‘There’s another conference in Spain the following week that you might want to consider attending,’ Cat said in a dry voice. ‘Sexual health. You, as an obstetrician, better than anyone must know the perils of casual sex.’

‘Of course I do, but sex is healthy.’ Gemma grinned and then she looked at Cat. She wanted to pick up an imaginary sledgehammer of her own and knock down the wall that had gone up around her friend since her baby’s death.

‘Do you know what’s brilliant about a one-night stand, Cat?’

‘Gemma…’ Cat shook her head. She really didn’t have time to stand and chat but her friend persisted.

Gemma loved to talk about sex! ‘He doesn’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to worry how you might slot into each other’s lives and whether he leaves the toilet seat up or is going to support you in your career and all that stuff, because you’re not looking for a potential Mr Right. He can be Mr Wrong, Mr Bad, Mr Whatever-It-Is-You-Fancy. God, but I miss one-night stands.’

‘Does Nigel know your theory?’

‘Of course he doesn’t.’ Gemma grinned. ‘Nigel still thinks he was my second…’ They both laughed for a moment but then Gemma stood firm. ‘It’s time for you to have some fun, Cat. Doctor’s orders—you’re to buy some condoms at the airport.’

Cat laughed and waved and got into her car and headed for the hairdresser’s.

She adored Gemma.

And Nigel.

But…

What she hadn’t said to her very good friend was that, as much as it might work for Gemma, she really didn’t want a Nigel of her own. She didn’t want someone asking what was for dinner every night, but nor did she want to be the one coming in after work and doing the ‘Hi, honey, I’m home’ thing.

Still, there wasn’t time to dwell on it all.

She parked her car in her usual spot behind the church and grabbed her bag and walked quickly to the hairdresser’s. She pushed on the door but it didn’t open and she frowned and then she saw the ‘Closed’ sign.

‘Don’t do this to me, Glynn…’

He never forgot her appointments and Cat had been very specific about the time for today when she had seen him on Monday. Glynn knew that she had a plane to catch and that she would be pushed for time.

‘Breathe,’ Cat mumbled as she accepted that no amount of rattling the door was going to make Glynn suddenly appear.

It’s a hair appointment, that’s all, she told herself. There would be a hairdresser at the hotel. Only, her presentation was at nine in the morning and she’d wanted to have a leisurely breakfast in her room and calm herself down before that.

And it was Thomas’s birthday tomorrow.

She was not going to cry over a missed hair appointment.

Cat wasn’t crying over that as she drove to the airport. Instead, she was wishing the boot was full of presents and wrapping paper and that she was dashing to pick up a birthday cake…

Why was it still so hard?

So, as she could not get her thick curly hair smoothed into long, glossy and straight, she bought some hair serum at the airport, then checked in her luggage and headed through with ages to spare.

She went to the loos and sorted her hair as best she could, deciding she would straighten it tonight and again in the morning, but for now she tied it back and headed out.

She took a seat and read through her talk on her tablet. It was about palliative care and its place in the emergency department and, really, she knew it back to front and inside out. She had done hours of research and all her meticulous notes and patient studies now came down to one talk.

And then what?

Exams.

And then?

Cat blew out a breath.

Her career was a little like her house renovation.

The day she’d moved in Cat had stared at the purple carpet and the purple tiles that would take for ever to get off. It had seemed unlikely, near impossible, that she would ever get there and yet here she was, just a bedroom and a garden away from completion.

She had, through high school, always wanted to be a surgeon yet as a medical student she had stepped into the emergency department and had been quickly ushered into Resus to observe the treatment of a patient who had just come in.

A cyclist had lain there unconscious with a massive head injury. Cat had watched in silent awe as the staff had brought his dire condition under control. His heart, which hadn’t been beating, had been restarted. His airway had been secured and the seizures that had then started to rack his body had been halted with drugs.

She had been sure at first that he would die and yet he had made it to Theatre and then on to Intensive Care.

She had followed him up and found out a week later that he had been transferred to a ward. She had gone in to see him, expecting what, she hadn’t known. Certainly not a young man sitting up in bed, laughing and talking with his girlfriend, who was sitting by his side.

He should be dead, Cat had thought, though, of course, she didn’t say that. Instead, she’d chatted to him for a few moments, unable to truly comprehend that here he was, not just alive but laughing and living.

Emergency medicine had become her passion right there and then. Yes, at twenty years old she had known she was a long way off being as skilled as the staff who had attended the cyclist that day.

Slowly she had got there, though.

And now here she was, coming to the top of her game.

So why the restlessness?

Cat glanced up at the board and rolled her eyes when she saw that her flight was delayed, and decided to wander around the shops.

Oh, there was Gemma’s dress!

She was sure that it was, though looking at the price tag, not quite sure enough to buy it without checking, so she took a photo and fired a quick text to her friend.

Is this it?

It was, and Gemma promised to love her for ever and forgive any stuffed donkeys she might bring home for the twins if Cat would buy it for her.

She bought some duty-free perfume too, as well as her favourite lip gloss and…no—no condoms.

Finally the plane was boarding and Cat, along with her purchases, was on her way.

She didn’t read through her talk again. She dozed most of the way, trying to drown out the sound of overexcited children and their parents. As they disembarked she almost forgot the dress but luckily she grabbed it at the last minute.

Very luckily, as it turned out.

Having spent hours watching an empty baggage carousel, seeing the shutters go down on all the airport shops and filling in numerous forms, she was doing her level best to hold it together as she climbed out of the taxi and walked into the hotel. It was close to midnight.

Her luggage was lost, her hair was a joke.

And tomorrow, at nine, she had to deliver the most important presentation of her life.

CHAPTER TWO

CAT WOKE BEFORE her breakfast was delivered and lay there.

She remembered a day seven years ago and wished, how she wished, that there was a seven-year-old waiting to open his birthday presents and to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to.

It was a hard picture to paint and each year it got harder.

Was Mike in this happy family picture and did Thomas have brothers and sisters now?

No, she didn’t miss Mike and the perfect world they had been building. She missed, on Thomas’s behalf, all that he had been denied.

She couldn’t afford to cry, especially given the fact she had no make-up with her and so she headed to the bathroom to set to work with the little she had.

With her heavy-duty hair straighteners neatly packed in her lost luggage, she was very grateful for the hair serum she had bought and applied an awful lot in an attempt to tame her long, wild curly hair.

When her breakfast was delivered she walked out onto the balcony and tried to calm herself with the spectacular view of the Mediterranean. It was just after seven but already the air was warm. The coffee was hot and strong and Cat tried to focus on her speech. It will be fine, she told herself, refusing to fall apart because she didn’t have the perfect, perfect pale grey suit and the pale ballet pumps in the softest buttery leather to wear.

They were here to hear her words, Cat reminded herself.

Yet she couldn’t quite convince herself that it didn’t matter what she wore or how she looked.

Neutral.

That was how she always tried to appear.

There was nothing neutral about her today, she thought as she slipped on Gemma’s dress.

Her rather ample bust was accentuated by the lace, the halter-neck showed far too much of her brown back—the tan was from painting the window frames on her last lot of days off, rather than lying on the beach. Her hair she tied back with the little white band that came with the shower cap in the bathroom and then she covered it with a thick strand of black hair.

A squirt of duty-free perfume, a slick of lip gloss and she would simply have to do.

Yet, she thought, having tied up her espadrilles, as she stood and looked in the mirror, while never in a million years would she have chosen this outfit for anything related to work, she liked how it looked. She wouldn’t even have chosen it for anything out of work either. Generally she was in shorts or jeans when sorting out the renovations. Yes, she liked how she looked today. It reminded her of how she had looked before she’d had…

Cat halted herself right there.

She simply could not afford the luxury of breaking down.

Tonight, Cat told herself. Tonight she would order room service and a bottle of wine and reminisce.

Today she had to get on.

She had one last flick through her notes and then she headed out to register for the conference and also to check that everything was in place for her talk.

She was just putting her swipe card in her bag when the elevator doors opened and she looked up to an empty lift, bar one occupant.

Bar One was tall and unshaven with grey eyes and his dark hair was a touch too long yet he looked effortlessly smart in dark pants and a white shirt. All this she noted as she stood there and briefly wondered if she should simply let this lift go.

For some bizarre reason that seemed far easier than stepping in.

‘Buenos días,’ Bar One said, and then frowned at her indecision as to whether or not to enter.

‘Buenos días,’ Cat replied, gave him a brisk smile and stepped in. The floor number for the function rooms had already been pressed and as she glanced to the side and down, anywhere other than his eyes, she noted he too was an owner of the softest buttery leather shoes.

His luggage clearly hadn’t been lost.

And neither was he wearing socks.

Three, Cat thought as his cologne met her nostrils and she found herself doing a very quick audit as to the number of garments that would remain on his lovely body once he’d kicked off those shoes.

Talk about thinking like a man!

She blamed Gemma, of course. It was her fault for putting such ideas in her head, Cat decided as the lift opened at the next floor and unfortunately no one got in.

He said something else in Spanish and Cat shook her head. ‘Actually, buenos días is as far as my Spanish goes.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought you were a local.’

His accent was English and he had just delivered a compliment indeed, because the locals, Cat had worked out during her prolonged time at the airport last night, were a pretty stunning lot.

‘Nope.’ She shook her head.

The lift doors opened and he wished her a good day as he went to step out.

‘And you,’ she offered.

‘Sadly not,’ he replied, and nodded to the gathering crowd outside the elevators. ‘I’m working.’

‘So am I,’ she said, and he stood there a little taken aback as he let her out first.

Oh!

Dominic had thought she was on her way to some… Well, he’d had no idea really where she might have been on her way to but talk about a sight for sore eyes.

She had a very, very nice back, he decided as he followed her over to the registration desk, where there was a small line-up.

A very tense back, he noted as she reached into her bag and pulled out her phone.

‘I’m Dominic…’

Cat had just had a text from the airline to say her luggage had been found. At Gatwick! It should be with her later this afternoon and could she confirm that she was still at the same hotel. She barely turned around as she fired back a text and told him her name. ‘Cat.’

‘Short for?’

She really didn’t have time for small talk and she knew, just knew, because her back was scalding from his eyes, that it was more than small talk he was offering. ‘I’m actually a bit busy at the moment…’

‘Well, that’s some name—no wonder you have to shorten it.’

Her fingers hesitated over the text she was typing and she gave a small, presumably unseen smile.

Dominic, even if he couldn’t see her mouth, knew from behind that she’d smiled.

He watched as that rigid spinal column very briefly relaxed a notch and those tense shoulders dropped a fraction.

Still, he left things there. He certainly wasn’t going to pursue a conversation that had been so swiftly shut down.

Instead, he looked at the brochure with only mild interest. He loathed this type of thing. He’d only put his hand up because he’d needed the update hours and because his parents and sister lived nearby—it would be a good chance to catch up. As well as that, he was seriously considering moving here.

He kept himself up to date and found these presentations pointless, or rather bullet-pointed—most speakers had everything on slides and it was rather like being read a bedtime story out loud. At thirty-two years of age, he would rather read for himself.

‘Dominic!’

He glanced over at the sound of his name and gave a smile when he saw that it was someone he had studied with in London.

‘How are you, Hugh?’

Cat stood there, trying not to notice the delicious depth to his voice. Not that he spoke much; it was his friend who did most of the talking.

She registered and was told that one of the organisers would be with her shortly to take her to where her talk was being held.

‘This way, Dr Hayes…’

Dominic stopped in mid-sentence as Cat was led away. She must be speaking, he realised, and, quite shamelessly, he glanced through the list of speakers and found out her name for himself.

Catriona Hayes.

And then he saw the topic of her talk.

Palliative Care and its Place in the Emergency Department.

Absolutely not what he needed.

So, instead of hearing her speak, he took himself off to listen to a disaster management panel but his mind wasn’t really there. Half an hour later he slipped out unnoticed and slipped into where she was talking.

She noticed him come in.

There was a tiny pause in her talk as she glanced at the opening door and saw him enter.

He didn’t take a seat but leant against the back wall with arms folded. There was a small falter in her flawless talk as he took his place but then she continued where she’d left off.

‘Of course, it’s great for the patient when they receive a terminal diagnosis to take that break, that trek, that overseas trip. It can just be a touch inconvenient for us when they present, minus notes, diagnosis, information and family. And so, because that’s what we do, we leap in and do our best to save them.’ She looked out at the room. ‘Of course, it’s not so great for the patient either when they come around to our smiling faces… It’s hard on the staff when a four-year-old presents on Christmas Eve. It’s our instinct to do all that we can. There isn’t always time to speak at length with the family when they come rushing in with their child but listen we must…’

It wasn’t like a bedtime story with everything spelt out. Yes, there were bullet points, but they were only brief outlines and, for Dominic, a lot of her words felt like bullets as she filled in the gaps.

Brusque was her delivery as she covered things such as legalities, next of kin, patient rights. For good measure, staff, relative and patient guilt was thrown in too.

He listened, he felt, yet his face never moved a muscle.

As she finished, he left the room and went off to lunch but, even if it smelt fantastic, food didn’t appeal and instead he took some water and went out onto a large balcony.

Unlike others who had been at her talk Dominic didn’t go up and congratulate her. Neither did he tell her that her talk had touched a nerve.

He could have walked over and said how his wife had got up in the night and wandered off. He could have said how angry she had been to wake up two days later in ICU and that he could still see the reproach in her eyes, as if Dominic had somehow failed her because she’d lived.

No, he didn’t need or want that look from Cat and he was tired, so tired of women who gave out sympathy and understanding.

He’d prefer something lighter.

Or darker, perhaps! Hopefully, Dominic thought, heading back in, so too would she.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WOULD BE an absolute lie to say the attraction hadn’t been as instant as it was mutual.

All through the lunch break there was a knot high in Cat’s stomach and tension in her muscles and she knew that she was bracing herself for him to come over.

Except he didn’t.

Ouch!

She wasn’t sure if she even wanted him to.

There was an arrogance to him, not that she couldn’t handle arrogant men; she’d dealt with more than her share of them.

No, it was something else about Dominic that had her seriously rattled—the presumption of sex.

From the briefest conversation she had gleaned that much. From the roam of his eyes on the bare skin of her back, from the sullen, one-sided conversation with his friend that had told her his mind was on her.

From the corner of her eye she watched as he came in from the balcony and then went over and chatted to a group.

She was incredibly aware of his presence and it had been a long time since she had felt anything close to that.

Not that it mattered.

She was being ignored.

Funny, but she knew that it was deliberate and what was stranger still it made her smile. ‘Excellent talk…’ A middle-aged blond man came over and introduced himself. ‘Gordon.’ He smiled.

‘Cat.’

It was a very long thirty minutes.

Gordon simply didn’t let up and Cat couldn’t really make her excuses and leave because he was talking about his wife who had died and the total hash that had been made in the emergency department.

It was a busman’s holiday for Cat as she lined up for the lovely buffet lunch and Gordon followed her with his plate.

‘Two hours, we waited, Cat,’ he said, and she glanced up and met those gorgeous grey eyes and saw that Dominic was now unashamedly watching her.

Rescue me, her green ones said, but he looked away.

‘And then…’ Gordon continued to tell her about his wife’s IV coming out and the drugs that didn’t go in. Yes, it was a sad story, but it was a story she dealt with every day and it was her lunch break.

‘Paella, please.’ Cat held out her plate to the waiter but he shook his head.

‘We’re waiting for some more…’

Cat chose some odd noodle salad, just to get away, but Gordon chose the same and he was off again. He sat next to her at a high table and droned on and on.

She met Dominic’s eyes again and this time he smiled.

You missed your chance, his eyes said.

I’ve changed my mind, was her silent plea.

Well, you’re too late!

He yawned and pulled out his pamphlet and with a very small smirk walked off.

What a bastard.

Cat laughed and then turned to Gordon’s confused expression.

‘I said, then she died…’

‘Sorry, I thought you said then she…’ Cat let out a breath. ‘What a terrible time you had.’

She just didn’t need to hear about it today of all days.

She didn’t see Dominic again all afternoon, not that it mattered by then. At 5:00 p.m. when she got back to her room to find that her luggage still hadn’t arrived, it wasn’t the Spanish-speaking English doctor who was on her mind.

It was Thomas.

She didn’t want to go down for dinner in an hour and be sociable.

Room service seemed a far better idea.

A huge plate of paella.

A bottle of wine.

She wished she’d brought his photo.

But there had been too many sad birthdays and, suddenly realising that she had a very small window if she didn’t want to spend tomorrow dressed in Gemma’s dress or linen pants that were more suitable for travel, she headed out.

She found herself in a large department store, explaining to an orange woman that, apart from a lipstick, she had no make-up with her.

‘My luggage was lost,’ she said.

The woman was so horrified on her behalf that Cat actually smiled. ‘It’s fine…’

It was.

So much so that instead of buying loads of make-up and then heading upstairs to the ropa de señora section to purchase a chic Spanish outfit Cat wandered out and found herself drawn to a busy market. There were gorgeous dresses blowing in the late-afternoon breeze and they were nothing like what she usually wore.

If she walked into work dressed as she was today, it would draw comment. Here, apart from a couple of vaguely familiar faces from conferences of long ago, no one knew her.

It was incredibly freeing—she could be whoever she chose to be.

Cat took her time with her purchases. She chose a loose long dress in lilac and shorts that were very short, along with a top and a stringy-looking bikini. And, she decided, instead of the museum on Sunday afternoon she was going to the beach.

She liked Barcelona.

Far more than she had expected to.

It was cosmopolitan, busy yet friendly, colourful and hot.

Walking back into the hotel, she was about to take her purchases up and get changed and, instead of hiding in her room, perhaps head out for dinner by herself when she saw him.

Dominic.

‘I was wondering where you were,’ he said by way of greeting, and Cat liked it that he was direct.

‘I went shopping…’ She was about to explain that her luggage was lost but then decided she didn’t have to explain anything.

‘Cat!’ a voice boomed, and she turned and saw that Gordon was bearing down on her. ‘There’s a group of us heading to the hotel restaurant. Why don’t you join us?’

‘Oh, I’d love to but I can’t,’ Cat said. ‘I’m expecting a call. A conference call. I—’

‘Maybe after?’ Gordon checked.

‘I’ll try.’

Gordon smiled over to Dominic. ‘Do you have plans or would you like to join us?’

Dominic dealt with things far more effortlessly than Cat. ‘I’ve already got plans, but thank you for asking.’

As the group walked off they were left standing.

‘Liar,’ Dominic said. ‘You don’t have a conference call you have to get to.’

‘Was it obvious?’ she groaned.

‘To me it was.’ Dominic nodded. ‘Liars always have a need to elaborate. You’d know that, working in Emergency.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘So would Gordon.’

‘Is he a friend?’

Cat shook her head.