Claiming his secret heir—and his bride!

Dr. Ellie Carson once married her secret prince, but then duty tore their whirlwind marriage apart—only, Ellie was also pregnant!

Now surgeon and crown prince Marc Falken is soon to become king—and he’s discovered he has a son! Claiming his heir means seeking out Ellie—the woman he’s never stopped loving. But can Marc convince Ellie that she can be a doctor and his queen, and that finally they can become the family they were always meant to be?

Marc paused, overwhelmed by what he had to tell her.

Ellie rose and opened the sideboard. She poured two whiskies. Large ones.

“I don’t drink this except in emergencies,” she told him. “I suspect I need it now. Maybe we both do. So tell me.”

He took the glass and drained it, and then he looked at Ellie. He could still see the girl he’d loved behind those tired eyes. He could still see the laughter, the fun... But he could also see the care and the responsibility.

He watched her shoulders brace yet again, and he hated it.

“Ellie, I’m now the crown prince of Falkenstein and Felix is my son. It takes a year to formalize a divorce in Australia so Felix was born while we were still legally married. This may mess with all our lives in ways I can’t imagine, but once I’m crowned, Felix will take my current title. Your son—our son—will be the new crown prince of Falkenstein.”

Dear Reader,

What is it with royalty? The combination of tradition, power and wealth is a heady mix that I suspect would be difficult to handle in real life, but as a writer I love playing with ‘what ifs?’. What if an entire royal family was wiped out in one hit? That’s a theme that’s been explored before—an unimaginable tragedy, but to a fiction writer the idea’s gold. What if the unexpected heir to the throne is a doctor, dedicated to his calling, who wants nothing to do with royalty? And what if, years ago, that doctor had a secret son, who’s suddenly the new crown prince?

The situation had me wiggling my toes in the sand in delight as I took my dog for her daily beach walk. I love a good ‘what if?’, and if it combines the pageantry of a royal coronation, a feel-good romance and a secret baby thrown in for good measure, hooray! The dog and I needed to walk our legs off in order for me to sort out all the complications, but we loved how it all turned out. At least I did. Sadly, Bonnie was too busy chasing seagulls to care.

Marion

Reunited With Her Surgeon Prince

Marion Lennox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Books by Marion Lennox

Mills & Boon Medical Romance

Wildfire Island Docs

Saving Maddie’s Baby

A Child to Open Their Hearts

Meant-to-Be Family

From Christmas to Forever?

Falling for Her Wounded Hero

Mills & Boon Cherish

His Cinderella Heiress

Stepping into the Prince’s World

Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

Praise for Marion Lennox

“This is a wonderful book, full of the trademark warmth, soul-searching and cheer Marion Lennox brings to all her books.”

—Goodreads on From Christmas to Forever?

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

Booklist

Praise

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THE BRAND-NEW Crown Prince of Falkenstein managed three hours of nightmare-filled sleep. He rose at dawn, desperate for coffee and a walk to clear his head. Instead, he found the Secretary of State waiting. The massive palace dining table was covered with newspapers, and their front pages all screamed versions of the same.

Entire Royal Family Killed in Plane Tragedy!

‘This is what you get for breaking rules,’ Josef said in greeting, and Marc wanted to thump him. At such a time, to be thinking of rules...

He headed for the huge silver coffee pot before deigning to answer. Being Crown Prince had to count for something. Half a cup of coffee in, his head was clear enough to respond. ‘How did breaking the rules cause this?’

‘Heirs in succession to the throne should never travel in the same plane,’ Josef told him. ‘Your uncle and his wife, your cousin, his sons and their assorted mistresses. All in the one small plane, on one indulgent holiday—and at vast expense when so much needs to be done at home. No consideration for rules. It’s all part of the same. Your grandfather was a warlord. Your uncle was a playboy. Your cousin was a wastrel, and his sons were already mixing with women of the worst kind.’ Josef heaved a sigh and laid the newspaper aside. ‘Now it’s up to you, boy, to fix the mess.’

‘I have messes of my own to fix.’

‘Not as big as this one. Your Highness—’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘It’s who you are,’ Josef said simply. ‘You’re Marc Pierre Henri de Falken, Crown Prince of Falkenstein. After your coronation you’ll be His Majesty.’ He hesitated but then forged on. ‘And, might I say, this tragedy is appalling, but for the country it may well be a force for good.’

‘I’m no prince,’ Marc exploded. ‘I’m a surgeon and I need to stay a surgeon. If you look at the mess our country’s health system is in...’

‘That’s why you have no choice but to take the throne.’ There’d been hours now to take in the news, and the country’s chief administrator obviously saw the path ahead as being without obstacles. ‘You’ve been doing your best with rundown hospitals, fighting for funds from a royal family who doesn’t care. Now the reins are yours. Think of the bigger picture. The schools. The courts. Our welfare system. If you refuse the throne then it goes to Ranald de Bougier, and heaven help us if that happens. He’ll propel us back to war.’

‘But I don’t want it.’

Marc took his coffee and stood at the vast bay window of the King’s private dining room. Though it was the informal part of the palace, even this part was intimidating.

Marc’s father had been the ignored younger son of the King. He’d been a pacifist who had hated his father’s warlike tendencies. He’d studied medicine, he’d struggled to build the country’s health system and he’d been appalled when the King propelled the country into a meaningless border conflict.

Marc had only been in this palace once, as an awed seven-year-old, brought to be introduced to a family his parents had little to do with. There’d been continual fights about health funding and then an epic fight when war broke out. Marc had never been back. Until now.

Marc raked his long surgeon’s fingers through his dark hair and stared into the future with horror.

He glanced through to the family’s ‘informal’ sitting room. It was an opulent display of gilt, brocades and priceless furniture.

He wanted nothing to do with it.

The huge mirror above the dining room’s massive fireplace showed Marc as he was, a thirty-five-year-old surgeon, a man who was weary from operating until midnight and who’d been brought to the palace straight from Theatre. After four hours of horrified discussion, he’d fallen asleep in his clothes. He was wearing faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt. He hadn’t had time to shave.

A king? Ha!

‘I can’t,’ he said simply. ‘I love my work.’

‘You have no choice,’ Josef told him, and Marc thought of the mess the country’s healthcare system was in, of the theatres without equipment, of the rundown hospitals, of the endless waiting lists.

If he turned his back on the throne, he could do more of what he was doing now. He could save lives, one patient at a time. If he accepted the throne...how many more could he save?

Josef was right. He had no choice, but he felt ill. He dug his hands into his pockets and kicked the heirloom rug at his feet.

‘We need to move on,’ Josef was saying, gently now, obviously knowing his argument had been won. ‘You need to face the press. We need to get you shaved, dressed in something...’ he eyed Marc’s clothes with distaste ‘...more fitting. And we need to have a statement ready. The country’s in uproar. We need reassurance of continuity. Even at this time we need the implication that this tragedy might make things better.’

‘Why? Surely there’s no need to talk of the future yet?’

‘There is a need,’ Josef told him. ‘The country’s desperate for a lifeline. You know there’s no one fit to form government. Marc, we need steadiness and the promise of a better future. Moving on, we need to find you a wife. Get you a son. I believe you’ll make a great king, and your sons after you.’

And that made Marc think of something else. Something that had played on his mind many times these past ten years. Something else that made him unfit to be royal.

He hesitated but it had to be said.

‘There may be another...issue.’

‘Yes?’ Josef looked as if nothing could surprise him, but Marc knew this would.

‘I have a son.’

He was right. To say Josef looked stunned would be an understatement.

Marc refilled his coffee mug and realised this was the first time ever that he’d said those words.

I have a son. The words seemed unreal in this situation that was already unreal. Having a son was part of another world. And yet, when it was said out loud it assumed a reality that shocked him as well as Josef.

He watched the colour drain from the old man’s face. His grandfather’s and then his uncle’s reign had been marred by scandal after scandal, Marc knew, and now he was asking Josef to cope with more. He was under no illusions as to the old man’s role in the royal household. Somehow Josef had kept the royal family intact, holding the country together. He’d served his country with honour. He didn’t deserve to have to cope with this.

‘A son...’ Josef whispered. ‘Where? When?’

‘You knew I was married, briefly?’

‘I...yes.’ The old man was struggling to regroup, sifting long-forgotten information about a Marc he barely knew, a doctor on the outer fringes of the royal family. ‘I had heard that,’ he said. ‘It was just after you qualified as a doctor, wasn’t it? In Australia. A momentary aberration. You came home when war broke out. The divorce was almost immediate?’

‘It was,’ Marc said heavily. ‘The marriage was...a mistake. I didn’t know Ellie was pregnant when we separated, and the child was born well after I returned. A son.’

‘It was never said.’

‘There was no need. Neither of us was in a position to keep a child. I was flying back into a war zone. Ellie was a second-year medical student and she wished to continue. The baby was adopted at birth.’

‘Formally adopted?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know the adoptive parents?’

‘No. I had nothing to do with the adoption.’

He watched Josef think through the ramifications while he considered a third coffee. Josef’s background was legal, Marc knew, and he’d spent a lifetime getting the royal family out of trouble. Scotching scandals was his principal skill. Marc could almost see the cogs whirring.

‘There should be no concern,’ he said at last. ‘This was a child conceived in an impulsive marriage when you were little more than a child yourself. If he’s been formally adopted, there can be no claim on inheritance. That can be explained to him if there’s ever contact. But then...’ he hesitated ‘...there may be more immediate repercussions. As the unexpected heir to the throne, you’ll face media scrutiny of the worst kind. The country hardly knows you, so the media frenzy will be extraordinary. They’ll dig out this old marriage. Where’s your ex-wife now?’

‘I presume she’s still in Australia. I haven’t spoken to her in years.’

‘Tell me about her.’

He was too tired for this. He was too tired for everything. To be dredging up memories of Ellie...

But, strangely, it was easy. She should have been a distant memory. Instead she was a vivid reality, a warm, vibrant woman, curvy, laughing...

Except when he’d last seen her, ten years ago, standing in the airport lounge. She’d been wan with what he’d learned later was morning sickness, but she’d been resolute in the direction they had to take.

‘We’ve been stupid, Marc, but you know what we need to do.’

He did. The senseless war was bringing his country to its knees. He was a qualified doctor—just—but his place was at home. Ellie was only two years into her medical course. Even after he’d learned of the pregnancy, they’d both known there was no room in their lives for a child.

‘Ellie’s a doctor too,’ he told Josef but he didn’t even know that for sure. Their separation had been absolute. She’d reluctantly allowed him to provide funds to keep studying—because of the pregnancy—but the amount she’d decided was ‘over the top’ had been returned and he hadn’t heard from her since.

‘Our marriage was a mistake by both of us,’ she’d told him. ‘I have no intention of profiting by it.’

And he’d had no choice but to agree. He’d been desperate to be with her for the birth but the conflict at home had escalated. The need for doctors had been dire, and by the time her—their?—baby was born, getting out of the country had been impossible.

Her email telling him of the birth had been businesslike, informing him only of the bare fact that she’d given birth to a boy. The feeling he’d had then was indescribable. Pain. Helplessness. Anger at a situation which made it impossible for him to claim his son.

And when he’d finally found a way to phone, her response had been curt.

‘Leave it, Marc. He’ll have a good home, I promise. You’re needed where you are and so am I. Our marriage was a fantasy, and we need to put it behind us. Good luck, Marc, and goodbye.’

Their son was no longer their son, yet the anger and helplessness had stayed. And guilt. Disconnecting from that phone call had seemed the hardest thing he’d ever done, and there’d been many times since when mother and child had been in his dreams.

‘She’s intelligent enough to be discreet?’ Josef asked, dragging him back to the present.

‘Of course.’ It was a snap, inappropriately terse.

‘Has she married again? Has she told her new husband?’

‘I have no idea. She made it clear she wanted no further contact.’

‘And the divorce? It was amicable?’

He thought of Ellie’s face that last time. They’d both known the impossibility of their situation. There’d been no argument, just bleak acceptance. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s a help.’ Josef wasn’t seeing Marc’s emotion. He was thinking ahead, anticipating trouble. ‘But you don’t know where the boy is?’

‘Ellie never shared adoption details.’ He hadn’t asked. In the midst of the chaos of war, he hadn’t had the energy to ask questions, and it had seemed unfair—even cruel—to question Ellie’s judgement.

‘Then that’s how it must remain,’ Josef decreed. ‘For the child’s sake, it’s imperative his adoption records remain confidential. There’s no problem with inheritance but the media would love it.’

‘I can’t guarantee—’

‘We need to guarantee,’ Josef said flatly. ‘If the media finds him, can you imagine the headlines? We need to contact this woman before the media does. Press the need for silence. Pay her if necessary.’

‘She won’t accept payment.’

He remembered that last conversation almost word for word.

‘You have a disaster to deal with. How many people dead, Marc? What’s the adoption of one child compared to that? Marc, you’ve helped enough. I don’t want to continue contact. It’s over.’

‘We’ll do what’s necessary and do it fast,’ Josef was saying. ‘If she’s remarried and hasn’t told her husband, then it could become messy. I’ll brief one of our best lawyers. We’ll research her background while he’s on the way to Australia. He’ll meet her face to face, tell her exactly what’s involved, tell her she has to keep her mouth shut. Most countries allow contact between adoptive parents and birth mothers. If she has that contact then she needs to be silent about where he is. Did she name you as the father?’

‘No.’ That was down to him too. She’d asked him in that first curt email:

‘Do you want your name on his birth certificate?’

The choice he’d made was wrong.

In his defence, he’d been stressed to the point of breaking. The war had been going badly. He’d been overworked past exhaustion, doing work far beyond his range of expertise, but there’d been no choice. For every patient he’d treated there’d been three more waiting. He’d also been gutted by the thought of Ellie having the baby alone. He couldn’t bear the thought of what he’d lost. He’d made an instant decision then that he still regretted.

‘Leave it blank,’ he’d told her. ‘I can’t be there for him. I have no right to be his father. The adoptive father should have all the rights.’

It still hurt but Josef’s face cleared. ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘Even if the media finds out, it can be implied he wasn’t yours. What better reason to end the marriage?’

‘That’s not fair to Ellie.’

‘We’ll pay her enough to compensate.’

As if that would work.

He turned and faced out of the window again, across the manicured palace gardens to the mountains in the distance. Somewhere, on the other side of the world, Ellie was making a life for herself, without him and without their son. It was a decision they’d made together.

Ellie was tough. She’d had to be, with her background. She called life as she saw it.

And now? A legal expert would come blustering in from her past, offering her bribes. Even asking her to swear a child wasn’t his.

He thought of the Ellie he’d known. She was feisty, opinionated...moral. She also had a temper.

‘No,’ he told Josef. ‘It could turn the situation into a disaster.’

‘There’s no other way,’ Josef told him.

‘There is,’ he said heavily and he saw his path clear. This part, at least. ‘If this is as important as you say, then let me do it. I must be able to fly under the radar for a few days. I’ll face the media this morning and then I have a week’s grace until the funeral. Say I’m stricken with grief, incommunicado. If I board a plane this morning no one will notice—the media surely won’t expect me to be leaving the country. I’ll go to Australia and talk to Ellie myself. I’ll make sure the child’s privacy is protected and there are no cracks the media can chisel open. And then...’

He put down his coffee cup. It was fine china with the royal coat of arms emblazoned on the front, and he found himself thinking almost longingly of the paper cups he grabbed after all-night Theatre shifts. That part of his life was over and he had to accept it. ‘Then I’ll come home,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll bury my family and I’ll accept the throne.’

CHAPTER TWO

LIFE AS BORRAWONG’S only doctor was sometimes boring, but just as often it was chaotic. If one person went down with the flu, the whole town usually followed. Kids never seemed to fall out of trees on their own. Ellie had a great team at the hospital, though. Usually she could cope.

But not with this.

Two carloads of kids had been drag racing on a minor road with a rail crossing without boom gates. Maybe the drifting fog had hidden the crossing’s flashing lights and the sight of the oncoming train until it was too late. Or maybe alcohol had made them decide to race the train. Whatever the reason, the results had been disastrous.

The train had just left the station so it had been travelling slowly, but not slowly enough. It had ploughed into one car, pushing it into the car beside it.

If the train had been up to speed, every occupant of the cars would have been killed. Instead, Ellie had seven kids in various stages of injury, distress and hysteria. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—practically the whole town—were crammed into the waiting room or spilling into the car park outside.

Air ambulances were on their way from Sydney but the fog was widespread and there were delays. The doctor from the neighbouring town was caught up with an unexpected traumatic birth.

She was the only doctor.

Right now, she was focusing on intubating seventeen-year-old May-Belle Harris. May-Belle was the town’s champion netballer, blonde, beautiful, confident. At least she had been. Her facial injuries would take months of reconstruction—if Ellie could get her to live past the next few minutes.

Ellie’s team was fighting behind her, nurses and paramedics coping with trauma far beyond their training. But while she fought for May-Belle’s life, she had to block them out.

‘You can make it,’ she told May-Belle as she finally got the tube secure. At least she now had a safe air supply. The girl was deeply anaesthetised. She should have an anaesthetist to watch over her before she could be transferred to Sydney for specialist reconstructive surgery. Instead of which, she had Joe.

‘Can you take over?’ Ellie asked the seventy-year-old hospital orderly. ‘Watch that tube like a hawk and watch those monitors. Any change at all, yell. Loud.’

‘Louder than these?’ Joe said with a wry grimace. There were six others kids waiting for attention, plus the injuries and bruises of the train crew who’d been thrown about on impact. Some of these kids—the least injured—were...well, loud would be an understatement. One of the girls was having noisy hysterics and the very junior nurse allocated to her couldn’t quieten her.

With years of experience, Ellie knew she could quieten her in a minute but she didn’t have a minute.

‘Grab me by the hair and pull me over here if you need me,’ Ellie told Joe. Block everything out and focus on that breathing.

Moving on...

A boy with bubbling breathing also needed urgent attention. There had to be a punctured lung.

A girl with a shattered elbow needed her too. She risked losing her hand if Ellie didn’t re-establish a secure blood supply soon. The lung had to be a priority but that elbow was at an appalling angle. If the blood supply cut...

And what if there were internal injuries?

Focus, she told herself. Do what comes next.

* * *

He was heading for Borrawong’s Bush Nursing Hospital.

Marc hadn’t been surprised when Josef’s discreet investigators had told him Ellie was back working here. This was where her mother had lived, the town Ellie was raised in.

The last time he’d seen her she’d been heading home to care for her mum.

Borrawong was a tiny town miles from anywhere. A wheat train ran through at need, hauling the grain from the giant silos that seemed to make up the bulk of the town. The train felt like the town’s only link with civilisation.

He’d never been there. ‘As long as Mum stays well, I’m never going back,’ Ellie had told him. She was jubilant at having escaped her small-town upbringing, her childhood spent as her mother’s carer. Until those last days when their combined worlds had seemed to implode, she’d put Borrawong far behind her.

But now Josef’s investigator had given Marc the low-down on Borrawong as well. ‘Population six hundred. Bush nursing hospital, currently staffed with one doctor and four nurses, servicing an extended farming district.’

To be the only doctor in such a remote community, to have returned to Borrawong... What was Ellie doing?

Had her mother died? Why had he never asked?

Because he had no right to know?

He landed in Sydney, then drove for five hours, heading across vast fog-shrouded fields obviously used for cropping. It was mid-afternoon when he arrived, and midwinter. The time difference made him feel weird. The main street of Borrawong—such as it was—seemed deserted. The general store had a sign: ‘Closed’ pinned to the door. The town seemed deserted.

Then he turned off the main street towards the hospital—and this was where everybody was.

The tiny brick hospital was surrounded by a sea of cars. There were people milling by the entrance. People were hugging each other, sobbing. Two groups were involved in a yelling match, screaming abuse.

What the...?

He pulled up in the far reaches of the car park and made his way through the mass of people. By the time he reached the hospital entrance, he had the gist. A train had crashed into two carloads of kids.

How many casualties?

The reception area was packed. Here, though, people were quieter. This would be mum and dad territory, the place where the closest relatives waited for news.

He made his way towards the desk and a burly farming type guy blocked his path.

‘Can’t go any further, mate,’ the man told him. ‘Doc Ellie says no one goes past this point.’

Ellie. So she was here. Coping with this alone?

‘I’m a doctor,’ he told him.

The man’s shoulders sagged. ‘You’re kidding me, right? Mate, you’re welcome.’ He turned back to his huddled wife. ‘See, Claire, I told you help’d come.’

He was the help?

There was no one at the reception desk, but double doors led to the room beyond.

A child was sitting across the doors. He was small, maybe nine or ten years old.

He was in a wheelchair but he didn’t look like a patient. He was seated as if he was a guard. He had his back to the doors and he held a pair of crutches across his chest. Anyone wanting to get past clearly had to negotiate the crutches, and the kid was holding them as if he knew how to use them.

Right now he seemed the only person with any official role.

‘I’m here to see Dr Carson,’ Marc told him. The kid’s expression was mulish, belligerent. The crutches were raised to chest height, held widthways across the doors. ‘I understand there’s been an accident,’ Marc said hurriedly. ‘I might be able to help.’

‘No one goes in,’ the kid told him. ‘Unless you’re Doc Brandon from Cowrang, or from the air ambulance. But you’re not.’

‘I’m a doctor.’

‘You’re not a relative? They all want to go in.’

‘I’m not family. I’m a doctor,’ he repeated. ‘And I might be able to help.’

‘A real doctor?’

‘Yes. I’m a surgeon.’

‘You have a funny accent.’

‘I’m a surgeon with a funny accent, yes, but I do know how to treat people after car accidents. I knew Dr Carson back when we were both training. When she was at university. Believe me, if she needs help then she’ll be pleased to see me.’

Pleased? That was stretching it, he thought grimly, but right now didn’t seem the time for niceties.

The crutches were still raised. The kid was taking a couple of moments to think about it. He eyed him up and down, assessing, and for a moment Marc took the time to assess back.

And then...

Then he almost forgot to breathe.

The kid was small and skinny, freckled, with dark hair that spiked into an odd little cowlick. He was dressed in jogging pants and an oversized red and black football jumper. One foot was encased in a worn and filthy trainer. The other foot was hidden by a cast, starting at the thigh.

He could be anyone’s kid.

His hair was jet-black, his brows were thick and black as well, and his eyes...they were almost black too.

And those freckles! He’d seen those freckles before, and the boy’s chin jutted upward in a way Marc remembered.

He looked like Ellie. But Ellie had glossy auburn hair that curled into a riot. Ellie had green eyes.

The kid had Marc’s hair and Marc’s eyes.

Surely not.

And then, from the other side of the door, someone screamed. It was a scream Marc recognised from years of working as a trauma surgeon. It spoke of unbearable pain. It spoke of a medical team without the resources to prevent such pain.

Shock or not, now wasn’t the time to be looking at a kid with dark eyes and asking questions.

‘You need to let me in,’ he told the boy, urgently now, as he pulled himself together. ‘Ask Dr Carson if she needs help.’

‘You really are a proper doctor?’ The boy’s voice was incredulous.

‘I am.’

‘Then go on in.’ There was suddenly no hesitation. He peeped a grin at Marc and there was that jolt again. He knew that grin! ‘But you’re either in or out,’ he warned. ‘If another doctor ever walks into this town Mum says we’ll set up roadblocks to stop them leaving. That’s me. I’m the roadblock. No one gets past these crutches.’

* * *

‘Ellie!’

Chris was Ellie’s best trained nurse. While Ellie was treating the kid with a suspected pneumothorax she’d put Chris in charge of the girl with the smashed elbow. Lisa Harley had smashed a few other things as well, but it was her elbow that was Ellie’s greatest concern. The fracture was compound. She’d found a pulse on the other side of the break but it was faint. The blood supply was compromised.

But the kid with the pneumothorax had taken priority.

‘I’ve lost the pulse,’ Chris called urgently. ‘And I’m worrying about her blood pressure. Ellie...’

She couldn’t go. She had to release pressure in the chest of the kid under her hands. One lung had collapsed—she was sure of it. Any more pressure and she’d lose him.

A life or a hand...

‘Five minutes,’ she called back to Chris. Could she close this in time? No matter. She had to focus on what she was doing.

The door swung open.

It was too soon to expect the air ambulance from Sydney. It was too soon to expect the doctor from the neighbouring town, but Felix wouldn’t have let anyone in unless they could help. Unless they were a doctor.

So she looked up with hope—and then felt herself freeze.

Marc.

He was older. There was a trace of silver in his jet-black hair. He looked taller, broader...more distinguished.

But he was still Marc.

Marc, here!

Her world seemed to wobble. If she’d had time she would have found a chair and sat down hard.

The boy she was treating needed all her attention. A smashed rib piercing the lung meant air was going in and not getting out. The pressure would be building. The second lung could collapse at any minute. She needed to insert a tube to drain the air compressing the lung and she needed to do it fast.

Marc was here.

‘Where can I help?’ he asked and somehow she forced her world back into focus. No matter why he was here; the one thing she knew was that he was a skilled doctor. A surgeon. Every complication that had suddenly hit her world had to give way to imperative.

‘Chris needs help,’ she told him, gesturing towards the nurse. ‘Lisa Harley, seventeen, smashed elbow—I’m sure it’s comminuted. There must be fragments of bone cutting the circulation. Feeble pulse in her fingers until a moment ago, but now nothing. Chris says blood pressure’s dropping too, but I haven’t had time to figure out why. I’ve given her morphine, ten milligrams. She probably also has alcohol on board.’

Marc’s attention switched instantly to Lisa, lying wanly on the trolley. The morphine had kicked in but the kid looked pallid.

‘I’m on it,’ Marc said, in his perfect English with that French-plus-something-exotic accent that had made Ellie’s toes curl all those years ago. He crossed to Lisa and touched her fingers. He’d be feeling for the pulse, Ellie knew. Even though it was Marc, she could only feel relief.

‘You’re right,’ he said calmly, smiling down at Lisa in a way that would be medicine all by itself. ‘Hi, Lisa. I’m Dr Falken. We need to get your arm sorted, but it’s your lucky day. I treat hurt elbows all the time.’ He checked her blood pressure and frowned. ‘We might also check your tummy and see if there’s anything else going on.’ He flicked a glance back to Ellie. ‘Lisa’s priority one?’

‘I’m coping with a pneumothorax but I have it under control,’ she told him. She hoped. ‘We also have a severe facial injury but I’ve intubated and she seems stable. Nothing else seems life-threatening. Chris, can you assist Marc? Everyone, this is Dr Marc Falken. He’s...he’s an old friend from university and he’s good. Give him all the assistance he needs. Marc, sorry, but you’re on your own.’

* * *

There was no time for shock or questions. There was only time to work.

With Chris’s help he did a fast X-ray. The elbow was a jigsaw of shattered bone fragments.

It wasn’t the greatest of her problems, though. Lisa’s blood pressure continued to drop. Chris helped him set up an ultrasound and that confirmed his fears.

Ruptured spleen. She’d have internal bleeding. This was life or death.

Ellie had far more than she could cope with already. This was his call.

He’d like a full theatre of trained staff. He had Chris.

But, even though Chris looked as if she could be anyone’s mum, the nurse was cool, efficient and exactly what he needed.

‘I can give an anaesthetic,’ she told him. ‘I’ve done it before when Ellie’s been in trouble. We can take Lisa into Theatre and go for it if that’s what you want.’

He’d worked on battlefields with less help than this. ‘That’s what I want.’

From the next cubicle, Ellie must have heard. She was focusing on the kid with the punctured lung but she must have the whole room under broader surveillance.

‘You can’t just straighten for the time being?’ she called.

Marc moved so he could talk without being overheard. The last thing Lisa needed to hear was a fearful diagnosis. ‘There are bone fragments everywhere,’ Marc told her. ‘I can re-establish blood supply but if something moves it’ll block again. It’s not safe to transfer her without surgery. But priority’s the ruptured spleen. I’ll need to go in to check for sure but her blood pressure’s dropping fast and the symptoms fit.’

She swore. ‘You can do it?’

‘I can.’ His gaze swept the room, seeing the mass of trouble she was facing. ‘You have enough on your hands.’ More than enough.

‘I can’t help,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘Then do it. Chris, give him all the help he needs.’

And Chris was already wheeling Lisa’s trolley through the doors marked Theatre.

He had no choice but to follow.

* * *

The cavalry arrived two hours later. Helicopters with skilled paramedics. The doctor from the neighbouring town. Everyone and everything she needed was suddenly there, and Ellie was able to step back and catch her breath.

The door to Theatre was still closed. There hadn’t been time to investigate. She’d had to trust that Marc knew what he was doing.

Now, though, as paramedics fired questions at her, as each of these kids got the attention they needed, she was able to think of what—and who—was behind those doors.

‘I have a kid with a shattered elbow and possible ruptured spleen,’ she told the senior paramedic. ‘A visiting surgeon was on hand. He’s in Theatre now.’

‘Here?’ the guy said incredulously, and Ellie thought again of the mixed emotions his arrival meant for her.

Marc was behind those doors. Her old life was a life of secrets. A life that now had to be faced.

She took a deep breath and opened the door to Theatre.

Chris was at the head of the table. She smiled and gave Ellie a swift thumbs-up, then went back to monitor-gazing.

Chris was magnificent, Ellie thought, not for the first time. Ellie had needed to talk her charge nurse through an anaesthetic more times than she could count and she’d coped magnificently every time. She should be a doctor herself. She practically was.

But her attention wasn’t on Chris.

Masked and gowned, Marc could be any surgeon in any theatre anywhere in the world. He was totally focused on the job at hand.

‘Nearly closed,’ he growled and his voice was a shock all by itself.

She’d never thought she’d hear it again.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked.

‘We’ve stabilised the elbow, removing bone fragments that could shift. The circulation should hold until she receives specialist orthopaedic attention. The worst risk was the spleen. It was a mess. There was no choice but removal. Sorry, Ellie, to leave you with everything else. I had Chris slip out and tell Joe to call if there was any priority you couldn’t cope with, but then we went for it.’

‘He’s done the whole thing,’ Chris breathed. ‘He’s removed the spleen but he’s done so much more. He’s stopped the internal bleeding completely. Blood pressure’s already rising. And the elbow! Look at the X-rays, Ellie. To get the circulation back. He’s saved her life and he’s saved her arm. Oh, Ellie, I can’t tell you...’

‘Thanks to Chris,’ Marc growled, still focused. ‘You have a gem of a nurse, Ellie.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ she said a trifle unsteadily.

This was surgery way beyond her field of expertise. Maybe she could have diagnosed and removed the spleen but the pneumothorax had been just as urgent. She would have lost one of the two kids, and how appalling a choice would that have been? But the elbow... She glanced at the X-ray, saw the mess, and knew without a doubt that Lisa would be facing amputation if Marc hadn’t been here.

Marc’s battlefield training had come to the fore. She never could have done this alone.

A bullet had been dodged. Or multiple bullets. She wanted to sit down. Badly.

It wasn’t going to happen.

‘I’m just applying an external fixator and then I’m done,’ Marc told her. ‘Ten minutes? I gather the air ambulance is here. I’d like Lisa transferred to Sydney as soon as possible. The elbow will need attention from a specialist. I’m not an orthopod.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ Chris muttered, and Ellie looked at Marc and thought, What good fairy brought you here today?

And then she thought of the repercussions of him being here and she stopped thinking of good fairies.

She didn’t have time to go there. She had to face the relatives.

But there was no longer any urgency. She had room for thought.

Marc was here.

Good fairies? She didn’t think so.

* * *

The first chopper took the most seriously injured, including Lisa, but the boy with the pneumothorax left by road. Air travel wasn’t recommended when lungs were compromised. The road ambulance also took the driver of one of the cars and his girlfriend. The pair had suffered lacerations; the girl had a minor fracture. They could have stayed, but feelings were running high in the town and a driver with only minor injuries could well turn into a scapegoat.

The second chopper, a big one, had places to spare and the battered train crew chose to leave on it. They, too, could have been cared for here, but their homes, their families, were in Sydney. Borrawong Hospital was suddenly almost deserted.

But Marc was still inside and, as Ellie watched the second chopper disappear, that fact seemed more terrifying than a room full of casualties.

‘You can get through this.’ She said it to herself, but she was suddenly thinking of all the times she’d said it before. During the trauma of being the kid of a defiant, erratic single mum with cystic fibrosis. The roller coaster of a childhood living with her mother’s illness. The relief of her mother’s first lung transplant and then the despair when it had failed.

And then the moment the doors had closed at Sydney Airport and Marc was gone for ever. The moment she’d looked at the lines on the pregnancy testing kit. The moment she’d seen her baby’s ultrasound.

The day she’d made the decision to keep her baby, to stay here, to cope alone.

But it was no use thinking of that now.

The sun was sinking behind the town’s wheat silos, casting shadows that almost reached the hospital. Somewhere a dog was barking. This was Borrawong’s nightlife. Marc was about to see Borrawong at its best.

Why was he here?

‘You can get through this,’ she said again but heaven only knew the effort it cost her to turn and re-enter the hospital.

Felix was still in the waiting room. He’d pushed his wheelchair behind the reception desk and was engrossed in a computer game but he looked up as she entered and grinned.

‘Got rid of them all?’

‘We have. Felix, you were wonderful.’

‘I know,’ he said, his grin broadening. ‘I kept ’em all out. Except the doctor with the funny accent. He’s still in there now, helping clean up. Joe says if we have a doctor who cleans we should lock the doors and keep him. He said he’s your friend?’

‘I...yes. He’s someone I knew a long time ago. When I was at university.’

And Felix’s face changed.

Uh oh.

Felix was smart. He was also right at the age where he was asking questions, and the questions had been getting harder.

‘So you met my dad when you were at uni. Why won’t you tell me his name? The kids at school reckon he must have been married to someone else. Or he was a scumbag. Otherwise you’d tell me. Why can’t I meet him?’

And now Felix had met a strange doctor three hours ago while he’d been bored and had time to think—a guy who’d appeared from the past, a man his mum had never talked about.

A man with hair and eyes exactly the same as his.

‘Is he my father?’ Felix demanded and Ellie closed her eyes.

And when she opened them Marc was in the doorway.

He’d ditched his theatre gear. He was wearing casual chinos and a white open-necked shirt.

His dark hair, wavy just like her son’s, was rumpled. He’d raked it, she thought. He always raked his hair.

Felix looked like him. Felix was Marc in miniature—except for the freckles. And the wheelchair.

But there was no use denying it. Felix’s face was bristling with suspicion, but also with something else. Hope, perhaps? He wanted a father.

How wrong had it been not to tell Marc what she’d done?

She glanced at Marc again. His face was impassive. Shuttered.

She thought of the first time she’d met him. She’d been nineteen, a second-year university student, working her butt off to put herself through medicine. Marc had been twenty-four, just completed training, headed to Australia for a gap year before he started surgical training.

He’d intended working his way around Australia’s coastline, but in his first week in Sydney there’d been an international conference on vascular surgery. He’d cadged an invitation because, gap year or not, he was interested.

She’d been there as a waitress. On the edges. Soaking up knowledge any way she could. She’d been working the crowd, carrying drinks.

An eminent vascular surgeon had been holding forth to a small group of similarly esteemed professionals, talking of the latest cardiovascular techniques. She’d paused to listen, intrigued by the discussion of a technique she’d never heard of.

And then one of the group had caught her eye, maybe suspecting she was eavesdropping. Uh oh. If she lost this job it’d be a disaster. She’d spun away fast—and crashed into Marc.

Her tray had been loaded with red and white wine and orange juice. The whole lot had spilled down his front. Glasses smashed on the floor. The attention of the whole room had suddenly been on her, and she’d stood, appalled, expecting to be sacked.

But Marc had moved with a decisiveness that had taken her breath away. He’d stopped people moving onto the broken glass, and he’d talked to her boss before she could say a word.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he’d said in his lovely broken English. ‘So stupid. I was caught by something Professor Kramer was discussing, and it seemed important to catch it. So I turned suddenly and I hit your waitress hard. Mam’selle, are you hurt? A thousand apologies. Sir, may I make recompense? The cost of the glasses? The wine? Something extra for your work? And, mam’selle, I will pay the cost of your cleaning...’

He’d charmed her right back into her job—and that night, when she’d finished work, he’d been waiting for her at the staff entrance.

‘I messed with your night,’ he said simply. ‘The least I can do is take you to supper.’

‘It was my fault.’

‘The fault is immaterial. It was my body you crashed into. Therefore my body will propel you to supper.’

He’d been irresistible. His looks, his accent, his smile... His kindness.

She’d fallen in love right there and then and, amazingly, he’d seemed to feel the same.

And now he was here.

‘Ellie?’ he said gently, but there was no smile.

He was waiting for an answer.

Felix was waiting for an answer.

She looked from one to the other. Her son. Her ex-husband. The man she’d loved with all her heart.

Once. Not now.

Is he my father?

There was nowhere to go.

‘Felix, this is Marc Falken,’ she managed and was amazed at the way her voice sounded. It was almost steady. ‘He’s from Falkenstein, near Austria, in Europe. Marc’s a doctor. He and I met at university and for a few short months we were married. But then there was a war in Marc’s country, a disaster that lasted for years. He was needed. I’d imagine he’s still needed. But, for whatever reason, he’s here now, and yes, Felix, Marc is your father.’

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