Emergency Doctor and Cinderella
Melanie Milburne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

About the Author

Praise for Melanie Milburne:

Dear Reader

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Copyright

I dedicate this book to Joe Tucci and Dani Colvin, who first approached me to be an ambassador for the Australian Childhood Foundation—a position I accepted with great enthusiasm.

Melanie Milburne says: ‘One of the greatest joys of being a writer is the process of falling in love with the characters and then watching as they fall in love with each other. I am an absolutely hopeless romantic. I fell in love with my husband on our second date, and we even had a secret engagement, so you see it must have been destined for me to be a Harlequin® Mills & Boon author! The other great joy of being a romance writer is hearing from readers. You can hear all about the other things I do when I’m not writing and even drop me a line at: www.melaniemilburne.com.au’

Praise for Melanie Milburne:

‘An outstanding read, TOP-NOTCH DOC, OUTBACK BRIDE by Melanie Milburne is a contemporary story that heals the soul and romances the heart. I love Ms Milburne’s style of writing, and kudos to her for another wonderful story.’

—Cataromance

Melanie Milburne also writes for Modern™ Romance!

‘THE FIORENZA FORCED MARRIAGE by Melanie Milburne: insults fly, passion explodes, and it all adds up to an engaging story about the power of love.’

—RT Book Reviews

Dear Reader

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a globally published author is the opportunity it gives me to raise awareness of certain issues that are very dear to me. By purchasing this book you are actively helping me help The Australian Childhood Foundation in their quest to stamp out child abuse and neglect in Australia. I will be donating all my proceeds from this book to the Foundation, and hope that in doing so many children’s lives will be changed for the better.

It has been said that every childhood lasts a lifetime. The memories some children carry from their childhood are not ones any child should be burdened with. Please join me in helping this great cause as it works to educate and advocate for children who have no one else to fight for them.

With best wishes

Melanie Milburne

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS the third day in a row that someone had parked in Erin’s spot. Not only had they parked there arrogantly, they had done so crookedly, taking up so much space she had to manoeuvre her car into the space near the garbagedisposal unit, which she knew would almost certainly result in a scratch or two on her shiny paintwork.

She rummaged in her handbag for a piece of paper and a pen, and then, glancing around for a flat surface, whooshed out a breath and leaned on the rogue-parker’s bonnet to pen her missive: you are in the wrong spot!

Erin tucked the note behind one of the windscreen wipers and made her way to the elevator. She tapped her right foot impatiently as she watched the numbers light up as it came down from the fifteenth floor. After a ten-hour shift in the emergency department of Sydney Metropolitan, the only thing she wanted was the quiet, safe sanctuary of her apartment. Her ears were still ringing from the shattered cries of a middle-aged mother who had lost her only son to a fatal stab-wound—yet another drug deal gone wrong.

The doors of the elevator glided open and she came face to face with a tall man who was wearing blue denim jeans and a white T-shirt that had a dust smear over the right shoulder. He was carrying an empty cardboard box and he smiled at her crookedly as he stepped out. ‘Moving in,’ he explained with a flash of perfect white teeth.

Erin lifted her chin and gave him a gimlet glare. ‘Is that your car in my parking space?’

Something hardened in his green gaze and his smile flatlined. ‘I was not aware there were designated parking spaces.’

Her chin went a little higher. ‘The numbers are painted on the ground. A blind man could see them.’

One of his dark brows lifted along with his top lip, as if controlled by the same muscle. ‘You must be the woman from 1503,’ he said, rocking back on his heels slightly. ‘I was warned about you.’

Erin felt her hackles rise like the fur of a cornered cat. ‘I beg your pardon?’

His eyes moved over her rigid form with indolent ease. ‘Erin Taylor, right?’

She tightened her mouth. ‘That’s correct.’

He smiled a smile that was borderline mocking. ‘My landlord told me all about you.’

‘Oh, really?’ She affected a bored, uninterested tone.

‘Yes,’ he said, placing the box on the concrete floor. ‘You’re a doctor at Sydney Metropolitan.’

Erin mentally rolled her eyes. Here comes another free car-park consultation, she thought. No doubt he thought he could weasel a flu shot out of her, like one of her neighbours had tried to do as soon as autumn had kicked in last month. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said crisply. ‘And right now I am off duty, so if you’ll excuse me?’

‘I’m renting the apartment next to yours,’ he said.

‘How…er…nice,’ Erin said with no attempt to sound sincere.

The man’s lazy smile travelled all the way up to his green eyes, making them crinkle up at the corners. ‘T guess in the interests of neighbourly peace I should move my car.’

‘You should,’ she said, stabbing at the call button to reopen the doors. ‘But don’t use the disabled spot. Mrs Greenaway on level ten uses that.’

‘I’ll try and remember that.’

Something about his tone made Erin feel as if he was laughing at her behind his urbane smile. She gave the call button an even harder jab, trying not to notice how his T-shirt clung to his lean but muscular frame. She had seen a lot of male bodies over the years so it took a particularly good one to make her do a double-take. This one was seriously fit. No spare flesh, just hard, toned muscle on a six-foot-three, maybe six-foot-four-inch frame. His hair was a rich, dark brown, several shades darker than hers, and his skin was the sort that tanned easily. His twelve-plus-hours-since-he’d-last-shaved stubbled jaw had a hint of stubbornness to it, and his blade of a nose, teamed with those penetrating green eyes, gave him a ‘take no prisoners’ air that she found strangely compelling.

The elevator doors pinged open, and Erin stepped in and pressed the button for the fifteenth floor. For the sake of common politeness, she forced her lips into a non-committal smile that didn’t quite make the distance to her eyes. ‘See you around,’ she said.

‘Yeah, no doubt you will.’ He smiled an inscrutable little smile in return.

The elevator doors closed and Erin let out the breath she hadn’t even realised she had been holding. She gave herself a mental shake. The tall, dark, handsome neighbour was certainly a welcome change from the previous tenants: a trio of university students who’d partied non-stop and who, to add insult to injury, had put their rubbish in Erin’s bin when theirs had been full. It had taken the last two weeks to get the smell of cigarette smoke out of her curtains, since the apartments were linked by a common balcony with only a waist-height glass partition to separate them.

As long as the new tenant stayed out of her way and out of her parking space, Erin was sure they would get along just fine.

‘Morning, Erin.’ Tammy McNeil, the triage nurse on duty in A&E, greeted Erin the next morning. ‘How come you didn’t come to the new director’s breakfast meeting? He insisted all the A&E doctors on duty today attend. He wants to meet everyone in person, even the cleaning staff.’

Erin placed her bag in the locker under the desk before she straightened to answer. ‘I had better things to do—like catch up on some much-needed sleep. I’m sure we’ll cross paths sooner or later.’

Tammy perched on the corner of the desk. ‘You don’t look like you had such a great night’s sleep. I know yesterday’s death was rough on you. The mum was a bit over-the-top trying to blame you for not saving her son. Are you OK? You look exhausted.’

Erin hated it when people told her she looked tired; it made her feel tired even when she wasn’t—although last night had been a rough one, she had to admit, even without the drama of the young man’s death. Right until the early hours, she had heard furniture and boxes being dragged across the floors next door, and even though she had put a pillow over her head it hadn’t really helped, for when she had finally drifted off to sleep she had woken several times in an agitated state from some vivid nightmares. It always happened after she had to deal with drug-affected patients. The ghosts from the past haunted her when she was most vulnerable. ‘I’m fine, Tammy,’ she said, reaching for her stethoscope. ‘I’m used to patients and their relatives using me as a scapegoat. It’s part of the job. It’s not as if I have to ever see them again. That’s one of the benefits of working as an A&E doctor: I treat them as best I can and then I leave them to someone else to follow up.’

Tammy gave her a wry look as she hopped down off the desk. ‘Mmm, well, you might have to have a rethink about that after you hear about Dr Chapman’s plan for the department.’

Erin shrugged herself into her white coat, pulling her hair out from beneath the collar and tying it back in a neat bun with an elastic tie she had in her coat pocket. ‘I don’t care what Dr Chapman has planned for the department. He can’t make me work any harder than I do.’ She picked up her name-badge and clipped it to her coat. ‘If he’s anything like our previous director, he’ll realise we’re all doing the best we can and leave us to get on with it.’

Tammy winced. ‘Er…’

Erin frowned at her. ‘What’s the matter?’

A deep, clipped voice spoke from behind Erin. ‘Dr Taylor—a word, please. In my office. Now.’

Erin turned, her eyes widening when she saw the man from the elevator standing there. ‘I’m about to start my shift,’ she said. ‘There are five bays already occupied, waiting for assessment.’

His green eyes were like steel darts pinning hers. ‘There are two other doctors and a registrar on duty. I am sure they are well able to cope without you for five or ten minutes.’

Erin pulled her mouth into a resentful line as she followed him out of the department to the office he had been allocated next to X-ray. He held open the door for her and she swept past him, bristling with irritation.

He closed the door and strode over to his desk, which was in a state of moving-in disarray. ‘Please take a seat,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you long.’

Erin hesitated for a brief moment. If she sat down it would give him an advantage she didn’t want him to have. He was so tall, standing there looking down at her, making her feel about fifteen years old when she was nearly twice that age. His hard gaze tussled with hers, and she sat like a heavy bag of theatre laundry being dropped. She folded her arms across her chest and swung one leg across the other, in a ‘let’s get this over with’ pose that she knew reeked of insolence, but she was beyond caring.

‘Perhaps I should introduce myself properly since I neglected to do so last night,’ he said.

‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked with a curl of her top lip. ‘You clearly knew who I was given you were “warned” about me.’

Eamon decided against taking the chair behind his desk. Instead he leaned back against the filing cabinet and surveyed Erin Taylor’s pursed lips and flashing, chocolate-brown eyes. She was sitting in a combative pose, every feminine inch of her poised to strike. He decided she would be quite astonishingly beautiful if she would smile instead of scowl. She had clear skin with just a dusting of light brown freckles over her uptilted nose. Her chestnut hair was glossy, and even though she had arranged it into a tight chignon at the back of her head a few escaping wisps framed her heart-shaped face. Her mouth was full, although it was currently pulled tight, and her cheekbones were classic, like a model’s, sharp and high with a hint of haughtiness about them. Her body was slight but unmistakably feminine; her breasts were pushed up by her tightly crossed arms, giving him a clear view of her cleavage, which he was almost certain was unintentional.

He felt a stirring in his groin which took him completely by surprise. Admittedly it had been a while since he had held a woman in his arms, but somehow he couldn’t see Erin Taylor falling into his bed any time soon—although in his head he rubbed at his jaw; there was nothing he liked more than a tough challenge.

‘As you already know, I am Dr Eamon Chapman, the new A&E director,’ he said. ‘You would have received the email about my appointment.’

She didn’t answer; she just sat there staring at him with that recalcitrant look on her face.

‘You would have also received the invitation to a breakfast meeting this morning which apparently you decided against attending,’ he continued.

She sat up even straighter in her chair. ‘It wasn’t compulsory.’

Eamon pushed his tongue into his right cheek as he fought to keep cool. Something about her reminded him of a defiant schoolgirl with little or no respect for authority. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But it would have been polite to inform me you were unable to attend. As you can imagine, this position is a busy and highly demanding one. I would appreciate every member of the team I am directing to be one-hundred-percent committed from day one of my appointment. That includes you, Dr Taylor.’

Erin raised her chin. ‘I worked a ten-hour shift yesterday and a twelve-hour the day before,’ she said stiffly. ‘I give one hundred and twenty percent to this place.’

‘All the more reason for you to be aware of my plans to improve the department,’ he said with equal tension.

Erin felt like rolling her eyes. How many times had some bureaucrat come in with a hot-shot plan to revamp the place? It didn’t matter what fancy plans Dr Chapman had drawn up; within a few months it would be back to double shifts, patients lying in the corridors and ambulances lined up in the street due to the lack of beds. ‘OK, then,’ she said, giving him a cynical look. ‘Why don’t you fill me in now so I’m all up to date?’

He pushed himself away from the filing cabinet and picked up a document from his desk. ‘It’s all in here,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘Perhaps you’ll do me the honour of reading it at your leisure and getting back to me with any questions or suggestions.’

Erin took the document but in the process of doing so encountered his long, tanned fingers for a fraction of a second. It felt like a lightning bolt had zapped up her arm at the brief contact. She tried her best to cover her reaction by casually flipping through the twenty-page document, but the words, although neatly typed, made no sense at all to her. It was as if her brain had shut down. Her body felt hot and tight, as if her skin had shrunk two sizes on her frame. She could feel her face heating under his silent scrutiny, and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. The air she breathed in contained a hint of his aftershave; it was lemony and fresh, not cloying or overpowering like some she had smelt.

She heard him shuffle through some papers on his desk and looked up to encounter his emerald gaze trained on her. ‘There is another matter I wish to discuss with you,’ he said. ‘I understand a patient died in A&E yesterday.’

Erin hardly realised she had moved but she suddenly found herself sitting on the edge of her chair. ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ she said. ‘He’d virtually bled out by the time he arrived here—he was in grade-four shock and went into asystole. I did his resus by the book.’

‘I’m sure you did, Dr Taylor,’ he said. ‘But a formal complaint has been made by a relative, and as director I am responsible for seeing that it is investigated thoroughly.’

Erin felt her spine give a nervous wobble that travelled all the way down her legs. ‘That resus was textbook EMST, Dr Chapman. I’ve documented the whole episode, and you can watch it on the CCTV as well,’ she said, forcing her voice to remain composed and confident.

‘The mother of the young man who died…’ He glanced at the paper before pinning Erin with his gaze once more. ‘The resus might have been technically correct, when it occurred, but what about its timing? Mrs Haddad maintains that you did not respond quickly enough to her son’s injuries. She said that they were waiting in A&E for more than an hour before he was properly assessed.’

Erin drew in a scalding breath. ‘That is not true! The triage nurse informed me of his injuries and I went straight to him from an asthmatic I was treating. The boy had multiple abdominal stab-wounds and was in hypovolemic shock. I was told that and went straight to the resus bay. I would have seen him within a couple of minutes at most after he arrived. If he was waiting around for treatment, it certainly wasn’t here. Maybe they were hanging about in the waiting room, or outside the department. All I know is that as soon as I was told of his arrival I finished injecting prednisolone to a severe asthmatic, made sure she was inhaling the ventolin nebuliser and supervised by a nurse, and went straight to the resus bay. Three minutes at most.’

Eamon Chapman didn’t speak but continued to look at her with that piercing green gaze of his.

‘You know what some relatives can be like,’ Erin argued. ‘They don’t believe their loved one was involved in something shady. “He’s a good boy” and all that. “Someone else did this to him”. “The doctors didn’t save him”. Blame anyone and everyone except the person responsible.’

Eamon put the paper back down on his desk. ‘I realise emotions run high in cases like this for everyone involved. Mrs Haddad may well withdraw the complaint after legal counsel. But even so there are still some issues that need to be dealt with in A&E. You will become aware of them once you read my proposal for change.’

Erin rose from the chair, holding the folder against her chest like armour. ‘I’ll read it and get back to you,’ she said.

‘You do that,’ he said with a half-smile that didn’t meet his eyes.

She turned on her heel and was almost out the door when his deep baritone voice stopped her in her tracks. ‘By the way, I checked the numbers in the parking area. Unless they are written in Braille, I am very much afraid a blind man could not see them.’

Erin turned back to face him. There was a hint of mockery in his sea-green gaze that made her scalp prickle in annoyance. ‘I’ll speak to the maintenance guy about having them repainted,’ she said with the arch of an eyebrow. ‘Or would you like him to paint arrows, or a big, fat, fluorescent “X” so you know exactly where to park?’

A tiny muscle moved next to his mouth. Erin wasn’t sure if he was fighting anger or a smile; either way, it made him look even more attractive than he had last night. She felt the tiny flutter of her pulse, and a tingling of her flesh that made her breath catch as his eyes held hers.

‘Just my number would be fine, thanks, Dr Taylor,’ he said, and reached for his ringing mobile that was clipped on his belt. ‘Excuse me. I have to get this.’

Erin spun away and closed the door with a sharp click behind her. She strode back to A&E; for the first time in her career she was immensely glad to see an overflowing waiting room.

It wasn’t until Erin was back at her flat with her cat, Molly, on her lap that she picked up the document Eamon Chapman had given her that morning. She absently stroked Molly’s thick fur as she read through the proposal, trying to ignore the sound of the sliding doors opening on the balcony next door. She had heard him come home about an hour after her. It gave her a slightly unsettled feeling to think of him on the other side of the wall. To her annoyance she found her thoughts drifting to what his routine might be: would he shower and change before dinner, or would he watch the news on television, perhaps have a beer or a glass of wine if he wasn’t on call? Would he cook his own dinner or eat out? Did he have a partner? Was there a Mrs Chapman who would lie next to him in bed at night and be folded into his arms…?

Erin pulled away from her wayward thoughts and focused back on the words printed in front of her. So far there had been some sensible suggestions on streamlining triage and reducing the number of minor cases that should have been handled in general practice. The next section was on follow-through care. Her eyes narrowed as she read the plan for A&E doctors to conduct their own ward-rounds on the patients that had come into the hospital via the emergency department. As she read each word, she could feel a tide of panic rising inside her. She wasn’t trained to sit by patients’ bedsides and discuss the weather or their personal lives; she was trained to respond to emergencies, to stabilise patients before sending them on to definitive care. She would never be able to cope with all the names and faces, not to mention the added burden of thinking about patients and their lives outside of A&E. She put them out of her mind once they left the department. She had to, otherwise she would end up too involved, unable to remain at a clinical distance.

Erin tossed the document to one side and got to her feet, dislodging Molly, who gave an affronted miaow before turning her back to lick each of her paws with meticulous care.

The doors of the balcony beckoned and Erin slid them open to look out over the view of Sydney Harbour and the city on the opposite shore. Yachts were out, some with their colourful spinnakers up, looking like one-winged butterflies. Smaller craft bobbed about on the light swell and passenger ferries crisscrossed their way through the water, carrying people home from work or into the city for entertainment or dinner.

She gripped the balcony rail with an iron grip and lifted her face to the breeze, breathing in the salty air, wishing she could be on one of those yachts and sail away into the sunset.

‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cup of sugar, would you?’ Eamon Chapman’s voice sounded from her right.

Erin swivelled her head to look at him, her heart giving a little free fall. He was bare-chested, his legs encased in dark blue denim slung low on his lean hips. Every muscle on his chest and abdomen looked like it had been carved into place by a master craftsman. She had studied anatomy, yet not one of her textbooks would have done Dr Eamon Chapman justice. ‘Um…sugar?’

His mouth tilted wryly. ‘Yeah, that sweet stuff you put in coffee. I forgot to get some when I shopped on the way home.’

Erin brushed a strand of hair that the breeze had worked loose from her chignon away from her face. ‘The shops are only a short walk away,’ she pointed out.

‘So you don’t have any?’ he asked, leaning on the dividing rail with his strong forearms. ‘Sugar, I mean?’

Erin tried not to look at the way his biceps bulged as he leaned his weight on the railing. He was more or less at eye level, which was disconcerting to say the least. This close she could see tiny brown flecks in his green eyes that fanned out from his dark-as-ink pupils. ‘I…I don’t take sugar,’ she said.

His mouth tilted even further. ‘Sweet enough, huh?’

This time Erin was sure he was mocking her. ‘I have five fillings,’ she said primly. ‘I am not keen on getting any more.’

‘Didn’t your mother teach you the importance of dental care?’ he asked.

She schooled her features into a blank mask, hoping he hadn’t noticed the slight flinch at the mention of her mother. ‘It wasn’t one of her strong points, no.’

Erin felt his silent scrutiny, as if he was reading her word by word, page by page. She wanted to go back inside but she felt inexplicably drawn to him, like tiny iron filings to a strong magnet.

‘It’s quite a coincidence, me moving in next door, don’t you think?’ he asked.

She gave a little shrug. ‘There are three nurses and an orderly in this apartment block. Mosman’s a convenient suburb. It’s close to Sydney Met.’

‘Are you renting or do you own your apartment?’

‘The bank owns it,’ she said. ‘I work to keep up the payments.’

Erin had forgotten to close the balcony doors and Molly chose that moment to strut out like a model on a catwalk.

‘I didn’t realise you were allowed pets here,’ he said, looking down as Molly began to weave around Erin’s legs.

She grimaced as she scooped up the big fluffy bundle of fur. ‘I–I’ve got special permission from the body corporate,’ she lied.

Eamon Chapman cocked his head, as if debating whether to believe her. ‘Isn’t it cruel to house a cat indoors all the time?’

Erin stroked Molly’s silky head. ‘She’s a Ragdoll. They prefer to be indoors.’

‘What’s its name?’

‘Molly.’

‘One of my sisters has a cat,’ he said. ‘Personally I’m a dog man, but yours looks cute.’

‘Thank you.’

He straightened from the railing and stretched. Erin’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, like popcorn from a hot pan, as each of his muscles rippled in response.

‘Have you had time to look at my proposal?’ he asked as his arms came back down to his sides.

Erin had to blink a couple of times to reorient herself. ‘Um…yes, I have. I’m not sure it’s going to work—that follow-through care thing—it’s too complicated. A&E is too busy as it is to expect us to wander off to plump up patients’ pillows on the wards.’

‘You’re missing the point, Dr Taylor,’ he said. ‘It’s not about plumping up pillows; it’s about treating the patient from start to finish as a person, not a statistic.’

‘I don’t treat patients as statistics.’

‘Tell me the names of the last five patients you saw today.’

Erin stared at him as her mind went completely blank. She could barely remember faces, let alone names. It had been so frantic, especially when an elderly woman had been brought in with a cardiac arrest at the same time a head injury had arrived. Names hadn’t been important; what had been important was saving lives that were hanging by a gossamer thread. ‘I didn’t have time to memorise their names,’ she said, putting Molly down. ‘My job is to save their lives.’

‘Do you ever wonder what happens to them after they leave you?’ he asked.

Erin didn’t want to admit how much she wondered about them. She saw it as a weakness in herself, a frailty that should have been knocked out of her way back in medical school. She fought against her human feelings all the time; they kept her awake at night—the sea of faces that floated past like ghosts. ‘Not really,’ she said, her tone chilly. ‘As I said, it’s not my job.’

‘You might want to have a rethink about that, Dr Taylor,’ he said. ‘The first trial ward-round begins tomorrow at the end of your shift.’

Erin forced her gaze to remain connected to his. ‘Well, I can’t see that working. You know as well as anyone that A&E shifts don’t end according to the clock—they end when you finish treating your last patient, or at least get them to the point where you can hand them over to the next shift. You can’t just breeze out to start chatting with folks on the ward.’

‘You’re so right. I am quite aware of that,’ he said. ‘If you read the plan properly, you would see that wind-up on your last patient starts an hour before your shift ends—that gives you at least part of the last hour to do ward follow-through.’

Erin gave him a mutinous look. ‘Oh, so we just walk out an hour before our shift ends then, and I suppose the next shift starts an hour early to fill in the gap? Or maybe we just abandon A&E altogether for an hour. Look, you can hardly force already overworked staff to take on even more responsibility.’

‘If you had read the proposal carefully, Dr Taylor, you would see that new arrangements do not mean more responsibility, just different responsibility. And, as far as implementing this plan, I’m not a great believer in using force to achieve anything,’ he said. ‘But I am the director, and I would like those working in my team to actually be a part of that team. The response from everyone else has been very positive, actually. I think you are going to find yourself out of touch with what everyone else is doing if you simply reject the department’s policies.’

She arched her eyebrows. ‘So, what do you plan to do, Dr Chapman? Hand-hold every A&E doctor until you’re confident they’re doing things your way?’

Eamon held her pert look, privately enjoying the way her burnt-toffee-brown eyes challenged his. Her defensive stance made him wonder why she was so against change. None of the other doctors he had briefed that morning had expressed any opposition to his proposal. In fact, three of them had cited cases where if such a plan had already been in place patient outcomes would have been better.

From what he had heard Erin Taylor was not one of the more social members of the department. Apparently she never joined in with regular drinks on Friday evenings at one of the local bars, and as far as he could tell she lived alone, apart from a contraband cat. She was prickly and unfriendly, yet her clinical management of patients was spot-on. She was competent and efficient, although one or two of the nurses had mentioned in passing her bedside manner needed work.

‘I have certain goals I would like to achieve during my appointment,’ he said. ‘One of them is to improve overall outcomes for patients coming through A&E in this hospital. What you might not be aware of is how your expert work in A&E can be undone by isolating later management teams from the acute-care team. When was the last time you did a tertiary survey? It’s mentioned in EMST and ATLS, but hardly ever happens. Sometimes injuries and clinical clues get missed in the wards. There is clear evidence that tertiary survey by the doctor who carried out the primary and secondary surveys is more likely to detect missed injuries, and so avoid complications which eat up beds and cost money.’

She continued to eyeball him in that ‘I don’t give a damn’ way of hers. ‘So, how long do you intend on propping up the public system before you scoot off for far more lucrative returns in the private sector?’

Eamon cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘I could ask you the very same question.’

She held his look for a moment before turning to look at the harbour. The sun was low in the sky, casting a pinkish glow over the sails of the Opera House and the towering skyscrapers of the city on the opposite shore. ‘I’ve thought about it plenty of times,’ she said. ‘But so far I haven’t got round to doing anything about it.’

‘You don’t like change, do you, Dr Taylor?’ Eamon asked.

She turned to look at him, her expression like curtains pulled across a window. ‘I can deal with change when I think it’s appropriate,’ she said, and without another word slipped inside her apartment and shut the sliding doors—locking him out in more ways than one, he suspected.

CHAPTER TWO

ERIN had not long finished stitching a leg wound on a teenager the following morning when Tammy alerted her to a new admission.

‘Forty-five-year-old male complaining of severe back pain,’ Tammy said, reading from the notes she had taken down. ‘His wife found him on the floor of the bathroom. He’s nauseous and vomited prior to arriving in A&E.’

Erin twitched aside the curtains in bay four and introduced herself. ‘Hello, I’mDr Taylor. The triage nurse tells me you’ve got back pain. Can you describe it exactly?’

The man pointed to his left loin. ‘Here…’ he said somewhat breathlessly. ‘Every couple of minutes…I…ahh…!’ He writhed and groaned on the bed as his ashen-faced wife clutched one of his hands in hers.

‘We’ll give you something for the pain and nausea,’ Erin said, administering morphine, buscopan and stemetil IV, with Tammy assisting.

‘Is he going to be all right?’ the man’s wife asked.

‘How long have you been unwell, Mr…’ Erin glanced at the notes ‘…Aston?’

‘I…I haven’t been sick for years,’ he said, and turned his head to his wife. ‘Have I, love?’

Mrs Aston nodded. ‘That’s right, Doctor. He’s never even taken a day off work in thirty-odd years. He’s always been—’

‘How’s the pain now?’ Erin asked as she clicked her pen open.

‘Eased off a bit,’ Mr Aston said, regaining some colour in his face as the pain-relief flooded his system.

‘When did you first feel unwell?’ Erin asked, pen poised over her patient-history clipboard.

‘First thing this morning,’ he said. ‘I woke up to go to the toilet and then it hit me, didn’t it, love?’

‘I found him on the floor of the bathroom,’ his wife put in. ‘I nearly had a heart attack myself.’

Erin acknowledged the wife’s statement with a movement of her lips that was neither a smile nor a grimace but something in between. ‘I need you to give me a urine sample if you can manage it, Mr Aston,’ she said, addressing the patient once more. ‘I’d also like you to have an abdominal X-ray. The nurse will organise that while I see to another patient. Once we have the results of the urine sample, we’ll know more.’

‘Is it cancer?’ Mrs Aston asked hollowly. ‘Jeff used to smoke, didn’t you, dear? He gave it up…what?…ten years ago now, it must be. I remember the day. It was when we went to—’

‘We’ll know more once we get the results back from the tests I’ve ordered,’ Erin said briskly.

Tammy took over the care of the patient as Erin moved to the next bay. She parted the curtains to see Dr Chapman standing by the bedside of a young child with his mother. ‘Oh, sorry,’ Erin said. ‘My patient must have been moved into another bay.’

Eamon gave her a formal smile which Erin suspected was for the sake of the patient. ‘Mrs Forster has been taken for a CT scan. This is Hamish, and his mother, Karen Young. Hamish here has had a persistent discharge from his right nostril for about a week, but this morning the discharge was blood-stained. We were about to have a look inside, weren’t we, Hamish? You don’t mind if Dr Taylor watches, do you? I bet she’s never seen a braver young man around here.’

The young boy of about three stared wide-eyed but trustingly at Eamon, who picked up a nasal speculum and bright light. Erin was privately a little impressed at how biddable the child became under Eamon’s care. She’d had a child with a foreign object up its nose only a month ago, and the floor above had heard its screams when she had tried to retrieve it. In the end she had handed the case over to the ear, nose and throat surgeon who had removed a plastic bead under general anaesthesia.

‘There,’ Eamon said as he showed the child and his mother the bright blue bead he had found. ‘You were a champion, Hamish. I’ve seen kids twice your age who would have screamed the place down.’

‘Weally?’ Hamish asked, still a little bug-eyed.

‘You betcha,’ Eamon said, and then he turned and winked at the young mother. ‘You can take him home now, Mrs Young. He’s good to go. Just put the ointment Nurse will get for you up his nostril three times a day, and massage it in a bit, until you’ve finished the whole tube.’

Once the young mother and her son had left, Eamon turned to Erin. ‘I’d like a word with you if you are free, Dr Taylor.’

Erin gave him a wary look. ‘I have a patient who should be back from X-ray by now.’

‘That would be Mr Aston next door?’ he asked.

She flattened her mouth at his expression. ‘I thought the plan was to have some sort of continuity of care around here,’ she said, keeping her voice down in case the patient had returned. ‘If I go off for a lengthy discussion with you, who’s going to follow up Mr Aston?’

‘Meet me in my office once you have finished assessing him,’ he said, pushing the curtains aside. ‘Unless, of course, anything urgent comes in.’

Erin blew out a breath once he moved past. It would be just her luck that today would be one of those quiet days, leaving her with no excuse to avoid another confrontation with him.

Mr Aston was being wheeled back to the examination bay when Erin returned, after responding to an HMO’s phone call about another patient who had been admitted the day before.

Mr Aston’s urine sample was positive for blood and his X-ray almost certainly showed a stone at the end of the right ureter. Erin ordered a rapid-sequence urinarytract CT, which confirmed the finding, and she explained the results to the patient and his wife. ‘You have renal colic, Mr Aston, which basically means you have a kidney stone. Very often stones pass spontaneously, but occasionally they don’t.’

‘What happens then?’ Mrs Aston asked.

‘If the stone doesn’t pass, it may have to be removed under anaesthesia. We’d get a urologist to see you to do a cystoscopy—put a camera up the front passage into the bladder—and use a wire basket to grab the stone and pull it out.’

‘Oh dear, it sounds horribly painful,’ Mrs Aston said, grasping her husband’s hand again.

‘He’ll be fine, Mrs Aston,’ Erin said. ‘The ENT specialist is one of the best in the city.’

Once she had left the patient’s bay, Erin looked at the clock and thought longingly of a cup of tea and a sandwich, even one from the hospital cafeteria. But over an hour had passed since Eamon Chapman had asked her to meet him in his office, so rather than delay the inevitable any further she trudged through the department to where his office was located. She gave the door a quick knock, secretly wishing he had been called away, but she heard his deep voice commanding her to come in.

He was sitting behind his desk but rose to his feet as she came in. ‘Have you had lunch?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Erin said, wondering if he could read her mind or hear her stomach in this instance. ‘But it can wait.’

‘No need to. Why don’t we head on down to the cafeteria and grab a sandwich now?’ he asked.

She looked at him as if he had gone mad. ‘I take it your plans to improve this hospital from top to bottom haven’t quite made it to the cafeteria?’ she said dryly.

He gave her a rueful smile. ‘That bad, huh?’

She felt her lips twitch, but forced them back into line. ‘Keep away from the salami and the chicken. We lost three staff members to a tandoori wrap three weeks ago.’

His dark brows lifted. ‘“Lost” as in…?’

‘Lost as in sick for a week with a reportable disease,’ she said. ‘A couple of us had to do double shifts to cover them.’

His lips twitched this time, making his eyes crinkle up at the corners. ‘There’s a café on the other side of the car park,’ he said. ‘Does that have any black marks against it I should know about?’

‘They do a mean salad sandwich with mung beans and alfalfa sprouts,’ she said. ‘And their coffee’s passable.’

He picked up his mobile from the desk and clipped it to his belt. ‘Let’s give it a try. I’ll just let Jan at reception know we’ll be within paging distance.’

A few minutes later, sitting opposite Eamon Chapman in the café across from the hospital, Erin wondered how long it had been since she’d shared a meal with a man, even a colleague. She hadn’t dated since medical school, and even then it had been an unmitigated disaster. In the end she’d decided she wasn’t cut out for the couples’ scene. Most of the men she knew were complicated creatures with too much baggage—not that she could talk, given the veritable road-train she had brought with her from Adelaide. But this was hardly a date, she reminded herself. She was pretty certain Eamon Chapman had other things on his mind besides chatting her up. From what she could read from his expression, she was in for a dressing down if anything.

‘So,’ he said, leaning back in his chair to study her pensive features. ‘How long have you been at Sydney Met?’

Erin was aware of his steady gaze on her as she toyed with the thick froth of her latte with a teaspoon. ‘Five years,’ she said, meeting his eyes for a brief moment. ‘I spent a year in the States before that.’

‘Travelling or working?’

‘A bit of both,’ she said.

‘Did you grow up in Sydney?’

Erin’s teaspoon gave a tiny clatter as she placed it back on the saucer. ‘No. I grew up in South Australia. I moved to Sydney when I was a teenager.’

He took a sip of his cappuccino; her gaze was suddenly mesmerised by the tiny trace of chocolate that clung to his top lip before his tongue swept over his mouth to clear it. She swallowed a little restriction in her throat and quickly dropped her gaze, picking up her teaspoon again and stirring her latte with fierce concentration.

‘So, do you have family here or back over there?’ he asked.

Erin put her spoon back down and met his gaze. ‘Look, I hate to be rude, but what’s with the twenty questions?’

His eyes bored into hers for a tense second or two. ‘I like to get a feel for the people I will be working with on a daily basis. It’s an important part of being a leader, knowing the team’s strengths and weaknesses.’

She screwed up her mouth in an embittered manner. ‘Do you trust your own judgement on that, or are you usually swayed by others’ opinions?’

He accepted her comment with an unreadable look. ‘I lean towards the “innocent until proven guilty” philosophy where possible.’

She gave a little snort and reached for her coffee again. ‘Yeah, well, I bet it didn’t take long for some members of the jury to swing your opinion.’

‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.

Erin gave her shoulders a gentle shrug. ‘Gut feeling; instinct; experience.’

‘I wanted to have a word with you about how you handled Mr Aston,’ he said after a short silence.

Erin’s gaze flicked back to his. ‘It was straight-out renal colic. He’s got a stone the size of a marble. He’s not going to pass it without surgical intervention.’

‘I’m not for a moment questioning your diagnosis, Dr Taylor,’ Eamon said. ‘But I think you could improve on your handling of accompanying relatives. Coming into A&E is stressful for both patients and relatives.’

She set her mouth into a defensive line. ‘My job is to treat the patient, not pander to their entourage.’

Eamon put his coffee cup back in its saucer, his eyes holding hers. ‘Listen, managing the relatives is part of treating the patient. Stressed relatives worsen patients’ stresses. And accompanying relatives are usually going to be the patient’s carers afterwards. One, they need to be well informed. Two, if they are stressed out and decompensate, they won’t be good carers. That means more time for patients in hospital, more hospital expense and more loss to the community. I’ve only been in the department less than twenty-four hours and I have already heard several complaints about your handling of relatives, yesterday’s threat of litigation being a case in point.’

Her slim jaw tightened. ‘Mrs Haddad’s suit will be rejected as soon as the medical council read through my notes and realise the extent of her son’s injuries.’

‘That is most certainly the case; however, the whole thing may well have been avoided if you had softened your approach.’

‘You know nothing of my approach,’ she said, shooting him a livid glare. ‘You weren’t there trying to save the boy’s life. When someone is bleeding out before your eyes, it’s not exactly the time to ask how his mother or his family are feeling, for God’s sake.’

Eamon leaned forward in his chair, his arms resting on the table. Erin moved back, folding her arms across her chest, her chin at a defiant height. ‘As you are now aware, I was in the bay next to you when you were assessing Mr Aston,’ he said. ‘His wife was clearly distressed to see her normally healthy husband in such a state. A reassuring word to her wouldn’t have gone astray, not cutting her off in mid-sentence.’

Erin rolled her eyes, and, pushing back her chair, got to her feet in one angry movement. ‘I haven’t got time for this. I’ve got patients to see.’

His green eyes hit hers. ‘Sit down, Dr Taylor.’

Erin’s hands gripped the chair-back with white-knuckled fingers. She was so tempted to shove the chair back underneath the table to drive home her point, but the steely look in his eyes forestalled her.

Several tense seconds passed before she reluctantly gave in. She sat back down, crossing her arms and legs as she sent him a querulous look. ‘You said you’d had other complaints about me,’ she said. ‘Am I allowed to know who they were from?’

He leaned back in his chair, but the hardened look hadn’t softened in his eyes. ‘That would be unprofessional of me. The complaints were made in confidence; in fact, they weren’t even official, just passing comments. No one is out to get you, Dr Taylor, far from it. Generally the staff speak very highly of you, on a professional level.’

‘So my bedside manner needs some work,’ she said with a petulant huff of her shoulder. ‘Pardon me for putting patients’ lives in front of politeness.’

‘I don’t see why you can’t manage both,’ he said. ‘Or do you have a particular reason for being so prickly with everyone?’

Erin felt the probe of his gaze and had to work hard to maintain eye contact. Something about him made her feel exposed. Even though she had only met him the day before, that intelligent, penetrating gaze of his had a habit of catching her off guard. He was seeing things she didn’t want him to see, things she had fought hard to keep hidden. She liked her life in its neat little compartments, but she felt as if he was threatening her stronghold, insisting on her being someone she was not, nor ever could be. ‘I’m not interested in winning the latest popularity contest,’ she said. ‘If people don’t like me, I don’t let it worry me. I have better things to do with my time.’

‘Do you live alone, apart from your cat?’ he asked.

Erin frowned. ‘I thought we were here to discuss issues to do with work, not my private life.’

Eamon draped one arm over the back of the chair that was next to his; his gaze continued to hold hers. ‘Sometimes one’s private life can have an impact on their professional one.’

She gave him an arch look. ‘Sometimes one’s boss can put his nose where it is not welcome.’

Eamon felt his lips flicker with a smile. ‘I’m not just your boss, Dr Taylor, I am also your neighbour. That blurs the boundaries a bit, don’t you think?’

‘Not for me,’ she said with a flinty glare.

He leaned forward again, his eyes still locked on hers. ‘As I said earlier, I don’t like the heavy-handed approach, but if it’s called for I am not afraid to use it. If you don’t lift your game, I will have to take appropriate action.’

She eyeballed him back. ‘If you want to fire me, go right ahead, but if you do I’ll have the unfair-dismissal commission on your back before you can say Code Blue.’

Eamon felt a rush of blood to his groin at her feisty words. She was like a spitting cat, all claws and hiss, making him want to tame that wild streak by pressing his own mouth to her snarling one. He wondered if anyone had been game enough to come within touching distance of her. She sent out keep-away-from-me vibes like soundwaves. For some reason he found that incredibly attractive. His three younger sisters would think he was crazy taking on someone like Erin Taylor; they were hanging out for a sweet sister-in-law they could take shopping and do girly things with. Somehow he couldn’t see the pintsized Dr Taylor with her touch-me-not glare and barbed tongue going down too well with his touchy-feely family.

‘Eamon?’ A high female voice sounded from behind their table.

Erin turned her head to see one of the nurses from the surgical ward approaching, bringing with her a wave of heady perfume that irritated Erin’s nostrils.

‘Hi, Sherrie,’ Eamon, said, rising to his feet and sweeping the woman into a brief, hard hug. He held her from him to look down at her flushed features. ‘How’re you doing? I’ve been meaning to call you, but things have been pretty crazy since I got back from London.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ the woman called Sherrie said, with a beaming smile. ‘Gosh, you look fabulous. Jet lag and hard work must suit you.’

Eamon gave a self-deprecating smile before turning to introduce Erin. ‘Sherrie, do you know Dr Erin Taylor from A&E?’

Sherrie held out her hand. ‘No, I don’t think we’ve met properly. I’ve seen you around, though. Nice to meet you.’

Erin briefly placed her hand in the other woman’s before pulling away. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You too.’

‘So…’ Sherrie turned back to Eamon. ‘When are you free for a meal or a drink or something? Where are you staying? Have you bought a house or an apartment?’

Eamon grinned at the barrage of questions, holding up his hands as if to ward them off. ‘One at a time, Sherrie. Yes, a meal would be great, and I’m renting my mate Tim Yeoman’s apartment in Mosman until the renovations are completed on my house at Balmoral Beach. Tim’s still on sabbatical in Edinburgh.’

Sherrie took a pen out of her uniform pocket and scribbled her number and address on a napkin from the table. She handed it to him and smiled. ‘Here are my details,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed my number since I last saw you. Call me any time. It will be great to hear all about your time in the UK.’

Eamon folded the napkin and put it in the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘Thanks, Sherrie; I’ll see what I can do for next week. I’m still unpacking, otherwise I’d organise something sooner.’

‘No problem,’ Sherrie said, and glanced at her watch. ‘Oops. Gotta dash. I’m meant to be in Surg A by now. Congratulations on the new job, Eamon. You’re exactly what this place needs to whip it into shape.’ She turned and smiled at Erin. ‘See you around, Erica.’

‘Erin,’ Erin corrected her.

‘Oh, sorry, I’mhopeless with names.’ And then, with another beaming smile aimed at Eamon, Sherrie left.

Erin pushed her half-drunk latte away. ‘A love interest of yours?’ she asked.

He sat back down and drained the contents of his cup before he answered. ‘We dated a couple of times a few years ago. Nothing too serious, and fortunately we managed to remain friends after we called it quits.’

‘It looks to me like she would like a re-run,’ Erin said, not quite able to stop herself from sounding slightly churlish.

One of his dark brows lifted. ‘Is that feminine intuition or something else?’

She was the first to shift her gaze. ‘What else could it be?’ she asked. ‘You’re not exactly my type.’

‘Oh really?’ he said. ‘What is your type?’

Erin wished she hadn’t started the conversation. She could feel her colour rising as the silence stretched and stretched. How could she answer such a question? She didn’t have a type. She didn’t even have a social life. She had a cat and a career and a cartload of reasons to keep her life as simple as possible. ‘I have to get going,’ she said, making a show of looking at her watch. ‘I don’t want another long day.’

‘Big plans for this evening?’ he asked as he rose to his feet.

Erin wondered if he was making fun of her. To an attractive man with women falling over themselves to book him for a date, her life must seem pretty dull in comparison. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact,’ she lied. ‘I’m meeting someone after work.’

‘About what we discussed over coffee…’ Eamon began as he accompanied her back to the hospital.

‘Don’t worry, Dr Chapman,’ she said before he could continue. ‘I’ll get working on winning friends and influencing people right now.’

Eamon watched as she stalked off down the corridor, her head down, her shoulders hunched and her face like a brewing storm. ‘You do that, Dr Taylor,’ he murmured, and, blowing out a breath, made his way back to his office.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be doing the trial ward-round with Dr Chapman?’ Lydia Hislop, one of the nurses who regularly worked with Erin, asked. ‘The others left over half an hour ago.’

Erin frowned as she checked through the patient’s notes she was reading, barely registering what the nurse had said. ‘When did Mrs Fuller have a second shot of pethidine?’ She glanced at the nurse. ‘I don’t remember signing for it.’

Lydia peered at the notes, her forehead creasing over a frown. ‘That’s your signature, isn’t it?’

Erin felt a cold hand of unease press against the base of her spine. She closed the patient folder and let out a long, unsteady breath. ‘I must be working way too hard,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t even remember what day it is.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Lydia said with an empathetic eyeroll. ‘Have you got time to see Mr Boyle in bay five, or should I get one of the night-duty staff to deal with it?’

Erin glanced at her watch. The ward-round, even if she had wanted to attend, would be winding up by now; it would be over altogether by the time she made it up to the appropriate floor. ‘I’ll see him,’ she said. ‘That’s the one with the suspected appendix, right?’

‘Yes, I’ve got his history here,’ Lydia said, handing her a file. ‘He’s been in before for a resection of gangrenous bowel about two years ago.’

‘That should make for interesting surgery,’ Erin said. ‘Who’s the surgeon on call?’

‘Mr Gourlay,’ Lydia said. ‘Your all-time favourite.’

This time is was Erin who rolled her eyes. ‘Maybe I should have gone on that ward-round after all.’

When Erin got home from work, Molly wound her plump body around her legs, mewing in delight. Erin smiled and scooped her up, burying her face in the cat’s luxurious fur. The phone rang inside her bag, and she gently put Molly down to answer it. When she saw the number on the screen, she felt a hand of dread clutch at her insides. ‘Hello, Mum,’ she said in a flat tone.

‘Ezzie, I need your help,’ Leah Taylor said. ‘Things have been tough just lately, you know how it is.’

Erin whooshed out an impatient sigh. ‘No, Mum, strange as it may seem, I don’t know how it is.’

‘There’s no need to be nasty,’ Leah said. ‘All I want is a bit of cash to get me through until my next pension payment.’

Erin began pacing; it was almost unconscious every time she spoke with her mother. Back and forth she went across the carpet, like a caged animal desperate for freedom. She could even see the slightly worn area when she’d last vacuumed. ‘Mum, you know what the social worker said about me giving you money all the time,’ she said. ‘You just shoot it up or drink it.’

‘I’m going straight now, Ez,’ her mother said. ‘I haven’t touched a drop for three days.’

Erin rolled her eyes. ‘And what about Bob or Bill or Brad, or whatever his name is? Is he going straight too?’

‘Just because you can’t pull a man doesn’t give you the right to slag me off. If you would just tart yourself up a bit you wouldn’t be living all alone with just a stupid cat for company.’

Erin felt anger rising in her like the froth of a soda poured too rapidly, threatening to overflow the glass of her control. She had to fight her temper back, knowing from experience it never worked with her mother. There was no hope of a rational conversation with someone in the grip of addiction. She had learned that earlier than any child should have to learn. Some people loved their fix more than their children. Leah Taylor was one of them. The drink and the drugs would always come first, her unsavoury boyfriends a close second. ‘Mum, I’m going to hang up now, OK?’ she said in a cool, calm voice. ‘I’ll call you in a couple of days.’

‘How can you turn your back on your own mother?’ Leah asked in a whining tone.

Erin closed her eyes as she thought of all the times her mother had abandoned her, leaving her to fend for herself until the authorities had finally stepped in. Years of being shunted from one foster home to another, with short periods of being reunited with her mother in some of Leah’s all-too-brief periods of sobriety. Yes, Erin could easily turn her back on her mother. It was either that or get hurt all over again. ‘I’ll call you later, Mum,’ she said again.

‘Selfish little cow,’ Leah snapped. ‘You’re just like your father.’

‘And that would be…?’ Erin asked pointedly.

Her mother slammed the phone down.

CHAPTER THREE

ERIN wasn’t sure why she went to that particular movie at that particular cinema, but at the time she had figured it was much better than spending the evening alone with her demons. The film was an art-house foreign-language one she had read a review about in one of the weekend papers. She took her seat and sipped at a diet soda; she barely read the subtitles, she just looked at the images flashing across the screen while her thoughts drifted elsewhere.

When she came out of the cinema the streets were crowded with people on their way home from dinner, or on their way to nightclubs for drinking and dancing. The noisy chatter and laughter of everyone having a good time as they enjoyed the balmy autumn evening made Erin wish she hadn’t come out after all.

She had never felt more alone in her life.

Eamon picked up his takeaway meal from his favourite restaurant, thrilled that the same people were still running it since he had left to work in the UK a couple of years ago. Right now he could think of nothing better than a cold beer and a madras curry, maybe watching some cricket on television or catching up on some current affairs on the Net.

He suddenly noticed a slight figure in the small crowd that was milling out of the local cinema, her shiny chestnut hair loose about her face instead of tightly pulled back. She was wearing jeans and a loose shirt over a camisole top, with ballet flats on her feet. Her eyes were downcast as she weaved her way through the knots of people, as if she didn’t want to be noticed.

Eamon was on his way to her when he saw a boisterous couple coming the other way jostle against her, almost knocking her over.

‘Hey, watch where you’re going,’ the young male half of the couple said belligerently.

Eamon quickly broke through the crowd and put his arm around Erin’s waist, pulling her close to his side. ‘Sorry I’m late, sweetheart,’ he said. Then, turning to look at the obstreperous pair, he gave them the full force of his commanding gaze. ‘Is there a problem here?’

The couple exchanged a glance, the young man eventually giving a shrug. ‘It’s cool, mate. I guess I wasn’t watching where I was going.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Eamon said, and stood with his arm still around Erin’s waist until they had moved on.

Erin felt the nerves beneath her skin tingle with feelings she had never felt before. The weight of his arm was unfamiliar, but not in any way unpleasant. With him standing so close to her she could smell his light citrus-based aftershave; she could even see the individual points of stubble on his jaw. The most primal feelings swept over her. No one had ever sprung to protect her before. It awakened such deep yearnings she had trouble disguising how affected she was. To cover her vulnerability, she stepped out of his embrace and dusted herself off, as if his touch had contaminated her in some way. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled. ‘But the sweetheart thing was a bit over-the-top, don’t you think?’

His mouth curved upwards in a smile. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’

Erin found her lips wanting to return his smile, but she controlled them by biting the inside of her mouth.

‘So, where’s your date?’ he asked, looking up and down the street before returning his gaze to hers.

‘What date? Oh…’ She felt her face colour again. ‘Um…they couldn’t make it at the last minute.’

‘Another doctor, huh?’

‘Um…’ She looked away. ‘No. Just a…Someone who couldn’t make it.’

‘Story of my life,’ he said with a hint of wryness.

Erin looked at him. ‘You got stood up?’ Her voice came out slightly incredulous.

‘You didn’t turn up for the first ward-round,’ he said, skewering her with his gaze.

Erin bit her lip and turned away. ‘I know. I’m sorry, I had a tough case to deal with. I lost track of time.’

‘I realise it won’t always be possible to attend each one, but the plan overall is to improve continuity of care,’ he said. ‘Today’s round showed up a few holes in the system, so it will be good to work on those. I can fill you in on what went on so you don’t feel out of the loop.’

Erin had always felt out of the loop, but she didn’t tell him so. She hadn’t gone to the right school, and she certainly hadn’t come from the right family. She didn’t mix with the high-flyers; she just got on with her job, hoping to make a difference where she could. ‘You seem pretty sure this set-up will work,’ she said. ‘Is this new system something you experienced overseas?’

‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked in several A&E departments now, and I’ve seen a lot of avoidable problems occur because communication with the medical staff in A&E stopped the moment the patient was rolled out the door of the department—problems that would have been avoided with a structured follow-through plan involving the staff who did the primary assessment.’

Erin suddenly noticed the takeaway bag he was carrying. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was holding you up from your dinner.’

‘You’re not holding me up,’ he said. ‘I was just on my way home. Did you drive or walk?’

‘I walked,’ she said. ‘Parking is always a pain down here at this time of night.’

‘Like most cities,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll walk back with you. Have you had dinner? I’ve got enough to share if you’d like to join me.’

Erin felt her cheeks flush. ‘Oh no…I wouldn’t want to intrude.’

‘You’re not intruding. Besides, I can tell you how the ward-round went while we eat.’

Erin wanted to refuse but the thought of the rest of the evening alone was suddenly not as welcome as it had been earlier. She told herself she should at least be polite to Eamon after he had come to her rescue so gallantly. Surely she owed him an hour or two of her time? ‘Thanks, that would be nice,’ she said, glancing at him shyly.

Following the short walk back, Eamon activated the security pass to the apartment block and waited for her to precede him. The elevator ride was swift but to Erin it felt as if it was taking for ever. She didn’t know what to say; she didn’t even know where to stand. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, half-leaning, half-standing against the bare wall of the elevator. She felt awkward, gauche and out of place, certain he was wondering what was wrong with her. He was probably used to the most sophisticated of women, wining and dining them in world-class restaurants. No doubt he bedded them as well, taking pleasure where he found it, almost certainly giving it back one-hundredfold. She kept her arms folded across her chest but even so she could still feel where his arm had been about her waist.

She began to imagine what it would feel like to have his touch on other parts of her body—her mouth, for instance. His mouth was a sensual one, the lower lip fuller than the top one, making her lips start to tingle in anticipation of feeling its firmness against hers. Would he kiss softly or firmly? Would he cup her face or hold her by the shoulders? Would he…?

The doors of the elevator opening catapulted her out of her wayward thoughts. With her colour still high, she moved past Eamon as he held the doors open with the strong band of his arm, her heart doing little skips in her chest as she breathed in his scent once more. She felt ashamed of her reaction, and hoped to God he wasn’t picking up on it. How foolish of her to be so taken in by good looks and easy charm. He was her boss, for goodness’ sake! What sort of a fool would she be to compromise her professionalism by becoming involved with a colleague? In any case, given her background, how soon would he stay interested in her? She could hardly take him home to meet her mother and her latest junkie boyfriend. Men like Eamon Chapman dated women from the right side of the tracks, not trailer-park misfits.

‘I’m sorry the place is still a bit of a mess,’ Eamon said as he opened his apartment door. ‘I should be an expert at unpacking by now; I’ve done it enough times.’

Not as many times as me, Erin thought as she followed him inside. ‘Can I do anything to help?’ she asked.

‘No, just take a seat and I’ll get some plates,’ he said. ‘Would you like a glass of wine? I’ve got red and white, or beer if you’d prefer.’

‘I’m not much of a drinker, so don’t open anything specially.’

‘One glass of wine won’t hurt you,’ he said, taking a bottle of chilled white wine from the fridge. ‘It’ll help you relax.’

Erin pulled at her bottom lip with her teeth. ‘Is it that obvious?’

He gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. That drunken jerk would have frightened most people. He was probably pretty harmless, but these days you never can tell.’

Erin hadn’t given the inebriated young man another thought. It was the stone-cold sober, gorgeous one standing in front of her right now that was her real concern. ‘I guess I should think about taking some self-defence classes,’ she said, taking the glass of wine he handed her.

‘Not a bad idea,’ he said. ‘You’re so tiny it wouldn’t take much to knock you off your feet.’

Erin felt a shivery feeling move down her spine. How could one casual, throwaway comment make her feel so utterly feminine? She buried her nose in her glass, keeping her gaze averted from his while her heart did funny little somersaults behind her ribcage.

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