Gift of a Family

He’d felt the attraction like a physical force and he knew that she had, too.

She was securing his T-shirt in place when they heard the ambulance siren.

The ambulance drove onto the sand and Mac gave a nod of recognition as the crew hurried towards them.

‘His GCS is twelve,’ the girl told them, and proceeded to give them a fluent account of the patient’s injuries. ‘In view of the blood loss from the artery, I want to get a line in and then we need to ship him off as fast as possible. He’s going to need surgery on that wrist and possibly a CT scan. He’s been drinking. Make sure you tell them that in A and E.’

Josh watched in admiration as she found a vein with apparent ease, strapped the Venflon in place and nodded to the paramedics.

‘All right. He’s all yours.’ She stood up, her damp hair trailing down her back like a blaze of fire.

Anticipating the moment when he could get the girl on her own and swap essential details, Josh paused briefly to chat with one of the paramedics who he knew well, but when he finally glanced up, the girl had vanished.

He frowned and glanced around him but there was no sign of her.

Damn.

Mac gave a grin and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well, bro’, that was a first. A woman who didn’t notice you. Think you’ll ever get over it?’

‘She noticed me.’ Josh was still looking around the beach. She had to be somewhere. She couldn’t have just vanished that quickly. ‘She definitely noticed me.’

Where the hell was she?

‘Which is why she hung around to get better acquainted. Face it, brother, she’s the one who got away. I saw her face when you used your “I’m a doctor” chat-up line. She was not impressed. I’m a doctor, too, and you’re in my light.’ Mac was still laughing as he recited her words exactly. ‘And she was bloody good with that patient. Knew exactly what she was doing. I wouldn’t mind having her in our department. That really would be a first. A woman who doesn’t notice you.’

Josh narrowed his eyes, remembering that one, intense moment when their eyes had locked. ‘She noticed me.’

‘Well, she certainly didn’t hang around to further the acquaintance,’ Mac drawled. ‘And apart from the body, which I have to admit was impressive, she didn’t seem like your usual type. For a start, she could string words into a sentence. And she’s clearly a doctor, and a good one at that. You never date doctors.’

‘Only because I can’t stand the conversation over the dinner table.’ Josh yawned. ‘It’s much more interesting to date someone in a different profession.’

But he would have made an exception for the girl with the green eyes.

Mac shot him a wry look as they strolled back along the beach to the dunes that led to his garden. ‘I never realised you were so interested in conversation. I thought all your relationships were enacted beneath the sheets.’

Josh grinned. ‘Absolutely right. What better place is there?’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c0283990-20f8-58c3-9055-8a1a46133708)

KAT unzipped the neck of her wetsuit and stood still with her back against the jagged rocks, waiting until she judged it safe to reappear.

Only when the two men had walked a safe distance along the beach did she emerge and retrieve the surfboard that she’d left at the water’s edge. By then the ambulance had gone and the crowd had dispersed.

Maybe it was cowardly of her to avoid them, but she knew that if she’d hung around then the handsome, blue-eyed doctor would have entered into a conversation that she didn’t want to have. The strength of her reaction to him had shaken her and she sensed that it was mutual. She’d recognised the look in his eyes and knew exactly which direction the conversation would have taken.

And she just didn’t want to go there.

Did he think she was some sort of brainless idiot? she wondered bitterly as she tucked the board under her arm and walked in the opposite direction along the beach towards her tiny cottage. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he’d announced in a tone that had suggested that using those words usually delivered a willing female into his lap.

What had he expected her to do? Gasp and faint?

She gave a snort of derision, carefully dismissing the memory of the strange sensation she’d felt in the pit of her stomach when their eyes had met. As if a pair of broad shoulders and a near-perfect bone structure was going to be enough to interest her. She’d met men like him before and she’d learned to keep them at a distance. They weren’t worth the trouble.

And, anyway, she already had one man in her life and that was enough.

At the thought of Archie she looked around her and gave a nod of satisfaction. At the first opportunity she was going to take him down to the beach and show him what she’d discovered today. They were going to have such fun together, living in this place. It was a whole new life, as far removed from their tiny flat in the depths of busy, faceless London as it was possible to be.

All she could see for miles was coastline. Wild cliffs, crazy sea and soft grass all blended together to make Cornwall. And it had the best surfing anywhere in England.

A five-minute walk along the beach in the opposite direction brought her to the little row of fishermen’s cottages, which almost touched the sand. Kat stopped dead and stood for a moment, breathing in the fresh sea air, feeling the sun burning through her wetsuit, unable to believe that she had the right to call this wonderful place home.

Hers.

She couldn’t contain the smile.

It was like a fairy-tale.

Acting on an impulse that was totally out of character, she’d paid the deposit, taken out a huge mortgage and moved in. And now they lived here. She and Archie.

A new life.

Her gaze shifted slightly to the abandoned lifeboat station that stood proudly at the head of a slipway near the cottages. It had been sympathetically converted into a luxury home, and from her vantage point on the beach Kat could see that the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living area gave the occupant fabulous views over the Cornish coast. On the abandoned slipway that led down to the beach there was a boat, obviously in the process of being restored, and a wetsuit lay over a bench.

Whoever lived there obviously had taste and style and clearly loved the sea, she mused as she dumped her surfboard in the tiny shed in her new garden and walked towards her cottage with a smile on her face.

She had a few hours before Archie was due home and she intended to finish the unpacking, shower and then devour the new textbook on accident and emergency medicine that she’d ordered from a store in London. Not that a few hours’ reading would make much difference to her performance in a busy A and E department, she thought ruefully, experiencing a sudden attack of nerves at the thought of starting her new job in the morning.

Would it be very different from London? she wondered, and then gave a shrug. Accidents were accidents wherever they happened and whatever the mechanism. She was a good doctor, she reminded herself firmly. She had nothing to be nervous about. Whatever was thrown at her here, she’d be able to cope.

Her new life was about to begin.

And she was looking forward to it.

* * *

‘So, how was the weekend? Did you manage without me yesterday?’ Josh strolled onto the A and E unit early the next morning and grinned at a staff nurse who was just going off duty after a night shift.

‘Just about, but it was a terrible struggle,’ Hannah said solemnly, removing her locker key from her pocket and jangling it in the palm of her hand. ‘I suppose you were sailing or surfing or something similarly wet and watery? Did you have an exciting day?’

Josh thought of the girl on the beach. ‘Not as exciting as it might have been,’ he murmured regretfully, glancing at the whiteboard on the wall and scanning the list of patients. ‘So—we’re pretty full already, I see. Did you do any work at all last night or were you leaving it all for me?’

‘Filing my nails took longer than anticipated,’ Hannah said brightly, but she lifted a fist and punched Josh on the arm. ‘For your information, buster, none of us managed more than a snatched glass of water last night, so if you want to live to catch another wave on that board of yours, don’t make that remark to anyone else! Least of all the new doctor, who is waiting in Mac’s office. On first meeting she seems really nice, and I don’t want you teaching her bad habits.’

‘New doctor?’ Josh was still frowning at the whiteboard. ‘What new doctor?’

‘The new SHO. She was bright and early.’

‘The new SHO…’ Josh raked long fingers through his dark hair and pulled a face. ‘I’d forgotten the new doctors were starting today.’