LITMIR.BIZ

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tricky task. ‘I’m staying here. Thank you for bringing me home.’ And she headed for the gate.

      He was out of the car, through the gate, stopping her.

      ‘Don’t stop me,’ she pleaded. ‘I need …’

      ‘I know this place,’ he said. ‘When I was an intern we averaged one drug overdose a week from this dump.’

      She was trying to shove past him, looking increasingly desperate. ‘It’s only until payday. It has a bathroom. Please …’

      She was nothing to do with him, he told himself. This was none of his business. He’d brought her home. He’d done what he had to do.

      But … she’d held him. She’d stopped his grief from stripping him raw.

      She’d lightened his life.

      That had to be an overstatement, he told himself. One crazy impulse did not mean emotional change. She’d simply been there when he’d needed her, had responded to his need, had maybe used him to assuage her own needs.

      Her own needs were pretty apparent now. She’d broken from him and was doubled over behind a scrubby hedge. The garden was filthy.

      Questions.

      She was a skilled theatre nurse from a town he remembered as being quiet and beautiful.

      His colleagues had her labelled as wanton.

      She’d held him.

      Whatever she was, he couldn’t leave her here.

      She was crouched, trembling, in the filthy garden, sweaty and sick, and he knew he had no choice.

      He waited for the spasms to cease. Then, giving her no chance to argue, he stooped and lifted her into his arms and carried her back to his car. He deposited her back into the passenger seat before she knew what he was doing.

      ‘What’s your room number?’ he demanded.

      ‘T-twelve.’ She could barely speak. ‘But—’

      ‘Give me your key.’

      ‘I don’t …’

      He took her purse from her limp grasp and retrieved the key.

      ‘Don’t argue and don’t move,’ he said, and headed for the house.

      She didn’t go anywhere. How could she? That last episode had left her wanting to do nothing so much as to lie down and die. Her bed in the boarding house was lumpy and none too clean, but it was a bed and right now she wanted it more than anything else in the world. Only her legs didn’t feel like they’d take her anywhere.

      After the week she’d had, it needed only this. Of all the stupid hospitals she had to temp in, it had to be Sydney Harbour Hospital during a gastro epidemic.

      She wanted to die.

      Why was she sitting in Luke’s car?

      It was too hard to do anything else.

      She closed her eyes and he was back again, carrying her suitcase. That got through … sort of. ‘What …?’ She was trying to get her thoughts in order. She wasn’t succeeding.

      ‘You’re not staying here,’ Luke said grimly. ‘This place is drug bust central.’ Then his face sort of … changed. He slid into the driver’s seat and pushed up her uniform sleeves.

      She got that. No matter that she was dying … he thought she was a crackhead?

      Enough. There were some things up with which a girl did not put. Or something. She wasn’t making sense even to herself, but as he tried to check her pupils she found the strength to haul back her hand and slap him. Straight across his cheek with all the strength she could muster. Which wasn’t actually very much. He recoiled but not far, then caught her hands in his before she could do it again.

      ‘Just checking,’ he said, mildly.

      ‘I drink champagne every time I get a pay rise,’ she managed through gritted teeth. ‘I’m addicted to romance novels and chocolate. I once got a speeding ticket and a parking fine all in the one month. Evil doesn’t begin to describe me—but I don’t do drugs.’ She tried, very badly, not to sob, as she hauled her hands away from his and fumbled for the door catch.

      ‘No.’ He leaned over and tugged the door closed, took her shoulders and twisted her to face him. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Me, too. Let me out.’

      ‘I’m taking you home.’

      ‘I am home.’

      ‘My home.’

      ‘You don’t want a junkie at home.’

      ‘You’re not a junkie,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ve seen enough to know I’ve mortally offended you. Can I start making amends?’

      ‘There’s no need …’ But her stomach wasn’t up to arguing. Another cramp hit and she doubled over.

      He handed her a paper bag but she didn’t need it. There was nothing left.

      He waited for the spasms to cease, then magically produced moist wipes. ‘Paper bags and wipes from Emergency,’ he said softly as he cupped her chin in one hand and washed her face. She was so limp she couldn’t argue. ‘You get parking tickets. I steal wipes. Criminals both. You want to do a Thelma and Louise and run for the border?’

      ‘I … No.’

      ‘Thought not,’ he said, and fastened her seat belt for her. ‘Let’s find you an alternative.’

      His surgical list started at eight and he made it only fifteen minutes late. This morning was his private list, cosmetic surgery. The woman he was treating had travelled overseas to get cheek implants, a reshaped nose and liposuction for her thighs. She’d got what she’d paid for and she hadn’t paid much. She’d ended up with a perforation of the nasal septum, a nasal obstruction and nasal deformity. One of her cheek implants had slipped, which meant her face was weirdly lopsided and her thighs were … undulating. She had lumps and bumps all over the place.

      He wasn’t working on her legs this morning. He’d remove the cheek implants first—he wasn’t the least sure of their quality and the last thing she needed was one to burst. Then he needed to focus on revision rhinoplasty and repair of the septal perforation.

      She’d need further procedures and he couldn’t be sure she’d look as good as she had when she’d started.

      Cosmetic surgery could sometimes be brilliant, restoring self-image, but this time it had been a disaster.

      The surgery he’d had as a child had been brilliant.

      Luke’s childhood had been made miserable by a massive port wine birthmark almost covering one side of his face. His parents, cold and emotionally detached, had decreed it was simply ‘character building’, but when he’d been fourteen his uncle had stepped in.

      ‘I’ve arranged the best plastic surgeon I can afford,’ he’d told his father. ‘The kid’s getting that off his face whether you like it or not.’

      His uncle was a bachelor, taciturn, unsentimental, refusing thanks. He and the plastic surgeon he’d found had changed Luke’s life and had set him on the path he was on now.

      His uncle’s farm had been lifesaving as well. It still was. Even though his uncle was as emotionally distant as the rest of his family, his farm had been a retreat from the world.

      He hadn’t been to the farm for two weeks now and he was missing it. Maybe he could take off for a few days. Leave his apartment to Lily. Whoever Lily was.

      Not a junkie. An unanswered question.

      Don’t get close.

      ‘So tell me about your lady of the night.’ Finn’s voice from the doorway to his office made

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