“I just have to say it, don’t I? Steve, I’m pregnant.”

Whump!

That was the sound of his backside hitting the couch with force. He suddenly knew what the expression “legs turning to jelly” meant, in a way he never had before. Beyond the beating of blood in his head, he had wit enough to understand at once that his first reaction to this news was critical. Still, the only thing he could come up with at first was “That’s a surprise.”

“I know.” She nodded. She flushed, then smiled, and that gave him his first clue.

She’s thrilled.

Dear Reader,

It’s possible one day I’ll regret that I wrote this book. I love my American heroine, Candace, with her combination of strength and vulnerability. I don’t regret her. She really deserves Steve Colton, the sexy Australian doctor who comes into her life. I love the way their story develops—sex comes early and real life hits them hard soon afterward. I love the atmosphere of surgery and the cast of minor characters, particularly Candace’s mother. No regrets there, either.

What I’ll regret is the fact that I’ve given away one of Australia’s great, undiscovered secrets—the beautiful coastline south of Sydney, stretching for miles and miles. As you’ll find out when you read The Surgeon’s Love-Child, some of those gorgeous beaches are deserted enough that you can walk for an hour and scarcely see another human being…or make love in the dunes after dark without fear of discovery.

I hope you love Candace and Steve’s story, and that the setting inspires some of you to come for a visit. But please don’t tell anyone. We want to keep the place to ourselves, don’t you think?

Lilian Darcy

The Surgeon’s Love-Child

Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

COVER

LETTER TO READER

TITLE PAGE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

HE WAS holding up a sign with her name on it, but he wasn’t Terry Davis.

Definitely not.

Terry wouldn’t have needed a sign. He and Candace had known each other, on and off, for years. She would have recognised his weatherbeaten face at once, and he would have seen her coming towards him through the milling crowd of arrivals at Sydney’s international airport. He would have smiled.

This man wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t seen her yet. He hadn’t realised that Candace had spotted her name, scrawled quickly by hand in black felt-tip pen on a makeshift rectangle of cardboard, and that she was zeroing in on it.

This man looked much younger than Terry. Early thirties, tall and fit and medium dark, with a body that somehow managed to be both solid and lean at the same time. He was wearing jeans and a navy T-shirt that hugged his form closely. In contrast, Terry was well past fifty, and had always looked his age. He never wore jeans.

Candace herself—DR CANDACE FLETCHER, as the sign correctly stated—was thirty-eight years old and intensely conscious of the fact. She had been for months and was, suddenly, particularly conscious of it now. It had been twenty-four hours since she had left Boston. She must look like a dog’s breakfast, despite a recent freshening in the unappealing cubicle of the aircraft toilet.

She reached the stranger and his sign, and was tempted to wave a hand in front of his face. Hell-o-o-o! I’m here! He was still scanning the crowd with a frown etched across his high, squarish forehead. Apparently, she didn’t look like her name.

‘Are you waiting for me?’

The frown cleared at once. ‘With insufficient vigilance, obviously, Dr Fletcher. You sneaked up on me.’

‘I did think about waving.’

‘Probably not what you expected. I should have been Terry.’

‘Mmm.’

She almost blurted out that not much in her life had gone according to expectations over the past year and more, but managed to keep the words back. Dear God, it would be so easy to get emotional!

‘I’ll explain as we head to the car,’ he said.

‘Sounds good.’

Unobtrusively, he took control of the luggage cart and began to wheel it towards the exit. She walked beside him, matching his pace.

‘I’m Steve, by the way. Steve Colton. You’ll be seeing me in Theatre fairly regularly. I’m often rostered to handle the anaesthesia. Terry’s wife is…not well. That’s why he couldn’t make it.’

‘Oh, no!’ Candace said. ‘That’s too bad! It isn’t serious, I hope.’

‘So do I,’ he answered soberly. ‘But I’m actually her GP, so I can’t really talk about it. Is this all of your luggage?’

‘This is it,’ she confirmed. Three suitcases and a box, for a one-year stay. ‘My mother helped me pack, and she’s very strict.’

‘Travels light?’

‘Arrives light. Leaves heavy. She’s convinced that Australia will have glorious shopping possibilities, thanks to the state of your dollar.’

‘She’s right, if you can find anything you want to buy. Terry told you Narralee’s not a big place, I hope. Not exactly a shopper’s heaven.’

‘Yes, but my mother has a bloodhound’s nose for good places to spend money. And Terry also told me Sydney makes a great weekend getaway, only a three-and-a-half-hour drive. Oh! Which means you’re making a seven-hour round trip to pick me up,’ she realised aloud, ‘and I haven’t thanked you yet.’

‘Plenty of time for that.’

‘Three and a half hours, in fact.’

They both laughed.

He seemed nice, Candace decided. The kind of well-mannered yet easygoing Australian male she’d heard good things about and seen—in somewhat exaggerated form—in various movies over the years. Three and a half hours, plus a stop for a snack, maybe. This shouldn’t be any kind of a penance…

And it wasn’t. Far from it.

They talked for a while, about the obvious things. Her journey. The city of Sydney. She commented on its red-tiled roofs, bright in the March morning sunlight, and all the aqua blue ovals and rectangles of the swimming pools she’d seen from above in the sprawl of suburban back yards as the plane had come in to land.

Then they left human habitation behind and crossed the wild, wind-scoured terrain of a national park. Steve Colton stopped asking questions and giving out helpful tourist information. Candace pretended to sleep.

She had been doing a lot of that lately—lying in bed with her brain buzzing and the shrill whistle of tinnitus in her ears, totally exhausted, miles from sleep and not fooling herself for a second.

Todd was sleeping with Brittany for six months and I never knew.

He said our marriage was empty long before that. Was he right? If there hadn’t been that electrical problem at the hospital that day, and they hadn’t cancelled elective surgery…If I hadn’t actually walked in on them, naked together in our marital bed…How long before I’d have found out? How long before he would have drummed up the courage to leave? Coming home to find them in bed was bad enough, but having them announce Brittany’s pregnancy before our divorce was even finalised was even worse.

I guess in a way I’m glad Maddy decided not to come to Australia with me—although that hurts, too, to think she’s so positive that she’ll be fine without her mother—because at least, out there, I’ll be able to be alone. I won’t have to pretend.

And here she was, pretending already.

Much easier to pretend to a newly met male colleague than to an emotional fifteen-year-old daughter, however. By hook or by crook, Candace wasn’t going to ruin Maddy’s relationship with her father. She had no right to do that—to deprive her daughter of something very precious and necessary in Maddy’s life purely in order to enact revenge on Todd, when maybe…probably…the blame wasn’t all on his side. She had to behave rationally, not let Maddy see quite how deeply ran her sense of betrayal.

But, oh, that huge, glowing and healthily advanced pregnancy of Brittany’s hurt! She was due in just a few weeks…

The car slowed. It stopped. Then there was silence. She opened her eyes. Dr Colton was watching her. No, Steve. She couldn’t possibly call him Dr Colton! He had to be a good five or six years younger than she was, and she had been told that Australians were informal people.

‘Are we here?’ she asked vaguely. She had no idea how long her mind had been churning while her eyes had flickered behind their closed lids.

‘No,’ he said, ‘But I thought it was probably hours since they gave you breakfast on the plane. It was a toss-up between letting you sleep and getting you fed. Did I pick the right one?’

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she admitted, finding it easier to be honest with him than she had expected. ‘Just thinking.’

‘That can give you an appetite.’

She smiled. ‘It has. Or something has.’

‘Rightio, then.’

Rightio? Weird word! Cute, actually. The difference, the newness of it in his easy accent, blew across the raw-burned surface of her soul like a gentle puff of wind, and she was still smiling as she got out of the car.

He hadn’t gone so far as to open the door for her. She might have mistrusted that degree of chivalry. But he was standing there waiting, and he reached out a hand to steady her as she stood up.

The kerb was unexpectedly high. She held onto him, closing her fingers around a forearm that was bare and warm and ropy with muscle, while his hand remained cupped beneath her elbow.

‘Oh-h! The sidewalk is going up and down,’ she said.

‘Having your own personal earthquake?’

‘No, it’s more gentle than that. A kind of quavery undulation.’

He laughed. ‘It’s that long flight, and the beginnings of jet-lag. What time is it now in Boston?’

‘Um…’

‘Let’s see…’

They both began a mental calculation.

‘Sydney is sixteen hours ahead,’ she supplied. ‘Which means…’

He got there first. ‘Yesterday evening, then. Around sevenish. You probably are hungry in that case, and an empty stomach wouldn’t be helping.’

‘No,’ she agreed, although this wobbly sidewalk was probably more the result of months of stress and inadequate sleep than a mere sixteen-hour time difference and a few hours without food.

‘Shall I let go?’ he asked cheerfully.

‘Not yet.’

It seemed like a long time since she’d had a man’s physical support, and it felt better than she could have imagined. He wasn’t in a hurry. He didn’t have an agenda. He was polite and steady, and she felt very safe.

‘OK,’ he said, tightening his grip a little.

Their eyes met and held for a moment before they both looked away. He was very good-looking. She hadn’t taken in this fact until now. It was in the shape of his face—the square forehead, the strong cheekbones and chin. It was in his easy, even smile, too, and in what that smile did to his blue eyes. They twinkled and softened, and looked a little wicked.

But this wasn’t just about looks, she realised. This was about—

Dear heaven, we’re going to have an affair!

The thought sliced into her mind without a shadow of warning, leaving her breathless. She could almost see it—the alluring progression of it—laid out before her like the squares on a life-sized Monopoly board, improbably perfect. A sizzlingly hot, totally heedless, carefree, life-affirming, fabulous affair, which would come to a painless, mutually-agreed-upon end some time before she was due to head home to that much chillier place called Real Life.

She dropped his delicious, masculine forearm like a live snake, her heart pounding.

This doesn’t happen to me. The whole idea is ridiculous. I don’t have intuitions like this. I’m scared. Would I really want something like that? No! Surely I wouldn’t! And surely I’m wrong! Of course I’m wrong!

‘I’m starving,’ she said aloud.

Wow.

Say it again.

Wow.

Don’t let it show on your face, Steve.

This woman is…No, she’s not gorgeous. Not even pretty. Something much better, and much more interesting. She’s magnetic, womanly, responsive.

He hadn’t felt it at first. He had been too busy thinking about the last time he’d been at Sydney airport, several months ago, seeing Agnetha off on her flight back home to Sweden.

The memory was like a splinter in his thumb. Yes, sure, he knew it wasn’t a major wound, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. And it had preoccupied him more than he’d wanted it to, during his wait for the visiting American doctor.

Did I even consider getting serious, asking Agnetha to marry me? No!

If she’d asked me to go to Sweden with her, would I have gone? No!

So what’s my problem?

One of sheer, bloody male ego, perhaps. He was…miffed…that Agnetha had apparently viewed him the same way she’d viewed the second-hand surfboard she’d bought at the surf shop in Narralee. Something to be enjoyed during her stay, but not something to take home with her, except in a photo or two. The surfboard was still in the back shed, beside his own. Agnetha had smiled as she’d waved goodbye. Five months down the track, she hadn’t even sent a postcard.

Now, here was another visitor from the northern hemisphere, equipped with what was known as special needs registration so that she could work here in a rural hospital in her surgical specialty. She was about fifteen years older than Agnetha. She had a long, thick, satisfying rope of honey-gold hair, bound back in a braid, instead of a fine thatch of short, Scandinavian blonde.

She had skin that would probably freckle like bits of melted milk chocolate under the Australian sun, while Agnetha’s skin had remained a perfect pale gold. Candace had almond-shaped eyes like brown pebbles, polished by the sea, while Agnetha’s were blue and clear and round. She had a ripe, luscious figure, with exquisitely full breasts and rounded hips, instead of a lean, almost boyish slimness.

And she had a lot more living evident in her face.

Terry had told him that Dr Fletcher had been divorced last year, and that she had a fifteen-year-old daughter. Well, it showed. Some of the sadness and complexity showed, around her tawny eyes and her generous mouth. For some reason, it actually added to the quiet richness of her unconventional beauty.

There was one thing that Candace Fletcher and Agnetha Thorhus had in common, however. With both of them, Steve had recognised within an hour or two of meeting them that there was a definite, undeniable and very bewitching spark. In this case, he wasn’t yet sure what he intended to do about it.

He took Candace to the café that was housed in the little town’s former bank. The place had a lot of charm, and excellent Devonshire teas.

‘My stomach is suddenly saying dinner, very loudly, at eleven-thirty in the morning,’ Candace confessed, so she began with a bowl of pumpkin soup, some salad and a hot, buttered roll. Then she moved on to scones with strawberry jam and whipped cream.

Not particularly hungry himself, Steve drank black coffee while he sat back and watched her eat. She was good at it. Just the right combination of fastidiousness and relish. Her response to the whipped cream was particularly appealing, and when she had finished there was a tiny beauty spot of white froth left just beyond the corner of her mouth.

Knowing that it wasn’t just a casual gesture, he leaned forward and used the tip of one finger to wipe it off. She didn’t object. Didn’t even look startled.

She knows, he thought, and felt an odd little flutter inside his chest which he didn’t have a name for.

She knows, too, just the way I do. She knows that something could happen between us. Whether it will or not, neither of us has decided yet…

It was a very pretty drive, Candace decided.

Dairy country, according to Steve. To the right, cliff-like escarpments rose above thick forests of eucalypts, but as the steepness of the terrain shelved away, the forest gave way to fenced farmland that was lush and green. To the left, in the distance, Candace glimpsed the sea. It twinkled in the sun like Steve Colton’s eyes.

And I’ll be looking at this sight every single day for the next year…

Looking at the sea, not the eyes.

Terry had arranged the rental of a furnished beach cottage for her, sending details, including photographs, of three or four for her to choose from. Narralee wasn’t quite on the coast but a mile or two inland, built on the banks of a river’s coastal estuary.

She hadn’t wanted the tameness and tranquillity of a river, no matter how pretty it was. She’d wanted the sea, fresh and wild and as solitary as possible, and the place she’d selected was in a little seaside community called Taylor’s Beach, about ten minutes’ drive away.

Steve had the address, and the keys. As soon as he pulled into the short driveway, she knew that the house and its setting were going to go way beyond her expectations. The house was built high, with the utilitarian parts beneath—carport, laundry, storage. On top, with magnificent views of the sea, were the living areas. There were other houses close by but, with tangles of bushland garden surrounding them, they didn’t impinge.

Steve helped Candace carry her luggage inside, then watched with a grin on his face as she simply wandered from room to room, uttering incoherent exclamations of pleasure.

‘You like it, then?’ he asked finally, when she returned to stand, woolly-witted, in front of the French windows that opened onto a shaded deck.

‘It’s perfect!’

‘I told Terry you’d pick this one if you were any good at reading photographs.’

‘They didn’t do it justice.’

‘How about my descriptions?’

‘Oh, it was you who wrote those?’

‘I tried to be objective, but probably didn’t succeed. I’m incurably biased. Couldn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to live along this stretch of beach.’

‘So where do you live?’

‘Five doors down.’

‘Right.’ She nodded, and looked quickly out at the ocean again before their eyes could meet. Five doors down. That had the potential to be very convenient. ‘Um, I like the interior, too, as well as the setting and the views,’ she added, speaking too fast.

The house wasn’t elaborate or huge. There was an open-plan lounge and dining room, a modern kitchen, a generous bathroom and two airy bedrooms, one furnished with twin beds, one with a queen-size. But with a whole world of sand and ocean and sky out there, she didn’t need interior space. The rooms were decorated in summery blues and yellows, with light, casual touches of good taste in the occasional piece of ceramic work or glassware.

Steve opened the French windows, and a sea breeze combed through the outer screens and puffed air into the full-length blue and yellow curtains, which were pulled back on their tracks to reveal the view. Candace went out onto the deck, willing him not to follow her. She could smell the fresh salt in the air at once.

Here on the deck, the outdoor furniture was made of cane. It didn’t normally appeal to her, but fitted in this setting. Yes, she would eat here at this little cane and glass table and watch the ocean, every chance she got…

‘I think Linda was planning to pick up some basic supplies for you,’ Steve said behind her, just inside. ‘Shall I check the fridge?’

‘Thanks.’

‘Then I ought to head off. I have appointments at my practice, starting at two.’

‘You’ve been terrific.’ She stepped back into the cool living room.

They were both being very neutral and polite with each other now.

‘Terry wants me to bring you into the hospital tomorrow morning, to meet everyone and get you orientated a little before you start in earnest on Monday. We’ve had to send a lot of our general surgery patients further north since before Christmas, when Dr Elphick retired. Quite a few people chose to postpone their operations, though, so you’ll be busy straight away.’

‘Yes, I was going to ask about all that. And about the other two hospitals I’m covering as well.’

‘Better talk to Terry. Is it all right if I pick you up at eight-thirty?’

‘I’ll be ready.’

She watched as he opened the fridge and the pantry. He confirmed, ‘Yes, Linda’s been here.’

‘Should I know about Linda?’

‘Linda Gardner, our local ob. You’re sharing professional rooms with her. Terry arranged it. With luck you’ll meet her tomorrow. Looks like she’s decided you’ll have eggs for dinner. Unless you phone out for take-away.’

‘The phone’s connected, then?’ She was pleased to hear it.

‘Yep. Of course, you’ll want to ring home, won’t you?’

Another odd word. Ring, instead of call. Quaint. Cute.

‘Um, where is it, I wonder? I can’t see it.’

‘Think I noticed it by the bed.’

‘Thanks. I won’t keep you.’

‘See you tomorrow, then.’

Seconds later, he was loping down the steps at the side of the house to his car.

Alone. Candace was alone, the way she had craved to be for months. Finding a plastic pitcher of iced water in the fridge, she poured herself a glass. Saw the eggs Steve had mentioned and decided that, yes, they’d be fine for her evening meal. If she lasted that long. The floor of the house was rocking up and down like the deck of a boat. Glass in hand, she went back through the French doors and onto the deck to watch the sea.

Just me, with the ocean for company.

It felt different to what she had expected. It was a happier, zestier feeling. She had more than half expected to zero right in on that comfortable-looking bed, covered in an intricately pieced patchwork quilt, and sob her eyes out.

In fact, she’d actually planned to indulge in the painfully luxurious release of being able to cry for hours, as stormily as she wanted to, without the possibility of interruption.

But, no, she didn’t want to cry now after all.

Mom was the one who had suggested this whole thing. Mom, the redoubtable, loving Elaine West.

‘Couldn’t you go away, darling?’ she had said five months ago, when Candace had gone to her with the blind pain of a wounded animal, freshly ripped apart by the news of Brittany’s pregnancy.

‘I don’t know if I can stand it, Mom,’ she had gasped, barely able to speak. ‘She’s radiant, while he’s…oh…already shopping for cigars. Not literally, but—’

‘I know what you mean, Candy.’

‘They had prenatal testing and they already know it’s a boy. Suddenly it turns out that Todd has “always wanted a son”. To me, he spent years arguing that one child was enough. Expensive enough. Sacrifice enough. Career-threatening enough. For his sake, I gave away the bassinet and the baby clothes. I told myself he was right. That Maddy was enough. But, oh, I wanted another baby! And now—’

‘Couldn’t you go away?’ Elaine said.

‘Away?’

‘Some kind of professional fellowship or exchange. Or a temporary position. In Alaska, or somewhere.’

‘Alaska?’

‘You don’t need them on your doorstep, Candy.’ Her mother was the only person in the world who was ever permitted to call her Candy, and even then only at times, when she needed to feel six years old again, nourishing her soul with a mother’s wisdom. ‘You don’t need to run into Brittany at the gym—’

‘Ha! As if I still go to the gym!’

Eighteen months ago, Todd had taken out a family membership, saying they both needed to get fitter. Brittany, aged twenty-five to Todd’s forty-four, taught aerobics there. Todd had quickly become very fit indeed. End of story. Candace felt personally insulted that the whole thing was such a cliché.

‘Or at the hospital.’

‘The hospital?’

‘Prenatal check-ups. Your OB/GYN has her practice in the hospital’s adjoining professional building, doesn’t she?’

‘Of course, you’re right. I know I’ll see her. Todd and I have a daughter together, remember? Occasionally we actually pass her back and forth at his place, instead of on safe, neutral terrain like school or the mall. Occasionally we even speak to each other.’ The words were hard with bitterness.

‘Maybe Maddy would like to get away, too?’ Elaine had suggested.

But when Candace had remembered Terry Davis’s comment, at a recent international medical conference, that rural Australia was chronically short of medical specialists, and had teed up this temporary appointment, Maddy had elected to stay behind with her father.

It hadn’t been in any sense a rejection of Candace. She knew that. It was about friends and routine, not about choosing one parent over the other, but it still hurt all the same.

She’s growing up. I’ll miss her more than she misses me. But Mom was right. This was probably the best thing I could have done.

After finishing her iced water, she found the phone by the bed. Called Maddy first. Heard Brittany’s perky voice, which quickly crystallised into glassy, high-pitched politeness when she realised who was on the other end of the line.

Candace had a brief conversation with Maddy, then called her mother, who said ‘See!’ in a very satisfied voice when she heard about the beachfront cottage and the acres of sea and sky. ‘Have you explored?’

‘I haven’t even unpacked!’

‘Dr Davis met you on time?’

‘Uh, no, he had to delegate to a colleague, but it worked out fine.’

And I managed to avoid mentioning Steve’s name, which I’m relieved about, and I know exactly why I didn’t want to mention it, which is unsettling me like anything…

When Candace had put down the phone, she looked at the suitcases and the box, stuck her tongue out at them and said in her best new millennium teen-speak, ‘You think I’m gonna unpack you right now, when there’s that beach out there? Like, as if!’

She walked the length of the beach twice, breathing the air and letting the cool water froth around her ankles. Then she unpacked, showered, made and ate scrambled eggs on toast, and conked out at seven in the evening in the big, comfortable bed with the sound of the sea in her ears.

She fell asleep as suddenly as if someone had opened up a panel in her back and removed the batteries.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS the best night’s sleep Candace had had in months, and it lasted until almost five the next morning. This meant she had plenty of time to iron a skirt and blouse, have another shower and eat breakfast on the deck, watching the sun rise over the sea. She was ready for Steve Colton at eight-thirty.

He was prompt, and if she’d had any sort of a theory overnight that yesterday’s intuitive sense of chemistry had been only a product of her jet-lagged disorientation, that theory was knocked on the head at once.

The chemistry was still there, invisible, intangible, lighter than air, yet as real as a third person with them in the room. Neither of them acknowledged it in any way. They didn’t get close enough to touch. Any eye contact they chanced to make was snapped apart again in milliseconds.

But, oh, it was there, and she was convinced he felt it, too.

She spent half an hour with Terry at the Narralee District Hospital. He had earned a certain seniority, having been a visiting medical officer in general surgery here for over twenty-five years, but in fact there wasn’t the official hierarchy of medical staff that Candace was used to.

There wasn’t very much that she was used to at all! It was quite a contrast to come from a 600-bed high-rise American city hospital to this low, rambling, red-brick building, which housed a mere fifty beds.

‘And six of those are political,’ Terry said darkly.

‘Political?’

‘They’re not beds at all, in most people’s definition. We have six reclining chairs where day-surgery patients recover until we’re satisfied that fluids are going in one end and coming out the other. But those six chairs make the numbers look better, so beds they’ve become and beds they’ll remain.’

He sounded tired and tense, and Candace longed to urge him, Go. Someone else can show me around.

Steve Colton, maybe? He’d muttered something about ‘errands’ after he’d deposited her into Terry’s care, and then he had disappeared. She was disturbed to realise that she was wondering, in the back of her mind, when she’d see him again.

She wanted to tell Terry, The tour can wait. I know you’re anxious to be on your way.

Terry was taking his wife, Myrna, up to Sydney today for a consultation with a top oncologist. The result of her second mammogram and fine-needle aspiration had come back yesterday afternoon, and there was no longer any doubt about the diagnosis. It was breast cancer.

They could only hope that it had been caught early, and Terry was clearly racked with worry. He was also behaving stubbornly in his insistence on a tour and a talk. He must feel as if he had let Candace down by not meeting her at the airport yesterday, and was determined to make up for it.

Accepting that she would only delay his departure if she kept apologising for her bad timing, Candace tried to ask a few intelligent questions and keep the pace brisk.

‘No full-time doctors here at all?’

‘No, we manage purely with Visiting Medical Officers. The local GPs cover the emergency department and the on-call roster, assist with surgery and handle anaesthesia. Steve probably mentioned that.’

‘Yes, he did, but not in any detail.’

‘Then there are about half a dozen of us who handle various specialities, travelling between several small hospitals in the region, as you’ll be doing. You can work out your own timetable, within certain constraints. Linda Gardner has space in her rooms, and will share her staff with you.’

‘Yes, Steve told me. Thanks for arranging it. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’

‘You’ll like her, I think. She’s married with two teenagers.’

‘We’ll have something in common in that area, then!’

‘Basically, you’ll probably want to operate one day a week here in Narralee, and a day every fortnight at Harpoon Bay and Shoalwater.’

‘A slower pace than I’m used to.’

‘Enjoy it!’

‘Oh, I intend to.’

The hospital had already created a pleasing impression. Its red-tiled roof had pale green lichen growing on it, attesting to its comfortable age. Above what must once have been the main entrance, the date ‘1936’ was carved. Mature eucalyptus trees shaded thick couch-grass lawns, and windows tinted with a gold reflective film ran all along one side of the building.

Most of the windows were open, providing a volume of fresh, mild air that was unheard of in Candace’s experience. In Boston, winters were arctic, summers were steamy and hospitals had air-conditioning.

With its pink walls and mottled linoleum floors, the place was too clean and cheerful to be called shabby, and there was an atmosphere of peace, underlaid by a low buzz of unhurried activity which suggested that hospitals didn’t have to be nearly as dramatic and hectic as they always seemed on prime-time television.

Terry doggedly tramped the building from one end to the other on their tour. He showed Candace the eight-bed maternity unit, which opened onto a shaded veranda. He took her through the four-bed high-dependency unit, the agedcare rehab beds, day surgery, the pharmacy, Emergency and Physio. He even took her past the tiny chapel and even tinier kiosk, which was open for just one hour each day. Finally, he pointed out the electrical plant room.

It was a relief to both of them when he finally announced, ‘And now I must pick up Myrna. She’ll be packed and waiting. Steve should be back before too long. Find someone to make you a coffee, and—’

‘I can do coffee on my own, Terry,’ Candace said gently. Several strands of his grey hair had fallen onto the wrong side of his parting, and he was rubbing his stomach as if he had heartburn. ‘Just give Myrna my very best and have a safe trip.’ She almost pushed Terry out through the administration entrance.

She had no trouble over the coffee. Found the nursing staffroom and was at once invited in. She hadn’t finished her mug of unremarkable instant by the time Steve appeared in the doorway ten minutes later, but it didn’t matter.

‘Now, what do you need to get done?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m not seeing patients today, and you know Terry will have my guts for garters when he gets back if I haven’t been looking after you.’

‘He’ll have your…what?’

‘Guts for garters.’ He grinned.

‘That sounds violent.’

‘So you’d better let me look after you, then, hadn’t you?’

‘Apparently!’

‘Good decision.’

‘Right, well, I need to get groceries, open a bank account and buy a car,’ she announced.

Steve raised his eyebrows and grinned, appreciating the way she’d ticked off each item on her finger with such assurance. Perhaps he shouldn’t have teased her with that piece of colourful Australian idiom just now. She didn’t need him to entertain her so deliberately.

‘Need to learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road, too?’ he suggested.

‘Well, yes.’ Now she looked less confident, but the effect was just as attractive.

His expectations for the day notched themselves a little higher, and he was aware that they’d been high enough to begin with.

‘I’ll give you a driving lesson,’ he offered.

OK, now she looked quite panicky. She gave a shriek, but she was smiling as widely as he was. ‘This is going to be a treat for my fellow road-users!’

‘Is that where we should start?’ he asked. ‘With the driving lesson? I can take you somewhere quiet first off then, when you’ve got some confidence, you can do the shuttling round to the bank and the supermarket. I’ll just sit in the passenger seat and give a terrified hiss every now and then…’

‘And slam your foot onto an imaginary brake pedal on the floor. I get the picture. Is it an automatic?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And is it insured?’

‘Comprehensively.’

‘OK, let’s do it before I start thinking of excuses. How’s the public transport around here?’

‘Not good enough for commuting between three hospitals more than fifty kilometres apart, every week.’

‘Thought not.’

So he gave her a driving lesson, and it wasn’t nearly as hair-raising as either of them had feared.

I’m not flirting with her, Steve realised. Why is that? I’d planned to.

He had acquired some skill in this area over the years. He was nearly thirty-three, now. His brother Matt, three years his senior and married since the age of twenty-five, kept telling him, ‘Get serious. Don’t miss the boat. Stop going after women who have a use-by date.’

‘Use-by date?’

‘Like Agnetha. Women that you know are going to leave and let you off the hook. There was that other girl from Perth, too. Agnetha wasn’t the first. Settle down!’

And he always found himself thinking, Yeah, obviously. Of course I will…I’m not a hardened bachelor. But not yet. Don’t think I’ve quite come to grips with the married man’s job description yet. When he took on a responsibility—and he was in no doubt that marriage was that—he liked to be sure it was one he was fully equipped to handle.

To prove to himself, and perhaps to Matt as well, that he hadn’t missed the boat, be it kayak or cruise ship or ferry, he flirted with a variety of women. Mutually enjoyable. Nothing heavy-handed. Not threatening to anyone.

He kept it very light, never trespassed into the sorts of overtly sexual references and double meanings that he, along with most women, would have considered sleazy. He conceded that there was probably some truth to Matt’s observation about women with a use-by date as well, although he didn’t like the way his brother had worded it.

Candace Fletcher was only here for a year, and he was fully aware of the fact.

So perhaps this is flirting, he decided. We’re laughing. Teasing each other a little. Only it’s even lighter than usual, so I’m calling it something else.

Why?

Because I don’t want to scare her off.

There was something in her eyes, something in the way she held that full, sensitive mouth. Coupled with the fact of her divorce, he was pretty certain that she would want a man to take things carefully, no matter how sudden and strong the spark was between them, no matter that she was leaving after a year.

Perhaps the spark was a little deceptive, too. They might both feel it, but that didn’t mean acting on it would be a good idea. Some instinct told him to tread carefully, and to think before he acted in this case.

I didn’t think twice with Agnetha, and neither did she…

The thought flashed through his mind and disappeared again.

They spent an hour on the quiet roads of Narralee’s newest housing development before Candace announced that she was ready for downtown.

‘Yes, I know you don’t call it that,’ she added.

‘Just town will do.’

‘Tell me how to get there.’

She parked without difficulty in the car park behind the bank and opened her account, then he showed her the supermarket nearest to Taylor’s Beach and they tooled down the aisles with a big metal shopping trolley, which she filled to the brim.

Always an instructive experience, shopping with a woman for the first time. What secret vices did she display in the confectionery aisle? Did she actually cook, or merely reheat in the microwave? Agnetha had lived on rabbit food, Steve considered. Celery and nuts and carrots. Horse food, too. Various flaky things that looked and tasted like chaff.

Candace’s diet held more promise and less obsessiveness. She smelled a rock melon—‘canteloupe’ she called it—with her eyes closed and a heaven-sent expression on her face. Then she put two of them in the trolley, right on top of the frozen chocolate cheesecake. She selected some delicate lamb cutlets and a medallion of pork, and they ended up lying next to the five-pack of lurid yellow chicken-flavoured two-minute noodle soups. She apparently drank hot chocolate, tea, three kinds of juice and four kinds of coffee.

He thought he’d been reasonably subtle in his analysis of her purchases, but he was wrong. When they stood waiting at the checkout, she tilted her head to one side and demanded, ‘So, Doctor, how many points did I lose? About fifty for the cheesecake and the cookies, obviously, but I believe I do have all the food groups represented in reasonable proportion.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘You were, too! Silently analysing everything that went in the cart. Comparing me to—well, to whoever.’

Agnetha. He almost said it, but managed to stop himself. Felt colour rising into his neck and thought in disbelief, My God, I’m blushing!

‘I thought so!’ said Candace under her breath.

It was a type of audition. She teetered on the edge of resenting it. He had no right to judge and draw conclusions like that!

Then, with more honesty and less bluster, she decided that she was doing exactly the same thing herself. Auditioning him for this imaginary, unlikely affair she couldn’t get out of her head.

So far, he seemed like exactly the right candidate for such a thing, if she was going to consider the question in such cold-blooded terms. He would be easygoing, physical, fun to be with. He’d also possess certain shared understandings that didn’t need talking about, because they worked in the same profession.

Yes, quite definitely an ideal candidate for an affair.

Is this what Mom was thinking about when she told me to go away? That I’d meet someone and have a crazy fling, get my socks sizzled off and come home as revitalised as if I’d been to a health spa for three months? That I’d be over Todd and Brittany? Dear God, over it. That it wouldn’t hurt any more, and twist me up inside with bitterness and resentment and regret…?

The idea was both terrifying and dangerously alluring.

With her breathing shallower than usual, she asked, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you need to do today? This is taking a long time.’

‘My schedule’s clear, so don’t worry about it. Shall we take this lot home to your place and unpack it, then grab some lunch before we do the car?’

‘Sandwiches? We have the makings for them now.’

‘Yep. Great.’

They got to the first car dealership at two, after a lunch so quick and casual Candace might have been sharing it with Maddy. The salesman then spent half an hour addressing himself exclusively to Steve, even when it ought to have been quite clear to him that Candace was the prospective buyer.

‘Do you think he realises why he didn’t make a sale?’ Steve asked her when they left.

She laughed. ‘I handled it. In fact, it was useful. He talked to you while I had an uninterrupted chance to think about whether I really wanted the car.’

‘I take it you didn’t?’

She waggled her hand from side to side. ‘Probably not. Let’s keep looking.’

At the second and third dealerships, she test-drove two vehicles and finally decided on a compact European model, with very low mileage on the odometer. She felt exhilarated and slightly queasy at having parted with so much money so quickly. Still, it didn’t make sense to delay. She was only here for a year. She needed to get organised, get her life sorted out, hit the ground running.

Did this apply to arranging a quick, therapeutic fling as well?

‘Now you just have to drive it home,’ Steve said, reminding her that in all spheres of life, actions had consequences.

‘I don’t know the way,’ she answered.

‘Which is why you’ll follow me.’

By the time they reached home, it was late afternoon. Steve suggested an evening meal at a local Chinese restaurant, and that sounded fine.

Sounded fine.

In reality, it was harder. When someone was seated a yard away and facing in your direction, it wasn’t as easy to avoid eye contact as it had been during driving lessons and grocery shopping. Candace drank a glass of red wine and regretted it. Jet-lag swamped her again, and the lighting in the restaurant was warm, inviting and intimate. She felt woozy, smily, relaxed and far too conscious of him.

When their eyes did meet, it was like tugging on a cord. She was a marionette and he was controlling the strings. He was making her nod and smile and listen with her chin cushioned in her palm and her elbow resting on the table.

‘Hey, are you falling asleep?’

‘No…’

‘You will be soon. I’d better take you home.’

‘You’re making my decisions for me,’ she retorted.

‘Only tonight,’ he said softly. ‘Promise you, the rest of the decisions will be all yours.’

Perhaps he hadn’t meant it to sound like such an intimate threat, but Candace panicked anyway. Her sleepiness vanished and she pulled herself to her feet, grating the legs of the chair on the restaurant’s scratchy carpeting.

‘Damn right they will!’ she said, and saw his startled expression.

‘Candace, I didn’t mean—I meant it, OK?’

‘I—I know. I’m sure you did.’

She turned away from him, felt his fingers slide in a quick, feather-light caress from her shoulder to her wrist, and was absolutely positive that she’d end up in his arms tonight. The idea was so breathtakingly terrifying that she didn’t wait for him to pay for their meal. She simply stumbled out of the restaurant, hurried along the sidewalk and stood by the driver’s side door of her new car until he caught up to her.

Steve didn’t say anything about it. Not then. Not for the next few days. And he didn’t kiss her.

He had more than one opportunity. Terry and his wife were still away, but the rest of Narralee’s small medical community gathered to welcome her at a barbecue at Linda and Rob Gardner’s on Saturday evening. She enjoyed meeting everyone, and laid some tentative foundations of friendship.

As Terry had predicted, Linda was going to be nice. She had a no-nonsense haircut, a chunky build, a throaty laugh and a wicked sense of humour. She was down to earth in her opinions, happy with her career and open in her love for her children and her even more down-to-earth husband.

Getting over her jet-lag, Candace stayed until ten o’clock and drove herself home, then saw Steve’s car breeze past her house as she stood on the deck, watching the moonlight over the water.

He glanced across, saw her there, slowed down and waved. She almost wondered if he would come over. They’d had a long conversation at the barbecue. Lots of laughs in it, and some quiet moments, too. If he did come, she would offer him tea or coffee, while secretly quaking in her shoes…

But, no, he didn’t show up.

The next morning, they met on the beach. Candace hadn’t swum in the ocean in years, but loved it again at once. Taylor’s Beach was patrolled and flagged in the Life-saving Association’s colours of red and yellow, so she felt very safe swimming between the flags. Had no desire to go out as far as those surfers, though, in their slick black wet-suits.

One of the surfers was Steve.

She didn’t recognise him until he came to shore with his creamy fibreglass board tucked under one arm, and he didn’t see her until he’d put the board down, pulled his wetsuit to his waist and towelled himself.

He did this with rough energy, like a dog shaking off the water, then he caught sight of her, slung his towel over his shoulder and came over. Dropping her gaze, she was treated to the sight of his bare, tanned legs still dripping with water from the knees down, and his feet, lean and smooth and brown, covered with sand.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘You’re not afraid of sharks out there?’

‘Only when I see a fin.’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘We get dolphins here sometimes. They like surfing, too.’

‘Now you’re definitely joking!’

‘No! Their bodies are perfect for it. They catch fish around here, too.’

‘I’m going to look out for them. Still don’t quite believe you…’

‘You’ll see them,’ he predicted. ‘If you spend any time on these beaches. The shape of their fin is different to a shark’s, and so is the way they move in the water, but when you first glimpse one, before you’ve had time to work out whether it’s shark or dolphin every hair stands up the way it does on a cornered cat. I tell you!’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Yes, a couple of times I’ve been damned scared!’

He was still a little breathless. His hair stood on end and looked darker than it did when it was dry. The coarse plastic teeth of the zip on his wetsuit had pulled apart to just below his navel. She could tell by his six-pack of stomach muscles that he kept himself fit, and by his tan that he didn’t always surf in his wetsuit.

My God, he’s gorgeous! she thought, her insides twisting. Who am I kidding, that he’d want an affair? With me? Sitting here in my plain black suit. He’d probably flirt like this with my grandmother. Oh, I mean, was it even flirting? It was only friendliness. He was making me welcome very nicely, as Terry would have done, and I—Oh, lord, I’m so raw, right now, I actually felt nourished by it. Totally misunderstood it, obviously.

A girl in an extremely small orange bikini wandered past. She was as blonde as natural silk, sported a tan the colour of fresh nutmeg and looked about twenty-five. For one crazy moment, Candace was tempted to reach out, haul her across by a bikini strap and park her right in front of Steve.

Here you go. Much more suitable. My apologies for trespassing on your personal space by even contemplating that you and I might have—

‘Ready for another dip?’ he said. He had taken no notice of the orange bikini, or the body inside it, and now the girl had gone past.

‘Um. Yes. Lovely.’ Oh, hell! ‘That would be really nice.’ She tried again, and managed a more natural tone. ‘I’ve been pretty timid on my own, but it’d be great to get out beyond the point where every wave dumps a bucket of sand down my front.’

He laughed. ‘OK, let’s go.’

Then he reached for the plastic zipper and peeled the wetsuit down even further.

He was wearing a swimsuit, of course. Board shorts, in fact. Black, with a blue panel on each side. Beneath the wetsuit, they’d ridden down below his hips. He had his back to her now, and she could see the shallow hollow just above the base of his spine. Like the rest of him, it was tanned to a warm bronze, and was dappled with tiny, sun-bleached hairs.

A moment later, he had hauled casually on the waistband and pulled the board shorts back to where they belonged.

They swam together for an hour, then she went home for lunch and he put his wetsuit back on and returned to the outer boundaries of the surf. She didn’t see him when she went back to the beach for a walk late in the afternoon, didn’t see him when she walked past his house on the return trip, although his car was in the driveway and a sprinkler was spinning round on the lawn.

Definitely, he was just being friendly.

And I appreciate that, she realised. Maybe that’s the problem. I appreciate it, and I need it too much at the moment. I’d better get the rest of it under control.

Candace didn’t see Steve again until Tuesday, when she had her first surgical list, consisting of three patients. Steve was scheduled to handle the anaesthesia.

She’d seen each of her patients the day before for a brief chat, and had gone through their reports from the preadmission clinic. No danger signals. Chest X-rays and cardiograms all normal. Blood pressures within the acceptable range.

First was a scheduled gall-bladder removal on a fifty-three-year-old woman, followed by two straightforward hernia repairs, both on older men. Blood had been cross-matched for the gall-bladder patient as there was a higher risk of bleeding during this operation. All three of the patients were here on a day-patient basis. After the surgery, they’d make use of the ‘political beds’—those reclining chairs that Terry had been so cynical about.

Preparing for surgery was like coming home. The OR—Theatre One, which sounded odd to her ears—was a place in which she was used to possessing undisputed control. She loved this environment, and the way everything was geared towards a single focus. One patient, one operation and six people who knew exactly what they were doing.

The scrub sinks were different—old-fashioned porcelain, with long levers on the faucets which you flicked on and off with a quick touch. She was used to stainless steel, and foot pedals. Theatre One had washable vinyl walls and the hard, antistatic floors which she knew only too well. They were murder on backs and legs after you’d been standing there for more than a couple of hours.

Candace was the last to scrub, and everything was ready to go now that she had arrived. She briefly greeted the other staff and the patient. Mrs Allenby looked a little nervous, of course. Years ago, Candace had had to fight the instinct to give her patients a reassuring pat, but now it was second nature to keep her gloved hands back.

There was music playing on a black compact disc player set up on a shelf. Something classical. Beethoven, Candace recognised. Not that it made any difference.

‘Could we have that off, please?’ she said.

The scout nurse, whose name badge was hidden beneath a green surgical gown, immediately went across and pressed a button on the player, bringing silence.

‘Would you like something else, Dr Fletcher?’ she offered. Her name was Pat, Candace found out a little later.

‘No, thanks,’ she answered, calm and polite. ‘I can’t operate with music.’

She registered one or two slightly surprised looks above pale green disposable masks, but didn’t take the time to explain. This was her space now. All surgeons had their quirks, and she wasn’t going to apologise for hers, now or later. She never swore or threw things or yelled at the nurses; she didn’t practise her golf swing to warm up her hands; she was consistent in her preference of cat-gut length and instrument size.

But she liked silence. It helped her sense of focus. No music. A minimum of chatter. No jokes or ribbing. Absolutely no disparaging comments about the patient.

‘OK, we’re looking good at this end,’ Steve said a few minutes later.

‘Thanks, Dr Colton.’

Her gaze tangled with his as he looked briefly away from his monitors, and she could tell he was still thinking about the ‘no music’ thing. Maybe he’d chosen the Beethoven himself. Well, he could listen to Beethoven at home.

‘All right, are we ready for the gas?’ she asked, and began the operation.

She’d done it hundreds of times, probably.

Several litres of carbon dioxide were injected into the abdomen to provide a space to work in between the outer layers of tissue and the internal organs. A tiny incision allowed the passage of a laparoscope with an equally tiny camera on the end of it, manipulated by the assistant surgeon, Peter Moody. What the camera saw was then screened like a video, allowing Candace to guide her instruments. The lumpy, disorientating appearance of the human abdominal cavity on the screen was a familiar sight to her now.

This patient’s symptoms suggested the need for a cholangiogram, which would confirm or rule out the presence of stones in the bile duct. In this case, the X-ray-type scan showed that, yes, there were three small stones present. Candace decided to remove them immediately, rather than bring Mrs Allenby back for a second procedure at a later date.

The monitors indicated that she was handling the anaesthesia well. Candace had no trouble in removing the stones successfully.

‘If I know Mrs Allenby, she’ll want to see those later,’ Steve said.

‘She’s your patient?’ Candace asked.

‘Since I started here four years ago. And she’s got a very enquiring mind, haven’t you Mrs A.?’ Under anaesthesia, Mrs Allenby’s conscious mind was almost certain to be unaware, but there was strong evidence that many patients could retain a memory of what happened during surgery. ‘She wanted to know last week—’ Steve began.

‘Could we save it until later?’ Candace cut in.

‘Sure.’ He gave a brief nod and a shrug.

Again, there was a moment of tension and adjustment amongst the other staff. Candace ignored it and kept going. She used tiny metal clips to close off the bile duct at the base of the gall bladder, as well as the vessel which provided its blood supply. Next, she used a cautery to detach the gall bladder from the liver, once again working through tiny incisions.

She brought the organ to the incision in Mrs Allenby’s navel and emptied its contents through a drain. The gall bladder was limp now, and slid easily through the incision. She checked the area for bleeding and satisfied herself that all was looking good, then the patient’s abdomen was drained of gas, the incisions were covered in small bandages, Steve reversed the anaesthesia and the operation was over.

Easy to describe, but it had still taken over two hours, and there was more work yet to be done. The two nurses chanted in chorus as they counted up instruments, sponges and gauze to make sure nothing was missing. Forceps and retractors clattered into metal bowls. Surgical drapes were bundled into linen bins. Mrs Allenby was wheeled, still unconscious, into the recovery annexe where two more nurses would monitor her breathing, consciousness, behaviour, blood pressure and pain as she emerged from anaesthesia.

The two hernia operations which came next were simpler and shorter. Both were of the type known as a direct inguinal hernia, which resulted from a weakness in the muscles in the groin area. A short incision just above the crease between thigh and abdomen on each patient allowed Candace to slip the bulging sac of internal tissue back into the abdominal cavity.

The first patient’s abdominal wall had quite a large area of weakness, and Candace asked for a sheet of synthetic mesh to strengthen it. The second patient, several years younger, needed only a series of sutures in the abdominal tissue itself. Each incision was closed with sutures, and both patients would rest on the reclining chairs in the day-surgery room after their first hour or two of close monitoring in the recovery annexe.

She would check on them as soon as she had showered, Candace decided. You never came out of surgery feeling clean.

The shower beckoned strongly as she pulled off her gloves and mask just outside the door of Theatre One. Behind her, Steve and the other staff were preparing for a Caesarean, and Candace crossed paths with Linda Gardner. The obstetrician was about to squeeze in a lunch-break while Theatre One was tidied and replenished with equipment, ready for her to take over.

‘Quiet in here today,’ Linda commented.

‘They’ll probably appreciate a request for rock and roll, I expect,’ Candace answered.

‘So you’re the culprit? You like reverent silence?’

‘Reverence isn’t a requirement,’ she returned quickly. ‘Silence is.’

‘No one gave you a hard time?’ Linda asked with a curious smile.

‘In surgery, I don’t give anyone the opportunity.’ She softened the statement with a smile in return, then went and answered the clamouring of her aching back with a long, hot shower.

She emerged in a skirt, blouse and white coat twenty minutes later to find Theatre Two up and running and ready for her.

‘All the symptoms of appendicitis, admitted through Emergency,’ on-call theatre sister Lynn Baxter explained.

‘Give me five minutes,’ Candace said.

‘And turn off the music?’

‘Word travels fast around here. Thanks very much, yes.’

As usual, she didn’t go on at length. Didn’t admit either that the unexpected extension of her list today was almost as unwelcome as the discovery that the last leg of a long flight home would be indefinitely delayed. She considered it her responsibility to each patient and to the rest of the surgical team never to talk about how she felt.

No complaints, no explanations. Her aching back and feet were private—her problem. So were hunger, thirst and an itchy nose or a throbbing head.

And as for the inner turmoil she’d felt during each agonising step between her discovery of Todd’s affair and their outwardly businesslike divorce…She had said nothing about it at all until the final papers had been signed and their marital assets divided. Then she had simply made an announcement in the doctors’ change-room at the end of a Friday list with a three-day weekend coming up. She had asked those present to pass the word around.

Most of her colleagues had been stunned, she knew, but they had three days to get used to the idea and to recognise the signals she was sending out. They knew her professional style by this time. Comments had been sympathetic and heartfelt, but mercifully brief…

Theatre Two was the exact twin of Theatre One, with all equipment and supplies set out in exactly the same way. This patient, a thirty-five-year-old woman with an uncomplicated medical history, had been given a pre-med through her drip and was already drowsy and relaxed, her considerable pain masked by the medication.

The appendix was notorious for sending out mixed signals, so Candace kept her mind open as she prepared to make the incision. You could open someone up and find nothing at all, even when a patient’s white cell count was up and all his or her symptoms slotted into place. Or you could find—

‘Good grief!’ she said.

She’d spotted it before anyone else. There was a tumour wrapped around the appendix, turning this operation from a routine excision into a complex feat of surgical technique.

‘It’s huge,’ muttered on-call assistant surgeon Mark Daley.

‘But still potentially benign,’ Candace said. ‘We’ll take it out straight away to send to Pathology, then explore a bit to see if there’s any obvious spread to other organs.’

She excised both appendix and tumour, then looked at the ovaries, which were the most likely sites for a primary tumour in a woman of this age. Fortunately, they looked healthy and normal. Neither was there any evidence of metastasis to the liver.

‘We’re looking pretty hopeful on this one,’ she concluded, and there was a sense of relief all round.

It was after three by the time Candace emerged from Theatre, and her stomach was aching sharply with hunger. She took another brief shower, grabbed a packet of potato chips from the vending machine in the emergency department, gulped some coffee and went straight in to check on the recovery of her day patients.

Mrs Allenby had eaten a sandwich and drunk some juice and tea, voided her bladder and shown a return of bowel sounds. She could manage a strong cough, her lungs were clear and she’d walked up and down the corridor a couple of times to assist her circulation.

‘But my shoulder is hurting,’ she said.

‘Your right shoulder?’

‘Yes.’

‘Strangely enough, that’s normal. Quite a common symptom. It’s called referred pain, and that’s really all you need to know about it, Mrs Allenby. It should go away on its own by the end of the day. You’ll probably notice some discomfort from gas as well. Your stomach doesn’t like being manhandled, and it may take a couple of days to settle down. But the surgery went very well, and I’m not anticipating any problems. Dr Colton would like to see you in his rooms in about a week to check on how you’re doing.’

‘I’ll make an appointment.’

‘Meanwhile, you can go home as soon as you’re ready. You have someone to pick you up?’

‘My husband’s waiting.’

‘Great! All the best, then. You were special, you know—my first patient in Australia.’

‘Oh, how nice!’

Mrs Allenby went to the patients’ change-room to dress, while Candace checked on her two hernia patients, who were both progressing normally but still too groggy to leave. As she slid her stethoscope around her neck, Candace heard Mrs Allenby say to a nurse, ‘All right, I’m ready. Do I get my stones now?’

She hid a smile as she crossed to the three-bed recovery annexe where Andrea Johnson was just emerging from her anaesthesia. Steve had predicted his patient’s interest in ‘her stones’. In a relatively small community like this one, where a patient’s GP could also be present during surgery, there would be more examples of this kind of knowledge. As Mrs Allenby had said in a different context, it was ‘nice’. A difference for Candace to enjoy while she was here.

Andrea Johnson was still very sleepy and disorientated. She was lying on a wheeled hospital bed a few metres from the other patient in Recovery, the Caesarean delivery from Theatre One.

‘Hurts,’ was all she wanted to say. ‘Feels awful.’

Candace ordered some additional pain relief, and out of the patient’s earshot said to the recovery annexe sister, ‘She’s not ready to hear about what we found and what we did.’

‘Wait until she goes upstairs?’ Robyn Wallace suggested.

‘Definitely. My notes are pretty clear, I think. I’ll follow up in the morning and answer any questions she’s come up with. If she seems too groggy to be told tonight, it can wait. And, of course, there’ll be a wait anyway for the pathology results. Does she have family here?’

‘No, she’s single apparently. Drove herself in.’

‘There must be someone to tell. Could you try and find out?’

‘She was probably in too much pain to think about next of kin before.’

‘That’s usually when people want family or a friend around.’

‘True.’ Sister Wallace nodded.

‘What have we got here? Two for the price of one?’ said a new voice just behind them.

It was Steve. As anaesthetist, he was technically responsible for any complications in patients for the first twenty-four hours following their surgery, and he’d be taking a look at the two hernia patients as well as the Caesarean delivery he’d just been involved with.

Candace didn’t understand his comment about two for the price of one. She assumed it was another Australian joke, but Sister Wallace looked blank as well.

‘They’re both my patients,’ he explained. ‘Sisters. And there’s a whole posse of other Johnson and Calvert relatives upstairs, waiting to see Carina and the baby. Should probably warn you,’ he added quietly to Sister Wallace, ‘sparks will fly if they each realise the other is here. Andrea and Carina don’t get on. Andrea seems to have cut herself off a bit lately.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind, and pull a curtain across,’ Sister Wallace drawled.

‘Speaking of getting on,’ Candace said lightly, ‘I’m heading off. It’s been an interesting first day, but I’m done now.’

She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Steve caught up to her as she reached her car.

‘Heading straight home?’

‘Yes, thanks to the existence of the frozen meals we picked up the other day, I don’t need to stop for anything.’

‘Frozen meals! Yum!’ he drawled. ‘How about steak instead?’

‘Too hungry to wait for steak.’

‘I’ll get it on the grill as soon as I get home. Walk down to my place when you’re ready, and we can call it a late lunch.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I know. If I had to, I’d be chafing by now. Terry said, “Look after her till Monday.”’

‘Ah, so he did say that?’

She felt the severity in her expression. Couldn’t always relax straight after surgery. He would probably think she was tight and humourless and no fun at all. From experience, however, she knew it would be worse to force a more laid-back mood. Wait until she got out of these cruel pantihose and unwound the stethoscope from her neck. She’d be far more relaxed then.

‘Yes, he did say that,’ Steve echoed steadily. ‘But it’s Tuesday now. This one’s pleasure, not duty. And I’m such a crash-hot GP I can tell just by looking at you that your iron stores are low.’

Unexpectedly, she laughed. ‘They probably are.’

‘You need steak. And a swim.’

‘The swim I won’t argue with.’

‘Neither will I, as long as it’s after the steak.’

‘All right…’

‘Then, when we’re sitting on the beach, I think we’ve got to talk about why you hesitated even for a second before you said yes to this,’ he finished.

Casual tone. Meaningful after-shock.

It was a threat. Candace was in no doubt about that. And it was a threat which sent twin curls of panic and dizzy need spiralling wildly through her blood. She stalled the car three times on the way home.

CHAPTER THREE

THEY lay side by side on their towels in silence, soaking up some late afternoon sun and digesting what couldn’t possibly have been called a late lunch.

Barbecued steak, a microwaved jacket potato and salad, dished up at a quarter to five? Not lunch. Delicious and satisfying, though. Steve Colton cooked steak very well.

He was going to ask me something, but I’ve forgotten what it was, Candace thought hazily.

She was too busy thinking about signals. Yes, those signals! The ones men sent to women, and the ones women, in their different way, sent back to men.

It’s been so long…So long since I had to decide if I was imagining it or not. If I wanted it or not. If a man really meant it or not. I was so sure about all those questions the other day, but now…

Some men had flirted with her, had given off signals, during her marriage to Todd. They had been signals she had casually interpreted as meaning, If you weren’t attached, I’d be interested. The key attitude on her part, of course, was ‘casually’. She had never needed to test out her perceptions, to work out whether she was right or wrong.

Because of Todd, because of her marriage, it just hadn’t mattered. She’d never had the remotest intention of responding to the possible, or probable, signals in any way. She’d never been tempted into an affair.

This time, it was different. A part of her craved the heady therapy of a successful fling. Another part of her was cynical, sceptical and just plain terrified. If I’m wrong…If I’m right, and it doesn’t work…

If I’m sure I’m right, and I throw myself at him, and he laughs, or he’s kind, or he tells me very carefully, Oh, but I’m married. Didn’t you know? My wife is away visiting her parents for a week in Woggabiggabolliga—which seemed to be the name of at least half of the towns people mentioned around here, as far as she could work out.

Candace had to suppress a gulp of hysterical laughter at this point. Am I going crazy? Who knew that betrayal and divorce could do this to a person?

‘You’re different in surgery, aren’t you?’ Steve said suddenly, sitting up cross-legged on his towel and resting his elbows on his knees.

Candace immediately sat up, too. She didn’t bother to argue his perception. ‘Enough to be worthy of comment, apparently.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘No, go ahead. It’s OK.’

‘I guess I thought you’d be more touchy-feely.’

‘And instead I’m…?’

‘You really give the impression that you know what you’re doing and you know what you want.’

‘Of course I do! I was doing this when you were still dissecting frogs, Steve!’

His abrupt launch into probing questions rattled her, especially the way it followed on from her own jittery train of thought.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t pull rank.’

‘Why not?’ she retorted. ‘I must be at least five years older than you.’

‘Six, I think.’

‘You’ve been checking?’

‘Terry said you were thirty-nine.’

‘Well, Terry is wrong! I’m only thirty-eight, and my birthday’s not until July!’

They looked at each other and both laughed at the absurdity of her objection.

‘Hey, can we start this again?’ he said.

‘Start what again?’

‘Now you’re being deliberately obtuse. This conversation. I hadn’t intended it to get confrontational. I wanted to say that in surgery you were…’ He hesitated.

‘A royal pain about the music?’

‘Yes, and it was great. I really liked the way you handled it. I liked you in surgery, Candace. I liked your focus and your confidence in the fact that it was your right to dictate the mood. But you were quiet about it. Polite.’

‘I’m well brought up.’

‘So well brought up that normally you’re probably like most women and apologise when someone else steps on your toes, right?’

She laughed again, recognising the arrow-like accuracy of his observation. ‘In my private life, yes. In surgery, Dr Colton, you’d better damn well apologise to me!’

He grinned and his blue eyes sparkled like the sun on the sea. ‘Yep. I liked that. It was good,’ he said, then repeated even more lazily, ‘It was good.’

Seconds later, he was on his feet and reaching down to pull her up as well. ‘Want to?’ he said.

‘A swim? Yes, I do.’

The surf was bigger today. ‘Dumpers,’ Steve told her. ‘Be careful. They can flip you over pretty hard.’

He kept a careful eye on her and on the waves as they swam, and told her a couple of times, ‘Not this one.’

After a while, she could feel the difference in the waves for herself. They didn’t curl and pause and fold smoothly over today, but broke abruptly, like hands crashing on piano keys. If you caught them at the wrong moment, they sent you tumbling so that you emerged disorientated, with wrenched muscles.

‘Where are the flags today?’ she asked Steve.

‘They don’t patrol Taylor’s Beach during the week, outside school holidays,’ he said. ‘We can stop, if you like.’

‘No, I’m enjoying it.’ And she felt very safe beside him, sensed that he really knew what he was doing in the water.

‘Jump!’ he interrupted, and they managed to keep their heads above water as a wave boiled around them. ‘They’re breaking all over the place. We’d have to go out a long way to avoid them.’

‘No, thanks!’

They stuck it out for a little longer, then Candace got dumped again and came up with sand all through her hair and down her classic black one-piece swimsuit. Salt stung in her nose.

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