EMILY FORBES began her writing life as a partnership between two sisters who are both passionate bibliophiles. As a team, ‘Emily’ had ten books published. One of her proudest moments was winning the 2013 Australia Romantic Book of the Year Award for SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: BELLA’S WISHLIST.

While Emily’s love of writing remains as strong as ever, the demands of life with young families have recently made it difficult to work on stories together. But rather than give up her dream Emily now writes solo. The challenges may be different, but the reward of having a book published is still as sweet as ever.

Whether as a team or as an individual, Emily hopes to keep bringing stories to her readers. Her inspiration comes from everywhere, and stories she hears while travelling, at mothers’ lunches, in the media and in her other career as a physiotherapist all get embellished with a large dose of imagination until they develop a life of their own.

If you would like to get in touch with Emily you can e-mail her at emilyforbes@internode.on.net

Tamed by the Renegade
Emily Forbes

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Dedication

For my fabulous brothers and sisters-in-law:

Andrew, Tim, Michelle, Brigid, Terry,

Rebecca, Nick, Alexandra, Duncan, Nick, Rachel,

Luke, Danielle, Ben and Kiera—with love.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Sunday, 14th December

RUBY HAD ALWAYS known she’d have to grow up one day but she’d suspected it would be a gradual process, like growing out a fringe or recovering from a broken heart. She never expected to have to grow up overnight.

A few hours earlier she’d been asleep in her bed. Now she was about to walk into an intensive care unit halfway across the country and she was terrified of what she would find. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to deal with this crisis. She suspected she was a flight-not-fight type of personality. In fact, she knew she was. She’d always run away when the going had got tough.

Perhaps being able to cope with traumatic situations was a sure sign of maturation. The trouble was she was afraid of what she was about to see and afraid she wouldn’t cope.

Maybe this disaster would be the catalyst that forced her to grow up. Maybe it would trigger her development into the sort of person others could depend on, but she really wasn’t sure if she had that level of resolve.

She waited as her sister’s fiancé keyed the security code into the door and held it for her and then she trailed in Jake’s footsteps as he crossed the room.

Ruby could see her sister, Scarlett, and their mother sitting side by side. Scarlett was holding their mother’s hand and Ruby knew she was comforting Lucy, not the other way around. Scarlett had always looked after all of them, their mother included.

Seeing her family huddled together threatened to damage the wall around the well of emotion that she’d been trying to keep under control since she’d left Byron Bay in the early hours of the morning. Throughout the flight to Adelaide, and even on the short trip from the airport to the hospital, she’d fought to keep her emotions in check. She hadn’t wanted to fall apart in front of a plane full of strangers or in front of her sister’s fiancé—she didn’t know him well enough yet and she couldn’t let him see that she wasn’t as brave or as strong as Scarlett was.

Scarlett stood up the moment she saw Ruby. She came towards her with her arms open and wrapped Ruby in her embrace. Ruby relaxed into her older sister’s comforting hug. She could feel the tears welling in her eyes and gathering on her lashes ready to spill over as she soaked up Scarlett’s reassurance.

She and Scarlett were of similar height but Ruby’s skinny frame was always a sharp contrast to Scarlett’s curves. Even more so today, thought Ruby as she felt Scarlett’s rounded belly, firm and hard and stretched tight as a drum, pressing into her. Ruby stepped back out of Scarlett’s embrace to take a proper look at her. Scarlett was into the final trimester of her pregnancy and it was the first time Ruby had seen her in several months, the first time she’d seen her looking pregnant. It suited her.

But seeing Scarlett’s new curves served as another little push to Ruby’s subconscious, another little hint that times were changing and she might have to change along with them. Scarlett had always been there for her. They’d always been close because Scarlett had made that her priority. Their relationship had been nurtured, and on occasion saved, by Scarlett’s determination and perseverance. She’d been there for all of them at one time or another but now she had another person totally dependent on her. Her fiancé and their baby would be Scarlett’s priorities now.

Ruby knew that didn’t mean that Scarlett would abandon any of them. Not her, not their mother and certainly not Rose, their younger sister and the reason they were all here in the ICU, but Scarlett couldn’t be expected to shoulder all their worries. Rose needed them and they needed to look out for her. She needed to look out for Rose.

She’d never really given much thought to how her family was faring. She’d chosen her own path at the age of sixteen and hadn’t spent much time considering others. She realised now how selfish she’d been. It was time for her to step up.

She hugged her mother next. Anyone watching may have thought it strange that she greeted her sister before her mother but Ruby and Lucy didn’t have an easy relationship. Ruby had always felt far more comfortable sharing her thoughts and feelings with her sister, but she recognised that the sometimes stilted relationship she had with her mother was her own fault. She’d always pushed her mother away. Ruby had always wanted to assert her independence and it had backfired on her in spectacular fashion during her teenage years but she’d been too proud then to admit her mistakes. She wasn’t sure if she’d changed all that much in the ensuing years.

‘It’s good to have you home.’ Lucy welcomed her with open arms.

Her mother would say she was home but Adelaide hadn’t been home to Ruby for almost eleven years. She wasn’t sure where she would say home was. But she wasn’t going to argue over semantics now. It wasn’t important. She was going to be mature and agreeable. Whether she called Adelaide home or not was irrelevant—she was here now. A week earlier than planned. She’d had flights booked for the end of the week, scheduled for Scarlett and Jake’s wedding, she hadn’t planned on making a middle of the night dash to the bedside of her critically ill little sister.

Ruby could hear the soft click and hiss of the ventilator behind her. So far she’d avoided looking at Rose and still she hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she could handle seeing her younger sister lying in a hospital bed connected to machines.

She let go of her mother and asked, ‘Have the doctors been back? Have they said anything more?’ She asked the question even though she was unsure about whether she was ready to hear the answer.

She knew the question was just another delaying tactic. When Jake had met her at the airport he’d told her what they knew about Rose’s condition so far. Which wasn’t much and not nearly enough to thaw the icy fingers that had gripped her heart since Scarlett had phoned her in the middle of the night. She knew the doctors suspected meningitis and had put Rose into a medically induced coma and started her on a course of antibiotics, but Jake hadn’t been able to tell her anything further.

She had directed her question at Scarlett and was struck again how she automatically turned to her sister and not their mother in a crisis. Scarlett, as the eldest of the Anderson sisters, had always been the level-headed one. The one who everyone in their scrambled family turned to in times of crisis, but Ruby had a premonition that this crisis might be too big for Scarlett to handle alone and she suspected she would have to be prepared to stand up and be counted too. The only issue was she didn’t know if she was capable of that.

Up until now Ruby had done a very good job of avoiding major responsibility but it seemed times might be changing. She was going to have to be prepared to take some of the burden from Scarlett.

She’d had plenty of experience of her life changing around her without warning or consultation. It had been something that had shaped her into the woman she was today, one who wanted total control over her own life. One who didn’t want to give anyone else an opportunity to upset her apple cart. Taking control hadn’t always worked out so well for her but at least her mistakes, downfalls and dramas had been of her own making.

But even though recently she’d been doing a relatively good job of controlling her own little world she wasn’t able to control the world that existed around her, and the wider world had a habit of intruding when she didn’t want it to and throwing curve balls her way.

Scarlett shook her head in reply to Ruby’s question. Jake and Scarlett were both doctors yet they had no more insight into Rose’s situation and the lack of information frustrated Ruby.

Ruby herself wasn’t a stranger to hospitals. All the sights and sounds and smells, which to many others would seem unfamiliar, were nothing unusual for her. She was a nurse, she’d had plenty of experience looking after patients and their families but she’d never been on the other side. She’d never had to sit by and watch while someone she loved was on life support and being cared for by a team of doctors and nurses. It was a very different situation and, for reasons she didn’t fully understand yet, it made her uneasy. She knew it was, in part, due to exhaustion. She was tired and emotional but she had to face her fears. She’d been on the go since four this morning and lack of sleep wasn’t making things any rosier.

Rose.

She needed to face her fears. She needed to see Rose.

She could feel anxiety gripping her chest, adding to the pressure of those icy fingers around her heart as she forced herself to look at her younger sister. She knew she was nervous, worried about the sight that was going to confront her. She turned to the bed.

Half a dozen various tubes and leads connected Rose to monitors and to life. Ruby tried to ignore the mechanical sounds of the ventilator as she focused on Rose. The pale skin of her arms was covered in a purple rash that was indicative of septicaemia but the rash didn’t appear to have spread to her face. Ruby didn’t know how she would have reacted to that. Rose had always been unbelievably pretty and Ruby didn’t want to face such a stark and obvious sign of Rose’s affliction. She looked as though she was sleeping and Ruby was grateful for small mercies.

But she still didn’t understand why nothing was happening. Everyone was sitting around, waiting. If the doctors wanted to run more tests, where were they? Why wasn’t someone doing something? What were they waiting for?

‘Where are the doctors?’ She turned away from Rose and, out of habit as much as anything else, once again directed her question to Scarlett. She forced herself to look at Lucy next. Forced herself to include her mother, but Lucy looked as though she was in shock and Ruby doubted she’d even heard her question.

Her mother looked tired. Lucy had always been beautiful. Scarlett had inherited her looks but although Lucy often looked tired, Ruby had never thought she looked older than her years. Until today.

Lucy had been only eighteen when Scarlett was born and they were often mistaken for sisters. But Ruby knew people wouldn’t be making that mistake today. Sitting side by side, their similarities were still obvious but so was their age difference. Growing up, Ruby had longed for their colouring, longed for their dark hair, dark eyes and flawless fair skin. She had the fair skin but she’d hated her red hair, even though her mother had insisted it was strawberry blond, and the smattering of freckles that were strewn across the bridge of her nose.

Ruby could see some strands of grey in Lucy’s dark hair, which she didn’t remember seeing before. She knew she had caused some of the lines on her mother’s face but there were more of those too than there used to be. Definitely more than there had been a few months ago when Ruby had last come back to Adelaide, and she suspected the events of the past twelve hours had put them there.

But this wasn’t about her or her mother now. It was about Rose, and she needed to stay calm and positive. Biting back a scream of frustration, she looked back at Scarlett, wanting someone to answer her.

‘They’re waiting for the results of the blood tests,’ Scarlett told her.

‘I thought they’d diagnosed meningitis?’

Scarlett nodded. ‘They’re treating her for septicaemia and bacterial meningitis but they haven’t identified the strain yet.’

Ruby knew that bacterial meningitis was more serious than the viral form and she also knew that the prognosis varied widely between the different strains of bacteria and between different people. What she didn’t understand was how Rose could have caught the disease.

‘How did this happen? How did Rose get sick?’ As she asked yet another question she wondered if they should be talking in front of Rose. She believed that coma patients could hear conversations going on around them but she figured Rose had probably heard everything else that had been discussed so far this morning.

‘No one can really say,’ Jake answered, ‘but the most likely scenario is that Rose picked it up at work in the after-school care facility. The bacteria can’t live outside the body for long so people need to be in close contact.’

Rose was studying to be a primary school teacher and her practical work plus her part-time job in an after-school care facility would give her plenty of exposure to all manner of bugs.

‘But it’s also reasonably common in young adults aged between fifteen and twenty-four so it’s almost impossible to tell where she came into contact with it.’ Jake shrugged.

Rose was twenty-one, six years younger than Ruby, and her age put her right inside the high-risk age bracket.

Ruby glanced at Scarlett as a realisation hit her. ‘Is it safe for you to be in here?’ she asked. Scarlett’s pregnancy was definitely showing but Ruby couldn’t remember enough about the disease to know if Scarlett was putting herself or her baby at risk.

Scarlett nodded in reply. ‘I’m fine. It’s passed through sneezing and coughing via droplets in the air.’ They both looked at Rose. Attached to the ventilator, she wasn’t doing either of those things.

‘Has anyone else from the school fallen ill?’

‘We haven’t been told but anyone she had contact with at school will be given antibiotics as a precaution, but there are other possibilities that complicate things further in terms of treating other people but don’t really affect Rose’s treatment. What the doctors need to do now is identify the strain of bacterium.’

‘Rose was out at a lunch for a friend’s birthday yesterday. She came home early and said she wasn’t feeling well and went straight to bed.’ Lucy added to Jake’s tale. ‘We assume she was already infected when she went to lunch but because there can be such a short period of time between becoming infected and presenting with symptoms it’s adding to the confusion. When she came home she had a temperature and a headache but it didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary. She didn’t complain about a stiff or sore neck or a rash. I didn’t see any of the red flags for meningitis so I just assumed it was a flu virus.’

Lucy was also a nurse but she worked in aged care, and meningitis wasn’t something she saw much of.

‘She got up to go to the bathroom around midnight and I heard her collapse. When I reached her she was having trouble breathing and that’s when I noticed the rash. I rang the ambulance and even though they arrived quickly, by the time we got to the hospital she had gone downhill rapidly. She was in cardiac failure, her blood pressure was too low to register and she had no pulse. The rash on her body was spreading before my eyes. I just wish I’d suspected something more sinister than flu to begin with.’

‘I’m not sure that anyone would have, Lucy. You know how variable the signs and symptoms can be and how often they’re missed.’

Jake’s words were meant to be reassuring but Ruby doubted anything would ease her mother’s conscience. Not yet. Not until they knew Rose’s prognosis and maybe not even then. But Ruby was grateful to Jake for being there to support them all. She knew Scarlett and Lucy would be struggling with the situation as much as she was and it wasn’t fair to expect Scarlett to support them all. They couldn’t expect Scarlett to have enough strength for all of them. Not always.

Ruby was pleased that Scarlett now had Jake to take care of her. No one was looking to lean on Ruby but neither was anyone offering a shoulder to support her. She had always rebuffed offers of help or support so she supposed no one thought she might need some now.

Before she could follow that train of thought any further they were interrupted by one of the ICU nurses and a trio of doctors.

‘The doctors want to do a lumbar puncture,’ the nurse explained.

Four pairs of eyes swivelled to the doctors.

‘Now?’ Lucy asked.

The doctors were nodding. Ruby wondered who they all were and what they did, but no one seemed to think it was important to introduce her.

‘We really need to identify the bacterium responsible for the infection as the outcomes can be vastly different.’ The doctor who spoke looked easily the more senior of the three. Balding and carrying some extra weight, Ruby assumed he was the specialist. ‘There are increased mortality rates and poorer outcomes with the pneumococcal strain compared to meningococcal. It’s fatal in about ten per cent of cases and one in seven will suffer a permanent disability.’

Ruby had heard enough now. She wished he’d stop talking.

‘We don’t know yet whether there’s any permanent damage to her heart and some of her other major organs are showing signs of stress. We’re hoping to minimise the damage to her vital organs and her extremities but we need to make a proper diagnosis in order to implement the right treatment.’

Ruby was feeling sick. She didn’t want to think about the consequences of Rose’s illness. She didn’t want to think about what else could go wrong. She wanted to believe that Rose would get better and that everything would go back to normal.

So much for being positive and grown up.

‘The next thirty-six to forty-eight hours are critical.’

And Ruby knew immediately what the doctor meant.

Rose had to get through the next two days if she was going to have any chance of surviving.

CHAPTER ONE

EVERYONE ELSE HEARD the unspoken words too and Ruby watched as Scarlett turned to Jake.

It seemed she was right, Scarlett couldn’t be expected to support them all. This was one time when she needed someone to support her. Lucy wouldn’t be able to lean on Scarlett, she had enough to deal with. Ruby might need to be the one to offer her mother comfort now.

As the medical team began to set up for the lumbar puncture Ruby found herself, along with the rest of her family, being ushered out of Rose’s cubicle.

The ICU had suddenly become a hive of activity and Ruby had to stop and wait as another patient was wheeled in and she was separated from the others by the barouche. As the bed was pushed past her she caught a glimpse of a solidly built man and she immediately wondered what had happened to him.

What had brought him to the ICU? There were usually only a couple of reasons why young men ended up here—accidents, usually involving vehicles, or serious illness. She turned her head, watching as he went past. Despite the oxygen mask covering his face, he looked too well to be seriously ill. His face was tanned and his colour was good and the one arm that she could see poking out from under the blankets was also tanned and well muscled. He looked robust and healthy enough.

She could see the outline of a cradle that was keeping the weight of the blankets off his leg and was suggestive of a lower-limb fracture. A motorbike accident, she decided before she ducked around the end of his bed to catch up with Scarlett and their mother.

They were hovering in the corridor, looking lost. They looked unsure what to do as they waited for the doctors to finish with Rose. Ruby was exhausted. It had been a crazy day—emotional, upsetting and stressful. She didn’t want to pace the hospital corridors, waiting for Rose’s procedure to be completed, she needed a shower and some fresh air to give her some strength to face what was yet to come.

‘Does anyone mind if I go and have a shower while the doctors are with Rose?’ Ruby asked.

She knew Lucy would wait and she knew Scarlett wouldn’t let her wait alone. Ruby also knew that she should offer to stay too. Hadn’t she just told herself she would need to be the one to offer support to her mother? But she couldn’t do it. She knew she’d go crazy with the tension of waiting and that would inevitably lead to her picking a fight with Lucy, something neither of them needed. She told herself it was best for everyone if she got away from the hospital and cleared her head before she exploded.

‘I’ll give you a lift to our place, if you like,’ Jake offered, when no one insisted she stay.

‘Don’t you want to wait with Scarlett? There’d be a shower in the hospital I could use, surely?’ She knew Scarlett would be able to organise a shower for her in the staff facilities at the hospital but she would prefer to get outside. She really wanted a chance to get some fresh air at the same time.

‘It’ll be nicer to shower at our house,’ Scarlett replied.

‘It’s only five minutes to home and your bag is still in my car,’ Jake said. The two of them were giving her permission to leave and she wasn’t going to argue further.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind ferrying me around?’ she asked him, as they left the hospital and returned to his car.

‘Not at all. I’m just doing whatever needs to be done at the moment—chauffeur, cook, liaison person.’

‘Liaison person?’

‘Between your family and the medical team,’ he explained. ‘It’s difficult for Scarlett and your mum to ask the right questions, they’re too close. It seems to work best if I do it.’

‘How can you do all that and go to work?’

‘I was already on holidays leading up to the wedding. I’ve quit The Coop.’

‘You’ve quit?’

Jake laughed. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I’m about to become a husband and a father. I think my nights spent working in a strip club have been numbered for a while. It’s time to move on to the more responsible stage of my life. I start my internship in three weeks. Quitting The Coop now was supposed to give us time for a honeymoon. So I am at your service. Anything you need, just ask.’

Ruby appreciated the offer. She had come to think of Jake as the brother she wished she had.

Jake was a good man. It was lucky for Scarlett that when Ruby had met Jake it had been clear he’d only had eyes for Scarlett, otherwise who knew what would have happened? Only Ruby did know, Jake was cute and smart but far too conventional for her. She smiled to herself, not quite believing she would ever describe someone who worked as stripper in a male revue club called The Coop as conventional! In fact, his gig as a stripper was far more in keeping with the type of man she usually looked for. Her men were always a little bit edgy. She needed the excitement. But despite his old job Jake was basically a good person. He wouldn’t be able to handle someone like her.

Scarlett was perfect for him. As he was for her. Jake was cute and smart. Scarlett was clever and sensible and they made a good match. Plus it was obvious that he adored her and, most importantly, he allowed Scarlett to be herself instead of the person Scarlett thought she should be or the one she thought people wanted her to be. That had always been Scarlett’s undoing. She always wanted to please everybody.

The same thing could definitely not be said about her.

Jake pulled to a stop in front of Scarlett’s renovated cottage. Ruby grabbed her duffel bag from the boot of his dark green MG and followed him through the gate in the high brick wall and into the tiny front garden. She was travelling light, and hadn’t had time to do more than throw a change of clothes into her bag before racing to the airport. She had known that the phone call in the early hours of the morning would only be bad news. A phone call in the blackest part of the night was only ever bad news.

Now that she was here, she had no recollection of what she’d actually packed. She hoped she had at least one change of clothes, although if she’d forgotten anything she’d borrow it from Scarlett. She had none of Scarlett’s curves but, being summer, she’d get away with wearing her sister’s clothes. It didn’t matter if they were loose on her and in desperate times she knew Scarlett had several tops that could be worn as dresses.

Jake slid his key into the lock on the front door. A Christmas wreath decorated the door, jolting Ruby back to the present. Christmas was less than two weeks away but she had never felt in less of a festive mood.

‘You know where everything is,’ he said, as he held the door open for her. ‘Make yourself at home.’

Ruby always stayed with Scarlett when she visited. It worked best if she and Lucy had their own space, but she hadn’t thought about the ramifications of her earlier arrival. She’d originally planned to arrive two days before the wedding, timing her arrival with Jake’s temporary move back to his parents’ home, but now that she was here early she hadn’t considered that a change of plan might be needed.

‘Does it still suit you for me to stay? I’m not crowding you?’ she asked.

‘It’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘The spare bedroom is still yours to use.’

‘Are you sure? I can stay at Mum’s.’ She could manage a few days there if necessary.

‘Ruby, don’t worry about it. Have a shower and I’ll be back to pick you up in about forty minutes, okay?’

She nodded and stopped arguing and pushed open the door to the spare bedroom. She upended her bag on the bed and rifled through the contents. There were a few T-shirts, a couple of skirts and a dress in various shades of the rainbow, plus an old pair of cut-off denim shorts. She’d make do for a few days. She turned to the wardrobe to grab a clothes hanger. Tucked in the corner beside the wardrobe was a white wooden baby’s bassinette and hanging on the wardrobe doors were two long dresses in pale green silk. The bridesmaids’ dresses, one for her and one for Rose.

She wondered what Scarlett and Jake would do about their wedding. So much had changed in just twenty-four hours. It was more than just Ruby’s expectations of herself. Yesterday Scarlett and Jake had been counting down the days to their wedding and the birth of their first child. Now they were sitting at Rose’s bedside, waiting and hoping for some good news.

A wedding and a baby. Ruby knew one could be postponed but not the other. She hoped the baby didn’t decide to come early. They had enough going on at present.

She threw her clothes onto a couple of hangers and headed for the shower. She showered quickly and turned her back to the bathroom mirror as she dried herself. She hated looking at her reflection in the mirror. She disliked any form of self-examination or introspection.

She knew she wasn’t particularly brilliant, like Scarlett. She was smart enough but didn’t love studying and she wasn’t pretty like Rose. Her face was too round, her nose was too small and she felt that her features still looked babyish despite the fact that she had just turned twenty-seven. At five feet nine inches she was tallish and model thin with no boobs to speak of. Her shoulder-length strawberry-blond locks were currently died platinum blonde, but despite regularly changing the colour of her hair she was yet to find a colour that she thought suited her. Her eyes were her best feature, large and an unusual shade of green. The colour of an emu’s egg. The colour of the bridesmaids’ dresses.

She wasn’t dark and curvaceous like Scarlett or blonde, petite and beautiful like Rose. She didn’t have Scarlett’s lustrous mane of raven hair or accompanying thick dark eyelashes neither did she have Rose’s perfectly proportioned heart-shaped face or dimples. She and Scarlett had their mother’s long, lean legs but that was where the similarities ended.

Scarlett was the clever sister, Rose was the pretty one and Ruby was never really sure which sister she was. She knew others described her as the fun one but she also knew that she’d worked hard to cultivate that image. She wanted to be seen as the fun one, the extrovert, and she knew it was because she was scared that if she stopped and stood still she would disappear. In her mind, if people thought she was fun they would gravitate towards her and then she would know she existed and she wouldn’t be lonely.

Ruby returned to her room and swapped the bath towel for a fresh singlet top and a long skirt made of a multitude of patchwork squares. It had been hot outside, the dry Adelaide summer heat was making the day almost unpleasant, and it had been warm in the ICU too.

Scarlett had left a pile of books stacked beside the bed. Ruby flicked through them as she waited for Jake. At the bottom of the pile was a Jane Austen novel, which Ruby recognised as one of Rose’s favourites. She stashed it in her bag, deciding she’d take it to the hospital to read to Rose. It would help to pass the time.

As she followed Jake back into the ICU she couldn’t help but notice that the new guy, the motorbike accident, had been put into the cubicle next to Rose. The nurses had removed his blankets—she obviously wasn’t the only one who found ICU uncomfortably warm—and she ran her eyes over him appreciatively. His torso was bare but partly covered by his right arm, which was fixed across his chest in a blue orthopaedic sling. She could see the definition of his pectoral muscles above the sling and the ridges of his lower abdominal muscles below it. His chest was smooth and hairless and wonderfully masculine. She could feel her steps slowing as she gave herself time to appreciate his sculpted chest and arms. She couldn’t blame the nurses for exposing him—something so gorgeous shouldn’t be covered up.

His smooth, tanned skin was unmarked by any tattoos as far as she could see, but his youth, physique and the injuries she suspected he had still suggested a motorbike accident. Her eyes drifted up over the curve of his deltoid muscle to where his hair brushed his shoulder. His hair was long and brushed back from a strong forehead. The oxygen mask over his face had been replaced with tubing, exposing a square jaw and full lips. He reminded her of a fair-haired Greek god—dark blond and tanned and perfectly formed—but surely he had to be mortal. He’d been injured after all.

Too late she realised he was awake.

CHAPTER TWO

HE WAS AWAKE and he was watching her.

His eyes were bright blue and she could see him follow her path as she continued slowly past. Knowing she was in his sights made her blush but she managed to smile at him. There was nothing else to do. She’d been sprung admiring him. She knew it and so did he.

He grinned back, his smile full of mischief, and Ruby felt a warm glow suffuse her body and lift her spirits. She knew he’d only been in the ICU for an hour or two but already he looked far too healthy and vital for this room. Which made her wonder about his smile. She had probably imagined a connection—most likely he was still delirious and drugged and would smile at anyone.

She kept walking. Each bed was separated by a thin partition wall and at the foot of each bed was a curtain that could be pulled across for privacy. The cubicles were arranged around the outside of the room with a raised central station for the medical team. Ruby stepped into Rose’s cubicle and her neighbour disappeared from view.

It felt like it had taken her several minutes to cross the room when in reality it had probably been seconds, but even though he was now out of sight his image was burnt on her retina—bright blue eyes, a tanned and ripped torso and a roguish smile. She knew the memory of his smile would get her through the rest of the day.

‘How did the lumbar puncture go?’ Jake asked, as he greeted Scarlett with a kiss.

‘Fine, apparently. We’re just waiting for the results.’

Ruby sighed. More waiting. Being impatient wasn’t going to speed up the process but she didn’t care, she wanted answers.

She offered to sit with Rose. She would read to her to pass the time while the others stretched their legs. As they left Ruby saw the swish of the curtain in the next cubicle as the nurse pulled it closed. Voices carried to her from the other side of the partition as she pulled the novel from her handbag.

‘Is your pain relief working?’ the nurse asked. ‘You can top it up if you need to by pushing this button.’

‘I can handle the pain,’ he replied. ‘What’s the damage?’

His voice was deep and sent an unusual tremble through her chest. It reminded her of distant thunder as it rumbled through her. His voice matched his rugged, muscular and masculine physique perfectly.

‘I need to know what injuries I sustained.’

‘You have a broken collarbone, a fractured elbow and a couple of busted ribs.’

‘No serious chest injuries?’

‘No, but the list does go on. You also have a fractured femur.’

‘Dammit.’

Ruby almost burst out laughing. She wasn’t even pretending to read as she smiled to herself and continued to eavesdrop on the conversation.

‘What have they done with that?’ he asked.

‘It’s been screwed and plated.’

‘How long will I be in ICU?’

‘You’ve only just got here. What’s your hurry?’

Ruby caught herself frowning as she listened to the nurse’s flirty tones.

‘It will give me an idea how severe my injuries are.’

‘I take it you’re no stranger to hospitals?’

‘I’ve been patched up a few times.’

Ruby would swear she could hear the smile in his voice and she could imagine his bright blue eyes sparkling with just a hint of recklessness.

‘You lost a lot of blood and you’ve just undergone major surgery. Protocol dictates that we need to keep a close eye on you for the next twenty-four hours.’

‘Whose protocol?’ he challenged.

‘The hospital’s insurance company and your team’s.’

‘I thought as much.’

‘ICU is not such a bad place to recuperate for a few days. It’s much more secure than any of the other beds, including the private rooms on the general wards. I’m guessing there may be quite a bit of interest in your story and at least we can keep journalists at bay while you’re with us.’

Ruby’s curiosity was piqued. She had always been a sucker for anything with a hint of difference, be it a job, a situation or, more often than not, a man. She listened with interest, waiting for further details but was left disappointed.

‘Fair enough. I won’t make a fuss for a day or two but I’m not a great one for standing still.’

‘I think you’ve managed to solve that problem for a while at least. You won’t be going too far at all on that broken leg.’

It went quiet in the cubicle next door and Ruby saw the nurse move on to the patient on the other side. She opened the novel and started to read but she could hear her words weren’t flowing. Her mind was distracted, fixated on the motorbike man. Who was he? And why would the media be interested in him?

She forced herself to keep reading. She couldn’t worry about a stranger in the bed next door. She tried choosing some of her favourite scenes, ones that showed the heroine’s sense of humour, but she found herself constantly looking at Rose, waiting for a response from her, expecting to see a smile or a hint of laughter but, of course, there was nothing. Unrealistically, she’d been hoping for a miracle, hoping the story would trigger a response, and it was difficult to continue without even a flicker of encouragement from Rose.

Ruby closed the book.

‘Hello? Are you still there?’

Ruby frowned. She recognised the voice. Deep and quiet, it was the motorbike man. ‘Are you talking to me?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Do you think you could keep reading?’

Her frown deepened. ‘You want to listen to a romance novel written in the nineteenth century?’

‘Romance? I thought it was a comedy.’

His comment made her smile. She’d always enjoyed the unexpected humour in this book too.

‘But it’s not the content … I like the sound of your voice,’ he said simply. ‘I could listen to you read the phone book.’

Ruby laughed and opened the book again. If the motorbike man could make her laugh when she really didn’t feel like it, she figured he deserved a favour. ‘If it’s all the same, I’ll stick with Jane Austen,’ she said.

She picked up from where she’d stopped but this time the words flowed far more smoothly. She lost track of time as she turned the pages, only stopping when the nurse interrupted to do Rose’s obs.

Ruby took a moment to stretch her legs. At least, that was what she told herself she was doing when she stood and wandered into the cubicle next door. She wanted to know why the motorbike man was in the ICU and she was going to ask him. He’d been very quiet while she’d been reading—she’d half expected some interruptions but she’d heard nothing from him—but now she saw why.

He was asleep.

Her eyes swept over his face. His cheekbones were wide and his nose was perfectly straight and narrow, flaring ever so slightly where it ended just above full lips. His eyebrows and lashes were a shade darker than his hair and she could see the beginnings of a darker beard on his jaw. A couple of little scars marked his face, one below his eye, another on his lip, but they did nothing to detract from his looks. His dark blond hair framed his face but one stray strand lay across his cheek. Ruby was tempted to reach out and brush it away but she was afraid of waking him. He looked like he was sleeping comfortably and she didn’t want to disturb him.

He had a face she suspected she could look at for hours but she could hear the nurse’s footsteps moving around Rose’s bed. Ruby ducked out of the cubicle before she was caught being somewhere she had no business to be.

Monday, 15th December

Sitting by Rose’s bed wasn’t achieving anything. Ruby had spent the whole day in ICU and nothing had changed for the better.

The doctors had confirmed that Rose had pneumococcal meningitis but if anyone expected a diagnosis to make a difference they were disappointed. Rose’s condition hadn’t improved and the doctors were now worried about her declining kidney function as a result of the blood poisoning. Her condition and treatment remained the same and the family just sat and waited for a sign, for anything, to indicate that she was recovering.

Ruby had chatted to Scarlett, Jake and her mother when they’d all been at Rose’s bedside and when she and Rose had been alone she’d read to her and kept one ear peeled for the sound of the voice of the motorbike man next door, the man with the devilish grin and the voice like distant thunder, but it seemed he wasn’t in a talkative mood today.

There was a lot more activity in the ICU and Ruby knew that there wasn’t a moment when they were alone but she was disappointed he hadn’t even tried to strike up a conversation with her. By the end of the day she had learned nothing further about him. She still didn’t know who he was and he’d had no visitors, not a single one. He’d had no one to talk to other than the doctors and nurses and Ruby hadn’t learnt anything interesting from them.

Where was his family? Where were the people who cared about him?

She supposed she could have asked him, should have asked him, but whenever she had gone in or out of Rose’s cubicle there had been one of the medical staff with him and she hadn’t been able to do more than smile at him.

She should have tried harder. She should have worked on her timing but she was nervous, which was something quite out of character for her. Holding back was not in her nature. Normally, if she wanted something, whether it was information or an introduction, she would make it happen. But the butterflies that took flight in her stomach whenever they made eye contact were enough to make her hesitate.

If they’d been in a social setting she would have walked straight up to him so perhaps it was the fact that he was at a disadvantage physically that made her hesitant. He didn’t know that she’d stood at his bedside the night before and watched him sleep. She thought that might freak him out so she was keeping her distance. He had no way of getting away from her if she encroached on his personal space. He wouldn’t be able to avoid her and she hated to think that she wouldn’t know if he was pleased with her attention or not. She didn’t want him to feel obligated to be nice to her just because he was confined to a bed.

She didn’t consider that he could easily be blunt and tell her to leave him alone—something about the way he smiled at her made her think he wouldn’t be rude, but she didn’t want to put him in an awkward position. So she said nothing.

* * *

By late afternoon she was tired of staring at the same four walls. Tired of pretending everything would be fine. Rose had made it through another twenty-four hours but that was all that had happened. She supposed that was better than the alternative but she had reached her limit of being cooped up. She knew she wasn’t doing a very good job of being supportive but she couldn’t stay inside the hospital for a minute longer.

Lucy was coming to take over the bedside vigil from her so Ruby arranged to meet her friend Candice for dinner. The last time she’d been back to Adelaide several months earlier had been for Candice’s wedding. It was strange to think that had been when Jake had been persistently pursuing Scarlett and she’d been trying to fend off his advances but not doing so very successfully. Now, months later, it was hard to imagine them not together.

Ruby and Candice had nursed together in Melbourne but had both grown up in Adelaide. In typical Adelaide fashion there were only ever three degrees of separation. Ruby and Candice had worked together, now Candice worked as a theatre nurse for emergency surgery in this hospital, where Scarlett was an anaesthetist and Jake was about to be an intern, and Candice and Jake had grown up together as family friends. If anyone understood what Ruby and her family were going through at the moment, it was Candice.

As they selected their dishes from the Thai menu Ruby filled her friend in on Rose’s status before Candice moved the conversation on to ‘other business’, as she called it.

‘So, are you bringing a plus one to Scarlett’s wedding?’

Ruby shook her head.

‘Why not? I know you have one, you always have one. I used to wonder how you found so many.’

‘You don’t wonder any more?’

‘Not now that I’m married.’ Candice laughed. ‘It doesn’t bother me any longer that you seem to have more than your fair share of men. Now that I’ve taken myself out of the marketplace you can have as many as you want, but I do like to meet one of them every now and again. Who’s the latest?’

Ruby paused. She didn’t think there was actually that much to say but it would be nice to talk about the things they always used to discuss. It would be nice to get her mind off Rose’s medical predicament for just a while.

‘I’m not sure that there is a latest,’ she admitted.

‘You’re between boyfriends?’

‘I’m not sure exactly.’

‘How can you not be sure? What’s going on?’

‘Mitch was asleep when Scarlett rang me about Rose in the middle of the night. The phone call didn’t wake him. I left him a note.’ Mitch was a musician, a drummer, and his band had been playing at one of the local pubs that night. He’d got home late and hadn’t been asleep long when Scarlett’s phone call had woken Ruby. But Mitch had slept through all of that and Ruby hadn’t thought it necessary to wake him. It wasn’t any of his business. She hadn’t thought about Mitch since she’d walked out.

‘You left him a note?’ Candice’s tone let Ruby know exactly what she thought about that. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

Ruby shook her head. ‘He hasn’t called me either,’ she said defensively. ‘We don’t, didn’t, have that sort of relationship.’ They hadn’t been like Scarlett and Jake. Or Candice and her husband, Ewan. They had both found the person they wanted to spend the rest of their life with. They had found the person who came first. Ruby had no idea what that was like.

‘Well, if neither of you are prepared to pick up the phone, you’re probably perfectly matched,’ Candice decided, ‘but it’s kind of ironic ‘cos now you’ll never know.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ruby said with a shrug. ‘I’d never planned to bring him home to meet my family and certainly not for Scarlett’s wedding. We wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. I’d been seeing him for almost two months.’

Two months was her self-imposed time limit on relationships. Any longer than that and there was the chance that one of them could start to think the relationship was serious and that was something Ruby had always taken pains to avoid. A serious relationship meant sharing bits of your soul with another person. Letting them see deep inside you. It meant taking things a step further than sharing a bed and your body. Sharing your mind was a far scarier proposition and not one that Ruby was particularly keen on.

In her experience people started to expect more from a relationship as it started to edge towards three months. Boyfriends wanted to know more about her. They would expect to be invited to an event as her plus one. Three months meant it was serious. It meant it would hurt if she was abandoned.

‘Besides,’ she added, ‘worrying about a plus one to the wedding is irrelevant as I assume Scarlett and Jake will postpone it. I can’t imagine Scarlett will want to get married while Rose is in hospital. She’ll want to wait until Rose has recovered.’ Ruby couldn’t voice the alternative. That Rose might not get better.

‘They haven’t said what they’re planning on doing?’

Ruby shook her head. ‘No. It seems kind of an odd conversation to have in the ICU. We tend to talk about what the doctor’s latest update means and what treatment Rose should have. I think everyone is just avoiding the topic of anything to do with the future. I don’t think any of us can think more than a day ahead at this stage. So it means we sit there not really talking about much at all. It’s no wonder the days seem interminably long in Intensive Care, but it’s all we can do. Just be there for Rose.’

‘Let’s hope she’s out of there soon and then a few more of us can split the shifts and visit her.’

Access to the ICU was restricted to family members only, and that reminded Ruby of the lonely motorbike man. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to ask Candice for information. She might have even been working on the day he had been brought in. She might be the one person Ruby knew who would have the lowdown on him.

‘Speaking of visiting, there’s a guy in the bed next to Rose who hasn’t had any visitors at all. He was brought into ICU yesterday. He looked as though he would have come through Emergency first. Were you working? Do you know anything about him?’

Candice grinned. ‘I wasn’t working but I heard about him. He’s into motorsport apparently, a racing-car driver or something. By all reports, he’d done a fair bit of damage to himself but the girls were still very complimentary about him.’ Her grin widened. ‘It’s not every day they get to see quite such a glorious naked man. Even if they did have to cover him with sterile drapes, they copped quite an eyeful in between times.’

Ruby’s imagination quickly added what Candice was describing to what she’d already seen for herself and created a rather glorious picture. Almost real enough to make her blush. ‘Do you know his name?’ she asked.

‘Neil? No, that’s not right.’ Candice shook her head. ‘Noel maybe? Something starting with an N anyway. The girls weren’t interested in his name.’ She laughed. ‘But I can find out if you like.’

‘No, that’s okay. I was just curious.’ She should have checked his chart while he slept, just to find out his name, but that seemed like invading his privacy just a little too much.

‘That would make you just one in a long line, from what I hear.’

Ruby was curious but she’d hoped Candice would have been able to give her a name or something to enable her to do some research when she got home. She didn’t want to think of it as cyber-stalking but wasn’t that one of the purposes of the internet? But she still didn’t have enough to go on.

It was ridiculous. She was never going to find out anything about him. She rather liked the fantasy of the lonely bachelor that she’d built up around him but she knew it was probably a complete fallacy. She knew the simplest way to get some answers would be to strike up a conversation with him. If she wanted to know more, she was going to have to drum up some courage and ask him herself.

Normally she was up for a bit of fun, some harmless flirtation, as much as the next person. All right, usually a bit more than the next person. A girl had to know how to have fun but even she wasn’t sure that an intensive care unit was the appropriate place to attempt to pick up a man. She was sure it wouldn’t make the list in a women’s magazine when they printed their articles on the top ten places to meet men. Not unless you worked there and then it could technically come under the heading of a workplace.

And although Ruby couldn’t be accused of being mainstream in her approach to dating, or even meeting men, even she wasn’t convinced that having an eye on a man who was lying in an ICU, no matter how hot he looked, was acceptable in the dating jungle.

Tuesday, 16th December

But nothing ventured, nothing gained was her motto, and the next morning was as good a time as any to venture, she decided as she keyed in the code to open the door into the ICU. Now that she knew he wasn’t an axe murderer or serial killer, she could relax. Her judgement had been known to let her down on occasion.

She summoned up her courage and pushed the door open. She’d check on Rose and then strike up a conversation. There’d be no harm in saying a simple ‘Hello’ as she walked past. She didn’t need to crowd him. She could say hello and then the ball would be in his court. If he wanted to engage her in conversation she’d be a willing participant. He’d had no visitors, perhaps she could offer to help. There must be something he needed and, if not, at least she would have broken the ice.

She was all ready to flash him her best smile as she made her way to Rose’s cubicle but his bed was empty, stripped of its sheets, leaving the mattress exposed, the machines all neatly packed away. The bed looked as though it had never been occupied.

The adrenalin that had been coursing through her body clumped together to form a little ball of lead in her chest and plummeted to the pit of her stomach, leaving her feeling flat.

He was gone and she’d missed her chance.

She couldn’t believe it.

It wasn’t really in her nature to be hesitant and she couldn’t explain why she’d held back. But she had and now she would never know anything more about him. Disappointment flooded her, joining the ball of lead in her gut.

She stepped past the empty bed and into Rose’s cubicle. Seeing Rose still lying inert, her condition obviously unchanged, and hearing the mechanical suck and hiss of the ventilator didn’t do anything to lift her spirits.

She leant over and squeezed Rose’s hand in greeting before kissing her cheek. Even if Rose wasn’t responding she had to let her sister know she was there. She kissed her mother next and then sank into a chair beside Lucy.

‘Has there been any change?’ she asked.

Lucy shook her head. ‘No, but we’ve passed the forty-eight-hour mark.’

Ruby knew that was a big milestone but what she didn’t know was how much that meant if Rose still hadn’t shown any signs of improvement.

‘Have the doctors seen her this morning?’

‘Yes, and they seem to think it’s a positive that Rose hasn’t declined any further.’ Ruby could hear the hopeful note in her mum’s voice, as if praying for Rose’s recovery would be enough to make it happen. That might have worked if they’d been a religious family but they weren’t. But, still, none of them were prepared to discuss anything other than the idea that Rose would recover, even though they all knew there were no guarantees. They only had their belief to get them through this. ‘Will you be able to stay until she’s better?’ Lucy added.

Ruby nodded. She wouldn’t leave while Rose was critically ill. She’d stay as long as she could and hopefully that would be long enough.

‘What about work? Can you get extra time off?’

Ruby hadn’t thought about work since she’d jumped on a plane before sunrise on Sunday and her mother’s question made her realise she hadn’t actually told work she was away. She’d been working as an agency nurse in Byron Bay. She’d been working as an agency nurse for years actually as the flexibility suited her. There was no commitment. She could almost come and go as she pleased, which she did on a fairly frequent basis. When she’d decided she’d had enough of one place she could up and leave without feeling like she was leaving an employer in the lurch.

Had she missed a shift? She couldn’t remember. She certainly hadn’t had a phone call telling her she’d forgotten to turn up. She did a quick calculation. Today was Monday, wasn’t it? No, Tuesday. That was okay, her next shift wasn’t until tomorrow. She had time to sort that out.

‘Time off isn’t a problem,’ she told Lucy. ‘I’ll just tell the agency I’m unavailable.’

Getting days off wasn’t difficult but losing the pay cheque would hurt. But there wasn’t anything she could do about that. She wasn’t leaving until Rose was out of the woods.

‘Are you still working agency? You don’t want something more permanent?’

Lucy had been working for the same aged care facility for ever. Ruby knew she was very attached to the residents but they didn’t live forever. In normal nursing patients came and went and Ruby couldn’t see what difference having a permanent job would make to her life when there was so much change anyway. Ruby didn’t want to form attachments, it would make leaving difficult.

‘It’s just as well I’m doing agency work as it meant I could jump on a plane and come to Adelaide without letting anyone down,’ she said, but she knew better than to expect that to be the end of the conversation. She waited for the inevitable question.

‘You don’t want to settle down?’

There it was. Their conversations always seemed to come back to that. No matter what they were discussing, her mother always seemed to be able to raise the topic of settling down.

By the age of twenty-six Lucy had been a mother of three but Ruby knew it hadn’t all been by choice and she had no intention of making the same mistakes her mother had made. She chose to ignore the fact that not only had she made some of the same mistakes, she had also made other, different, ones and now she was trying just to get through life. She wanted company but she didn’t want commitment. She didn’t want to share her private thoughts or her history with anyone else.

She could feel her hackles rising.

She knew she should be mature enough not to fight with her mother, especially not at the moment next to her sister’s ICU bed. Rose always tried to avoid confrontation and Ruby didn’t want to get into a fight here in case Rose could hear them. She knew she wouldn’t have given work a second thought if Lucy hadn’t asked about it and that realisation put a match to her already short fuse. She needed to remove herself from the situation before Lucy could ask any more questions.

‘Have you eaten today?’ she asked. She needed some breathing space and a quick trip to the hospital kiosk would give her a chance to get it. ‘I’m starving. I skipped breakfast so I might go and grab something to eat. Would you like something?’ She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen her mother eat and, as she expected, Lucy declined her offer.

As she left the ICU she couldn’t help but look at the empty space in the cubicle beside Rose. She hoped the vacant bed meant he’d been moved because he was recovering well. She didn’t want to think that things might have gone from bad to worse.

She kept her eyes peeled for him as she made her way along the hospital corridors but he was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t as though she’d really expected to bump into him but she still felt a frisson of disappointment as she stepped up to the counter of the hospital kiosk and placed her order.

She just wanted to see him once more. She needed to know he was okay.

She picked up her green tea and vegetarian wrap and turned from the counter and found the person she’d been searching for. He was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watching her with his bright blue eyes.

It had been twenty-four hours since she’d seen him and she couldn’t help but think what a difference a day made. One day ago he’d been in an intensive care bed and now he was dressed and sitting in the hospital kiosk. Watching her.

Although he was on the far side of a crowded room Ruby would have sworn they had the place to themselves. She certainly wasn’t aware of anyone else. Not while he was watching her. Even from a distance the colour of his eyes was a vivid blue and somehow he had become familiar to her despite the fact she still had no idea who he was.

He smiled and her heart skipped a beat.

He didn’t look surprised to see her. Neither did he seem embarrassed to be caught watching her. If she didn’t know better she would think he’d been waiting for her.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she walked towards him. She told herself she had to walk past him to get out of the kiosk but there were actually several different exits, she could have easily chosen a different route, but her feet were already moving in his direction. It was no use pretending she didn’t want to see him; for the past two days she’d thought of nothing else except her sister and the stranger in the bed next to her.

She was three steps away when she discovered that the path she’d taken was blocked by his wheelchair. She hesitated and looked up, meeting his eyes, before continuing on another step.

‘Hello.’ His voice rumbled through her. It was deep and strong but quiet. It sounded as though he was far away but it was loud enough to bring her to a stop beside him. It was only one little word, two syllables, but to Ruby’s ears it was so much more than a simple greeting. To Ruby it was the start of something more.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.