Kitabı oku: «Brides of Penhally Bay - Vol 1»

CHRISTMAS EVE
BABY
BY CAROLINE ANDERSON
THE ITALIAN’S NEW-YEAR MARRIAGE WISH
BY SARAH MORGAN
THE DOCTOR’S BRIDE BY SUNRISE
BY JOSIE METCALFE
THE SURGEON’S FATHERHOOD SURPRISE
BY JENNIFER TAYLOR

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Welcome to Penhally Bay!

Mills & Boon^® welcomes you to the picturesque town of Penhally, nestled on the rugged Cornish coast! With sandy beaches and breathtaking landscapes Penhally is a warm, bustling community, cared for by the Penhally Bay Surgery team, led by the distinguished and commanding Dr Nick Tremayne.

There are sixteen stories in all to enjoy, available in four bundles of four, set in this idyllic coastal town, where fishing boats bob up and down in the bay, friendly faces line the cobbled streets and romance flutters on the Cornish sea breeze! We’ve got gorgeous Mediterranean heroes, top-notch city surgeons, a royal scandal, little miracle babies and Penhally’s very own bad-boy rebel! But that’s not all…

With Brides of Penhally Bay you get double the reading pleasure…as each book also follows the life of damaged hero Dr Nick Tremayne. His story will pierce your heart—a tale of lost love and the torment of forbidden romance. Dr Nick’s unquestionable, unrelenting skill would leave any patient happy in the knowledge that she’s in safe hands, and is a testament to the ability and dedication of all the staff at Penhally Bay Surgery. Come in and meet them for yourself…

CHRISTMAS EVE BABY

Caroline Anderson has the mind of a butterfly. She’s been a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, run her own softfurnishing business, and now she’s settled on writing. She says, ‘I was looking for that elusive something. I finally realised it was variety, and now I have it in abundance. Every book brings new horizons and new friends, and in between books I have learned to be a juggler. My teacher husband John and I have two beautiful and talented daughters, Sarah and Hannah, umpteen pets, and several acres of Suffolk that nature tries to reclaim every time we turn our backs!’ Caroline also writes for the Mills & Boon^® Romance series.

Recent titles by this author:

Medical™ Romance

HIS VERY OWN WIFE AND CHILD

A WIFE AND CHILD TO CHERISH

MATERNAL INSTINCT

Mills & Boon® Romance™

CARING FOR HIS BABY

THE TYCOON’S INSTANT FAMILY

A BRIDE WORTH WAITING FOR

CHAPTER ONE
Early May

‘LUCY.’

‘Ben!’ She spun around, her heart tripping and a smile she couldn’t hold breaking out at the sound of his voice. ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’

Hoped, yes, stupidly much, even though she’d known it was an outside chance, but here he was, the answer to a maiden’s prayers—well, hers, at least—and her knees had turned to mush.

‘Oh, you know me, ever the sucker,’ he replied with that lazy, sexy grin that unravelled her insides. ‘I had my arm twisted by one of my patients, and it would have been churlish to refuse. Besides, if I remember rightly, the food’s amazing.’

So, he hadn’t come to see her, then, but what had she expected? Two years was a long time, and so very much had happened. Too much.

Stifling the strangely crushing disappointment, she looked away from those piercing eyes the colour of a summer sky and glanced behind her at the barbeque. ‘It certainly smells fabulous. I wonder when we can get stuck in? I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and that was before seven.’

‘Sounds as if your day’s been like mine,’ he murmured, and she realised he’d moved closer. Much closer, so that she could not only hear his voice more clearly, but smell the clean, fresh scent of his skin. He never wore aftershave, but he didn’t need to, not to enhance him, because the combination of soap and freshly laundered clothes, underscored by warm, healthy man, was a potent combination.

She felt herself sway a little towards him and wrenched herself back upright. ‘Sorry—my heels are sinking into the grass,’ she said, not untruthfully, but it gave her an excuse to shift her position and move a fraction away from him. Just far enough so she couldn’t smell that intoxicating blend of citrus and musk.

‘So—how are you?’ he asked, his voice still soft, and even though she knew it was silly, that it didn’t matter how nice he was to her, her heart opened up to his gentle enquiry.

‘Oh—you know.’

His smile was wry. ‘No, I don’t, or I wouldn’t be asking. How’s general practice working out?’

She tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. ‘It’s fine. Great. I was on call last night and I had a surgery this morning, so I’m a bit tired today, but it’s OK. I’m really getting into it.’

‘Pity.’

She tipped her head and looked up at him curiously. ‘Why?’

‘My registrar’s leaving—decided for some reason to throw away a promising career in favour of maternity. I don’t suppose I can tempt you back to A and E?’

Oh, she was tempted. So tempted. To work alongside him again—well, opposite him, to be exact, their heads and hands synchronised, fighting together to save a patient against all odds, their eyes meeting from time to time, his crinkling with that gorgeous, knee-melting smile—but there were too many reasons why not, and one of them was insurmountable, at least for now if not for ever.

She shook her head regretfully and tried to smile. ‘Sorry, Ben. Anyway, I still get to do emergency medicine, and we’ve got a really busy minor injuries unit.’

‘What, sprains and jellyfish stings with the odd heart attack thrown in for good measure?’ he teased. ‘That isn’t emergency medicine, Lucy.’

‘We do more than that, and it’s enough drama for me,’ she said, ignoring the little bit of her that was yelling liar! at the top of its voice. ‘And anyway, we’ve been thinking about expanding. We’re already too busy in our minor injuries unit, so why not expand and make it a state-of-the-art MIU? Still walking wounded, but a bit more sophisticated than what we’ve got. Maybe have a dedicated space for one of the community physios instead of her just sharing the nurses’ room, and ideally get our own X-ray—I don’t know. And while we’re at it, expand our minor surgery. We’ll have to talk to the trust—see if we can convince them it’s a good idea. We could take some of the heat off St Piran, especially in the summer with all the tourists.’

She was babbling, trying to ignore the bit of her that was screaming Yes, take me back! but he was listening as if she wasn’t talking utter rubbish, and he nodded slowly.

‘Sounds as if you’ve given it a lot of thought, and it certainly makes sense. Our A and E’s running flat out, and if you’ve got good minor surgical facilities as well, that’s all to the good. You’d need that for all the stitching of wounds in the MIU, and you could maybe take on some more complex minor surgery. I’m sure they do loads of things in the day surgery unit that don’t really need a GA. If the simpler things could be done out in the community under local anaesthetic, it would shorten the waiting list, but the X-ray idea’s brilliant. People often sit for hours just to be told they’ve got a sprain. If you could filter some of those out, maybe put casts on undisplaced fractures or reduce the odd dislocation, it could really take the heat off us. I like it. I like it a lot. I’m all for people being seen quicker and closer to home, and I’d be happy to help in any way I could.’

‘I may well take you up on that in your new capacity as head honcho of A and E,’ she said with a smile, her heart giddy at the idea of working with him again in any capacity at all. ‘All I have to do is convince the bean counters.’

He grinned. ‘I wish you luck,’ he said drily. ‘Whatever, I’m more than happy to advise you, if you want, and if you need any help with leaning on anyone in the primary care trust or the hospital trust for funding, give me a shout. I won’t guarantee I’ve got any influence, but you’re welcome to what little I have.’ He hesitated for a moment, then added softly, ‘I see your father’s here. How is he, Lucy?’

Oh, lord. Her father. She shook her head slowly. ‘I’m not sure, really. Sometimes he seems fine. Other times he’s moody and preoccupied, as if he’s still sad inside. I just get the feeling he hasn’t let go. Hasn’t grieved properly. I mean, it’s been nearly two years, Ben, but he still doesn’t talk about Mum. Not naturally, in conversation. And I want to talk about her. She was my mother, I loved her. I don’t want to forget her.’ She looked round, spotting her father at the barbeque, turning sausages and talking to Kate.

Kate was the backbone of the practice, his practice manager and her mother’s friend. His friend first, from way back when, but nothing more than that. Sometimes she wondered if Kate would have liked it to be more, but she didn’t think there was any chance of that. Not on her father’s side, at least. Not unless he could move on.

‘I didn’t know if he’d be here. Do you think he’ll object to my presence?’

‘No,’ she said quickly, although she wasn’t sure. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s a fundraiser, you have every right to be here. Besides, you haven’t done anything wrong, and you don’t have to talk to him.’

‘No, I suppose not. I just didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s his problem, not yours. Anyway, he’s got other things to think about, and so’s Kate Althorp, our practice manager. That’s her, next to him—dark hair, in the pale pink top.’

‘Yes, I’ve met her in the past. Nice woman.’

‘She is. She practically runs this thing every year. Did you know her husband James was our lifeboat coxswain? She lost him, and Dad lost his father and brother, in the storm in ’98.’

His brow creased into a frown. ‘I didn’t know that. I wasn’t living here at the time, and the names didn’t mean anything to me. I just remember there was a group of schoolchildren studying the rockpools and they were cut off by the tide, and some of the rescuers died.’

Lucy pointed across the harbour to the headland jutting out, crowned by the lighthouse and the church. ‘It was over there.’

He was looking at the headland, his brow furrowed. ‘What on earth were the kids doing out there anyway? Weren’t they supervised?’

‘Oh, yes, but the teacher’s watch had stopped and they didn’t realise the tide was coming in until it was too late. Add in the huge sea, and you get a disaster.’

‘Absolutely. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise any of them were connected to you. I just remember one of them was a local doctor.’

She nodded. ‘My uncle. They were trying to rescue the children from the bottom of the cliff over there, and it all went wrong. Phil—my uncle—had abseiled down the rocks and got most of them up, but the storm had got really wild by then and he was swept off the cliff by a huge wave and suffered severe head injuries. My grandfather had a heart attack and died on the clifftop just after they brought Phil’s body up.’

Ben’s eyes searched hers, his expression sombre. ‘That must have been horrendous for you all.’

She nodded. ‘Especially my father. Apart from Mum and my brothers and me, they were his entire family. He’d lost his mother a couple of years before, and his brother wasn’t married. And his father was only sixty-eight.’

‘And Kate’s husband?’

‘James? He was swept off the rocks. They sent out the inshore lifeboat to pick up the kids on the rocks at the end of the promontory, but James had a broken rib so he wasn’t on the lifeboat, so he went down out onto the rocks to help a girl who was too scared to move. They threw him a line and a lifejacket, and he got it on her and tied her to the line, but the same wave that killed my uncle swept several of them out to sea and his body was never recovered.’

Ben made a sympathetic noise. ‘How awful for Kate.’

‘I’m sure it was, but she seems to have dealt with it pretty philosophically. As she said, the sea was going to get him one way or another. At least he died a hero.’

Ben nodded. ‘It must have left a huge hole in the community.’

‘Oh, yes, but my father never talks about that night. It’s as if it never happened. He’s always like that. Anything bad that happens, anything personal, he just shuts down.’

‘I’m surprised he comes to this event.’

Lucy gave a rueful laugh. ‘Oh, I don’t think Kate gives him a choice. They’ve been friends for ever, and she pretty much organises this event every year. He just does what he’s told. And anyway, it’s for a good cause. The lifeboat’s been part of Penhally for generations, and there’s nobody who hasn’t lost someone close to them or someone they knew well at some time in the past—sorry, I’m going on a bit, but I’m quite passionate about it.’

‘Don’t apologise. I’m all for passion. The world would be a much duller place without it.’ He grinned and added, ‘You can get passionate with me any time you like.’

Innocent words, said to lighten the mood, but there was something in his eyes that was nothing about lifeboats and all about passion of another sort entirely, and she felt her heart skitter. Crazy. She hadn’t seen him for nearly two years, and their brief relationship had been cut off abruptly, but if it hadn’t…

‘Mr Carter! You came!’

He turned to the grey-haired woman with a cast on her arm and smiled and shook her other hand. ‘I said I would.’

‘Lots of people say that. Most of them aren’t here. And you’re with our lovely Dr Lucy. How are you, dear? Keeping well, I hope? I haven’t seen you for a while.’

‘No, you’ve defected and moved to Wadebridge, Mrs Lunney,’ Lucy said, grateful for the distraction. ‘You look well on it—well, apart from your arm. I take it that’s how you met Mr Carter.’

She smiled. ‘Yes—and I’m getting married again because of it! All my neighbour and I had ever done was say hello over the fence for the past six months, but when I broke my arm Henry was just there for me, doing all sorts of little jobs without me asking, and then—well, let’s just say he was very persuasive! And we’re getting married next month, when I’ve got this cast off.’

Lucy hugged her gently. ‘That’s wonderful. I’m really pleased for you. Congratulations. I hope you’ll both be very happy.’

‘Thank you, dear. Now, you two enjoy yourselves. I’d better get back to Henry—he’s a bit out of his depth here, and they’ll be giving him a bit of a grilling, checking him out. You know what they’re like! I’d better rescue him.’

Ben chuckled. ‘You do that—and congratulations. I’m glad something good came out of your broken arm. Now,’ he said softly as she walked away, ‘Mrs Lunney’s typical of the sort of cases we don’t need to see at St. Piran. Simple, undisplaced fracture, and she had to come all that way and sit and wait for an hour and a half before she was seen and given pain relief. Crazy. You could have had her sorted out and on her way by the time she arrived at St. Piran.’

‘Don’t. I’m working on it, Ben, and Dad’s very keen.’ Partly because he didn’t want anyone who didn’t have to go there being sent to St Piran. Since her mother…

He lifted his head and cocked an eyebrow towards the food. ‘Looks like we’re on,’ he said, and she fell into step beside him, dragging her mind back to the present.

‘Thank goodness for that. I’m going to fade away in a minute! That piece of toast was much too long ago.’

They joined the queue, many of them known to her, either as patients or old friends of her family, and several of the villagers recognised Ben from their trips to the A and E department, so as the queue moved steadily towards the food they were kept busy chatting.

She picked up two plates and handed one to Ben, and then they were there in front of the massive oildrum barbeque, and her heart sank. She’d hoped her father might have moved on to do something else, but he was still there beside Kate, turning sausages and piling up steaks and burgers, and he lifted his head and paused, a sausage speared on a long fork hovering in mid-air.

Ben met his eyes and inclined his head the merest fraction in acknowledgement.

‘Dr Tremayne, Mrs Althorp,’ he said, and Lucy felt her pulse shift up a notch. It was inevitable that they’d end up running into each other, but now, watching as they eyed each other in silence like stags at bay, she conceded that maybe Ben had been right about not being here.

For an awful, breathless moment she thought her father was going to make a scene, but then he handed the fork to Kate, muttered something to her and walked off.

‘He’s just remembered something he had to do,’ Kate said apologetically, but she couldn’t look them in the eye and Ben shook his head and turned to Lucy with a strained smile and handed her the plate.

‘I’m sorry, I appear to have lost my appetite. Enjoy the rest of the party.’

And he turned on his heel and strode away through the crowd, heading for the gate that led out of the car park. Lucy turned back to Kate, her eyes wide with distress.

‘Why is Dad like this? Why can’t he just get over it?’ she said helplessly.

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry, Lucy. Can I get you anything?’

She looked across the crowded car park. Ben had turned the corner, gone through the gate into Harbour Road, but she could still catch him…

‘No. Sorry, got to go!’ she said, turning back for a moment to dump the plates back on the pile. Ignoring the damage to her high heels, she sprinted across the car park and through the gate into the road and followed him. He was just reversing his sleek BMW convertible out of a space, and she ran over to the car and wrenched open the passenger door.

‘Ben, wait!’

‘What for?’ he asked, his eyes bleak. ‘I shouldn’t have come, Lucy, it was stupid of me. I’m out of here.’

‘Me, too,’ she pointed out, sliding in beside him and shutting the door. ‘After all, we have to eat, and we’re all dressed up with nowhere to go. It seems a bit of a waste.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll be very good company.’

‘I’ll risk it,’ she said, holding her breath. ‘We could always get fish and chips.’

For a moment he just sat there, the engine idling, and then he gave a ragged laugh and cut the engine. ‘Go on, then. Go and buy them. Here—take this. I’ll wait here.’ He handed her a twenty-pound note, and she ran over the road to the chippy. It was deserted, because everyone was at the barbeque, so she was served quickly. She put the change into the Penhally Bay Independent Lifeboat Association collecting tin on the counter and ran back to Ben.

He was staring sightlessly out to sea, his eyes fixed on the horizon, and she slid into the seat beside him and gave him a smile. ‘I gave your change to the PBILA,’ she told him, and he gave a crooked smile.

‘How appropriate. Right, where to?’

‘Somewhere quiet?’

He grinned. ‘I know just the place.’ Starting the engine again, he nosed out into the crowd, drove slowly down Harbour Road and then, as they left the crowds behind, he dropped the clutch and shot up out of the village along the coast road with a glorious, throaty roar. The sun was low over the sea, but it was behind them and once past the caravan park he hit the accelerator, the car hugging the curves and dips of the road as if it were on rails.

She gathered her long, tumbled curls in one hand and turned to him, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the engine and the rush of air. ‘So where are we going?’ she yelled.

‘There’s a viewpoint along here, and we can catch the sunset. It’s my favourite place,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the road, and she nodded.

‘Good.’

And at least no one from Penhally Bay would be there. They were all safely at the barbeque. She settled back in the seat, and waited for the sick feeling in her stomach to settle.

‘That was fabulous.’

He crumpled up the paper and wiped his hands on it. ‘It was—and probably no more unhealthy than a barbeque, even if it was the most expensive fish and chips I’ve ever had,’ he added pointedly.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said feeling a flicker of guilt, but he just grinned.

‘Don’t be. Fancy a stroll?’

‘In these shoes?’ She laughed.

‘You’d be all right in bare feet on the sand.’

‘But I have to get there, and I won’t get down those steps in these heels.’

‘I’ll carry you,’ he said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she told him, but she took her shoes off anyway and started to pick her way over the stones to the edge of the car park, wincing and yelping under her breath.

‘Idiot,’ he said mildly, and, scooping her into his arms and trying not to think too much about the feel of her warm, firm body against his chest, he carried her down the steps and set her on her feet on the sand. ‘There,’ he said, and he heeled off his shoes, stripped off his socks and rolled his trouser legs up to the knee. ‘Last one in the water’s a sissy,’ he said, and sprinted towards the sea.

She couldn’t resist it. He’d known she wouldn’t be able to, and he let her catch him, grabbing her hand at the last moment and running with her into the surf.

Just ankle deep, and so early in the year that was enough, but it brought colour to her cheeks and laughter to her brown eyes, and then the laughter faded and she lifted her hand and rested it against his cheek.

‘Ben, I’m so sorry about my father…’

He turned his head and kissed her palm gently. ‘Don’t be. It’s my fault. I suspected he’d be there and I should have stayed away.’

‘But he was so rude to you.’

‘I can cope with it. It’s my own fault, but I hoped you’d be there, and you were, so let’s forget about your father and just enjoy being together. Come on, let’s walk for a bit.’

It was like something out of a film set. They were strolling beside the water, their hands still linked, and it was wonderful—romantic, peaceful, with the sun’s last rays gilding the rippling surface of the sea. But he was unsettled, churned up inside by his encounter with Nick Tremayne and going over it all again and again, as if it would change the past.

Stupid. It was over—finished. He put it out of his mind and turned to Lucy. The sun was about to slip below the horizon, a pale gold orb hovering just above the surface of the sea, the sky shot through with pink and gold, and he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her, easing her against him so her back was warm against his chest, and he held her there motionless as together they watched it flare, then sink into the sea and disappear.

‘I never get tired of watching it set,’ she said softly. ‘I can see it from my sitting-room window at this time of year, and I love it. I can quite see why people worship the sun.’

She turned slowly and lifted her head, her eyes gazing up at him. They were beautiful, the softest brown, warm and generous. Windows on her soul. Such a cliché, but so, so true, and for the first time that day Ben felt she was really letting him in. He felt his pulse pick up, felt the slow, heavy beat of his heart against his ribs, the first stirrings of need.

‘Have I told you how lovely you look today?’ he said a little unevenly.

She let her breath out in a little rush that could have been a laugh but might just have been a sigh. ‘No. No, you haven’t.’

‘Remiss of me. You look fabulous.’ He ran his eyes over her, over the soft gauzy dress that was cut on the cross and clung gently to those slender curves. It was sea-blue, not one colour but many, flowing into each other, and with the surf lapping at her ankles, she could have risen from the water.

‘You look like a siren,’ he said gruffly, and then without stopping to think, he leant forward, just a fraction, and lowered his mouth to hover over hers. ‘Luring me onto the rocks,’ he added, his words a sigh.

And then he touched his lips to hers.

For a moment, she just stood there, her eyes staring up into his, and then her lids fluttered down and she shut out everything except the feel of his lips and the sound of the sea and the warmth of his hands on her shoulders, urging her closer.

She didn’t need urging. She was ready for this—had been ready for it for ever—and with a tiny cry, muffled by his lips, she leant into him and slipped her arms around his waist, resting her palms against the strong, broad columns of muscle that bracketed his spine.

He shifted, just a fraction, but it brought their bodies into intimate alignment, and heat flared in her everywhere they touched. She felt the hot, urgent sweep of his tongue against her lips and she parted them for him, welcoming him in, her own tongue reaching out to his in greeting.

He groaned, his fingers tunnelling through her hair, and steadying her head with his broad, strong hands, he plundered her mouth, his body rocking against hers, taut and urgent and, oh, so welcome. She heard herself whimper, felt him harden, felt his chest heave in response, and she thought, We can’t do this. Not here. But she couldn’t stop, couldn’t drag herself out of his arms, couldn’t walk away…

‘Lucy.’

He’d lifted his head, resting his forehead against hers, his breath sawing in and out rapidly. ‘What the hell are we doing?’ he rasped softly.

What we should have done years ago, she thought. She lifted her hand and cradled his jaw. ‘Your place or mine?’ she murmured, knowing it was stupid, knowing it was the last thing she ought to be doing but unable to stop herself.

He lifted his head and stared down into her eyes, his own smouldering with a heat so intense she thought she’d burn up.

Then the ghost of a smile flickered over his taut features. ‘Mine,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s not in Penhally. And it’s closer. Come on.’

And freeing her, he slid his hand down her arm, threaded his fingers through hers and led her back to the steps, pausing only to hand her his shoes before scooping her up and carrying her up the steps and across the stones to his car.

‘Ouch,’ he muttered, limping, and she laughed breathlessly.

‘That’ll teach you to behave like a caveman,’ she teased, and he dumped her over the door into her seat, vaulted past her and slid down behind the wheel.

‘I’ll give you caveman,’ he growled, and she felt a delicious shiver of anticipation.

‘Want your shoes?’

‘No. The only thing I want is you,’ he said tautly, gunning the engine and shooting backwards out of the space, then hitting the coast road in a spray of granite chips while she grappled for her seat belt and wondered if it had been quite wise to wake this sleeping tiger…

‘Lucy?’

She opened her eyes and stared up at him, reaching up a hand to rub it lightly over the stubble on his jaw. That siren’s smile hovered on her lips, rosy and swollen from his kisses, and he wanted to kiss her all over again. ‘Well, if it isn’t my very own caveman,’ she said softly.

He laughed, then bent his head and touched his lips to hers, tasting her smile. ‘Good morning,’ he murmured, his mouth still on hers, and he felt her lips curve again.

‘Absolutely,’ she replied, and opened her mouth to his, drawing him in, her arms sliding round him and cradling him closer. He felt the heat flare between them, felt her pelvis rock, felt the soft, moist heat of her against his thigh as she parted her legs to the urging of his knee.

Hell. He hadn’t been going to do this again. He’d been going to talk to her, to tell her all the reasons why this was such a lousy idea, but her body was hot and naked against his, her soft, welcoming flesh too much for him to resist. He’d wanted her for years, ever since they’d worked together, and if it hadn’t been for her mother’s death…

Damn.

He shifted, pulling away, but she followed him, her hands holding him to her, rolling after him and taking over, her body hot and sweet and so, so lovely, and as she lowered herself and took him inside her, he lost rational thought.

He groaned her name, arching up as she rocked against him, taking him deeper, and then, grasping her hips, he drove into her again and again, feeling her passion build, feeling the tension spiral in her until her breathing grew ragged and she sobbed his name. He felt her body contract around him, felt the incredible power of her climax, and followed her headlong over the edge.

It was her phone that woke them, ringing from somewhere downstairs in the depths of her handbag.

‘I’ll let it ring,’ she said, but then it rang again, and again, and finally she got up. ran downstairs naked and answered it.

He followed her slowly, pulling on his dressing-gown and going into the kitchen to put on the kettle, the shirt he’d worn the previous day flung over his shoulder.

‘Dad, I’m fine. No, I’m not at home,’ she was saying as he threaded her arms one at a time into the shirt. ‘I’m twenty-nine years old, for heaven’s sake! I don’t need your permission to leave my house on my day off!’

She rolled her eyes at Ben, and he smiled faintly and turned back to the kettle, listening by default to her side of the conversation as he made them tea.

‘Yes, I’m sorry, too. Yes, I think you do. Yes, I’ll tell him if I speak to him. OK. I’ll see you on Tuesday, after the bank holiday.’

He heard her cut the connection, heard the soft sound of her bare feet on the floor and turned with a smile. ‘You looked a little underdressed,’ he said, glad now that he’d covered her because she looked sexier in his shirt than he could have imagined in his wildest fantasies.

‘Thanks.’ She threw him a fleeting smile and pulled the shirt closed, buttoning it and running her hands round the neck and lifting her hair out in a soft, gleaming tumble of curls that made him want to gather them in his hand and tug her gently back to his arms. Or bed. Whatever. Closer, anyway.

He turned back, poured the tea and handed her a mug instead. ‘What did your father want?’

‘To apologise for being rude to you yesterday. He said he owed you an apology, too. He asked me to tell you if I saw you.’

Ben grunted. Nick Tremayne probably did owe him an apology after yesterday, and if he hadn’t just spent the night with the man’s daughter Ben might have been less forgiving. As it was, he just felt sick at heart and deeply sorry for everything that had happened, even though it hadn’t been his fault.

He wondered if Lucy really believed that he wasn’t to blame, or if somewhere deep inside there was a bit of her that wasn’t quite sure. He must have been crazy to bring her back here last night and complicate things like this…

‘Ben?’

He glanced up at her, his face sombre, and she felt her heart sink.

‘This isn’t going to work, is it?’

‘Us?’ He shook his head and sighed softly. ‘No.’

She felt tears sting her eyes and blinked them away. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. ‘Too much baggage.’

He didn’t reply. There was nothing more to add.

So that she didn’t have to go home in the same dress everyone had seen her in the day before, he lent her a pair of denim cut-offs that were loose on her waist and snug on her hips, and the shirt she was already wearing, and drove her home. He pulled up outside her front door. Gathering her things together, she paused, her hand on the car door.

‘Thank you for last night, it was wonderful,’ she said, and, leaning over, she kissed him goodbye.

It seemed horribly, unbearably final.

CHAPTER TWO
Mid-November

‘RIGHT, Lucy and Dragan, don’t forget I’ve booked you both off this afternoon for the MIU meeting with the St Piran consultant. He’s coming about two-thirty,’ Kate said.

‘Pointless,’ Nick said flatly. ‘I don’t know why you’ve booked him in with Lucy. Can’t you reschedule it for when I’m around? She won’t be in a position to implement the changes and we’ve got more than enough to think about at the moment. We won’t need all the extra hassle while we’ve got a locum in. I think we should forget it for now.’

‘No,’ Marco interjected. ‘The community needs more than we can offer, Nick, and we do need to do this as soon as we can. We’ve talked it over endlessly.’

‘So why Lucy? Why not us? It’s our practice.’

‘Because she’s the most appropriate person,’ Kate pointed out calmly. ‘Apart from the fact that you’ve shown no interest in being involved in this up to now, emergency medicine is her area of responsibility in the practice, and this was all her idea. It’s only a feasibility study, Nick,’ she went on, ‘planning for the future. Someone’s got to do it, so why not her? Besides,’ she added before Lucy could interrupt and point out that she was still, actually, in the room, if they’d all finished talking about her, ‘they’ve worked together before, so it makes sense.’

They had? When? Or more importantly…

Nick’s brow pleated into a scowl. ‘Who is it?’ he asked, yet again before Lucy could speak.

‘Oh—didn’t I mention that?’ Kate said guilelessly. ‘It’s Ben Carter.’

‘Ben?’ Lucy said, her heart lurching against her ribs. Oh, no. Not Ben! Not when she still hadn’t told him…

Her father’s frown deepened. ‘Carter!’ he growled. ‘Why the hell is he coming?’

‘Because he, like Lucy, is the most appropriate person for the job—and he volunteered.’

Really? Why on earth would he do that, seeing that the last time she had spoken to him it had been to agree that they shouldn’t see each other again because of the situation between him and her father?

Nick was emphatic. ‘No. Not Carter. I don’t want him in my practice.’

‘Our practice,’ Marco pointed out mildly. ‘And anyway, it’s irrelevant what you or I or anybody else want. If we’re going to do this, we need an expert, and he’s the best.’

‘Rubbish, the man’s incompetent.’

‘Dad, no! You cannot go around saying things like that about him.’

‘Why not, if it’s the truth?’

‘Because it isn’t! The inquiry exonerated him absolutely.’

‘It was a whitewash. Utter whitewash, and if you weren’t so hoodwinked by the man you’d realise it.’

‘Nick, that’s not fair,’ Kate said gently. ‘He’s very well regarded.’

He stood up and banged his mug down on the drainingboard. ‘Think what you like, he’s the last person we need here,’ he said stubbornly. ‘It doesn’t matter what any of you say, you’ll never convince me otherwise. Ben Carter’s bad news, and I don’t want anything to do with him.’

He spat Ben’s name as if it were poison, and Lucy’s heart sank. Was he ever going to be able to see this clearly? Because if not…

‘Nick, you’re getting this totally out of proportion,’ Kate said firmly. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to have anything to do with him. You’re busy with your antenatal stuff, Marco’s concentrating on the paeds, this is all Lucy and Dragan. Mostly Lucy. And if they’re all happy about it, I really don’t see why it’s such an issue. It’s not as if he’s going to be having any involvement in the running of the unit.’

Nick opened his mouth to reply, but Marco cut him off.

‘She’s right. Move on, Nick. Let it go.’

He shut his mouth, opened it again, and then turned abruptly and stalked towards the door. ‘Fine. Don’t any of you mind me, I’m just the senior partner,’ he snapped, and slammed the door shut behind him.

Lucy winced, Marco shrugged, Dragan shook his head and frowned and Kate smiled briskly at everyone and headed for the kettle. ‘Right. That’s that settled. Coffee, anyone?’

Lucy couldn’t believe it was Ben.

Of all the people to be coming, why did it have to be him?

Although she had to see him some time, and preferably soon. Unless she just wasn’t going to…

No. That wasn’t an option. She just wanted time to think it through, to work out the words, to find a way of introducing the subject.

Ridiculous. She’d had months to talk to him, months to think up the words. She was just a coward—a coward with a patient who was staring at her a little oddly, waiting.

‘Right, Mrs Jones, I’m sure you’ll be all right. I’m confident that as I first thought it’s just a little bit of fluid on your lungs from your heart problem, so I’m juggling your pills a little and we’ll see if you improve. Here’s your new prescription, but in the meantime the injection I’ve just given you should start to shift it soon, and the extra frusemide should do the trick in the long term.’ She clipped her bag shut with a little snap, and picked it up. ‘If I don’t hear anything from you, I’ll come back and see you next week to make sure it’s cleared up, but if you’re at all worried, you call me, OK? No being stoic.’

Edith Jones nodded. Recently widowed, she was struggling to cope with her new independence, and Lucy worried about her. Her heart condition had been fine until her husband’s sudden and traumatic decline, and since then she’d been neglecting herself. Not any more, though. Lucy simply wouldn’t let her. Edith was still a little breathless, but even in the short time since Lucy had given her the diuretic injection, she’d noticed an improvement.

‘I’ll be fine, Doctor,’ Edith said with a smile. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’

‘My pleasure. You stay there, I’ll let myself out.’

‘No, that’s all right, I’ll see you to the door. I have to get up to go to the toilet anyway. That’s one of the problems with your medicine!’

Good. More evidence of the drugs working, but just to be on the safe side, Lucy warned, ‘Don’t forget to keep drinking. I don’t want you thinking you can keep the fluid off your lungs by dehydrating yourself. That’s not how it works. Cut down on your salt intake, and have lots of water and fruit juice, and not too much of that mega-strong tea you like to drink, or you’ll be getting problems with your waterworks to make life even more interesting! And don’t forget—if you aren’t entirely convinced it’s working, ring me.’

‘I will, Doctor. Thank you.’

She waved goodbye, got into her car and drove the short distance back to the surgery. It was ten past two, and Ben would be arriving in twenty minutes. Just time for a bite of lunch and a little hyperventilation before she had to see him again…

He was early.

He hadn’t meant to be, but the morning had gone badly and he hadn’t stopped for lunch in case the roads were busy, then they’d been clear and he’d found himself at the practice at five past two. So he was sitting in his car and killing time, staring out over the harbour and wondering whether he should go in and what kind of reception he would get from Nick Tremayne.

Hopefully better than the reception he’d got in May when he’d come to the barbeque here. Still, Nick had agreed to their meeting, so presumably Lucy had finally talked him round. Not that he expected miracles. A chilly silence would be more like it, but even that might be better than outright hostility.

A vessel caught his eye, a little fishing smack coming into the harbour, running in on the waves. The sea beyond the harbour mouth was wild and stormy today, the water the colour of gunmetal. It looked cold and uninviting, and he was glad he didn’t make his living from it.

He turned his head and studied the cars in the car park, wondering which one of them was Lucy’s. The silver Volvo? No. That was most likely to be Nick’s. The little Nissan? Possibly. Not the sleek black Maserati that crouched menacingly in the corner of the car park, he’d stake his life on it. That, he’d hazard a guess, was Marco Avanti’s.

He was just psyching himself up to get out of the car and go inside when a VW turned into the car park and drove into one of the spaces marked ‘Doctor’.

Lucy. His pulse picked up, and he took a slow, steadying breath to calm himself. After all, the last time he’d seen her had been in early May, and they’d both made it clear it wasn’t going anywhere. He was sure they could be adult about this—even if it had taken weeks to get her out of his mind again.

Longer still to get her out of his dreams, but he’d done it, finally, by working double shifts and staying up half the night trawling the internet in the name of research. And he was over her. He was.

So why was his heart racing and his body thrumming? Crazy. He shouldn’t be here. He should have let someone else do it—one of the other A and E guys…

She was getting out of the car, opening the door, and in the rear-view mirror he could see her legs emerging, and then her…body?

He was on his feet and moving towards her before he had time to realise he’d moved, before he’d thought what he was going to say, before he’d done anything but react. And then, having got there, all he could do was stare.

‘Ah, Mr Carter, welcome!’

He realised Kate Althorp was beside them, talking to him, and over the roaring in his ears he tried to make sense of it. She was holding out her hand, and he sucked in a lungful of air, pulled himself together and shook it, the firm, no-nonsense grip curiously grounding. ‘Ben, please—and it’s good to see you again, Mrs Althorp. Thank you for setting this up.’

‘Call me Kate—and it’s my pleasure. Lucy, I’ve put tea and biscuits out in my office for you, so you won’t be disturbed. Dragan Lovak’s had to go out on a call—he’ll be joining you later. But since we’re here now, why don’t we have a quick guided tour before the clinics start, and then I’ll leave you both to it?’

And he was led inside, Lucy bringing up the rear, her image imprinted on his retinas for life. He followed the practice manager through the entrance to Reception, smiling blankly at the ladies behind the counter, nodding at the patients in the waiting room, vaguely registering the children playing in the corner with the brightly coloured toys. He saw the stairs straight ahead, easy-rising, and the consulting rooms to the right, on each side of the short corridor that led to the lift.

‘It’s a big lift,’ Kate was saying as the doors opened and they stepped in. ‘Designed for buggies and wheelchairs and so on, but not big enough for stretchers, although we don’t have any call for them really. If people collapse and have to go to hospital in an ambulance, they’ve probably been in to see one of the doctors, and as most of the consulting rooms are downstairs anyway, that’s more than likely where they’ll be. If not, the paramedics usually manage to get them down in the lift without difficulty. The trouble is the building wasn’t designed to be a surgery, so it’s been adapted to make the best use of what we have.’

‘How long has the practice been here?’

‘Two years. After Phil died there wasn’t a practice here in Penhally Bay until two years ago. A neighbouring practice closed and they lost the last of the local doctors, and Marco Avanti and Nick set up the practice here where it is now to fill the gap.’

The lift doors opened again and he found himself at the end of a corridor the same as the one downstairs, with rooms to left and right. ‘We’ve got the nurses’ room and a treatment room up here, and our MIU, such as it is. I’ll let Lucy show you that, she’ll know more about it than me.’

‘What about a waiting area?’ he asked, forcing himself to concentrate on something other than Lucy. She was going through a door marked ‘Private’, closing it firmly behind her. Damn.

‘We have a couple of chairs out here but we don’t tend to use them except in the summer when it’s busier,’ Kate was saying. ‘Usually they call the patients up one at a time from downstairs. Our staffroom and shower and loo are up here, too, as well as another public toilet and the stores, and this is my office.’

She opened the door and ushered him in. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. ‘Lucy won’t be a moment. I’ll put the kettle on.’

He didn’t sit. He crossed the room, standing by the window, looking out. It was a pleasant room, and from the window he could see across the boatyard to the lifeboat station and beyond it the sea.

He didn’t notice, though, not really. Didn’t take it in, couldn’t have described the colour of the walls or the furniture, because there was only one thing he’d really seen, only one thing he’d been aware of since Lucy had got out of her car.

The door opened and she came in, and with a smile to them both Kate excused herself and went out, closing the door softly behind her, leaving them to it.

Lucy met his eyes, but only with a huge effort, and he could see the emotions racing through their wary, soft brown depths. God only knows what his own expression was, but he held her gaze for a long moment before she coloured and looked away.

‘Um—can I make you some tea?’ she offered, and he gave a short, disbelieving cough of laughter.

‘Don’t you think there’s something we should talk about first?’ he suggested, and she hesitated, her hand on the kettle, catching her lip between those neat, even teeth and nibbling it unconsciously.

‘I intend to,’ she began, and he laughed and propped his hips on the edge of the desk, his hands each side gripping the thick, solid wood as if his life depended on it.

‘When, exactly? Assuming, as I am, perhaps a little rashly, that unless that’s a beachball you’ve got up your jumper it has something to do with me?’

She put the kettle down with a little thump and turned towards him, her eyes flashing fire. ‘Rashly? Rashly? Is that what you think of me? That I’d sleep with you and then go and fall into bed with another man?’

He shrugged, ignoring the crazy, irrational flicker of hope that it was, indeed, his child. ‘I don’t know. I would hope not, but I don’t know anything about your private life. Not any more,’ he added with a tinge of regret.

‘Well, you should know enough about me to know that isn’t the way I do things.’

‘So how do you do things, Lucy?’ he asked, trying to stop the anger from creeping into his voice. ‘Like your father? You don’t like it, so you just pretend it hasn’t happened?’

‘And what was I supposed to do?’ she asked, her eyes flashing sparks again. ‘We weren’t seeing each other. We’d agreed.’

‘But this, surely, changes things? Or should have. Unless you just weren’t going to tell me? It must have made it simpler for you.’

She turned away again, but not before he saw her eyes fill, and guilt gnawed at him. ‘Simpler?’ she said. ‘That’s not how I’d describe it.’

‘So why not tell me, then?’ he said, his voice softening. ‘Why, in all these months, didn’t you tell me that I’m going to be a father?’

‘I was going to,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘But after everything—I didn’t know how to. It’s just all so difficult…’

‘But it is mine.’

She nodded, her hair falling over her face and obscuring it from him. ‘Yes. Yes, it’s yours.’

His heart soared, and for a ridiculous moment he felt like punching the air, but then he pulled himself together. Plenty of time for that later, once he’d got all the facts. Down to the nitty-gritty, he thought, and asked the question that came to the top of the heap.

‘Does your father know it’s mine?’

She shook her head, and he winced. ‘So—when’s it due?’

‘The end of January.’

‘So you’re—’

‘Thirty weeks. And two days.’

He nodded. That made sense, but there was another question that needed answering. ‘You told me you were on the Pill.’

She bent her head. ‘I was, but because it was only to regulate my periods I probably hadn’t been as punctual all the time as I should have been. I used to take it in the morning, but I didn’t remember till the Tuesday, by then it was too late.’ Because she’d been crying since the moment she’d closed her front door behind her on Sunday morning and retreated into the sanctuary of her little home, wearing his shirt day and night until she’d had to take it off to shower and dress to come to work after the bank holiday, and then she’d found the pills…

‘So why not take the morning-after pill just to be safe?’

Why not, indeed? She shook her head. ‘I didn’t have any, and by the time I was able to get them from the pharmacy it would have been too late. And anyway, I thought I was safe,’ she told him, and wondered, as she’d wondered over and over again, if there’d been a little bit of her that had secretly wanted to have his baby. And when her periods had continued for the next two months, she’d put it out of her mind.

Not for long, though. Eventually it had dawned on her that things were different, that the lighter-than-usual periods had been due to the hormones, and she’d kept it a secret as long as she could. Eventually, though, the changes to her body had become obvious, and her father had been shocked and then bossily supportive.

And he hadn’t asked about the father, not once she’d told him that he was out of her life for good and she didn’t want to think about him any more. Not that she had wanted Ben out of her life, but he was, to her sorrow and regret, and she didn’t want to think about him any more. She’d been sick of crying herself to sleep, missing him endlessly, wishing he could be with her and share this amazing and fantastic thing that was happening to her body.

Her stomach rumbled, and she gave the biscuits a disinterested glance. OK, she could eat them, but she really, really wanted something healthy, and if Dragan was held up…

‘Have you had lunch?’ she said suddenly.

‘Lunch?’ he said, his tone disbelieving. ‘No. I got held up in Resus. There wasn’t time.’

‘Fancy coming back to my house and having something to eat? Dragan can ring when he’s on his way back and we can meet him here. Only I’m starving, and I’m trying to eat properly, and biscuits and cakes and rubbish like that just won’t cut the mustard.’

‘Sounds good,’ he said, not in the least bit hungry but desperate to be away from there and somewhere private while he assimilated this stunning bit of news.

She opened the door, grabbed her coat out of the staffroom as they passed it and led him down the stairs. ‘Kate, we’re going to get some lunch. Can you get Dragan to ring me when he’s back?’

‘Sure,’ Kate said, and if Lucy hadn’t thought she was being paranoid, she would have sworn Kate gave her and Ben a curiously speculative look.

No. She couldn’t have guessed. It had been months since she’d seen them together.

Six months, one week and two days, to be exact. And Kate, before she’d become practice manager, had been a midwife.

Damn.

They walked to her flat, along Harbour Road and up Bridge Street, the road that ran alongside the river and up out of the old town towards St Piran, the road he’d come in on. It was over a gift shop, in a steep little terrace typical of Cornish coastal towns and villages, and he wondered how she’d manage when she’d had the baby.

Not here, was the answer, especially when she led him through a door into a narrow little hallway and up the precipitous stairs to her flat. ‘Make yourself at home, I’ll find some food,’ she said, a little breathless after her climb, and left him in the small living room. If he got close to the window he could see the sea, but apart from that it had no real charm. It was homely, though, and comfortable, and he wandered round it, picking up things and putting them down, measuring her life.

A book on pregnancy, a mother-and-baby magazine, a book of names, lying in a neat pile on the end of an old leather trunk in front of the sofa. More books in a bookcase, a cosy fleece blanket draped over the arm of the sofa, some flowers in a vase lending a little cheer.

He could see her through the kitchen door, pottering about and making sandwiches, and he went and propped himself in the doorway and watched her.

‘I’d offer to help, but the room’s too small for three of us,’ he murmured, and she gave him a slightly nervous smile.

Why nervous? he wondered, and then realised that of course she was nervous. She had no idea what his attitude would be, whether he’d be pleased or angry, if he’d want to be involved in his child’s life—any of it.

When he’d worked it out himself, he’d tell her. The only thing he did know, absolutely with total certainty, was that if, as she had said, this baby was his, he was going to be a part of its life for ever.

And that was non-negotiable.

What on earth was she supposed to say to him?

She had no idea, and didn’t know how it could be so hard. When they’d worked together, he’d been so easy to talk to, such a good friend, and they’d never had any tension between them. Well, that was a lie, but not this sort of tension.

The other sort, yes—the sort that had got her in this mess.

No. Not a mess. Her baby wasn’t a mess, and she wasn’t ever going to think of it as one.

She put the sandwiches on plates, put the plates on a tray with their two cups of tea and carried them through to her little living room. ‘Sit down, Ben, you’re cluttering the place up,’ she said softly, and with a rueful little huff of laughter he sat, angled slightly towards her so he could study her.

Which he did, with that disconcertingly piercing gaze, the entire time she was eating her sandwich.

‘We could get married,’ he said out of the blue, and she choked on a crumb and started to cough. He took the plate and rubbed her back, but she flapped him away, standing up and going into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

And when she turned he was right behind her, so close that she brushed against him, her bump making firm and intimate contact with his body. For a moment he froze, and then his eyes dropped and he lifted a hand and then glanced back up at her, as if he was asking her permission.

She swallowed slowly and nodded, and he laid his hand oh, so tenderly over the taut curve that was his child. Something fierce and primitive flickered in his eyes, and then he closed them, and as the baby shifted and stretched she watched a muscle jump in his jaw.

His hand moved, the softest caress, and he opened his eyes, lifted his head and met her eyes.

‘I felt it move,’ he said, and there was wonder in his voice, and joy, and pride.

And for the first time she felt the tension ease and some of the dread fade away.

‘It’ll be all right, Lucy. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’

‘We aren’t getting married, Ben.’

‘Don’t close your mind to it,’ he said softly.

‘It’s too soon.’

‘Of course it is—but it’s one of our options.’

Ours?

She would have moved away from him, but he had her pinned up against the sink and in the narrow kitchen there was nowhere to go. So she turned her back to him, but it didn’t help because he simply moved up closer, sliding his arms around her, resting both hands on her tummy and drawing her gently back into his warm embrace. ‘Don’t be scared.’

‘I’m not scared,’ she lied. ‘I just don’t like you turning up out of the blue and telling me what to do.’

‘Out of the blue? I hardly abandoned you, Lucy. The last conversation we had, you told me it wasn’t going to work. Too much baggage.’

‘And you agreed.’

‘So I did,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But that was then, and this is now, and things are different. The baggage certainly is. I can’t let you face your father alone.’

‘And you really think you being there, telling him you’re the baby’s father, will help?’

He sighed and moved away at last, giving her room to breathe, to re-establish her personal space and gather her composure around her like a security blanket.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You haven’t finished your sandwich. Come and sit down and put your feet up and tell me what you were planning.’

She laughed wryly. ‘I didn’t have any plans,’ she confessed, feeling suddenly lost again. ‘I was just winging it, getting through a day at a time. And Dad hasn’t really asked very much about the baby’s father. Just how could I have been so silly and that I’d have his support. He wants me to move back in with him, but I don’t want to.’

‘Lucy, you can’t stay here,’ he said, his voice appalled, and she felt her mouth tighten.

‘Why not? Don’t come in here and start insulting my home, Ben.’

‘I’m not insulting your home, sweetheart, but look at it. It’s tiny, and it’s up a steep hill and a narrow flight of stairs, with no parking outside—where do you keep your car? The surgery? That’ll be handy in the pouring rain when you’ve got a screaming baby and all your shopping.’

She bit her lip, knowing he was right and yet not wanting to admit it. Of course the flat wasn’t suitable for a baby, and she’d been meaning to find somewhere else, but anything rented was usually in holiday lets in the summer, and she couldn’t afford those rates, not unless she went back to work, and buying somewhere in the village on a part-time salary probably wasn’t an option either.

‘I don’t suppose he’s any nearer to accepting that I wasn’t to blame for your mother’s death?’ he suggested, and Lucy shook her head.

‘I don’t think so. He wasn’t very pleased this morning when Kate announced that it was you coming.’

A frown pleated his brow. ‘Really? But it was decided weeks ago. Kate said everyone was fine with it. I assumed he must know.’

She met his eyes, and realisation dawned. ‘She’s worked it out,’ she said slowly. ‘She knows you’re the father. Well, at least, she knows I don’t have a life outside Penhally, because she can see the surgery car park from her house up behind it, and she’ll know my car’s always there unless I’m out on a call or visiting friends, and she can see my window here—that’s her house over there,’ she said, pointing out to him the pretty little cottage tucked against the hillside above the surgery. ‘So there’s nothing I can do without her knowing, and if I had a man, believe me, Penhally would be talking about it. And the last man I was seen with was you, and of course she knows we’d worked together, that we were friends.’

‘I don’t know how you can stay in this place,’ he said gruffly, and sighed. ‘You reckon she knows?’

‘I think so. She gave us a look as we left the surgery.’

‘A look?’

‘Yeah—one of those knowing ones.’

He grinned a little crookedly. ‘Ah. Right. And do you think she’ll tell your father?’

Lucy felt a little bubble of hysterical laughter rising in her chest. ‘I wish. Maybe that way he’d calm down before I had to talk to him about it.’

‘You really think it’ll be that bad?’

She stared at him blankly. ‘You don’t have any idea, do you? Because you haven’t seen him since Mum died, apart from the lifeboat barbeque. Ben, he—’ She broke off, not knowing quite how to put it, but he did it for her, his voice soft and sad.

‘Hates me? I know. I’ve already worked that out. And I can see why.’

‘But it wasn’t your fault!’ she said, searching his face and finding regret and maybe a little doubt. ‘Ben, it wasn’t. The inquiry exonerated you absolutely. Mum died because she didn’t tell anyone how sick she was until it was too late. I wasn’t there, Dad was too busy setting up the practice with Marco, and she downplayed it just too long.’

‘Lucy, she died because when she arrived in the A and E department she didn’t check herself in straight away, so nobody flagged her up as urgent, nobody kept an eye on her, nobody realised she was there until they found her collapsed in the corner. There’d been a massive RTA, there were ambulances streaming in, we were on the verge of meltdown—I don’t have to explain it to you. You know the kind of mayhem I’m talking about, you’ve seen it all too often. I was trapped in Resus, the walking wounded were way down the list. Too far. And the other people waiting just thought she was asleep, instead of which she’d all but OD’d on painkillers and by the time we got to her it was too late.’

‘They said her appendix had ruptured. She must have been in so much pain. I knew she’d been feeling rough but I had no idea how rough. It must have been agony.’

‘Yes. Hence the painkillers. She’d obviously had a hell of a cocktail. We found codeine and paracetamol and ibuprofen and aspirin in her bag. The codeine must have knocked her out, but it was the aspirin that killed her. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was too woozy to talk to anyone. The CCTV footage shows her stumbling to a chair in the corner and sitting down, and because she didn’t check in or tell anyone how bad she felt, she was overlooked until it was too late. You know how aspirin works—it’s an anticoagulant, like warfarin, and it stops the platelets clumping to arrest a bleed in the normal way. And with the rupture in her abdomen, she just bled out before we could get to it. If your father hadn’t phoned her mobile, she wouldn’t have been found until she was dead. It was only because the phone kept ringing and she was ignoring it that the alarm was raised. And we did everything we could at that point, but it just wasn’t enough, and everything we touched was breaking down and starting another bleed. And I can tell you how sorry I am for ever, but it won’t bring her back.’

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut to close out the images, but they wouldn’t be banished, and she knew her father had seen it because they’d called him immediately to ask if he knew why she might be there, and he’d arrived while they had been in Resus, fighting for her life, and had insisted on going in. It must have been hideous for him, but it didn’t change the facts. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she told Ben yet again.

‘I was in charge. I know I wasn’t a consultant then, but I was the most senior person in the department that day, and so the responsibility rested with me.’

‘You’re not God.’

‘No. So I needed to be more careful, because I don’t just know everything, but things are different now that I’m a consultant and actually have some say. It couldn’t happen now. All patients are intercepted on their way into the department by the triage nurse, people waiting are checked at regular intervals, and I insist on being constantly alerted to what’s happening in my department. I can’t let it happen again.’

‘Ben, you didn’t let it happen. You weren’t negligent.’

‘Maybe not. But I can see where your father’s coming from, and I wouldn’t want a man I thought was responsible for the death of my wife, no matter how indirectly, being the father of my grandchild.’

‘Well, he’s going to have to get over it,’ she said firmly, ‘because you are the father—unless we just aren’t going to tell him?’

‘That’s not an option, Lucy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘This baby may not have been planned, but it’s mine, and I fully intend to be involved in its life. And I can’t do that in secret. I can’t, and I won’t, so, come what may, your father has to know.’

But how? She had no idea, but at least now Ben was in the picture. One down, one to go, she thought.

But then he went on, ‘I know you’ll say it’s too soon, and you’re probably right, but I intend to look after you and my baby for the rest of your lives, so get used to the idea.’

She sat up straighter, absently massaging the bump. ‘Out of a misplaced sense of duty? No, Ben. It has to be more than that. I agree, I can’t stay here, but I’m not moving in with you any more than I’m moving in with my father. I don’t want to be someone’s duty. I’m sick of duty. I want love for my baby. And for me. Nothing else.’

‘It will be love.’

‘It will. From me, for a start. But we’re part of a package, the baby and I, and we’re both equally important, and I’m not going to do anything hasty. You and I haven’t seen each other for months, and that was a one-off. You weren’t even ready to carry on seeing me because things were too difficult. Well, if they were difficult before, they’re much worse now, and I’m not going to do anything until I’m sure the time is right.’

‘Right with who?’

‘With me—with you—with my father.’

His jaw tensed, the muscle working, and he turned away. ‘OK. So—you need accommodation. Somewhere we can have some privacy so I can share my baby with you without causing any of you unnecessary grief—is that what you’re suggesting? That we duck around, grabbing a few minutes together every now and then when your father and the rest of Penhally Bay aren’t looking? No. It’s my baby, Lucy, and I’m damned if I’m going to be ashamed of it. Your father can just learn to deal with it, and the rest of this flaming community can just learn to mind their own business.’

She stared at him, then with a choked laugh she turned away, picked up the tray and stood.

‘If you imagine for a moment that’s going to happen, Ben Carter, you’re in cloud cuckoo land,’ she said, and, taking the tray through to the kitchen, she dumped it down and brushed off her hands. ‘We’d better get back to the surgery.’

‘I thought Dragan was going to phone you.’

‘So did I, but he’s obviously been held up. There’s a lot we can achieve without him, so let’s get on with it.’ And without waiting for him to reply, she picked up her coat, slid her arms into it and headed for the door.

CHAPTER THREE

THERE was no sign of Nick, thank goodness. Ben had been in suspense, waiting for him to appear, but he noticed the silver Volvo was gone, so maybe he could relax for now. Not for ever. He knew that, but if they were going to have a confrontation, he’d rather it wasn’t in a crowded surgery in front of half of Penhally Bay’s insatiably curious residents.

There was no sign of Dragan Lovak either, and Ben wondered if Kate had sent him off on a wild-goose chase or told him that they’d gone for lunch and to take his time. If Lucy was right, that wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

Whatever, Lovak wasn’t there to keep them on the straight and narrow, and he had to force his attention back to the Penhally Bay surgery’s MIU and away from the smooth, firm protrusion that was his child.

‘Have you had a scan?’ he asked abruptly, and Lucy stopped talking and turned and looked at him in frustration.

‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’

He opened his mouth to deny it, then shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’m finding it a bit hard to focus.’

She sighed and reached out a hand, but then thought better of it and withdrew it. ‘Look—are you busy tonight? I’ve got a surgery from five to six-thirty, but I’m not doing anything later. If you’re free, perhaps we could talk then? Deal with some of your questions?’

He nodded, a little shocked at how eager he was to have that conversation—a conversation about a child that until a very short while ago he hadn’t even known existed. ‘Of course.’

‘And for now,’ she said, her voice gently mocking, ‘do you think you could keep your eyes on my face and concentrate on what I’m saying about our minor injuries unit?’

‘Sure.’

He nodded, swallowed and tried to smile, but it was a feeble effort and he just wanted to fast-forward to the evening and get the hell out of there.

‘Come and see what we have,’ she said, and led him into the room in question. It was about twice the size of a consulting room, on the upper floor, and not ideal. He forced himself to concentrate.

‘It needs to be bigger and it could do with being on the ground floor,’ he told her without preamble.

‘We know that. We’re looking at funding for expansion.’

He nodded.

‘In the meantime, this is what we have and what we do. There’s a room next door where we do minor surgery, but it really is minor and very non-invasive—skin lesions, ingrowing toenails and the like. It’s more of a treatment room, it’s not a proper theatre, although of course we use sterile techniques, but I don’t think we can realistically create a dedicated theatre environment either in there or anywhere else in a general practice setting. It simply isn’t called for, but it’s adequate for what we do surgery-wise. And this room is where we do all our minor injury stuff that we handle at present.’

‘Such as?’

‘Oh, all sorts. If I tell you the areas that we can currently cover and where I feel the holes are in our provision, maybe you can give me some advice on what we’d need both short and long term to improve that?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. Right. Well, in the summer, we get tourists, of course, who as well as coming for medical treatment come to the MIU with things like stings, sprains, cuts and fractures. You’d be surprised how many people travel without a first-aid kit.’

He chuckled. ‘No, I wouldn’t. We get them all the time.’

‘Of course you do. I forgot,’ she said, smiling at him and dragging his mind away from medicine and onto something entirely more interesting.

‘Then all year round but particularly in the warmer months we have surfers with all their associated injuries—scrapes on rocks, collisions with their own surfboards and with others, the odd weaver fish and all the other touristy things, and we get anyone who needs more than the basic first aid the lifeguards give on the beach, but our baseline local population is farmers and fishermen and their families, so we have a lot of work-related injuries. I’ve lost count of the number of tetanus shots I’ve given in the last year. We do a lot of needlework, obviously—cuts and tears, many of them dirty, so we have a certain amount of debriding to do. Some have to come to you because they’re too extensive and need plastics or specialist hand surgery, for example. And we have fractures, lots of simple undisplaced fractures and dislocations that with X-ray we could deal with here if we had plaster facilities. They’d still need the care of the orthopaedic team for anything more complex, of course, but there are so many little things we could sort here locally.’

He nodded. ‘I agree. The medical emergencies are still going to have to come through us, but from the point of view of straightforward physical injury you could take a lot off us.’

He looked around the room, noting the two couches, the chairs and trolleys and screens, the bench along the side with pretty much the same equipment you would find in a practice nurse’s room or one of the cubicles in his A and E department, but for the most part that was all that would be necessary.

‘What about resuscitation equipment?’

‘Standard GP stuff for an isolated rural practice. We’ve got a defib and oxygen and a nebuliser, of course, and 12-lead ECG and heart monitor…’

She rattled off a list of things they had and things they wanted, leaving nothing out that he felt would be in any way useful or necessary, and he was impressed.

‘You’ve done your homework,’ he said softly, and she stopped and stared at him, giving an exasperated sigh.

‘Did you really think we’d get you over here to talk this through if we hadn’t? I want this to work, Ben. We need it. We’re too far from St Piran. Some of the injuries we see—if we had better facilities so we could just treat them here, at least initially…That journey must be horrendous if you’ve got a fracture. It’s not so much the distance as the roads—so narrow, so twisty, and lots of them are rough. The main road’s better, but reaching it—well, it doesn’t bear thinking about, not with something like a spinal injury or a nasty compound fracture. We have to fly some of our surfers out just for that reason, because they’d have to come to you, but for the others—well, it’s just crazy that we can’t do it. There’s certainly the demand.’

‘I’m sure. You know, if you weren’t about to be taking maternity leave, it would make sense for you to come and spend some time in the department. Catch up on your X-ray, diagnostic and plastering skills.’

‘I could do that anyway—well, not the X-ray, not until the baby’s born, but the rest. I’m going to be coming back to work—I can’t afford to stop—And don’t say it!’ she ordered, cutting him off before he could do more than open his mouth.

So he shut it again, shrugged his shoulders and smiled wryly. ‘So where are you going to site the X-ray machine?’ he asked. ‘Bearing in mind that the room needs screening on all six sides?’

‘Out on the end of the sea wall?’ she suggested, eyes twinkling, and he chuckled.

‘Nice one. Not very practical, though. Do you have a spare room?’

She laughed wryly. ‘Not so as you’d notice. In an ideal world, as Kate says, it would all be on the ground floor, but down in the old town like this it’s difficult. The sides of the cove are so steep, so all the houses are small and on top of one another. The only way around it would be to build it up out of the town, and that’s not where it’s needed.’

‘Unless you sited it up near the church, halfway between the old town and the beach. Handier for the tourists and all the people staying in the caravan park, and no harder for the people you serve who don’t live right in the centre and have to come by car anyway.’

‘Except that when we tried to sound them out we couldn’t get planning permission and, anyway, any site up there which they’d allow development on would have such stunning sea views it would be worth shedloads and we couldn’t afford it, so it’s academic. This is what we have, Ben. And there’s room to extend at the back—behind the stairwell there’s an area of garden which isn’t used for anything except sneaking out in breaks and having a quiet sit down out of earshot of the locals. And we’re so busy that that isn’t really an option in the summer, and in the winter—well, frankly it’s not very appealing, so really it’s dead space.’

‘Can I see?’

‘Sure.’

She led him downstairs, snagging her coat from the staffroom on the way, and they went out the front and round the side, between the boatyard and chandlery and the end of the surgery building. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to an area that was behind the waiting room and stairs.

He nodded approval, running his eyes over it and measuring it by guesswork. ‘It’s ideal. It’s big enough to make a proper treatment area for suspected fractures and house the X-ray facilities, and you could put further accommodation on top—a plaster room, for instance, and somewhere for people to rest under observation. And you’d still have the existing room upstairs which you could use for other injuries, cuts and such like, jellyfish stings, weaver fish—you name it. Or you could relocate one of the consulting rooms currently downstairs upstairs to that area and use more of the downstairs space for those things, so you’ve got all your injuries together. And weren’t you talking about physio? That probably needs to be downstairs…’

She started to laugh, and he broke off and scrubbed a hand through his hair ruefully. ‘OK, so it’s not big enough for all that, and it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, but I don’t see what else you can do. If you want to do this properly, you’ll have to compromise. And you’ll have to sell it to the people who’ll be compromised.’

‘Except my father doesn’t want me involved, because I’m going to be on maternity leave. He thinks he should be doing it, but it’s not his area of expertise, and I really wanted to oversee it, to make sure it works,’ she said softly, the smile fading from her eyes and leaving a deep sadness in its place.

And Ben felt guilty—hugely, massively guilty—because all he’d done by taking Lucy back to his house and making love to her had been to cause her even more grief to add to the emotional minefield that was her life. ‘It’ll work, Lucy. I’m sure it will—and by the time you come back to work it’ll be ready for you to commission.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said, but she didn’t sound it.

She shivered, and he frowned and turned up her coat collar, tugging it closer round her. ‘You’re cold. Come on, let’s go back inside and jot some of this down, do a few doodles…’

‘I’ve done some. I’ll show you. And we can have tea.’

The universal panacea. He smiled. ‘That would be good. Come on.’

She led him back inside, shivering again and realising that she’d let herself get chilled. It wasn’t cold—in fact, it was incredibly mild overall—but the wind was blustery today and cut right through her.

‘Kate, is it OK to use your room still?’ she asked, leaning over the counter and smiling a greeting at the receptionist, Sue.

Kate put her hand over the receiver and nodded. ‘Sure. Go on up. Oh, and Dragan’s on his way in—he’s bringing Melinda. She’s been bitten by a dog. That’s why he’s been held up. He asked if you could see her. I think she needs suturing.’

‘Oh. Right. Can’t Dad see her, or Marco?’

‘No. Your father’s gone over to the house to meet the agent, and Marco’s got a clinic, so if you wouldn’t mind fitting her in?’

‘No, sure. Send them up. I’ll use the treatment room upstairs,’ she said, and felt the tension draining out of her at the news that her father had gone out and wasn’t about to pop out of the woodwork at any moment and cause a scene.

She headed for the stairs, still thinking about her father and not really conscious of the extra effort it took to mount them now that she was pregnant, but evidently Ben noticed because as she arrived at the door of the staffroom he asked, ‘How long are you planning to work?’

His voice had a firm edge to it and she looked up at him questioningly.

‘Today? Till six-thirty.’

‘In your pregnancy.’

‘Oh.’ So he was doing the proprietorial father bit, was he? ‘Till I have the baby,’ she said defiantly, and then, before he could argue, qualified it with, ‘Well, as long as I can, really. I’ll cut out house calls soon, especially if the weather gets bad, and I’ve already stopped doing night calls. That’s one of the advantages of being a pregnant woman in a practice of three single men—they’re so busy fussing over me and taking work off me I have to fight them for every last patient!’

His mouth twitched, and he gave a soft laugh. ‘And I bet you do.’

‘Absolutely. I don’t need to be pandered to,’ she told him firmly. ‘I’m pregnant, Ben, not sick.’ She filled the kettle and switched it on, made them two mugs of tea and picked them up. ‘Can you get the doors, please?’ she said, and he dutifully led her through into Kate’s room and shut the door behind them.

She plonked the mugs down on Kate’s desk, took the plans of the surgery from the drawer in the filing cabinet and smoothed them out, then laid her tracing-paper alterations over the top. ‘Right, this is what I’d thought could be done,’ she said, and launched into her explanation.

He couldn’t fault it.

She knew just what she wanted and, apart from a very few suggestions, there was nothing she’d planned he wouldn’t have been more than happy with in their situation.

He told her so, pointed out the few changes he’d make, and they did some little scribbles on the tracing paper, then she sat back and rubbed her tummy and winced.

‘Braxton Hicks?’ he guessed, and she nodded.

‘Yes. It’s beginning to drive me mad. Every time I sit still for any length of time I get them, over and over again. I swear I don’t need any more practise contractions. My uterus is going to be so toned up by the time I give birth it’s ridiculous.’

‘I suppose you’re sure of your dates?’ he said, and then immediately regretted it because she glared at him as if he’d lost his mind.

‘As there was only the one occasion,’ she snapped, ‘it would be hard to miscalculate.’

‘Three, if I remember correctly,’ he murmured.

‘Three?’

‘Occasions,’ he said, and she coloured and turned away with a little sound of frustration.

‘That’s irrelevant.’

‘Not to me,’ he said. Her colour deepened and she stood up and walked over to the window, rubbing her back. He got up and followed her, standing by her side and drawing her against him, putting the heel of his hand into the small of her back and massaging it firmly while he held her steady against his chest.

Silly girl. She needed him, and he wasn’t going to let her get away with this independent nonsense a minute longer.

For a moment she stood stiffly, then with a ragged little sigh she leant into him, dropped her head forward and gave herself up to the comfort of his touch. It just felt so good to have him hold her, and she’d missed that so much, having someone to hug her and hold her. Her mother had always hugged her, and her father used to, but her mother was gone and her father had shut down and now there was no one.

Except Ben, and his hand was moving slowly, rhythmically round on her back, easing out the kinks in her muscles and soothing the tension. And she would have stood there for ever, but she heard footsteps outside and a tap on the door, and she stepped away from Ben just as Dragan put his head round the door and smiled.

‘Hi. Sorry I’m late. I’ve got Melinda here—Kate said you’d look at her?’

‘Sure. Hi, Melinda,’ she said, greeting the young vet who was fast becoming a treasured part of their community. ‘I gather you’ve been bitten?’

‘Yes—stupid,’ she said, her slight Italian accent at odds with the gorgeous golden blonde of her hair. She tossed it back over her shoulder out of the way and it slid forward again, obviously irritating her. ‘It was my own fault. The dog was injured—we found her on the road near the pub. We’d been for lunch to the Smugglers’ and we were on the way down when we saw her. She was in pain, she didn’t know me—it was just one of those things.’

‘Is she OK?’

‘She is now,’ Dragan said drily. ‘We had to follow her, of course, and catch her, and then take her to the surgery and put her in a cage to rest. I had to drag Melinda here.’

‘I could have cleaned it up myself—’

‘It’s bleeding much too fast. You need serious attention, the right antibiotics—’

‘You think I don’t have antibiotics suitable for dog bites?’ she said mildly, but she held out her left arm to Lucy, her right hand holding down a blood-soaked swab on the inside of her forearm. ‘He’s right. It is bleeding heavily. I think she’s nicked one of the vessels.’

‘Let’s go into the treatment room and have a look. Oh, by the way, sorry, Dragan Lovak, Melinda Fortesque, Ben Carter,’ she said economically, getting the introductions over and ushering her into the treatment room where they did their minor surgery. ‘Let’s have a look at it,’ she suggested. Easing off the pad of gauze, she winced at the bloody mess and pressed the pad quickly back in place over the briskly bleeding vein.

‘Ouch.’ Ben leant over her shoulder. ‘May I take a closer look in a moment?’

‘Of course,’ Melinda said.

‘Nasty bite. We need to clean it thoroughly,’ Lucy said as Ben joined her at the basin and started scrubbing.

‘That vein needs suturing,’ he murmured. ‘Are you happy to do that or do you want me to have a go? Assuming it’s something we can tackle here?’

She shrugged uncertainly. ‘Well, I can have a go,’ she said.

‘Have you got any fine suture material?’

‘I believe so. I don’t suppose, since you’re here…? We might as well take advantage of the head honcho—you’re bound to be better than me, your skills are more up to date than mine.’

He chuckled. ‘I doubt if that’s true, but if you’re happy for me to do it to save sending her to St Piran?’

‘Of course I am. It’s not my arm, of course, but I’m sure Melinda doesn’t want to go to St Piran either.’

‘No, I don’t,’ she said promptly from behind them. ‘I have to get back to the dog, and I don’t care which of you does it so long as one of you does.’

‘Right, let’s take a look at it before we make any rash promises,’ Ben said. Snapping on gloves, he settled down on a stool next to the couch and studied the wound, blotting it frequently with a gauze swab to keep the field clear of blood. ‘Looks sore.’

‘It is sore. Some local wouldn’t hurt before you go poking it.’

He chuckled and met her eyes with a smile that made Lucy feel instantly, absurdly jealous. Dragan, too, unless she was much mistaken, and she wondered what the situation was between them. Something, otherwise he would have done this himself, but what?

Lovers? Friends? Two strangers in a strange land? Dragan was Croatian, and he’d been living in England since his teens. He didn’t talk about his past, but there were shadows in his eyes, and as for Melinda, although Lucy knew little about her past there was an air of quiet dignity about her that hinted at breeding. Yet even so, she was open and friendly and down-to-earth, and anyone more lacking in airs and graces she could hardly imagine.

She looked up at Dragan to say something, and found him watching her, his brooding eyes thoughtful. Then his eyes dropped to Ben, and back to her, and she thought, Good grief, is it so obvious? Do I have a sign on my bump that says, Child of Ben Carter on it?

Or was she just reading something that didn’t exist into his expression?

‘Lucy, can we put a cuff on the arm to cut off this blood supply? And can I have some saline to irrigate this, please?’ Ben asked, and she stopped worrying about Dragan and what he was thinking and concentrated on doing her job—or rather helping Ben do his, which she had to admit he was doing beautifully.

He numbed the area and sutured the vessel so neatly Lucy could only watch in awe, then he cleaned the wound thoroughly and released the cuff to check his suturing had worked. ‘Good,’ he murmured, and trimmed away the little flaps of skin that had lost their blood supply and drew the edges of the wound together with Steristrips. The whole thing had only taken him a few minutes.

‘There,’ he said, flexing his shoulders and nodding in satisfaction. ‘That should sort you out. I can’t suture the skin because of the high risk of infection, but the tape should hold it together well enough. Keep it dry, though—and I think you should have a broad-spectrum antibiotic. They’ve discovered bugs in dog bites that they didn’t know infected humans, so I like to provide a broader cover than a simple penicillin type. Lucy, could I have a sterile non-adherent dressing, please?’

‘Sure.’ She handed him the pack, found the tape and helped him dress the wound.

‘OK,’ he said, sitting back with a smile. ‘Hopefully it’ll heal fast, but I’m afraid you might end up with a scar.’

Melinda shrugged and smiled. ‘It won’t be the first—occupational hazard. Thank you, Ben. Now I can get back to my patient.’

‘How’s your tetanus?’ Lucy asked, and she laughed.

‘Well and truly up to date. I got bitten last year. You’d think I’d learn but apparently not.’

Ben chuckled. ‘Right, Lucy had better give you your prescription—and you’ll need painkillers. Something with codeine, probably, and a non-steroidal. And look out for reddening, fever, swelling, shivering and anything else unusual in the next week. OK?’

‘OK. And thank you so much. Right, now I must get back to this dog.’

‘You should get someone else to do it,’ Dragan said, frowning, but she brushed his suggestion aside.

‘No. She’s frightened, that’s all. She’s only young, and she was hurt. She’s not vicious. I’ll get a nurse to help me, we’ll be fine.’

He muttered something unintelligible and foreign under his breath. ‘I should be here, we’re meant to be having a meeting, but you haven’t got your car,’ he said to Melinda, and Lucy shook her head and handed over the prescription.

‘Don’t worry, Dragan, you give her a lift back. We’ve talked it all through and, anyway, I’ve got a surgery starting in a few minutes. We’ll catch up tomorrow and I’ll fill you in, and we’ll schedule another meeting in a week or two.’

He nodded and, shaking Ben’s hand and thanking him, he ushered Melinda out, leaving them alone.

She was about to offer him more tea when Ben glanced at his watch. ‘Right, I suppose I ought to shoot off. I’ll pick you up tonight—from here? Six-thirty?’

She shook her head. The last thing she wanted was him picking her up from the surgery when her father was likely to be lurking around. ‘I’ll meet you somewhere at seven. Your house?’

He nodded. ‘Fine. Do you still know the way?’

Know it? She’d almost worn out the road, toing and froing, desperate to see him and yet unable to bring herself to ring the bell and tell him she’d made a mistake about them not being together. And then she’d found out she was pregnant, and she had been wearing out the road for another reason, trying to screw up the courage to tell him that.

‘Yes, I know the way,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you there. And make it eight. That’ll give me time to get home and eat something.’

‘No. I’ll feed you.’

‘Seven-thirty, then,’ she agreed, because for some perverse reason she wanted to go home after her surgery, shower and change into something—well, something else. Something pretty. Something that didn’t make her feel like a heffalump.

She walked him back down to Reception, sent him on his way and went into her consulting room, watching him through the window as he got into his BMW and drove away.

It was nearly five. The lights were on in the village, twinkling all around the harbour and giving it a cosy feel, and she could imagine how it must be to enter the harbour mouth and see the lights of home ahead of you.

Safe. Reassuring.

And unaccountably she thought of Ben. Her eyes tracked to his car, following the lights out of the village, along Harbour Road, up Bridge Street and past her front door, out of sight.

Two and a half hours, she told herself, and felt a little shiver of something she hadn’t felt for a very long time.

‘Kate?’

The knock on the door came again, and Kate opened it to find Nick standing there, hands rammed deep into his pockets, a brooding look on his face. She frowned in concern.

‘Nick—hi. What can I do for you?’

‘Oh, I was just—I’ve been clearing the last of the things out of the house. It seems so odd—end of an era. The agent’s expecting a good turn-out at the auction, but I’ve told him to lower the reserve. He was putting a high one on with a view to marketing it in the spring if it doesn’t go, but I told him no. I just want it gone.’

‘And you’re feeling lost.’

‘Not at all. Has to be done,’ he said briskly.

But Kate knew him better than he knew himself, she sometimes thought, and she knew just how hard he’d be finding this. His mother’s family home, the place he’d been born and raised in, the house his father had been living in at his death. The sale had been a long time coming, but he’d got there in the end. Maybe he’d always imagined retiring there with Annabel in the future, but of course that wouldn’t happen now, and the pointlessness of owning it had gradually come home to him.

Poor Nick. He’d lost so much. ‘I’m sure the sale will be a great success,’ she said just as briskly. ‘Some Londoner who wants to divide their time—someone with a family who’ll come down and spend quality time together, bring it to life again. Just what it needs, and you’ll be able to take a nice long holiday on the proceeds. Got time for coffee?’

‘I suppose so. Thanks—yes, coffee would be lovely.’

He followed her through to the kitchen and propped himself up against the island unit, watching her while she made their drinks. ‘Where’s Jem?’ he asked.

‘In bed—Nick, it’s nearly ten.’

‘Is it?’ He sounded startled, and checked his watch disbelievingly. ‘So it is. I’m sorry—want me to go?’

‘No, you’re fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and sit down.’

She handed him his coffee and led him through to the sitting room. He sat beside her on the sofa, propping his feet on the box that served as a coffee-table and resting his head back with a sigh. ‘I’m bushed,’ he confessed.

‘Of course you are. Clearing the house was always going to be hard. You should have asked for help.’

‘No.’

Nothing else, just the one word. Then he sat up straighter and looked down into his coffee. ‘Do you know where Lucy is?’

‘At home in bed, I imagine, if she’s got any sense.’

‘Her car’s not at the surgery. It’s always there.’

‘Perhaps she’s out meeting friends. Maybe they’ve gone out for a meal or something. She sometimes goes out with Chloe and Lauren.’

‘But if she’s not—if she’s in trouble…’

‘Nick, she’s fine.’

‘I’m going to ring her.’

‘No. Let me do it. If you really insist, let me do it. She won’t bite my head off.’

She put her coffee down, got up and went into the kitchen. Quite unnecessarily, because it was a cordless phone, but she wanted Nick out of earshot. ‘Lucy, your father’s worried,’ she said when Lucy answered. ‘He noticed your car wasn’t there. I said you’d probably gone out for a meal with friends.’

There was a heartbeat of silence, then Lucy said, ‘Um—yes, I have.’

‘I thought so,’ Kate said, reading between the lines. ‘You enjoy yourself—and don’t worry about him.’

There was another tiny hesitation, then Lucy said softly, ‘Kate, keep him off my case.’

‘Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Thanks.’

Kate hung up and went back into the sitting room.

‘Well?’

‘She’s out for dinner with friends—I told you she would be.’

‘She never goes out without telling me. I wonder if she’s with the father?’ Very likely, Kate thought, knowing that Lauren was out with Martin, Alison’s little one wasn’t well, and Chloe was on call, but kept it firmly to herself as he went on, ‘If I knew who it was who’d left her to give birth and bring up her child alone, I’d hang him out to dry. How she got herself in this mess—’

‘Oh, Nick, leave the girl alone. She’s a mature, independent professional woman. She’s perfectly capable of fighting her own battles.’

‘Is she?’

‘Yes, of course she is.’

‘So how did she end up like this? And how’s she going to manage? For God’s sake, I was only eighteen when Annabel got pregnant. We managed. And it was twins! And then we had Edward far too soon afterwards, but still we coped. We stuck together, we made a family—for all the good it’s done,’ he added despairingly. ‘Lucy’s pregnant and alone, Jack’s got some bee in his bonnet about cosmetic surgery, he’s been running around London with one tarty little it-girl after another and won’t speak to me, and Edward can’t hack it in the army. So why the hell did we bother? Sometimes I think it’s a good thing Annabel isn’t around to see it.’

‘Oh, Nick.’ Kate sat back with a sigh. ‘You really are down in the dumps, aren’t you? You and Annabel did a fantastic job bringing up your children. You gave them every chance you could, they’ve all ended up qualified doctors and they’re all doing well. You should be proud of them. What more could you want?’

‘To know my daughter’s marrying the father of her child? A man worthy of her? To know my sons aren’t going off the rails—although if either of them would talk to me it would be an improvement—’

‘And when did you last try and talk to them?’

He went silent.

‘I thought so. Give them space, Nick, contact them—send them a text, tell them you’re thinking of them. Tell them about the house. Anything. Tell them you love them. Just don’t nag.’

He snorted, and she took his mug out of his hand and stood up. ‘Come on, it’s time you went home. I need to go to bed and so do you. You look exhausted. It’ll all feel better in the morning.’

‘Will it?’

His face was bleak, and she realised he was thinking about Annabel, about going home alone to an empty house. She knew all about that. Oh, she had Jeremiah, and she adored every hair on his precious little head, but her bed was still cold and lonely at night.

‘Goodnight, Nick,’ she said firmly, and shut the door on him.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘WAS that Kate?’

Lucy nodded and sighed, pushing her hair back off her face and running her fingers through it absently. ‘I’m sorry. Apparently my father was worried. He must have seen that my car wasn’t there and my lights were off. I expect he panicked. He’s such a worrywart.’

She looked troubled, and Ben just wanted to hug her, but he didn’t want to push it. Instead he tried the gentle voice of reason. ‘I can understand his concern. He’s lost a lot of people in his family. That would make him overprotective even if you weren’t pregnant and alone. And if he didn’t know you were going out.’

‘Oh, I know, but I just feel stifled—as if I have to log a flight plan every time I go to the supermarket! That’s why I won’t live with him, although in some ways it might be easier because I could just let him fuss me and give up fighting, but he’d drive me mad in a week.’

That made him smile. He could imagine her frustration but, like her father, he didn’t want her living alone. Not now. Not with the baby so close. He settled back on the sofa and looked across at her curled up at the other end, her slender legs tucked up beneath her, the blatant fecundity of that smooth, round curve bringing out his paternal instinct in spades. ‘So—if you aren’t staying in your flat, and you don’t want to live with your father, and you won’t let me bully you into living with me—where do you want to live?’ he asked, trying hard to keep his voice casual. ‘If you could choose anywhere, regardless of anything.’

Her expression was wistful. ‘Really? Total fantasy? My grandparents’ house,’ she said, surprising him. ‘It was my grandmother’s family home for ages—the farmhouse, originally, although her brother died without a family and so she inherited it, and they sold off the farm and kept the house. It’s gorgeous. It’s a bit rundown now. I went over there with Dad the other day and it was looking so tired. That’s where he was this afternoon, clearing it out after the tenant left. He was elderly and he’s left it in a bit of a state, and it needs so much work if it’s going to be let again that Dad’s finally decided to get rid of it. It’s being auctioned this week.’

‘Really?’ His attention sat up and took notice of that, because his own house, dull and safe and just a stop-gap until he found somewhere with a bit more character, had been sold. That was why he was asking her, because now would be a perfect time to tailor his choice of new house to something that would fit her dreams. He’d lost the house he had been after, but he’d already accepted an excellent cash offer on his own house. The contracts had been exchanged, it was just a matter of settling the moving date—and that might just put him in a very good position…

‘I feel ridiculously sad about it going out of the family,’ Lucy was saying, her voice echoing her feelings, ‘and I think he does, too, but there’s no point in him keeping it, and I can’t afford it, and there’s no way my two bachelor brothers would bother with it. It’s not a huge house, only four proper bedrooms and a bit of an attic, and it needs serious updating, but it’s got fabulous sea views, lovely garden—I adore it. So that’s my fantasy. Silly really.’

He felt a ripple of excitement. ‘Not at all. It sounds lovely. What’s it called?’

‘Tregorran House.’

He made a mental note, but it wasn’t necessary. ‘Have you got internet access?’ Lucy was asking, and he nodded.

‘Yes—why?’

‘It’s on the agent’s website,’ she told him, and within minutes he had it all. The details, the date of the auction, the guide price, the viewing arrangements and the location.

‘It looks pretty.’

‘Oh, it’s very tired and rundown,’ she pointed out. ‘Not that it matters. I won’t go again. The only good thing is the council has rejected any suggestion of developing the site, so I know it’ll stay as a home for some lucky family. Just not mine.’

She turned away from the computer, and he clicked the little heart that made it a favourite place so he could find it again when he next logged on, and shut it down.

She was back on the sofa, looking a little uncomfortable and very tired. He went over to her, hunkered down next to her and took her feet in his hands, lifting them onto his thigh and rubbing them gently.

‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ she sighed, and he shifted so he was kneeling and her feet were in his lap, and she closed her eyes and sighed again. She was looking so tired. Lovely, but so, so tired. Worn down by the worry of all this, of not knowing what to do about her father and her accommodation, and he wanted so much to help her, to ease that burden, and yet he’d caused it.

Ben’s hands slowed and stopped, and he realised she was asleep. Very carefully and gently he lifted her legs up and swung them round onto the sofa, and she made a little noise and snuggled down. He took off his sweater and tucked it around her, then sat down by her feet and watched her while she slept. The baby was moving, her bump shifting and wriggling, and he watched it, fascinated, for what seemed like hours.

And then suddenly her eyes flew open, screwed up then she wailed and struggled to her feet.

‘What is it?’ he asked, panicking, and she grabbed her calf and muttered something pithy under her breath about idiots.

‘Cramp!’ she yelled when he asked her again. ‘Can’t you see I’ve got a cramp?’

‘So sit down and give me your leg,’ he ordered, stifling the urge to laugh at his reaction. He pushed her carefully back onto the sofa and took the leg out of her hands, bending her foot up, stretching out the muscle and massaging it firmly until it softened under his hands and she groaned with relief.

‘Sorry,’ she said meekly, but he didn’t care about what she’d said, what she’d called him, because he’d been holding her leg up in the air and trying really, really hard not to notice that under the pretty, clingy little jersey dress she’d put on for the evening she was wearing the most outrageous lacy knickers.

He dropped her leg as if it was red hot and moved away. ‘OK now?’

She nodded and hauled her skirt down, but it was too late for that, the damage was done. She yawned, sighed and made to get up, and he sat down next to her and reached out a hand, resting it gently on her knee.

‘Stay.’

‘Stay, as in good dog?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘Stay with me. You’re tired, you shouldn’t be driving when you’re tired.’

‘And sleeping with you is any more sensible?’

‘Why not? It’s not as if I’m going to get you pregnant.’

She laughed and stood up, moving away from him. ‘Why on earth do you want me to stay, Ben? I’m fat, I’m waddling…’

He thought of the knickers. ‘No. You’re pregnant. You’re not fat, and you’re not waddling.’

‘Humph.’

‘Well, not much,’ he said, trying to suppress a smile. ‘And you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’

‘You’re such a liar.’

‘No. You are—beautiful and funny and warm and intelligent and sexy as hell.’

‘Sexy?’ she said, as if he was mad.

The knickers popped into his head again. ‘Yes. Sexy,’ he said firmly. ‘Desirable. Gorgeous.’

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said sceptically.

‘Yes. And still sexy as hell.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, I get it. You’re one of those men with a thing about pregnant women…’

‘Only when they’re carrying my child.’

Her jaw dropped fractionally, and she shut it and turned her head slightly. He could almost hear the cogs turning.

‘Lucy?’

She looked back, soft colour touching her cheeks. ‘Ben, I—This is a really lousy idea.’

‘Why? I’m not walking away. I fully intend to be there for you and the baby for ever. Why not start now? You don’t even have to sleep with me. I’ve got a spare room.’

She laughed a little oddly. ‘Bit late for that.’

He wanted to go to her, scoop her into his arms and carry her up to bed, but he forced himself to be still, to wait there for her to make the first move.

But she didn’t. She stood there, her lip caught between her teeth, her eyes wary. ‘Ben, what if—’

‘What if—what?’ And then he realised. She was afraid that when she took her clothes off he’d change his mind, find her unattractive. Crazy, silly woman. Not a chance. ‘Please?’ he said softly. ‘I just want to hold you.’

And that must have been enough, because her eyes filled with tears and she nodded, and then she was in his arms and he was carrying her up the stairs, laughing and protesting that he’d put his back out if he wasn’t careful. Once he’d put her down on the edge of the bed he sat beside her and stroked the hair back from her face.

‘Do you want a T-shirt to sleep in?’ he asked, knowing she’d be shy, and she nodded. He pulled a long one out of his drawer and handed it to her. ‘There’s a new toothbrush and some toothpaste and clean towels and stuff in the bathroom. You go first,’ he said, and shooed her in that direction, then turned back the quilt, stripped off his clothes, went into the en suite shower room and cleaned his teeth, then ran downstairs and brought up the tealight holder from the dining table and lit the candles.

He turned out the light, contemplated stripping off his jersey boxers and thought better of it, then got into bed.

He heard the loo flush, the water running, the door open, the light click off, and then she was there, hovering in the doorway, her face troubled in the candlelight. He held his arm out to her in invitation.

‘Come and have a cuddle,’ he said gently, and after another moment’s hesitation she slipped into bed beside him.

‘Oh! It’s chilly,’ she murmured, and he tucked her up against him so that the firm bulge of her tummy was snuggled against his abdomen and her legs were tangled with his, and gradually, as all he did was hold her, he felt the tension ease out of her and her body relaxed against him.

God, it felt good to have her in his arms. He could feel the baby kicking, and he wondered how on earth she could rest while it fidgeted about like that. Then he got to wondering whether it was a boy or a girl, and if he cared, and he decided he didn’t, just so long as everything was all right.

And then he heard a soft snore, and with a wry chuckle he shifted slightly so her head was on his shoulder and not his arm. Tucking the quilt around her shoulders to keep out the draughts, he closed his eyes and lay there and thought about the future.

He didn’t know what it would bring, but one thing he was sure of—he and Lucy would be together, with their child, come hell or high water.

It was still dark when she woke up.

Dark, and warm, and deep inside her pillow she could hear a heart beating. Hers?

She shifted her legs, and found they wouldn’t move because they were tangled in—legs? Hard, muscular legs, hairy legs, long and lean and definitively masculine.

And her arm was draped across a lean, firm abdomen, her hand resting on a deep chest that rose and fell steadily.

Ben. Safe and solid and apparently not in the least interested in her if last night was anything to go by.

She lifted her head a fraction and tried to ease away, but the arm around her back tightened and eased her back again. ‘Don’t go.’

‘I need the loo,’ she said, and he sighed and released her.

The candles had gone out, and she couldn’t see where she was going. She heard the bed creak, felt the mattress shift, and the bedside light came on. ‘OK?’

‘Fine. Thanks.’

‘Want a drink?’

‘Oh. Water?’

‘Want tea? It’s nearly six. I have to get up soon.’

‘Tea would be great,’ she said, and then hurried to the bathroom as the baby shifted against her bladder and reminded her of why she’d woken up. And she sat there on the loo, looking down at this huge blimp that was her body now, and thought, He didn’t want me. He just held me all night, and he didn’t want me—not once he’d seen me like a beached whale in a T-shirt.

And she felt a stupid, stupid urge to cry. After all, she hadn’t wanted to sleep with him, hadn’t wanted him to initiate anything, and she’d been really tired.

Now, though, she was perversely disappointed, and she flushed the loo and had a quick wash and cleaned her teeth and wondered if she had time to get dressed again before he got back to the bedroom with the tea.

The answer was no. He was in bed, a mug on each bedside table, and he had his hands locked behind his head so she could see the broad expanse of his chest, lightly scattered with soft, dark hair, his arms powerful and strong. She knew they were strong. They’d lifted her last night as if she weighed nothing, and she remembered that the last time he’d carried her, back in May, it had been because he had wanted her.

Not last night, though.

Damn. And now she had the embarrassing morning-after thing to get through.

‘You look better. You looked shattered last night.’

Oh, the compliments were flying today. ‘I was,’ she said, sliding into bed beside him and wondering how quickly she could drink her tea and get out of this humiliating situation.

‘What time do you have to be at work?’

‘Eight-thirty.’

‘It’s only ten to six. I don’t have to leave till seven.’

It could have been a simple statement of fact, but there was something in his voice, something warm and gentle and coaxing, and she risked a glance at him and saw he was looking at her with a question in his eyes.

She swallowed, and put her tea down untouched. ‘Ben—’

‘Come here.’

So she lay down, and rested her head on his chest, and his arm closed around her back, his free hand lifting her chin gently and tilting her head back so he could see into her eyes. ‘I want to make love to you, Lucy,’ he said softly, and she felt her eyes fill with tears.

‘Really?’

He gave a strangled laugh. ‘Really. Really, really really—if it’s what you want?’

‘Oh, yes, please,’ she whispered, and with a ragged sigh he rolled towards her, his mouth meeting hers hungrily. His hand ran down her body, his fingers splayed over her hip, her abdomen, up over her ribs, under the T-shirt and cupped her breast with a groan. He pushed the T-shirt impatiently out of the way, then stared down at her, swallowing hard.

‘Your nipples are darker than they were. Like chocolate.’

And lowering his head, he took one into his mouth, rolling the other between finger and thumb, just gently, as if he knew how sensitive they’d be, and then his mouth moved on, feathering kisses over the baby, murmuring ‘Good morning’ on the way past, so she could feel the puff of his breath and hear the smile in his voice, and then he lifted his head.

‘I hope you don’t wear these outrageous knickers for your antenatal checks,’ he murmured, and, slipping a finger under the elastic, he eased them down, tapping her bottom so she’d lift it and he could slide them free.

‘Better,’ he said, bending his head and kissing her tummy once again. And then his mouth travelled lower, the devastating accuracy of his caress robbing her limbs of control and stealing her breath.

‘Ben!’ she screamed, and he shifted, stripping the little scrap of lace away from her feet, ripping off his boxers, rolling to his side and taking her with him, leaving her in no doubt about his need of her.

He was so gentle, so careful, but his touch drove her crazy, his hand never leaving her, taking her over the edge in a blinding climax that left her shaken to her core.

Dimly, she was aware of his body stiffening, the ragged cry, the long, slow shudder of his release, and then his hand, trembling, cupping her face, cradling her head as he leant forward and kissed her long and slow before folding her against his still pounding heart.

She felt the baby move, felt his hand splay over it in a gentle caress, and the tears welled in her eyes.

‘Are you OK?’

She nodded, squeezing her lids tightly shut, but his fingers caught her chin and lifted it. ‘Look at me,’ he murmured, and she made herself open her eyes and meet his, so blue, so gentle, yet still smouldering with the last embers of passion.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘So beautiful. I wish I didn’t have to go to work.’

‘Don’t worry. I have to go to work, too.’

‘I know.’

He leant forward and kissed her again, softly, lingeringly, then with a sigh he rolled away, threw back the quilt and stood up, walking unselfconsciously into the en suite shower room and turning on the water.

He left the door open, and she sat up in bed and drank her now tepid tea. She watched Ben through the steamy glass of the cubicle door and wondered how she could ever reconcile her father to the fact that the man he was convinced had caused the death of his wife was the man she loved.

Because, she realised, she did love him. She’d loved him for years, ever since they’d worked together, and if her mother hadn’t died, they might well have been together since that time.

But now it was all the most awful mess, and she had no idea where they could go from here.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, shrugging into his jacket and picking up his briefcase. ‘What time do you finish work?’

‘Six—but, Ben, I don’t know…’

‘Don’t know?’

‘If it’s a good idea.’

He stared at her, then rammed a hand through his hair, rumpling the still damp strands and muttering something inaudible under his breath.

‘Look, I’ll call you,’ he said after a moment. ‘You drive carefully.’

‘You, too.’

He gave her a fleeting smile, hesitated and came back to where she was perched on the third step and pressed a quick, hard kiss on her lips. ‘Love you,’ he said, and went out, leaving her open-mouthed and speechless.

‘He didn’t mean it,’ she told the empty hall when she could speak. ‘He was just saying it. Figure of speech. Nothing more. Don’t read anything into it.’

But she couldn’t help the crazy, irrational joy that filled her heart. She tucked it away, a warm, cosy glow to keep her going for the rest of the day…

‘Morning, Lucy. Good time last night?’

She fought down a blush and smiled at her father. ‘Morning, Dad. Yes, thanks.’ Good? Try amazing. Incredible.

Love you.

Oh, more than amazing.

‘So how did it go with Carter?’

‘Car—Oh, the meeting? Fine. Very useful. Dragan couldn’t make it but I’m going to fill him in later. How was the house?’ she added, hoping to distract him.

‘Fine. All done. So, er, where did you say you spent the night?’

Sly old fox. ‘I didn’t,’ she said to make the point, ‘but it was late by the time we’d finished dinner and I was falling asleep, so I stayed over,’ she said, crossing her fingers under the edge of the desk. To her relief, Kate passed the door and stopped.

‘Morning, Lucy. Nick, I wonder if I could have a word? There’s a letter here from the PCT that really needs your urgent attention.’

‘Oh. Sure.’ He turned away.

Lucy met Kate’s eyes gratefully over his shoulder and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’

Kate just smiled and escorted him away, and Lucy closed the door with a sigh of relief. It dawned on her that if Kate knew the baby was Ben’s and was on her side, she could make life a great deal easier. But, then, she’d thought yesterday that Dragan knew, too. And Marco? The smouldering, passionate Italian? He knew about love, although his own marriage was up the creek. Would he see the love for Ben in her eyes and know?

Which only left the reception and nursing staff and her father. And if they talked—

Her phone rang, and she lifted the receiver, banishing the little flutter of panic. ‘Hello?’

‘Your first patient’s here, Lucy, and Toby Penhaligan’s just come in—he thinks he’s broken his arm. Are you free to see him?’

‘Sure. I’ll do that first. I’ll come out,’ she said.

Toby was a local fisherman, a good-looking young man in his twenties, and it wasn’t the first time she’d treated him or another member of his family. He was standing in Reception, still in his oilskins and cradling one arm in the other hand. ‘Hi, Doc. Sorry about this. Stupid of me—caught my toe on something and went down on deck. I thought I was OK, but I’ve got no strength in my arm at all and Dad reckons I’ve broken it.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ she said, and led him up to the MIU. ‘Toby, can you get your oilies off? Don’t want to go cutting your jacket if we can avoid it, do we?’ she said.

He shrugged the good arm out of the jacket and with her help he gritted his teeth and eased the coat down over his hand. By the time she’d sat him down his face was colourless and he was grim-lipped and silent. There was nothing obvious about the arm, now she could see it, and his hand was warm with good capillary refill, but he was cradling the forearm ultra-cautiously in his other hand and she’d bet her life the radius was broken, and probably the ulna as well.

‘Can you squeeze my fingers?’ she asked, and he tried, but he wouldn’t have crumpled a tissue with that much pressure.

‘Right. Can you feel your fingers?’

‘Can feel the whole darned thing,’ he said in disgust. ‘It hurts like a proper cow. Dad’s right, isn’t he? It’s broken.’

‘I’m afraid it almost certainly is. I’ll put a splint on it just to get you to hospital a bit more comfortably, but you’ll have to go to St Piran and get a cast on it.’

‘Pity you can’t do that here.’

‘It is, and we’re working on it, but it’ll be a while yet, Toby. Sorry.’ She smiled apologetically at him, wrapped his arm in wadding and taped it to a flat support. ‘There. That should stop it moving around too much until you get to St Piran. Rest it on a pillow or a cushion on your lap for the journey. And when you get there, if you see Mr Carter, can you ask him to give me a ring and let me know how it is?’

‘Sure. Thanks, Doc. It’ll be a while yet. Dad’s got the fish to unload and if he doesn’t get it away soon he’ll miss the market.’

‘Well, don’t leave it too long. Can’t you get someone else to give you a lift?’

He shook his head. ‘They’ve all got things to do—boats to clean down, nets to repair. Nobody’s got time to run about after me. I could take the bus.’

‘Not with a fracture. You could call an ambulance.’

‘What, and waste their time? No, Doc, it was my own fault. I’ll wait for my dad.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll give Mr Carter your message,’ he said, opening the door, and typically her father was just outside.

‘What message?’ he asked, stepping through the door after Toby had gone out and scowling.

‘What?’ she asked, pretending ignorance.

‘For Ben Carter.’

‘Oh. About Toby’s fracture. I think it’s exactly the sort of thing we could treat here—I wanted his opinion. It’s really difficult for Toby to get to St Piran. He won’t call an ambulance because of the waste of resources, and his father can’t leave till they’ve unloaded the fish and got them away. And they’ve been out all night and they’re exhausted. X-ray and plaster facilities here would improve things so much for people like him.’ She smiled at him and kissed his cheek. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a full surgery and I’m already running late.’

He grunted, gave her a fleeting hug—the first for how long?—and opened the door for her. She gave a quick sigh of relief, went back down to her consulting room and carried on with her work.