LITMIR.BIZ

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

      Dedication

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Epilogue

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’

      The cheers rained over Chloe Kefes and she didn’t know if she wanted to laugh, cry or run. Truth be told, she wanted to do all three as she stared in shocked surprise at the smiling faces of her colleagues.

      Somehow she managed to get her legs to move and as she stepped forward into the meeting room, the staff enthusiastically rushed her with balloons and hugs before pressing a polystyrene cup containing a small drop of champagne into her hand. So much for this being a vital patient review meeting on the busy Gold Coast City Hospital’s plastic surgery ward—instead it was a well-meant ambush.

      ‘To Chloe.’ They raised their cups.

      ‘Many happy returns, Clo.’

      ‘Have a good one.’

      Her shoulders were squeezed, she was patted on the back, and her arm was pummelled with birthday bumps as half the room—the afternoon shift—rushed past her, dashing back to work.

      ‘Don’t let Richard eat all the Tim Tams,’ Julie, the radiographer, called out over her shoulder.

      Their departure left behind the now off-duty day staff, which comprised a student nurse, a medical student and the plastics registrar, Richard, who had a reputation for eating all the chocolates.

      Chloe finally found her voice. ‘Oh, you guys, you didn’t have to do this.’ Really, I wish you hadn’t.

      Keri Letterman, the unit nurse manager, gave her a wide smile. ‘You didn’t think we’d let the big three-oh go past without acknowledging it, now, did you?’

      ‘Wow,’ muttered the barely twenty-year-old student nurse to the twenty-one-year-old med student, ‘I didn’t think she was that old.’

      Chloe tried to give the bright and breezy smile she was known for but, despite her very best attempt, her ‘I guess not’ came out a tad strangled.

      Up until a few minutes ago she’d really thought she’d managed to slip under the birthday police’s radar, otherwise known as Keri and Kate. Given the fuss they’d made of Lizzie, the ward clerk, on her fiftieth birthday, Chloe probably should have known better. Except that, unlike the rest of the staff, she hadn’t spent the preceding days giving a birthday countdown to anyone who’d listen.

      In fact, she hadn’t told anyone it was her birthday and she certainly hadn’t told them it was the dreaded thirtieth.

      ‘Lucky for you,’ Keri continued, ‘I met Nick, Lucy and those gorgeous twins in the cafeteria and they told me it was your special day. If we were depending on you to tell us, we’d never have known.’

      That was the general idea. ‘Who needs enemies when you’ve got a big brother, right?’ Chloe joked, hearing the slight criticism in her boss’s voice. She worked on letting it slide over her. Unlike many of her colleagues, she didn’t bring her private life to work—mostly because she didn’t have one.

      Instead, she chatted about her new apartment with the sea view—a ten-centimetre glimpse of the ocean from her kitchen sink—her bushwalks in the rainforest hinterland around Mt Warning, and her latest adventures with sea kayaking. All

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