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      ‘Which ones are yours?’ Laird asked, beside Tammy. ‘The kids, I mean.’

      ‘Oh. Which ones? All of them!’

      ‘All five?’

      ‘Yes.’ Was he turning pale? She wouldn’t blame him. People often did.

      ‘I somehow thought it was three,’ he murmured.

      ‘No, it’s five.’ She held up the correct number of fingers, just to drive the point home. ‘Three four-year-olds—’

      ‘Triplets!’

      ‘You’ve turned pale.’

      He really had.

      ‘Five kids, including triplets,’ she went on. ‘That’s why I need five ice-creams.’

      ‘And you’re on your own with them.’

      Was he horrified or impressed? She couldn’t tell.

      He’d looked quickly down at his coffee, but somehow a memory had imprinted in his mind and he couldn’t seem to let it go.

      I want her. In my bed. In my life.

      Bestselling romance author Lilian Darcy has written over seventy novels, for Silhouette Special Edition, Mills & Boon^® Medical™ Romance and Silhouette Romance. She currently lives in Australia’s capital city, Canberra, with her historian husband and their four children. When she is not writing or supporting her children’s varied interests, Lilian likes to quilt, garden or cook. She also loves winter sports and travel. Lilian’s career highlights include numerous appearances on romance bestseller lists, three nominations in the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA^® Award, and translation into twenty different languages. Find out more about Lilian and her books or contact her at www.liliandarcy.com

      Look out for a new book by Lilian Darcy next month!

      A PROPOSAL WORTH WAITING FOR

      is the next story in the fabulous mini-series set in Crocodile Creek—available September 2008, only in Medical™ Romance!

      THE CHILDREN’S DOCTOR AND THE SINGLE MUM

      BY

      LILIAN DARCY

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘WE NEED another nurse,’ Laird muttered.

      He had one standing right beside him, checking the two resuscitaires, plugging in tubing for oxygen, laying out the plastic wrap that would help keep the twins warm once they’d been born. He could see the nurse mentally confirming that all the equipment on the resuscitaire trolleys was in place—laryngoscope, endotracheal tubes, Magill for-ceps—and she moved adroitly around the awkward positioning of various fixtures in the operating theatre.

      She looked as if she knew exactly what she was doing.

      All well and good, but one nurse wasn’t enough. The scrub nurse and circulating nurse adding to the crowd in the operating theatre would be fully occupied on the surgical side. They weren’t here for the babies themselves. This patient was about to have a Caesarean delivery.

      Two paediatricians, one NICU nurse, two twenty-seven-weekers about to be born—it didn’t add up, especially when the babies had stage three twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. You really needed two medical people for each twin when they were going to be so fragile and small and ill and would need transfer to the NICU as soon as they were stabilised after birth. At least Sam Lutze was a good doctor, and the one neonatal nurse they did have seemed unfazed by the whole situation.

      But she’d heard his muttered complaint.

      ‘Sorry, but there’s only me,’ she said, calm and matter-sof-fact, still checking her equipment. ‘Someone’s just gone off sick. We have a supernumerary and we’re shifting things around, but for now… Yeah. You’ve got me.’

      ‘It’s not good enough,’ he muttered again.

      ‘I know. But we have a whole NICU full of sick prems. Someone’s on the phone, seeing if there’s anyone we can transfer to another hospital. We’re doing our best.’ She glanced over at the operating table, where their pregnant patient was about to be delivered, by Caesarean. ‘Give Dr Lutze the recipient twin, if he’s the strongest, and you and I can take care of the donor. Would that be the way to go?’

      ‘We’ll see how it pans out. I haven’t met you before,’ Laird said.

      He couldn’t help turning the statement into a challenge. It was one in the morning and Sam Lutze had called him in half an hour ago—Laird had only left the NICU two hours before that—when Fran Parry’s obstetrician had decided her labour was unstoppable.

      Laird had seen the latest scans and tests on the babies. They would have needed an emergency delivery within the next few days anyway, because the recipient twin had heart problems developing, while the donor twin just wasn’t getting enough blood.

      This woman…

      What was her name? He discreetly checked her badge. Tammy Prunty. Was he reading that right?

      She had better be more than competent at her job.

      ‘No, you haven’t met me,’ she answered. ‘But plenty of people at Royal Victoria NICU have. Dr Cathcart, Dr Leong, Dr Simpson. I was there for eight years, on and off, before I came here.’

      Here being Yarra Hospital, several kilometres northeast of Melbourne’s city centre, while Royal Victoria was closer in.

      ‘Sorry, I wasn’t pushing for your résumé.’

      ‘Well, I can understand why you wanted it.’ She unkinked a cable, switched something on. She had a comfortable figure—some people might call it plump, others voluptuous—but her movements were fast, deft and sure, and Laird had the grudging realisation that she seemed to know her way around the equipment better than he did.

      ‘Don’t tell me this is your first shift here, though, please!’ He could hear all too well how crabby he sounded, but the prospect of staffing issues affecting a high-risk birth like this one always got to him.

      ‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Second.’

      ‘Oh, great!’

      ‘But so far it’s pretty similar to how we did things at RV. Everything’s the same colour!’

      Her calm good cheer soothed his irritation, and his impatience seemed to have affected her like water on a duck’s back, thank goodness. Her disposable cap stuck out all around her head, like a cross between a pancake and a Madonna-blue halo, and her pale forehead was shiny above a pair of brilliant blue eyes. If she had hair, he couldn’t see it.

      They were ready for the babies now.

      Or as ready as they’d ever be.

      ‘Everything all right, Mrs Parry?’ asked her obstetrician, Tim Wembley.

      ‘I can’t feel anything now.’ Her voice sounded shaky, and her husband squeezed her hand and hissed out a tense breath. Both of them were understandably frightened and emotional. They were in their late twenties, which was starting to look young to Laird at thirty-four.

      ‘That’s the way we want it.’

      ‘Good to go here,’ the anaesthetist said.

      ‘Not long now,’ said one of the two theatre nurses, giving Mrs Parry’s shoulder a pat. She was circulating, not scrubbed and sterile like her colleague. Both women had kept up a cheerful stream of reassurance, explanation and general chat as preparations for the Caesarean birth were completed.

      ‘Dr Burchell, Dr Lutze, how are we over there?’ Dr Wembley asked.

      ‘We’re good,’ Laird answered,

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