Sydney Harbour Hospital: Luca's Bad Girl

realise their marriage really is worth saving in

SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: AVA’S RE-AWAKENING by Carol Marinelli

And not forgetting Sydney Harbour Hospital’s legendary heart surgeon Finn Kennedy. This brooding maverick keeps his women on hospital rotation … But can new doc Evie Lockheart unlock the secrets to his guarded heart? Find out in this enthralling new eight-book continuity from Medical

Romance.

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Sydney Harbour

Hospital:

Luca’s Bad Girl

Amy Andrews

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To six Aussies and a Kiwi—thank you! I had so much fun writing this continuity with you. And to Meredith Webber, an amazing writer, fabulous mentor and generous friend. Your down-to-earth advice always keeps me grounded and your encouragement has led me into new worlds.

CHAPTER ONE

DR MIA MCKENZIE didn’t know it yet but her night was about to go from bad to worse.

And that was no mean feat.

A full moon didn’t usually bode well for emergency departments and this clear, cold Saturday night was no different. Moonbeams sprinkled like fairy dust on the world-renowned surface of Sydney Harbour, lending a deceptive calm to the view from the windows of Sydney Harbour Hospital.

But inside the walls of the emergency department it was crazy town!

At two in the morning there had been no let up from the insanity. SHH, or The Harbour to those who worked there, was living up to its reputation as the busiest emergency department in the city.

‘I could have been a dermatologist,’ Mia grumbled to Dr Evie Lockheart, her best friend and flatmate, as she strode out of the resus cubical, turning her back on the torrent of abuse from a drug addict she’d just brought back from the brink of death.

‘They don’t get abused by patients at half past stupid o’clock. You know why? Because they’re sleeping. No on-call, no such thing as a dermatological emergency in the middle of the night, no urgent consults required.’

Evie, clutching a portable ultrasound unit, grinned. ‘You’d be bored to tears.’

Mia’s long blonde ponytail swished against her shoulder blades as she made her way to the central nurses’ station with the patient’s chart in hand. ‘I could do bored.’

Evie snorted. ‘Yep, whatever you say.’

Mia ignored her friend’s sarcasm. ‘How much longer are you and George Clooney going to be with the MVA?’

Evie laughed. ‘The name is Luca. Dr Luca di Angelo.’

As far as Mia was concerned, the hospital’s new director of trauma looked more like the devil than an angel.

He certainly seemed to be having a devil of a time with every available female walking the halls of SHH in the very short time he’d been here.

Which was fine by her. It was his life. And in a way she admired him for it. She too liked to keep her liaisons short and sweet.

But maybe that’s what caused an itch up her spine whenever he was around—besides his disturbing good looks apparently honed beneath a Sicilian sun. She recognised a kindred spirit.

And didn’t like what she saw.

‘And he really is quite dishy.’

‘Yes,’ Mia mused. ‘That he is.’

Evie grinned. Now, why couldn’t she be interested in a tall, dark, handsome Italian who was living up to the reputation of sex god that had preceded his arrival at The Harbour a few weeks ago? Why was it the infuriating, dictatorial Dr Finn Kennedy that her brain insisted on conjuring up with monotonous regularity?

‘Anyway,’ she said shaking the thought away. ‘We’re stabilising the patient at the moment. He needs to go to Theatre for a laparotomy.’

Mia nodded. ‘Okay, but when he’s gone, go home. You were supposed to have finished three hours ago.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Evie grinned as she departed.

Mia had ten minutes’ respite to catch up on some charts before a stocky man with swarthy features and wild eyes burst through the ambulance bay doors. ‘My wife … she’s in labour. The baby’s coming now!’ And then turned around and raced out the door again.

Mia sprang to her feet as a shot of adrenaline surged into her system. She hurried after the man, followed by Caroline, the triage nurse. She didn’t notice the chill in the air, just the beaten-up old car parked at a crazy angle near the doors and a woman’s urgent cries.

‘Hurry,’ the man yelled, wringing his hands.

Mia was there in seconds. The woman was lying on the back seat yelling, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming.’

‘Hi, I’m Dr McKenzie,’ Mia said over the din. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Rh-Rhiannon,’ the woman panted.

Mia smiled at her encouragingly. ‘How far along are you?’

‘Thirty weeks, she’s thirty weeks, all right?’ the husband barked.

The man seemed hostile and had his wife’s needs not been so urgent she’d have told him to back off. The last thing she needed right now while having to deliver a ten-week premature baby was a man with some kind of chip on his shoulder.

‘Caroline, page the neonatology team, please,’ Mia said quietly as she reached for the endless supply of gloves she had stashed in her pockets. ‘And get Arthur to bring out a gurney.

‘Okay, let’s have a look here,’ Mia said calmly.

The woman groaned again and it took Mia two seconds to identify a crowning head, despite the poor light. ‘Right, well, you’re absolutely correct, Rhiannon, this baby is coming.’

‘I have to push,’ Rhiannon yelled.

‘That’s fine.’ Mia nodded, her heart bonging in her chest like the bells of a clock tower. ‘I’m here to catch.’