to use her card to pay for groceries. ‘Declined: Limit exceeded.’

Her mother had been using her credit card?

Speechless, she’d gone home and there was the vicar, pudgy, weak and shamefaced, but totally besotted with her mother.

‘Make yourself scarce for a while, there’s a good girl,’ her mother had said. ‘We need time to ourselves. It’ll be okay, dear,’ she’d cooed as Lily had tried to figure what to do, what to say. ‘We were going to go to Paris but we’ve run out of money. It doesn’t matter. If Harold can just borrow a little bit more from his relatives we’ll leave. We’re in love and everyone just needs time to accept it.’

Enough. What had followed had been the world’s fastest pack. She’d driven eight hundred and fifty miles from Adelaide to Sydney. A seventeen-hour drive, her stomach cramping all the way. She’d had cat naps at the side of the road, or she’d tried to, but sleep had refused to come. She’d arrived in Sydney late in the afternoon, trying to figure how she could survive on what little money she had.

She’d walked into the nursing agency before it had closed and they’d fallen on her neck.

‘All your documents and references are in order. There’s a job tonight, if you’re available. Sydney Harbour Hospital is desperate.’

She’d found a cheap boarding house, dumped her luggage and booked accommodation for the next night. That was tonight, she thought, glancing at her watch. She could have the room from ten.

But it was five hours until ten o’clock, and she was so tired she was asleep on her feet.

Her stomach hurt.

She stared at her locker, trying to make her mind think. The thought of finding an all-hours café until then made her feel ill. There’d be an on-call room somewhere for medical staff, she thought. Probably there’d be a few. There’d be rooms for obstetricians waiting for babies. Rooms for surgeons waiting for their turn in complex multi-specialist procedures.

Rooms to sleep?

Just for a couple of hours, she thought. Just until it was a reasonable time to find breakfast and book into her boarding house.

Just for now.

He had a whole hour of thinking he’d done it right. One lousy hour and then the phone went off beside his bed.

‘Problem.’ It was Finn. Of course it was Finn—when did the man ever sleep?

When did Finn ever wake him when it wasn’t a full-blown emergency? Luke was hauling his pants on before Finn’s next words.

‘It’s Jessie,’ Finn snapped. ‘It seems he has a congenital heart problem. No one thought to tell us, not that it would have made a difference to what you did anyway. His heart’s failing. You want to come in or you want me to deal?’

‘I’m on my way.’

She woke and he was right beside her. Luke Williams, plastic surgeon. He looked like he’d just seen death.

The on-call room was tiny, one big squishy settee, a television, a coffee table with ancient magazines and nothing else. She’d curled into a corner of the couch and fallen asleep. Until now.

The man beside her wasn’t seeing her. He was staring at the blank television screen, gaze unfocused.

She’d never seen a man look so bleak.

‘What’s wrong?’ she breathed, and touched his arm.

He flinched.

‘What are you doing here?’ His voice was harsh. Breaking. It was emotion that had woken her, she thought. Raw grief, filling the room like a tangible thing.

‘I don’t get into my boarding house until ten,’ she told him. ‘So I’m camped out, waiting. But what is it? Jessie?’

‘He died,’ he said, and all the bleakness in the world was in those two words. ‘Cardiac arrest. He had a congenital heart problem and no one thought to tell us. As if we had time to look for records. The admission officer didn’t even read the form, she was too upset. We patched him up, we made him look like he might even be okay, and all the time his heart was like a time bomb.’

‘There was no choice,’ she managed, appalled.

‘There was a choice. If I’d known … I could have taken the flap off, thought about grafts later, concentrated on getting his heart stable first.’

She took a deep breath. What to say?

This man’s anguish was raw and real.

A congenital heart problem …

If Luke had known he might well have decided not to try and save his face, but without that immediate operation Jess would have been left with a lifetime of skin grafts. With a face that wasn’t his.

‘What sort of life would he have led?’ she whispered.

‘A life,’ he said flatly. ‘Any life. I can’t bear …’

And she couldn’t bear it either. She took his hands and tugged him around to face her.

There was more to this than a child dying, she thought. This man must have lost patients before. He couldn’t react like this to all of them. There was some past tragedy here that was being tapped into, she guessed. She had no idea what it was; but she sensed his pain was well nigh unbearable.

‘I killed him,’ he said, and for some reason she wasn’t sure he was talking about Jessie.

‘The dog killed him,’ she said, trying to sound prosaic. ‘You tried to save him.’

‘I should have—’

‘No. Don’t do this.’

He shuddered, and it was a raw and dreadful grief that took over his whole body.

Enough. She pulled him into her arms and held him. And held and held. She simply held him while the shudders racked his body, over and over.

This couldn’t just be about this child, she thought.

Something had broken him.

He was holding her as well now. Simply holding. Taking strength from her. Taking comfort, and giving it back.

A man and a woman, both in limbo.

The events of the past two days had left Lily gutted. Her mother … The vicar…. Losing her job. The judgement of the town.

The Ellis women.

She held to comfort, but he was holding her as well and she needed it.

Jessie’s death. The trauma of finding what her mother had done, planned to do. Forty-eight hours with little sleep.

If she could give comfort …

If this was what they both needed …

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be holding this woman.

But he wasn’t thinking of now. He was thinking of Jessie, four years old and red-headed.

The past was back with him. Four years ago, walking into their apartment after surgery that had lasted for fourteen hours. Exhausted but jubilant. Calling out to Hannah. ‘I’m home. It’s over and she’ll live. Hannah …’

Walking into the bedroom

Ectopic pregnancy, the autopsy said. Fourteen weeks pregnant.

By her side, a letter to her mother in Canada.

‘Tonight I’m finally telling Luke I’m pregnant. I’ve been waiting and waiting—I thought a lovely romantic dinner, but there’s no chance. He’s been so busy it’s driving me crazy but now he’ll have to make time for us. I want a son. I’m hoping he’ll be red-headed like me. I want to call him Jessie.’

Tonight, four years later, he hadn’t been able to save a red-headed boy called Jessie.

The woman in his arms was holding him. She smelled clean, washed, anonymous, clinical.

But more. The scent of faded roses was drifting through, like some afterthought of a lovely perfume. The silken threads of her fair hair were brushing his face.

She was an agency nurse. She didn’t know him.

She was warm and real and alive.

He’d come in here to sit, to try and come to terms with what had happened. He had two hours before his morning list started. He needed to get himself under control

Jessie.

Hannah.

They were nothing to do with the woman who was holding him.

She shuddered and he thought, She’s as shocked as I am. He tugged away a little and searched her face.

Her sky-blue eyes were rimmed with shadows. Her shock mirrored his. She looked like she, too, was in the midst of a nightmare.

‘Lily …’ It was the first time he’d used her name and it felt like … a question?

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Just hold me. Please.’ And she tugged him back to her.

He should back away.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He simply held. And held and held.

A man and a woman—with a need surfacing between them as primeval as time itself.

Stupid. Crazy. Wanton?

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.

His hands were slipping under her blouse, feeling the warmth of her, the heat. He needed her heat.

Her breasts were moulding to his chest. Skin was meeting skin, and conscious will was slipping. Their bodies were meeting, in a desperate, primitive search for …

What?

For life?

That was a crazy idea. He was crazy.

It didn’t matter.

For now, for this moment, he was kissing her, holding her, wanting her, with a desperation that was so deep, so real that nothing could interfere.

They were only kissing. They were only holding. They were only touching.

No. This was much, much more. This was a man and a woman come together in mutual need, giving, taking …

Holding desperately to life.

‘Luke …’

‘Just hold me,’ he ordered, and she did, she did. She held.

Fire to fire. Need to need.

They held—and two minutes later a junior nurse looking for something to read in her coffee break slipped into the room and saw two entwined bodies.

One passionate embrace.

The girl stared, dumbfounded, as she realised who it was. The solitary Luke Williams. Head of Plastic Surgery. A man who walked alone.

Kissing an agency nurse. Slipping his hands under her blouse.

And, oh, that kiss …

She gasped in disbelief and backed out, her magazine forgotten.

Who needed magazines when there was much better fodder right through the door? Boy, was this juicy titbit about to fly around the hospital.

CHAPTER THREE

LILY had signed up for four weeks at Sydney Harbour. That was approximately three weeks and six days too long. She knew it the moment she turned up for duty that night. Gossip reached her the moment she crossed the threshold.

From the lady in the florist shop on the ground floor, to the orderlies, to the nurses and interns working in Emergency where she’d been rostered, it seemed they all knew what had happened that morning.

They didn’t know her—many of them hadn’t even been working last night—but they knew Luke Williams and it seemed the gossip machine was in overdrive.

A mutual offering of comfort had turned to something stronger, and the hospital gossip machine had flamed the story to the next level. Even before she’d walked out this morning she’d realised the news was flying all over the hospital—that she and Luke Williams had indulged in wild sex in the on-call room.

It had taken sheer willpower to walk back into the Harbour tonight—plus the fact that, thanks to her mother, she was broke. She’d agreed to four weeks and if she didn’t fulfil her contract she’d have to find another agency. This was the only agency that dealt with acute-care hospitals and she didn’t have the money to leave Sydney.

The alternative was to go back home to her mother. And the vicar.

No way.

So get over it, she told herself. She’d been caught in a clinch with the head of plastic surgery. So what? Who cared what these people talked about? In four weeks she could pick up her pay and move on.

How far did she have to run to escape gossip?

For ever if she brought it with her, she told herself, keeping her chin deliberately high. What had she been thinking, letting Luke hold her as he had? She was just like her mother.

Um … no. Her mother would never do what she’d done. Her mother would now be declaring to the world that she was in love, and she’d be destroying anything and anyone she needed in order to get what she wanted. Her mother would get her heart broken and launch herself into suicidal depression when it was over.

Lily had simply made one mistake. She’d been emotionally shattered and she’d fallen into the arms of someone who was equally shattered.

There was no need for everyone to look at her sideways.

They did anyway.

‘Wow.’ Elaine, a woman who’d looked intimidating and severe last night, relaxed enough to greet her with laughter as she appeared at the nurses’ station. ‘Who’s on your list tonight?’ Then at Lily’s expression her smile softened; becoming friendly. ‘Don’t look like that. Lots of women in this place would offer to comfort Luke Williams any way they know how. That man is a walking suit of armour. I don’t know how you managed it but his armour was well and truly pierced last night, and thank heaven for it. Maybe now he can move on.’

‘Move on?’

‘You didn’t know?’ Obviously things were quiet right now, because the senior nurse was ready to talk. ‘Luke’s wife died four years ago. She was gorgeous, a redhead with a temper to match. She had an ectopic pregnancy, went into septic shock and died, and Luke didn’t even know she was pregnant. Since then it’s been like he’s built the Great Wall of China around himself. No one gets near. And then you did.’

‘I don’t usually …’ she managed.

‘Nobody gives a toss what you usually do,’ Elaine said. ‘The fact is that our mighty Dr Williams has been shagged by an agency nurse.’

‘I did not …’

‘It doesn’t matter whether you did or didn’t,’ Elaine said bluntly. ‘Gossip is truth as far as this hospital is concerned, and we’re delighted. Let him try and keep his armour after this. A girl with accommodating morals was just what he needed. Now … we’ve just got word there’s been a boat crash on the harbour, two guys with suspected spinal injuries and a girl with deep facial lacerations expected any minute. I suspect we’ll want you in Theatre again. Scrub?’

‘I … Yes.’ At least this was a vote of confidence. She’d expected to be treated like a pariah. Here she was being handed a position of responsibility.

‘You did great last night,’ Elaine said. ‘In more ways than one. But hands off the rest of our male staff, at least until you’re off duty. You’ve done us a favour with our Luke, but let’s not push things too far.’

And that was that.

A girl with accommodating morals … Everyone was looking at her.

Aaagh.

He’d come close to having sex with an unknown nurse in the on-call room. It was like being a member of the mile-high club, he thought. Sordid and stupid.

Only it hadn’t felt like that at the time.

But that’s how his colleagues were treating it, as a huge joke. Medics had black humour at the best of times. Jessie’s death last night had upset them all and Luke’s out-of-character behaviour was a welcome diversion.

Even Finn commented. ‘About time,’ he growled. ‘Now take her out properly and do it again.’

Huh? He didn’t date. Ever.

He wasn’t starting now.

What had happened? He’d been gutted by the events of the night; he’d found himself in the on-call room simply because he hadn’t had the strength to get back to his apartment without getting some sort of grip on himself, and she’d been there.

He’d lost himself in holding her. She’d felt …

Amazing. Just amazing. From a night where all he could see was black, he’d been lifted into a world of warmth, and strength and laughter. Yes, even laughter. She’d made a gentle joke as the world intruded, she hadn’t let him apologise, she’d slipped away and he’d thought he might not even see her again.

What would have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted? He should feel grateful that they had been—they’d both been well out of control. Instead, strangely, he felt an empty regret. And worry for her. The gossip machine in this hospital was ruthless.

When he’d finished his day’s list he’d gone back to the agency sheet, checked for her address and found a simple ‘To be advised’. So he couldn’t find her even if he wanted to. She was an agency nurse. She might not even turn up tonight.

She did.

Evie called him at dusk.

‘Your lady’s back. She’s contracted to us for four weeks. Are you popping into Emergency tonight by any chance?’

Evie was laughing.

‘I might,’ he conceded.

‘To introduce yourself?’ Evie was definitely laughing.

‘What makes you think I don’t know her?’ he growled before he could stop himself.

‘You know her? I thought this was lust at first sight.’

‘Leave it alone,’ he told her. ‘I’m coming in.’

‘The lady’s busy,’ Evie said. ‘We’re run off our feet. She goes off duty at six; you can come and take her home.’

They met before that. The woman with lacerations needed someone with real skill if she wasn’t to be scarred for life. Once again he found himself in Theatre, with Lily as second scrub.

This wasn’t a life-and-death situation. Becky Martin would survive with barely a scar from her drunken joy ride in a powerboat, and the mood in the theatre was a far cry from last night’s trauma.

But it was also a far cry from the usual relaxed theatre. Everyone was watching Luke—and Lily. One glance between them and it’d start again.

No. They didn’t even have to glance for the gossip to keep going, Luke thought. This hospital used gossip as a means to dispel tension, and what they’d done last night had started a wildfire that only time would extinguish.

Or Lily leaving.

She might. She looked strained and flushed.

She was working with professional competence, anticipating well, displaying skills he valued. Even so, he wasn’t sure he wanted her here. He didn’t like his staff distracted and they were distracted by her.

That wasn’t fair, he thought grimly. She was being judged because she’d tried to comfort him.

His colleagues thought his actions were amusing. They saw her as … easy.

That was a harsh judgement by any standards.

He put in the last suture, stood back from the table and sighed.

‘Well done, Luke,’ his anaesthetist said. ‘Great job. You deserve a wee rest. I hear the on-call room’s free. Nurse Ellis, maybe you’re free, too?’

‘Leave it,’ he growled, and watched in concern as Lily started to clear.

The junior nurse was sniggering.

He needed to talk to her, he thought. He needed to apologise.

Not in the on-call room.

He was due to sleep. Lily was on duty all night. He’d come in at change-over, he decided. He’d see her then.

Not in the on-call room.

Luke disappeared and she could get on with her night’s work. Which was just as well. The guy was distracting, to say the least, and the staff reaction was well nigh unbearable. With him gone she could lose herself in what needed to be done.

She felt mortified. She was also feeling … ill? Her stomach cramps were getting worse, and now there was nausea on top of them.

She’d left Lighthouse Cove to get rid of the tension that was making her sick. In two days here, she’d only created more tension.

‘You’re looking pale,’ Elaine said in passing. ‘You’d better not be coming down with gastro. Half this hospital’s had it, but I thought we were past the worst. Are you feeling okay?’

‘I’m just tired,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve had a hard …’ She caught Elaine’s gaze and stopped. ‘I mean …’

‘No, no, I understand,’ Elaine said, grinning. ‘You and Luke … I’d imagine he can be very tiring. But according to Dr Blain, who heard it from Dr Lockheart, word is you already know him. Is that right? Why did you make me tell you about him if you’re old friends?’

‘I—’

‘I know he keeps to himself, but if he pairs up with someone who does the same thing we’re in real trouble,’ Elaine said. ‘Apparently he’s coming to take you home at six. If you make it that long.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re looking sick as a dog. Tell you what, you stick round the nurses’ station until handover and finish the paperwork there. If you’re coming down with gastro, we don’t want you near patients.’

‘I’m just tired—and I don’t need anyone to take me home.’

‘It’s not anyone, it’s Luke Williams. Paperwork for you, my girl, and then let your lover take you home to bed.’

Lily had felt bad before. She tackled her paperwork feeling infinitely worse.

Luke found her in the locker room, preparing to leave.

He could have gone the whole four weeks of her contract without seeing her again, he thought. With the gastro outbreak almost over, staff levels were nearly back to normal. He could easily arrange for her not to be rostered to Theatre with him.

He could pretend the encounter had never happened.

Finn used women to forget, Luke thought. Maybe he could, too.

Only … there was something about Lily that made him think it hadn’t been a casual embrace. That her need had been almost as great as his.

A lesser man wouldn’t need to ask why, but for some reason this didn’t feel like a simple matter of honour. It was how she’d made him feel. It had been the generosity of her body, the smile behind her eyes, the touch of her …

He’d remember it, he thought, and he honoured her for it.

And she was being labelled because of it. The least he could do was thank her and apologise.

He opened the locker-room door and she turned to face him. She looked white faced. A bit unsteady on her feet. Wobbling?

He crossed the room in four long strides to reach her. Gripped her shoulders. Steadied her.

‘Hey …’

‘It’s … it’s okay,’ she said, and hauled away to plonk herself down on the wooden bench. ‘I’m just having a queasy moment.’

‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

She gave him a look that would have withered lesser men. It was the look he deserved.

What had made him say that? Of all the ridiculous …

‘We didn’t make it that far, Superman,’ she retorted. ‘You don’t get pregnant by kissing, no matter how hot you think you are.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with feeling. ‘That was dumb. Plus offensive. But you’re ill.’

‘I suspect,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘that I’m coming down with this blasted gastroenteritis that half this hospital seems to have suffered. You should have a huge skull and crossbones on the entrance with a sign saying “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”.’

‘Or abandon the contents of your stomach.’

‘Don’t,’ she begged. ‘Go away.’

‘Let me take you home.’

She glared. ‘Tell me you don’t have a car with leather upholstery and I might be interested.’

‘I do,’ he admitted. ‘But we can go via Emergency and get a supply of sick bags. I had it last week so I won’t get infected.’

‘You might have infected me.’

‘Then that’d be yet another thing I need to apologise for,’ he said grimly, and took her elbows, propelling her up. ‘We’ll organise you a shot of metoclopramide for the nausea. Then we’ll take some paper bags and take you home and to bed.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I mean, yes, please,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘Only I need to spend ten minutes in the bathroom first.’

They didn’t speak on the way to the address she’d given him. She didn’t lose her dignity, but he could see she was holding onto it with every shred of effort she could muster. One shot of metoclopramide was barely holding it.

She wasn’t what she’d seemed. Questions were crowding in, but his medical training told him that breaking her concentration would be unwise. So he focused on driving, found the address, pulled up in front of a boarding house that looked as if it had seen better days and watched in astonishment as she struggled out of the car.

‘You don’t live here?’

‘No,’ she said, closing the car door with care, as if it was a really tricky task. ‘I’m staying here. Thank you for bringing me home.’ And she headed for the gate.

He was out of the car, through the gate, stopping her.

‘Don’t stop me,’ she pleaded. ‘I need …’

‘I know this place,’ he said. ‘When I was an intern we averaged one drug overdose a week from this dump.’

She was trying to shove past him, looking increasingly desperate. ‘It’s only until payday. It has a bathroom. Please …’

She was nothing to do with him, he told himself. This was none of his business. He’d brought her home. He’d done what he had to do.

But … she’d held him. She’d stopped his grief from stripping him raw.

She’d lightened his life.

That had to be an overstatement, he told himself. One crazy impulse did not mean emotional change. She’d simply been there when he’d needed her, had responded to his need, had maybe used him to assuage her own needs.

Her own needs were pretty apparent now. She’d broken from him and was doubled over behind a scrubby hedge. The garden was filthy.

Questions.

She was a skilled theatre nurse from a town he remembered as being quiet and beautiful.

His colleagues had her labelled as wanton.

She’d held him.

Whatever she was, he couldn’t leave her here.

She was crouched, trembling, in the filthy garden, sweaty and sick, and he knew he had no choice.

He waited for the spasms to cease. Then, giving her no chance to argue, he stooped and lifted her into his arms and carried her back to his car. He deposited her back into the passenger seat before she knew what he was doing.

‘What’s your room number?’ he demanded.

‘T-twelve.’ She could barely speak. ‘But—’

‘Give me your key.’

‘I don’t …’

He took her purse from her limp grasp and retrieved the key.

‘Don’t argue and don’t move,’ he said, and headed for the house.

She didn’t go anywhere. How could she? That last episode had left her wanting to do nothing so much as to lie down and die. Her bed in the boarding house was lumpy and none too clean, but it was a bed and right now she wanted it more than anything else in the world. Only her legs didn’t feel like they’d take her anywhere.

After the week she’d had, it needed only this. Of all the stupid hospitals she had to temp in, it had to be Sydney Harbour Hospital during a gastro epidemic.

She wanted to die.

Why was she sitting in Luke’s car?

It was too hard to do anything else.

She closed her eyes and he was back again, carrying her suitcase. That got through … sort of. ‘What …?’ She was trying to get her thoughts in order. She wasn’t succeeding.

‘You’re not staying here,’ Luke said grimly. ‘This place is drug bust central.’ Then his face sort of … changed. He slid into the driver’s seat and pushed up her uniform sleeves.

She got that. No matter that she was dying … he thought she was a crackhead?

Enough. There were some things up with which a girl did not put. Or something. She wasn’t making sense even to herself, but as he tried to check her pupils she found the strength to haul back her hand and slap him. Straight across his cheek with all the strength she could muster. Which wasn’t actually very much. He recoiled but not far, then caught her hands in his before she could do it again.

‘Just checking,’ he said, mildly.

‘I drink champagne every time I get a pay rise,’ she managed through gritted teeth. ‘I’m addicted to romance novels and chocolate. I once got a speeding ticket and a parking fine all in the one month. Evil doesn’t begin to describe me—but I don’t do drugs.’ She tried, very badly, not to sob, as she hauled her hands away from his and fumbled for the door catch.

‘No.’ He leaned over and tugged the door closed, took her shoulders and twisted her to face him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me, too. Let me out.’

‘I’m taking you home.’

‘I am home.’

‘My home.’

‘You don’t want a junkie at home.’

‘You’re not a junkie,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ve seen enough to know I’ve mortally offended you. Can I start making amends?’

‘There’s no need …’ But her stomach wasn’t up to arguing. Another cramp hit and she doubled over.

He handed her a paper bag but she didn’t need it. There was nothing left.

He waited for the spasms to cease, then magically produced moist wipes. ‘Paper bags and wipes from Emergency,’ he said softly as he cupped her chin in one hand and washed her face. She was so limp she couldn’t argue. ‘You get parking tickets. I steal wipes. Criminals both. You want to do a Thelma and Louise and run for the border?’

‘I … No.’

‘Thought not,’ he said, and fastened her seat belt for her. ‘Let’s find you an alternative.’

His surgical list started at eight and he made it only fifteen minutes late. This morning was his private list, cosmetic surgery. The woman he was treating had travelled overseas to get cheek implants, a reshaped nose and liposuction for her thighs. She’d got what she’d paid for and she hadn’t paid much. She’d ended up with a perforation of the nasal septum, a nasal obstruction and nasal deformity. One of her cheek implants had slipped, which meant her face was weirdly lopsided and her thighs were … undulating. She had lumps and bumps all over the place.

He wasn’t working on her legs this morning. He’d remove the cheek implants first—he wasn’t the least sure of their quality and the last thing she needed was one to burst. Then he needed to focus on revision rhinoplasty and repair of the septal perforation.

She’d need further procedures and he couldn’t be sure she’d look as good as she had when she’d started.

Cosmetic surgery could sometimes be brilliant, restoring self-image, but this time it had been a disaster.

The surgery he’d had as a child had been brilliant.

Luke’s childhood had been made miserable by a massive port wine birthmark almost covering one side of his face. His parents, cold and emotionally detached, had decreed it was simply ‘character building’, but when he’d been fourteen his uncle had stepped in.

‘I’ve arranged the best plastic surgeon I can afford,’ he’d told his father. ‘The kid’s getting that off his face whether you like it or not.’

His uncle was a bachelor, taciturn, unsentimental, refusing thanks. He and the plastic surgeon he’d found had changed Luke’s life and had set him on the path he was on now.

His uncle’s farm had been lifesaving as well. It still was. Even though his uncle was as emotionally distant as the rest of his family, his farm had been a retreat from the world.

He hadn’t been to the farm for two weeks now and he was missing it. Maybe he could take off for a few days. Leave his apartment to Lily. Whoever Lily was.

Not a junkie. An unanswered question.

Don’t get close.

‘So tell me about your lady of the night.’ Finn’s voice from the doorway to his office made him start. Dammit, he should be used to it. He wasn’t. ‘My what?’

‘Your one-night stand. Or your one-morning stand. You planning to make it two mornings?’

‘Leave it,’ he growled. He thought of Lily as he’d left her, huddled in his bed, so sick she could hardly acknowledge he was leaving. He’d stayed with her for an hour and made sure the retching had stopped. He’d left her with fluids, and he knew all she needed was sleep, but still he’d hated leaving her.

And somehow … for some reason he hated this hospital thinking she was … his one-night stand.

Sydney Harbour Hospital. It should read Sydney Scandal Central, he thought. Any hint of gossip was through the place in minutes. A team of skilled medics working long hours under intense pressure, in teams where they were thrown together in emotionally charged scenarios over and over, made for a hotbed of scandal. Up until now he hadn’t added to it.

It drove him crazy, though, the fact that he was being watched all the time. ‘When’s our aloof Dr Williams going to crack and prove he’s human?’

He was aware he was a target; he was aware there were bets—first woman to break his icy barricade. Even a couple of the gay guys had tried.

The gossips would be relentless now, he thought. A one-night stand … They wouldn’t stop.

And Lily? She’d signed up for four weeks’ work and she was labelled from this moment forth.

She was in his bed. They’d find that out in about two seconds flat. Other medics lived in his apartment block, Kirribilli Views. Hell, his cleaning lady was due in there this afternoon. By the time she’d finished dusting, the news would be all over Sydney.

‘She’s not a one-night stand,’ he found himself saying, before he even knew he intended saying it. ‘I already told Dr Lockheart that. I’ve known Lily for years.’

‘Years?’ Finn raised his brows in disbelief. Finn Kennedy made stronger doctors than Luke nervous, Luke thought. The man just had to raise one of those supercilious eyebrows and minions were supposed to quake.

But Luke was still thinking of Lily retching. This was no time for quaking. Or for disbelief.

‘Why do you think she’s here?’ he demanded. ‘We wanted to see if we could make a go of it.’

‘You were checking her records.’

‘I was making sure they’d got her address right. We used a boarding-house address as cover, intending to keep our relationship private a bit longer.’

‘By snogging on the on-call couch?’

‘Yeah, that wasn’t exactly wise,’ he admitted. ‘She was waiting for me after finishing work. I found her and …’ He closed his eyes. ‘The kid had just died. Sure, what happened was inappropriate, but Lily’s a big-hearted woman. She held me first, asked questions later.’

‘You’re in a relationship. What the—?’

‘This hospital thinks it knows everything about me,’ Luke said wearily. ‘It doesn’t.’

The door to his office was open. Their voices were carrying, which was just what Luke intended.

Everyone knew what had happened in the on-call room. They were labelling Lily because of it, but if they thought Lily and Luke were in an established relationship she’d be treated with respect. He’d already hinted at it to Evie. Why not take it further?

Maybe this was the least he could do. Where women were concerned he always did the least he could do, he thought grimly, but this time …

‘You bring your woman to work here without telling us about the relationship?’ For some reason Finn’s disbelief was giving way to anger.

‘What of it?’ It was Evie, just passing. Like half the hospital. How many medics used this corridor, and how carrying was Finn’s voice?

Answer—very carrying.

‘It’s deception,’ Finn growled.

‘What, not telling us who he’s sleeping with?’ Evie demanded. ‘What gives us the right to know?’

‘We’re a team.’

‘If we are you have an odd way of treating team members,’ Evie snapped. ‘Leave Luke alone. It’s his business.’

‘If he wants to bring his—’

‘Luke’s your friend,’ Evie said, closing the door. ‘You want to make this worse?’

‘I have a patient being sedated,’ Luke said warily. Sparks flew whenever these two got close and he didn’t want to be in the middle. He needed to leave. Now.

‘I’m so pleased,’ Evie was saying warmly, and she hugged him. ‘She’s a very competent nurse. I agree you should have told us, but …’ she cast a disparaging glance at Finn ‘… I can see why you wouldn’t. She looked bad though when she left this morning. Is she okay?’

‘She has gastro,’ Luke said. ‘Remind me to speak to Admin. She’ll have got it here; she’ll get paid for time off or I’ll take it further.’

‘She needs time off?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she now?’ Finn growled, and Luke fixed his friend with a challenging stare.

‘At home,’ he said. ‘In my bed.’

‘How wonderful,’ Evie said happily. ‘Lily and Luke … Ooh, I love it.’ She cast a cheeky look at Finn. ‘Maybe it’s time you tried a solid relationship, Mr Kennedy.’

‘In your dreams,’ Finn snapped.

‘Aren’t you having one?’ Luke asked.

‘He’s been seen with Mariette from Accounts,’ Evie said, disparagingly. ‘Not exactly a long-term proposition, that one.’

‘Will you butt out?’ Finn was almost explosive.

‘Like you butted out of Luke’s love life?’ Evie retorted. ‘Certainly, Mr Kennedy. Can I walk you to Theatre, Dr Williams?’

‘Yes,’ Luke said with relief.

‘And tell me about Lily on the way. Leave nothing out. First sight, first touch, first kiss. The whole romantic fantasy.’

Fantasy, Luke thought. She had it right there.

Lily woke as someone was vacuuming right through the door.

There were sunbeams on her counterpane. Her counterpane?

She was lying in the middle of a king-sized bed, on down-filled pillows, ensconced in crisp, white sheets and fleecy blankets.

The room was spacious, painted in cool soft greys, with white drapes—masculine but not too harsh.

The focus of the room was the floor-length picture windows, and through the windows Sydney Harbour.

She could see the Manly ferry chugging across the harbour. She could see the opera house.

A sunbeam was on her nose.

The cramps had stopped. She wriggled, very carefully. The nausea had gone as well.

She’d died and gone to heaven.

She was in Luke Williams’s bed.

It didn’t matter whose bed she was in, she decided. Anyone with a bed like this was a friend for life.

Was she more like her mother than she’d thought?

Even that concept wasn’t enough to spoil what she was feeling right now. Like life might be possible again.

A tap on the door. ‘Come in.’ She hauled her sheets to her chin, expecting … Luke? Instead a chubby little lady in a floral pinafore peered round the door, looking anxious.

‘Are you awake, dear? I didn’t want to disturb you, only I popped my nose round the door an hour ago and saw you hadn’t drunk anything. I think Dr Williams would like you to drink. Would you like a cup of tea?’

Lily thought about it. She had many things to think about, but right now tea was pretty much the limit of her brain power.

‘I’d love one.’

‘With lots of sugar.’ The lady beamed. ‘I’m Gladys Henderson and I do for Dr Williams. I do for other doctors in this apartment block as well but he’s my favourite. But he’s in my bad books for not telling me you were coming. They tell me you’ve had quite the romance and then you just start doing night duty and no one knew. And now to get this nasty bug … But we’re all so pleased for Dr Williams. He’s ever so nice and we’ve been thinking he goes up to that farm of his all the time with only his old uncle, and he stares at nothing and just thinks and thinks about that poor young wife of his. But she’s four years dead, and we’re so pleased … well, not pleased she’s dead, of course, but pleased as Punch that he’s got a young lady. And that’s enough from me; you don’t want me standing here gabbling for ever. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and plump your pillows and then you settle down and sleep until the doctor comes home. Ooh, I do love a good romance.’

CHAPTER FOUR

LUKE’S list went overtime. There were always complications, he thought. The problem with being a plastic surgeon with a decent reputation was that he was sent other people’s mistakes. Repairs of repairs … He hated it.

His real work, his passion, was repairs that made a huge difference to people’s lives. Birth defects, accidents, improving the aesthetic results after disfiguring cancer surgery.

He’d refused at first to do cosmetic surgery but there was a need. The lines blurred between vanity and distress and he couldn’t say no.

Regardless, he left the hospital as he always did on a Wednesdays, feeling that his time could be better utilised. Feeling that there should be something more.

Like going home to Hannah and their little boy?

No. Time had left him ceasing to miss Hannah. In truth, their marriage had been … problematic. He didn’t miss her as if he was missing part of himself. He missed what could have been without even knowing what that was.

He was going home now to another woman.

She might not still be there. She might have had her sleep and gone back to that appalling boarding house.

He’d fetch her back.

Um … no. It was none of his business where she was living.

But now half the hospital believed she was his long-term lover. And it was his business. He’d compromised her reputation. Maybe some kind of primitive instinct was kicking in, making him feel …

Dumb? Too chivalrous for words? He hadn’t even had sex with her.

But the whole hospital thought he had, and he wasn’t doing logic right now. He swung into the underground car park as Mrs Henderson was loading her buckets into the back of her cleaning van.

‘Oh, Dr Williams, I’m so pleased you’re home,’ she said. ‘I’ve been popping in to check on your young lady all afternoon and I didn’t like to leave until you got home so I thought I’d do Dr Teo’s spring cleaning. His place has been wanting a good going over for ever. But she’s looking a little better. I gave her a nice boiled egg and she managed to eat most of it. She wanted to get dressed an hour ago but I said you wouldn’t hear of it and if she tried I’d ring you. So she’s gone back to sleep like a good girl. And she’s lovely.’ She beamed. ‘Just lovely. I knew you’d find someone someday but I had no idea that you’d already found her … Lovely, lovely, lovely.’

He opened the door looking like a little boy expecting a bogeyman. If she wasn’t so discombobulated, she would have laughed.

The last time she’d seen this man he’d been totally in control and she very much hadn’t been. She still wasn’t, but he looked like a man thrown overboard without a lifeline.

She shoved herself up on her pillows … on his pillows, she reminded herself … and tried to look dignified.

Gladys had helped her shower and change into her nightgown. It was quite a respectable nightgown. It wasn’t respectable enough for greeting the man the whole hospital thought she’d slept with. Who’d held her paper bag.

‘Thank you for the bed,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘I’ll get up now. I would have left sooner but Gladys was threatening strait-jackets.’

‘And you didn’t feel well enough?’

‘There was that. It’s a powerful little bug.’

‘It hit most people harder than you.’

‘Gee, that makes me feel better.’

‘Sorry.’ He wasn’t sure where to take it from here, she thought. Neither was she.

‘I will get up now,’ she said.

‘There’s no need.’

Really? The thought of wriggling further down on these gorgeous pillows was almost irresistible—but this wasn’t her bed. It was Luke Williams’s bed.

‘Gladys seems to think I’m your long-lost lover,’ she managed. ‘The sooner I’m out of here the better.’

‘The whole hospital thinks you’re my long-lost lover. It’s not such a bad idea.’

She thought about that. Or she tried to think about it. Her brain was ever so fuzzily … well, fuzzy.

What he’d said was a very fuzzy statement.

‘From whose point of view?’ she said at last.

He ventured further into the room, looking suddenly businesslike. Professional. Doctor approaching patient with an action plan. ‘From both of our points of view if you intend fulfilling your contract,’ he said briskly. ‘We were caught in a position that was less than dignified. If we were long-term lovers, the hospital grapevine would think it was funny and get over it. For a man and woman who met each other only hours before, it’s like a great big neon light’s appeared over your head saying “Condemn”.’

There was much in that to think about. Condemn. It was a heavy word. Condemnation was how she was thinking of herself, in the fragments of time the gastro had given her to contemplate the matter.

But her self-image wasn’t this man’s problem. She’d held him. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her. It was up to her to handle the consequences. ‘I can handle a bit of condemnation,’ she said, wondering if she could.

She thought of all the insults thrown in her direction since her father had died. She was her mother’s daughter, therefore she was a Scarlet Woman by default. It had even ended her relationship with Charlie the Accountant, the man she’d dated for three years but who’d jibbed when expectations had turned to marriage.

‘Sorry, Lily, but I can’t handle your reputation.’

‘You mean my mother’s reputation? My mother’s behaviour makes me a whore, too?’ Her voice had risen … maybe more than she’d intended.

‘No but people look at you. I’m not sure I can handle that for the rest of our lives; people expecting you to turn out like your mother.’

She’d thrown something at him. Something large and unwieldy that had just happened to be full of water and half-dead Christmas lilies. It had been a satisfactory moment in a very unsatisfactory interview, one that had left her feeling sullied. Mostly because she’d thought she’d loved Charlie and he’d loved her, and how could she have loved someone who thought her mother’s reputation was more important than their relationship?

But her mother’s reputation was important. It made a difference. Like her reputation was important now, if she was to continue working at the Harbour.

She was only at the Harbour for four weeks. She could handle this.

‘I need a favour,’ Luke said and sat on her bed.

His bed. She inched back on the pillows.

She’d held this man, why?

She knew why she’d held him. It had been the culmination of an appalling time, an appalling emotion. She’d felt a matching need in him and their mutual need had exploded.

There was no longer mutual need. They were strangers. There wasn’t even attraction.

Um … yes, there was. He was rumpled after a long day at work. He’d hauled off his tie and his top shirt button was undone, revealing a hint of lean muscle underneath. His dark eyes were shadowed with weariness, and his five o’clock shadow was toe-curlingly sexy.

If he leaned forward and touched her …

She’d be out of here so fast he wouldn’t see her go. What she was feeling scared her witless.

She was not going to become her mother.

What had he said? I need a favour.

‘I don’t owe you,’ she said, cautiously. ‘Or not very much. I mean … it was lovely that you helped me this morning, and you gave me a gorgeous bed to sleep in for the day, but—’

‘I’d like you to sleep in it for a month.’

That was enough to take her breath away. A girl could be properly flummoxed with a statement like that.

‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘It’s a very nice bed,’ she managed. ‘But despite all evidence to the contrary, I keep myself nice.’

‘I’m not propositioning you. I have a sofa bed in the living room. This apartment has two bathrooms. This bed can be yours for a month.’

‘I have a bed of my own.’

‘You’re not going back to that doss house.’

‘It might be a doss house,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘but it’s a prepaid doss house. It’s okay. My bedroom’s almost clean.’

‘There are bedbugs.’

‘Nonsense. I would have been bitten by now.’

For answer he tugged her arm forward, slid her sleeve to her elbow and exposed a cluster of red welts. They both looked down at them. Irrefutable evidence. ‘I saw these this morning,’ he said. ‘I rest my case.’

She stared down at the welts, perplexed. Bedbugs. She had been itchy, she thought. She’d just been too preoccupied to notice.

‘Yikes,’ she muttered. ‘And double yikes. I’ll buy insect spray.’

‘You don’t get rid of bedbugs with inspect spray. You get rid of them by moving out.’

‘Not an option.’

‘You have an option. Here.’

‘I’m not in the market for a relationship,’ she snapped.

‘I told you, I have a very comfortable sofa bed. I’m not in the market for a relationship either.’

‘I didn’t even mean to kiss you.’

‘Neither did I.’

They were glaring at each other. He was still holding her arm. A frisson of something … electricity? … was passing between.

She couldn’t figure it out.

Why had she kissed him?

She wanted, quite fiercely, totally inexplicably, to do it again.

Get a grip, she told herself frantically. Even if her body was operating at ten per cent capacity, she had to think.

She was so tired. She wanted to go back to sleep.

But a woman with no money, a woman who was dependent on her next pay cheque, a woman like her, couldn’t sleep.

She glanced at the bedside clock. Seven-thirty. She was due back at the hospital at eight. She went to toss back the covers and then thought better of it. Her nightgown wasn’t all that long. She didn’t intend to make this situation more personal than it already was.

‘I need to get to work,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She glanced at her suitcase in the corner. ‘Thank you for bringing my stuff. Would you mind giving me some privacy while I get dressed?’

‘You’re not getting dressed.’

‘Says who?’

‘Me. And there’s no need. You’re not required at work again until Monday.’

‘Monday!’ She gasped. ‘Are you out of your mind? I’ve signed on for four weeks. If I don’t go to work tonight, I’ve broken my contract. No pay. Do you know what that means?’

‘The hospital’s paying,’ he said. ‘Their barrier nursing clearly isn’t working; they took out the controls too soon. The least they can do is pay you while you’re sick. I’ve already organised it. Standard leave for this bug is four days—barrier nursing requires it. They don’t want you back there before Monday but you’ll be paid regardless.’

Whoa.

No work until Monday.

Four days with pay.

She could sink …

She couldn’t sink. She was in this man’s bed.

‘You’re looking paler every minute,’ he said conversationally. ‘You don’t want to be sick again. Put your head down and sleep.’

‘No!’ It was practically a wail.

Why did he want her here? She was starting to feel like a white slave trader was standing at the end of her bed. His bed.

‘I’m not holding you here against your will,’ he said.

‘Yes, you are.’ She was having trouble making herself speak. ‘If you won’t let me get dressed …’

‘Your baggage has been cavorting with bedbugs,’ he said, prosaically. ‘I’ll take it down to the basement and fumigate it while you sleep.’

‘But why?’ It was a wail this time—she was reaching the point where the world was starting to blur.

He knew it. He took her hands in his before she could resist, his strong fingers holding hers. The strength of him was infinitely … masculine. Infinitely seductive and infinitely comforting.

How long since someone had held her to comfort her?

He wasn’t holding her to comfort her, she reminded herself, trying frantically to defuzz her thoughts. He was holding her to have his wicked way … although how he could want to have any sort of way with a woman who’d just stopped throwing up …

‘We can help each other,’ he said, quite gently, and she blinked and tried to think of something other than the feel of his hands holding hers. His gorgeous eyes; his gaze meeting hers, pure and strong. The strength of his jaw, the strong bone structure of his face, the shadow of a smile that was gentleness itself.

He’d make a gorgeous doctor, she thought. He was a gorgeous doctor.

‘You’re already helping me,’ she muttered. ‘Your housekeeper gave me an egg and toast soldiers.’

‘Good for Gladys. I hope they helped.’

‘I kept ‘em down.’

‘All the more reason why you should help me back. Stay here for a month.’

Her eyes weren’t working properly. They kept blinking.

She was seeing him in soft focus. He was a beautiful man, she thought, and he was proposing that she stay with him for a month. Like a sheik and a desert princess.

Princesses didn’t wear shabby nightgowns and smell of … She didn’t want to think of what she smelled of, despite her shower. A night on duty, followed by gastro …

‘I think you’re weird,’ she said. ‘Go find a princess, instead of—’

‘I’m not in the market for a princess,’ he said, the gentleness fading a little. ‘That’s why I want you.’

‘Pardon?’

He sighed, looked down at their linked hands and carefully disengaged. The gentle look became grim.

‘I don’t do relationships,’ he said.

‘I see that,’ she said cautiously, casting a quick look round the sparse bedroom. This was such a male domain.

‘But everyone in the hospital wants me to.’

This was important, she decided. She had to get to the other side of the fuzz. Figure out where reality and nonsense merged. ‘You don’t think that’s just a wee bit egotistical?’ she demanded, and his smile returned. It was a truly gorgeous smile.

His smile could make a girl’s knees turn to putty—if a girl’s knees weren’t already putty.

‘Sydney Harbour Hospital is gossip central,’ he said. ‘Too much intense emotion, too many people working long hours, thrown together over and over … Everyone at the Harbour knows everyone else’s business.’

‘You’re kidding,’ she said faintly. ‘I’d thought it’d be a huge, anonymous hospital.

‘The Harbour?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Anonymous is not us. Big or not, we’re made up of individual teams. Everyone knows everyone else’s business, sometimes I think right down to the jocks we wear. Actually, that may well be the literal truth; Mrs Henderson does my washing. This apartment block is home to at least half a dozen Harbour medics who also use Mrs Henderson, so I guess that’s public knowledge as well. But since my wife died four years ago …’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s history,’ he said harshly. ‘But that’s the problem. The hospital, the grapevine, the whole gossip network has decided it’s time for me to move on. Even my boss keeps pushing women at me.’

‘Gee,’ she said cautiously, her interest caught through the fuzz. ‘So you’re being besieged with women. That must be tough.’

‘I’ve been married,’ he said, maybe more harshly than he intended because he paused and softened his tone. ‘What I mean is that I have no intention of going there again. I’d like everybody to lay off. You’re in Sydney for a month?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then where are you going?’

‘Brisbane?’ It was the first place that came into her mind. It sounded a lot more fun than Lighthouse Cove.

‘A month would give me head space,’ he said. ‘I’ve told them we’ve been in a relationship for a while.’

‘You did that?’ The fuzz was thickening.

‘It protects your reputation.’

‘Thank you.’ She didn’t feel like saying thank you. She felt … like she didn’t know what to say.

He was being businesslike, a surgeon outlining an action plan. ‘Apart from protecting your reputation, if we let everyone know what happened yesterday was the result of a long-term relationship, it helps me. I’m having four weeks with you and then you can go to Brisbane, you can do anything you like, but from my point of view you can be my absentee girlfriend for as long as I can carry it off. I’ll tell them you need to care for an ailing mother or something similar. I can tell them we met on holiday a couple of years ago. That you come to the farm whenever you can. That I’m a very loyal lover. I’m thinking I might get two years out of this.’

‘Two years …’

‘Two years without matchmaking. Two years where I’m left alone.’ He ran his fingers through his already rumpled hair and sighed. ‘Believe me, in this hothouse, that’s worth diamonds. And in return you get board for a month. You have to admit anything’s better than that dump you were staying in. So … deal?’

The fuzz was everywhere, but his gaze was on her. Firm. Businesslike. Like what he was suggesting was reason itself. ‘Platonic,’ he said. ‘No sex. Promise.’

‘Of course there’d be no sex, but …’ But her head was spinning. This was crazy. She’d be a pretend lover?

He was proposing an affair of convenience. No sex.

He really did have the most beautiful … pillows.

Oh, she was tired.

‘You,’ Luke said, with a certain amount of contrition, ‘are wrecked. You need to sleep. I have another bathroom off the living room. We’re independent. You sleep your bug away and then settle in for a month of businesslike contact. Would you like anything before you go to sleep?’

What was happening?

Sense was telling her to get out of this man’s bed now; get out of his life.

If she did, she’d have to leave the pillows.

And … He’d just asked her if she’d like anything. What she wanted more than anything else in the world …

‘Another cup of tea?’ she murmured, figuring it couldn’t hurt to ask.

He grinned. ‘Your wish is my command.’

And five minutes later she was tucked up in his bed with a fresh cup of tea, plumped pillows, a spare blanket, the night settling in over the apartment. Five minutes later she was Luke Williams’s Lover of Convenience.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE slept for almost twenty-four hours. Mrs Henderson popped in during the day with sympathy, tea, more eggs and toast soldiers, and some gentle probing.

Where had she come from? How long had she known ‘our lovely Dr Williams’? Were they engaged?

She acted shy. She acted sleepy, which wasn’t all that hard.

She slept.

The events of the last week had left her exhausted. In truth, the events of the last few years had left her exhausted.

She’d been her mother’s keeper. It had been a full-time job.

Right now, her mother didn’t know where she was and she couldn’t contact her. When Lily left town she’d stopped at the headland overlooking the bay and tossed her cellphone as far as she could throw it.

If her mother had a drama—and she would certainly have a drama—Lily wouldn’t even know about it.

She could guess.

Would the vicar stay with her? Would her mother be able to ride out the town’s condemnation? Would her mother be able to operate the microwave?

Her father had treated her mother like a Dresden doll. He’d died when Lily had been twelve, and Lily had promised …

Enough.

She lay in Luke’s bed with no cellphone, no way her mother could know where she was, and she felt … weightless.

She could even manage pretending to be Luke’s lover for this luxury, she told herself. And Luke was serious about what he wanted. He’d slept in the living room, then carefully packed everything up before he’d left for work, checking and rechecking so Mrs Henderson would have no hint they’d slept apart.

Mrs Henderson supported her into the shower, clucked over her and helped her into a clean nightgown. Apparently Luke had gone through her baggage and given instructions that everything should be cleaned. She should be offended but she didn’t have the energy. She lay in the vast bed on the crisp linen Mrs Henderson had insisted on changing. She gazed out of the windows at the glorious vista of Sydney Harbour.

Four days of nothing, nothing and nothing.

Apart from being Luke Williams’s pretend lover.

‘Wouldn’t your mother want to know that you’ve been ill?’ Mrs Henderson asked as she bustled back in to say goodbye for the night.

‘No,’ she said sleepily. ‘I don’t want to worry her.’

And her mother wasn’t worrying her. Luke Williams’s lover wouldn’t have mother worries.

Luke William’s lover didn’t.

‘So how long has this been going on? Why haven’t we heard about her before this? Where have you been keeping her? And where is she now?’

To say he was besieged was an understatement.

Luke’s Thursdays were always frantic—it was the day he did his kids’ list, birth defects, procedures that took all his skill and emotion. Today he was doing graft work on Ruby May Ellington’s left thigh. Ruby May was four years old. Born as a conjoined twin, her sister had died at birth. Her sister’s death had meant there had been no hard ethical decisions to be made, but the surgery to separate them had been performed urgently. There’d been no time for preparation of excess skin flaps, and the grafting still was ongoing.

Luke had been working on this case when Hannah had died. The day she’d died, his team had saved Ruby’s life.

The medical imperative tore a person in two. Like now, when he was concerned about the woman he’d left in his apartment. She was suffering from gastro but instinct told him it was more. She was too thin. Too tired. Too … shadowed.

She was running from something, he thought, but what?

He worked on, but the questions kept coming.

And they kept coming from the people around him.

Who was this Lily he’d kept so dark?

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ The head of paediatrics, Teo, a Samoan with a heart almost as big as his body, had been involved in Ruby’s care from the beginning and, like Luke, he was willing the little girl a good outcome. It wasn’t, however, deflecting him from hospital gossip. ‘You’ve had this woman for how long?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Hey, this is the Harbour,’ Teo said mildly. ‘Everything’s everyone’s business. And now you’ve installed her in Kirribilli Views … You expect to keep her to yourself?’

‘Until she’s better, yes.’

‘You have the next three days off, right?’ With the procedure over, Luke was stripping off his theatre garb. Teo had hitched himself up onto the sinks and was regarding him thoughtfully.

‘Yes.’ What was coming?

He knew what was coming. Teo had a huge extended family and he treated the hospital as part of it. He shouldn’t be a paediatrician, he should be a party organiser.

‘I’m having a party on the beach on Saturday night,’ Teo told him. ‘My aunties are bringing food. You’ve knocked me back now one hundred and seventeen times …’

‘A hundred and seventeen?’

‘I’ve been counting,’ Teo said. ‘You disappear every time you have time off, and now we know why. But since you’ve introduced your Lily into the medical team, the least you can do is bring her along.’

His Lily? ‘No.’

‘No?’

Finn walked in and Teo turned to him. ‘He’s not cooperating,’ he complained. ‘Tell him letting us in on this lady is in his contract.’

‘It’s not,’ Finn said shortly, and Luke glanced sharply at his boss. Was he in pain? His voice was tight, tense. Luke had seen a lot of pain in his professional life. There was something wrong.

‘Leave him alone,’ Finn snapped before Luke could get any further. ‘He chose to flaunt his woman once, it doesn’t mean he has to do it again.’

‘I didn’t … flaunt,’ Luke said, and Teo grinned.

‘Having it off in the on-call room? I’d call it flaunting. Bring her on Saturday. You’re going to spend the whole weekend fending off visitors anyway. Word is Ginnie Allen’s already figured out she’s Lily’s new best friend. She’ll be knocking on the door asking for a cup of sugar right now. So … party it is.’

‘Party it isn’t,’ Luke growled.

‘Are you taking Mariette to Teo’s party on Saturday?’

Finn Kennedy groaned. Surely as Surgical Director he should have privacy. He’d been back in his office for a whole two minutes and now Evie Lockheart was leaning on the doorjamb, surveying him with sardonic amusement.

‘No.’

‘No?’ She raised her brows. ‘Just as well. Everyone’s tiptoeing around you but maybe someone ought to let you know David Blackmore, the new paediatric intern, is breaking his heart over Mariette.’

‘What does that have to do with me?’ The pain in Finn’s shoulder was driving him nuts and this woman was driving him nuts. She had no power in this hospital. She was one cog in a very big machine.

Her family money meant she could lean on the doorjamb and look … sardonic.

She also looked concerned. ‘Is there something wrong with your arm?’

‘No. Butt out.’

She butted, but only so far. ‘Mariette’s afraid to break things off with you because she’s scared you’ll sack David.’

‘I won’t sack David. And Mariette …’

‘Has a reputation,’ Evie said evenly. ‘Which is why you’re using her. You don’t use women you can hurt. All I’m saying is that David’s smitten and Mariette’s worried enough to be not backing off from you for his sake. David might be the making of her. They say love cures all …’

‘You’re telling me this why?’

‘Just so you know,’ Evie said blithely. ‘You’re the ogre around this place. No one stands up to you.’

‘Except you.’

‘And Luke,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘There’s another case in point. Love conquers all. He has a lady and he’s taking her to the farm this weekend. I’m thinking we should change the quarantine rules so neither can come back to the hospital for a week. It wouldn’t hurt to give them a push.’

‘If you think I have time to waste …’

‘On romance? I know you don’t,’ she said, and straightened. ‘Just saying. Just going. Think about Mariette, though. She’s a good kid at heart. And as for interfering with Luke’s hot weekend—’

‘I have no intention—’

‘Excellent,’ Evie said. ‘I do like a man with no intentions.’

Every second Friday Luke had off. Every second Friday was tomorrow.

Luke’s normal routine was to work for eleven days straight. He was happy to be rostered on public holidays, Christmas and Easter; in fact, he preferred it. But at the end of every two weeks he had three days off for the farm. For his sanity.

His farm was his place, his sanctuary, his solitude.

Solitude? Lily?

The entire hospital now believed he was taking Lily there.

In the brief moments he’d had to himself since settling Lily into his apartment, he’d decided that he’d go to the farm as usual this weekend and that she’d stay where she was. Only now he’d started a lie.

Lily was deemed his long-term lover. He’d hardly go away to the farm the moment she arrived.

If he did, everyone at Kirribilli Views would know she was ‘home alone’, and what’s worse, he wouldn’t put it past them to drop in on Lily. To sympathise? To check on her for him?

He could see Teo dragging her to his party whether she willed it or not. The man’s charm was legendary.

He didn’t mind if Teo’s charm was second to none, he told himself, but …

But his thoughts wouldn’t go further than that one word.

One lie and a whole skein of deception had appeared.

Should they both stay here?

If he stayed here he’d be either pacing the hospital with nothing to do or he’d be pacing the apartment. With Lily.

So … Farm?

Would she come?

How did you persuade a stranger?

But she wasn’t a stranger, he told himself grimly. She was his lover for a month.

Including farm time.

‘John says you’re going to the farm for the weekend. Oh, that’s lovely. What’s it like? He never tells us anything about it. He keeps everything so quiet. He’s kept you so quiet.’

To say Lily was bewildered was putting it mildly. She’d opened the door, hoping the doorbell signalled a delivery or something equally innocuous, and an immaculately groomed woman with eyes darting everywhere swept right in.

‘I’m Ginnie Allen. My husband’s a clinical psychologist at the Harbour. We live in the apartment on the next floor up. I’m so happy to meet you. Oh, he’s wicked, your Luke, fancy keeping you to himself. Has he told you Teo’s having a party this weekend? Everyone’s aching to meet you but he says you’re going to the farm. He always goes to the farm. Surely you’d prefer the party?’

Lily clutched her bathrobe round her. Actually, it was Luke’s bathrobe. Big and black and masculine, it fell to the floor and made an ungainly train.

She’d just woken. Her hair was ghastly. She was wearing no make-up. The woman before her looked like she’d just stepped out of Sporting Vogue.

To say she felt at a disadvantage was an understatement.

‘And you’re Lily …?’ Ginnie waited for her to complete the name.

‘Yes,’ Lily said discouragingly, backing away slightly. ‘And I’m sorry, but I’ve been ill. If you could excuse me …’

‘Oh, of course, you tuck yourself straight back into bed and we’ll talk there. Would you like me to make us both a nice cup of tea?’

Tea had suddenly lost its appeal. ‘I’d rather—’

‘Coffee? No, dear, tea’s much better. And toast? You need to keep your strength up if you’re going to spend the whole weekend with Luke.’

‘Hi, Ginnie.’

Luke. He stepped out of the apartment elevator in his suit and tie, with his briefcase in hand. Doctor coming home from work—to be greeted by the little woman in his bathrobe, and her new best friend, Ginnie.

‘Luke!’ Ginnie gave a crow of delight and hugged him before he had a chance to defend himself. ‘Oh, wow, congratulations. You and Lily … I had no idea.’

‘We’re hardly announcing diamonds,’ Lily said dryly, thinking she’d better nip this in the bud. ‘Are you congratulating Luke on sharing his bathrobe?’

‘I’ve no intention of sharing,’ Luke said, and looked across Ginnie’s head to smile at Lily.

And that smile …

Oh, that smile. She really was her mother’s daughter, she thought, suddenly feeling frantic. If Luke had been the vicar …

She thought suddenly of the vicar, and for some stupid reason the thought made her want to chuckle. And wince. How could her mother fall for someone like the vicar when there were men like Luke in the world? Men who owned bathrobes like this. It must be cashmere, she thought. It was a caress all on its own.

His smile was a caress all on its own.

‘I can’t believe you’re not coming to Teo’s party,’ Ginnie said reproachfully, letting Luke go and regarding him with huge disappointed eyes—and Luke’s expression became a bit hunted.

He always goes to the farm … Lily wasn’t sure what was happening here, but he didn’t look the least bit like he wanted to go to any party. Well, neither did she. She didn’t know what was going on but he’d lent her his bathrobe. He’d lent her his bed. Maybe she could afford to be generous.

He always goes to the farm …

‘I’m not a city girl,’ she told Ginnie. ‘That’s why I’ve only agreed to come and stay here for a month. That’s why Luke and I can’t be … as together as we’d like. But now I’ve been ill I’m—’

‘Pining,’ Luke finished for her, his smile still lurking. ‘For the fjords.’

She cast him a look that was meant to put him in his place. ‘For fresh air,’ she told him. ‘For the smell of … sheep.’

‘Horses,’ Luke said.

It was becoming more difficult to be generous. Especially when he was still smiling.

‘Especially for the smell of horses,’ she amended. ‘Eau de horse will cure me faster than anything.’

‘You like farms?’ Ginnie sounded incredulous.

‘What’s not to love?’

‘Well, horses for a start,’ Ginnie said, and shuddered. ‘They bite.’

‘Not my horses,’ Luke said.

‘Well, we wouldn’t know,’ Ginnie said, suddenly waspish. ‘We’ve been practically next-door neighbours for four years and not one invite. You know we’d all love to see your farm. It’s like you’re keeping it a secret. It’s like you’ve been keeping Lily secret.’

‘It’s because I know you hate horses,’ Luke said blandly. ‘Lily loves horses. She rides ‘em to the manor born.’

Lily blinked. She loved horses?

Actually … she did.

A farm with horses. She thought suddenly … what was being proposed here? A couple of days on a farm with horses.

She might even put up with Luke Williams for that.

‘Well, I think you should stay here,’ Ginnie said crossly. ‘Look at her.’ She motioned to Lily-In-The-Bathrobe. ‘She looks sick.’

‘Gee, thanks.’ But she was wobbly.

‘My car’s lovely,’ Luke said reassuringly. ‘Aston Martin, deep leather seats, pure luxury. And Lily even managed to protect them with her paper bag,’ he told Ginnie. ‘She’s a heroine, my Lily. I’m thinking she can sleep all the way there.’

My Lily. The words hung.

This was getting out of hand, Lily thought, starting to feel hysterical. She’d agreed to this, why?

‘How long have you guys been an item?’ Ginnie demanded of Lily. ‘Have you been to his farm?’

Was now the time to back away? Lily wondered, hysteria growing. Pack and leave for Brisbane?

It’d have to be Brisbane. She couldn’t go back to the Harbour after confessing this lie.

Luke had started the lie. Not her. She glanced at Luke, who glanced right back. Their eyes locked. His gaze was … almost a challenge?

Are you about to tell the truth?

Oh, for heaven’s sake, why should she? she thought. What right did this nosey woman have to the truth?

Whatever, she decided. Go with the flow.

But maybe … not lie unless she had to?

‘Merrylegs is my very favourite horse,’ she said, tangentially.

‘Merrylegs?’ Ginnie blinked.

‘She’s given me years of joy,’ she said and somehow, between Ginnie’s prurient interest and Luke’s bland withdrawal, she found herself remembering her first and one true love. ‘She’s beautiful. I know her so well she’s almost part of me, and I wish I could be riding her now.’

‘She’s on Luke’s farm?’

‘All my horses are on my farm,’ Luke said, sounding suddenly … wicked. ‘Even though Merrylegs is Lily’s favourite, all my horses are her horses.’

‘How long have you two been an item?’ Ginnie demanded.

‘Years,’ Luke said. ‘Like Lily said.’

‘How many years.’

‘Three?’ Luke said. ‘I think. Isn’t that right, dear?’

‘Have you been staying on Luke’s farm for three years?’ Ginnie was almost speechless. ‘That’s not even a year after Hannah died.’

‘I never met Hannah.’ Lily faced Luke’s wickedness head on. What had he called her? Dear. She lowered her voice, talking respectfully about her lover’s deceased wife. ‘Would Hannah have loved Merrylegs?’ she asked Luke. ‘Dear?’

‘Hannah was more a cat person,’ Luke said. The smile behind his eyes was challenging. Dangerous.

She rose to meet it. Challenging right back.

‘You never talk to me about Hannah. I think you should.’ She turned back to Ginnie. ‘He never talks to me about Hannah,’ she said, sounding aggrieved. ‘I think our relationship would be better if he let it all out.’

‘That’s what John says,’ Ginnie managed. ‘So …’

‘So, farm,’ Lily said, trying hard to sound brisk when, in fact, all she wanted to do was retreat to Luke’s bed and pull pillows over her head. ‘We can pack pillows,’ she told Luke. ‘Your beautiful car might even be comfortable enough to sleep in. Mind, I’m more accustomed to the farm truck,’ she confessed to Ginnie. ‘But when in the city, act like a city girl, that’s what I say. You might like to pack some more paper bags … sweetheart.’

‘I guess we’d better start packing,’ Luke said faintly. ‘Darling.’

‘You start packing,’ Lily said tartly, long-term-lover-like. ‘I’m poorly. Ginnie, would you like to help? Maybe you could make me that toast you were offering?’

‘Are you offering to make us dinner?’ Luke asked, full of hope, and Ginnie backed out as if burned.

‘I’ll leave you to it. We’ll miss you tomorrow night. Come back better, Lily. We’ll have a lovely long chat on Monday.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Lily muttered as Luke closed the door behind her. ‘I just can’t wait.’

To say the silence was loaded was an understatement. Luke closed the door carefully and then snibbed it, as if even now Ginnie might return.

Lily backed to the closest dining room chair and sat. Whatever energy she’d had had been spent.

‘I’m thinking,’ she said at last, trying hard to breathe so she didn’t gasp, ‘that communication seems to be lacking. So we’re a couple. Congratulations are in order. We’ve been dating for years. We’re about to leave on a romantic weekend to some farm I’ve never heard of.’

‘Where you ride a horse called Merrylegs.’ He seemed just as winded as she was. ‘I believe two of us are playing this game.’

‘It’s not a game,’ she snapped.

‘I’m not laughing,’ he said, and suddenly he wasn’t. All this time he’d been holding his briefcase. Now he set it down, carefully, like it might explode.

That’s what the atmosphere felt like, Lily thought. Loaded.

‘I’m feeling a wee bit trapped,’ she said, and hauled his bathrobe tighter round her.

‘That’s the part I don’t understand.’

‘What?’

‘The trapped bit. You’re an agency nurse. You could pack up and leave.’

‘If I break my four-week contract.’

‘I understand it’d make it hard to find another agency to take you. But there are other cities.’

‘I don’t have enough money to move to another city.’

‘Would you like to tell me why you’re in trouble?’

‘No,’ she said. She thought about it, thought about all the conclusions he might be jumping to, thought that maybe hiding any more conclusions wasn’t a good idea. ‘My mother’s maxed out my credit card,’ she said. ‘She’s done … well, let’s just say savings I thought were in my account no longer are. She’s taken a lover. We live in my tiny two-bedroom apartment and the walls are thin.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Her lover’s the local vicar, husband of a prominent citizen, I’m a scarlet woman by association.’

‘Double ouch.’

‘Lighthouse Cove is too small.’

‘I can see it might be.’ He looked at her, not so much sympathetic as interested. Doctor inspecting patient. Looking at strange symptoms. ‘So why not Adelaide? You trained there. You could get a job there.’

‘And my mother would be on my doorstep within days, weeping, asking for money, needing support. Or worse, walking into the ward where I’m working, weeping, asking for money, needing support. She’s done it before and she’ll do it again.’

‘So Sydney.’

‘For as long as I can manage,’ she said wearily. ‘For as long as I can get by until I need to go home and face the mess. I hadn’t counted on running into a mess myself.’ She sighed, and looked longingly at the bed. ‘I’m really very tired.’

‘You are,’ he said, gently this time, as if the physician had made his diagnosis and was moving to treatment phase. ‘But this apartment block is almost an extension of the hospital. We’ll be watched all weekend. The farm is best.’

‘I don’t want to move,’ she admitted.

‘It’d be better if I went to the farm and you stayed here,’ he conceded. ‘Only you’d get visitors and questions. At the farm you can sleep for three days straight. So what I suggest is that you sleep now for a couple of hours while I finish some patient notes, then I’ll tuck you into my car and you can sleep all the way to Tarrawalla.’

‘Tarrawalla?’

‘It’s where my elderly uncle lives,’ he said. ‘And the phantom Merrylegs.’ He smiled. ‘And the rest of my horses, all of which you ride like the wind.’

That smile …

She shouldn’t.

Shouldn’t what? Go to his farm? Sink into that smile?

No, she thought wearily, but her body was caving in.

‘You’re beat,’ he said softly, and before she could guess his intention he lifted her and carried her to the bedroom.

‘Put me … put me down …’

‘Of course I will,’ he said softly. ‘I won’t do anything you don’t like, Lily Ellis. We’ve been unwise enough. Now’s the time to be sensible.’

She didn’t feel sensible. She felt … she felt …

Like Luke Williams was carrying her to his bed and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

Travelling in Luke’s car was almost like travelling in his arms. She lay back in her glorious leather seat, padded with pillows, ensconced in a soft cashmere blanket and felt … cherished.

‘I feel like your ancient grandmother, being taken on a nicely padded outing,’ she told him as he negotiated his way up into the hills north-west of Sydney. It was well past dusk. They were driving into the night and the passenger compartment was a pool of luxurious intimacy.

Luke’s face was a focused profile against the moonlight shining through the driver’s window. His face had such strength … He’d been hurt, Lily had decided after a few covert glances at him. Even if she hadn’t known his wife had died, his face told her that. It looked … forbidding.

She was fighting an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch his hand on the steering-wheel, as a lover might, as a wife might.

Or an ancient grandmother ensconced in woolly cashmere.

‘My grandmother wouldn’t have been seen dead under a cashmere blanket,’ he said, and she blinked.

‘Past tense?’ she said cautiously. ‘Your grandma?’

‘She died young; cirrhosis of the liver. Too much champagne.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘There’re worse ways to go. She was the society matriarch of Singapore.’

‘Is that where your family live?’

‘Yes.’ Blunt and hard. The meaning was clear. Don’t go there.

She wouldn’t. But he had family. The thought jolted her. He’d seemed isolated.

He still seemed isolated.

And … he’d mentioned an uncle at the farm. Maybe it was time she learned more, even if she couldn’t ask directly about his parents.

‘So why aren’t you in Singapore?’ she ventured.

‘I was sent to Sydney to boarding school when I was ten and I’ve stayed. A couple of visits home were enough for me, to be honest. My uncle did all the caring needed. He left Singapore when he was twenty as well, pleased to be shot of them.’

‘So the Harbour is your de facto family,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘No wonder they matchmake.’

‘They won’t any more.’

‘Because I’m the match.’ She retreated under her cashmere and watched the car eat white lines. ‘So after I leave … will you go back to being heartbroken?’

‘I haven’t decided.’ He sounded amused. ‘But I’m thinking I won’t give up on you. You’ll be heading into the sunset to find yourself and I’ll be faithful for years, waiting hopelessly for you to return.’

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Like Miss Havisham, sitting in a pool of mouldy wedding dress.’

‘That’ll be me,’ he said, sounding cheerful. ‘So your family. One nutty mother. Who else?’

‘Not a sausage.’

He shook his head. ‘Everyone has a sausage.’

‘Nope. My parents were both only children of elderly parents. My dad died when I was twelve. There’s just been me and Mum ever since.’

‘Cheap on birthday gifts,’ he said, cautiously.

‘Not so much. This year Mum’s self-administered birthday gift was a trip to Paris for her and her vicar. She’s disgusted because apparently I didn’t have as much in my bank account as she thought. That’s why she’s still stuck in Lighthouse Cove, until her vicar finds the extra money—or her vicar gets tired of her.’ She grimaced. ‘It’s a merry-go-round. I’ll put more safeguards in place next time.’

‘Next time … You’ll go back?’

‘I promised my dad I’d look after her and I will, but I need a break for a bit.’

‘Of course,’ Luke said, cheering up. ‘For now you’re my lover, or my ancient grandmother. But it doesn’t matter. My farm’s a haven Tom and I have created, a place with no obligations at all. My farm’s for being whoever you like.’

Whoever she liked.

His lover or his grandmother?

Hmm.

She snuggled under the cashmere and thought, This could be a very long weekend.

CHAPTER SIX

THE farmhouse was tiny, remote, perfect.

Lily gazed in awe at the moonlit valley; at the tiny house set high above a creek meandering through bushland. Mountains loomed in the background, blue-black in the moonlight.

A trail of smoke wisped from the chimney and a warm glow of light spread from the veranda.

‘Who lives here?’

‘I do.’

‘But … the fire … the light …’

‘My uncle lives in the big house. He likes his privacy. I bought the adjoining land so this is mine. Tom knows when I’m coming. He’ll have brought in supplies, lit the fire, got the place warm.’

The night was warm and still. A mopoke was calling from the gums around the house. She could hear water rippling over stones, and frogs.

She climbed out of the car and the beauty of the place felt breathtaking. To have had the week she’d had, and then to find herself in a place like this …

Her eyes were suddenly filling with tears and she swiped them away with desperation. Luke was carting her suitcase up the steps. He stopped and looked back.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I … Nothing.’

‘There are no padlocks here,’ he said, mistaking her hesitation. ‘I promise.’

I wouldn’t mind if there were, if I got to stay here, she thought, filling her lungs with the gorgeous night air.

She could smell horses!

A million memories were crowding in. Her father, their farm, the horses she’d grown up with.

‘When can I meet Merrylegs?’ she managed, and made her feet head for the steps. All she wanted to do was stand and sniff the air.

‘Merrylegs might be a bit hard to arrange,’ he told her. He grinned. ‘Though come to think of it, Tom told me we have a new colt since last time I was down. Merrylegs … Shall we take a look tomorrow and see if the name suits?’

‘You’d name a colt for me?’ She practically gasped.

‘Think about it in the morning,’ he said gently. ‘You’re shaking.’

How had he known? But she was. This stupid bug had left her so weak she was struggling not to cry.

She was out of control. But no. It was simply that she wasn’t under her own control. Luke was calling the shots and for the first time since her father had died someone had lifted responsibility from her shoulders.

She was back on a farm, without the burden of care.

She thought suddenly of the day of her father’s death. Of him sitting at the kitchen table, a mass of bills around him, his face as bleak as death. ‘Lily, if anything ever happens to me, you’ll take care of your mother? Promise!’

She’d promised.

‘Coming?’ Luke said, and she looked up at this big, stern stranger, whose eyes were gentle but whose voice was inexorable. If she didn’t move he was quite capable of striding down the steps, lifting her up and carrying her to bed.

The thought was …

Unwise. She made herself walk up the steps, into the beautiful little house, then up the stairs, into the made-up spare room and into bed.

She was asleep in an instant.

How could he sleep?

He didn’t sleep much anyway. He lay staring into the night. So what was new?

Lily sleeping in his spare room was new.

He didn’t invite people to this house. Hannah had made it beautiful, but he only used his bedroom and kitchen. He’d made the bed up because last year when the local stock and station agent’s car had broken down a few miles from the house, he’d decided having the spare bed ready was sensible—but there was no question that this was his place.

To have Lily here was even more disconcerting than having her back at his apartment.

Why should it be disconcerting? She was a guest, a stranger in the next bedroom. A colleague. She was no different from the stock and station agent.

Or not.

Lily of the gaunt face. Lily who had been too thin even before the gastro. She seemed shadowed.

She needed this weekend. What harm was there in giving it to her? So what reason was there, then, to stay awake and be aware that she was just through the wall?

The whole hospital thought they were an item.

It’d been a spur of the moment deception but now … the thought seemed to be closing in on him. Deception or not, he didn’t connect with people. Especially with complicated women.

Lily.

Hannah.

‘Stand on your own two feet.’ His father’s voice seemed to boom from the darkness.

Luke’s father and also his paternal grandfather were wealthy, foul-mouthed bullies. Luke’s mother and grandmother were society gadflies, only interested in social standing. It was amazing they’d come together for long enough to produce children. Luke’s father certainly hadn’t wanted him. A son with a disfiguring birthmark had meant contempt from the day he was born.

What a family! His Uncle Tom had escaped Singapore as soon as he’d been old enough to emigrate, and Luke had been sent away at ten. Even though Tom had taken rough care of him since he’d arrived in Australia, Tom didn’t seem like family. Neither uncle nor nephew knew what that was about.

Stupidly, Luke had tried family with Hannah. He’d spent four years thinking it might work; knowing it wouldn’t. Then disaster.

Family was disaster. Emotional attachment was disaster.

‘I have my farm and my medicine,’ he told the darkness. ‘That’s enough.’

Whether Lily Ellis was his make-believe lover or not.

She woke and had to pinch herself to think she wasn’t dreaming.

The bed was high, cast iron, the kind you’d expect in your grandmother’s attic with a chamberpot underneath.

There was no chamberpot. There was a tiny bathroom right through the door. Lush towels hung from antique towel rails. Her patchwork quilt was gorgeous. The thick lemon carpet meshed beautifully with the soft blue walls.

This was no garret. This whole wee house was beautiful.

Had it been furnished by Hannah? Certainly there was a woman’s touch—this was a far cry from the cool greys of Luke’s city apartment.

She’d gone to sleep listening to mopokes and night owls.

Now there were kookaburras right by her window, their raucous laughter making her smile. How come they hadn’t woken her until now?

She rolled over and reached for her watch. And practically yelped.

Ten o’clock in the morning? What the …?

Where was Luke?

She glared at her watch like it had betrayed her. What sort of guest was she? He’d think … he’d think …

Why worry? He already thought she was loose and fast; why not let him think she was a total slob? The damage had been done. She could sleep until midday.

Or not. Kookaburras. Sunlight on her coverlet. Smells, pure country.

It was Friday. She was here until Sunday; three whole days of farm.

She was out of bed, heading for the shower before she finished the thought.

They needed to be independent. Luke decided this at dawn, when he woke, headed to the kitchen for his standard eggs and bacon, and then hesitated and thought he should wait for Lily to wake.

No. She needed to sleep. Independence was the go. He needed to ride the boundaries, head over to the big house, spend a bit of time with Tom, do what he normally did on his first day here.

Lily needed to sleep for as long as her body required.

So he headed for Tom’s but he made a phone call first. There was enough in what Lily had told him to think maybe some intervention might be needed. Without pushing the thought further, he called a lawyer mate in Adelaide. Then he left a note directing Lily to breakfast and headed out.

He found Tom, out with his dogs, eager to be doing things. Even though Tom was fiercely independent, he usually greeted Luke with a list of jobs the length of his arm. Today was fencing.

Excellent, Luke thought. Building fences, a man could get his thoughts together. Building fences, a man could forget about a woman with shadows, who’d melted into his arms and who’d …

No. Concentrate on fencing. He’d made the call to the lawyer. His conscience didn’t require he worry any further.

Funny things, consciences. They had a will of their own.

The horse was young, Lily thought, watching him skittering toward her. Full grown. A gelding—he wasn’t big enough, tough enough to be a stallion. He didn’t look tough but he looked … bad? He pranced toward her and she could almost see challenge.

‘Oh, you’re beautiful,’ she breathed as he came closer. She stood motionless against the fence, letting him assess her.

He was wearing a halter of tooled leather with a metal name-plate attached.

Glenfiddich.

He’d have been called Glenfiddich because he was pure spirit, she thought, and couldn’t resist reaching to touch.

Or not. The contact had him skittering back, rearing, then tearing round the paddock at full gallop. His coat gleamed in the morning sun, every muscle clearly delineated. He was glorying in his strength, in the morning, in the sheer joy of being alive.

Which was exactly how Lily was feeling. The sun was on her face. She was out of the city. For now her mother was the vicar’s responsibility. She felt like she’d shed a too-tight skin.

‘Did he rescue you as well?’ she whispered, and the big horse dashed past her once, twice, and then paused. Slowed.

Decided to investigate.

She stayed absolutely still. He reached her and touched her cheek with his nose. He blew against her hair.

She swung onto the fence-rail, slowly, but he didn’t shy away. He nuzzled her again, pushing his nose into her armpit.

She scratched him behind his ears and he threw back his head, backed away again, then tossed his head and came back for more.

He was a wild, beautiful thing.

She looked at the halter. Maybe not so wild.

Wildish.

He looked at the gate. So did she.

Dared she?

This was Luke’s horse.

What had he said to Ginnie? All my horses are her horses.

There was soft rope by the gate; rope that could be looped as makeshift reins.

At twelve there wasn’t a horse she couldn’t ride. She’d helped her father break them. He’d taught her well.

She hadn’t been on a horse since.

Oh, he was beautiful.

She slipped down from the rail and he started nudging her toward the gate.

She giggled and he shoved her in the chest. Hard. Like, hurry up, there’s a world out there. Let’s go.

Let’s go …

They might find Luke. He had to be somewhere. On this horse she could go anywhere.

Not since she was twelve …

‘Don’t you dare throw me,’ she told the nose shoving her toward the gate. ‘My pride’s at stake.’

Luke spent four hours with Tom. Thirty satisfactory fence posts later he decided he needed to check on his guest.

He swung himself up back onto Checkers, his favourite horse, elderly, big, black and docile, with the gorgeous white blaze that had given him his name. He needed to head back to the house and make some lunch. He’d take Lily for a gentle stroll over the more accessible places on the farm.

Or not. For suddenly he saw her, over the ridge, cantering down along the track toward them. And she was riding … Glenfiddich.

His breath caught in his throat. Glenfiddich was a half-broken yearling, as spirited as his namesake. Lily was riding him without a saddle, with the halter he always wore but no bridle or reins. She was using rope as reins.

The last time Luke had ridden Glenfiddich it had taken him an hour to settle him; to make him trustworthy. But here was Lily, her canter turning to gallop.

Was she crazy?

Even as the question hit, he was flying. Checkers was almost an extension of himself. He touched his flanks and his big horse flew toward Glenfiddich, veering at the last moment so Luke could grasp his halter. Glenfiddich tried to rear—of course he did—but Luke had him in a grip of iron. He swung off Checkers so he could take full control.

Glenfiddich objected—and so did Lily. ‘What are you doing with my horse?’ Even though Glenfiddich had reared back she hadn’t shifted on his back.

‘He’s not your horse,’ he said through gritted teeth. He was fighting Lily for the rope-cum-reins. ‘Give me the reins and get off. Tom,’ he yelled to his uncle. ‘Come and lift Lily off.’

‘Does Lily want to be lifted off?’ Tom asked mildly, strolling up to meet them and raising his battered hat to Lily. ‘Seems to me she’s got a pretty good seat. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Get off the horse,’ Luke snapped.

‘So … you didn’t mean what you said about me being free to ride whatever horse I liked?’

‘He’s not trained.’ When he thought of what could have happened … a slip of a girl on a half-trained gelding … he felt sick.

‘And I’ve forgotten my training as well,’ Lily said happily. ‘So we suit.’

‘Get down!’ His anger reverberated through the bush.

Lily stared at him in dismay and then slid expertly from Glenfiddich’s back.

‘I haven’t hurt him.’

‘You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.’

‘I know horses.’

‘Not this one. Of all the stupid, risk-taking behaviour … You’re just like those kids, rollerblading over tallow.’

‘You don’t think you might just be overreacting?’ she ventured.

‘I didn’t give you permission.’ He had both horses in hand now, keeping them well clear of Lily. Glenfiddich was objecting but Luke was in no mood to let him show it.

‘I believe you told Ginnie I rode every horse here,’ Lily said, sounding angry herself now. ‘I ate breakfast as your note said, but there were no instructions after breakfast. I inspected the creek, the home paddock, the horses close by, and then I thought I’d like to go further. Glendiddich asked me to ride him, so we’ve been exploring and here we are.’ She smiled at Tom and carefully ignored Luke’s fury. ‘You must be Luke’s Uncle Tom. I’ve very happy to meet you.’

Glenfiddich asked me to ride him …

He tried to take it in. This morning Glenfiddich had seemed to take his decision to ride Checkers as a personal insult. He’d kicked out as they’d left the paddock, and it was only because Checkers was an old and wise horse that there had been no damage.

To see Lily flying along the track toward him, bareback …

Gorgeous didn’t begin to describe her, and fear didn’t begin to describe how he’d felt.

‘You’re out of your mind, riding a strange horse,’ he snapped.

‘He’s not a strange horse. We introduced ourselves before we got familiar.’ She tilted her chin defiantly. ‘Not like you and me.’

It almost defused his anger. A lesser man would have blushed. He almost did.

‘Let the girl back up,’ Tom said from behind them. ‘She looks a picture on horseback.’

‘I’ll find you a quiet mare,’ Luke snapped.

‘Or a tractor?’ Lily said, suddenly teasing. ‘Tractors are safe but they’re not nearly as much fun.’

‘You’re not here to have fun.’

Her smile died. ‘Of course I’m not. I’d forgotten. Sorry.’

‘Lunch,’ he said, tugging the horses round to face the house.

‘I guess we’re not riding, then.’

‘No. I’ll find you a safe horse after lunch.’

Her smile died completely. ‘It’s okay. I guess I don’t need to ride. I should have learned that a long time ago. Tom, are you joining us for lunch?’

Tom shook his head, but amazingly he looked almost tempted. ‘No, but let the girl back on,’ he told Luke.

‘And have her break her neck? In your dreams. I’ve had one woman die on me; there’ll not be another.’

‘Hey,’ Lily said, startled. ‘I’m not your woman.’

‘Of course you’re not,’ he said shortly, and he led two horses along the track to the house without saying another word.

Luke worked with Tom again in the afternoon and Lily wandered the farm alone. She dropped by to chat—to Tom. She offered to help and when Luke said she should be resting she seemed rebuffed.

‘She’s a decent woman,’ Tom said, eyeing Luke sideways. ‘Good seat on her, too. Find her a horse.’

Luke had quiet horses but Lily’s reaction had been blunt. ‘I don’t ride,’ she’d said flatly. ‘Forget it.’

He’d hurt her but he couldn’t help it. He wasn’t about to let her risk her neck.

But he did feel bad—and he had a foal she needed to see. Toward sunset, as Tom headed off to feed his cattle, Luke joined Lily on his veranda.

‘I’m sorry I snapped,’ he told her. ‘I don’t like people taking risks.’

‘I wasn’t taking risks,’ she said mildly. ‘But apology accepted.’

‘I have something I need to show you.’

She looked at him, considering whether to take the conflict further. She shrugged, moving on, and he was relieved.

What he had to show her should lighten the atmosphere, he decided, and led her over to Tom’s home paddock to visit Zelda.

Zelda was a roan with soft white markings, a lovely gentle mare. The foal by her side was a tangle of spindly legs with his father’s markings. Checkers’s markings.

‘Meet Zelda,’ he told Lily, and Lily gazed at the foal in delight. ‘And Merrylegs. Just named this morning.’

Tension was forgotten. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘Is Checkers his dad?’

He nodded.

‘A family,’ she breathed. ‘Mother, father, son. How lucky are you!’

‘It’s all the family I ever want.’

‘Really?’ she said, sounding startled. ‘Why?’

Why?

He hadn’t intended to say it. It had been a dumb thing to say.

So why had he said it?

Because she was too close.

Because she was too beautiful?

He’d hurt her today. He didn’t intend to hurt her again.

He didn’t intend to be hurt himself.

He forced himself to recall the day Hannah had died. She’d been unwell at breakfast but she’d thought it was the take-away meal she’d eaten the night before. She’d eaten too much of it, she’d snapped, because he hadn’t arrived home in time to share.

‘Ring me if you need me,’ he’d said, knowing she was angry but not knowing what to do about it. He’d kissed her goodbye, intending to come home at lunchtime and check.

And then there’d been cojoined twins, one dead, one close to death, surgery impossible to delay. Fourteen hours in Theatre. At some stage he’d asked a nurse to ring and let Hannah know what was happening.

‘The call went to your answering-machine,’ the nurse had told him. ‘I left a message.’

She must have gone out, he’d thought, relieved, and then all his thoughts had gone back to saving one little life.

While his wife and son had died.

So why had he said it? It’s all the family I ever want. He watched Lily stroke Merrylegs’s soft nose, he watched Lily fall under the spell of the tiny colt and he knew that he’d been warning himself.

‘I don’t do relationships,’ he growled, and Lily cast him a look that held amusement.

‘Good, then. Except pretend relationships. They’re my favourite. So what will happen to Merrylegs? Will he be sold?’

‘No.’

‘So this farm …’ she said cautiously. ‘It makes a lot of money?’

He smiled at that, tension defusing. ‘Not so much as you’d notice. We make a bit on the beef cattle.’

‘I’ve seen your beef cattle,’ she said. ‘World’s fattest beasts. I’m betting when they droop with age you move them into cattle nursing homes where they’re pushed round in bath chairs until they die. And I’ve counted six horses I reckon are twenty years old or more. Plus you’ve bred Zelda with Checkers when anyone can see …’

‘That’s practical,’ he told her. ‘Checkers is getting too old to carry me and I’m used to a checkered blaze. It’s like a flag on the antenna of your car how I pick my horse out in a crowd.’

She chuckled. The little colt nudged her chest and she hugged him. Zelda nudged her so she gave Zelda a hug for good measure.

‘What a softie,’ she murmured. ‘You know your reputation around the hospital is cool and grumpy. And solitary.’

‘That’s the way I like it.’

‘You could never be solitary with these guys.’

The sun was setting low in the west. Lily was stroking Zelda while the colt shoved her for his share of attention. The last rays of the sun were glinting on Lily’s hair the soft evening breeze was making it ripple like silken waves.

Zelda was usually wary of strangers. She wasn’t wary of Lily. She wanted to get closer. Touch.

Same with Luke. Maybe he could …

He raised a hand … and let it fall. No.

Talk about something else. Something to break the moment.

He had it. A reality check.

‘I made some phone calls for you this morning,’ he said. ‘I went through university with a solicitor from Adelaide. He’s made enquiries on your behalf.’

She straightened and stared. ‘You … what?’

‘Firstly the money. What your mother did was illegal. The bank wasn’t authorised to transfer your money.’

‘I didn’t ask you—’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it seemed … you’re in such trouble.’

‘That’s my business.’

‘But you can reclaim your money.’

‘No,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘I can’t. Of course I know Mum’s action was illegal but the bank won’t refund money without wanting it back from somewhere. They’ll have Mum arrested for fraud. Do you think I want that?’

‘If she’s stolen—’

‘She’s my mum!’

‘She’s an adult. She’s stolen—’

‘Luke, my mum can’t help herself,’ she said, anger giving way to weariness. ‘She was indulged by doting parents and then by my dad. He adored her. All men adore my mother,’ she conceded. ‘But apart from my father, she never sticks to them. Dad committed suicide when I was twelve, lumbered with a mountain of her debt. He made me promise to look after her and I will. I know she can’t help it. It’s just the way she is.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So, no, I won’t claim, and I won’t have her arrested. I’ll be more careful in future. In a while I’ll go home and sort out the damage. But not … not yet.’

‘You could go home now,’ he said gently.

‘I don’t want to go home.’ She said it with a vehemence that was startling. ‘Mum’s vicar will leave,’ she said, weary again. ‘But not until my mother gets tired of him, which won’t be long. Meanwhile I’m staying as far away as possible.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah.’ She gave him a shame-faced smile. ‘I’m sorry, too. You were trying to do good.’

‘Gerald says he can get you damages.’

‘Damages?’

‘That’s the second thing,’ he said. ‘According to Gerald, you were publicly slapped and dismissed without cause. Assault and public humiliation, with witnesses. The hospital board should pay damages.’

She thought about that. Her weariness and anger seemed to fade.

‘The hospital board,’ she said slowly, ‘consists of five judgmental toads. I’m judged a bad lot by association. They only gave me the job because my qualifications beat every other applicant fourfold.’ She considered a bit longer. ‘Damages, eh?’

‘It’d be a statement,’ he said. ‘A line in the sand.’

She considered a bit more. ‘She did have cause,’ she said. ‘Vicar’s wife discovering vicar with Mum.’

‘Was that cause to hit you?’

‘No.’ She grinned, bouncing back. ‘Does it cost to sue?’

‘With the evidence as clear as it is, Gerald said one letter should do it, sent to the board with a promise to copy it to the press if damages aren’t forthcoming. He reckons they’ll be falling over themselves to limit fallout.’

‘Ooh …’

‘Do I have your permission to go ahead?’

She beamed and it was as if the sun had come out. ‘Yes.’

‘And the bank …’

‘No.’ Her humour faded. ‘Mum’s not going to jail on my account.’

‘How long do promises last?’ he said softly. ‘A promise made by a twelve-year-old …’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s ridiculous, but I loved my dad. I do this for him. Thank you for what you’ve done already but I won’t take it further. My mum, my problem.’

He glanced at Zelda and at Merrylegs. Then he looked at Lily, at her expression of acceptance of a load that seemed almost too much to bear. He’d yelled at her, he thought, and he was sorry. ‘Are you sure I can’t organise you a quiet horse tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Not Glenfiddich?’

‘No.’

‘Because?’

‘I will not watch you take risks.’

‘So don’t watch.’

‘Lily …’

‘Okay, sorry,’ she said, and held up her hands. ‘You’re trying to protect me. Thank you very much, but I don’t need it.’

‘You could enjoy a quieter ride.’

‘I guess I could,’ she said, but then managed a rueful smile. ‘I know, it doesn’t make sense, even to me, but I’d rather not. Not having been on Glenfiddich.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s just … Luke, I don’t want to be protected. For now I just want to be me.’

She seemed to wilt a bit after that. The gastro had knocked her, he thought, or maybe it was simply life that had knocked her. A crazy mother and a promise to the father she’d adored … She’d faced it alone since she was twelve.

He bullied her into toast and soup. She sat by the fire and gazed into the flames and he thought he shouldn’t have let her out today. She should have stayed home by the fire. He should have stayed home with her.

I don’t want to be protected …

What else was a man to do?

‘Go to bed,’ he said gently, and she cast him a look he couldn’t understand.

‘I like it by the fire.’

‘You’re exhausted.’

‘Yes, but—

‘But you don’t sleep?’

‘I slept last night.’

‘Gastro would make anyone sleep. Is that why you signed up for night duty?’ he asked. ‘To keep the demons at bay?’

‘I don’t have demons.’

‘I think … living with your mother must be nigh on impossible.’

‘Like having your wife die? And the fear of facing that sort of tragedy again?’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘I think you are. Wasn’t that what today was all about?’ She rose, a little unsteady on her feet, and he jumped up fast to steady her. He took her shoulders and held on.

He could draw her closer.

He didn’t. He simply held.

A common bond—two nightmares?

It was enough to forge a friendship. This could be touching from mutual sympathy—but it felt much more than that.

The fire crackled in the grate, a sort of warning. That was a dumb thought, but right now anything was acting as a warning.

He should let her go.

He couldn’t.

‘Maybe you could curl up here and watch the flames while you go to sleep,’ he suggested, and the tension around them escalated. Maybe he could stay here, too. The flames … the warmth … this woman.

He knew how this woman could make him feel. She could drive out his demons.

He couldn’t make her safe. He knew she wouldn’t let him.

‘I will go to bed,’ she said, and somehow she managed to step back from him.

‘Count mopokes to go to sleep?’ he suggested, and she smiled.

‘Or frogs?’

‘You don’t have enough fingers and toes to count frogs.’

She chuckled and the desire to draw her close again was almost irresistible.

She stepped back fast, as if she felt it too.

‘Goodnight,’ she said.

He couldn’t help it. He touched her hand, a feather-like touch, nothing more, but in that touch fire flared. It was contact that burned.

She tucked her hand behind her back. ‘Luke … no.’

‘No,’ he said, and let his own hand fall.

They were pretend lovers. Nothing more.

‘Goodnight,’ she said again, gently, and she walked out of the door, closing it after her.

He stood staring at the closed door. Thinking, How much courage would it take?

Too much.

He wasn’t tired. He headed out again, around the paddocks, following the line of the creek. How many times had he followed this route since Hannah had died?

It was different tonight. He was here because of Lily.

She touched such a chord … A woman keeping a promise at all costs. A woman of honour and intelligence and skill and laughter.

But …

The moment he’d seen her on Glenfiddich’s back, he’d been hit with the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to protect her …

She’d guessed right. She’d known that his fear had been all about Hannah.

He looked over toward his uncle’s house, where a solitary light burned on the veranda.

His uncle had learned the same hard lessons. He was like Luke.

They didn’t do relationships. Not now. Not ever.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LILY woke without the joy of the day before.

She could hear Luke moving downstairs. She heard Tom calling, dogs barking in the distance, and those dratted kookaburras.

Her stomach was cramping again. She’d talked to the doctor at home about the cramps. Tension, he’d said. Avoid stress.

Stress was sharing a house with a guy who was drop-dead gorgeous. Stress was playing pretend lovers with Luke.

She shouldn’t have come. This was a stupid deception, designed to protect a reputation she didn’t have and to add another level to Luke’s armour, but by coming here a layer of her own armour had peeled away.

This farm … these horses …

Luke.

Okay, there was the problem. She was feeling what she had no right to be feeling.

He was feeling it too, she thought, but …

But she’d seen his panic when she’d been on Glenfiddich, and his reaction had scared her. He’d yelled at her through fear. Shadows of a dead wife.

She was being dumb, she thought. This was an overreaction.

It was an overreaction because she was scared.

Because she was falling for Luke?

Maybe falling for anyone would be scary.

Growing up in her mother’s dramatic shadow, she’d never thought of romance. Of falling in love. Drama, emotion were to be avoided at all costs. She knew the devastation they caused and it wasn’t something she wanted.

Her relationship with Charlie had been like a comfortable pair of old socks. They’d been friends at school, they’d fallen into dating and they’d kept dating until suddenly Charlie had woken up one morning and realised he was heading for marriage with the daughter of the town tramp. When he’d cut her adrift she’d been hurt and angry, but she hadn’t been heartbroken. Sometimes when she looked at romantic movies, seen friends marry, she’d felt like that part of her had simply not been formed. She’d been born without it.

Now… What she felt for Luke.

It was as if she knew him at some level she couldn’t possibly understand.

She knew Luke’s story—between Gladys and the Harbour night shift she knew more than she’d ever need to know—but this went deeper than that. She’d instinctively joined the dots. Last night she’d said his fear for her was all about his dead wife and she knew it was. A lonely child, a tragic marriage … A man who walked alone.

He made her feel …

She didn’t know how he made her feel. She felt … She felt …

She felt like she had cramps in her stomach, she decided. She felt like she needed to roll over in bed and put her pillows over her head, which was exactly what she did.

Avoid stress? Ha!

Luke worked with Tom, stringing wires between the fencing posts they’d put in the day before, then going on to rewire fences further along the creek.

All the time he worked he expected her to come.

She didn’t.

‘You two still fighting?’ Tom said at last.

‘We’re not fighting. She’s had gastro. She overdid it yesterday. She should spend the day in bed.’

‘Then why are you wiring fences?’ Tom asked bluntly. ‘With a woman like that in your bed.’

‘She’s in the guest bed.’

‘More fool you. She’s a good ‘un.’

‘There speaks an authority on all women,’ Luke said. ‘Curmudgeonly old bachelor that you are.’

‘Had a woman once,’ Tom said reflectively, astonishingly. ‘Liseth.’ He sighed. ‘I thought maybe I had a chance, that our family hadn’t stuffed me completely. But with parents like ours you don’t rush into relationships. Anyway, I got drafted; Vietnam War. I was stupid enough to tell her to go out with other guys while I was away. I met her twenty years later, married to a car salesman. I walked into the office and she was there. She told me about her husband and her kids. All very polite. Then at the end when her husband was shifting the car she turned to me and exploded.

‘I would have married you,’ she said. ‘In a heartbeat. Even if we’d only had those two months before you went overseas, it would have been enough.’

‘Tom …’ The vehemence of his uncle’s voice shocked him.

‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘I was a fool, like you were a fool with Hannah; but in your case the fool part wasn’t one-sided. So we’ve made mistakes, do we have to keep making them? Enough. All I’m saying, boy, is life’s short and she’s a good ‘un. Now let’s get this wire done. And I want to talk to you about my arm. I damn near dropped the chainsaw on Friday. I reckon I might have tennis elbow.’

‘Chainsaw elbow,’ Luke said, and the old man grinned.

‘You doctors have fancy names for everything.’

‘Hi.’

The men turned and saw Lily at the edge of the clearing.

Uh-oh. How much of the conversation had she heard? Just the end, Luke hoped, though the silence in the bush meant sound travelled.

‘I’m feeling better,’ she said. ‘I wanted to stretch my legs. And, no, Luke, I’m not about to ride another of your horses, even though I had to duck round Glenfiddich’s paddock so he wouldn’t see me. And I’m not here to interfere. I’ll keep on walking.’

‘Keep walking with Luke,’ Tom growled. ‘He’s done enough for one day.’

‘So must you if you have chainsaw elbow,’ Lily said, teasing a smile from the old man.

‘Nah, I’m fitter than the pair of you,’ he retorted. ‘You head off and do what a young feller and his lady ought to do.’

Luke looked at Lily and Lily looked at Luke, and Luke put down his tools.

What was it that a young feller and his lady ought to do?

They walked slowly back to the house. She was walking a bit gingerly.

‘Your tummy’s okay?’ he asked.

‘Recovering nicely.’ Her tone said not to go there.

‘Rest this afternoon.’

‘You should tell Tom to rest,’ she said. ‘Not that he will when you’re around. He’s lonely.’

‘Tom—lonely!’

‘He’s like you,’ she said softly. ‘He drives people away. I met Patty Haigh up on your north boundary fence when I was walking …’

‘Patty!’ Patty was the cheerful next-door neighbour who cooked and cleaned for Tom. She was the mother of seven sons. She was always ready for a gossip—not that he and Tom gossiped.

‘She worries about Tom,’ Lily said.

‘Tom’s okay.’

‘She doesn’t like him being on his own.’

‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘That’s why I bought adjoining land.’

‘Why don’t you commute?’ she asked curiously. ‘Patty says you can get to the Harbour in forty minutes from here.’

‘An hour and a half at peak hour.’

‘Since when do doctors travel at peak hour? You can fit your hours around traffic.’

‘Tom doesn’t want me here.’

‘That’s not what Patty says. He needs family.’

‘He doesn’t want family. Neither of us do.’

What did Lily know about Tom? he thought. Lonely? Tom was as fiercely independent as he was. But. Tom’s revelation of moments ago had shaken him.

Regardless, it was nothing to do with Lily.

The chainsaw revved up behind them. He winced. He hated Tom using power tools when he wasn’t here; it was a risk, the price they both paid for independence.

He blocked it out. Or tried to. He tried not to care.

‘You want to go back and help?’ Lily asked, looking concerned.

‘He wouldn’t thank me.’

‘Like my mum doesn’t thank me for caring,’ she whispered. ‘Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.’

‘And sometimes you need to back off.’

‘Like you have from everyone?’

‘Butt out,’ he said, trying to sound good humoured. If she was to pry into his personal life, the next four weeks would be endless.

‘You made phone calls on my behalf,’ she said mildly. ‘Do you call that butting out?’

‘That’s …’

‘Different,’ she said cordially. ‘You can butt into my life, but I can’t do the same in yours.’ She glanced back along the track. ‘That chainsaw …’

‘He doesn’t want us! He’s vowed not to want anyone.’

‘Like you?’

‘I wouldn’t know. Tom and I don’t talk of it. What business is it of mine?’

‘All your business if you love him.’

‘Then you end up where you are with your mother.’

‘Are you saying your uncle Tom is like my mother?’

‘No, but …’ He raked his hair. ‘You can care too much. It leaves you open for hurt, like you’ve been hurt. It sounds to me like you should have backed off years ago.’

‘Like you,’ she said cordially. ‘And Tom. Living in your emotion-free bubbles.’

‘I like emotion-free bubbles.’

‘Good for you,’ she said, and smiled, and it was an entrancing smile. Enchanting. Beguiling. It made him want to.

Step right out of his emotion-free bubble.

It wasn’t going to happen. It was not.

The chainsaw was roaring in the background. They walked on in silence, using the noise as a silent excuse not to talk.

He was so aware of her, a slip of a girl with an enchanting smile, with judgment written all over her. And challenge.

He thought of Tom. Was she right? Was the old man finally admitting he needed people?

The chainsaw was biting through wood. It really wasn’t safe, he conceded.

He had talked to Tom about it. Tom had told him where he could put his worries.

Suddenly the chainsaw’s motor whined sharply, differently, rising in pitch as if it had been jerked free of wood. The wood was rotten. If Tom was pressing against solid wood and met rot …

Even as Luke thought it, the chainsaw motor cut out as it was meant to do the moment pressure was released from the hand hold.

And as the motor died … a scream.

Luke was running almost before his brain had processed the sounds.

They’d been replacing fence posts. The old ones had been hauled out and stacked.

Tom had balanced the first post against the pile, then started slicing it for firewood. Now he was sprawled on the damp grass, the chainsaw tossed beside him. The dogs were whimpering in fear.

A pool of bright scarlet was blooming out from Tom’s leg.

Lily wasn’t as fast as Luke. By the time she reached the clearing Luke had rolled Tom from curled and clutching his leg onto his back so he could see the damage.

In that one instant, she knew what had happened. He’d swiped the chainsaw downward. Maybe the wood was more rotten than he’d expected—maybe he hadn’t needed as much pressure as he had exerted. For whatever reason the saw had sliced far further than he’d intended, smashing into his upper thigh.

He must have hit the femoral artery. It had to be cut, she thought with horror. There was no other explanation for this amount of blood.

Luke was searching for pressure points, one hand pressing, the other ripping at his shirt to try and get a wad, a tie, anything.

Her shirt was off in an instant, folded, handed to him. Then she grabbed Luke’s sleeve and ripped with a strength she hadn’t known she had. She ripped the sleeve right off, then ripped again from shoulder to cuff.

It gave them padding and a tie.

‘Let me … let me…’ Tom was gasping, trying to see.

‘Lie still,’ Luke snapped. There was no time for reassurance, not while the blood was pumping as it was. ‘Tom, lie still. You’ve cut an artery and we have to stop it.’

‘Bloody fool,’ Tom muttered, and subsided.

His face was ashen.

So much blood.

The pad was doing nothing, no matter how hard Luke pressed. Lily was twisting the tie above the wound but making no difference at all to the blood flow. Already Tom was looking clammy, a sheen of cold sweat on his face.

He’d bleed out in minutes.

If they were back at the hospital they’d have tools to cut down, to find the artery and clamp it off. Here they had nothing.

‘I can’t locate it,’ Luke snapped, and the agony in those words was desperate. ‘Your hand’s smaller. You try.’

It was a desperate request. He had nothing else to try.

He took the tie, while she shoved her fist into the wound, hard, as tight as it’d go. Was her hand small enough? She was searching for the source of the blood, pushing with a desperation born of terror.

Harder …

The blood welled around her fingers … and slowed.

Slowed more.

But in time?

She had to be in time.

‘Hey, she’s stopped the bleeding,’ Luke told his uncle. Until now it had been impossible to disguise the panic. ‘Lily’s hit the spot. Don’t you move, not a whisker.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Tom whispered. ‘Oh, girl, I’m making you all mucky.’

‘I love horses and I love nursing,’ Lily told him, trying to match Luke’s reassurance, trying to keep the strain from her voice, as if holding back blood like this was routine. Knowing how close to disaster they still were. ‘I like a bit of muck.’

Tom tried to laugh but it didn’t come off. He looked …

Like he could go into shock at any minute.

It was a real possibility.

Lily couldn’t move. Her fist was a ball curled tight against damaged tissue, pressed hard against the pulsing artery. Somehow she’d hit the spot, somehow she’d blocked the blood supply. If she moved a fraction …

Luke was tightening the tourniquet with one hand, holding his phone in the other. Snapping details to an emergency service.

‘Air ambulance, helicopter, code blue. GPS co-ordinates …’ He lifted his uncle’s phone from his pocket—a new model, Lily saw, and read the positional co-ordinates off. Thank goodness for technology. ‘There’s a clearing a hundred yards to the north. I’ll secure it before you get here. If you can break the sound barrier I’d appreciate it. Move.’

He flicked the phone off.

There were sheets of paper-bark hanging from the massive gums along the river. While Tom—and Lily—stayed motionless Luke hauled a dozen of the soft bark sheets, folded them into a wedge and manoeuvered them with extraordinary care underneath Tom’s hips and legs. He had to be careful; there was no way he was interfering with Lily’s position. But it had to be done. Any available blood needed to flow to Tom’s head and not to his lower limbs. His hips had to be higher than his heart.

Done. He twisted the shirt tighter around Tom’s thigh and Tom grunted in pain.

‘I have emergency gear in the car,’ he told Lily. ‘Catheters. Saline. Morphine.’

‘Then why are you here?’ She was impressed by how calm she sounded. Luke needed to get an IV catheter in now, if not sooner. If Tom’s veins collapsed, resuscitation would no longer be possible.

They both knew that point was close.

‘I’m going.’ Luke sounded agonised. He’d hate to leave but he couldn’t stay. He touched his uncle’s face, then he touched Lily on the shoulder—a feather-light brush.

Then he was gone.

They were the longest minutes of Lily’s life, keeping pressure on the wound, praying Tom’s condition wouldn’t worsen. Trying not to let Tom see she was terrified.

The dogs, Border collies, lay and watched and she sensed their fear as well.

‘I hope Luke can run,’ she ventured, and Tom tried a smile.

‘Like the wind,’ he whispered. ‘He spent half his childhood running on this farm. Most weekends. All his school holidays. Ran all over this farm.’

‘Did he never go back to Singapore?’

‘Parents sent him to boarding school to get rid of him,’ Tom muttered. ‘He had a ruddy big birthmark on his face. His parents hated looking at it. My brother was too mean to get it fixed, though. Told the kid it was character building but in truth he was fixated on money. Like that bloody wife of his …’

He broke off and gasped and Lily wished she could hug him, wished she could move. Selfishly she also wished she could alleviate the pins and needles in her hips.

She could do nothing.

They were totally dependent on Luke. He needed to fetch equipment. He needed to check for a safe place for the helicopter to land. It was maybe a ten-minute run back to the house. Ten minutes there, ten minutes back, time to get land cleared …

All she could do was sit.

It was killing her. It was killing Tom. With every moment his chances grew slimmer.

Then, before she imagined it was possible, she heard the roar of a motor revving through the trees, crashing … and Luke’s Aston Martin broke into the clearing, bush-bashing like he was driving an ancient SUV rather than a sports car. No matter, he was here. He was out of the car almost before it stopped, hauling his bag with him.

‘Tom …’ She heard the catch in his breath, knew how terrified he’d been of what he’d find.

‘We’re fine,’ Lily said quickly. ‘And we always knew Aston Martins were offroaders.’

He managed a fleeting grin as he hauled a catheter from his bag.

‘You drove that thing through the bush?’ Tom gasped, and Luke’s smile became genuine. Luke would have run thinking the worst, Lily thought. He’d have known that if Tom had gone into cardiac arrest while he was gone there’d have been nothing she could do—not when taking her hands from the pressure point meant blood loss would resume.

But now …

Luke was inserting a catheter. He had IV fluids! Not blood product, she thought, that’d be too much to hope from most emergency kits, but he had saline, and any fluid was a lifesaver.

Could be a lifesaver.

Please.

The catheter was inserted in seconds. An IV line was set up.

‘There’s morphine going in, Tom,’ Luke said. ‘Any minute now you can stop gritting your teeth.’

‘I’m not gritting my teeth,’ Tom said, indignant. ‘Or not very much.’

Lily let out her breath, not knowing until then that she’d been holding it. There was a chance …

‘I’m releasing the tourniquet for a moment,’ Luke said. ‘I’m not saving you only to lose that leg. You might want to grit those teeth.’

‘Pansies grit teeth,’ Tom said, though the expression on his face said the pain was bad. ‘Me and Lily aren’t pansies.’

‘You and Lily can face the world with your heads held high,’ Luke said. ‘Pansies? I don’t think so. Heroes, both of you.’

‘It’s our Lily. I’m just lying here thinking of England.’

‘Well, think of England a while longer,’ Tom said. ‘I need to get the paddock cleared for the chopper. Harbour Hospital, here we come.’

‘Hey, we might even be in time for Teo’s party,’ Lily managed, desperately striving for lightness. ‘Tom, there’s a party on the beach tonight. You want to get stitched up and come?’ They all knew how impossible it was, but the thought was a good one.

Tom groaned. ‘Parties,’ he whispered, trying to sound withering. ‘Mind, if alcohol’s involved, I wouldn’t mind a wee drop.’

‘Neither would I,’ Lily said, with meaning. ‘And not so wee at that.’

The helicopter arrived soon after with a team of paramedics from the Harbour who knew Luke by name.

Jack Stephens, trauma specialist, was in charge. The team must have understood the call was deadly serious to have sent a physician of Jack’s standing. In her two nights in the Harbour Lily already knew this guy’s reputation and he was with a team who were just as awesome. They worked with competence and speed, and a light-hearted banter that made Tom relax as nothing else could.

‘For years we’ve been trying to wangle an invitation to see the place where Luke hides out,’ Jack told Tom as he replaced IV saline with blood product and set up another line in case of need, then checked Lily’s position and placed a hand on her shoulder—a silent message not to move. ‘Thanks for organising it. I guess you’re not quite up to guided tours.’

‘Maybe another time?’ Tom said weakly, and Luke gripped his hand and held.

‘Don’t agree to anything,’ he urged. ‘This guy’s a freeloader from way back. He’ll have conned you into bed and breakfast in no time.’

‘I’m guessing it’s you who needs the bed and breakfast,’ Jack told Tom. ‘Let’s get you back to the Harbour.’ He cast an uncertain look at Lily, looking closer at where her hand lay. ‘And I’m thinking we’re taking Lily as well. You’ve got a pulsing artery there, Tom. Lily has her hand on exactly the right spot and it’s hard to reach. If we try to clamp it here we risk more blood being spilled and you’ve made enough of a mess already. Lily, can you stay where you are while we work around you?’

Luke made an involuntary protest. To have Lily hold that position during transfer.

But it was the only way. Where she was now, not only was she holding the blood flow back but somehow she’d lucked onto a position where a tiny amount of blood was seeping through to Tom’s foot. To take Lily away, to slice down, to tie off the artery, keeping the blood supply to the foot uncompromised …

It had to be done in a well-equipped theatre to give Tom any chance of keeping his leg, as well as his life.

‘I’ve never ridden in a helicopter,’ Lily said. ‘Cool.’

She was amazing, he thought. She was as pale as a ghost, still shaken by gastro. Her jeans were blood-soaked and she was only wearing a bra on top. She wasn’t moving. She knew what needed to be done and she was doing it.

‘We can’t fit you in as well,’ Jack told him, and grinned at the look on Luke’s face. ‘This is cool indeed. Our team has the whole ride back to grill Lily and Tom about our Dr Williams’s secret love life and secret farm life. The hospital’s been bursting with questions since Wednesday. Now, you, Luke Williams, can butt out and calmly drive your poncy little car back to the Harbour while we do our interrogation as we ride in real transport. We’ll do our best to save your uncle’s leg while we’re at it. By the way, you might want to stop and collect pyjamas for your uncle on your way. That’ll give us more time to interrogate. Okay, guys, let’s move.’

The Aston Martin, loaded now with two subdued dogs, took a lot more time getting back to the road than it had taken getting to his uncle.

He’d hit a couple of small trees, bush-bashing in his desperation to get back to Tom and Lily. His front fender was bent. He stopped at Tom’s house and had to do a bit of rebending in order to protect the wheel. He didn’t want any hold-ups on the way back to hospital.

He was thumping the fender one last time when his neighbour Patty arrived, looking scared.

‘I saw the chopper,’ she said. ‘From the Harbour. What’s happened?’

He told her, and she offered to pack Tom’s bag while he got the car sorted.

‘I’ll take care of the dogs and the rest of the place as well,’ she said. ‘Tell him Bill and I will drop in and see him as soon as he’s well enough for visitors.’

‘He won’t want—’

‘He always says he doesn’t want,’ she said. ‘But what men say and what men mean are different things. Like telling me he doesn’t need me bringing him casseroles and pies. Like telling me he doesn’t want you living here. He’s a lying hound but he’s our lying hound so we’d be grateful to have him home safe and sound.’

He left her, but her words stayed with him.

What men say and what men mean are different things …

If he and Lily hadn’t been there today …

Tom couldn’t stay on the farm any more. Not alone. They’d have to find him a live-in housekeeper.

He’d hate it.

Could he finally decide to commute?

Tom would hate that, too. He’d put up with him as a kid, because he’d felt sorry for him. He tolerated Luke owning the place next door and he appreciated his help, but essentially he was a loner.

Tom didn’t want Luke close, like Luke didn’t want anyone close.

Anyone like Lily.

His thoughts should have only been on Tom. Instead they kept drifting to a shadowed girl with bloodstained clothing and a courage that defied belief.

Riding Glenfiddich yesterday.

Holding Tom today.

Facing down the gossip of the Harbour.

Coping with a mother who sounded like a nightmare.

Wasn’t he supposed to be worrying about Tom?

He was feeling sick about Tom. No matter that he was in good hands, there was still a chance …

Don’t go there.

He was going as fast as the speed limit and a slightly buckled Aston Martin allowed. The chopper would be back at the Harbour by now. Jack and his team would be doing their utmost to save Tom.

Would they have released Lily?

She’d go into Theatre with them, he thought. They’d leave her hand in position while Tom was anaesthetised, while they put every tool in place so they could work with speed to cut down, clamp, tie off, without compromising what little was left of the leg’s blood supply.

Then Lily could step away.

He needed to be there when she stepped away.

How fast could he make this car go? Not fast enough.

He hit the phone. Evie.

‘He’s here and he’s still with us,’ Evie said before he could say a word. ‘Jack’s taken him straight through into Theatre. He had everyone lined up before he got here. Finn’s supervising. Judy’s on her way. You have the best surgical team the Harbour can provide.’

‘Lily …’

‘Lily still has her hand in place. We’re not shifting her until we’re sure we can get in fast enough.’

‘Can you be there when she’s no longer needed?’

‘I’ll have one of the nurses—’

‘I want you, Evie,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t ask favours, but I’m asking for one now. She’s had gastro. I’m worried about her as well. It’ll be twenty minutes before I get there. Be there for Lily for me.’

‘If it means that much …’

‘It means that much, ’

‘Well, well,’ Evie said gently. ‘And I thought it was mostly gossip. You really do care. Don’t worry, Luke, of course I’ll be there.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

LILY woke and someone was holding her hand.

That someone was Luke.

She blinked but she wasn’t dreaming. Luke Williams was leaning over, smiling, and he was definitely holding her hand. Her fingers were on the coverlet. His were entwined with hers.

Sunlight was streaming in the window, or rather the rays of a tangerine sunset. She was warm and cosseted and …

Luke Williams was holding her hand.

‘Hey, sleepyhead,’ he said softly, and his hold on her hand tightened. ‘I thought you might be intending to sleep until morning. Mind, you have the right.’

His voice was low and husky, tense with emotion. His face was drawn.

It definitely wasn’t a dream. The day’s events flooded back and with it, dread.

‘Tom …’

‘Tom’s fine,’ he said, and he didn’t release her hand by a fraction. ‘Judy Nerolin, our senior vascular surgeon, has decreed his leg will be okay and no one argues with Judy. He’s out of Theatre. He’s still in Intensive Care but all the signs are that he’ll make it and even make it with his leg intact. Thanks to the team from the Harbour—and one amazing nurse. One nurse called Lily.’

‘Hey, I didn’t do anything,’ she said sleepily. ‘Except put my fist in a hole. Like the boy with his thumb in the dyke in Holland. Highly skilled stuff.’

‘You fainted,’ he said ruefully.

‘But not until Judy took over,’ she said with pride. ‘I told myself I couldn’t and I didn’t.’

‘You mean you knew you were going to faint.’

‘By the time they rolled us into Theatre I was feeling a bit light-headed,’ she admitted. ‘But then Dr Lockheart brought me up to this cool bedroom.’

It was indeed a cool bedroom. This suite was for the Harbour’s wealthiest, most influential patients. It was more a suite of rooms than a bedroom.

Dr Evie Lockheart’s family were principal benefactors of this hospital. They were Sydney’s answer to royalty and what royalty decreed, royalty received.

Royalty had obviously decreed Lily deserved this bedroom and Luke wasn’t arguing.

He should pull his hand away. He didn’t.

He’d been sitting here for the last ten minutes, watching her sleep. Her curls were sprawled over the pillows. She was stained and battered.

She’d fought and she’d won. For Tom.

He wasn’t supposed to feel like this. Had Tom taught him nothing?

He remembered the first time Tom had come to collect him from boarding school. It had been his first week there, aged all of ten, and to say it had been ghastly was an understatement.

‘You teach yourself you don’t need anyone,’ Tom had growled. ‘You grow up tough and you stay tough.’

That’s what his father had said when he refused to pay for the removal of the birthmark. ‘It’ll make you tough.’

He’d sent him away, though. Tom had been raised with the same philosophy, had learned the hard way how it worked, but he’d bent the rules.

He’d cared for Luke.

Luke now cared for Tom in a way he hadn’t realised. He’d thought the only person he’d ever fallen in love with was Hannah. It wasn’t true, though. Seeing Tom’s life hang so precariously, he knew he was exposed to pain all over again. And now this slip of a girl, who’d hung on for over an hour, knowing if she moved a sliver of an inch they’d lose …

It was her bravery that moved him, he told himself, not the woman herself, but he knew it was much more.

He thought of her suddenly on Glenfiddich, and the dread surfaced. He thought of Tom and the chainsaw.

When Luke had been fifteen Tom had been bitten by a snake. He’d recovered but Luke remembered thinking, If he dies I have no one.

‘Don’t watch me if you’re worried,’ Tom had snapped, and Luke had been trying not to watch ever since.

It wasn’t working.

‘I’m sorry I overreacted about Glenfiddich,’ he said. ‘Give me another six months to train him and you can ride him all you like.’

‘All by myself?’ she demanded, mock-awed. ‘Will you buy me a stepladder to climb up with?’

‘Lily …’

‘No, it’s a very generous offer,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry. I should have asked before I rode him.’

‘And I should have stayed home with you.’

‘Watching me in case I did anything dangerous?’ she asked, her eyes clouding. ‘Is that the problem? Is that why you can’t stay with Tom—because you can’t bear that he does dangerous things whether you’re watching or not?’

‘That’s deep,’ he said, and tried a smile. ‘Have you been talking to John Allen?’

‘I don’t need a psychologist to figure out something’s wrong. Luke, go away.’

But her hand didn’t disengage from his.

‘You want me to leave?’

‘I need to take a shower. I’m fine. Fainting was just a reaction. Even the strongest woman might have been tempted to faint, so a wuss like me …’

She was laughing again! After all she’d been through …

She was enchanting.

Love …

Whoa. Step away now, he told himself.

Don’t watch.

He could no sooner not watch than fly.

‘I could help you shower.’

‘In your dreams, Dr Williams.’ She grinned. ‘Since when do plastic surgeons shower patients?’

‘Three nights ago a very bossy nurse said I should do just that.’

Her lips twitched. ‘That was some cheek.’

‘I think you’re wonderful.’

The laughter in her eyes faded. She met his look square on. ‘Luke, don’t.’

‘Don’t?’

‘You want me to share your apartment for a month. That’s not going to work if you make me feel …’

She didn’t finish but he knew what the words were.

Their eyes locked, and something was happening. A link, a connection, growing stronger every second.

He wanted to lean forward. He wanted to take her in his arms and …

The door opened and Lily flinched. He pulled back, not sure whether to be glad or sorry.

No. He was definitely sorry.

Evie Lockheart opened the door with caution. She smiled as she saw him, and she smiled even wider when she saw Lily was awake.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘We were worried about you. Nurses collapsing in Theatre does our safety record no good at all.’

Lily smiled back, looking embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to be sorry. The whole hospital’s in awe of what you did. Saving Luke’s uncle …’ She glanced at Luke and grinned. ‘And the hosital’s on fire with the story. In one fell swoop we’ve met your lady, your uncle and your farm. Where’s your precious privacy now?’

‘Shot to pieces,’ Luke admitted.

But Evie was focusing on Lily. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine.’

‘You don’t look fine.’

‘Because I’m covered in blood,’ Lily said with dignity. ‘If I could have a shower …’

‘I’ll send a nurse to help you.’

‘I don’t need—’

‘Tell me what you need when I’m interested,’ Evie retorted. She elbowed Luke out of the way and felt Lily’s pulse.

‘She’s had gastro,’ Luke reminded her. ‘The plan was for her to rest this weekend.’

‘Yeah, like that worked,’ Evie said dryly, assessing Lily with professional concern. ‘You’re too thin.’

‘I’m always thin.’

‘No other symptoms?’

Lily hauled her hand away and tucked it under the covers. ‘I’m okay. Honestly, gastro and this afternoon would make anyone faint.’

‘I guess.’ Evie turned to Luke. ‘Look after her.’

‘I will.’ And he surprised himself by how much he meant it. ‘She won’t let me help her shower, though,’ he complained, and Evie grinned.

‘Good. She needs to rest.’

‘I wouldn’t …’ He practically blushed.

‘You’re male,’ she said darkly. ‘Of course you would. I’m with Lily. I’ll send in a nurse.’

‘I don’t need help,’ Lily said.

‘You’ll take it. Shower and back to bed for the night.’

‘I’m going home,’ Lily said, and then hesitated. Home. The word had connotations for them both.

But Evie was being efficient. It was up to him to be the same. ‘I’ll collect you as soon as you’re clean,’ he said. ‘I’m going to check on Tom but I’ll be back in half an hour, Lily. I’ll bring the car to the discharge area.’

‘I’m not a patient.’

‘No,’ Evie said. ‘You’re a heroine. The Harbour takes a while to accept people as its own, but what you’ve done this afternoon … you’re now one of us, like it or not. We might gossip, we might be in your face, but we do look after our own. Luke takes you home or you stay here, like it or not.’

‘Fine,’ she said helplessly. ‘I mean, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Evie said, and grabbed Luke’s arm and steered him out of the room. ‘Expect a nurse. Luke, let’s leave the lady to get on with what she needs to do.’

The nurse took a while to come. That was fine by Lily. She watched the sun set over the distant harbour and she felt as if she was floating.

Luke was taking her home.

She could still feel the pressure of his fingers on hers. He didn’t know his own strength, she thought.

He’d almost kissed her.

She’d wanted him to.

Which was really dumb. It must be because she was still tired and overwrought. Today—or, to be honest, the last few days—had taken it out of her.

Her stomach still hurt. Stress?

Maybe she should have said something to Evie.

No. She simply needed to give herself time to get over the gastro. To get over today. And more, she needed to stop stressing.

How could a girl do that when she was heading to Luke’s apartment? What had she got herself into?

She sighed and closed her eyes. At least her mother wasn’t here, and with that thought came more. How was her mother coping?

Her father’s voice … ‘You will look after her?’

She was so tired.

A young nurse peeped round the door. ‘Dr Lockheart said you’d like help to shower. Dr Williams has given me a bag with some clothes. Are you up to showering now? Dr Lockheart says if you’d like to have another sleep first then Dr Williams will wait.’

‘No,’ she said, pushing herself upright. Reluctantly. ‘No, it’s okay. I need to go home.’

Wherever home was.

Home with Luke?

‘So why’s she looking like she’s been hit by a train?’

To say Evie was blunt was an understatement. She said things as she saw them.

‘She had gastro.’

‘You and I both know gastro doesn’t make you look like that. There’s no underlying medical problem? She went out like a light in Theatre. She scared the hell out of Judy.’

‘She’s been under strain.’

‘Because of your relationship?’

‘Will you butt out?’ He turned to face her head on. Finn had labelled her Princess Evie. The staff still called her that, not to her face but as a gentle reminder to themselves of the power she wielded. Evie was one doctor among many, but her family money meant she was unsackable. Her grandfather had brought her in here when she was tiny, she’d practically lived in his office and she thought of the place as home.

So this hospital was her home and she didn’t like mess. She was trying to tidy Lily up, he thought. Pigeonhole her. Figure exactly where she fitted.

‘She almost looks abused,’ Evie said conversationally, and he practically spluttered.

‘You’re accusing me of abusing … my girlfriend?’ It took him a while to find the last two words but he managed it.

‘I’m not saying anything of the kind,’ Evie said. ‘That’s why I’m asking. I said almost. What other explanation is there?’

He groaned inwardly. There was no way she’d leave this now; no way she’d stop pestering him. If he didn’t give her what she wanted then he had no doubt she’d march right back and ask Lily. If she thought a woman was in trouble …

She might be Princess Evie, but she had courage and honour.

Almost as much as Lily?

He had to give her the truth, he thought, or as much as he needed to divulge to get her off both their backs.

‘Lily’s having trouble with her mother,’ he said. ‘Major trouble.’

‘Illness?’

‘Her mother’s stolen her savings and has taken up with the local vicar. And if you repeat that to a soul I don’t care who your family is, I’ll hang you out to dry. I imagine Lily would kill me if I told anyone.’

Evie stared at him, stunned. ‘All her savings …’

‘Yep.’

‘So that’s why she’s finally staying with you. Oh, the poor girl.’

‘I’m fixing it,’ he said heavily.

‘You’re fixing it?’

‘As much as she’ll let me.’

‘You?’ she said, and he wondered what exactly the staff did think of him.

‘Leave it,’ he said, and her face creased into a smile.

‘Our Luke, fixing it,’ she said happily. ‘How about that? Falling for a woman with problems.’

He wasn’t.

Or wait … maybe he was.

He needed to get things in perspective.

He wasn’t sure what perspective was.

‘Luke, while you’re in fixing mode …’ Evie said

And he thought, Uh-oh, here we go. He did not have this kind of conversation with Evie. He didn’t have this kind of conversation with anyone.

Did Evie suddenly think he’d changed?

‘It’s Finn,’ she said. ‘I’m worried.’

Here was another jolt. Evie wasn’t a worrier; she was a brisk, efficient doctor with the weight of the Lockheart fortune behind her.

Finn.

The niggle of worry he’d been feeling about his friend surfaced again, and turned into something more substantial.

But this was Finn Kennedy they were talking about, and no matter how much money Evie’s family had, he wouldn’t thank Luke for crossing boundaries. A junior doctor was talking to him about his boss. ‘I don’t think he’d thank you for worrying about him,’ he said dryly.

‘You’re his friend,’ Evie snapped.

Was he? Finn didn’t do friends. Still … He’d been there when Finn had been released from the army. He’d spent time with him whether Finn wanted him or not. The number of bottles of single malt they’d consumed …

There was a good reason why Finn had hit the bottle, Luke conceded. His brother had died in front of him. He’d been wounded himself. There was trauma, deep and never spoken of.

He didn’t want to get involved.

Too late. He already was.

‘So why are you worried?’ he growled, and started walking again, but Evie took his arm and made him stop. Here in the carpeted corridor of the private suites they could have some privacy.

‘He dropped his clipboard.’

He dropped his clipboard. He let her words sink in. There wasn’t a lot of basis there for worry.

But this was Evie, talking about Finn. Evie didn’t do worry lightly.

Evie and Finn sparked off each other. Evie gave as good as she got. They’d make a good pair, Luke thought, but, wow, there’d be some fights.

Maybe that’s what Finn needed. Fights. Someone to stand up to him.

His thoughts were flying tangentially. He was thinking about Finn. He was thinking about Tom.

He was thinking about Lily.

He didn’t do personal concern. Or he hadn’t. Suddenly he was surrounded on all sides.

In half an hour he had to take Lily home. Put her back into his bed. Make her something to eat …

Keep her safe.

No. Focus on Finn. Of the three worries, this was the easiest.

‘Tell me what you’re worried about.’

Evie exhaled and he thought this seemed liked a major decision, to talk to him about it.

‘Wednesday night … he was walking down the corridor in front of me, carrying patient notes in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Heavy pile in the left. Clipboard in the right. He dropped the clipboard. I … We’ve been a bit tense with each other so I stood back; hoping he wouldn’t turn around and see me. He stared down at the clipboard and then he stared at his hand. Swore. He set the notes down, put the clipboard on top of the notes and lifted them all in his left arm. Then he kept going, everything in his left arm, his right arm sort of tucked against him. And, Luke … yesterday in Emergency we had a guy who needed urgent stitching and I was flat out. Finn was passing. You know how he’s always passing. I called for help and he stitched for me. It was tricky. This was a guy’s face but Finn’s good. Anyway, fifteen minutes later I finished what I was doing, went to the cubicle where Finn was working and he handed back over to me. “This is your job,” he snapped. Okay, that’s his usual style. But, Luke, I’d swear his right hand was trembling.’

Silence.

Luke stared out of the window and watched the Manly ferry chug slowly across the harbour.

His boss. A shaking hand.

It was probably nothing—only Evie didn’t worry for nothing.

No matter how convoluted the gossip network of the Harbour became, Luke stayed detached. He liked to think he’d taught himself not to care, only of course he did care. From a distance.

Finn was a bad-tempered, surly, uncommunicative surgeon. He was one of the best surgeons Luke had ever worked with.

He was, like it or not, his friend.

How much of the single malt was he putting away?

So what to do? Head to Finn’s office and say, ‘I hear your hand’s shaking?’

There was not one snowball’s chance in a bushfire of that happening, and of getting back out of the door if he did.

Besides, he needed to check on Tom. And then take Lily home.

Lily, of the gaunt face. Lily, who was too thin even before the gastro.

She’d needed this weekend to recover and it had ended like this.

‘That’s all I wanted to say,’ Evie said, brisk again. ‘I just thought … someone else should know.’

Gee, thanks, Luke thought morosely. Hand over your worries to me, why don’t you?

But that wasn’t fair, and he stopped himself from saying it. Evie could have taken her concerns straight to the medical director. Eric would then be bound to take them further. The legal implications of an impaired director of surgery would make Eric act whether he wished to or not.

Evie had chosen the kinder path.

‘Thank you,’ he said heavily.

‘I’m sure you mean that,’ she said dryly. ‘Sorry, but I had to tell someone. Short of counting the whisky bottles in his garbage and confronting him with it, I didn’t know what else to do. So can you fix Finn as well as Lily and her mother? I’ll see to Uncle Tom.’

‘That’s hardly a fair division of labour.’

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