CONTENTS

       COVER

      Dear Reader

       TITLE PAGE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       COPYRIGHT

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘WHAT on earth am I doing in Scotland in the middle of winter?’ Seth Gifford groaned in disgust.

      The snow seemed to be coming at him from every direction at once, and as fast as it was chilling his face and piling up on his hair and coat, it was also melting down the back of his neck in freezing trickles.

      He could barely see the outline of the tiny cottage through the wildly whirling flakes surrounding him, even though it was just a few paces away. The path was slippery, too, especially with a cumbersome box of groceries in his arms.

      ‘Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?’ he grumbled aloud, knowing that there was no one in this whirling white wilderness to hear him. For the first time in his life he was completely alone, with not a single person for miles around him. Even his unofficial chauffeur was too far away by now to hear him talking to himself, on his way back to the cosy warmth of his cottage in the village at the other end of the glen. It would be two weeks, when Christmas and the New Year’s celebrations were all over, before the elderly man would retrieve him from his solitude in this tiny croft.

      Solitude, he repeated as he made a second journey between the pile of boxes the elderly man had helped to offload at the gate and the tiny porch sheltering the front door. Well, it was another less emotive word for loneliness, he supposed. But, then, he seemed to have been lonely for so much of his life that another two weeks wouldn’t make much difference.

      His colleagues back at the hospital had been looking forward to the coming festive season with their usual mix of anticipation and resignation, depending on their family situations and whether they were rostered on or off duty.

      He’d barely registered feelings either way. Since Fran had died he’d had no really close friends. There was only his brother left to share the holiday season with, and he’d had his own agenda for years. Not even the matchmaking efforts of the boldest of his co-workers had been able to persuade him into starting a new relationship, and he certainly wasn’t into brief flings.

      There had only ever been three women in his life who had mattered to him. First, Margaret, the mother who had died so tragically when he was only sixteen, then Fran, the wife whose disregard for hospital rules and regulations had exacted such a terrible price. The third had been a colleague in his own Obs and Gyn department who he’d foolishly believed would be there for him when he needed her most.

      Instead, she had disappeared from his life without a trace and he tried to avoid even thinking about her, let alone saying her name.

      ‘So much for third time lucky,’ he muttered grimly as he searched in one pocket after another to find the elusive key while bracing the last box against the frame of the door. With a growl of frustration he dragged first one glove and then the other off with his teeth, beyond caring when only one of them managed to drop inside the box. The other disappeared towards his feet, probably destined to be whirled away and buried under a mountain of snow.

      He supposed it was his own fault that he’d ended up here, bearing in mind his increasingly sombre moods over the last year or so. The fact that he’d never been able to confide in any of his colleagues had only added to the stress. Sometimes it had felt as if the only thing that had kept him sane had been the fact that he’d had patients depending on his skills to bring their babies safely into the world, but even so…

      Really, he admitted silently, remembering the pointed comments he’d had from more than one of those colleagues, it was probably just sheer luck on his part that his whole team hadn’t ganged up to banish him to the North Pole.

      ‘On second thoughts, perhaps they have,’ he muttered in disgust as the rising wind blew a veritable blizzard of snowflakes around him in spite of the partial protection of the porch. But he hadn’t been that bad, had he, that they’d want to dump him in the middle of this? At Christmas, too…?

      He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and grimaced. The brief glimpse he’d had of starkly beautiful winter mountains had disappeared almost as quickly as his unofficial taxi. The snow was falling faster now and the last of the daylight was almost gone. If this kept up he was going to be completely stranded in a matter of hours and who knew how long it would be before the roads would be clear again? If he didn’t find the key soon, perhaps they’d find his body still frozen on the doorstep when the snows finally thawed in the spring…

      ‘Gotcha!’ He finally closed his chilly fingers around the elusive key and dragged it out of his pocket. ‘Now all I’ve got to do is get the wretched thing to fit into the lock.’

      With