So maybe Jake had his reasons for saying he wasn’t wanting a relationship up front, Kirsty thought, a flash of sympathy filtering though her anger.

‘I’m not offended,’ she managed. ‘Just bemused that you can think anything so ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous is this district’s specialty,’ Jake said wryly, but then his cell phone rang. ‘Dammit, please, let this not be more work.’

She should take this chance to leave, Kirsty thought. She should. But she hesitated just a moment too long.

‘You’re kidding,’ Jake was saying into the phone. ‘How can you do that? It’s almost grounds for dismissal without a reference.’ He heaved a doleful sigh.

‘Fine, then,’ he said, even more dolefully. ‘We’ll just starve. No, no, think nothing of it. We’ll fade to shadows of our former selves, but we’ll fade as martyrs.’

He replaced the phone on his belt and found them all looking at him.

‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said, still doleful.

‘Tragedy?’ Kirsty asked, cautious. His eyes were twinkling in that dangerous way he had that said there was no tragedy at all.

‘Angus and Susie are feeling better.’

‘Um…that’s a tragedy?’ She didn’t want to ask, Kirsty decided. But his eyes were laughing openly, even though his mouth was trying to be tragic. He had her intrigued.

‘Mrs Boyce has made soup and sausage rolls for dinner,’ he said sadly. ‘Everyone’s been exercising, they were hungry and we’re late. She couldn’t make them wait for us and I’m sorry to have to inform you, Kirsty, that they’ve eaten the lot.’ His face grew even more mournful. ‘Which leaves you and me with no dinner. Margie says we need to buy fish and chips on the way home.’

‘Have something here,’ Barbara said, and hesitated. ‘I can stretch…’

Country hospitality at its best, Kirsty thought. This lady was managing kids, a farm and a dying mother, and she still offered to feed all comers.

‘Margie can give us eggs on toast,’ Jake said, sighing his martyred sigh again. ‘But no.’ He held up a hand to stop Barbara’s protest. ‘Dr McMahon and I are true medical heroes. We know how to exist on a piece of stale bread and dripping and tea made with a used teabag. Fish and chips will be sheer luxury.’

‘Have it on the beach,’ Herbert said approvingly. ‘Just like me and the missus. We take a bottle of wine down there every Friday night, and nine times out of ten it ends up in a spot of hanky-panky.’ He suddenly realised what he was saying and gave an embarrassed snort. ‘I mean…when we were younger it ended up in hanky-panky.’ His colour deepened as he realised they were all looking at him, fascinated. ‘In the old days. I mean…’

Ooh, sexy, Kirsty thought. Fish and chips and hanky-panky with Herbert.

‘That sounds just what you both need,’ Mavis volunteered from her window behind them. ‘If I was forty years younger, I’d join you.’

Fish and chips and hanky-panky with Herbert and Mavis, too?

Or just fish and chips with Jake. On the beach.

Where was she going? Into territory that was very dangerous indeed.

‘We’ll buy fish and chips and take them home,’ Kirsty said, a trifle desperately, but Barbara shook her head.

‘I can guess what’ll happen if you do that, and I bet you can, too. They’ll all have had sausage rolls, and they’ll be as full as googs, but you step inside the castle with fish and chips and suddenly they’ll be hungry all over again. They’ll be gone in a flash, mark my words. You take her down the beach, Dr Jake.’

‘Yeah, Dr Jake,’ Herbert said, and nudged Jake in the ribs. ‘Take her down the beach.’

‘I don’t need fish and chips,’ Kirsty said, with an attempt at dignity, but she was howled down by everyone.

Except maybe Jake? But Jake said nothing as plans were made around them. As they were told sternly what to do.

‘You are hungry?’ Jake asked as silence finally reigned, and she had to agree that she was.

‘Right, then,’ he said with resignation. ‘It’s fish and chips on the beach. By order.’

And five minutes later she was meekly following Jake’s car to the Dolphin Bay fish and chippery-and to the beach beyond.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHILE Jake purchased fish and chips, Kirsty walked across the park separating the town from the beach. The park was a gorgeous little triangle-beach on one side, river with harbour on another and the town on the third side. It was a great little town, Kirsty thought, falling deeper in love with this strange mix of bushland and harbour and sleepy village.

There was a pair of kookaburras in the gums above her head. Their mocking chortles made her feel weird. She shouldn’t be here. Why was she here?

They both knew this was dangerous territory.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, this was fish and chips on the beachfront. It wasn’t one of Jake’s scary dates. It was…nothing.

Safe or not, Kirsty found a table close to the shops-just because-but then Jake strolled up bearing a fat parcel of fish and chips and a couple of bottles of lemonade. He smiled as he put his load on the table and she didn’t feel safe at all.

‘We should take these home,’ she managed, but Jake’s smile became rueful.

‘Barbara’s right. The scavengers would have it in minutes and I’m starving.’

So was she. When he ripped the paper to reveal slivers of flathead, tiny, succulent scallops, fresh oysters and enough chips to feed a small army, she decided that no way was she taking this home.

‘This is my half,’ she said, putting a hand through the halfway mark, hauling her fish, chips, scallops and oysters to her side of the paper and thus delineating shares.

‘Hey,’ he said, startled. ‘I thought women were supposed to pretend they didn’t eat.’

‘Not this woman. I’ve been watching Susie peck at her food for months now. She gags at the sight of anything fried so we’ve been having healthy little morsels of not very much at all. To have a nice carbohydrate-loaded meal in front of me-where I have to fight for every mouthful-is the stuff of dreams.’

‘I’m happy to oblige,’ he said, but he still looked disbelieving and Kirsty was aware that she was being watched all the time she ate.

‘What?’ she said at last as the final scallop found a thoroughly satisfactory home. ‘You look like you’ve never seen anyone eat a chip before. You must have.’

‘I’ve never seen anyone like you.’

‘Watch Susie, then. She’s identical.’

‘She’s not identical.’

‘Because she’s pregnant and battered? She’ll recover. But she’ll be a stronger person than I’ll ever be,’ Kirsty agreed.

‘You mean because life’s tossed her around?’ he asked curiously. ‘You don’t think you might be just as strong?’

‘I’m not strong.’

‘When I rang to check on your credentials for registration, I got a glowing report,’ he said. ‘Smart, caring, ambitious and poised to become one of the youngest-ever medical directors of the hospice you’ve been working in. Strong was one of the biggest words they used. You have the reputation for fighting with everything you have to see your patients get what they need to make them comfortable to the end. It’s a hugely prestigious establishment, and to have the credentials to take over at your age seems amazing.’ He paused. ‘But then you walked away,’ he said softly. ‘You haven’t been near the place for the last three months and the appointment’s been given to someone else.’

‘There’s lots of jobs,’ she said a trifle self-consciously. ‘It’s no big deal.’

‘The woman I talked to said it was a big deal. A really big deal. In the cutthroat medical establishment, for you to walk away because you cared so much for your sister is tantamount to professional suicide.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ she said, suddenly angry. He was intruding on her personal space here-her personal doubts? ‘Oh, maybe it’s the truth in a sense-to get where I was headed you need to be blinkered to everything else in the world. Maybe I was for a while but maybe being blinkered is dumb. Family comes first.’

‘My ex-wife’s still dumb,’ he said inconsequentially, and for some reason that made her angrier.

‘Good for her, then. Each to his own and every other platitude I can think of.’ She rose and stalked over to the nearest rubbish bin, depositing her empty wrappings with force.

‘Um…platitudes?’ he said cautiously, and she shook her head without turning back to him.

‘Don’t ask. I’m going for a walk on the beach. You go on home.’

‘You’re dismissing me?’

‘I am,’ she told him. ‘If we’re seen walking on the beach together in this town, I don’t think we need a wedding certificate. It’ll be seen as a done deal.’

He grinned at that. ‘You’re starting to see what I’m up against.’

‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘But you weren’t polite.’

‘I’ve forgotten how to be polite.’

‘Sure.’ She’d reached the sand and was hauling off her sandals, then rolling up her jeans. When she straightened she found he was beside her, doing the same.

‘You’re supposed to be going home.’

‘The kids ate my sausage rolls. They all ate our sausage rolls. There’s no bedtime story for sausage-roll eaters.’

‘What you mean is that they won’t even notice that you’re not there,’ she said, softening. ‘There are people queued for bedtime reading rights. You’ve made so many people happy by lending us your family.’

‘Good old Kenneth,’ he said softly. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s started.’

‘I suppose it was Kenneth that pulled everyone together,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to forget him soon though, and let everyone go home.’

‘Who wants to go home?’ he said enigmatically. ‘I’m for walking on the beach. How about you?’

‘Different sides of the beach?’ she said cautiously.

‘Of course. You want me to go get Boris to chaperon?’

‘We should.’

‘If I went and got him then everyone would come back and join us.’