LITMIR.BIZ

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Poor old Dad. It dated him well in the past, calling her a matron. The senior nurses were all ‘managers’ now.

      Unfortunate Dad, the poor fellow laid back with his broken arm and his twisted knee. It had been an accident waiting to happen for his father, a man of his advanced age taking random locum destinations while he surfed. But Sam understood perfectly well why he did it.

      Sam sighed and turned off the ignition. Too late to back out. He was here now. He climbed out and stretched the kinks from his shoulders. The blue expanse of ocean reminded him how far from home he really was.

      Above him towered a lonely white lighthouse silhouetted against the sapphire-blue sky on the big hill behind the hospital. He listened for traffic noise but all he could hear was the crash of the waves on the cliff below and faint beats from a song. Edge of Nowhere. Not surprising someone was playing country music somewhere. They should be playing the theme song from Deliverance.

      He’d told his colleagues he had to help his dad out with his arm and knee. Everyone assumed Sam was living with him while he recuperated. That had felt easier than explaining this.

      Lighthouse Bay, a small hamlet on the north coast of New South Wales at the end of a bad road. The locum do-everything doctor. Good grief.

      * * *

      Ellie jumped at the rap on her door frame and turned her face to the noise. She reached out and switched her heroic balladeer off mid-song. The silence seemed to hum as she stared at the face of a stranger.

      ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’ A deep, even voice, quite in keeping with the broad shoulders and impeccable suit jacket, but not in keeping with the tiny, casual seaside hospital he’d dropped into.

      Drug reps didn’t usually get out this far. That deeply masculine resonance in his cultured voice vibrated against her skin in an unfamiliar way. It made her face prickle with a warmth she wasn’t used to and unconsciously her hand lifted and she checked the top button of her shirt. Phew. Force field secure.

      Then her confidence rushed back. ‘Can I help you?’ She stood up, thinking there was something faintly familiar... But after she’d examined him thoroughly she thought, no, he wasn’t recognisable. She hadn’t seen this man before and she was sure she’d have remembered him.

      The man took one step through the doorway but couldn’t go any further. Her office drew the line at two chairs and two people. It had always been small but somehow the space seemed to have shrunk to ridiculous tininess in the last few seconds. There was a hint of humour about his silver-blue eyes that almost penetrated the barrier she’d erected but stopped at the gate. Ellie was a good gatekeeper. She didn’t want any complications.

      Ellie, who had always thought herself tall for a woman, unexpectedly felt a little overshadowed and the hairs on the back of her neck rose gently—in a languorous way, not in fright—which was ridiculous. Really, she was very busy for the next hour until the elderly locum consultant arrived.

      ‘Are you the matron?’ He rolled his eyes, as if a private thought piqued him, then corrected himself. ‘Director of Nursing?’ Smooth as silk with a thread of command.

      ‘Acting. Yes. Ellie Swift. I’m afraid you have the advantage of me.’

      The tall man raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m Samuel Southwell.’ She heard the slight mocking note in his voice. ‘The locum medical officer here for the next month.’ He glanced at his watch as if he couldn’t believe she’d forgotten he was coming. ‘Am I early?’

      ‘Ah...’

      Ellie winced. Not a drug rep. The doctor. Oops.

      ‘Sorry. Time zones. No Daylight Saving for you northerners from Brisbane. Of course. You’re only early on our side of the border. I was clearing the decks for your arrival.’ She muttered more to herself, ‘Or someone’s arrival...’ then looked up. ‘The agency had said they’d filled the temporary position with a Queenslander. I should have picked up the time difference.’

      Then the name sank in. ‘Southwell?’ A pleasant surprise. She smiled with real warmth. ‘Are you related to Dr Southwell who had the accident?’ At the man’s quick nod, Ellie asked, ‘How is he?’ She’d been worried.

      ‘My father,’ he said dryly, ‘is as well as can be expected for a man too old to be surfing.’ He spoke as if his parent were a recalcitrant child and Ellie felt a little spurt of protectiveness for the absent octogenarian. Then she remembered she had to work with this man for the next month. She also remembered Dr Southwell had two children, and his only son was a consultant obstetrician at Brisbane Mothers and Babies. A workaholic, apparently.

      Well, she certainly had someone with obstetric experience for a month. It would be just her luck that they wouldn’t have a baby the whole time he was here. Ellie took a breath and plastered on a smile.

      First the green frog jumping at her from the door, then the ones croaking outside the window and now the Frog Prince, city-slicker locum who wasn’t almost retired, like locums were supposed to be.

      ‘Welcome. Perhaps you’d like to sit down.’ She gestured at the only other chair jammed between the storage cupboard and the door frame. She wasn’t really sure his legs would fit if he tried to fold into the space.

      He didn’t attempt to sit and it was probably a good choice.

      There was still something about his behaviour that was a little...odd. Did he feel they didn’t want him? ‘Dr Southwell, your presence here is very much appreciated.’

      It took him a couple of seconds to answer and she used them to centre herself. This was her world. No need to be nervous. ‘We were very relieved when someone accepted the locum position for the month.’

      He didn’t look flattered—too flash just to be referred to as ‘someone’, perhaps?

      Ellie stepped forward. Bit back the sigh and the grumbles to herself about how much she liked the old ones. ‘Anyway, welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Most people call me Swift, because it’s my name and I move fast. I’m the DON, the midwife, emergency resource person and mediator between the medical staff and the nursing staff.’ She held out her hand. He looked at her blankly. What? Perhaps a sense of humour was too much to hope for.

      His expression slowly changed to one of polite query. ‘Do they need mediation?’ He didn’t take her hand and she lowered it slowly. Strange, strange man. Ellie stifled another sigh. Being on the back foot already like this was not a good sign.

      ‘It was a joke, sorry.’ She didn’t say, ‘J. O. K. E.,’ though she was beginning to think he might need it spelled out for him. She switched to her best professional mode. The experience of fitting in at out-of-the-way little hospitals had dispatched any pretensions she might have had that a matron was anyone but the person who did all the things other people didn’t want to do. It had also taught her to be all things to all people.

      Ellie usually enjoyed meeting new staff. It wasn’t something that happened too often at their small hospital until Dr Rodgers had retired.

      Lighthouse Bay was a place more suited to farming on the hills and in the ocean, where the inhabitants retreated from society, though there were some very trendy boutique industries popping up. Little coffee plantations. Lavender farms. Online boutiques run by corporate women retreating from the cities looking for a sea change.

      Which was where Ellie’s new clientele for Maternity rose from. Women with considered ideas on how and where they wanted to have their babies. But the town’s reliable weekend doctor had needed to move indefinitely for medical treatment and Ellie was trying to hold it all together.

      The local farming families and small niche businesses were salt-of-the-earth friendly. She was renovating her tiny one-roomed cottage that perched with two other similar crofts like a flock of seabirds on the cliff overlooking the bay. She’d found the perfect place to forget what a fool she’d been and perfect also for avoiding such a disaster again.

      Ellie dreamed of dispensing with the need for doctors

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