‘So I didn’t have any blankets on?’ she said at last, cautiously, and he grinned. The woman in her was back.

‘Nope.’

‘Oh, my…’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen worse things come out of cheese.’

She stiffened. She sat up and swivelled. ‘Pardon?’

‘I’m a doctor,’ he said, apologetically. ‘I learned anatomy in first year.’

‘I am not your patient.’ That was definite.

‘No.’

‘I’m your colleague.’

‘Yes.’ He thought about it. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

He felt her smile rather than heard it and it felt good. To make her smile…

But suddenly he was thinking of her back in the water again, and this time it was he who shuddered.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Sorry.’

‘You’re cold.’

‘Nope.’

‘I’m fine. You can go back to bed.’

‘You’re still shaking.’

‘Not much.’

‘I could go across and get some heat pads from Joyce.’

‘No,’ she said, and suddenly the fear was back in her voice. Born straight out neediness.

It had been some nightmare.

He’d had nightmares himself. As a kid. One of his stepfathers had enjoyed using a horsewhip. The beatings themselves hadn’t been so bad. Waking up, though, in the night, when dreams blended reality into something worse…

Okay, he wouldn’t leave her.

‘The bed’s big,’ she whispered. ‘Sh-share?’

He stiffened. She felt him stiffen, and he felt her immediate reaction. Indignation.

‘We’re colleagues,’ she said, pulling away. Backing against the bedhead. Eying him with something that looked suspiciously like scorn. ‘We have one bed. Why does everything have to be about sex?’

‘I didn’t think it was about sex.’

‘It wasn’t, until you reacted like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like I’d jumped you. Go back to your sofa.’

‘No.’ He could cope with her need, he thought. She was a colleague.

No. She was a patient. Think of her as a patient.

The lines were blurring. He wasn’t sure how he thought of her. But he knew he couldn’t leave her.

‘Why not?’ she demanded.

‘Because one of two things will happen,’ he said. ‘Either you’ll lie and stare at the ceiling for the rest of the night, scared to go back to sleep. Or you’ll go back to sleep and the nightmare will be waiting. You’re not out from it yet.’

‘How do you know?’

He knew. If the shaking hadn’t stopped…

‘So what’s happened to you?’ she asked, her voice suddenly gentling, and that caught him so unawares he could have dropped her. Only he no longer had her. She’d slipped back onto the bed and only her feet were still touching him.

He wanted, quite badly, to be holding her again.

The thought jolted him. What was happening here?

He didn’t react to women like this, but she’d somehow pierced something he’d hardly known he had. It was like she’d opened some part of him he’d been unaware existed.

It made him feel exposed. He had to get it sealed up again fast, but how could he do that while she was… here?

‘Harry says you have a daughter.’ Her voice was suddenly prosaic, like they were making polite conversation at a dinner party. She tugged her quilt. He let it go and she pulled it over her. She huddled under it and she tried to hide the next wave of shivers. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Harry talks too much.’ He sighed. ‘Lucy.’

‘You want to tell me about her?’ She was eying him over the top of the quilt. ‘I’m guessing Lucy isn’t one of 2.4 children in a suburban back yard with Mummy in her apron and a casserole warming on the stove.’

‘There are no slippers and pipe waiting at my place.’ He said it almost self-mockingly and she slid to the far side of the bed and hauled one of her disarranged pillows to the empty side. She patted it.

‘You want to tell me about it?’

She was still asking for help. He knew she was. She couldn’t camouflage those tremors. This woman was needy.

So what was stopping him lying on the spare pillow, hauling up a quilt and telling her about Lucy?

Pride? Fear? Fear at letting someone as perceptive as she was close?

He wouldn’t be letting her close. Or… no closer than she needed to be to get her warm.

She wanted distraction from terror. What harm?

He sighed. He slid onto the pillow and tugged up a quilt. Then, because it was what she needed and he knew it was, he slid an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. She stiffened for a moment, but then he felt her relax. It was as if she, too, was reminding herself to be sensible.

‘Back to front,’ he growled. ‘I can warm you more that way.’

‘Wait,’ she said, and sat up, grabbed her shirt and tugged it on.

Two Flight-Aid shirts. Colleagues.

‘Needs must,’ she said, lying down and turned her back, letting him tug her into him. He felt her force herself to relax. Muscle by muscle.

He was doing the same himself. The smell of her hair, soft and clean and with a scent so faint… if he wasn’t this close he could never have smelled it.

‘Tell me about Lucy,’ she said, with sudden asperity, and he wondered if she realised what he was thinking.

If she had, then a man was wise to stop thinking it. Right now. Tell her about Lucy.

‘She’s my daughter.’

‘I know that much.’ She sounded amused.

‘She’s beautiful. She’s dark and tall and slim. Maybe a bit too thin.’ According to the one photograph he’d seen. What would he know?

‘How often do you see her?’

‘Never. I didn’t know she existed until three months ago.’

‘Wow!’ She didn’t sound judgmental. She just sounded… interested. It was the right reaction, he thought. She made it sound like not knowing you had a daughter was almost normal. That came from years of medical training, he thought. Nothing shocks.

‘Wow’s right.’

‘Harry says she’s coming tomorrow.’

‘So it seems,’ he said harshly. ‘Let’s talk of something else.’

‘Something else.’ She was silent for a while. Absorbing an absent daughter? He wondered if she was drifting into sleep, but apparently not.

‘So what about your parents?’ she asked.

‘What about them?’

‘Where are they?’

‘My mother’s in Perth. Last time I heard, my father was in New Zealand but that was twenty years back.’

‘Not a close family, huh?’

‘You could say that.’ Family wasn’t something he chose to talk about but if it stopped the trembling… This was therapy, he decided, and tugged her tighter and thought, Yep, medical necessity.

‘You’re so warm,’ she murmured, and she was relaxing a little, warming a little, tension easing.

‘So tell me about your family,’ he said, deciding to turn the tables.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Why your mother didn’t get on that plane and come. She knew how close you’d come to death.’

‘Just as long as it didn’t hit the papers. That’s all she’d care about.’

‘Not close either?’

‘Too close. They should have had more children. Only one… it’s all your eggs in one basket and a girl can’t live up to it.’

‘Do they like you being a nurse?’

‘They hate me being a nurse.’ The tension was back again. ‘I wanted to do medicine so badly but there was no way they’d support me. I was to go into the family business. That was my grandfather’s decree. It’s my grandfather who pulls the strings. I’ve had to work my way through nursing. He fought me every step of the way.’

‘But you’re doing something you love.’

‘I’m not sure,’ she whispered. ‘Or… I am but I’m not doing enough. When I was trying to stop myself drowning, there was a part of me thinking… If I get out of here, I want to make a difference. Not just… be.’

‘I can’t imagine you just being,’ he said, and she sighed and yawned and snuggled.

‘It’d be so easy to sink into my parents’ world. Like my hotel room. I have three different types of bath foam.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’ She snuggled again. His body was reacting. Of course his body was reacting. He’d have to be inhuman for it not to react.

He was wearing heavy-duty pants with a heavy-duty zipper. He was becoming exceedingly grateful that he didn’t routinely pack pyjamas.

‘I’m so warm,’ she murmured. ‘I shouldn’t let you do this.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘I’m sure it’s not.’ Her voice was starting to slur. ‘I’m sure it’s just that you’re a very nice man and a fine doctor. You saved my life and you’ve rescued me from my nightmare. Now you’re making me feel wonderful. I’m so sorry you didn’t know about your daughter.’

‘I’m seeing her tomorrow. She’s the guest I told Coral about.’

‘That’s great.’ She sighed again, a long, sleepy, languorous sigh that made the night feel impossibly sensual. ‘That’s wonderful. Tomorrow you’ll turn into a father. You’re a lifesaver, a doctor, a father, a guy with pecs to die for… and you’re holding me. Like three types of bath foam… what more could a girl desire?’

She was making no sense at all. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘I will.’ She smiled-he heard her smile. ‘I am. But I first I need to say thank you.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘No, but tomorrow you’ll be a father,’ she said. ‘And a doctor again, and a lifesaver, and I need to say thank you now.’

‘Pippa…’

‘You saved my life.’ She was no longer even trying to make sense, he thought. She was simply saying what came into her head. ‘You saved me from Roger. I could have married him.’

‘That was hardly me…’

‘You were part of it. If you hadn’t been there for me… Apart from being dead… if it hadn’t been you I might even have been weak enough to let him come. He might have bullied me into believing in him again. Marriage for the sake of family. Ugh.’ She shuddered and clung.

‘Not now, though. You’ve shown me how… ordinary it all was. Just ordinary.’ Her voice was a husky whisper, part of the dreaming. Filled with pleasure and warmth and something more… ‘Today… Not only am I alive, not only do I not have to marry Roger, there’s a whole world you’re showing me. You’re showing me how it is to be alive. New. Wanting…’