‘See you tomorrow, Craig, Simon,’ she said happily.

‘Unless you’re in hospital tomorrow,’ one of the men said, and for a moment a shadow flitted across Maggie’s face.

Was she worried about it, then? The birth?

Of course she would be. How many pregnant women had Max cared for? Every single one of them worried.

But Maggie was putting on a cheerful front and he watched her deliberately put the shadows aside. ‘I’m not due for a week,’ she told them. ‘And first babies are always late. I’m guessing there’s two more swimming weeks to go.’

‘Well, good luck if there’s not,’ the same guy said. ‘And let us know what happens. We’re starting to feel like we know your daughter already.’

They walked up the beach together, slowly. Max had tugged on his clothes but he still felt…different.

Maggie had introduced the lifesavers to her daughter. She’d made them her friends. This woman could make friends with anyone.

She was beautiful. The word was echoing over and over in his mind. She had the sunflowers draped over her shoulders. She was a huge blue and yellow whale.

Gorgeous!

‘I wouldn’t mind an ice cream,’ she ventured as they neared the street, so Max bought two ice creams and in silent consent they sat on a park bench and ate them.

She was a very neat ice-cream eater, Max noted. Methodical. Cute.

‘And you’re a biter,’ Maggie told him, and he stared.

‘Pardon?’

‘You bite your ice cream. I’ve never been able to figure why people do that. You risk freezing your insides. Licking’s much more sensible.’

‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

‘I just know,’ she said smugly and then relented as she saw his look of bewilderment. ‘You have a very readable face.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘My pleasure. I practise reading people’s faces,’ she explained. ‘So much more dependable than palm-reading-and I like doing it.’

‘I don’t like you doing it.’

‘Whatever,’ she said happily. ‘But biting ice-cream cones is nuts. You’ve finished already, and mine’s only quarter way down. So…do you always take your pleasures this fast?’

She eyed him sideways, her eyes twinkling, deliberately appraising, deliberately teasing, and he felt himself respond-maybe exactly how she hoped he’d respond. Trying not to blush like a schoolboy!

First the boxers, now this. She was enjoying herself at his expense.

He’d found her expecting her to be lonely, maybe anxious, maybe depressed. Maybe she was all those things, but she was making a good job of hiding it.

‘When did you last have an antenatal check?’ he demanded, trying to get back to sounding businesslike, but instead sounding like he was feeling, out of his depth and flailing.

‘Yesterday-Doctor,’ she said, raising her brows, still laughing. Still teasing. ‘I’m being very good.’

She had him off balance and she knew it. All he could do was flounder on. ‘So what did he say?’

‘She. A lovely obstetrician called Helen.’ She says my baby’s head’s not engaged yet so I could be at least a week.’

‘So what are you doing with yourself?’

‘Reading,’ she said, and looked virtuous. ‘Reading, reading, reading. And no-Doctor-not a romance or a thriller or even a trashy magazine. Medical journals. If I’m going to be a family doctor I’m going to be a good one. Did you know bed bugs are on the rise?’

‘Bed bugs,’ he said faintly.

‘World travel’s getting so common that the little pests are spreading,’ she said. ‘Apparently, if a patient comes in covered in red welts I should check if they’ve been in a hotel recently. And if a local hotel gets infected then there’s a whole list of things that need to be done. I’ve been reading Health Department Guidelines. As district medical officer-that’s me now-I need to know what to look for. Did you know they hide in the seams of mattresses during the day? And you can’t just spray the place with an insecticide bomb and move on either. There’s serious health implications. I need to know what to do-and I get to close the place down if they won’t comply.’

‘Really,’ he said faintly.

‘Really,’ she said, sounding reproving. ‘And don’t sound dismissive. You get bitten by bed bugs and you’ll be the first to complain to the local health officer. There’s so much to learn.’

‘I see there is.’

‘Don’t belittle it,’ she said, even more reproving, and stood up. He looked up at her-wrapped in her sarong and towel, balancing her ice-cream cone-and thought there was no way he could belittle this woman.

And suddenly the focus was no longer on bed bugs. Or ice creams. Or even mischief and teasing. Suddenly he didn’t know where to go from here.

‘Look, I’d better go,’ she said, as he rose to stand beside her. ‘That shower… Maybe it’s not a good idea.’

‘Maybe it’s not.’ What was going on here?

But he knew. What he was feeling was an irresistible attraction to a woman who represented everything he didn’t want. Commitment. Giving himself. Emotional entanglement.

Everything he didn’t want?

How many doctors did he know that’d take bed bugs on as a commitment? But he knew that Maggie would take on everything she cared about as a commitment.

The farm. Angus. The community of Yandilagong.

Him?

See, there it was. He looked down into her eyes and thought he could read her. If he wanted her…

He did want her.

No. To leap into that abyss…

‘Maggie…’

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You don’t really want…what’s between us. Not now, maybe not ever. It’s better you go.’

‘John wants me to keep checking.’

‘You can ring me at the hotel. John can ring himself if he wants. Come to think of it, he does already, so you needn’t bother.’

‘Is there anything at all that you need?’

‘No.’

‘So that’s it, then.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and turned away.

And then…


They were standing near where pedestrians were streaming over the road from the beach-side park to the shops beyond.

The traffic lights across to the shops didn’t appear to be working. At some subconscious level while they’d been eating their ice creams Max had been conscious of confusion, cars slowing, honking at each other, pedestrians scurrying between cars.

The car came from nowhere, overtaking others that had slowed to a crawl. Its tyres were screeching into acceleration where others were braking. It was bearing straight down on the intersection like there was no question it had right of way. It was travelling way beyond the speed limit, a crazy speed, even if people weren’t there.

Only, of course, people were there. Families were leaving the park. Tourists were holding ice creams and cameras, chatting to each other as they headed to the shops. A couple of office workers, their suits at odds with the casual crowd, looked like they were heading home. A young mother was pushing a stroller.

All were frozen by the noise of a car out of control.

There was no time for screaming. Just the roar of the car’s engine.

It didn’t even slow. It came straight through.

There was a flash of yellow, a sickening thump, a crash of breaking glass. A body flew high, above the car’s bonnet. All the way over.

It crumpled to nothing on the road behind.

The car didn’t pause; indeed, the scream of its engine increased. The bright yellow motor with huge wheels and about a dozen exhaust pipes behind simply kept right on accelerating, screaming along the esplanade, through the next set of lights-also not lit-around the corner, up the hill and out of sight.

Leaving behind mayhem.

CHAPTER EIGHT

FOR a moment nobody moved. It was like some sort of Greek tragedy-players turned to statues where they stood.

Then someone screamed, and Max was gone from Maggie’s side in an instant.

She hardly saw him go. He was simply no longer with her, and by the time she could take in the enormity of what had happened-what was still happening-he was crouching by a body crumpled on the roadway.

Dear God, it was a child.

She dropped her ice cream and her bag and ran.

Triage. Max was with the child. What else?

No one else seemed to have been hit. Or maybe there had.

Yes, there was another. A woman was standing in the middle of the road, behind a stroller, staring numbly at the child who was now more than ten yards away from her.

Maggie’s eyes dropped from her face and saw her arm, which was streaming with blood. Far, far too much blood.

Maggie was with her in a heartbeat, seizing her hand and raising it above her head.

‘Sit,’ she said, and the woman looked wildly toward the child Max was tending.

‘No. I…’

‘Help me,’ Maggie said harshly to a kid standing by-a teenager with green-spiked hair and a T-shirt with a message that was shocking. If she was in the mood to be shocked. She wasn’t.

‘Give me your shirt,’ she said, and to the kid’s enormous credit he peeled it off almost before she’d finished saying the words.

‘Help me sit her down,’ she said, and the kid took the woman’s good hand and Maggie gently pressured the woman to sit. And then, as she sagged, to lie down.

Her arm was gushing, blood pumping out at a rate that was terrifying. Maggie had it still in the air. She grasped one of the kid’s hands and placed it on the woman’s wrist so he was holding her arm up. ‘Hold it high,’ she snapped, ‘Keep it there.’ She was twisting his T-shirt into a tie, twisting, twisting.

‘Grace…’ the woman managed.

‘I’m a doctor,’ Maggie said as she wound the T-shirt round her upper arm. ‘There’s two of us here. Dr Ashton’s looking after Grace while I look after you. I need to stop your arm bleeding before you can go to her.’