AMY ANDREWS has always loved writing, and still can’t quite believe that she gets to do it for a living. Creating wonderful heroines and gorgeous heroes and telling their stories is an amazing way to pass the day. Sometimes they don’t always act as she’d like them to—but then neither do her kids, so she’s kind of used to it. Amy lives in the very beautiful Samford Valley, with her husband and aforementioned children, along with six brown chooks and two black dogs. She loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a line at www.amyandrews.com.au

Dear Reader

This is the first book I’ve written where my hero is a nurse. I’ve been toying with doing it for a long time, but I didn’t really have a scenario in my head until recently. Then I saw ex-military triage nurse Gareth in my mind’s eye and knew I had my hero.

He’s tough and strong and self-reliant, but after thirty doctor/paramedic heroes I thought I’d meet resistance from my editor over Gareth being a nurse and Billie, the heroine, being a doctor. Not the case, however. I was given free rein to bring their story to life and I’m so grateful—because Gareth is just the hero that Billie needs: supportive when required, but challenging her to be the person she is … not the person others want her to be. And Billie is just the woman Gareth needs—dragging him back into the world of the living. Helping him live, laugh and love again. Showing him that there is another life for him.

Both of them have pasts that make going ahead with the future complicated. Both of them are facing demons. But that is the beauty and power of love. And for Gareth and Billie falling hard is inevitable.

I hope you enjoy their journey.

Love

Amy

It Happened
One Night Shift
Amy Andrews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication

I dedicate this book to all my lovely nursing friends from the former Royal Children’s Hospital. Twenty-one years is a long time to be in any one place and I have enjoyed every moment—even the harrowing ones. I will miss you all.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

GARETH STAPLETON DROPPED his head from side to side, stretching out his traps as he kept his eyes on the road.

He was getting too old for this crap.

It had been a long, crazy shift in the emergency room and he needed a beer, a shower and his bed.

Saturday nights in a busy Brisbane ER were chaotic at the best of times but the full moon had added an extra shot of the bizarre to the mix. From now on he was consulting astrological charts when requesting his roster.

He yawned and looked at the dash clock—almost midnight—and was grateful for his shift ending when it had. The waiting room had still been full as he’d clocked off and he didn’t envy the night shift having to deal with it all.

Suddenly, the car in front of him—a taxi—swerved slightly into the opposite lane and Gareth’s pulse spiked.

What the hell?

Despite only going at the speed limit, he eased back on the accelerator as the taxi corrected itself. Gareth peered into the back windscreen of the car, trying to see what the guy was doing. What was distracting him? Was he texting? Or talking on the phone?

He couldn’t tell what the driver was doing but at least the taxi appeared to be empty of passengers.

Gareth eased back some more. He may only be driving a twenty-year-old rust box but he had no desire to be collateral damage due to this clown’s inattention. Luckily they were on a long, straight section of road linking two outer suburbs so there were no houses, no cars parked on either side, just trees and bushland.

The taxi wobbled all over the lane again and Gareth’s stomach tightened as a set of oncoming headlights suddenly winked in the distance. His fingers gripped the steering-wheel a little firmer as a sense of foreboding settled over him.

Gareth’s sense of foreboding had served him well over the years—particularly in the Middle East—and it wasn’t going to be disappointed tonight.

He watched in horror as the taxi swerved suddenly again into the path of the oncoming car. Gareth hit his horn but it was futile, the crash playing out in front of him in slow motion.

The driver of the other car slammed on the brakes, swerving to avoid what Gareth could have sworn was certain collision. He waited for the crash and the sound of crunching metal but, thankfully, it never came. The taxi narrowly missed the other car, careening off the road and smashing into a tree.

But now the oncoming car was in his lane and Gareth had to apply his brakes to prevent them crashing. Luckily the other driver had the good sense to swerve back into his own lane and they both came to a halt almost level with each other on their own sides of the road.

Gareth, his heart pistoning like a jackhammer, automatically reached for his glove box and pulled out a bunch of gloves from a box he always kept there. He ripped his seat belt off and pushed open his door.

‘Are you okay, mate?’ he asked as he leapt out, his fingers already reaching for the mobile phone in his pocket as he mentally triaged the scene.

He wrenched open the door of the other car, noticing absently it was a sleek-looking two-seater, to find a pair of huge brown eyes, heavily kohled and fringed with sooty eyelashes, blinking back at him. A scarlet mouth formed a surprised-looking O.

A woman.

‘I’m … I’m fine.’ She nodded, looking dazed.

Gareth wasn’t entirely sure. She appeared uninjured but she looked like she might be in shock. ‘Can you move? How’s your neck?’ he asked.

She nodded again, undoing her seat belt. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’ She swung her legs out of the car.

‘Don’t move,’ he ordered. ‘Stay there.’ The last thing he needed was a casualty wandering around the scene. ‘I’m Gareth, what’s your name?’

‘Billie.’

Gareth acknowledged the unusual name on a superficial level only. ‘I’m going to check out the taxi driver. You stay here, okay, Billie?’

She blinked up at him and nodded. ‘Okay.’

Satisfied he’d secured her co-operation, Gareth, already dialling triple zero, headed for the smashed-up taxi.

It took a minute for Billie to come out of the fog of the moment and get her bearings. She’d told Gareth—at least that was what she thought he’d said his name was—she was okay. Everything had happened so fast. But a quick mental check of her body confirmed it.

She was shaking like a leaf but she wasn’t injured.

And she was a doctor. She shouldn’t be sitting in her car like an invalid—she should be helping.

What on earth had caused the taxi to veer right into her path? Was the driver drunk? Or was it something medical? A hypo? A seizure?

She reached across to her glove box and pulled out a pair of gloves from the box she always kept there, her heart beating furiously, mentally preparing herself for potential gore. Being squeamish was not something that boded well for a doctor but it was something she’d never been able to conquer.

She’d learned to control it—just.

She exited her car, yanking the boot lever on the way out, rounding the vehicle and pulling out a briefcase that contained a well-stocked first-aid kit. Then she took a deep breath and in her ridiculous heels and three-quarter-length cocktail dress she made her way over to the crashed car and Gareth.

Gareth looked up from his ministrations as Billie approached. ‘I thought I’d told you to stay put,’ he said, whipping off his fleecy hoody, not even feeling the cool air. His only priority was getting the driver, who wasn’t breathing and had no pulse, out of the car.

‘I’m fine. And I’m a doctor so I figured I could help.’

Gareth was momentarily thrown by the information but he didn’t have time to question her credentials. She was already wearing a pair of hospital-issue gloves that he hadn’t given her, so she was at least prepared.

And the driver’s lips were turning from dusky to blue.

He needed oxygen and a defib. Neither of which they had.

All the driver had was them, until the ambulance got there.

‘I’m an ER nurse,’ Gareth said, rolling his hoody into a tube shape then carefully wrapping it around the man’s neck, fashioning a crude soft collar to give him some C-spine protection when they pulled him out.

‘Ambulance is ten minutes away. He’s in cardiac arrest. Thankfully he’s not trapped. Help me get him out and we’ll start CPR. I’ll grab his top half,’ Gareth said.

Aided by the light from the full moon blasting down on them, they had the driver lying on the dew-damp grass in less than thirty seconds. ‘You maintain the airway,’ Gareth said, falling back on protocols ingrained in him during twenty years in the field. ‘I’ll start compressions.’

Billie nodded, swallowing hard as the metallic smell from the blood running down the driver’s face from a deep laceration on his forehead assaulted her senses. It had already congealed in places and her belly turned at the sight, threatening to eject the three-course meal she’d indulged in earlier.

She turned away briskly, sucking air slowly into her lungs. In through her nose, out through her mouth, concentrating on the cold damp ground already seeping through the gauzy fabric of her dress to her knees rather than the blood. She was about to start her ER rotation—she had to get used to this.

She opened the briefcase and pulled out her pocket mask.

Gareth kicked up an eyebrow as she positioned herself, a knee either side of the guy’s head, and held the mask efficiently in place over the driver’s mouth and nose.

‘Very handy,’ he said, noting her perfect jaw grasp and hand placement. ‘Don’t suppose you have a defib in there by any chance?’

Billie gave a half-laugh. ‘Sadly, no.’ Because they both knew that’s what this man needed.

She leaned down to blow several times into the mouthpiece. Her artfully curled hair fell forward and she quickly pushed them behind her ears as the mask threatened to slip. The mix of sweat and blood on the driver’s face worked against her and Billie had to fight back a gag as the smell invaded her nostrils.

If she just shut her eyes and concentrated on the flow of air, the rhythm of her delivery, mentally counted the breaths, she might just get through this without disgracing herself.

‘What do you reckon, heart attack?’ Gareth asked after he’d checked for a pulse two minutes in.

Billie, concentrating deeply, opened her eyes at the sudden intrusion. Rivulets of dried blood stared back at her and she quickly shut them again. ‘Probably,’ she said between breaths. ‘Something caused him to veer off the road like that and he feels pretty clammy. Only he looks young, though. Fit too.’

Gareth agreed, his arms already feeling the effort of prolonged compressions. The man didn’t look much older than himself. ‘’Bout forty, I reckon.’

Billie nodded. ‘Too young to die.’

He grunted and Billie wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was. The taxi driver probably was going to die. The statistics for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests were grim. Even for young, fit people. This man needed so much more than they could give him here on the roadside.

They fell silent again as they continued to give a complete stranger, who had nearly wiped both of them out tonight, a chance at life.

‘Come on, mate,’ Gareth said, as he checked the pulse for the third time and went back to compressions. ‘Cut us some slack here.’

A minute later, the silence was pierced by the first low wails of a siren. ‘Yes,’ Gareth muttered. ‘Hold on, mate. The cavalry’s nearly here.’

In another minute two ambulances—one with an intensive care paramedic—pulled up, followed closely by a police car. A minute after that a fire engine joined the fray. Reinforcements surrounded them, artificial light suddenly flooding the scene, Billie and Gareth continued their CPR as Gareth gave an impressive rapid-fire handover.

‘Keep managing the airway,’ the female intensive care paramedic instructed Billie, after Gareth had informed her of their medical credentials. She handed Billie a proper resus set—complete with peep valve and oxygen supply. ‘You okay to intubate?’

Billie nodded. She could. As a second-year resident she’d done it before but not a lot. And then there was the blood.

She took another deep, steadying breath.

Gareth continued compressions as one of the advanced care paramedics slapped on some defib pads and the other tried to establish IV access.

In the background several firemen dealt with the car, some set up a road block with the police while others directed a newly arrived tow truck to one side.

The automatic defibrillator warned everyone to move away from the patient as it advised a shock.

‘Stand clear,’ the paramedic called, and everyone dropped what they were doing and moved well back.

A series of shocks was delivered, to no avail, and everyone resumed their positions. IV access was gained and emergency drugs were delivered. Billie successfully intubated as Gareth continued with cardiac massage. Two minutes later the defibrillator recommended another shock and everyone moved away again.

The driver’s chest arched. ‘We’ve got a rhythm,’ the paramedic announced.

Gareth reached over and felt for the carotid. ‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘I have a pulse.’

‘Okay, let’s get him loaded and go.’

Billie reached for the bag to resume respiratory support on the still unconscious patient but the intensive care paramedic crouched beside Billie said, ‘Would you like me to take over?’

Billie looked at her, startled. She’d been concentrating so hard on not losing her stomach contents she’d shut everything out other than the whoosh of her own breath. But the airway was secure and they had a pulse. She could easily hand over to a professional who had way more experience dealing with these situations.

Not to mention the fact that now the emergency was under control her hands were shaking, her teeth were chattering and she was shivering with the cold.

And her knees were killing her.

She looked down at her gloves. They were streaked with blood and another wave of nausea welled inside her.

Billie handed the bag over and then suddenly warm hands were lifting her up onto her shaking legs, supporting her as her numb knees threatened to buckle. A blanket was thrown around her shoulders and she huddled into its warmth as she was shepherded in the direction of her car.

‘Are you okay?’

Billie glanced towards the deep voice, surprised to find herself looking at Gareth. He was tall and broad and looked warm and inviting and she felt so cold. She had the strangest urge to walk into his arms.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, gripping the blanket tighter around her shoulders, looking down at where her gloved hands held the edges of the blanket together.

Dried blood stared back at her. The nausea she’d been valiantly trying to keep at bay hit her in a rush.

And right there, dressed to the nines in front of Gareth and a dozen emergency personnel, she bent over and threw up her fancy, two-hundred-dollar, three-course meal on the side of the road.

CHAPTER TWO

BILLIE WAS THANKFUL as she talked to the police a few minutes later she’d never have to see anyone here ever again. She doubted if any of these seasoned veterans blinked an eye at someone barfing at the scene of an accident and they’d all been very understanding but she was the doctor, for crying out loud.

People looked to her to be the calm, in-control one. To take bloodied accident victims in her stride. She was supposed to be able to hold herself together.

Not throw up at the sight of blood and gore.

Billie wondered anew how she was going to cope in the emergency room for the next six months. For the rest of her life, for that matter, given that emergency medicine was her chosen career path.

Mostly because it was high-flying enough to assuage parental and family expectations without being surgical. The Ashworth-Keyes of the world were all surgeons. Choosing a non-surgical specialty was not an option.

Unless it carried the same kind of kudos. As emergency medicine, apparently, did.

And at least this way Billie knew she’d still be able to treat the things that interested her most. Raw and messy were not her cup of tea but infections and diseases, the run-of-the-mill medical problems that were seen in GP practices across the country every day were.

But Ashworth-Keyes’ were not GPs.

And Billie was carrying a double load of expectation.

She glanced across at Gareth, who was looking relaxed and assured amidst a tableau of clashing lights. The milky phosphorescence of the moon, the glow of fluorescent safety striping on multiple uniforms and the garish strobing of red, blue and amber. He didn’t seem to be affected by any of it, his deep, steady voice carrying towards her on the cool night air as he relayed the details of the accident to a police officer.

Billie cringed as she recalled how he’d held her hair back and rubbed between her shoulders blades as she’d hurled up everything in her stomach. Then had sourced some water for her to rinse her mouth out and offered her a mint.

It seemed like he’d done it before. But, then, she supposed, an ER nurse probably had done it a thousand times.

Still … why did she have to go and disgrace herself in front of possibly the most good-looking man she’d seen in a very long time?

She’d noticed it subliminally while they’d been performing CPR but she’d had too much else going on, what with holding someone’s life in the balance and trying not to vomit, to give her thoughts free rein.

But she didn’t now.

And she let them run wild as she too answered a policeman’s questions.

Billie supposed a lot of her friends wouldn’t classify Gareth as good looking purely because of his age. The grey whiskers putting some salt into the sexy growth of stubble at his jaw and the small lines around his eyes that crinkled a little as he smiled told her he had to be in his late thirties, early forties.

But, then, she’d always preferred older men.

She found maturity sexy. She liked the way, by and large, older men were content in their skins and didn’t feel the need to hem a woman in to validate themselves. The easy way they spoke and the way they carried their bodies and wore their experience on their faces and were comfortable with that. She liked the way so many of them didn’t seem like they had anything to prove.

She liked how Gareth embodied that. Even standing in the middle of an accident scene he looked at ease.

Gareth laughed at something the policeman said and she watched as he raked a piece of hair back that had flopped forward. She liked his hair. It was wavy and a little long at the back, brushing his collar, and he wore it swept back where it fell in neat rippled rows.

She’d noticed, as they’d tried to save the driver’s life, it was dark with some streaks of grey, like his whiskers.

And she liked that too.

His arm dropped back down by his side and her gaze drifted to his biceps. She’d noticed those biceps as well while they’d been working on their man. How could she not have? Every time she’d opened her eyes there they’d been, contracting and releasing with each downward compression.

Firm and taut. Barely covered—barely constrained—by his T-shirt.

Billie shivered. She wasn’t sure if it was from the power of his biceps alone or the fact he was wandering around on a winter’s night with just a T-shirt covering his chest.

Why hadn’t someone given him a blanket?

Although, to be fair, he did look a lot more appropriately dressed for a roadside emergency than she did. His jeans looked snug and warm, encasing long, lean legs, and he had been wearing a fleecy hoody.

It sure beat a nine-hundred-dollar dress and a pair of strappy designer shoes.

He looked up then, pointing in the direction she’d been driving, and their gazes met. He nodded at her briefly, before returning his attention to the police officer, and she found herself nodding back.

Yep, Billie acknowledged—Gareth was one helluva good-looking man. In fact, he ticked all her boxes. And if she was up for a fling or available for dating in the hectic morass of a resident’s life then he’d be exactly her type. But there was absolutely no hope for them now.

The man had held her hair back while she’d vomited.

She cringed again. If she ever saw him again it would be too soon.

Gareth was acutely aware of Billie’s gaze as he answered the police officer’s questions. It seemed to beam through the cold air like an invisible laser, hot and direct, hitting him fair in the chest, diffusing heat and awareness to every millimetre of his body.

It made her hard to ignore.

Of course, the fact she was sparkling like one of those movie vampires also made her hard to ignore.

The gauzy skirt of her black dress shimmered with hundreds of what looked like crystal beads. Who knew, maybe they were diamonds? The dress certainly didn’t look cheap. But they caught the multitude of lights strobing across the scene, refracting them like individual disco balls.

As if the dress and the petite figure beneath needed to draw any more attention to itself. Every man here, from the fireman to the paramedics, the police to the tow-truck driver, was sure as hell taking a moment to appreciate it.

Their attention irritated him. And the fact that it did irritated him even more. She was a stranger and they were at an accident scene, for crying out loud!

But it didn’t stop him from going over to her when the police officer was done. He told himself it was to check she was feeling okay now but the dress was weirdly mesmerising and he would have gone to her even if she’d not conveniently vomited twenty minutes ago.

She had her back to him but, as if she’d sensed him approaching, she turned as he neared. Her loose reddish-brown hair flowed silkily around her shoulders, her hair curling in long ringlets around her face. Huge gold hoop earrings he’d noticed earlier as she’d administered the kiss of life swung in her lobes, giving her a little bit of gypsy.

He smiled as he drew closer. She seemed to hesitate for a moment then reciprocated, her scarlet lipstick having worn off from her earlier ministrations.

‘You sure know how to dress for a little unscheduled roadside assistance,’ he said, as he drew to a halt in front of her.

Billie blinked, surprised by his opening line for a moment, and then she looked down at herself and laughed. ‘Oh, yes, sorry,’ she said, although she had absolutely no idea why she was apologising for her attire. ‘I’ve just come from a gala reception.’

This close his biceps were even more impressive and Billie had to grip the blanket hard to stop from reaching her hands out and running her palms over them. She wondered if they’d feel as firm and warm as they looked.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ she asked, engaging her mouth before her brain as she dragged her gaze back to his face.

He did a smile-shrug combo and Billie’s stomach did a little flip-flop combo in response. ‘I’m fine,’ he dismissed.

Billie grimaced. Where had she heard that already tonight? ‘I really am very sorry about earlier.’

‘Yeah.’ He grinned. His whole face crinkled and Billie lost her breath as his sexiness increased tenfold. ‘You’ve already said so. Three times.’

She blushed. ‘I know but … I think I may have splashed your shoes.’

Gareth looked down at his shoes. ‘They’ve seen far worse, trust me.’

‘Not exactly the impression I like to give people I’ve just met.’

Gareth shrugged. She needn’t have been worried about her impression on him—he doubted he was going to forget her in a long time, and it had nothing to do with his shoes and everything to do with how good she looked in those gold hoops and sparkly dress.

And if he’d been up for some flirting and some let’s-see-where-this-goes fun he might just have assured her out loud. He might just have suggested they try for a second impression. But hooking up really wasn’t his thing.

Hooking up at an accident scene even less so.

‘We haven’t exactly met properly, have we? I mean, not formally.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Gareth Stapleton. Very pleased to make your acquaintance—despite the circumstances.’

Billie slipped her hand into his and even though she’d expected to feel something, the rush of warmth up her arm took her by surprise. She shook his hand absently, staring at their clasped fingers, pleased for the blanket around her torso as the warmth rushed all the way to her nipples, prickling them to attention.

Gareth smiled as Billie’s gaze snagged on their joined hands. Not that he could blame her. If she felt the connection as strongly as he did then they were both in trouble.

Just as well they wouldn’t be seeing each other again after tonight. Resisting her in this situation was sensible and right. But if there was repeated exposure? That could wear a man down.

Sensible and right could be easily eroded.

‘And you’re Billie?’ he prompted, withdrawing his hand. ‘Billie …?’

Billie dragged her gaze away from their broken grip, up his broad chest and deliciously whiskery neck and onto his face, his spare cheekbones glowing alternately red and blue from the lights behind him.

What were they talking about? Oh, yes, formal introductions. ‘Ashworth-Keyes,’ she said automatically. ‘Although if you want formal formal then it’s Willamina Ashworth-Keyes.’

Gareth quirked an eyebrow as a little itch started at the back of his brain. ‘Your first name is Willamina?’

Billie rolled her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said, placing her hand on her hip. ‘What about it?’

Gareth held up his hands in surrender. ‘Nothing. Just kind of sounds like somebody’s … spinster great-aunt.’

Billie frowned, unfortunately agreeing. Which was why she’d carried over her childhood pet name into adulthood.

‘Not that there’s anything remotely spinsterish or great-auntish about you,’ he hastened to add. The last thing he wanted to do was insult her. The very last thing. ‘Or,’ he added as her frowned deepened, ‘that there’s anything wrong with that anyway.’

This woman made him tongue-tied.

How long had it been since he’d felt this gauche? Like some horny fifteen-year-old who couldn’t even speak to the cool, pretty girl because he had a hard-on the size of a house.

Not that he had a hard-on. Not right now anyway. Or probably ever again if this excruciatingly awkward scene replayed in his head as often as he figured it would.

Billie’s breath caught at Gareth’s sudden lack of finesse. It made her feel as if she wasn’t the only one thrown by this rather bizarre thing that had flared between them.

And she’d liked his emphasis on remotely.

She laughed to ease the strange tension that had spiked between them. ‘Only my parents call me Willamina,’ she said. ‘And generally only if I’m in trouble.’

‘And are you often in trouble?’

Gareth realised the words might have come across as flirty, so he kept his face serious.

Billie felt absurdly like laughing at such a preposterous notion. Her? In trouble? ‘No. Not me. Never me.’ That had been her sister’s job. ‘No, I’m the peacekeeper in the family.’

Gareth frowned at the sudden gloom in her eyes. The conversation had swung from light to awkward to serious. It seemed she wasn’t too keen on the mantle of family good girl and suddenly a seductive voice was whispering they could find some trouble together.

Thankfully the little itch at the back of his brain finally came into sharp focus, obliterating the voice completely.

‘Wait …’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Ashworth-Keyes? As in Charles and Alisha Ashworth-Keyes, eminent cardiothoracic surgeons?’

Billie nodded. Sprung. ‘The very same.’

‘Your parents?’ She nodded and he whistled. Everyone who was anyone in the medical profession in Brisbane knew of the Ashworth-Keyes surgical dynasty. ‘That’s some pedigree you’ve got going on there.’

‘Yes. Lucky me,’ she said derisively.

‘You … don’t get on?’

Billie sighed. ‘No, it’s not that. I’m just … not really like them, you know?’

He quirked an eyebrow. ‘How so?’

‘Well, I’m no surgeon, that’s for sure. I’m a little too squeamish for that.’

Gareth surprised himself by laughing at the understatement but he couldn’t help himself. ‘Really?’ he asked, looking down at his shoes. ‘You hide it well.’

Billie shot him a cross look but soon joined him in his laughter.

‘And?’ he asked. ‘What else?’

What else? Being a surgeon was all that mattered in the Ashworth-Keyes household. ‘It’s … complicated.’

Gareth nodded. Fair enough. Complicated he understood. It really wasn’t any of his business anyway. ‘So what field is the next Ashworth-Keyes going to specialise in? Clearly something … anything that doesn’t involve the letting of blood? Dermatology? Radiology? Maybe … pathology?’

Billie shook her head. ‘Emergency medicine,’ she said. Even saying it depressed the hell out of her.

Gareth blinked. ‘Really?’ Surely Billie understood the squeamish factor could get pretty high in an ER?

‘Yep,’ she confirmed, sounding about as enthusiastic as he usually did just prior to starting a night shift. ‘I’m starting my six-month emergency rotation at St Luke’s ER next week in fact.’

Gareth held his breath. ‘St Luke’s?’

‘Yes.

Crap. ‘Ah.’

She frowned at him in that way he’d already grown way too fond of. ‘What?’

‘That’s where I work.’

‘You … work at St Luke’s?’

He nodded. ‘In the ER.’

‘So we’ll be … working together,’ she murmured.

‘Yup.’

And he hoped like hell she didn’t look as good in a pair of scrubs as she did in a black sparkly dress or sensible and right were going to be toast.

CHAPTER THREE

BILLIE’S FIRST DAY at St Luke’s wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. Gareth wasn’t there and she was able to slip into the groove of the department during daytime hours when there were a lot of senior staff around to have her back and take on the more raw and challenging cases.

She was content to take the nuisance admissions that everybody grumbled about. The patients that should be at their GPs’ but had decided to save their hip pockets and clutter up the public waiting room instead.

Billie really didn’t mind. It was satisfying work and she took to it like a duck to water. Her previous six months had been her medical rotation and she’d thrived there as well, treating a variety of cases from the humdrum to the interesting.

It was Thursday she wasn’t looking forward to. Thursday was the start of three night shifts and from nine until eight the next morning there were just three residents—her and two others—and a registrar, dealing with whatever came through the doors.

Actually, Thursday night probably wasn’t going to be so bad. It was Friday and Saturday night that had her really worried. The city bars would be open and the thought of having to deal with the product of too much booze and testosterone wasn’t a welcome one.

There would be blood.

Of that she was sure.

Nine o’clock Thursday night rocked around quicker than Billie liked and she walked into St Luke’s ER with a sense of foreboding.

Her hands shook as she changed into a set of scrubs in the female change room. ‘St. Luke’s ER’ was embroidered on the pocket in case Billie needed any further reminders that she was exactly where she didn’t want to be. Jen, the other resident who had also started her rotation on the same day, chatted away excitedly and Billie let her run on, nodding and making appropriate one-word comments in the right places.

At least it was a distraction.

Thankfully, though, by the time the night team had taken handover at the central work station from the day team, Billie was feeling a little more relaxed.

Things were reasonably quiet. The resus bays were empty and only a handful of patients were in varying stages of being assessed, most of them with medical complaints that didn’t involve any level of gore.

Billie knew she could handle that with one hand tied behind her back. In fact, she was looking forward to it.

A nurse cruised by and Helen, the registrar, introduced the three new residents. ‘Who’s on the night shift, Chrissy, do you know?’

‘Gareth,’ she said.

Billie’s pulse leapt at his name. Helen smiled. ‘Excellent.’

Chrissy rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she joked. ‘Everyone loves Gareth.’

Helen laughed. ‘He’s highly experienced,’ she said, feigning affront.

‘Sure,’ Chrissy teased. ‘And those blue eyes have nothing at all to do with it.’

‘Blue eyes? I hadn’t noticed.’ Helen shrugged nonchalantly.

‘Who’s Gareth?’ Barry, the other new resident, asked as Chrissy left to attend to a buzzer.

‘Brilliant nurse. Ex-military. Used to be in charge around here. Not sure why he was demoted … think there was some kind of incident. But, anyway, he’s very experienced.’

‘Ex-military?’ Billie’s voice sounded an octave or two higher than she would have liked but no one seemed to notice. No wonder Gareth had taken charge of the scene so expertly on Saturday night.

‘Apparently,’ Helen said. ‘Served in MASH units all over. The Middle East most recently, I think. Exceptionally cool and efficient in an emergency.’

Billie nodded. She knew all about that coolness and efficiency.

‘Also …’ Helen smiled ‘… kind of easy on the eyes.’

She nodded again. Oh, yes. Billie definitely knew how easy he was on the eyes.

‘Right,’ Helen said. ‘Let’s get to it. Let’s see if we can’t whittle these patients down and have us a quiet night.’

A quiet night sounded just fine to Billie as she picked up a chart and tried not to think about seeing Gareth again in less than two hours.

Gareth came upon Billie just after midnight. He’d known, since he’d checked out the residents’ roster, they’d be working together for these next three nights.

And had thought about little else since.

She had her stethoscope in her ears and was listening to the chest of an elderly woman in cubicle three when he peeled the curtain back. She didn’t hear him and he stood by the curtain opening, waiting for her to finish, more than content to observe and wait patiently.

She looked very different tonight from the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was swept back in a no-nonsense ponytail. The long curling spirals were not falling artfully around her face as they had on Saturday night but were ruthlessly hauled back into the ponytail, giving her hair a sleek, smooth finish. Her earlobes were unadorned, her face free of make-up.

And … yup. He’d known it. Even from a side view she rocked a pair of scrubs.

‘Well, you’ve certainly got a rattle on there, Mrs Gordon,’ Billie said, as she pulled the stethoscope out of her ears and slung it around her neck.

‘Oh, yes, dear,’ the elderly patient agreed. Billie was concerned about her flushed face and poor skin turgor. ‘I do feel quite poorly.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Billie clucked. ‘Your X-ray is quite impressive. I think we need to get you admitted and pop in a drip. We can get you rehydrated and give you some antibiotics for that lung infection.’

‘Oh, I don’t want you to trouble yourself,’ Mrs Gordon said.

Billie smiled at her patient. The seventy-three-year-old, whose granddaughter had insisted was usually the life of the party, looked quite frail. She slipped her hand on top of the older, wrinkled one and gave it a squeeze. It felt hot and dry too.

‘It’s no trouble Mrs Gordon. That’s what I’m here for.’

Mrs Gordon smiled back, patting Billie’s hand. ‘Well, that’s lovely of you,’ she murmured. ‘But I think that young man wants to talk to you, my dear.’

Billie looked over her shoulder to find Gareth standing in a break in the curtain. He did that smile-shrug combo again and her belly flip-flopped once more. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hey,’ Gareth murmured, noticing absently the cute sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the clear gloss on her lips. Her mouth wasn’t the lush scarlet temptation it had been on the weekend but its honeyed glaze drew his eyes anyway.

‘Thought I’d pop in and see how you were getting on.’

‘Oh … I’m fine … good … thank you.’ She sounded breathy and disjointed and mentally pulled herself together. ‘Just going to place an IV here and get Mrs Gordon …’ she looked down at her patient and smiled ‘… admitted.’

Gareth nodded. She looked cool and confident in her scrubs, a far cry from the woman who’d admitted to being squeamish after losing her dinner in front of him on Saturday night. He had to give her marks for bravado.

‘Do you want me to insert it?’

Billie frowned, perplexed for a moment before realising what he meant. He thought she’d baulk at inserting a cannula? Resident bread and butter?

God, just how flaky had she come across at the accident?

Another thought crossed her mind. He hadn’t told anyone in the department about what had happened the other night, had he? About how she’d reacted afterwards?

He wouldn’t have, surely?

She looked across at him and Helen was right, his blue scrubs set off the blue of his eyes to absolute perfection. The temptation to get lost in them was startlingly strong but she needed him to realise they weren’t on the roadside any more. This was her job and she could do it.

She’d been dealing with her delicate constitution, as her father had so disparagingly called it, for a lot of years. Yes, it presented its challenges in this environment but she didn’t need him to hold her hand.

‘Do you think we could talk?’ she asked him, before turning and patting her patient’s hand. ‘I’ll be right back, Mrs Gordon. I just need to get some equipment.’

Gareth figured he’d overstepped the mark as he followed the business like swing of her ponytail. But he had seen her visibly pale at the sight of the blood running down the taxi driver’s face on Saturday night. Had held her hair back while she’d vomited then listened to her squeamishness confession.

Was it wrong to feel protective of her? To want to alleviate the potential for more incidents when he was free and more than capable of doing the procedure himself?

Her back was ramrod straight and her stride brisk as she yanked open the staffroom door. He followed her inside and Billie turned on him as soon as the door shut behind them.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

Gareth quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘Trying to help? I wasn’t sure if putting in IVs made you feel faint or nauseated and …’ he shrugged ‘… I was free.’

She shoved her hands on her hips and Gareth noticed for the first time how short she was in her sensible work flats. He seemed to have a good foot on her. Just how high had those heels been the other night?

‘Would you have offered to do anyone else’s?’ she demanded.

Gareth folded his arms. ‘If I knew it made them squeamish, of course,’ he said.

‘Putting in an IV does not make me squeamish,’ she snapped.

‘Well, excuse me for trying to be nice,’ he snapped back. ‘You looked like you had a major issue with blood on Saturday night.’

Billie blinked at his testy comeback. She looked down at her hands. They were clenched hard at her sides and the unreasonable urge to pummel them against his chest beat like insects wings inside her head.

She shook her head. What was she doing? She was acting like a shrew. She took a deep breath and slowly unclenched her hands.

‘I can put in an IV,’ she sighed. ‘I can draw blood, watch it flow into a tube, no problems. It’s not blood that makes me squeamish, it’s blood pouring out where it shouldn’t be. It’s the gore. The messy rawness. The missing bits and the … jagged edges. The … gaping wounds. That’s what I find hard to handle. That’s when it gets to me.’

Gareth nodded, pleased for the clarification. The ER was going to be a rough rotation for her. He took a couple of paces towards her, stopping an arm’s length away.

‘There’s a lot of messy rawness here,’ he said gently.

‘I know,’ Billie said. Boy, did she know. ‘But that’s the way it is and I don’t want you protecting me from all of it, Gareth. I’m training to be an emergency physician. I’m just going to have to get used to it.’

She watched as his brow crinkled and the lines around his eyes followed suit. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Surely this isn’t the right speciality for you?’

Billie gave a half snort, half laugh. That was the milliondollar question. But despite feeling remarkably at ease with him, there were some things she wasn’t prepared to admit to anybody.

‘Well, yes … and there’s a very long, very complicated answer to that question, which I do not have time to tell you right now.’ Or ever. ‘Not with Mrs Gordon waiting.’

Gareth nodded. He knew when he was being fobbed off but, given that she barely knew him, she certainly didn’t owe him any explanations. And probably the less involved he was in her stuff the better.

He was a forty-year-old man who didn’t need any more complicated in his life.

No matter what package it came wrapped in.

He’d had enough of it to last a lifetime.

‘Okay, then,’ he said, turning to go. ‘Just yell if I can help you with anything.’

He had his hand on the doorknob when her tentative enquiry stopped him dead in his tracks.

‘You didn’t … you haven’t told anyone about the other night, about what I…?’ He caught her nervous swallow as he faced her. ‘About how I reacted? Please … don’t …’

Gareth regarded her seriously. If she’d known him better he would have given her a what-do-you-think? look. But she didn’t, he reminded himself. It just felt like they’d known each other longer because of the connection they’d made less than a week ago.

It was hard to think of her as a stranger even though the reality was they barely knew each other.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t tell tales out of school, Billie,’ he said.

He didn’t kiss and tell either.

The sudden unwarranted thought slapped him in the face, resulting in temporary brain malfunction.

What the hell?

Pull it together, man. Totally inappropriate. Totally not cool.

But the truth was, as he busied himself with opening the door and getting as far away from her as possible, he’d thought about kissing Billie a lot these last few days.

And it had been a very long time since he’d wanted to kiss anyone.

CHAPTER FOUR

FIVE HOURS LATER, Gareth knew he was going to have to put Billie’s I-don’t-want-you-protecting-me convictions to the test. He had a head laceration that needed suturing and everyone else was busy. He could leave it until Barry was free but, with the Royal Brisbane going on diversion, a lot of their cases were coming to St Luke’s and things had suddenly gone a little crazy.

They needed the bed asap.

If he’d still been in the army he would have just done the stupid thing himself. But civilian nursing placed certain restrictions on his practice.

Earlier Billie had demanded to know if he’d have given another doctor the kid-glove treatment he’d afforded her over the IV and had insisted that he not do the same to her.

Would he given any other doctor a pass on the head lac?

No. He would not.

Gareth took a deep breath and twitched the curtains to cubicle eight open. Billie looked up from the patient she was talking to. ‘I need a head lac sutured in cubicle two,’ he said, his tone brisk and businesslike. ‘You just about done here?’

She looked startled at his announcement but he admired her quick affirmative response. ‘Five minutes?’ she said, only the bob of her throat betraying her nervousness.

He nodded. ‘I’ll set up.’

But then Brett, the triage admin officer, distracted him with a charting issue and it was ten minutes before he headed back to the drunk teenager with the banged-up forehead. He noticed Billie disappearing behind the curtain and cursed under his breath, hurrying to catch her up.

He hadn’t cleaned the wound yet and the patient looked pretty gruesome.

When he joined her behind the curtain seconds later, Billie was staring down at the matted mess of clotted blood and hair that he’d left covered temporarily with a green surgical towel. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I haven’t had a chance to clean it up yet.’

She dragged her eyes away from the messy laceration and looked at him, her freckles suddenly emphasised by her pallor, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air. ‘I’ll be … right back,’ she said.

She brushed past him on her way out and Gareth shut his eyes briefly. Great. He glanced at the sleeping patient, snoring drunkenly and oblivious to the turmoil his stupid split head had just caused.

Gareth followed her, taking a guess that she’d headed for the staffroom again. The door was shut when he reached it. He turned the handle but it was locked. ‘Billie,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘it’s me, open up.’

The lock turned and the door opened a crack and Gareth slipped into the room. She was just on the other side and her back pushed the door shut again as she leaned against it.

Billie looked up at him, the swimmy sensation in her head and the nausea clearing. ‘I’m fine,’ she dismissed, taking deep, even steady breaths.

‘I’m sorry. I had every intention of cleaning it up … so it looked better.’

Billie nodded. ‘It’s okay. I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘I just need a moment.’

Gareth nodded as he watched her suck air in and out through pursed lips. She lifted her hand to smooth her hair and he couldn’t help but notice how alarmingly it shook.

She didn’t look okay to him.

‘You look kind of freaked out,’ he said. ‘Do you need a paper bag to blow into? Are your fingers tingly?’

She glared at him. ‘I’m not having a panic attack. I just wasn’t expecting … that. I’m better if I’m mentally prepared. But I’ll be fine.’ She turned those big brown eyes on him. ‘Just give me a moment, okay?’

‘Okay.’

She nodded again and he noticed tears swim in her eyes. Clearly she was disappointed in herself, in not being able to master her affliction.

Gareth shoved a hand through his hair, feeling helpless as she struggled for control. ‘Try not to think about it like it is,’ he said. ‘Next time you go out there it’ll be all cleaned up. No blood. No gore.’

She nodded. ‘Okay.’

But her wide eyes told him she was still picturing it. ‘You’re still thinking about it,’ he said.

‘I’m not,’ she denied, chewing on her bottom lip.

Gareth took a step closer to her, wanting to reach for her but clenching his hands at his sides. ‘Yes, you are.’

She gnawed on her lip some more and he noticed she’d chewed all her gloss off.

‘Look. I’m trying, okay?’ she said, placing her palm flat against his chest. ‘Just back off for a moment.’

Her hand felt warm against his chest and he waited for her to push against him but her fingers curled into the fabric of his scrub top instead and Gareth felt a jolt much further south. As if she’d put her hand down his scrubs bottoms.

Oh, hell. Just hell.

Now he was thinking very bad things. Very bad ways to calm her down, to take her mind off it.

For crying out loud, she was a freaked-out second-year resident who needed to get back to the lac and get the stupid thing sutured so he could free up a bed. Gareth had dealt with a lot of freaked-out people in his life—the wounded, the addled, the grieving.

He was good with the freaked out.

But not like this. Not the way he was thinking.

Hell.

And that’s exactly where he was going—do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect any money—because all he could think about now was her mouth.

Kissing it. Giving her a way to really forget what was beyond the door.

It was wildly inappropriate.

They were at work, for crying out loud. But her husky ‘Gareth?’ reflected the confusion and turmoil stirring unrest inside him.

The look changed on her face as her gaze fixed on his mouth. Her fingers in his shirt seemed to pull him nearer and those freckles were so damn irresistible.

‘Oh, screw it,’ he muttered, caution falling away like confetti around him as he stepped forward, crowding her back against the door, his body aligning with hers, his palms sliding onto her cheeks as he dropped his head.

Billie whimpered as Gareth’s lips made contact with hers. She couldn’t have stopped it had her life depended on it. Her pulse fluttered madly at the base of her throat and at her temples. Everything was forgotten in those lingering moments as his mouth opened and his tongue brushed along her bottom lip.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Again and again.

Maddening. Hypnotic. Perfect.

The kiss sucking away her breath and her thoughts and her sense. Transporting her to a place where only he and his lips and his heat existed. The press of his thighs against hers was heady, her breasts ached to be touched and her belly twisted hard, tensing in anticipation.

She didn’t think she’d ever been kissed like this. And she never wanted it to stop.

She slid her hands onto his waist, anchoring them against his hips bones, feeling the broad bony crests in her palms, using them to pull him in closer, revel in the power of his thighs hard against her, fitting their bodies together more intimately.

A groan escaped his mouth, deep and tortured, as if it was torn from his throat and then Gareth pulled away, breathing hard as he placed his forehead against hers, staying close, keeping their intimate connection, not saying anything, just catching his breath as she caught hers.

‘You okay now?’ he asked after a moment, looking down into her face.

Billie blinked as she struggled to recall what had happened before the kiss. To recall if there had been anything at all—ever—in her life before this kiss.

He groaned again, his thumb stroking over her bottom lip, and it sounded as needy and hungry as the desire burning in her belly. ‘We can’t … do this here,’ he muttered. ‘We have to get back.’

She nodded. She knew. On some level she knew that. But her head was still spinning from the kiss—it was hard to think about anything else. And if that had been his plan, she couldn’t fault it.

But it was hardly a good long-term strategy.

He took a step back, clearing his throat. ‘You all right to do the lac now?’ he asked.

The laceration. Right. That’s what had happened before the kiss. She tried to picture it but her brain was still stuck back in the delicious quagmire of the kiss.

‘Give me five minutes and then come to the cubicle. I promise it’ll be a different sight altogether.’

Billie nodded. ‘Okay.’ She shifted off the door so he could open it.

And then he was gone and she was alone in the staffroom, her back against the door, pressing her fingers to her tingling mouth.

Billie took a few minutes to review the chart of her head lac patient. His blood alcohol was way over the limit. He’d gone through a glass window. The X-ray report was clear—no fractures, no retained glass—but she pulled it up on the computer to satisfy herself nonetheless.

The laceration wasn’t deep but it was too large for glue.

Ten minutes later she pulled back the curtains of the cubicle. Gareth faltered for a moment as he looked at her and she didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know what he was thinking.

The way his eyes dipped to her mouth said it all.

‘All ready,’ he said briskly, as he indicated the suture kit laid out and the dramatically changed wound. The blood was gone, leaving an uneven laceration, its edges stark white. It followed the still-sleeping patient’s hairline before cutting across his forehead.

Billie swallowed as she took in the extent of it. It wasn’t going to be some quick five-stitch job.

‘Size six gloves?’

She nodded as she dragged her gaze back to Gareth, thankful for his brisk professionalism.

‘Go and scrub,’ he said. ‘I’ll open a pair up.’

Billie stepped outside the curtain and performed a basic scrub at the nearby basin. When she was done she waited for the water to finish dripping off her elbows before entering the cubicle again. She reached for the surgical towel already laid out and dried her hands and arms then slipped into her gloves, hyper-aware of Gareth watching her.

She took a deep breath as she arranged the instruments on her tray to her liking and applied the needle to the syringe filled with local anaesthetic.

She could do this.

She glanced at Gareth as she turned to her sleeping patient. His strategy had worked—she wasn’t thinking about the gruesome chore ahead, all she could think about was the kiss.

‘Good grief,’ she said, screwing up her nose as a blast of alcoholic fumes wafted her way. ‘Think I should have put a mask on.’

‘Aromatic, isn’t he?’

‘It’s Martin, right?’ she enquired of Gareth as if they’d been professional acquaintances for twenty years. As if he hadn’t just kissed her and rocked her world.

Gareth nodded. ‘Although he prefers M-Dog apparently.’

Billie blinked. ‘I’m not going to call him M-Dog.’

Gareth laughed. ‘I don’t blame you.’

‘Martin,’ Billie said, raising her voice slightly as she addressed the sleeping patient.

Gareth shook his head. ‘You don’t have much experience with drunk teenage boys, do you? You need to be louder. You don’t hear much in that state.’

She quirked an eyebrow. ‘You talking from experience?’

He grimaced. ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

Billie returned her attention to the patient. ‘Martin!’ she called, louder, firmer. But still nothing.

‘Allow me,’ said Gareth. He gave the teenager’s shoulders a brisk hard shake and barked, ‘Wake up, M-Dog.’

The teenager started, as did Billie, the demand cutting right through her. It was commanding, brooking no argument.

And very sexy.

Had he learned that in the military?

‘Hmm? What?’ the boy asked, trying to co-ordinate himself to sit up and failing.

Billie bit down on her cheek to stop from laughing. ‘I’m Dr Keyes,’ she said as Martin glanced at her through bloodshot eyes. ‘I’m going to put some stitches in that nasty gash in your head.’

‘Is there going to be a scar?’ he asked, his eyes already closing again. ‘Me mum’ll kill me.’

Billie figured that M-Dog should have thought about that before he’d gone out drinking to excess. But, then, her sister Jessica had never been big on responsible drinking either. She guessed that was part and parcel of being a teenager.

For some, anyway.

‘Martin, stay with me,’ Billie said, her voice at the right pitch and command for M-Dog to force his bleary eyes open once again. ‘I’m going to have to put a lot of local anaesthetic in your wound to numb it up. It’s going to sting like the blazes.’

He gave her a goofy grin. ‘Not feelin’ nuthin’ at the moment.’

Billie did laugh this time. ‘Just as well,’ she said, but the teenager was already drifting off. ‘Okay,’ she muttered, taking a deep breath and picking up the syringe. She glanced at Gareth. ‘Here we go.’

Gareth nodded. She looked so much better now. She had pink in her cheeks, her freckles were less obvious and she’d lost that wide-eyed, freaked-out expression.

Billie’s hand trembled as she picked up some gauze and started at the proximal end of the wound, poking the fine needle into the jagged edge and slowly injecting. M-dog twitched a bit and screwed up his face and Billie’s heart leapt, her hand stilling as she waited for him to jerk and try and sit up. But he did nothing like that, his face settling quickly back into the passive droop of the truly drunk.

Clearly he was feeling no pain.

Gareth nodded at her encouragingly and Billie got back to work, methodically injecting lignocaine along the entire length of the wound, with barely a twitch from M-Dog. By the time she’d fully injected down to the distal end, the local had had enough time to start working at the beginning so she got to work.

Her stomach turned at the pull and tug of flesh, at the dull thread of silk through skin, and she peeked at Gareth.

‘Talk to me,’ she said, as he snipped the thread for her on her first neat suture.

He glanced at her, his gaze dropping to her mouth, and the memory of the kiss returned full throttle. ‘What do you want me to talk about?’

Not that, Billie thought, returning her attention to the job at hand. Anything but that. The military. The incident that had caused his demotion, which Helen had hinted at earlier. But neither of those seemed appropriate either. Not that appropriateness hadn’t already been breached tonight. But they needed to steer clear of the personal.

They’d already got way too personal.

‘Tell me about the patients out there.’

And so he did, his deep steady voice accompanying her needlework as they wove and snipped as a team.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE REST OF the night and the two following were better than Billie could have hoped. The gore was kept to a minimum and she managed to get through them without any more near nervous breakdowns.

Or requiring any more resuscitative kissing.

Not that she wasn’t aware of Gareth looking out for her. Which should probably have been annoying but which she couldn’t help thinking was really sweet. And kind of hot.

She knew the last thing he needed was having a squeamish doctor to juggle as he ran the night shift with military-like efficiency—overseeing the nursing side as well as liaising with the medical side to ensure that the ER ran like a well-oiled machine. But he seemed to take it in his stride as just another consideration to manage.

He was clearly known and well respected by both nurses and doctors alike, he was faultlessly discreet, he knew everybody from the cleaning staff to the ward nurses, he knew where everything was and just about every answer to every procedure and protocol question any of them had.

By the time she’d knocked off on Sunday morning she was well and truly dazzled.

St Luke’s was lucky to have Gareth Stapleton.

Which begged the question—why wasn’t he running the department as he apparently used to? What had happened to cause his demotion? What was the incident Helen had made reference to? Annabel Pearce, the NUM, was good too, but from what Billie could see, Gareth ran rings around her.

Billie yawned as she entered the lift, pushing the button for the top floor. Her mind drifted, as it had done a little too often the last couple of days, to the kiss. She shut her tired eyes and revelled in the skip in her pulse and the heaviness in her belly as she relived every sexy nuance.

Not only could Gareth run a busy city emergency department but he could kiss like no other man she knew.

And Billie had been kissed some before.

She’d had two long-term relationships and a few shorter ones, not to mention the odd fling or two, including a rather risqué one with a lecturer, in the eight years since she’d first lost her virginity at university. She liked sex, had never felt unsatisfied by any of her partners and wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted.

Essentially she’d been with men who knew what they were doing. Who certainly knew how to kiss.

But Gareth Stapleton had just cleared the slate.

She wet her lips in some kind of subconscious memory and grimaced at their dryness. Between winter and the hospital air-con they felt perpetually dry. She pulled her lip gloss out of her bag and applied a layer, feeling the immediate relief.

The lift dinged and she pushed wearily off the wall and headed to the fire exit for the last two flights of steps to the rooftop car park. She jumped as a figure loomed in her peripheral vision from the stairs below, her pulse leaping crazily for a second before she realised it was Gareth.

And then her pulse took off for an entirely different reason. ‘You took the stairs?’ she said in disbelief. ‘All eight floors?’

Of course he had. Super-nurse, freaked-out-doctor whisperer, kisser extraordinaire. What wasn’t the man capable of?

‘Of course.’ He grinned. ‘It’s about the only exercise I get these days.’

Billie shook her head as they continued up the last two flights, which was torture enough for her tired body. By the time they’d reached the top and Gareth was opening the door, her thighs were grumbling at her and she was breathing a little harder.

Of course, that could just have been Gareth’s presence.

Was it her overactive imagination or had his ‘After you’ been low and husky and a little too close to her ear?

She stepped out onto the roof, her brain a quagmire of confusion, thankful for the bracing winter air cooling her overheated imagination. She zipped up her hoody and hunched into it.

Gareth was hyper-aware of Billie’s arms brushing against his as they walked across the car park to their vehicles. ‘You on days off now?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Three. How about you?’

‘Me too.’ Which meant they’d be back on together on Wednesday. An itch shot up Gareth’s spine.

Fabulous.

Three days didn’t seem long enough to cleanse himself of the memory of the kiss and he really needed to do that because Billie, he’d discovered, was fast becoming the only thing he thought about.

And that wasn’t conducive to his work. Or his life.

The last woman he remembered having such an instantaneous attraction to wasn’t around any more, and it had taken a long time to get over that. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d managed it yet. He grimaced just thinking about the black hole of the last five years.

Billie was in the ER for six months and the next few years of her life would be hectic, with a virtual roller-coaster of rotations and exams and killer shifts sucking up every spare moment of her time. She didn’t have time to devote to a relationship, let alone one with a forty-year-old widower.

They were in different places in their life journeys.

They reached their cars, parked three spaces from each other, and he almost breathed a loud sigh of relief.

‘Well …’ he said, staring out at the Brisbane city skyline, ‘I guess I’ll be seeing you on Wednesday.’

She looked like she was about to say something but thought better of it, nodding instead, as she jingled her keys in her hand. ‘Sure,’ she murmured. ‘Sleep well.’

Gareth nodded, knowing there was not a chance in hell of that happening. ‘Bye.’

And he turned to walk to his vehicle, sucking in the bracing air and refusing to look back lest he suggest something crazy like her coming to his place and sleeping off her night shift there.

In his bed.

Naked.

Get in the car, man. Get in the car and drive away.

He opened the door, buckled up and started the engine. It took a while for his car to warm up and the windscreen to de-mist and he sat there trying not to think about Billie, or her sparkly dress, or her cute freckles.

Or that damned ill-advised kiss.

A minute later he was set to go and he reversed quickly, eager to make his escape. Except when he passed her car, it was still there and she was out of it, standing at the front with the bonnet open, looking at the engine.

He groaned out loud. No, no, no! So close. He sighed, reversing again and manoeuvring his car back into his car space. He disembarked with trepidation, knowing he shouldn’t but knowing he couldn’t not offer to help her.

‘Problem?’ he asked, as he strode towards her.

Billie looked at him with eyes that felt like they’d been marinating in formaldehyde all night. If possible he looked even better than before. ‘It won’t start,’ she grumbled.

‘Is it just cold?’

‘No. I think the battery’s flat.’

‘Want me to give it a try?’

‘Knock yourself out,’ she invited.

Gareth slid into the plush leather passenger seat and turned the key. A faint couple of drunken whirrs could be heard and that was it. He placed his head on the steering-wheel. Yep. Dead as a doornail.

‘Did you leave your lights on?’ he asked, as he climbed out.

She shook her head. She’d taken her hair out of her ponytail and it swished around her face, the tips brushing against the velour lettering decorating the front of her hoody. Her nose was pink from the cold.

‘The car automatically turns them off anyway.’

Of course it did. It wasn’t some twenty-year-old dinosaur. A pity, because if it had been he could have offered her a jump start. But with the newer vehicles being almost totally computerised, he knew that wasn’t advisable.

‘Do you have roadside assistance?’

‘No. I know, I know …’ Billie said, as he frowned at her. She rubbed her hands together, pleased for the warmth of her jeans and fleecy top in her unexpected foray into the cold. ‘It expired a few months back and I keep meaning to renew it but …’

His whiskers looked even shaggier after three nights and his disapproving blue eyes seemed to leap out at her across the distance. ‘You’re a woman driving alone places, you should have roadside assistance.’

Billie supposed she should be affronted by his assumption that she was some helpless woman but, as with everything else, she found his concern for her well-being completely irresistible.

He sighed. ‘I’ll drive down to the nearest battery place and get you one,’ he said.

Billie blinked as his irresistibility cranked up another notch. Was he crazy? ‘It’s Sunday, Gareth. Nothing’s going to be open till at least ten and I don’t know about you but I’m too tired to wait that long.’ She shut her bonnet. ‘I’ll get a taxi home and deal with the battery this afternoon after I’ve had a sleep.’

Gareth knew he was caught then. He couldn’t let her get a taxi home. Not when he could easily drop her. Unless she lived way out of his way. ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ he said. ‘Where do you live?’

He hoped it was somewhere really far away.

Billie would have been deaf not to hear the reluctance in his voice. And she was too tired to decipher what it meant. Tired enough to be pissed off. ‘You don’t have to do that, Gareth,’ she said testily, fishing around in her bag for her mobile phone. ‘I’m perfectly capable of ringing and paying for a taxi. I could even walk.’

She watched a muscle clench in his jaw. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he dismissed. ‘You’ve worked all night and I’m here with a perfectly functioning car. It makes sense. Now … Where. Do. You. Live?’

She glared at him. ‘Only a really stupid man would call a tired woman stupid.’

Gareth shut his eyes and raked a hand through his hair, muttering, ‘Bloody hell.’ He glanced at her then. ‘I apologise, okay? Just tell me where you live already.’

‘Paddo.’

Paddington. Of course she did. Trendy, yuppie suburb as befitted her sparkly dress and expensive car. ‘Perfect. You’re on my way home.’ He was house-sitting in the outer suburbs but she lived in his general direction.

She folded her arms. He could tell she was deciding between being churlish and grateful. ‘If you’re sure you don’t mind?’

Gareth shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he said, indicating that she should make her way to his car. ‘As long as you don’t mind slumming it?’

Billie shot him a disparaging look. ‘I’m sure I’ll manage.’

Gareth nodded as she passed in front of him. The question was, would he?

CHAPTER SIX

THEY DROVE IN silence for a while as Gareth navigated out of the hospital grounds and onto the quiet Sunday morning roads. He noticed she tucked her hands between her denim-clad thighs as he pulled up at the first red traffic light.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked, cranking the heat up a little more.

‘Not too bad,’ she murmured.

Gareth supposed the seats in her car were heated and this was probably a real step down for her. And maybe when he’d been younger, before life had dealt him a tonne of stuff to deal with, he might have felt the divide between them acutely.

But he’d since lived a life that had confirmed that possessions meant very little—from the pockmarked earth of the war-torn Middle East to the beige walls of an oncology unit—he’d learned very quickly that stuff didn’t matter.

And frankly he was too tired and too tempted by her to care for her comfort.

Her scent filled the car. He suddenly realised that she’d been wearing the same perfume last Saturday night but he had been too focused on the accident to realise. Something sweet. Maybe fruity? Banana? With a hint of vanilla and something … sharper.

Great—she smelled like a banana daiquiri.

And now it was in his car. And probably destined to be so for days, taunting him with the memory.

She shifted and in his peripheral vision he could see two narrow stretches of denim hugging her thighs, her hands still jammed between them.

‘So,’ Gareth said out of complete desperation, trying to not think about her thighs and how good they might feel wrapped around him, ‘you called yourself Dr Keyes … the other night. With M-Dog.’

Yep. Complete desperation. Why else would he even be remotely stupid enough to bring up that night when they were trapped in a tiny, warm cab together, only a small gap and a gearstick separating them, the kiss lying large between them?

But Billie didn’t seem to notice the tension as she shrugged and looked out the window. ‘It’s easier sometimes to just shorten it. Ashworth-Keyes is a bit of a mouthful at times and, frankly, it can also sound a bit prissy. I tend to use it more strategically.’

‘So drunk teenagers who go by the name of M-Dog don’t warrant the star treatment?’

Billie turned and frowned at him, surprisingly stung by his subtle criticism. ‘No,’ she said waspishly. ‘Some people respond better to a double-barrelled name. There are some patients, I’ve found, who are innately … snobbish, I guess. They like the idea of a doctor with a posh name. Guys called M-Dog tend to see it as a challenge to their working-class roots … or something,’ she dismissed with a flick of her hand. ‘And frankly …’ she sought his gaze as they pulled up at another red light and waited till he looked at her ‘… I was a little too … confounded by our kiss to speak in long words. I’m surprised I managed to remember my name at all.’

Billie held his gaze. If he was going to call her on something, he’d better get it right or be prepared to be called on it himself. She might be helplessly squeamish, she might not be able to stand up to her family and be caught up in the sticky web of their expectations but she’d been taught how to hold her own by experts.

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