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had. James had bought her a ring, the large amber ring that she was wearing now, because, he’d said, it matched her eyes. And he’d taken her out for dinner, the perfect night, and they’d had the same old good-natured joke as they’d got back to the apartment and she’d moaned about the lack of flowers.

      It hurt to remember and she tried not to, but the memory was out there, all polished and gleaming and allowing for total recall.

      Tumbling in bed together, making love as they once had.

      His big body over hers, his chin all stubbly, those gorgeous green eyes looking down, and she saw in that image what she hadn’t seen in a very long time. James was smiling. ‘Men only send flowers when they’ve something to feel guilty about.’

      ‘In your own words, James,’ Ava said, and looked at the flowers and wanted to bin them. If her window had opened she would have tossed them out there and then, except her window was sealed closed, and then in came Ginny with a huge vase.

      ‘Put them out in the waiting room,’ Ava suggested. ‘Let the patients enjoy them.’

      ‘Don’t be daft,’ Ginny said, and plonked them right there on her desk. ‘He sent them for you.’

      And there they sat, for appearances sake, their sweet, sickly fragrance filling her nostrils, the violent colours perpetually in her line of vision. She wished they’d just wilt and fade.

      Like her marriage.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘THEY’VE cancelled the surgery.’ Ava said nothing for a moment, just stood quietly as her colleague Evie Lockheart leant against the corridor wall, her eyes closed as she struggled to keep in the tears, utterly defeated by what had happened. Ava had seen her walking dazed along the hospital corridor. Even if she didn’t know Evie particularly well, she liked her—they had shared the odd conversation and everyone in the hospital knew that Finn Kennedy was having his surgery today.

      Complicated surgery that was extremely risky. Ava already knew his operation had been called off—news spread fast around SHH and she couldn’t even hazard how Finn must be feeling to have been told an hour before such major surgery that it wasn’t going to go ahead.

      ‘It hasn’t been cancelled,’ Ava said, her voice practical. ‘It’s been postponed.’

      ‘Well, it might just as well have been cancelled,’ Evie said. ‘He just told them not to bother booking it again, then he told me to get the hell out.’ Evie shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t be troubling you with this.’ She was clearly in distress and not used to sharing her private life, and Ava was more than used to situations like that.

      ‘Come back to my office,’ Ava suggested. She could see a couple of nurses turning their heads as they walked past—Evie and Finn were hot topics indeed. Finn was the chief of surgery and a formidable man at best, well known for his filthy attitude and ability to upset the staff, but no one could question his brilliance. His voice could be as cutting as the scalpel he so skilfully wielded, except lately he hadn’t been operating and it had done nothing to improve his mood, and today poor Evie was wearing it. ‘We can get a coffee there. I’m sure you might like a bit of privacy now.’ She walked Evie back along the corridor and to the left and then up in the lifts they went without a word. She walked along the corridor, nodded good morning to Donald, one of the therapists, and then through to her own centre and shook her head when Ginny told her she had a message from the spinal unit.

      ‘I’ll call back later,’ Ava said. ‘I’m not to be disturbed.’

      She and Evie entered her office—well, it was more a room. Yes, she had a desk, though it was terribly messy, but the room had a couple of couches and a coffee table, and a small kitchenette where Ava would make her clients a drink, or herself one, if they needed a moment to pause, and she gave Evie that moment now as she went over to make them a drink.

      ‘Finn would never forgive me, you know …’ Evie gave a pale smile as she sat down on one of the comfortable couches ‘If he knew I was stepping into a sex therapist’s office to talk about him.’

      ‘I’d be patronising you if I laughed.’ Ava turned around and smiled. ‘I hear the same thing I don’t know how many times a day. She put on a gruff male voice. ‘“Well, I never thought I’d find myself here. I really don’t need to be here …’” Ava rolled her eyes and poured coffee, taking a little longer than perhaps she needed to, to give Evie a chance to collect herself.

      ‘Well.’ Evie gave a wry laugh. ‘At least we know that’s one type of therapy that Finn doesn’t need.’

      Ava chose not to correct her—Finn had been using women as sticky plasters for a very long while, there was certainly something going on in that brilliant head of his. Still, that wasn’t what Evie needed to hear today. Finn’s and her on-again, off-again relationship was clearly taking its toll on her.

      ‘What a view …’ Evie noticed her surroundings for the first time. ‘Maybe I could ask them to consider moving Emergency up here.’

      ‘The paramedics would never forgive you,’ Ava said. ‘Do you want me to leave you?’ she offered, handing Evie a steaming mug of coffee—Ava wasn’t a nosy person at all and she certainly never gossiped. It was why, perhaps, she often found herself in situations such as this one. ‘The cleaners have already been in.’ She glanced at the desk, wished those blasted flowers were gone, but apart from a couple of wilting roses that the cleaner had removed, they were still there and still taunting her. ‘I haven’t got any patients for another hour, so you won’t be disturbed.’

      ‘No.’ Evie shook her head. ‘You don’t have to go. It’s actually nice to talk, just to be up here and away from the prying eyes.’

      ‘It must be an extra pressure on Finn,’ Ava mused. ‘Having to have his operation where he’s the chief of surgery. Still, there’s no better place.’ SHH was the best hospital for this sort of procedure, there was no question that it might be done elsewhere. It was experimental and even with the best surgery, the best equipment, there were no guarantees that Finn’s ability to operate again could be saved. Indeed, there was a good chance that he would be left a quadriplegic.

      Ava knew that, not because of the gossip that was flying around the hospital but because, unbeknown to Evie, Finn had actually been in for mandatory counselling prior to surgery. The team had discussed who should see him and Ava had immediately declined. She didn’t know Finn particularly well, but they lived in the same apartment block, Kirribilli Views—his penthouse apartment was directly above hers—and though they barely greeted each other if they met on the stairs or in the lift, still, it could surely only make things more awkward for Finn.

      He’d seen Donald instead.

      And even though Donald was terribly experienced—he did both family counselling and sexual dysfunction and his patients adored him—Ava wondered if his brusque approach would mesh with Finn in such a delicate matter.

      Ava dealt with spinal patients a lot. Her work gave her much pleasure, seeing relationships saved, helping people to learn that there could be life, a satisfying sex life even, after such catastrophic events. Her work was, in fact, moving more towards trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder patients, it was how she and Evie had first started talking. Evie worked in Accident and Emergency and had dropped by for a chat about a ‘patient’. Ava was sure, quite sure, that the person they had been discussing was Finn. Finn’s brother had been a soldier like Finn. His brother had died in Finn’s arms and shrapnel from the bomb that had killed his brother was still lodged in Finn’s neck, and it was that that was causing his health issues.

      Sometimes Ava wondered if Finn had ever heard the rows between her and James, not that there had been many, really, before he’d gone away to Brisbane. They had been so deep into injury time by then that she and James hadn’t talked much at all, but Finn had never intruded, there had been no chatting on the stairs or anything, just a very occasional ‘Good morning’. And not once had Finn questioned her about her red, swollen eyes, neither had

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