Praise for Meredith Webber:

‘Medical Romance™ favourite Meredith Webber has penned a spellbinding and moving tale set under the hot desert sun!’

—Cataromance on THE DESERT PRINCE’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

‘Medical Romance™ favourite Meredith Webber has written an outstanding romantic tale that I devoured in a single sitting—moving, engrossing, romantic and absolutely unputdownable! Ms Webber peppers her story with plenty of drama, emotion and passion, and she will keep her readers entranced until the final page.’

—Cataromance on A PREGNANT NURSE’S CHRISTMAS WISH

‘Meredith Webber does a beautiful job as she crafts one of the most unique romances I’ve read in a while. Reading a tale by Meredith Webber is always a pleasure and THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

is no exception!’

—Book Illuminations on THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

Dear Reader

I realised recently that in my long and varied career as a medical writer I hadn’t ever written a ‘friends to lovers’ story, yet I know this happens in real life.

Any number of disparate bits of information come together to make a book—or one of my books, anyway—and for this one I remembered a plane trip where I sat next to a member of the Elite Mine Rescue team on the first leg of his journey to the USA to help rescue some trapped miners. I was fascinated by his stories, but more intrigued by his enthusiasm for what was obviously a very dangerous profession—and they are professionals, all of them. Why this memory surfaced for this book I’m not sure, but there it was, all ready to use.

Then there was the child. Children have been fairly prevalent in my books. The powerful bond between a parent and a child, to me, can mirror the bond of love slowly and hesitantly growing between a man and a woman, a hero and a heroine—and, of course, a child can bring problems in its wake … big problems! But I loved Steffi from the moment that she appeared on the scene, rather unexpectedly even for me, so I hope you love her too.

All the best

Meredith

About the Author

MEREDITH WEBBER says of herself, ‘Once I read an article which suggested that Mills & Boon were looking for new Medical Romance™ authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’

One Baby Step
at a Time
Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CHAPTER ONE

HE HADN’T EXPECTED it to feel so strange, walking into the ER at Willowby Hospital. After all, he’d been here often enough as a child—broken arm, a badly sprained ankle and, on one memorable occasion, suffering hypothermia after he’d been trapped down a well. Bill’s fault, that! Bill crying pitiably at the top because her cat had fallen in—Bill going all girlie on him!

Whillimina Florence de Groote—his friend Bill!

Finally producing a daughter after six sons, Bill’s mother had named her after both grandmothers, thinking it a nice feminine name, but from before she could talk, Bill had decided she was one of the boys and early on had insisted her name was Bill.

So Bill she’d stayed.

Lost in the past, he was startled when the woman who’d met him at the door—Lesley?—spoke.

‘I’ll introduce you to our senior nursing staff, and you’ll meet the rest as you move around.’

But once again he was distracted, for there she was!

The wild, vivid, red hair, ruthlessly tamed for her work shift, burst like tendrils of flame from beneath her white cap, bringing smudges of colour to the sterility of the room.

‘Bill!’

His delighted cry echoed around the still-quiet space and as he strode towards her, Lesley—he was sure it was Lesley—bleating, ‘Oh, you know Bill?’ as she followed him.

He watched as disbelief chased surprise across Bill’s face, then delight dawned in a smile that made the brightly lit room seem even brighter.

‘No one told me!’ she said, abandoning the patient she’d been shepherding towards a cubicle to give him an all-enveloping hug. ‘You didn’t tell me you were coming,’ she added, with a punch on his shoulder. ‘But I’m so glad! Gran will be so happy. But what are you doing here? I’m working. Did you just call in to say hello?’

He grinned at her, the pleasure of seeing her again, from hearing the rush of words that was pure Bill, warming him right through.

‘I’m working too,’ he said, and saw shock dawn on her face.

‘Working?’

He nodded.

‘Here?’

He nodded again, still smiling broadly because he’d never seen Bill flabbergasted before, but flabbergasted she truly was.

‘You’ve got a patient, I’ll explain later,’ he said, delighted that he could keep her guessing a while longer.

That drew a scowl but she did return to her patient, fully focussed on work once again, leaving Nick with a strange sense of … Well, he wasn’t sure what it was—surely not rightness about returning home?

No, he was being fanciful. It was probably nothing more than the pleasure of seeing Bill again.

‘You know Bill?’ Lesley had been hovering behind him during the exchange.

‘You could say that,’ he replied, still smiling because somehow seeing Bill had made this decision to come home seem comfortable—even inevitable—for all he’d been thrown into work before he’d had time to settle in because of some emergency in the senior ER registrar’s family.

Four hours later he’d had plenty of opportunities to see his old friend in action, her seniority evident in the way she designated duties and handled patients, always busy yet always calm and smiling.

Always attracting his attention whenever she was in sight, but that was nothing more than his natural delight in seeing her again. That she felt the same he had no doubt, for she’d flash a smile at him as their paths crossed.

Until now, when she was coming towards him with determination in her easy, long-legged stride, another scowl on her face.

‘Tearoom now, Dr Grant!’ she ordered, and he fell in obediently behind her, knowing he’d have a lot of explaining to do but pleased to have an opportunity to sit and talk to her in this small lull.

Had she ordered everyone out, that the area was empty? he wondered, as he followed her into the messy room. He wouldn’t have put it past her, but right now he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was give her a proper hug, to reaffirm he really was home again.

He caught her in his arms and swung her round, not easily as she was nearly as tall as he was—and only for a moment as she pushed away and glared at him.

‘And what’s all this about?’ she demanded. ‘Creeping into town without a word to anyone? And don’t tell me Gran knows because I saw her yesterday and you know she can’t keep a secret.’

He grinned at the red-headed termagant who’d bossed him around all his young life.

‘Neither can you,’ he reminded her, ‘and I wanted it all settled before I told Gran. In the end, the job came up sooner than I expected so there was no time to tell anyone.’

Gold-brown eyes narrowed suspiciously.

‘What is all settled?’

‘The contract—twelve months with an option to extend.’

And now Bill was hugging him!

‘Oh, Nick, Gran will be so happy. She never says anything but since that fall a month ago she’s been feeling fragile and I think that makes her miss you more than ever. I can hear it in her voice when she talks about you.’

And you? Nick found himself wanting to ask, although why he wasn’t sure. He and Bill had kept in close touch over the years, with regular emails and infrequent phone calls, very occasionally catching up in person when they’d both happened to be in the same city at the same time. It was what friends did so, yes, he did want her to be happy he was home …

‘Sit, I’ll make coffee,’ Bill was saying, so he set the thought aside and sat, happy to watch her move around the little room, totally at home, composed—beautiful really, his Bill, although he’d probably always been too close to her to see it.

Bill shook her head as she set the kettle to boil, disbelief that Nick was actually here still rattling her thoughts. Her first glimpse of him had made her heart thud in her chest—just one big, heavy thud as she’d taken in the sight of the tall, lean man with a few threads of grey in the softly curling brown hair that had been the bane of his younger life. The black-rimmed glasses hid eyes she knew were grey-blue and gave him a serious look.

Her Nick, all grown up and devastatingly handsome now, she realised as she stepped back from their friendship and looked at him as a man.

They’d met in kindergarten class at Willowby West Primary School, a friendship begun when she had punched the boy who’d called Nick Four-Eyes. She’d dragged him home with her that afternoon, made him phone his gran to say where he was, then ordered a couple of her brothers to teach him how to fight.

And so the bond had been forged—a bond that had survived years of separation, though they’d always kept in touch and shared with each other what was happening in their lives.

Was there any tougher glue than friendship?

She found the tin of biscuits and put it on the table in front of him then brought their coffees over, setting them both down before plopping into the battered lounge chair opposite him, unable to stop staring at him and slightly embarrassed that he seemed to be equally focussed on her.

‘Well?’ she finally asked, mainly to break a silence that was becoming uncomfortable.

‘It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other,’ he said. ‘You’ve changed somehow.’

‘It’s been five years and then only for an hour at Sydney airport. Anyway, I never change, you should know that,’ she teased. ‘I was a skinny kid with wild red hair who grew into a skinny adult with wild red hair. But you, who knew you’d get so handsome?’

It was a weird conversation to be having with Nick—strained somehow. Although they’d gone in different directions after high school, he to Sydney to study medicine, she choosing Townsville for her nursing training, on other occasions when they’d caught up with each other, even briefly, they’d fallen back into their old patterns of friendship as if they’d never been parted.

Yet tonight was different.

‘Will you stay with Gran?’

Gran was Nick’s relation, not hers, but Bill was in the habit of calling in a couple of times a week, taking Gran shopping or getting library books for her.

With Nick here, Gran wouldn’t need her …

‘No, I spoke to Bob when the idea of the contract first came up. He offered me one of the penthouses at the new marina development he’s just completed.’

‘The sod!’ Bill muttered, thinking of her eldest brother, the developer in the family. ‘So he knew you were coming and said not a word to me! What’s more, all I’ve got is a one-bedroomed apartment on the sixth floor in that building, and I bet he’s giving you family discount as well.’

Nick smiled.

‘But I am family, aren’t I?’ he retorted. ‘I’m your seventh brother. Isn’t that what you’ve always said?’

It was, of course, but it wasn’t their relationship that was disturbing Bill right now, though what it was she couldn’t pinpoint.

‘It’ll be a bit weird working with you,’ she said, fairly hesitantly because that didnt seem to be what it was either.

Nick smiled and her heart gave another of those strange thuds.

‘You only think that because you’re used to being the one bossing me around and in the ER a doctor trumps a nurse.’

She rose to the challenge in his words.

‘Oh, yeah? Says who?’

He didn’t answer, just picked up his coffee, his smile still lingering about his lips, showing in fine lines down his cheeks and a crinkle at the corner of his eyes.

It was because she hadn’t seen him for so long she had to keep staring at him, she was telling herself when the smile turned into a grimace.

‘Aaargh! You call this coffee? You haven’t heard of coffee machines? How backward is this place?’

Bill laughed.

‘Not too backward these days but budget cuts are everywhere. You want fancy coffee you’ll have to provide the machine and the beans, and everyone will use both and one night a junkie will steal the machine and you’ll be back to instant.’

‘I’ll get a small one and lock it in my locker and it will be for my exclusive use,’ Nick growled, sounding so like the old Nick of her childhood that Bill felt warmth spread through her.

This was going to be all right—wasn’t it?

Bill was pondering this when Lesley burst through the door.

‘Critical emergency on the way in, Dr Grant. Can you take the call from the ambulance?’

Forty minutes later Nick was ready—well, as ready as he would ever be. Although the town had grown, Willowby Hospital was still little more than a large country health centre. No specialist resuscitation area here, no emergency trauma surgeon on standby, just him and whatever nurses could be spared from the usual stream of patients on a Sunday night.

Him and Bill!

Right now she was setting up a series of trays on trolleys, IV and blood-drawing supplies, chest tubes, ventilator, defibrillator, medications, and was checking the supply of oxygen, the suction tubes, not fussing but moving with swift confidence and precision. Just watching her gave him added confidence about whatever lay ahead.

‘The baler they spoke of—it’s one of those things that rolls hay into huge round bales?’ he asked, and she looked up from what she was doing to nod.

‘Though what the lad was doing, putting his arm anywhere near the machine, is beyond me,’ she said, before adding thoughtfully, ‘I suppose if the string got caught you might think you could pull it loose and give it a tug. I’ve always thought night-harvesting had an element of danger because, unless you’re used to night shifts, your mind might not be as sharp as it should be.’

Images of the damage such a machine could do to a human arm and shoulder flashed through Nick’s mind, and he had to agree with Bill’s opinion, but further speculation was brought to an end by the arrival of the ambulance and their patient, unstable from blood loss, his right arm loosely wrapped in now-bloody dressings, a tourniquet having been unable to stop the bleeding completely.

Nick listened as the paramedic explained what had been done so far—the patient intubated, fluid running into him, morphine to ease the pain, conscious but not really with them, so shocked it was clear the first-response team doubted he could be saved.

Hypovolaemic shock from loss of blood. The young man’s heart would be racing, his hands and feet cold and clammy, his pulse weak—

‘All we need to do is stabilise him enough for him to be airlifted down to Brisbane,’ Bill reminded Nick, as if she’d heard the same thing in the paramedic’s tone and had the same symptoms racing through her head.

So it began, the flurry of activity to keep the young man alive long enough for surgeons down south to save him. The paramedics had fluid flowing into him through his radial artery but he needed more.

While Bill hooked the patient up to the hospital’s oxygen supply and monitors, taking blood to send to the lab for typing, Nick prepared to put a catheter into the left subclavian vein, anaesthetising the site, then advancing a needle carefully down beneath the clavicle, a guide wire following it when blood flowed freely into the needle’s syringe.

Removing the needle, he made a small incision, his hands working mechanically while his mind raced ahead. Once the catheter, guided by the wire, was in place and more fluid was flowing in, he could examine the torn arm and shoulder in order to find the source of the blood loss.

‘The tourniquet is holding back blood loss from the brachial artery,’ Bill said, making Nick wonder if their childhood ability to follow each other’s thoughts was still alive and well.

He looked across to where she was gently probing the damaged arm, flushing debris and carefully tweezing out bits of dirt and straw—the work a surgical assistant would be doing in a major trauma centre.

‘I’ve been releasing the tourniquet and can see where the artery is damaged but he’s so shocked I doubt that’s the only source of blood loss.’

They were definitely following each other’s thoughts!

He moved round the table, leaving another nurse to control the fluid while a third watched the monitors. He’d have liked to have an anaesthetist present, but that, too, was for city trauma centres, so he used a nerve block to anaesthetise the arm before examining it.

‘There,’ Bill said, passing him a loupe so he could see the torn artery more clearly.

Two tiny sutures and the tear was closed, but the nurse watching the monitors reported falling blood pressure.

Drastically falling blood pressure …

‘V-tach,’ the nurse said quietly.

The words were barely spoken before Bill had the defibrillator pushed up against the trolley and was already attaching leads to the paddles. Nick set the voltage, gave the order to clear, placed the paddles above and below the heart and watched as the patient’s body jerked on the table.

He looked at the monitor and saw the nurse shake her head.

He upped the voltage, cleared again and felt the tension in the room as the body jerked and stilled, then the green line on the monitor showed the heartbeat had stabilised.

A release of held breath, nothing more than a sigh, but he knew everyone had been willing the lad to live.

For now!

‘He’s had three litres of fluid—he’s definitely losing blood somewhere else,’ he muttered, then turned to Bill. ‘We need full blood—has he been cross-matched?’

‘It’s on its way,’ she said quietly, then nodded towards the door where a young man in a white coat had appeared, stethoscope around his neck and, thank heavens, two blood packs in his hands.

‘Rob Darwin, I’m one of two doctors on duty upstairs but Bill said you needed help down here, and when Bill calls, I obey. Her slightest wish is my command.’

He was joking, teasing Bill, but Nick had no time for jokes.

‘Get that blood into him—it’s warmed?’

Rob nodded and took up a position at the head of the table, fiddling with the fluid lines as he prepared to give the patient the transfusion.

‘The bleeding has to be internal, but how? Where?’

Nick was talking to himself as he looked at the swollen, badly dislocated shoulder, picturing how the machine must have caught the arm and twisted it, trying to imagine where internal damage would have occurred.

‘A tear to the axillary artery?’ Bill suggested quietly, looking up from where she was putting clean dressings on the damaged arm.

‘That or the subclavian,’ Nick agreed. ‘I’m going to have to go in and have a look.’

He glanced up at Rob.

‘You okay with anaesthesia?’

Rob grinned.

‘I haven’t been here long but as Bill told me soon after I arrived, country doctors do the lot,’ he said. ‘How long would you want him out to it?’

‘Hopefully twenty minutes, but double it—make it forty to be on the safe side. He’s due to be flown out if we can get him stable.’

‘The plane will wait,’ Rob assured him, already checking the available drugs and drawing up what he’d need.

Bill prepared the area beneath where the young man’s shoulder should be, quickly shaving the hair and swabbing antiseptic all around then stepping back as Nick made the incision.

‘We know it’s in the armpit—it should be right there,’ Nick grumbled, but the muscle had been torn so badly it was hard to see where the armpit should have been.

A fresh flush of blood as Bill moved the lad’s scapula revealed the tear, blood pulsing from it into the surrounding tissues.

‘The pressure must have been enormous,’ he murmured. ‘It looks as if it’s been ripped apart. I’ll have to cut off the torn ends and sew it back together. The vascular surgeons in Brisbane can do the fancy stuff.’

Bill watched in utter amazement as the man she’d known so well as a boy—her first best friend—calmly performed life-saving microscopic surgery on their patient. But the whole shift had been one surprise after another, beginning with Nick walking into the ER as if he belonged there.

‘Another suture!’

He snapped the order, making her realise he’d already asked while she’d been reliving the shock of his arrival. Her mind back in gear, she worked with him, actually thrilled to be seeing him in action—seeing just how good an emergency doctor he’d turned out to be.

Not that she’d ever doubted it. Nick had always been able to do anything, and even excel at it, once he’d set his mind to it.

Her friend Nick …

CHAPTER TWO

THE PATIENT WAS finally wheeled away, heading for an airlift to Brisbane and the experts who might or might not save his life and, with even more luck, his arm. Bill slid down the wall and slumped to the floor of the trauma room, oblivious to the mess of packaging, blood, swabs and tubing that littered the floor.

‘Not bad for a first night on duty?’ she said to Nick, smiling up at the man who leant against the wall across from her. ‘Think you’ll enjoy work back in the old home town?’

His face was drawn, the stress of the two-hour fight to keep the youngster alive imprinted clearly on his features, yet he found the shadow of a smile.

‘Anything you can do I can do better,’ he teased, using a phrase that had been bandied back and forth between them a thousand times in their youth.

A young nurse poked her head into the room.

‘Want me to clean up?’ she asked.

Bill shook her head.

‘I’m off duty, I’ll do it in a minute.’

She turned back to Nick to find him studying her, a strange expression on his face.

‘What?’ she asked, disturbed not by him looking at her but by her reaction to it—to him, the new him.

‘Rob Darwin? Love interest?’ he asked.

‘As if!’ Bill snorted. ‘Not that he’s not a nice young man, and not that he wouldn’t like there to be something, but …’

She hesitated, finding her reluctance to date hard to put into words.

‘No spark?’

Nick had found the words for her.

‘None at all,’ she said, ‘and it seems a waste of my time and unfair to him just to date for the sake of dating.’

‘Very noble of you,’ he teased, then he smiled again.

This smile was better than the first one, and her reaction more intense.

Weird when this was Nick, but she didn’t have time to consider it as he was speaking again and, anyway, maybe the reactions were nothing more than tiredness and the aftermath of stress.

‘There must have been a spark with Nigel,’ he was saying. ‘What really happened there? You could have married him, the Great God of Surgery, and been taken away from all this. You could be down in the city, doing social stuff, running fundraising balls, lunching for good causes, decked out in designer gear instead of bloody scrubs.’

‘Now, there would be a fate worse than death!’

The words were lightly spoken but pain pierced her heart as she remembered it had been that same ‘Great God’ who’d ordered her to have an abortion a month before their wedding because he didn’t want people thinking they’d got married because she was pregnant. She breathed deeply, aware that too much bitterness still leaked into her veins when she thought of that disastrous time.

The realisation that the man she’d loved had been nothing more than a shallow, social-climbing pretender had rocked her self-confidence and made her question her judgement about people, particularly men. The miscarriage two months later had exacerbated her loss of self-worth and it had taken years, back here in Willowby with her family and friends, to rebuild it.

Although now she’d grown a thicker skin and heavier armour to shield her fragile heart …

Nick heard the change in her voice and wondered how much damage her broken engagement had done to her trust—to Bill herself, given she was the most trusting person he had ever known. It worried him that he didn’t know the background to the break-up—didn’t know a lot of things about his friend.

His best friend!

What did the kids call it these days? BFF? Best friends for ever?

‘Anyway,’ she was saying, while his mind had drifted back to the past, ‘if we’re going to talk of what might have happened in our lives, you could have married Seraphina or whatever she called herself when she fell pregnant, and gone swanning off to New York to live off her earnings as a top supermodel.’

That was better, more like old times, Bill taking the fight to him!

‘Serena,’ Nick corrected. ‘You’re muddling her up with Delphina, who was the one before, and, anyway, I did offer to marry Serena but she wanted none of it, not me, not a child and definitely not marriage.’

Silence fell, the ghosts of dead children lying between them among the empty packaging and blood.

Bill reacted first, pushing herself up off the floor, stripping off her soiled apron and flinging it into a bin, then bending to begin collecting the rubbish off the floor.

‘I’ll do that.’

The young wardsman who appeared, mop and bucket in hand, waved her away and although she picked up a few more bits of rubbish, she was happy to leave him to it, following Nick out of the trauma room to find the big open area of the ER eerily quiet at six on a Monday morning.

‘Everyone’s sleeping in,’ Andy, the duty ER manager, told them. Newly arrived on shift, he was spic and span, his face alert, his smile bright. ‘Go home, both of you.’

‘Got to dictate some notes on that last case,’ Nick said.

‘And I’m having a shower then heading for beach,’ Bill told them. ‘I need some sea air to clear my head before I can think about sleeping.’

Would she go to Woodchoppers? Nick wondered, not wanting to ask in front of Andy but aware he’d like to join Bill at the beach. Weird name for a beach, but it had been their favourite swimming beach growing up, Bill and her six brothers declaring it their personal fiefdom, keeping it free of any less desirable elements, particularly those pushing drugs to impressionable teenagers.

Whillimina de Groote and her brothers! They’d become the family he’d never had. Bill dragging him to her home after his first day at school, insisting her brothers teach the five-year-old Nick how to defend himself.

They’d taught him a lot after that …

Bill stood under the shower, the water so hot that steam was fogging the cubicle, but no amount of heat or water could wash away the uneasiness that lingered over her reaction to Nick.

To Nick as a man!

How pathetic!

She’d known him for close to thirty years, considered him her best friend in all the world, so why, now, would she be reacting to him as a man?

Maybe it was nothing more than the stress and tiredness engendered by their battle to save the teenager’s life.

She could only hope …

Accepting that the hot water wasn’t helping, she turned off the taps, dried herself hurriedly, rubbed at the tangled mess of red curls that topped her head and fell down past her shoulders, then pulled on an old bikini she kept in her locker, covered it with a voluminous T-shirt, grabbed her handbag and hurried out the staff exit, not wanting to bump into Nick before she’d had a good run on the beach and a swim in the limpid, tropical waters to clear her head.

Not before she happened to be on duty with him again, in fact, and if she spoke to the ER secretary who drew up the rosters, total avoidance might be possible.

Well, not total. He was back to see his gran, so they’d undoubtedly run into each other at Gran’s house …

But at least he’d come home.

She pulled up in the small parking area at Woodchoppers Beach and slogged across the sand dunes, glad the effort of crossing them made the beach the least used of the beaches around Willowby. Pulling off her T-shirt and dropping it on the sand, she began to run, slowly at first then, as her muscles warmed, sprinting faster and faster—short sprints then slow jogs, alternating the two, feeling the blood surge through her body, bringing it to life in a most satisfactory manner.

Two more lengths of the beach and then she’d swim.

‘You shouldn’t come here on your own—you never know who might be around.’

Nick’s appearance startled her.

‘Obviously!’ she snapped at him.

But as he ignored her comment and fell into stride beside her, she knew all the good of her run had vanished, and with it her peace of mind.

It’s only Nick, she told herself, but that didn’t seem to stop the awareness that prickled in her skin all down one side—the side closest to her jogging companion.

Veering away from him, she headed for the water and dived from ankle depth into the clear, green-blue sea, surfacing to breathe then diving again to porpoise along parallel to the beach, relishing the silken kiss of the water against her skin.

Had she always been this gorgeous?

Long, lean, and tanned in a way redheads weren’t supposed to tan?

Nick watched as she dived and surfaced in the water, only to dive again, her limbs flashing in the sunlight, her hair trailing behind her—a mermaid at play.

Was it because she’d always been a friend that he’d never seen her as a woman? Not that he could afford to see her that way now—they were friends! There’d be plenty of interesting and intelligent, even beautiful, women here in Willowby. It was only a matter of connecting up with some of them, and the thoughts he found himself having about Bill would disappear.

For all she joked about having escaped a fate worse than death when she’d dumped Nigel, she was the kind of woman who should be married—married with a tribe of red-headed kids clustered around her—because she’d always been a mother hen, adopting not only him but any fellow pupil in danger of being bullied or excluded from one of the childhood gangs.

He stripped down to his jocks and dived into the water, surfacing a little distance from her, uncertain enough about the strange reactions of the night to not want to be too close.

‘Race you to the rocks,’ she challenged, and started immediately, but his longer strokes and stronger kick soon had him catching up, so they swam together towards the smooth, rounded rocks that jutted into the water at the end of the bay until they were close enough for him to swim away, beating her by a body length.

Strange reactions or not, he wasn’t going to let her beat him!

‘Oh, that was good,’ she said, coming up out of the water, her hair streaming down her back. ‘I find it’s so much easier to sleep during the day if I have a run and a swim before I go home.’

She looked at him for a moment, her golden-brown eyes assessing.

‘And a hearty breakfast at the surf club back at the main beach. You up for that, or has your body become a temple so you can’t eat delicious crispy bacon, and beef sausages, and fried tomatoes, and all the other things that are loaded with cholesterol and fat?’

Nick shook his head in disbelief.

‘So you still eat like a navvy and stay as slim as a whip. Some metabolism you de Grootes inherited.’

‘Not all of us,’ Bill told him, smiling as she waded in front of him back to the beach. ‘Bob’s developed a most unsightly paunch, and Joel’s heading in the same direction. Too many business lunches and not enough exercise, that’s the problem with those two.’

Nick watched the way her butt moved as she walked in front of him and tried to think of Bill’s brothers rather than how those twin globes would fit into his hands.

‘Have you already moved into the apartment?’

She threw the question over her shoulder but it brushed right past him, his attention snaffled by the way the woman in front of him moved, and how her breasts hung low as she bent to retrieve her T-shirt from the sand, the bikini she wore barely covering her nipples.

‘Nick?’

Had she caught him watching her as she turned, her eyebrows raised as she waited for a reply?

What had she asked?

Had he moved in …?

‘If you call dumping a couple of suitcases in the bedroom and unpacking my wash bag as moving in, then yes,’ he responded, hoping the gap between the question and the answer hadn’t been too long. ‘It’s fully furnished so all I had to bring were clothes and personal stuff. I’d hardly begun to unpack when the hospital phoned to ask if I could work last night.’

Bill didn’t respond, so disturbed was she by the sight of Nick’s lean, toned body that casual conversation was beyond her. He’d shrugged as he’d mentioned unpacking, an unfortunate movement as it had drawn her attention back to his chest, with its flat wedges of pectoral muscles and clearly defined six-pack.

She wanted to ask if he’d been working out, but that would give away the fact she’d noticed and the way she was feeling it was better if the question went unasked.

She climbed the first dune and raced down the other side then up the next, aware he was pacing himself to stay beside her—aware of him!

It was bad enough that he was living in the same building, so now she’d have to avoid seeing him out of work hours as well as at work, without him suspecting she might see him as other than a friend.

A passing fancy, surely?

But her reactions to him were forgotten as she topped the last dune.

‘What is that?’

The words burst from her lips as she saw the racing-green sports car, hood down, cream leather seats, sleek lines shouting speed and, yes, seduction.

‘My car?’ His voice was quiet but she heard the pride in it.

‘Well, that will get you noticed in Willowby,’ she muttered, aware of just who would notice it first—the constant stream of beautiful women who used Willowby as a jumping-off place for reef adventures. True, they worked, if you could call hostessing on luxury yachts or on the six-star island resorts working, but since the mining boom had led to the town becoming one of the wealthiest per capita in the country, the place had been swamped by women, and men if she was honest, looking to separate some of that money from those who had it.

‘Gets me noticed most places,’ Nick replied, and the smile on his face made her stomach clench.

That’s why he’d bought it! She knew that much immediately, remembering the email he’d sent her many years ago when he’d returned from his first stint with the army reserve, serving overseas. He’d helped to put back together young men blown apart by bombs in wars that ordinary people didn’t understand.

He’d come home, he’d said, with one aim—to live for the day. He’d promised himself a beautiful car, the best of clothes and as many beautiful women as cared to play with him. ‘I’m honest with them, Bill,’ he’d said in the email. ‘I tell them all it’s not for ever, that marriage isn’t in my long-term plans. You’d be surprised how many women are happy with that—even agreeing that it’s not for them either. Things are different now.’

Were they? Bill hadn’t been able to answer that question then and couldn’t now. For herself, she knew she wanted marriage, and children too, but not without love and so far, apart from that one disastrous experience, love hadn’t come along.

‘Ride with me,’ Nick suggested. ‘I’ll drop you back at your old bomb after breakfast.’

‘Ride in that thing? The town might have grown, Nick, but at heart it’s still the same old Willowby. I only need to be spotted by one of the local gossips and my reputation would be ruined. Did you see the de Groote girl, they’d be saying, running around in a fast car with a fast man? You, of course, will be forgiven. About you they’ll say, hasn’t he done well for himself, that grandson of old Mrs Grant? And such a kind boy, coming home to be with his gran now she’s getting on.’

Nick laughed and headed for his car.

‘Okay, but I won’t offer to race you to the surf club,’ he teased. ‘Too unfair.’

Bill climbed into her battered old four-wheel drive, the vehicle her father had bought her new when she’d passed her driving test. She patted the dash to reassure the car she wasn’t put off by its shabby appearance, or influenced by the shining beauty of Nick’s vehicle, but it was she who needed reassurance as her folly in suggesting he breakfast with her finally struck home. Even with her sea-drenched curls, and the tatty old T-shirt, she’d always felt quite at home at the surf club, but these days many of the beautiful people breakfasted there as well—

Whoa! Surely she wasn’t concerned that Nick would compare her to some of the other women and find her wanting?

Of course she wasn’t!

Then why was she wondering if there might not be a long shift somewhere in the mess of clothes, books and papers in the back seat of the car—wondering if there might be a slightly melted tube of lip gloss in the glove box?

Hopeless, that’s what she was.

He’d selected a table that looked out from a covered deck over the town’s main beach and the placid tropical waters. Bill slipped into a chair beside him, so she, too, could look out to sea. Far out on the horizon they could see the shapes of the islands that dotted the coastline—tourist havens on Australia’s biggest natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef.

‘I’ve ordered the big breakfast for both of us,’ Nick informed her. ‘Anything you don’t want, I’ll eat. And coffee—double-shot latte still your drug of choice?’

‘It is, and thanks,’ Bill replied, telling herself at the same time that a nice normal breakfast with Nick should banish all the silly stuff that had been going on in her head.

Especially as Nick was wasting no time checking out the talent, with his eyes on a group of three long-haired blondes, laughing and joking on the other side of the wide deck.

‘The town’s scenery’s improved,’ he joked.

‘It’s the money that’s being splashed around,’ Bill reminded him, deciding to take his comment seriously. ‘Money attracts money but it also attracts the kind of people who like to have it—like to spend it. The problem is that while the miners and the people who work in mining support services are all earning big money, the price of housing goes up, rents go up, and the ordinary people of the town, especially those who don’t own their own houses, are stuck with costs they can’t afford.’

Nick smiled.

‘Still a worry-wart,’ he teased.

‘Well, someone has to worry about it. Nurses at the hospital don’t get paid more than their counterparts in other places in the state, yet accommodation costs in town are enormous. Fortunately the hospital has realised it has a problem and has built some small rental apartments in the grounds, but you spread that problem out across the town—the check-out staff at supermarkets, the workers in government offices, the council truck drivers—all the locals suffer.’

She stopped, partly because she was aware she’d mounted her soap-box and really shouldn’t be boring Nick with the problem but also because the blondes appeared to have noticed him—new talent in town?—and were sending welcoming smiles his way.

‘Maybe they saw the car when you drove in,’ Bill muttered.

‘Ouch! And anyway the car park’s out the back. No, it’s my good looks that have got their attention—see, one of them is coming over.’

One of them was coming over. The leggiest one, with the longest, shiniest, blondest, dead-straight hair!

‘Aren’t you Nick Grant?’ she asked, and as Nick nodded, she held out her hand.

‘I told the girls it was you. You used to go out with Serena Snow, didn’t you?’

Again Nick had to agree, and the leggy blonde introduced herself.

‘I’m Amy Wentworth. I met you a couple of times at parties back then. What are you doing up in this neck of the woods? Holidaying? Off to the reef for a few days’ R and R?’

So far she’d totally ignored Bill—not that it mattered, Bill told herself.

She studied the woman while Nick explained he was working here, living in the new apartment building at the marina but with no elaboration on why. Amy raised her eyebrows.

‘Can’t imagine you in a hick town like this. Oh, I know there’s a lot of money around, but what do you do when you’re not working?’

Nick grinned at her.

‘I’ll be doing pretty much what I did when I wasn’t working in Sydney.’

Amy drifted away but Bill wasn’t going to let him get away with that tantalising reply.

‘Which was?’ she asked.

‘What which was?’

‘The “pretty much what you did in Sydney” bit of that conversation.’

‘Ah, but I told you years ago,’ he reminded her. ‘I had a good time and I intend to do just that up here. You don’t need nightclubs and friends with yachts on the harbour to have a good time.’

‘We’ve got a nightclub and a two of my brothers have yachts, or big motor launches,’ Bill said defensively, and Nick laughed.

‘Exactly, although I think the nightclub crowd are a bit young for me, but you can have a good time wherever you are. In fact, I’m off for three days next week and think I might pop across to one of the island resorts—do a bit of diving and fishing and …’

‘Meeting beautiful women,’ Bill finished for him.

Again Nick smiled, although this time it was a little forced because in the back of his mind he’d had another reason for returning to Willowby, one that was becoming important to him.

‘That too, of course,’ he answered glibly. ‘Want to come?’

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