LITMIR.BIZ

      MILLS & BOON

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      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      Memo:

      Tell Emily: Doctors are not trained to tie pew ribbons.

      Tell Emily: Doctors should not even need to admire pew ribbons. It’s not written in the wedding contract. Is it?

      Remember to admire the bridesmaids. Don’t tell anyone I detest pink chiffon.

      Do not slug Mrs Smythe when she asks me yet again when we can expect the patter of tiny feet.

      Run. Run until I forget how many people are intending to watch me get married tomorrow…

      SHE’D hit him.

      Dear God, she’d hit him. Dr Lizzie Darling pushed Phoebe aside and shoved open the car door, her heart sprawled somewhere around her boots.

      Where was he? There. Oh, no…

      The man was face down in the mud right beside her car. Lizzie hadn’t been going fast—this was a blind bend on an unmade road and it was raining. She’d crawled around the bend, but Phoebe had snapped her dog-belt at just the wrong time. The vast basset hound had launched herself joyously at her new mistress and Lizzie had been momentarily distracted. Or maybe distracted was too mild a description for the sensation of a basset tongue slurping straight down your forehead.

      Whatever.

      What had she done?

      He must have been jogging, but what was someone doing jogging in this wilderness? He was in his late twenties or early thirties, Lizzie guessed. She’d reached him now. The sick dread in her heart was almost overwhelming. What damage had she caused?

      Stay calm, she told herself. Look. Think. Triage. Sort priorities. And the first priority had to be to get herself calm enough to be professional.

      Was he an athlete? With this build he surely could be. He was wearing shorts. His too-small T-shirt revealed every muscle. On his feet were running shoes, and he wore nothing else. Lying in the mud, he looked like some discarded Rodin sculpture. A wounded Rodin sculpture.

      But…not dead? Please?

      How hard had she hit him? She’d practically crawled around the blind bend. He must have run into her as much as she’d run into him.

      She knelt in the mud beside him and put a hand to the side of his neck. Beneath her fingers his pulse beat strongly. That was good. There wasn’t any blood. That was good, too.

      But he wasn’t moving. Why?

      Her momentary calm was receding as panic built in waves. Lizzie might be a qualified medical practitioner but she was accustomed to her emergencies coming through the front entrance of her nicely equipped emergency department—not lying in the mud at her feet. She looked wildly around her, taking in her surroundings. She truly was in the middle of nowhere.

      Birrini was a tiny fishing town on the south coast of Australia. The road through the forest into this town was one of the wildest in Australia. Scenic, they called it, but no tourists ever came here at this time of the year. Especially now, when the road surface had been ripped up for roadworks. Local traffic only, the sign had said, and for good reason. The road was a series of hairpin loops along a jagged coastline. On one side was a sheer cliff face; the other side dropped straight to the sea.

      And what a sea! From here the ocean fifty feet down was a churning maelstrom of foam, with jagged shards of rock reaching up like suppliant fingers in the foam.

      Suppliant fingers…hands raised in prayer. The analogy was a good one, she thought bitterly. Help was what she needed.

      Action was what she needed. Here she was staring out to sea when she should be figuring out what to do with this guy.

      She was figuring out how alone she was.

      At least his breathing was fine. Her fingers had been moving over his face even as she looked about her, searching for what was most important. The stranger was face down but as her hand came over his mouth she felt the soft whisper of breathing. Thank God. She adjusted the position of his head a tiny bit—not enough to hurt if his neck was broken but a tiny sideways shift so his mouth and nose were clear of the mud.

      So why wasn’t he moving?

      ‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered, but there was no answer.

      Had he hit his head? He must have. Her fingers kept searching and found what they were seeking—an ugly haematoma on the side of his forehead. There was a little blood. Not much.

      Maybe

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