LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      HE WAS holding up a sign with her name on it, but he wasn’t Terry Davis.

      Definitely not.

      Terry wouldn’t have needed a sign. He and Candace had known each other, on and off, for years. She would have recognised his weatherbeaten face at once, and he would have seen her coming towards him through the milling crowd of arrivals at Sydney’s international airport. He would have smiled.

      This man wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t seen her yet. He hadn’t realised that Candace had spotted her name, scrawled quickly by hand in black felt-tip pen on a makeshift rectangle of cardboard, and that she was zeroing in on it.

      This man looked much younger than Terry. Early thirties, tall and fit and medium dark, with a body that somehow managed to be both solid and lean at the same time. He was wearing jeans and a navy T-shirt that hugged his form closely. In contrast, Terry was well past fifty, and had always looked his age. He never wore jeans.

      Candace herself—DR CANDACE FLETCHER, as the sign correctly stated—was thirty-eight years old and intensely conscious of the fact. She had been for months and was, suddenly, particularly conscious of it now. It had been twenty-four hours since she had left Boston. She must look like a dog’s breakfast, despite a recent freshening in the unappealing cubicle of the aircraft toilet.

      She reached the stranger and his sign, and was tempted to wave a hand in front of his face. Hell-o-o-o! I’m here! He was still scanning the crowd with a frown etched across his high, squarish forehead. Apparently, she didn’t look like her name.

      ‘Are you waiting for me?’

      The frown cleared at once. ‘With insufficient vigilance, obviously, Dr Fletcher. You sneaked up on me.’

      ‘I did think about waving.’

      ‘Probably not what you expected. I should have been Terry.’

      ‘Mmm.’

      She almost blurted out that not much in her life had gone according to expectations over the past year and more, but managed to keep the words back. Dear God, it would be so easy to get emotional!

      ‘I’ll explain as we head to the car,’ he said.

      ‘Sounds good.’

      Unobtrusively, he took control of the luggage cart and began to wheel it towards the exit. She walked beside him, matching his pace.

      ‘I’m Steve, by the way. Steve Colton. You’ll be seeing me in Theatre fairly regularly. I’m often rostered to handle the anaesthesia. Terry’s wife is…not well. That’s why he couldn’t make it.’

      ‘Oh, no!’ Candace said. ‘That’s too bad! It isn’t serious, I hope.’

      ‘So do I,’ he answered soberly. ‘But I’m actually her GP, so I can’t really talk about it. Is this all of your luggage?’

      ‘This is it,’ she confirmed. Three suitcases and a box, for a one-year stay. ‘My mother helped me pack, and she’s very strict.’

      ‘Travels light?’

      ‘Arrives light. Leaves heavy. She’s convinced that Australia will have glorious shopping possibilities, thanks to the state of your dollar.’

      ‘She’s right, if you can find anything you want to buy. Terry told you Narralee’s not a big place, I hope. Not exactly a shopper’s heaven.’

      ‘Yes, but my mother has a bloodhound’s nose for good places to spend money. And Terry also told me Sydney makes a great

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