LITMIR.BIZ

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not that lucky.’

      ‘Excuse me?’

      ‘I haven’t come here as a surgeon.’

      His words punched the air with the pop and fizz of barely restrained politeness, which matched his tight expression. Was he upset? Perhaps he’d come to Turraburra for a funeral after all. Her eyes flicked over his suit and, despite not wanting to, she noticed how well it fitted his body. How his trousers highlighted his narrow hips and sat flat against his abdomen. How the tailored jacket emphasised his broad shoulders.

      Not safe, Lily. She swallowed and found her voice. ‘What have you come as, then?’

      He threw out his left arm, gesticulating towards the door. ‘I’m this poor excuse of a town’s doctor for the next month.’

      ‘No.’ The word shot out automatically—deep and disbelieving—driven from her mouth in defence of her beloved town. In defence of the patients.

      Turraburra needed a general practitioner, not a surgeon. The character traits required to become a surgeon—a driven personality, arrogance and high self-belief, along with viewing every patient in terms of ‘cutting out the problem’—were so far removed from a perfect match for Turraburra that it was laughable. What on earth was going on at the Melbourne Victoria that made them send a surgical registrar to be a locum GP? Heaven help them all.

      His shoulders, already square, vibrated with tension and his brown eyes flashed with flecks of gold. ‘Believe me, Ms Cartwright,’ he said coldly, ‘if I had things my way, I wouldn’t be seen dead working here, but the powers that be have other plans. Neither of us has a choice.’

      His antagonism slammed into her like storm waves pounding against the pier. She acknowledged that she deserved some of his hostility because her heartfelt, shock-driven ‘No’ had been impolite and unwelcoming. It had unwittingly put in her a position she avoided—that of making men angry. When it came to men in general she worked hard at going through life very much under their radar. The less she was noticed the better, and she certainly didn’t actively set out to make them angry.

      She sucked in a breath. ‘I’m just surprised the Melbourne Victoria’s sent a surgeon to us, but, as you so succinctly pointed out, neither of us has a choice.’ She forced herself to smile, but it felt tight around the edges. ‘Welcome to Turraburra, Dr Jackson.’

      He gave a half grunting, half huffing sound and swung his critical gaze back to Chippy. ‘Get the dog out of here. It doesn’t belong in a medical clinic.’

      All her guilt about her own rudeness vanished and along with it her usual protective guard. ‘Chippy is the clinic’s therapy dog. He stays.’

      Noah stared at the tall, willowy woman in front of him whose fingers had a death grip on a set of bright pink folders. Her pale cheeks had two bright spots of colour on them that matched her files and her sky-blue eyes sparked with the silver flash of a fencing foil. He was still smarting from her definite and decisive ‘No’. He might not want to work in this godforsaken place but who was she to judge him before he’d even started? ‘What the hell is a therapy dog?’

      ‘He provides some normalcy in the clinic,’ she said, her tone clipped.

      ‘Normalcy?’ He gave a harsh laugh, remembering his mother’s struggle to maintain any semblance of a normal life after her diagnosis. Remembering all the hours they’d spent in numerous medical practices’ waiting rooms, not dissimilar to this one, seeking a cure that had never come. ‘This is a medical clinic. It exists for sick people so there’s nothing normal about it. And talking about normal, that dog looks far from it.’

      She pursed her lips and he noticed how they peaked in a very kissable bow before flushing a deep and enticing red. Usually, seeing something sexy like that on a woman was enough for him to turn on the charm but no way in hell was he was doing that with this prickly woman with the fault-finding gaze.

      ‘Chippy’s a greyhound,’ she snapped. ‘They’re supposed to be svelte animals.’

      ‘Is that what you call it?’ His laugh came out in a snort. ‘It looks anorexic to me and what’s with the collar? Is he descended from the tsars?’

      He knew he was being obnoxious but there was something about Lilia Cartwright and her holier-than-thou tone that brought out the worst in him. Or was it the fact he’d spent the night sleeping on the world’s most uncomfortable bed and when he’d finally fallen asleep the harsh and incessant screeching of sulphur-crested cockatoos at dawn had woken him. God, he hated the country.

      ‘Have you quite finished?’ she said, her voice so cool he expected icicles to form on her ash-blonde hair. ‘Chippy calms agitated patients and the elderly at the nursing home adore him. Some of them don’t have anyone in their lives they can lavish affection on and Chippy is more than happy to be the recipient of that love. Medical studies have shown that a companion pet lowers blood pressure and eases emotional distress. Like I said, he absolutely stays.’

      An irrational urge filled him to kick something and to kick it hard. He had the craziest feeling he was back in kindergarten and being timed out on the mat for bad behaviour. ‘If there’s even one complaint or one flea bite, the mutt goes.’

      Her brows rose in a perfect arc of condescension. ‘In relative terms, Dr Jackson, you’re here for a blink of an eye. Chippy will far outstay you.’

      The blink of an eye? Who was she kidding? ‘I’m here for seven hundred and twenty very long hours.’

      Her blue eyes rounded. ‘You actually counted them?’

      He shrugged. ‘It seemed appropriate at three a.m. when the hiss of fighting possums wearing bovver boots on my roof kept me awake.’

      She laughed and unexpected dimples appeared in her cheeks. For a brief moment he glimpsed what she might look like if she ever relaxed. It tempted him to join her in laughter but then her tension-filled aura slammed back in place, shutting out any attempts at a connection.

      He crossed his arms. ‘It wasn’t funny.’

      ‘I happen to know you could just have easily been kept awake by fighting possums in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne.’

      Were they comrades-in-arms? Both victims of the vagaries of the Melbourne Victoria Hospital that had insisted on sending them to the back of beyond? A bubble of conciliation rose to the top of his dislike for her. ‘So you’ve been forced down here too?’

      She shook her head so quickly that her thick and tight French braid swung across her shoulder. ‘Turraburra is my home. Melbourne was just a grimy pitstop I was forced to endure when I studied midwifery.’

      He thought about his sun-filled apartment in leafy Kew, overlooking Yarra Bend Park. ‘My Melbourne’s not grimy.’

      Again, one brow quirked up in disapproval. ‘My Turraburra’s not a poor excuse for a town.’

      ‘Well, at least we agree on our disagreement.’

      ‘Do you plan to be grumpy for the entire time you’re here?’

      Her directness both annoyed and amused him. ‘Pretty much.’

      One corner of her mouth twitched. ‘I guess forewarned is forearmed.’ She turned to go and then spun back. ‘Oh, and a word to the wise, that is, of course, if you’re capable of taking advice on board. I suggest you do things Karen’s way. She’s run this clinic for fifteen years and outstayed a myriad of medical staff.’

      He bit off an acidic retort. He hadn’t even met a patient yet but if this last fifteen minutes with Ms Lilia Cartwright, Midwife, was anything to go by, it was going to be a hellishly long and difficult seven hundred and nineteen hours and forty-five minutes in Turraburra.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘I’M HOME!’ LILY CALLED loudly over the blare

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