Of course, Jake thought bitterly. This was a tiny community. News travelled fast.

All the more reason not to think about Kirsty. If he so much as touched her, the news would be all over the district in minutes.

‘Hey, maybe she’s eligible,’ Connie said, beaming some more. ‘I hear she’s really pretty. Both of them are lookers, they’re saying, but the first poor lass has been battered. Knocked about in the car crash when her husband was killed, poor girl. But Harriet in the post office says the doctor one is a real stunner.’ She raised her eyebrows in enquiry. ‘So how about it, Doc? You’ve been single for far too long. Those poor wee mites need a mother.’

He was absolutely right in the way he’d reacted to Kirsty’s invitation, Jake thought grimly as he managed a smile and showed Connie resolutely to the door. Kirsty thought he was inferring too much from one dinner invitation. She didn’t know this town. They just had to see an eligible female and they started planning the wedding.

He just might nip this in the bud.

‘I hear she’s married,’ he said, with something approaching malicious enjoyment. ‘With six kids.’

‘Six kids?’ she said, astonished. ‘No one told me that.’

‘The village gossip network is letting you down. But she told me herself. She’s taken time off to care for her sister but back home she has a poor, downtrodden husband changing diaper after diaper…’

‘You’re having me on.’

‘She told me herself,’ he said, virtuous and sure.

‘Well!’ Connie pulled herself up, figuring out whether to be indignant or not and deciding a little indignation was justified. ‘Gallivanting over here when she has all those kiddies…’

‘Awful, isn’t it?’

‘She must be real worried about her sister.’

‘Maybe she’s just tired of diapers.’

‘We won’t judge her,’ Connie said resolutely. ‘We need to know more. Your Margie was out there this morning, wasn’t she?’

‘She was.’

‘I might just pop in to see Margie on the way home.’

‘You do that,’ Jake said, and suddenly he felt tired. ‘See if you can find any more skeletons in the closet. Oh, and, Connie?’

‘Mmm?’

‘No dancing for a week.’

‘But-’

‘Some things I’m sure about,’ Jake said. ‘Not many, mind, but this is one of them. Sore knee. Sore big toe. I prescribe new boots and rest.’

‘I can’t rest.’

Not when there was gossip to be gleaned, Jake thought, watching through the window as she marched up the hill to visit Margie with nary a limp.

If ever he was going to have a relationship…how could he have it under the eyes of everyone in this town?

He wasn’t having a relationship. End of story.

Move on to the next patient.


Kirsty woke the next morning to the sound of her sister whistling. Unable to believe her ears, she crossed to the window and looked outside.

The change in her two patients was extraordinary.

Susie was dressed and lying on a camping mattress they’d found yesterday. They’d cleaned it so Susie could lie on it while she gardened. The last of the rain had cleared. The day was already warm. Susie had a trowel in her hand, and she was digging around individual carrots.

Kirsty glanced up to Angus’s window and Angus was perched in the window-seat, overseeing operations.

‘You’ll do yourself damage, girl,’ he called. ‘Wait until I get down to give you a hand.’

She was being put to shame by two invalids, Kirsty thought. Angus needed help dressing and he needed his oxygen checked and he was waiting for her.

Two people who thirty-six hours ago had wanted to die were now both aching for the day to begin.

Was she aching for her day to begin?

Maybe she was.

She was going to help Jake operate this morning, she remembered, but excitement wasn’t exactly her overriding emotion.

Maybe there was also a tinge of fear.

Why fear? Was she fearful of the way she responded? Jake had let her know in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing of that response.

She needed to ring Robert, she decided. Robert, her nice safe boyfriend back home. He was an optometrist she’d known for ever and their romance had been proceeding placidly-if tamely-when she’d had to leave with Susie.

She hadn’t rung Robert for a week. It was time to get in touch with him again. Maybe he’d be surprised to hear from her. Their relationship was lacklustre at the best of times, and she suspected a month’s absence was probably killing it for good, but she needed to ground herself somewhere and Robert was eternally useful.

Right. She’d ring Robert. After she’d telephoned Mavis Hipton to see how she’d got on in the night. After she’d organised Angus down to his garden. After she’d bullied Susie and Angus into eating breakfast.

But maybe the bullying wouldn’t be because they weren’t interested in eating, she thought suddenly. It would be bullying because they’d be too busy to eat.

Suddenly Susie and Angus were excited by life again.

She needed to get excited, too.

She was going to operate with Jake.

She was excited.

There was no relationship, she told herself crossly.

No-but she was still excited.

CHAPTER FIVE

DOLPHIN BAY Bush Nursing Hospital was a neat little building made of the deep grey stone of the local cliffs. It had wide verandas and a lovely, rambling garden, and as she pulled into the parking lot she could see half a dozen people pottering in the flower-beds. There were glimpses of the sea through the tangle of honeysuckle and bougainvillea, and a flock of white galahs was screeching and fighting for places on the branches of the towering gums.

She should transplant this place to Manhattan, she thought longingly. What a wonderful place to die.

What a wonderful place to live.

They all knew who she was. The moment she climbed out of the car she was watched, by the gardeners and by the patients sitting in the sun on the veranda, and a chirpy young nurse bustled out to greet her.

‘You’ll be Dr Kirsty. I’m Babs. We’ve been waiting for you.’

Dr Kirsty. Babs. This was as formal as it got in Dolphin Bay, Kirsty thought wryly, but she grinned.

‘Dr Cam- Dr Jake said to be here at ten.’

‘Yes, but Francis is in such a state that if we don’t knock him out soon, he’ll do a runner,’ Babs told her. She ushered her inside and flung open the theatre doors. ‘It’s OK, Jake. Kirsty’s here.’

Jake was already in theatre gear. He was systematically checking equipment but as Kirsty walked in he turned and smiled, and her heart did that crazy backflip she was starting to recognise. And starting to resent. Darn, why didn’t she get that backflip when Robert smiled?

This man didn’t want a relationship. Not!

‘You’ve been waiting for me?’ she managed.

‘We have the world’s scaredest patient,’ he told her. ‘Francis is sixty years old. Until his hernia got bad he was our local fire chief. Put him in front of wildfire and he’ll be the coolest head in the district, but show him a drop of blood and he’ll faint. He’s still in his room. I thought if we wheeled him along here and he caught sight of theatre gear, he might end up dying of shock.’

‘I’ll check him there, then, shall I?’ she asked, and he smiled again.

‘If you would. Is there anything else here that you need?’

She did a fast check. This should be a simple procedure-a simple anaesthetic. Even catering for terror.

The little theatre looked brilliant.

‘How many beds does the hospital have?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Twenty. Plus ten nursing-home beds.’

‘That’s too many for one doctor.’

‘You’re telling me. I have to work hard to keep them healthy.’

‘Jake makes his patients work in the garden,’ Babs said cheekily from the doorway. ‘He has a method of bowel control that’s second to none. You stay regular or you get garden duty.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘He gives out garden duty for everything,’ Babs continued. ‘You just sigh in this place and someone sticks a trowel in your hand.’

‘Don’t the patients object?’

‘They love it,’ Jake said, attempting a glower at the nurse. ‘Babs, go introduce Kirsty to Francis. I want him back here asleep in ten minutes.’

‘That’s if my checks are OK,’ Kirsty said, attempting to find some vestige of authority.

‘They will be,’ Babs said. ‘Otherwise you’ll be handed a trowel as well. Our Dr Jake runs a tight ship.’


There was no need for the trowel.

Francis was a big man, but he’d kept himself fit, he didn’t smoke and he had no underlying medical conditions to give her concern. The only problem was his terror, which was palpable the moment she entered the room.

‘Hi. I’m Dr Kirsty, your anaesthetist. I’m here to make you relax enough for Jake to fix your bump.’ Then she hesitated. The man was physically cringing. ‘Am I so scary?’

‘N-no, but…’

‘Does your wife ever get her hair set at the hairdresser? Does she ever sit under a dryer?’

‘Sure,’ he whispered, not knowing where this was going.

‘Well, I don’t want to scare you any more than you already are, but your wife has more chance of getting electrocuted under the dryer than you do of getting damaged by my anaesthetic. But Dr Jake’s telling me you’re scared.’

‘I’m not…it’s not…’

‘It’s not logical,’ she said, smiling and lifting his wrist, ostensibly to feel his pulse but in reality to give him the comfort of touch. ‘I know. Like I’m scared of moths. I can’t stand them; they make my hair stand on end. But if I had to face them in order to fix my life…’

‘You would?’

‘Actually, I wouldn’t,’ she conceded with a rueful smile. ‘Not without a lot of screaming and running and general loss of dignity. What I might do, though-if I had to face them-is ask a nice doctor to give me something to make me sleepy and dreamy and away with the fairies, so that any moth could go bump into me and I’d simply wave and smile.’