‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to wake up beside you.’

Something shuttered in his face—an expression she didn’t like. Pain? No. It was a closing of something that had barely started to open.

‘Jake, no,’ she said swiftly—she did not want to hurt this man but this was important. She was struggling to explain it, struggling to understand it herself, but somehow she had to find words for what she was feeling. ‘What happened tonight was magic, time out of frame. I needed it so much—I needed you—and I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life. But if I wake up beside you in the morning…then I might hold and cling. I don’t want that. I don’t want anything to mess with what we had tonight.’

I don’t want to fall in love.

Where had that come from? No matter, it was there, hovering between them as if both had thought it.

Love…After one night? She didn’t think so.

She knew she had to move on. Somehow Jake seemed to have given her the strength to do just that, and she would not mess with it.

‘I loved tonight,’ she whispered. ‘Tonight I loved you. But we both know our worlds don’t fit together. Let’s just accept tonight’s magic and move on.’

‘I’m not sure I can.’ He was pushing open the door to her bedroom with his foot…

Dating the Millionaire Doctor

By

Marion Lennox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor’, Marion writes romances for Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance as well as Mills & Boon® Romance (she used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Mills & Boon® Romance stories, search for author Trisha David as well).

In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost).

Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!

Recent titles by the same author:

Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance

CITY SURGEON, SMALL TOWN MIRACLE

A SPECIAL KIND OF FAMILY

Mills & Boon® Romance

CINDERELLA: HIRED BY THE PRINCE

CROWNED: THE PALACE NANNY

(Marrying His Majesty mini-series)

This book is dedicated to all the wonderful volunteers who worked tirelessly to save injured wildlife after the Australian Black Saturday bushfires.

Dear Reader

On February 7th, 2009, wildfire destroyed a vast section of Australia’s south-east corner. Almost two hundred lives were lost, many people lost their homes, and vast tracts of farmland and natural bushland were destroyed. But in the days that followed we saw our community at its best.

I was privileged to be part of a livestock appeal, and the response left us overwhelmed by human kindness. People brought in birdseed and cuttlefish, and others staggered in under huge bags of dog food. We had people who looked as if they had no money at all coming in with animal bedding, food—anything they could think of. We had companies donating truckloads of their produce. We had vets arriving with veterinary equipment.

Volunteers loaded, unloaded, distributed. Out in the burned-out bushland volunteers scattered feed, searched for injured animals, did whatever was needed. Volunteers are working still.

In Tori’s story I wanted to share with you some of my pride in my community, and my awe of what people are capable of. From the ashes springs new life. Take care of each other, but know that in times of deepest trouble we’re never truly alone.

And we can still look forward to love.

Marion Lennox

Chapter One

FIVE-MINUTE dating was five minutes too long. He’d dated nine women tonight, and the last was the least inspiring of the lot.

Jake glanced down at his fact sheet, hoping for help. Victoria. Twenty-nine. Single. There wasn’t a lot here to talk about.

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Victoria,’ he ventured. That’s terrific, he thought wryly. Snappy dialogue. Incisive. Excellent way to start things rolling.

‘My friends call me Tori,’ she ventured, dragging her gaze from the door. Was she thinking about escaping?

‘Is this your first try at speed dating?’

‘Yes. And you?’

‘Yes.’

This wasn’t exactly scintillating, he conceded. Where did he go from here?

Each of his last nine ‘dates’ had been vivacious and chirpy. He hadn’t needed to make an effort. Now, when effort was required, he wondered whether it was worth it.

Had Tori made an effort?

Victoria—or Tori—looked a real country mouse. She was wearing a knee-length black skirt, scuffed court shoes and a white blouse with ruffles down the front. Her chestnut-brown curls—had she cut the fringe herself?—had been pulled into a rough knot, simply tied with a white ribbon. She wore no make up and no jewellery.

Why was she here if she wasn’t prepared to spend some time on her appearance? he wondered. The lines around her clear green eyes were stretched tight, making her seem a lot older than twenty-nine years. But did she care? She looked as if she wanted to be here even less than he did, which was really saying something.

The manager of Dr. Jake Hunter’s Australian properties had promised Jake he’d enjoy it, but enjoy was so far off the mark Jake couldn’t believe it. But he was here. He was stuck. He had to make conversation.

‘So what do you do for a living?’

‘I care for injured wildlife.’

That’d be right. She looked like a do-gooder. Not that he had anything against do-gooders, he reminded himself hastily. It was just that she looked…the type.

‘So you’ll have been busy in the fires?’

‘Yes.’

And here was another conversation stopper. Six months ago wildfire had ripped this little community apart, decimating the entire district. As an outsider Jake didn’t know where to take it. Should he say something like, Was your house burned? Was anyone you cared about hurt?

Surely the fact that she’d come to speed dating was proof that it hadn’t touched her too badly. But don’t go there, he told himself, and he didn’t. Which left silence.

‘What…what about you?’ she asked, sounding desperate, and he thought, Three minutes and fifty seconds left.

‘I live in the U.S. but I own properties here, in the valley and up on the ridge. I’ve come back now to check on them, maybe put them on the market.’

‘Were they damaged?’

‘Not badly. My manager’s been taking care of them for me. He’s the one who talked me into coming tonight.’

‘So speed dating’s not your thing?’

‘No,’ he admitted, and decided to be honest. She looked the sort of woman who called a spade a spade. ‘Rob said you were a guy short. I got dragged into this at the last minute.’

‘You don’t want to be here?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’m wasting your time,’ she said, and suddenly the mouse had changed into something else entirely. Her relief was palpable. She rose and took his hand in a grip so firm it surprised him. ‘This is the last round so we can finish this now. Goodnight, Jake.’

Then, astonishingly, she smiled, a wide, white smile that had the power to turn her face from plain to something extraordinary. But he didn’t have a chance to register the smile for long. She’d released his hand and was heading for the door, her sensible heels clicking briskly on the polished wooden floorboards of the Combadeen Hall.

And to his further bewilderment, the moment she rose she looked…cute? Definitely cute, he thought. Her curls bounced on her shoulders. She had curves in all the right places, the badly fitting skirt unable to conceal her tiny waist, the lovely lines of her legs and the unconscious wiggle of her hips as she stalked to the door.

He wasn’t the only one watching. As she tugged the door open and walked out into the night, as the door slammed closed behind her, he realised everyone else in the hall was looking as well, as astonished as he was.

He’d just been stood up for a speed date. He’d been stood up by a smile that was truly stunning.

Should he follow?

Um, no. She was right. Speed dating was not his thing.

Nor was any other sort of dating, he acknowledged. He was in town to check on his father’s property, to sign documents to put the farmhouse on the ridge on the market and to make a decision about the resort. Then he was out of here. His job back in the States was waiting. He had no place here. So why was he watching a country mouse stalk away from him, as if he cared?

Why had she come?

Her best friend, Barb, had lied to her. They can’t have been a woman short if that guy—Jake?—could patronise her by saying he was only here to make up numbers, to do them all a favour.

Arrogant toerag.

Outside, the stars were hanging low in the sky. The air was crisp and clean, and she filled her lungs, as if the hall inside had been full of smoke.

Of course it wasn’t, though maybe the smell of smoke would never completely leave her. The fire that had ripped through these mountains had changed her life—and she wasn’t ready to move on, no matter what Barb said.

‘Please come tonight,’ Barb had pleaded. ‘We’re desperate to make up the numbers. It’ll be fun. Come on, Tori, life can be good again. You can try.’

So she’d tried. Not very hard, she conceded, looking ruefully down at her serviceable skirt. She’d been living courtesy of welfare bins for too long now.

Tori—or more formally Dr. Victoria Nicholls, veterinary surgeon—had no financial need of welfare bins, but the outpouring of the Australian public had been massive. The local hall was filled with clothes donated to replace what was burned, and it was easier to grab what she needed than to waste time shopping.

She hadn’t shopped since…

She shook herself. Don’t go there.

But maybe she had to go there. Maybe that was part of the healing. No, she hadn’t shopped since the fire. She hadn’t dated since the fire—or before, of course, but then she’d had Toby. Or she’d thought she’d had Toby. There was the king of all toerags. Even the thought of him made her cringe. That she could have imagined herself in love with him…

She’d been incredibly, appallingly dumb. She’d made one disastrous mistake that had cost her everything, so what on earth was she doing lining up for another?

Oh, for heaven’s sake, she was supposed to be moving on. There were good people out there, she told herself. Good men. She had to learn to trust again. Jake had seemed…

Bored. Compelled to be there. But sort of interesting?

Maybe Barb was right; she did need to get out more, because Jake seemed to have stirred something in her that hadn’t been stirred for a long time.

He’d been long and lean and sort of…sculpted. Rangy. He hadn’t bothered to shave, and there was another mark against him. She’d gone to all the trouble of finding this stupid blouse and he’d come with a five-o’clock shadow. Mind, it had looked incredibly sexy, with his deep, black hair—a little bit wavy—and his lovely brown eyes and the crinkles around his tanned face that said he normally didn’t look as bored as this; normally he smiled.

How stupid was this? She gave herself an angry shake. She’d met ten men tonight, all of them seemed uninterested and uninteresting, and even though Jake seemed…interesting…he was the rudest of the lot.

She’d been stupid once. Any relationship she might have in the future must thus be dictated by sense and not by hormones, and all she’d felt with Jake was hormones. Lots of hormones.

Disgusted, she climbed into her battered van and headed out of the car park, back up the mountain. She’d been away for long enough.

No matter what Barb said, she wasn’t ready for a new life. She already had an all-consuming one.

Or did she? Barb was right, she accepted. The life she knew was coming to an end.

Where did she go from here?

Wherever—as long as her decisions were based on sense and not hormones, she told herself fiercely and headed back up the mountain.

‘Anyone strike your fancy?’

Jake’s manager and friend from university days was watching a blonde totter across the car park to her cute little sports car. She was definitely Rob’s choice for the night. Maybe he’d even take it further.

As opposed to Jake. He had no intention of ever taking things further. Yeah, it had been crazy to agree to speed dating. He was here for less than a week, and every one of the women he’d met tonight had diamonds in their eyes.

He didn’t do diamonds. Diamonds had been drilled out of him early.

Jake had been brought up by a mother who spent her life bewailing an Australian father who was, according to her, the lowest form of life on the planet. Love made you cry, his mother told him, over and over from the time he was a toddler, since she’d taken him back to the States and—as she’d said repeatedly—abandoned her dreams for ever.

Maybe his mother’s broken dreams had left their legacy. Who knew? He needed a shrink to tell him, but a shrink couldn’t change him. He didn’t do long-term relationships. He’d never felt the slightest need to take things down that road. Women were colleagues and friends. They were often great companions. The occasional mutually casual relationship was great, but why open yourself to the angst of commitment?

Rob, however, had talked about tonight as though it was the answer to his prayers. As if diamonds were on his agenda. Which was ridiculous.

‘What do you see in this five-minute set-up?’ he demanded, and Rob gave a crooked smile.

‘My perfect woman’s out there somewhere. I just have to find her. So there was no one tonight who struck your fancy?’

‘Your lady’s hot,’ Jake conceded, being generous. ‘But no.’

‘So what did you say to Doc Nicholls?’ Rob asked. ‘To make her walk out.’

‘Doc Nicholls?’

‘Tori. Barb says she’s the vet up on the ridge, part of the group that rent your house. I’m thinking I should have met her before this, but since the fires life’s been crazy. Any negotiation’s been done through Barb. Then tonight…I couldn’t make her talk, but at least she stayed the full five minutes. Unlike you. You didn’t say anything to upset her, did you? Barb’ll have me hung, drawn and quartered if you’ve hurt her feelings.’

‘How could I have hurt her feelings?’

‘You say it like it is,’ Rob said. ‘Not always best.’

‘I don’t tell lies, if that’s what you mean.’

‘So what did you tell her?’

‘Just that I was here to make up the numbers.’

‘Right,’ Rob said. ‘That’d be a turn-on. I’m speed dating because I’m being kind. Woo-hoo.’

‘Look, it doesn’t matter anyway,’ Jake said, shoving his hands into his pockets and staring out at the vast night sky. Hankering for Manhattan where stars were in shop windows and not straight up. ‘I’ll get the house on the market and leave again, though I don’t know why you can’t do it for me.’

‘I offered, if you remember, and for once you decided to take an interest and come do it yourself.’

‘The figure seemed ludicrously low.’

‘Who wants a house on top of a fire-prone ridge?’

‘It was snapped up pretty fast after the fires.’

‘Only because there was still green feed around it,’ Rob said bluntly. ‘And you offered it rent free. But six months on, there’s feed everywhere, and it’s smoke damaged. Property values on the ridge will rise again but not until the memory of the fire fades a bit. So many of the people round here lost someone. You’re lucky you weren’t living here yourself.’

Yeah, well…Luck had all sorts of guises, Jake thought, as they headed back down the valley towards the second property his father had left him—a lodge with attached vineyard. His mother would definitely say he was lucky not to live here. His mother would be devastated that he was here now.

But how could he help but come? Jake was wealthy before his father died, but his father’s death had made him more so. The combined properties, even at post-fire prices, were worth a fortune.

Why had he held onto them? That was a question he was having trouble facing, and maybe that’s why he was here—seeking some final connection to his father.

Apart from financial support—given grudgingly, according to his mother—Jake’s father had played no part in his life. He hadn’t contacted him all through his childhood. There’d been nothing. But twelve years ago, when Jake qualified as a doctor, he’d finally received a letter. Congratulating him and wishing him all the best for his future. Intrigued, he’d written back. That’s when he’d discovered his father was working as a country doctor in the hills outside Melbourne.

He’d decided he wouldn’t mind getting a personal idea about this man who’d cared for him financially but in no other sense. Tentatively he’d suggested a visit.

But, ‘I hear your mother’s ill and she’d hate it,’ his father had said bluntly. ‘I’ve married again. We’ve all moved on. After all these years, what’s the point? I’m glad you’ve graduated and I’m proud of you. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to contact you before, but now I have…let’s leave it there.’

So he’d left it, and then life grew busy. He’d immersed himself in his career. He’d visit Australia one day, he promised himself, but then five years ago his father died, suddenly, of a massive coronary.

Jake had finally come then, to a funeral that shocked him with the community outpouring of grief. He’d sat at the back of the church and watched strangers cry for a father he didn’t know. A father who hadn’t even objected when his mother had changed his name back to hers. Who seemed to have little connection to him at all.

But when tentatively he’d confessed to the elderly lady beside him who he was, to his astonishment she’d known all about him.

‘I’m one of Old Doc’s patients—and you must be Jake,’ she’d said, sniffing and beaming a watery smile at him. ‘His American son. Doc had a baby picture of you up on his clinic wall. I used to say to him it was a shame your mother took you away, but he’d say, “Just because he’s in the States doesn’t make him any less my son. I love him wherever he is.”’

He’d loved him? That was the first he’d heard of it. The woman had wanted to introduce him around, but he was so shocked he’d simply walked away.

Maybe he should have sold the properties then, but it had seemed wrong. Troubled by the conflicting messages he was getting—had his father indeed cared?—and by the morality of accepting such an inheritance, he’d employed Rob to manage the properties and he’d retreated to the States. To his all-consuming career as chief anaesthetist at Manhattan Central.

But now, finally, he’d returned.

The lodge, once owned by his stepmother and run as a winery and genteel place of retreat, had been needed as emergency accommodation in the first weeks after the fire. Rob had it running again now, but there were few guests.

Rob had worked in hospitality for years. Five years back he’d followed a lady to Australia—of course—and jumped at the opportunity to run the lodge, but getting it viable again could take more than Rob’s enthusiasm. And up on the ridge, Jake’s second property—the one used by Tori and her friends—was smoke damaged and had been used for six months as an animal hospital.

So maybe he should sell both. Maybe he should abandon any last trace of a father he didn’t know, abandon any last connection. Rob would find alternative employment. His friend was born hopeful. The blonde’s car was in front of them, and Rob was speeding up and slowing down, doing a bit of automotive courting. Jake shook his head in disbelief.

‘Hey, stop it with the disapproval.’ Rob grinned, sensing his thoughts. ‘Worry about your own love life.’

‘I don’t have a love life.’

‘Exactly. My life’s work, wine and women. Your life’s medicine, medicine and medicine—and worry. You know you don’t need to. The resort will turn around.’

‘Maybe it will,’ Jake agreed and then thought, Why was he worrying? The winery supported the lodge, he had no money problems, so why was he even here? And the farmhouse up on the ridge—Old Doc’s Place, the locals called it—well, why was he quibbling about price? ‘I’ll go check out the ridge tomorrow, put it on the market and then go home.’

‘Back to your medicine.’

‘It’s what I do.’

‘It’s what you are,’ Rob said. ‘Why do you think I conned you into coming tonight? You need a life.’

‘I have a life.’

‘Right,’ Rob drawled in a voice that said he didn’t believe it at all. ‘Sure thing.’

Chapter Two

SHE was losing the fight—and someone was banging on the front door. Her nurse’s gaze shifted towards the entrance, her brows raised in enquiry.

‘Leave it,’ Tori said tightly. ‘She’s slipping.’

Up until now the koala under her hands had been responding well. Like so many animals, she’d been caught up in the wildfire, but she was one of the lucky ones, found by firefighters the day after the fire, brought into Tori’s care and gradually rehabilitated.

Tori had worked hard with her, and up until now she’d thought she’d survive. But then a few days ago she’d found a tiny abscess in the scar tissue on her leg. Despite antibiotics and the best of care, it was spreading. It needed careful debridement under anaesthetic. That left a problem. With this shelter winding down, she no longer had full veterinary support.

If she took her down the mountain she could get another veterinarian to assist, but travel often took more of a toll on injured animals than the procedure itself. Thus she was working with Becky, a competent veterinary nurse who worked under instruction. It wasn’t enough. She needed an expert, right here, right now, who could respond to minute-by-minute changes in the koala’s condition.

She was working as fast as she could to get the edges of the abscess clean but she couldn’t work fast enough. The little animal was slipping. To lose her after all this time…She was starting to feel sick.

‘Anyone there?’ It was a deep masculine voice, calling from the hallway. Whoever had knocked had come right in.

The door to their improvised operating theatre opened. Tori glanced up, ready to yell at whoever it was to get out—and it was Jake. Her one-and-a-half-minute date.

Whatever. It could be the king himself and there was only one reaction. ‘Out,’ she snapped, and Becky said, ‘I think she’s stopped breathing.’

Her attention switched back to her koala. She could have wept. To lose her now…

‘Can I help?’ Jake demanded.

She shook her head, hardly conscious that she was responding. She had to intubate. But if she left the wound…She couldn’t do both jobs herself.

‘Unless you can intubate…’ she whispered, hopeless. She shouldn’t have tried. The oral conformation of koalas—small mouth, narrow dental arcade, a long, soft palate and a caudally placed glottal opening, all of these combined with a propensity to low blood oxygen saturation—made koala anaesthetics risky at the best of times. And without another vet…

‘I can intubate,’ he snapped. ‘Keep working.’

‘You can?’

Jake was already at the side bench, staring down at equipment. ‘What size tube?’

‘Four millimetre,’ she said automatically.

Another vet? Maybe he was, she thought, as he grabbed equipment and headed to the table. Whoever he was, he knew what he was doing.

The soft palate of the koalas obscures the epiglottis from direct view, but Jake didn’t hesitate. He’d found and was using silicone spray, snapping instructions at Becky to hand him equipment.

Tori was concentrating on applying pressure to the wound to prevent more blood loss. She was therefore able to watch in awed amazement as Jake manoeuvered the little animal into a sternal recumbency position, as he applied more spray—and as he slid the tube home.

It was like the Angel Gabriel had suddenly appeared from the heavens. Ask and ye shall receive. She’d barely been aware that she’d prayed.

No matter where he’d come from, no matter that she couldn’t see his wings and he sounded autocratic and fierce rather than soft and halo-like, her one-and-a-half-minute date was definitely assuming angel-like status. He had oxygen flowing in what seemed seconds. The monitor by Tori’s side showed a slight shift in the thin blue line—and then a major one.

She had life.

‘Heart rate’s seventy beats a minute,’ Jake snapped, adjusting the flow. ‘How does that compare to normal?’

Not a vet, then? Or not a vet who cared for koalas. Of course not.

‘Low, but a whole lot better than before you arrived,’ she told him, but there was no time for questions. Stunned, she went back to what she was doing. She was incredibly grateful but now wasn’t the time to show it. She had to get this wound debrided, then get it dressed so the anaesthetic could be reversed.

Koalas died under anaesthetic. This one wouldn’t. Please…

As if in echo of her thoughts, Jake said, ‘She seems knocked around. Wouldn’t euthanasia be the kindest option?’ He’d had time now to take in the scar tissue, the signs of major trauma.

‘Says the man who just saved her,’ Tori muttered. ‘Let’s try to keep her alive until I finish. We can do the moral debate later.’

‘Right.’

There was silence while she worked on. Becky had faded into the background, assisting both of them, deeply relieved, Tori guessed, to be freed from a task she hated. There was so much they’d done in the past six months they’d all hated—including putting down more animals than she wanted to think about.

How to explain that after so much death, one life became disproportionately important. This little one she was working on didn’t have a name. Or…she shouldn’t give her one. She should not be emotionally involved.

Only, of course, she was emotionally involved. Koala Number Thirty-seven—the thirty-seventh koala she’d treated since the fire—belonged in the wild, and Tori was determined to get her back there. She would win this last battle. She must.

Thanks to this man, she just might.

Who was he?

She was finishing now, applying dressings, having enough time again to pay attention to the man at the head of the table. He was watching the monitors like a hawk, his face fierce, absorbed, totally committed to what he was doing.

Inserting an endotracheal tube in a koala was always dangerous territory. If you went too deep there was a major risk of traumatising the trachea and extending the tube into bronchus. She hadn’t told him that. There hadn’t been time, but he’d seemed to know it instinctively. How?

Maybe he was a vet, or maybe he did paediatric anaesthesia. Sometimes she thought paediatrics and veterinary science were inexplicably linked. Varying weights and sizes. The inability of the patient to explain where the pain was.

Who was he?

She was finished. Another check of the monitors. Pulse rate eighty. Blood oxygen saturation ninety percent.

Koala Thirty-seven just might live.

She couldn’t help herself; she put her hand on the soft fur of the little koala’s face and bestowed a silent blessing.

‘You keep on living,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve come so far. You will make it.’

‘She might well,’ Jake said. He was working surely and confidently, removing the endotracheal tube with care and watching with satisfaction as the little animal settled back into normal breathing pattern. ‘So who’s going to pay her bill?’

‘Now there’s a question,’ she murmured. She was carrying the little animal carefully back to her cage in the corner. She wasn’t out of the woods yet—she knew that. Any procedure took it out of these wild animals, but at least there was hope.

She’d done all she could, she thought, arranging the IV line the little animal needed to provide fluids until she started eating again. Then she was finished.

Really finished, she thought suddenly. There was now nothing left to do.

The sensation was strange. For the six months since the fires Tori had worked nonstop. This place had been a refuge for injured wildlife from all over the mountain. They’d had up to fifty volunteers at one time, with Tori supervising the care of as many as three hundred animals. Kangaroos, wallabies, possums, cockatoos, koalas—so many koalas. So many battles. So much loss.

It was over. Those who could be saved had been saved, and were being re-introduced in the wild. The spring rains had come, the bush was regenerating; there was food and water out there for animals to re-establish territories.

This little koala was the last of her responsibilities. She glanced down at her and, as she did, she felt a wave of the deep grief that was always with her. All those she’d failed…

‘Is it okay if I go now?’ Becky said, glancing uncertainly at Jake. ‘It’s just…Ben’s picking me up. He’ll be waiting.’

‘Sure, Becky. Thanks for your help.’

‘You won’t need me again, will you?’

‘No.’ She glanced back at the koala. If there was a need for more surgery, she knew what her decision would have to be, and for that she wouldn’t need Becky.

‘See you, then,’ Becky said. ‘I’m out of here. Hooray for the city—I’m so over this place.’ And with another curious glance at Jake she disappeared, closing the door behind her.

Leaving Tori with Jake.

‘I…Thank you,’ she managed. He looked pretty much like he had the night before. Slightly more casual. Faded jeans and a white, open-necked shirt. Elastic-sided boots. He looked like a local, she thought, which was at odds with his American accent.

‘My pleasure,’ he said, and sounded like he meant it. ‘I didn’t realise last night that you were a vet.’

‘I didn’t know you were.’

‘I’m not.’

‘So inserting endotracheal tubes in koalas is just a splinter skill for, say, a television repairman?’

‘I’m an anaesthetist. Jake Hunter.’

‘An anaesthetist,’ Tori said blankly. ‘In Combadeen? You have to be kidding.’

‘I’m not kidding. I’m staying at Manwillinbah Lodge.’

‘Rob Winston’s place?’ She was struggling now with the connection. What had Jake said last night? ‘I own properties here, in the valley and up on the ridge.’ And Rob. Distracted, she thought of the pleasant young man who’d flirted outrageously last night. She remembered him arriving with this man. With Jake. ‘Was Rob Winston the ninth date last night?’ she demanded.

‘That was Rob.’

‘He was nice. Fun.’

‘Meaning, I wasn’t?’

‘I didn’t say that. But I wish I’d known who he was,’ she said ruefully. ‘He should have told me. I need to thank him, and not only for letting us use this place. I had a friend who went to Manwillinbah Lodge when she was released from hospital two months ago. It wasn’t right for her. She needed ongoing medical treatment, but that wasn’t Rob’s fault, and she said he tried so hard to give her time out. So many people around here need that.’ She frowned, figuring more things out. ‘So is this…is this your farm?’

‘It is.’

‘Oh, my…’

Uh-oh.

Last night she’d walked out on her landlord. On the guy who’d made this whole hospital possible. ‘You’ve been giving this place to us rent free and I didn’t even know who you were.’ It was practically a wail and he grinned.

‘This is a whole new conversation topic. If we’d known last night we could have used our whole five minutes.’

She managed a smile—just. How embarrassing. And how to retrieve the situation?

She should shake his hand. Or, um, not. She glanced down at her gloves and decided gratitude needed to wait. Plus she needed to catch her breath. Breath seemed in remarkably short supply.

‘Could you excuse me for a moment?’ she muttered. ‘I need to wash.’ And she disappeared—she almost ran—leaving him alone with Koala Number Thirty-seven.

He was in the front room of what seemed to have been a grand old farmhouse. It still was, somewhere under the litter of what looked to be an animal hospital.

When the fires had ripped through here, almost fifty percent of properties on the ridge had been destroyed. The loss of life and property had been so massive there’d been international television coverage. Horrified, he’d contacted Rob to see how he could help.

‘The lodge and the winery are okay,’ Rob told him. ‘We’re almost ten miles from where the fire front turned back on itself, so apart from smoke on the grapes there’s little damage. I’ve been asked if we can provide emergency accommodation, if it’s okay with you. And the farmhouse on the ridge…There’s an animal-welfare place wanting headquarters. When the wind shifted, pushing the fire back on itself, your place was spared. Just. There’s still feed around it, and the house itself is basically okay, but your tenants are moving off the mountain. They can’t cope with the mess and the smell, and they’re going to her mother’s. Can the animal-welfare people use it for six months or so?’

‘Of course,’ he’d said, so it was now a hospital—of sorts.

But as he looked around he thought he wouldn’t have minded seeing it as it once was—a gracious family home. And he wouldn’t have minded seeing the bushland around here as it was either. The fire had burned to within fifty yards of the house and then turned. Beyond that demarcation, the bush was black and skeletal. Green tinges were showing through the ash now, alleviating the blackness, but six months ago it must have been a nightmare.

He stared out the window until Tori bustled back into the room, carrying a bucket of steaming, soapy water. She looked like a woman who didn’t stay still for long, he thought. Busy. Clinically efficient. Cute?

Definitely still cute. She was in ancient jeans, an even more ancient T-shirt and a white clinical coat with a torn pocket. Her curls were again scraped back into a ponytail. Last night she’d pulled them back with a ribbon. Today they were tied with an elastic band. She looked…workmanlike.

But workmanlike or not, he thought, nothing could hide her inherent sexiness. Why had he wasted time last night thinking she was dowdy?

When she left the room she’d looked confused. Now, however, she looked relieved, as if she’d spent her bucketfilling time figuring things out as well.

‘I know now why you’re here,’ she told him. ‘You’re Old Doc’s son. Jake. I loved your father.’ She hesitated as if she wanted to say something else, but then thought better of it.

‘So you’re here to put this farm on the market,’ she continued briskly. ‘That’s fine, but first I need to thank you.’ She abandoned her bucket, put her hands out and grasped his, holding them in the same strong grip of the night before, a grip that made him wonder how he’d ever thought her a mouse. The connection felt strangely…right.

But Tori wasn’t noticing connections. She was moving right on.

‘I can’t tell you how grateful we’ve been,’ she said. ‘It’s been fabulous—and Barb said you won’t take any rent. It’s been truly lifesaving.’ She looked across at the little koala in her cage, and her business-like tone faltered a little. ‘And now you’ll sell. That’s fine. We don’t need it any more. As soon as this one goes…’

‘She’s the only one here now?’

‘We release as soon as we can,’ she said, efficient again. ‘Wild animals respond to captivity with stress. There’s a few that are too damaged to survive on their own, but we’ve relocated them all now to bigger animal shelters. Places where they can have as close to a normal life as possible. So yes, there’s only this little one here now. And me.’

He frowned. ‘You’re living here?’

‘I…Yes. I hope you don’t mind. It’s easier.’

‘You’re on twenty–four-hour call?’

‘Not many of my patients buzz me. It’s not as hard as it sounds.’ She was opening the door onto the verandah and ushering him out, almost before he was aware of what she was doing.

There was a small dog lying on an ancient settee by the door. He’d seen him as he arrived. He was some sort of terrier, a nondescript brown-and-white mutt who hadn’t bothered checking Jake out when he arrived. Too old to care? He glanced up now, gave a feeble wag of his tail and then went back to what he was doing.

Which wasn’t sleeping, Jake realised. He was staring down the valley, as if he was waiting for someone.

Tori touched the dog’s ears, and the dog nosed her palm and went right back to looking. Waiting to go home?

‘You’ll be looking forwards to going home,’ he ventured, and saw a flash of pain, hidden fast. Uh-oh, he thought. Stupid. If she was staying here…She’d be one of the hundreds burned out.

She hesitated and he knew he was right, but it was too late to retrieve the situation. ‘I guess I must be,’ she said slowly before he could think what else to say, and she shrugged. ‘No, of course I am. It’s time I moved on.’

‘Is that what you were doing last night—moving on?’

‘What I was doing last night was being conned by my friend. I gather you were conned as well. So when do you need me to move out?’

‘I don’t—’

‘It’ll be soon. You’ll need to clean the place up before you put it on the market. There’s a lot of smoke damage. Do you want to look through now?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have a teleconference in five minutes with our local shelter staffers, but you could look around yourself.’

‘I’d be happier if you could show me personally.’

Why had he said that? Surely he could see what he needed from here. What point was there doing a detailed inspection, and why did he need a personal tour from Tori?

She had him fascinated. There was something about the way her hand had shaken his, brisk, efficient, but also…there was something vulnerable about her. Something he couldn’t figure out.

She wasn’t sounding vulnerable, though. She was organising. ‘I can show you,’ she said, ‘but if you want the personal tour it’ll have to be later in the day. But tomorrow would be better.’

‘Is nine in the morning all right?’

‘Sure. When are you going back to the States?’

‘Monday.’ Six days away.

Suddenly six days seemed okay. If he kept the resort there was only this place to organise. He could be here again tomorrow and be shown over the property by Tori. Those jeans…He’d never seen jeans look this good on a woman.

‘I do need to get in to my teleconference,’ she said, a bit sharply, and he pulled himself together. What was he thinking? This woman was a country mouse—a vet who lived on the other side of the world to him. If she hadn’t stood him up on a five-minute date…

Was that what this was? Bruised ego?

‘Thank you very much for saving my koala,’ she said, starting to edge away.

‘What’s she called?’

‘I don’t name them. You get attached if you name them.’

‘You don’t get attached?’

‘I try hard not to. Now if you’ll excuse me…’

‘Of course,’ he said, but he was still surprised when she stepped back inside the house and closed the door sharply behind her.

She wasn’t a time waster, then, Dr. Nicholls. He didn’t waste time either—but he couldn’t help feeling piqued. Most women reacted to him differently to the way this woman had.

What was he thinking?

Nothing. There was nothing to think about. He gave himself a mental swipe to the side of the head and headed back to his rental car. He should get back to the States fast if he thought shabby little country vets were cute. If he thought shabby little country vets were fascinating.

He wasn’t to know that one shabby little country vet watched him until he was out of sight.

Boy, was she hopeless. She twitched the smoke-stained drapes back into place and glowered at nothing in particular. One gorgeous male, and here she was, feeling…weird. Which was dumb. The last thing she needed in her life was another man.

So why had she let Barb talk her into five-minute dating?

Because, with the leaving of the army of volunteers, she’d become so lonely she was starting to talk to walls.

Dad. Micki.

Don’t go there.

There weren’t even enough animals left to talk to. She returned to the makeshift surgery and stooped to check the little koala. She was barely conscious. So small. So battered.

Maybe it had been a mistake to keep on trying.

‘Live,’ she whispered, almost fiercely. ‘You must get better. You must start living again.’

She knew she must, too.

She glanced out the window to the west and flinched like she always did. She could just see the chimney stack which was all that was left of the house she’d lived in forever.

Her dad. Her sister.

‘Move on,’ she whispered. ‘Get yourself a nice little town house in the city. You can be a pet vet. Take care of allergies, dew claws, vaccinations.’

Maybe she would. It was just…she didn’t feel ready yet.

In a couple of weeks this little koala should be ready to move on to a wildlife refuge and this place would be sold to be a home again. But not her home. She’d sheltered here for long enough. It was time to face the world again.

She knew she could. She’d schooled herself to be independent.

So why was the thought of Jake Hunter walking away so disturbing?

‘So what’s the story with Tori?’ he asked Rob.

It was after dark. There were only two guests staying at Manwillinbah Lodge right now, and both had gone to bed early. Rob had organised a theatre night—an old showing of Casablanca. He’d set up a themed dinner, decorated the sitting room with black-and-white posters, even worn a hat—but both his guests were weary and just wanted their own beds.

They were fire victims, too, Jake had discovered. Both were elderly women, living in temporary accommodation, organising to rebuild. They’d come here for time out, because the process was leaving them exhausted, and all they wanted to do was sleep.

It left Rob dissatisfied, though. He loved being the entertainer, but by eight he was left to entertain himself and his boss. They sat on the back porch and watched the stars and drank beer—and Jake pushed.

‘Tori,’ he prodded again. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘I don’t even know her.’

‘But Barb’s told you.’

‘Nope. There’re tragedies everywhere and if you’re not told you don’t ask. Some people need to talk about it, some people can’t. All I know is that she was put in charge of the wildlife rescue effort and she was vet up on the ridge before the fires. I didn’t know she was staying on-site but I did say they could use it for whatever they wanted. I told you that when I phoned.’

He had. There’d been a couple of days when the news coming through from Australia was dreadful. He’d been ready to promise anything.

He still was.

‘I don’t want to kick Tori out,’ he said now, uneasily. ‘If she still wants to live there…’

‘She doesn’t. Barb says as soon as the last animal goes, so will she. It’s fine to put it on the market.’

‘Does she have somewhere to go?’

‘I have no idea,’ Rob said, giving him a curious glance. ‘I’ve never met the lady until last night, and five minutes with her didn’t give me much time for in-depth questions. Yours was worse—how many questions did you manage in your minute and a half?’

‘Don’t rub it in,’ Jake growled. ‘I don’t make a great speed dater.’

‘I don’t think you make an anything dater,’ Rob said, pouring another beer. ‘But you’ve met the lady properly today. What’s she like?’

‘Smart. Tired. Worried.’ And very cute, he thought, but he didn’t say it. Really sexy, despite those appalling clothes.

‘Tired and worried equals everyone up here in the hills,’ Rob said, not hearing his afterthoughts. ‘So we’re back to smart. How smart?’

‘She’s a vet.’

‘And?’

‘And she had the gumption to walk away from me when I was being an—’

‘I know exactly what you were being,’ Rob said, and had the temerity to grin. ‘Good for Tori.’

‘She practically told me to leave today, too.’

‘You’re kidding. It’s your property.’

‘Which she’s legally entitled to be on. Oh, she wasn’t rude. She evicted me in the most businesslike way. Maybe she’s a man hater.’

‘Not if she agreed to dating. So you’re interested?’

‘I’m not interested. I’m just concerned. Where has everyone else gone whose houses burned?’

‘Relatives, friends, or there’s a whole town of mobile homes—relocatables—set up further down the valley for anyone who needs them. You’ll have passed them on your way from the airport.’

‘She’ll go there?’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘It’s none of my business.’

‘So why do you want to know?’

He didn’t have an answer. He sat on, staring into the night, and finally Rob left him to his silence.

Leaving Jake alone with half a bottle of beer, a starlit sky and a silence so immense it was enough to take his breath away.

A faint rustle came from beside him. A wallaby was watching from the edge of the garden, moonlight glinting on its silvery fur.

‘Hi,’ Jake said, but the wallaby took fright and disappeared into the shadows. Leaving Jake alone again.

He should go inside. He had journals to study. He didn’t do…nothing.

But the stars were immense, and somewhere under them, alone up on the mountain, was Tori.

A woman with shadows?

She was nothing to do with him. So why did a faint, insistent murmur in his head tell him that she was?

Chapter Three

HE ARRIVED at the farmhouse at nine the next morning and nobody answered the door.

He knocked three times. The same van he’d seen yesterday was in the driveway but there were no sounds coming from the house. There was no dog on the settee.

He tried the door and it opened, unlocked and undefended. ‘Hi, Tori,’ he called. ‘It’s Jake.’

Still no answer.

She’d been expecting him.

Should he come back later? He hesitated and then thought maybe she was in the surgery again, doing something that couldn’t be interrupted. He went through cautiously—and stopped at the open door.

Even from here he could tell the koala was dead. The little animal was facing him, curled on her side, still. The cage door was open.

He crossed to the cage and stooped, putting his hand on her fur to make sure. But yes, she was gone. Simply, he thought. There was no sign of distress. The IV lines Tori had attached yesterday had been removed but were lying neatly to the side, as if they’d been removed after death.

She looked as if she’d hardly moved since yesterday.

She’d simply died.

He’d had patients who’d done this—just died. The operation had been a success, yet the assault on their bodies had been too great, their hearts had simply stopped.

Mostly it happened in the aged, where maybe there’d been a question of whether the operation should have been done at all, only how could you convince a patient that you couldn’t remove cancer because there was a risk of heart failure? Maybe you tried, but the patient could elect to have the operation anyway.

He hated cases like those. He hated this.

He knelt and saw, closer now and more dreadfully, the full extent of scar tissue. He thought about what this little animal must have gone through in the past six months and he knew that yesterday’s decision to operate must have been a hard one for Tori to make.

Where was she?

He glanced around, out through the window, and then he saw her. She was out at the edge of the clearing, and he knew what she was doing.

Hadn’t she cried enough?

She didn’t get attached to her patients. She couldn’t. Getting attached was the way of madness.

She was crying so hard she could barely see the ground she was trying to dig.

This was the first of the animals she’d tried to bury. Up until now there’d been volunteers taking away bodies of the animals she’d failed.

This was the end. Her last failure. If she’d known it would turn out like this she’d have euthanised her six months ago.

She’d had to make a decision. She’d got it wrong, and there were no volunteers left to bury her.

So much loss. So much appalling waste. Dad, Micki, one tiny baby with no life at all…

One little koala who somehow represented them all.

‘I can’t do this any more,’ she whispered and hit the ground with the spade. The spade shuddered back. Was she hitting tree roots?

She swore and hit the ground again. Three spade lengths away, Rusty flinched, as if the little dog felt every shudder.

‘You and me both,’ she told Rusty and shoved the spade uselessly down again. This was dumb, dumb, dumb, but she did not want to take the little koala’s body down the mountain to the veterinary crematorium. She did not.

All she could see was the Combadeen cemetery, two graves with brass headstones. Dad. Micki. Micki’s with a tiny extra plaque, white on silver.

No.

She shoved the spade down hard again, uselessly. She gulped back tears—and suddenly the spade was taken out of her hands.

Where he came from she didn’t know. She knew nothing, only that the spade was tossed aside, two strong arms enfolded her and held her close. And let her sob.

He’d never held a woman like this. He’d never felt emotion like this.

Jake was chief anaesthetist in a specialist teaching hospital in Manhattan. Once upon a time he’d spent time with patients, but that seemed long since. Now he handled only critical cases. Patient interviews and examinations were done by his juniors. His personal contact with patients was confined to reassurance as they slipped under anaesthetic, and occasional further reassurance as they regained consciousness.

If there were problems during an operation, it was mostly the surgeon who talked to the family. As anaesthetist Jake took no risks. He did his job and he did it well. There were seldom times he needed to talk. Now, as he faced Tori’s real and dreadful grief, he realised he actively kept away from this type of anguish.

His mother had cried at him all of his life. He’d done with tears.

And this was just a koala.

Just a koala. Even as he thought it, he recalled the limp little body lying alone down at the house, the scar tissue, the evidence of a six-month battle now lost. He looked around him and saw the blackened skeletons of a ravaged forest. His mother had cried for crying’s sake. He knew instinctively that Tori’s tears were very different.

So much death…

Tori was trying desperately to pull herself together, sniffing against his shirt, tugging back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed. ‘This is stupid. It was a risk, operating on her. I should have put her down. I should have…’

‘You weren’t to know what you should or shouldn’t have done,’ he said gently. ‘You did your best. That’s all anyone can ask.’

‘No, but she was wild. She’s been through so much.’

‘You didn’t add to that. Tori, you had to give her every chance.’

‘But was I operating for me?’ she demanded, sounding desperate. She’d managed to pull back now and was wiping her hand furiously across her cheeks. ‘I named her! How stupid was that?’

‘You told me you didn’t.’

‘I told everyone I didn’t. All the volunteers I’ve worked with. The nurses. The drivers. The firefighters who brought animals in. I told them we can’t afford to get attached. There are so many. If we get attached we’ll go crazy. Let’s do our best for every individual animal and let’s stay dispassionate.’

There was nothing dispassionate about Tori. She looked wild. Her face was blotched from weeping. The spade she was working with was covered with ashes and dirt. Her hands were filthy and she’d wiped her hands across her sodden face.

She looked like someone who’d just emerged from this burned-out forest—a fire victim herself—and something inside him felt her pain. Or felt more than that. It hurt that she was hurting, and it hurt a lot.

He wanted to hug her again—badly—but she was past hugging. She had her arms folded across her breasts in an age-old gesture of defence. Trying to stop an agony that was unstoppable?

This was much more than the death of one koala, he thought, as bad as that was. There were levels to this pain that he couldn’t begin to understand.

‘Keep yourself to yourself.’ His mother’s words sounded through the years. ‘Don’t get involved—you’ll only get hurt.’

Wise advice? He’d always thought so, but right now it was advice he was planning to ignore.

‘What did you call her?’ he asked, and she hiccupped on a sob and tried to glare at him. It didn’t come off. How could it?

‘Manya’

Why was she glaring? Did she think he’d mock?

Maybe she did. He knew instinctively that Tori was assessing him and withdrawing. As if he’d think she was stupid—when stupid was the last thing he’d think her.

‘Why Manya?’ he asked, searching for the right words to break through. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Just…“little one.” It’s from the language of the native people from around here. Not that it matters. It was only…I talked to her.’ She sounded desperate again, and totally bewildered. ‘I had to call her something. I had to talk to her.’

‘I guess you did,’ he said. And then, as she still seemed to be drawing in on herself, he thought maybe he could make this professional. Maybe it’d make it easier. ‘Do you know why she died?’

‘No.’ She spread her filthy hands and stared down at them, as if they could give her some clue. She shook her head. ‘Or maybe I do. She’s been under stress for months but I thought we were winning. I knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to the wild, but there are sanctuaries that’d take her, good places that’d seem like freedom. And she was so close. But one tiny abscess…It must have been the last straw. She was fine when I checked on her at seven, and when I checked at eight she was dead. Everything just…stopped.’

‘It does happen,’ he said softly. ‘To people, too.’

‘Have you had it happen to patients?’ she managed, and he knew she was struggling hard to sound normal. Her little dog nosed forwards and she picked him up and held him against her, shield-like. He licked her nose and she held him harder.

The dog was missing a leg, he saw with a shock, and his initial impression of him as an old dog changed. Not old. Wounded.

As Tori was wounded.

Have you had it happen to patients? Tori’s question was still out there, and maybe talking medicine was the way to go until she had herself together.

‘Not often,’ he told her, ‘but yes, I have. That it hasn’t happened often means I’ve been lucky.’

‘As opposed to me,’ she said grimly. ‘I’ve lost countless patients in the past six months.’

She looked exhausted to the point of collapse, he thought. Had she slept at all last night?

When had she last slept?

‘Your patients are wild creatures,’ he said, and he felt as if he was picking his way through a minefield, knowing it was important that she talk this out, but suspecting she could close up at any minute. ‘My patients are the moneyed residents of Manhattan. There’s no way a rich, private hospital will cause them stress, and there’s the difference.’ He hesitated. ‘Tori, let me dig for you.’

‘I can do it.’ She put the little dog down and grabbed the spade again.

‘Can you?’

She closed her eyes, gave herself a minute and then opened them. ‘No. This is dumb. I accept that now. The ground’s one huge root ball. I’ll take her down the mountain and get her cremated.’

‘But you don’t want to.’

‘Just…just because I named her,’ she whispered, hugging the spade, while the little dog nosed her boots in worry. ‘I wanted her buried here. At least the edges of the bush here are still alive. I wanted her buried under living trees. Does that make sense?’

‘It does,’ he said, strongly and surely, and before she could protest again, he took the spade from her hands and started digging.

She was right. The ground was so hard it would be more sensible to cremate her. Only there was something about Tori that said this burial was deeply important on all sorts of levels. So he put all his weight behind the spade and it slid a couple of inches in. Slowly he got through the hardened crust to the root-filled clay below, while Tori watched on in silence.

After a couple of minutes she sank to her knees and gathered the little dog against her.

‘What’s his name?’ he asked, trying not to sound like the digging was as hard as it was.

‘Rusty.’

‘How did he lose his leg?’

‘Fire,’ she said harshly, and he glanced at the little dog in surprise. He’d lost his leg but he wasn’t otherwise scarred.

‘He was burned?’

‘Wasn’t everything around here?’ She hugged him closer and got another nose lick for her pains. ‘But Rusty was lucky—sort of. He was…I found him in the fireplace of…of where I lived. Over there.’ She motioned to the neighbouring property. ‘Part of the bricks had collapsed, trapping his leg, but otherwise he was okay. He was my dad’s Rusty. He’s just waiting ‘til he comes home.’

Her voice broke. No more questions were allowed, Jake thought, while she struggled for control, so he kept right on digging.

It took time. Ten minutes. Fifteen. He wasn’t in a hurry. This was giving Tori time to catch her breath, figure if she wanted to tell him more.

There were cockatoos screeching in the gums about his head. Apart from the birds and the sound of the spade against the earth, there was nothing but silence.

What had happened to this woman? He shouldn’t ask, but finally he had to.

‘So who did you lose?’ he asked into the silence, and for a while he thought she wouldn’t answer.

Then, ‘My father and my sister,’ she said flatly, dreadfully. ‘My sister was eight months pregnant.’

Dear God, he thought helplessly. Where to take this from here? ‘You all lived over there?’ he tried.

‘We did. Micki…Margaret…My sister’s relationship had fallen apart and she’d come home, so she could have her baby with us. Toby and I were going to look after her for the first few weeks after the birth.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But then they died. Dad and Micki and Benedict. Benedict was Micki’s baby. A little boy. She was going to call him Benedict. I found Rusty three days later when I finally got back up here, but there was nothing else left. Nothing.’

It took his breath away. He felt ill. But desperately he wanted to help, and somehow he knew that the only way to do that was to keep on going. Keep digging—and keep on talking.

‘So…Toby?’

‘Toby was my fiancé.’

‘But he wasn’t killed?’

‘What do you think?’ She laughed, mirthlessly, and buried her face in her dog’s soft fur. Her laugh sounded close to hysteria.

He let her be for a moment, pushing the spade deeper into the tree roots. The grave was deep enough, but he knew instinctively that if he stopped, then so would she. She’d get back to the business of living—but maybe talking about the dying would help?

He’d done a bit of psychology in medical school but he’d never practised it. Now, however, what to do seemed to be instinctive. A human skill rather than a professional one? Whatever, it seemed to be working.

‘Sorry,’ she said at last, sniffing and giving Rusty a bit of slack. ‘That…that sounds dumb. Of course you’d think he’d be killed. But Toby…well, Toby was a charmer, and he was also a survivor. He was a lovely, vibrant guy, a photographer who came up here last autumn and took pictures of the mountains, took pictures of my vet clinic—and finally stayed.’

She paused again but then went on, more in control now. ‘I need to tell you…Dad started the vet practice up here when Micki and I were kids. Mum died early but Dad looked after us really well. We had a great childhood. Micki married and moved interstate—I did veterinary science. Then Dad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The past couple of years have been hard. But then along came Toby and he made us both laugh. He brought the house to life, and when he asked me to marry him I don’t know who was happier, me or Dad. Toby didn’t have any money, but what could be more natural than he stay here? His photography would take off, I’d do the vet work I love and we’d live happily ever after.’

He let that sink in for a bit, and dug a few more spadefuls. This was getting to be a very deep hole and still he didn’t have the full story. ‘But…’ he prompted softly, and he thought she wouldn’t answer but finally she did.

‘So then Micki came home for Christmas because her relationship had ended. She was having a tough pregnancy but Toby charmed her as well. Maybe…maybe things between Toby and me weren’t as good as they could have been but Micki and Dad loved him.’

‘And then the fires hit.’

‘Then the heat hit,’ she said dully. ‘Micki was so pregnant she could hardly move. Dad was having one of his bad spells. He could hardly move. On the day…It was so hot. There was no sign of fires, but I was nervous. Everyone was nervous. Then the district nurse rang to say she didn’t want to come up the mountain because she was scared her car might boil. But Dad had run out of his medication. So I made a run down into the valley. I’d only be away for an hour or so. Toby was here with the other car. What could go wrong? And then the fires hit.’

‘There’s no need…’ he said, hearing the raw anguish in her voice and not wanting to make her say it. He’d stopped digging now. He moved towards her but she waved him back.

‘Let me finish,’ she whispered. ‘He heard on the radio that there were fires on the other side of the ridge—that’s where they started. So Toby took the van and went to see. He took magnificent photographs. You probably saw them—they were the ones beamed around the world the next day, after the wind changed and over a hundred people were killed, and Dad and Micki and Benedict and all the animals in our vet clinic were left without a vehicle to escape in. Dad put Rusty in the fireplace and protected him with his body. Our three big dogs—Mutsy and Pogo and Bandit, they died, too. One little dog was all they could save.’

Once more he made a move to go to her, but she flinched. She swiped her hand across her face again and she sniffed. Trying desperately to move on. ‘Enough,’ she said bleakly. ‘Toby made a fortune, and I lost everything. I promised Micki she’d be safe here, but it didn’t happen. I failed her as I failed…so many. Trusting Toby. Leaving the mountain. But it’s dopey to keep crying. We’ll bury Manya, and then Rusty and I will move on.

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘This is where I belong but I don’t know any more. Look, it’s deep enough. I can do the rest.’

‘You’ll do nothing,’ he growled. ‘I’m the undertaker, today. Stay.’

He helped Tori gather sheaths of fresh eucalyptus leaves. He carried the little body from the house. They laid her on a bed of the leaves she’d loved, they covered her with more leaves and then he filled in the grave. They spread more leaves on the freshly dug earth, and then Jake stood back, silent, not knowing where to go next.

Not knowing how to help.

He wanted to hold her again, but Tori was standing apart, rigid, as if ashamed at her previous show of emotion.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you so much. I…When do you want your house back?’

‘Let’s look at it now,’ he said and held out his hand. She looked at it but she didn’t take it. Her reserve was back again. The woman who’d sobbed her heart out was well hidden.

‘Of course,’ she said, stiffly, and led the way back down to the house, with Rusty limping along behind them. She ushered him into one room after another, letting him see it all.

Apart from yesterday he’d never been in this house. When his father died it had already been let to tenants who’d wanted to keep renting. A realtor had acted as intermediary, and there’d been no opportunity or need for him to see it.

The grand old homestead was battered now, from years of renting, from six months of being used as an animal hospital and from the fires themselves. The building hadn’t burned but it was still smoke stained and grim. The only furniture was what they’d needed for the animal hospital.

The last room Tori showed him was what was obviously the master bedroom. He stood at the door and saw how she’d been living for the past six months, and he drew in his breath in dismay.

There was a camp stretcher in the corner. There were half a dozen cardboard cartons acting as storage and as a bedside table. A basket lay in the corner for Rusty.

Nothing else.

At speed dating he’d thought she’d looked dowdy. It was a miracle she’d managed to look presentable at all.

‘No mirror?’ he asked, trying to make it sound as though he was joking.

‘No mirror.’ She’d recovered a little now; her voice was firmer. Moving on. ‘Just as well, as I suspect I’d scare myself silly.’

‘You look all right to me.’

‘Said the man who looked at me like I was a porrywiggle on our five-minute date.’

‘A what?’

‘A tadpole. Something that wiggles out of pond scum.’

‘I never said…’

‘You never had to. Have you seen enough?’

‘More than enough. Are these all your possessions?’

‘I live light,’ she said, in a tight voice. ‘I can be gone in half an hour.’

‘Where are you staying tonight?’

‘You’re not kicking me out tonight?’ she demanded, alarmed, and he shook his head.

‘I’m not kicking you out at all. I’m asking if you have an alternative—something a bit less appalling than here.’

‘Here’s fine.’

‘Here’s not fine. This place needs an army to make it habitable.’

‘It’s a lovely house.’

‘It could be a lovely house. It’s anything but now. Do you have anywhere you can go?’

‘Of course I do,’ she retorted, but he thought that she was lying.

There were all sorts of emotions twisting inside him right now. He didn’t want to get involved—when had he ever?—but walking away from her…

He’d be as bad as Toby if he left her anchored to this place, to her grief, to her loss.

‘Come down to Manwillinbah Lodge,’ he found himself saying. ‘You know the lodge?’

‘I know it, but…’

‘But what?’

‘I can.’t’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s your place.’

‘It’s a guesthouse and it’s almost empty. So I’m offering, and I believe you’d be sensible to accept.’ He spread his hands. ‘Tori, either you stay here tonight in this bleak and lonely place and, I suspect, cry your eyes out again for a little koala called Manya, or you come down the mountain and let Rob take care of you while you regroup.’ Then, as she hesitated, he added, ‘You know, you’d be doing Rob a favour. He loves the lodge being full and he loves company. Since the fire, all his guests have come and stared out into the night and not wanted to talk.’

‘I don’t think I want to talk.’

‘No, but our housekeeper can cook for you, and Rob can make you smile. Rob’s good with people.’

She looked at him curiously at that. ‘You talk as if you mean you’re not.’

‘I’m not a people person.’

‘Yet you let me soak your shirt.’

‘Sometimes I’m compelled to be a people person.’

‘That sounds like your five-minute date. Like you want to be out of here.’

‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ he said, flinching. Hell, he had to figure out how to sound nice.

But to his relief she was smiling, a faint smile but a smile nonetheless. ‘Yeah, okay, you’re not a people person but you did very well just now,’ she said. ‘I was really grateful for your shirt and you held on manfully. So whether you wanted to bolt or not, the fact is you didn’t and I’m not asking questions.’ She turned and looked down at her camp bed, at the detritus of six months’ camping in this sooty, makeshift home. He could see her indecision.

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