She worked solidly for three hours. Claire ushered patients in one after the other, and, to her astonishment, Sarah found she was enjoying herself immensely.

This was real medicine. It was medicine she hadn’t practised for five years, and even then she’d started her initial training as a paediatrician in a city hospital. Paediatrics wasn’t this sort of medicine.

The fishing crews were rough, tough, but underneath as worried as mothers with newborns about their myriad ills. Most of them had been at sea for weeks, and in those circumstances-three weeks of thinking of nothing but sea and fish-minor complaints had a habit of growing in the mind if not in reality. A freckle on a forearm became a melanoma. A little deafness in one ear became a tumour. Sarah found most of her time was spent in reassurance. And apart from that, there were the festering sores that had been neglected for too long…

She worked through, being given an inquisition by each patient.

After Claire’s good-natured injunction to behave with respect, they treated her with caution-but also with immense curiosity. ‘How can you possibly be a forensic pathologist? We’ve seen what they do on telly. Why would anyone as pretty as you want to do that stuff?’

This community was heavily male-oriented. Single women were scarce as hen’s teeth, and she was propositioned by at least five fishermen. She ended up chuckling as she saw out the last fisherman, listening to his impassioned plea to go out with him that night as she tried to close the door behind him.

‘Yeah, I know we haven’t got any restaurants, but I know this great secluded little cove, and I’ll bring lobster and as much beer as we can drink.’

She grinned at him and declined, and was still laughing when she turned to find Alistair watching her, an expression of stunned incredulity on his face.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

She didn’t stop smiling. ‘I suspect I’m protecting my virtue. If he hasn’t got more than lobster and beer on his mind then I’m a monkey’s uncle.’

‘I mean-’ he wasn’t smiling ‘-seeing my patients.’

‘It’s unethical, isn’t it?’ she agreed. ‘But Claire said you were snowed under. You needn’t worry. The people I saw only had minor worries. Anything that I was the least concerned about I saved for you, or told them to come back in the morning for a repeat consultation with a real doctor. For instance you.’

‘Thank you very much,’ he said dryly, and her smile faded.

‘Well, I think you should say thank you,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve saved you three hours’ work.’

‘While you should be out solving crime?’

‘As far as I know there’s no crime to solve. There are missing people I’m doing my best for, but there’s not a lot I can do but wait.’

‘And do nothing?’

‘And do your work.’ Her anger was building.

‘I didn’t ask you-’

‘I offered. I’m not incompetent, Alistair. I’m not sure why you came with me this morning, but-’

‘I’m not suggesting you’re incompetent, either.’

‘Then let’s leave it,’ she snapped. ‘We’re both competent doctors. You help me and I’ll help you. That’s fair.’

‘I don’t need help.’

‘No? You could be just starting clinic now and coping with everything else all on your own. If I was anyone else but me would you be so ungracious?’

He hesitated. Then met her gaze square-on. ‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Then why-’

‘There’s too much history, Sarah. What you did…’

She closed her eyes. What she did… It hung over her like a great black fog. An admission of guilt she could never escape.

When she opened her eyes Alistair’s expression had changed. ‘Sarah…’ His brows had snapped down as if he was suddenly uncertain. That was a change, she thought bleakly. The black cap of judgement had been replaced by something that had just the faintest shade of grey about it.

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. What this man thought of her was totally immaterial.

‘I need to go through my notes with you,’ she told him.

‘Why?’

‘If there’s something you disagree with then you can dash out and change the medication before I kill someone else.’

Kill someone else. It was a bleak and harsh statement and it hung. Dreadful.

And Alistair’s face changed yet again. Acknowledging the pain she had no hope of disguising.

‘You’ve lived with the guilt of Grant’s death for six years,’ he said softly, and she didn’t say anything at all. Nothing. There was nothing to say.

If she’d wanted to say something then the time to do that had been six years ago, she acknowledged bleakly. Not now. Not now, when it was far, far too late to change a thing.

‘Sarah, I-’

‘Leave it,’ she said, more roughly than she’d intended. ‘Alistair, we agreed to shelve it. We need to work together for the next couple of days, until we sort this out, and then we can move on. We don’t have to see each other again after this. But for now we need to be civil. The way I see it, the only way we can do that is if we avoid the subject completely.’

‘There are unresolved issues-’

‘Then they’re staying unresolved.’

‘Right.’ There was a moment’s silence while each of them regrouped. Figured out where to go from here. Finally…

‘You’re telling me you’ve done all my work?’ Alistair said cautiously, and Sarah practically groaned in relief. They were back to being medical colleagues. It was a relationship she could cope with. She couldn’t cope with anything more.

He even sounded as if he intended to be nice again.

Well, two could go down that path.

‘Yep.’ She even managed a smile. ‘Plus your ward round. Mr Carter’s heart is behaving itself. Don dropped in and had his shoulder checked-he’s doing nicely. It looks to me as if it’s only the result of his major fall-I doubt it’ll end up being a chronic problem. How’s your guy under the tractor?’

‘He’s okay. He was pushed into soft dirt. He had breathing trouble until we got the thing off him, but once the pressure was off he recovered almost immediately. He has two broken ribs. I’ve put him into hospital for observation but he should be fine.’

‘Lucky.’

‘He is.’ Alistair’s gaze was thoughtful. His eyes were appraising her. ‘Are you tired?’

‘Why should I be tired?’ She was ready to spring onto the defensive.

But he was still in nice mode. ‘You’ve had a long day.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s only six.’

‘And you’ve just knocked back a dinner invitation.’

‘So I did,’ she said, finally relaxing a little. Alistair seemed to have moved on-away from the hurtfulness of a past that was almost unbearable-and if he was prepared to do that then she was only too glad to follow. ‘I liked the idea of beach and lobster, but the beer and seduction bit was maybe a spot over the top.’

‘So if I said lobster and beach, with no seduction included…?’

‘Anyone who says lobster and beach has my complete compliance,’ she told him. ‘Lobster, beach. Two of my very favourite things. In fact, if I hadn’t been so scared of scary things I’d be on the beach right now.’

‘Scary things?’

‘The beach was deserted this afternoon,’ she told him. ‘It looked gorgeous, but with no lifesaver in sight and no one in the water I assumed there must be at least half a dozen lethal-type stingers like box jellyfish lurking out there.’

‘They don’t come in at this time of the year.’

‘Then why isn’t the town swimming?’

‘It’s a normal school day,’ he told her. ‘The townspeople are working. The fishermen are in port, but the last thing they want when they’re in port is any more sea. And anyone who has any free time is out searching. Not wasting time swimming.’

‘Well,’ she said, meeting his gaze square-on, ‘that’s put me in my place properly, hasn’t it?’ She gave him a half-hearted smile. ‘You’re very good at it.’

‘I don’t have a clue what your place is.’

Silence. Neither knew where to take it from there. But…he had said lobster and beach…

‘Cooked lobster?’ she queried, and the tension eased off again as he smiled.

‘Yep. One of the fishermen who’s just come in cooked up a batch this afternoon. He always keeps me some. It saves me from Mrs Granson’s interminable casseroles for a day or so.’

‘You know,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘you could always learn to cook.’

‘I need a wife,’ he said-and the twinkle was suddenly back behind his eyes again. She liked it, she thought. More. She loved it. Well, she must. Grant had had just that same twinkle.

No. It was different. Grant’s twinkle had led to nothing but disaster. Alistair’s twinkle promised teasing and lobster and a swim. Nothing more.

‘I need a wife, too,’ she said, responding to his smile. ‘Anything to save me from a casserole like last night’s. But if it’s only you that’s offering…well, Dr Benn, I accept you and your lobster as a wife substitute.’

‘Thanks very much,’ he said faintly, and she grinned.

‘Any time. Lobster, eh? Is it a large lobster?’

‘Maybe it can even be stretched to two lobsters.’

‘You’re definitely wife material,’ she told him. ‘Lead on.’


The beach was magic.

The tide here was huge, which meant that at low tide there was almost three hundred yards of golden sand. The tide was coming in now, though, which meant it took only fifty or sixty yards to reach the water. Sarah walked onto the sand, looked out at the waves lapping the shore and simply shed her clothes as a butterfly shed its cocoon. Her bikini was underneath, but, watching her, Alistair thought she was almost unaware of it.

She was certainly unaware of him. She’d walked down here by his side, with Flotsam bouncing next to her. Her face had been tilted to the sun and she’d seemed almost oblivious to his presence.