‘I’m sick of guts,’ Finn said. ‘Give me a good pliable woman any day. So why are we reading her CV?’ He raised an eyebrow in sudden interest. ‘Well, well. It’s about time …’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Hannah’s been gone for four years now,’ Finn said, gentling. ‘A man can’t mourn for ever.’

‘Says the whole hospital,’ Luke said grimly. ‘It’s driving me nuts.’

‘So have an affair.’ He motioned to the CV. ‘Excellent idea. Get them off your back. Get a life.’

‘Hannah didn’t get a life.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘So whose fault was it?’ he demanded, explosively. ‘Fourteen weeks and I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’

‘You were working seventy hours a week and fronting for exams. Hannah knew the pressures. She was also a nurse and she knew her way around her body. To lock herself in her bedroom and suffer in silence at fourteen weeks pregnant … She was fed up that you were caught up in Theatre. It still smacks of playing the martyr.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Speak ill of the dead? I say it like it is. If one stupid act of martyrdom stops you from getting on with your life …’

‘I don’t see you getting on with your life.’

Finn stiffened. Finn was his boss, Luke conceded, but their relationship went deeper. He knew as much of Finn’s background as anyone did. Finn had a brother who’d been killed in combat. He’d been wounded himself. There’d been a messy relationship with his brother’s wife, then a series of forget-the-moment flings.

Was he about to throw those in his boss’s face? Maybe not. Not at two in the morning, when they were both sleep deprived—and when a cute little blonde nurse had suddenly appeared in the background behind Finn. Waiting for an opportunity to break in.

‘Don’t make this about me,’ Finn snapped. ‘Meanwhile, you …’ Finn waved the folder. ‘An agency nurse, ripe for the picking. That’s what you need. A casual affair and then move on.’

The blue eyes widened.

Luke stifled a groan.

‘Excuse me, doctors,’ the Agency-Ripe-For-The-Picking nurse said, in a carefully neutral voice. ‘The paging system doesn’t appear to be working down here. Dr Lockheart has asked me to find you, Dr Williams. Not you, Mr Kennedy. Dr Lockheart’s words were, “Keep that man out of my department at all costs”. But a child’s been admitted with facial injuries from dog bites. Dr Lockheart says to tell you, Dr Williams, that this is serious and could you please come now.’

CHAPTER TWO

JESSIE BLANDON was headed for Theatre—if he made it that far.

He was four years old. He’d woken in the middle of the night, needing his mother, the bathroom, something. He’d stumbled through the living room. His mother’s boyfriend’s Rottweiler had been on the couch.

As far as Lily could see, he’d lost half his face. Or not completely lost; it was hanging by a flap. How he’d not bled to death, she didn’t know.

Lily didn’t have time to think about what she’d just overheard. She flew back to Emergency with Luke.

‘Tell me,’ he snapped as they strode down the corridor at a pace practised by most emergency medics. Never run in a hospital. Walk—exceedingly fast.

She outlined what she’d seen and Luke’s face grew grim.

‘Dogs and kids,’ he muttered. ‘No matter how trustworthy … Hell.’

It was hell. Lily had seen the mother and her boyfriend as the ambulance had wheeled the little boy in. They looked shattered. This would be a great goofy dog, she guessed, normally quiet, startled from sleep into doing what dogs were bred to do. Attack and defend.

How good was this man beside her?

She was about to find out.

She’d not dealt with a case like this at Lighthouse Cove. For the last two years, in her tiny hospital, any serious case had been transferred to Adelaide. Still, she had the training to back her up. Those long years, travelling back and forth from Lighthouse Cove to Adelaide Central, struggling to do her training yet still support her mother, they’d been hard but they’d provided her with skills, so that when Luke Williams said, ‘You’ve done plastics, you trained with Professor Blythe? You’ll work with us on this?’ she could nod.

But she wasn’t nodding with confidence that they’d save the little boy. He was desperately injured. She was only confident that she could back up this man’s skills.

If he had the skills.

He did.

To say she was impressed with Luke William’s professionalism was an understatement. This was a life-and-death emergency. Every minute they wasted meant this little boy had a smaller chance at life, yet Luke exuded calm from the moment he saw him.

First and foremost he made sure Jessie was feeling no pain. He had an anesthetist there in moments and Jessie was placed swiftly into an induced coma. He assessed what needed to be done. He gave curt, incisive directions with not a word wasted. He even found a moment to talk to the couple outside.

‘Things are grim,’ he told them. ‘There’s no way I can assure you your little boy will be okay. I don’t know. No one knows. But he’s in the best of hands, and we’ll do everything we humanly can to save him. Meanwhile, I want you to ring a reliable friend and ask them to bring in Jessie’s favourite things, a bear maybe, his blanket from his bed? Reassuring stuff. The paramedics will have informed the police. Tell your friend not to go near the house until he’s sure the police have the dog under control.’

‘The dog’s a pussy cat,’ the man said, brokenly.

‘No,’ Luke said grimly. ‘He’s a dog. And your son …’ He closed his eyes for a fraction of a moment and when he opened them Lily saw something behind his eyes that looked like pain. ‘Jessie,’ he said. ‘It’s up to us now to see if we can save your Jessie.’

She’d come on duty tonight as an unknown nurse, expecting to be treated as very junior. In fact, she’d kind of wanted to be junior. Anonymous. Working steadily in the background, a tiny cog in a big wheel, disappearing as soon as she was off duty, coming on duty tomorrow on another ward, knowing no one, no one knowing her. Bliss.

What she hadn’t expected was to be part of a close-knit, highly skilled team, working desperately to save one little life.

That weird conversation she’d overheard in Admin was put aside. For some reason Luke had been checking her credentials. Whether the conversation between Finn and Luke should have the pair of them up before the medical board for sexual discrimination was immaterial right now. What was important was that Luke knew she was up to the job in hand and he let the rest of the team know it. The hospital was desperately short-staffed, so she was no doormat, standing in the background. She was scrub nurse, working with every ounce of her knowledge and skill.

They all were.

The child’s face had been torn from chin to forehead. A vast flap of skin and flesh was hanging from his cheek. Among the blood and mess, they could see bone.

His eye socket, his nose, the side of his mouth … Unspeakable damage …

But the flesh hadn’t been ripped away entirely. If Luke had the skills he might … he must …

The alternative was unthinkable. If the flap couldn’t be replaced, this little boy would be facing years of grafts, even a face transplant. A life of immuno-suppressant drugs. If he lived.

The alternative was that Luke sorted this mangled mess and teased it all back into place. That he keep the flap alive, re-establish blood supply, leave nerves undamaged …

A miracle?

No. Pure skill.

Her initial impressions of the man were that he was … okay, a womaniser. He’d been laughing with her. Eyeing her appreciatively. Talking with the director of surgery about her in that way …

Now every speck of concentration was on what he was doing. Jessie’s face was an intricate jigsaw puzzle that had to be fitted together before the blood supply was compromised. Every tiny torn piece had to be sorted, cleaned, put into careful, cautious position.

The nursing team of the hospital might have been hit by gastro but there was no hint of understaffing now. This was priority one, a child’s life. Luke was assisted by a surgical registrar, a paediatric anaesthetist, two scrub nurses and two junior nurses. All were totally focused.

And in their hands was a little boy called Jessie. Redheaded. Freckled on the tiny part of his face that wasn’t damaged. He was intubated, heavily anaesthetised. He’d been lucky he hadn’t drowned in his own blood.

Every person in the room was totally tuned to what they were doing. This was the most important job in the world, saving a child’s life … piece by piece …

Lily thought briefly of a case she’d worked on three years back. A professor in Adelaide, trying to save a man’s lips. Problems with drainage afterwards. Like Luke, the professor’s total attention had been caught in what he was doing, but afterwards he’d talked through what might have helped.

She turned to the closest junior nurse.

‘Slip out and find Dr Lockheart,’ she said. ‘Tell her we may need medical leeches. Tell her priority one.’

‘I don’t have authority …’ the girl said, casting a worried glance at Luke, but Luke’s attention was all on what he was doing. He might not have the head space to think beyond his current actions, Lily thought.

The anaesthetist, the registrar, the senior scrub nurse were totally focused as well.

‘Just say leeches are needed urgently,’ she told the nurse. There was no need to say the agency temp had ordered them. ‘Be it on my head if they’re not.’

And it would be her head, too, she thought. Leeches were kept in only a few medical facilities around the country. Her order might well involve helicopter, urgency, cost.

So sack me, she thought grimly, and went back to what she was doing. Elaine, the senior scrub nurse, needed to back off a little; there was only so long that she could hold the suction tube steady, that her fingers would do as she bid.

Luke’s fingers didn’t have a choice, they had to keep going.

‘Lily, move in,’ Luke growled, and he’d sensed it too, that the older nurse was faltering.

She moved in and kept on going.

Two hours later her decision was vindicated. The flap of skin was finally closed around the nostril and left lip. Luke was working under the little boy’s eyelid but he rechecked the lip and swore.

‘The blood’s coagulating,’ he said. ‘I need drainage. Hell, I didn’t think we’d get this far.’

‘We have leeches on hand if you can use them,’ she said diffidently, and the nurse in the background was already unfastening the canister.

‘How the … ?’ Luke was momentarily distracted. ‘Did Dr Lockheart order these?’

‘Lily did,’ the junior said, and grinned, the atmosphere in the theatre lightening as the outlook improved. ‘She’s not bad for an agency temp, is she?’

‘Not bad at all,’ Luke said, and caught Lily’s gaze and held, just for a moment, a fleeting second, before he went back to work.

Lily went back to work, too, but she was flushing under her mask.

Not bad at all.

His glance had unnerved her.

Luke Williams was a womanising surgeon, she told herself. She was here as a temporary nurse, knowing no one, wanting to know no one.

But his gaze …

It did something to her insides. Twisted …

She didn’t have time for anything to twist.

Work. Anonymity. Just do what comes next.

At five in the morning she was totally drained.

‘Go home,’ Dr Lockheart told her. ‘We’ve thrown you in at the deep end tonight. I know you’re not off duty until six but no one’s expecting anything more of you now.

‘And if you’d like to change agency nursing for permanent nursing at the Harbour, you’d be very, very welcome,’ Elaine said warmly. ‘Dr Williams is already asking that you be made a permanent member of the plastics team.’

‘I don’t want to be a permanent member of anything,’ she said wearily, and went to change and fetch her gear from her locker.

Home.

Problem. She didn’t actually have a home. Not until ten o’clock.

She’d arrived in Sydney yesterday, fresh from her mother’s dramas, wanting only to escape.

Her mother was, even by Lily’s dutiful daughter standards, an impossible woman. She drifted from drama to drama, and the small town they lived in had labelled her as trash, for good reason. She wasn’t trash, Lily thought. She was … needy. She needed men. And in between needing men, she needed Lily.

This last fling, though, had pushed the townspeople to the limit. It had pushed Lily to the limit. Two days ago—had it really been only two days ago?—the wife of the local vicar, a woman who was also the head of the hospital board, had stormed into Lighthouse Cove hospital and slapped her. As if her mother’s actions were Lily’s fault.

‘Get your mother away from my husband. You and your mother … She’s a slut and you’re no better. She needs a leash! You think you can be a respectable nurse in this town while your mother acts as the town’s whore?’ She’d slapped Lily again. A couple of patients’ relatives had had to pull her away and she’d collapsed in shock and in fury. Lily had caught her as she’d fallen, stopped her from hurting herself, but there had been no gratitude. No softening of the vitriol.

Why would there be?

‘Get out of my sight,’ the woman had hissed as she’d recovered. ‘Get out of our hospital. Get out of our town.’

She’d had no right to sack her. It was her mother who’d played the scarlet woman, not her.

But in a tiny town distinctions blurred.

She’d sat in the nurses’ station with her stomach cramping, feeling sick, knowing she couldn’t live with this stress a moment longer. She was being unfairly tarred with the same brush as her mother, and she knew she didn’t deserve it. But it was a small town and so far she’d always stuck up for her mother … that couldn’t go on.

On the way home she’d stopped to buy groceries. Walking into the general store had been a nightmare. Shocked, judgmental faces had been everywhere.

The Ellis women.

Then she’d tried to use her card to pay for groceries. ‘Declined: Limit exceeded.’

Her mother had been using her credit card?

Speechless, she’d gone home and there was the vicar, pudgy, weak and shamefaced, but totally besotted with her mother.

‘Make yourself scarce for a while, there’s a good girl,’ her mother had said. ‘We need time to ourselves. It’ll be okay, dear,’ she’d cooed as Lily had tried to figure what to do, what to say. ‘We were going to go to Paris but we’ve run out of money. It doesn’t matter. If Harold can just borrow a little bit more from his relatives we’ll leave. We’re in love and everyone just needs time to accept it.’

Enough. What had followed had been the world’s fastest pack. She’d driven eight hundred and fifty miles from Adelaide to Sydney. A seventeen-hour drive, her stomach cramping all the way. She’d had cat naps at the side of the road, or she’d tried to, but sleep had refused to come. She’d arrived in Sydney late in the afternoon, trying to figure how she could survive on what little money she had.

She’d walked into the nursing agency before it had closed and they’d fallen on her neck.

‘All your documents and references are in order. There’s a job tonight, if you’re available. Sydney Harbour Hospital is desperate.’

She’d found a cheap boarding house, dumped her luggage and booked accommodation for the next night. That was tonight, she thought, glancing at her watch. She could have the room from ten.

But it was five hours until ten o’clock, and she was so tired she was asleep on her feet.

Her stomach hurt.

She stared at her locker, trying to make her mind think. The thought of finding an all-hours café until then made her feel ill. There’d be an on-call room somewhere for medical staff, she thought. Probably there’d be a few. There’d be rooms for obstetricians waiting for babies. Rooms for surgeons waiting for their turn in complex multi-specialist procedures.

Rooms to sleep?

Just for a couple of hours, she thought. Just until it was a reasonable time to find breakfast and book into her boarding house.

Just for now.

He had a whole hour of thinking he’d done it right. One lousy hour and then the phone went off beside his bed.

‘Problem.’ It was Finn. Of course it was Finn—when did the man ever sleep?

When did Finn ever wake him when it wasn’t a full-blown emergency? Luke was hauling his pants on before Finn’s next words.

‘It’s Jessie,’ Finn snapped. ‘It seems he has a congenital heart problem. No one thought to tell us, not that it would have made a difference to what you did anyway. His heart’s failing. You want to come in or you want me to deal?’

‘I’m on my way.’

She woke and he was right beside her. Luke Williams, plastic surgeon. He looked like he’d just seen death.

The on-call room was tiny, one big squishy settee, a television, a coffee table with ancient magazines and nothing else. She’d curled into a corner of the couch and fallen asleep. Until now.

The man beside her wasn’t seeing her. He was staring at the blank television screen, gaze unfocused.

She’d never seen a man look so bleak.

‘What’s wrong?’ she breathed, and touched his arm.

He flinched.

‘What are you doing here?’ His voice was harsh. Breaking. It was emotion that had woken her, she thought. Raw grief, filling the room like a tangible thing.

‘I don’t get into my boarding house until ten,’ she told him. ‘So I’m camped out, waiting. But what is it? Jessie?’

‘He died,’ he said, and all the bleakness in the world was in those two words. ‘Cardiac arrest. He had a congenital heart problem and no one thought to tell us. As if we had time to look for records. The admission officer didn’t even read the form, she was too upset. We patched him up, we made him look like he might even be okay, and all the time his heart was like a time bomb.’

‘There was no choice,’ she managed, appalled.

‘There was a choice. If I’d known … I could have taken the flap off, thought about grafts later, concentrated on getting his heart stable first.’

She took a deep breath. What to say?

This man’s anguish was raw and real.

A congenital heart problem …

If Luke had known he might well have decided not to try and save his face, but without that immediate operation Jess would have been left with a lifetime of skin grafts. With a face that wasn’t his.

‘What sort of life would he have led?’ she whispered.

‘A life,’ he said flatly. ‘Any life. I can’t bear …’

And she couldn’t bear it either. She took his hands and tugged him around to face her.

There was more to this than a child dying, she thought. This man must have lost patients before. He couldn’t react like this to all of them. There was some past tragedy here that was being tapped into, she guessed. She had no idea what it was; but she sensed his pain was well nigh unbearable.

‘I killed him,’ he said, and for some reason she wasn’t sure he was talking about Jessie.

‘The dog killed him,’ she said, trying to sound prosaic. ‘You tried to save him.’

‘I should have—’

‘No. Don’t do this.’

He shuddered, and it was a raw and dreadful grief that took over his whole body.

Enough. She pulled him into her arms and held him. And held and held. She simply held him while the shudders racked his body, over and over.

This couldn’t just be about this child, she thought.

Something had broken him.

He was holding her as well now. Simply holding. Taking strength from her. Taking comfort, and giving it back.

A man and a woman, both in limbo.

The events of the past two days had left Lily gutted. Her mother … The vicar…. Losing her job. The judgement of the town.

The Ellis women.

She held to comfort, but he was holding her as well and she needed it.

Jessie’s death. The trauma of finding what her mother had done, planned to do. Forty-eight hours with little sleep.

If she could give comfort …

If this was what they both needed …

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be holding this woman.

But he wasn’t thinking of now. He was thinking of Jessie, four years old and red-headed.

The past was back with him. Four years ago, walking into their apartment after surgery that had lasted for fourteen hours. Exhausted but jubilant. Calling out to Hannah. ‘I’m home. It’s over and she’ll live. Hannah …’

Walking into the bedroom

Ectopic pregnancy, the autopsy said. Fourteen weeks pregnant.

By her side, a letter to her mother in Canada.

‘Tonight I’m finally telling Luke I’m pregnant. I’ve been waiting and waiting—I thought a lovely romantic dinner, but there’s no chance. He’s been so busy it’s driving me crazy but now he’ll have to make time for us. I want a son. I’m hoping he’ll be red-headed like me. I want to call him Jessie.’

Tonight, four years later, he hadn’t been able to save a red-headed boy called Jessie.

The woman in his arms was holding him. She smelled clean, washed, anonymous, clinical.

But more. The scent of faded roses was drifting through, like some afterthought of a lovely perfume. The silken threads of her fair hair were brushing his face.

She was an agency nurse. She didn’t know him.

She was warm and real and alive.

He’d come in here to sit, to try and come to terms with what had happened. He had two hours before his morning list started. He needed to get himself under control

Jessie.

Hannah.

They were nothing to do with the woman who was holding him.

She shuddered and he thought, She’s as shocked as I am. He tugged away a little and searched her face.

Her sky-blue eyes were rimmed with shadows. Her shock mirrored his. She looked like she, too, was in the midst of a nightmare.

‘Lily …’ It was the first time he’d used her name and it felt like … a question?

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Just hold me. Please.’ And she tugged him back to her.

He should back away.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He simply held. And held and held.

A man and a woman—with a need surfacing between them as primeval as time itself.

Stupid. Crazy. Wanton?

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.

His hands were slipping under her blouse, feeling the warmth of her, the heat. He needed her heat.

Her breasts were moulding to his chest. Skin was meeting skin, and conscious will was slipping. Their bodies were meeting, in a desperate, primitive search for …

What?

For life?

That was a crazy idea. He was crazy.

It didn’t matter.

For now, for this moment, he was kissing her, holding her, wanting her, with a desperation that was so deep, so real that nothing could interfere.

They were only kissing. They were only holding. They were only touching.

No. This was much, much more. This was a man and a woman come together in mutual need, giving, taking …

Holding desperately to life.

‘Luke …’

‘Just hold me,’ he ordered, and she did, she did. She held.

Fire to fire. Need to need.

They held—and two minutes later a junior nurse looking for something to read in her coffee break slipped into the room and saw two entwined bodies.