A Woman Worth Waiting for

Auteur

Meredith Webber

Lezers

15,7K

Hoofdstukken

Auteur

Meredith Webber

Lezers

15,7K

Hoofdstukken

Harlequin💕 Romance 🩺 Doctors & Nurses 😌 Second Chances 🏙️ Contemporary

CHAPTER ONE

‘THEY’RE fairly basic,’ Joe Allen, one of the senior security staff at Ellison General, said to Sarah as he led her up the flight of three wide steps to a veranda which stretched along the front of the low, brick building.

‘I’m used to basic, having done locums in some far-flung places,’ Sarah assured him.

Joe produced keys from his pocket as he moved past the first door towards the third, in the middle of the row of five.

‘Dr Willis is in the first flat. She’s been looking to buy something in the area but hasn’t found what she wants. A psychologist, some chap here for a short course or to do a survey or something, is coming into the second for a few weeks. You’re in here and the two beyond this one are empty.’

Sarah nodded. She’d already met Virginia—‘call me Ginny’—Willis over at the A and E department. The young woman had seemed open and friendly—though, no doubt, part of the welcome was because she’d have more help, now Sarah had arrived to hold the fort until a new doctor could be appointed to the team.

‘I’m sure we’ll all get along very well though, from previous experience, there’s not much time for socialising after hours.’

Joe nodded, then pushed open the door to reveal what Sarah had come to think of as a typical hospital flat. They walked into a living room, furnished with one two-seater and two single vinyl-covered armchairs, with a cheap laminated coffee-table set in front of them. The living space merged into the kitchen, separated by a low counter. Three stools along the counter made it into a dining table of sorts.

Across from the kitchen was a hall, with two doors opening off it, one bedroom and one bathroom—hers for a fortnight.

‘You know about the extra security?’ Joe asked, and Sarah nodded.

‘Ring for an escort if moving around the hospital grounds on my own after dark.’ She repeated the order Joe had already given her. Then, as they walked back onto the veranda, she looked around and waved her hand towards the flat paved space in front of the flats. ‘Though this area seems well lit, and all I have to do is cross the road to be in the hospital car park.’

‘The police think Dr Craig was taken from the hospital car park,’ Joe told her, ‘though she was murdered somewhere else.’

Sarah nodded. Her own recent close call with abduction, when a psychotic woman had forced her into a vehicle then tried to kill her, was enough to make her wary.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t take any risks,’ she promised. ‘You can even escort me back, if you’re going that way. Although I don’t officially start until tomorrow, I’ll bring my car across and unpack my things, then go over to A and E. It looked as if Dr Willis could do with a hand, and I like to get a feel for places before I begin work.’

Joe shut the door and handed her the keys.

‘The second key is for the back door. All the locks were changed recently—a regular upgrade to more effective deadlocks. The doors lock automatically when you shut them, and you need a key to open them from inside or outside.’

Sarah slipped the keys into her handbag as they followed the path skirting the parking area. Her thoughts were on Isobel Craig, the woman she was temporarily replacing. No locks had kept her safe from an attacker who, police suspected, had already killed twice before killing Isobel and dumping her body in scrubland on the outskirts of the city.

‘Where did the other two young women come from?’ she asked Joe. ‘Did they have any connection with the hospital?’

‘No, thank goodness,’ he replied. ‘Can you imagine the panic among the women who work here if they thought hospital staff were being targeted?’

‘It’d be pretty bad,’ Sarah agreed.

They crossed the road and entered the main staff car park, passing the boom gate that provided some security for the staff cars.

Though not enough to keep Isobel safe, she thought sadly.

‘You’ll get a swipe card for the boom gate when you get your photo ID from the personnel department,’ Joe told her, indicating the metal box where cards could be swiped.

‘Do you have camera surveillance of the car park?’ Sarah asked.

‘Some,’ he admitted. ‘We’re putting in more now. Dr Markham, Dr Craig’s husband, he’s offered to pay for it himself, though that won’t help Dr Craig. He said he always told his wife to park in the corner where the cameras were, but you can’t always get a space where you want it.’

Joe’s explanation carried undercurrents of gloom, but Sarah was wondering how Paul Markham was coping. She didn’t know the man, although she’d heard his name and knew him to be one of the breed of young specialists who’d hitched their wagons to the bright star of nuclear medicine.

Thanking Joe for his help, she retrieved her own vehicle from the visitors’ car park, drove across to the flats and unpacked her clothes, some ‘basic’ provisions and a few knick-knacks she’d brought with her. Once satisfied the place felt a little like home, she walked back to the hospital, entering A and E through the ambulance entrance.

To her surprise, the department was relatively quiet. A green-curtained cubicle suggested that a patient was resting in the makeshift room, no doubt waiting to be transported to a ward, and two nurses, both male, were shifting papers at the main desk, while another woman, possibly a clerk, spoke on the phone.

‘Is Dr Willis around?’ Sarah asked one of the nurses.

He nodded towards the end of the long room.

‘She’s up there somewhere,’ he said, without asking Sarah who she was or what business she had in the department.

Hospital security isn’t your concern, she reminded herself as she headed in the direction he’d indicated.

Then regretted it when she saw Ginny Willis, in a corner provided by an undrawn curtain and the wall, in close conversation with a handsomely beautiful, dark-haired man. He wasn’t much taller than the woman doctor, but he leant towards her, and something in his posture suggested a possessiveness—almost intimacy.

It was too late to back away for Ginny had seen her and, after a word of explanation to the man and a light touch on his forearm, the younger doctor stepped away, greeting Sarah as she approached.

‘You’ve been shown your new home?’ she asked, and Sarah nodded, while her eyes were drawn again to the departing man.

He was beautiful, though she’d always considered the word inappropriate for describing male members of the species. Beautiful, and not hanging around for introductions—he was already halfway to the bank of lifts at the end of the room.

Ginny caught her interest.

‘That was Paul Markham,’ she said to Sarah. ‘He’s taking Isobel’s death hard, and drifts about the place as if he’s still looking for her. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you, but I thought introducing you as her replacement, even though only temporary, might be upsetting for him.’

‘Of course it would have been. Actually, I’m surprised he’s back at work so soon,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s been what—two weeks?’

‘Just about, but he only took a couple of days off—says he was going mad at home. I guess the staff members are like family to him. He did his intern and resident years here, then, after studying overseas, was appointed to head the new nuclear medicine division of the radiology department. With Isobel working in A and E, we were used to him popping in and out.’

‘What was she like—Isobel?’ Sarah asked, but the question was doomed to remain unanswered as a wailing ambulance siren heralded the arrival of an emergency.

Ginny rushed away, and Sarah followed more slowly, stopping at the desk to see if her security pass had come down from the human resources department.

Once tagged as an official member of the team, she checked on Ginny’s new patient, an elderly woman found unconscious in her home, the ambulance alerted by her meals-on-wheels provider.

‘We’ll rehydrate her, take blood for tests to see if we can discover what happened,’ Ginny said, waving away Sarah’s offer of help.

Left to her own devices, she walked down the short corridor between the emergency entrance and the A and E waiting room, where she offered her services to the clerk and nursing sister organising the walk-in patients.

‘We’re not busy today,’ Ruth Storey, the nursing sister on duty, told her. ‘The intern seems to be managing, so why don’t you have a look around, see what’s what, introduce yourself to the staff, and generally get a feel for the place?’

‘I noticed two trauma rooms out the back. Do you handle much trauma?’

‘Not as much as we used to,’ Ruth said. ‘Nowadays most severe trauma cases—serious MVAs, burns or gunshot wounds, that kind of thing—are airlifted straight to one of the major hospitals in Brisbane. Once a Medivac helicopter is in the air, it’s only another twenty minutes and, with trained trauma personnel on board, they can do as much as we could on the ground.’

‘What about a bad motor vehicle accident locally?’ Sarah asked.

‘They’d come here,’ Ruth told her, ‘then, if necessary, critically injured victims would be airlifted on to Brisbane. We get minor things—two-car collisions at intersections with fractures of ankles, concussion or contusions—but the worst of the MVAs are out on the motorway, and if the helicopter’s called in it makes sense to take the injured straight to a major city hospital.’

Sarah nodded, knowing the major hospitals had both the trained trauma teams ready to roll into action when a patient was admitted and more specialist surgeons, neurologists and physicians to call in as consultants.

She chatted for a while longer with Ruth, before excusing herself to look around. The arrangement of the waiting room, with its admission area and line of small numbered cubicles, was standard for a hospital the size of Ellison General.

‘Mrs Warren to Room Five,’ a voice, distorted to mechanical blandness by the intercom, intoned.

A large woman responded to the summons, struggling to her feet then waddling towards the door marked with a bold figure five. A young man, nursing a toddler, was the only other patient, and when he was called to collect a prescription for the pharmacy, the waiting room was empty.

‘It’s a rare sight,’ the clerk told her, ‘so make the most of it. Do you want to come into the office and use the second computer to familiarise yourself with our record-keeping procedures?’

Deciding it was a good idea, Sarah waited while Ruth pressed code buttons to admit her into the secure office area, then slipped into the room.

As she settled in front of the computer, the outer doors slid open and a tall, rangy man with over-long, sun-streaked, honey-coloured hair ushered a harassed-looking woman into the room. She was dragging a blond-haired, white-faced child behind her. One look at the child’s arm was enough to tell its own tale.

‘I don’t know,’ the woman said, heading to the reception counter like a lemming to a cliff-top. ‘You’d think there was a prize for the most hospital visits, the way this kid gets into mischief. Connolly, Fletcher. He’s already got a file a mile long. Will we go straight through to X-Ray?’

‘In a minute, Mrs Connolly,’ the clerk said, tapping the information into her keyboard to find Fletcher’s file number.

Fletcher, meanwhile, had slunk off to a chair, where he sat and gingerly nursed his injured arm.

The tall man stood back, as if content to watch from the sidelines whatever drama played out.

A few minutes later, a nurse appeared with Fletcher’s file and led the woman and child through to X-Ray.

‘There are a couple of things I need to check, Mr Connolly,’ the clerk said, and the tall man turned to look behind him.

‘Aren’t you Mr Connolly?’ the clerk persisted.

The man frowned at her.

‘No,’ he said, then he crossed to a self-serve drink machine, pressed money into it, retrieved a bottle of mineral water and, settling into one of the waiting-room chairs, proceeded to drink it.

‘I keep doing that!’ the clerk said crossly to Sarah. ‘Assuming people are married to each other. For all I know, he could be the fourth father figure in little Fletch’s life. I’ve got to get into the habit of phrasing things better.’

She was berating herself so forcefully that Sarah had to smile, but something in the man’s movements—or perhaps simply his presence—made her study him more closely.

So she couldn’t help but pick up on his reaction when Ginny Willis whirled through the room.

He glanced up, patently disinterested, then his eyes—too far away for Sarah to discern their colour—seemed to focus more intently. He half rose, shook his head, peered down the corridor in the direction Ginny had taken, then slumped back into his chair.

Still shaking his head.

Sarah puzzled over it as she returned to her exploration of the computer system, but the arrival of more patients soon put paid to any thought of an easy day.

Patching minor wounds, admitting patients with more serious ailments—the day slid into a pattern more typical of a small regional city A and E department.

‘Come on, let’s go while there’s a lull, otherwise we’ll be here all night,’ Ginny said to her, much later. ‘You weren’t supposed to be working at all, and look at you. You’ve been here all day.’

They were slumped in chairs in the doctors’ office in the back section of the department, glass windows revealing the continuing bustle of activity in this behind-the-scenes area of Accident and Emergency.

‘I’ll just get my handbag. I left it in the reception area, where I was looking at computer files.’

‘We can walk out that way,’ Ginny suggested, shucking her white coat and dropping it over the back of a chair. ‘Pretend we’re real people, not doctors.’

She followed Sarah out of the room and down the short corridor to the reception area and waiting room.

Sarah saw the man with the blond-streaked hair, and heard Ginny’s gasp of surprise at the same time, then, as Sarah wondered if Security should be advised of his presence, Ginny whispered, ‘Max!’ She turned tail, almost running back towards the ambulance admittance area.

The man, who wouldn’t have heard the gasp but had probably noticed the movement, looked up, studied Sarah for a minute, then returned his attention to a magazine open on his lap. Sarah sensed he had more interest in the people in the room than in the magazine but whether he was studying the patients in general, or seeking a particular person, she couldn’t tell.

What she did know was that the man unsettled her. Given the recent murders of three women in the town, including one from this department, someone should be made aware of his continuing presence.

Ginny had retreated to the doctors’ office again, then realised she couldn’t react in any of the ways she favoured—screaming, beating her hands against her head—when everyone in the department would be able to see her.

She sat down in a chair and pressed her hand to her chest, dismayed with her body for reacting the way it had—over a man who’d rejected her such a very long time ago!

Perhaps it hadn’t been Max. After all, there had to be more than one tall, rangy, streaked-blond-haired man in the world. Besides, Max had returned to the United States so he couldn’t possibly be sitting in the A and E waiting room at a regional city hospital in Australia. She had to pull herself together! Sarah Kemp must be wondering what had happened to her, but there was no way—no way—she could walk out there again.

Just in case!

She stared through the window, eyes seeing but not seeing, while her mind churned with shocked emotion—attraction, love, hope, fear, determination and then despair. In retrospect, it always seemed as if she’d run through the whole gamut of human emotions in three short months. The memories tumbled about in her head like clothes in a dryer, glimpses of them flashing through her mind.

Max walking in to her tutorial group that first day, and her own instant recognition of him as ‘her’ man.

How her friends had laughed!

But Max hadn’t laughed—even when she’d embarrassed both of them by declaring her attraction. He’d put up with her shenanigans as she’d insinuated herself into his life, and eventually she’d won a grudging admission from him that the attraction wasn’t all one-sided.

Poor Max! He’d been so concerned about the ethical issues of a student-tutor relationship, and he’d had to fight his own feelings as well as her persistence. Then, just when all the barriers had been about to come tumbling down, he’d had to go—summoned back to the United States by some family crisis.

Ginny squeezed her eyes tightly closed, but could still see the words he’d written to her after his departure—words that had been kind, even loving, but had, nonetheless, broken her heart.

If it was Max, how did she feel about meeting him again?

Not that she had met him yet.

Maybe she didn’t need to, even if it was.

Her mind dithered and her body trembled and six hard-won years of maturity disappeared.

So she only partly registered the two large security men who entered the department from the rear and looked carefully around. Sarah was with them, speaking and waving her hand then leading them back towards the waiting room.

Security men! There were security cameras in the waiting room. If she looked at the screen in the security office, Ginny decided, she’d see the man—and realise it wasn’t Max at all!

Then she could relax and regain her usual composure.

Before she could set off on a hare-brained dash to the security office Sarah returned, but with one man, not two. And it was Max. She didn’t have to look at him to know, because all the little hairs on her arms stood on end and her heart rate rose to danger levels, while a chill of warning slid icily down her spine.

Sarah led him inexorably towards the office door.

‘Max was telling me you’re old friends,’ the new doctor said cheerfully. ‘I’ve just made my mark at Ellison General by asking Security to throw him out. It turns out he’s a psychologist and here quite legitimately. He’s studying stress in A and E departments but was rather hoping to go unnoticed for a few days.’

‘U-unnoticed?’ Ginny managed to stutter. ‘A man his size?’

She had to look at him then, had to force herself to face him.

‘Hello, Max,’ she managed. ‘It’s been a while.’

Max McMurray looked down into Ginny’s huge green eyes. Those eyes, a pert nose spread with caramel-coloured freckles and a smile as wide as Australia had been his undoing six years ago.

And his reason for returning to this country.

He was damned if they weren’t still affecting him.

The eyes, that was. And the freckles. He hadn’t seen the smile yet and, judging by the wariness in the sea-green depths, might not see it for some time. But the lips were the same—the deep V in the middle of the top one, the slight upward tilt to the corners as if they were always getting ready to smile…

‘Yes!’

Brilliant reply! Really top-class. You’re going great guns here! A fourteen-year-old schoolboy would do better!

He tried again.

‘You’re looking well.’

It was a blatant lie—she looked terrible. Pale and somehow haunted, the incredible eyes too big for her face, the freckles standing out against chalky-white skin, the dark hair that used to fall in such a straight, no-nonsense fashion to chin-length tousled into confusion.

A raised right eyebrow challenged his remark.

‘At the end of twelve hours on duty? You’ve got to be joking.’

A little colour was creeping back into her cheeks, while in his own blood desire stirred. Thick and sludgy as yet, but no less worrisome because he knew from experience it would soon become hot and insistent. She was the only woman he’d ever known who had this immediate physical effect on him.

Sure, he’d flirted with other women from time to time, even shared their beds, but none had ever set fire to his body the way Ginny Willis had.

And still did, it seemed.

‘Obviously know each other.’

He’d missed what the woman with the red-gold hair—what had she said her name was?—was saying but, in spite of his scrambled brains, he thought he’d caught the gist of it.

‘I was Ginny’s tutor—’

‘He was my tutor—’

The dual explanations exploded simultaneously, so it sounded like a rehearsed line. The woman must have caught the undercurrents surging through the air for she glanced from one of them to the other, but all she said was, ‘Ah!’

‘We were just leaving.’ Ginny’s voice was anxious as it hurried into the silence. She grabbed the other woman by the arm as though to hustle her out the door.

‘I’ll walk you to your car.’ He didn’t know why he’d offered. Yes, he did! Having found her again, he couldn’t let her go—not right away. And not when he’d quickly checked her left hand and seen no evidence of a declared attachment to another man.

Although she might remove her rings while she was at work…

‘Have a car.’

The negativity in her voice filled in the bit of conversation he’d missed this time.

‘Then I’ll walk you wherever you’re going,’ he said, pig-headed now, although he guessed she didn’t want his company. ‘Given the recent crime wave in this town, women shouldn’t be walking around on their own at night. Or in the daytime either, for that matter. Success breeds extra boldness with serial killers.’

Ginny stepped away so the other woman was between them.

‘I wasn’t going to walk on my own,’ she told him, her voice as cool as his blood was hot. ‘Sarah and I are both flatting across the road.’

‘In the hospital accommodation? But that’s wonderful! I’m there, too. Why don’t we all have dinner together in the canteen? Save cooking when we get home.’

He was babbling and knew it, but even worse was his confusion resulting from Ginny’s announcement that she and Sarah—that was the redhead’s name—were apparently sharing a flat.

Delight that a man wasn’t sharing Ginny’s living quarters vied with disappointment she wasn’t living alone…

Therefore more accessible to predatory males like himself? What was wrong with him?

‘Evening canteen meals are terrible. I’ve invited Sarah—you’ve met Sarah Kemp—for dinner. I suppose you can come, too.’

Once again he’d missed the beginning of a statement, but it appeared he’d been invited to dinner.

As had Sarah? Maybe they weren’t flatmates? Hope springs eternal…

You’ve never heard a dinner invitation more grudgingly given, he reminded himself, so don’t let it go to your head.

‘That would be great!’ Oh, how pathetically grateful he sounded. He’d regressed from a fourteen-year-old to an eight-year-old, and all because he’d met the woman he’d returned to Australia to meet!

But accidentally—before he’d been prepared to meet her. Before he’d even figured out all the things he wanted to say.

He really had to pull himself together. Make an effort to at least sound like a mature and rational adult.

‘I meant to shop today but didn’t get around to it. Once I walked into the waiting room, it seemed more important to get a feel for the place, rather than organise food.’

He glanced at Ginny as he spoke—hell, he’d done nothing but glance her way since this stupid conversation had started! But this time he caught a flicker of movement on the right side of her shapely lips. The beginnings of a smile?

‘So nothing’s changed in your work patterns,’ she said, the smile now flirting around her mouth, teasing him to a kind of breathless anticipation as he waited for the full-blown effort.

She turned to Sarah and added, ‘Typical absent-minded professor when it comes to work-related matters. Ten minutes could stretch to five hours once his interest’s caught, though I wouldn’t have thought there’s been much to interest anyone in the A and E waiting room today. I’ve never known the place so quiet.’

‘Isn’t that interesting enough in itself?’ Max asked her, using his own smile in an effort to tempt hers further out.

He was doomed to disappointment. She was no longer looking at him, her attention fixed on a point beyond his left shoulder. So the smile, when it came, wasn’t for him at all.

Max turned to see the recipient while disappointment jarred with an irrational jealousy, intensifying when he saw the darkly handsome man approaching them.

He was handling this rush of negative emotion quite well until the newcomer deftly cut Ginny from their threesome, moving her a little apart and bending towards her with an unmistakable intimacy.

‘Sorry, but I’ve just offered to provide a meal for these two newcomers. You know how the powers that be encourage us to make new staff members feel at home.’ Max couldn’t help but overhear Ginny’s clear-voiced explanation. He fancied he’d caught a note of regret in it, as if she’d far rather be doing whatever Mr Dark and Handsome had suggested.

In an effort to appear unaffected, Max turned to Sarah, but she’d forgotten his existence as well. She was studying the newcomer with an alert kind of interest.

‘Why don’t you join us?’

Ginny’s question to the man stopped Max’s breath, until he heard the murmur of a muted apology or explanation and relaxed again.

He realised he’d have to accept that someone as attractive as Ginny undoubtedly had a special man in her life, but he was pretty sure he’d find it easier to accept tomorrow when he’d got used to the fact he’d met up with her again.

Or maybe next year.

Next century?

‘We’ll wait for you outside,’ Sarah said, taking Max by the arm so he’d be in no doubt as to who was included in the ‘we’.

‘Was I staring?’ he asked, when the fresh early evening air brushed against his heated skin and brought him down towards a semblance of normality.

‘No,’ Sarah told him gently, ‘but you were making little growly noises and, while I don’t think Dr Markham heard you, it seemed to be upsetting Ginny.’

He should have denied the ‘growly noises’ comment, or at least investigated its veracity, but the name sparked his interest.

‘Dr Markham? Paul Markham? Is that who it was?’

‘I believe so, although I haven’t been introduced,’ Sarah said, and now she was studying him with as much interest as he’d taken in the dark-haired stranger. ‘Know the name, do you?’

Max gathered his scattered wits and aimed for lightness when he said, ‘Who in Ellison wouldn’t? Especially coming new to the place—there’s always someone to fill you in on all the gossip and scandal.’

‘Yes?’

The intonation in the woman’s voice told him she didn’t believe a word of his explanation, but something else was niggling in his usually ordered and productive brain. ‘Mind like a computer’, he’d heard himself described. Well, right now the disk drive had crashed, and all he had was fragments of information and no easy way of retrieving it. Who would have believed the sight of a woman could have caused such chaos?

He focused on the redhead. What was her name?

‘Kemp? You’re Sarah Kemp? Tony Kemp’s wife? What are you doing here?’

She smiled at him.

‘A locum, and that’s genuine. What about you?’

He hesitated, giving her time to probe deeper.

‘If you know of me through Tony then you know him. Or of him. Are you with the police?’

Max shook his head.

‘No, I really am what I say I am—a psychologist. Medical degree first then further studies in psychology but I was always more interested in research than a career in psychiatry. And I’m genuinely here at Ellison—well, Ellison first and then other hospitals—to study stress in Accident and Emergency.’

‘But?’ Sarah persisted.

‘Stress is my specialty. Stress factors, stress triggers, the build-up of stress—’

‘In serial killers?’

Max studied the woman. He’d met Tony Kemp in Washington twelve months earlier, when the Australian policeman had attended a series of lectures he’d given on multiple offenders. Drawn to a man who’d spoken with the accent of his own childhood, they’d had a few drinks together at the end of each day and for a while had exchanged occasional emails. So, if the pretty doctor was married to a man senior enough to be travelling to overseas conferences, it was likely she’d picked up some tips.

‘I’ve read the books, seen files, know something about it,’ he admitted, and she nodded, as if satisfied that some hunch had proved correct. He was about to query her assumptions when Ginny came through the door.

‘Sorry to keep you both waiting, but poor Paul’s so upset. I guess it’s bad enough to lose your wife at any time, but this way—it’s so pointless. Just because the unfortunate woman had long dark hair!’

‘Is that the only resemblance between the victims?’ Sarah asked, as they walked towards the entrance to the car park. ‘I’ve been away and really don’t know much about it all—apart from my husband’s warning to go nowhere alone the whole time I’m here. Even though I’m a redhead!’

‘After Isobel was killed, the local paper ran the photos of all three victims side by side, and there’s definitely a resemblance. Not only the long hair, but slim build and fairly elongated faces. Isobel had what I think of as a classic beauty—and to see her and Paul together, they made a stunning couple.’

Ginny sounded sad, as if envious of either the pair’s beauty, or perhaps of their marriage, Max thought. Had she been attracted to Paul Markham before his wife was killed?

Been friends, or more than friends?

You don’t want to go there, he told himself as his experience with crime started him along the line of means, motive and opportunity—with the focus on motive!

Ginny killing off a rival? The thought was too stupid to even contemplate. He really had to take control of the turmoil in his mind. Forget this unexpected reunion for a moment and concentrate on the conversation.

‘According to the only newspaper article I read, the police found nothing to link the three or any likely suspects in any of the women’s circles of friends.’

Sarah offered this scant information as they waited for a break in the traffic, so they could cross the road to the row of flats. Max, who’d searched the police reports for the same kind of linking information, nodded his agreement, then remembered he was here to seek out new information, not go over old ground.

Or renew an old relationship, come to that!

‘Hard to believe there’s never been any gossip about the two doctors,’ he said, keeping his voice deliberately light to cover his earlier—and totally unworthy—suspicions. ‘Hospital grapevines must be slipping if no stories surfaced after the poor woman disappeared.’

‘No stories surfaced because there were none!’ Ginny said, leading them in a dash across the road when a small break appeared. ‘They were two people with related careers, dedicated to their jobs and to each other.’

‘I can understand him being dedicated to his job, but does anyone get dedicated to A and E? I mean, it’s hardly the most rewarding place in the hospital to work. You, for instance.’ Max turned Ginny to face him, though touching her was a mistake as it generated a twitchiness beneath his skin. Hers, too, if the start she gave was any indication. ‘Is it where you want to stay? For ever?’

Ginny gave him a long, hard look.

‘Why are you asking? Why do you want to know? And don’t tell me it was nothing but idle conversation because you wouldn’t know an idle conversation if it bit you on the backside. All your questions lead somewhere, even if it’s only into an analysis of the poor questionee’s mental health.’

Max grinned at her.

‘The thing I can’t believe,’ he told her as a flooding wave of happiness at being in her company again rocked him back on his heels, ‘is that I didn’t even consider I might meet up with you again so quickly.’

She frowned her bewilderment.

‘What do you mean? So quickly?’

Sticky question. It was OK to dream you’d meet that special girl again one day, but if you talked about dreams like that, people tended to look around, expecting to see men in white coats arriving to carry you off.

And it was OK to plot and plan, put out feelers, suggest studies, all with the aim of finding her again, but to admit it was tantamount to admitting an obsession!

‘When I came back to Queensland, I thought there was a chance we might run across each other…’ Good going, McMurray. You’ve suggested just the right amount of casual happenstance. ‘But when this came up at Ellison, I didn’t for a minute imagine you’d be here. It must be fate—kismet.’

The frown, instead of vanishing with this logical explanation, deepened, growing into a scowl.

‘Well, I can’t see why you would have expected me to be here. Or why you’d remember me for that matter. You never did see further than the end of your nose. All I ever was to you was little Ginny, the student-nuisance. As for kismet—I went to school with a girl of that name and, believe me, she was nothing but trouble!’

She shook her arm free of his hand and stalked away from him, spoiling her huffy exit slightly by tripping on the bottom step.

Little Ginny! Yes, he’d called her that, and had hurt her with the words. Hurt her because he did see further than the end of his nose—far enough, in the beginning, to worry about the ethical concerns of a student-tutor relationship, and later to know it would be wrong to tie a twenty-year-old student to him for an indefinite period of time, especially when they were thousands of kilometres apart.

‘This first one is my flat,’ she announced. ‘How about you give me half an hour to shower, then come in for a drink while I fix us something to eat?’

Max knew he should protest—at least make noises about not wanting to put her out—but he couldn’t deny himself the opportunity to see more of her, to be with her, perhaps make her smile…

‘I’ve a bottle of Californian wine someone gave me when I left the States. I’ll bring that,’ he offered.

‘And I’ve got biscuits and cheese, and other nibbly things,’ Sarah added. She’d walked on ahead and was waiting at the top of the steps. ‘We’ll see you shortly.’

When Max joined her, she walked with him along the veranda to the next door.

‘I’m in the third, and I believe you’re in here. This should be cosy! Not to mention fun!’

He heard a gurgle of laughter in her voice, and saw a glint of amusement in her eyes.

If he was so easy for a stranger to read, what had happened to the ‘calm, remote scientist’ image he thought he promoted?