PROLOGUE

      Dubai—United Arab Emirates

      THE crack of the starter gun echoed across the desert and silenced the noisy crowd for a heartbeat as the annual doctors versus nurses camel race began.

      Hunter Morgan, paediatrician and contestant for the doctors’ side of the neonatal nursery, kicked his camel into a gallop as the crowd roared. Ex-patriot medical staff can’t get out much, he thought with a wry grin, though he noticed even some black-robed Arabs were among the throng. He wondered fleetingly what the attraction was in the hospital games for them.

      To be honest, he wouldn’t have been here if Kirsten Wilson hadn’t dared him. She was a determined woman. She’d cornered him in the neonatal unit and he could still remember her enchanting tenacity as she’d ensured his participation. She’d promised to pound on his door in the dark if he didn’t show, to let the tyres of his car down, to tell everyone she was pregnant with his baby, and he stifled a laugh at what a frenzy of gossip that would have caused.

      It was his own fault people took bets on any sign that his immunity to women was failing—he’d never weakened before.

      Still, Kirsten had made him laugh more in the last few months than he had in the last five years.

      She was an amazing woman. Hunter clamped his lips shut to stop the flying sand from coating his tongue. He pulled his scarf more closely into his face, despite the early heat, and wiped his eyes so he could focus on the delicate shoulders of the woman riding in front.

      Kirsten was tall for a woman, he knew that. When she was standing in front of him in the unit, he could just see over her head. He used that trick to keep the mental distance between them. He’d discovered if he spent too long looking into her wonderfully expressive face he’d lose track of what she was saying and just enjoy the show.

      He really didn’t think she was aware that she threatened his peace of mind.

      The first marker was coming up and she still sat lightly, and delightfully, on her throne-like seat as if she’d grown up there. He wasn’t quite as comfortable but that didn’t mean he couldn’t win.

      Dormant competitiveness surfaced where it had been lacking. ‘Second really isn’t good enough,’ he said to himself as he urged his camel on, tapping with his crop to let the beast know.

      Kirsten was only winning because of her lighter weight and those strange encouraging noises she was making to her camel, but he had to admit she could ride. Her white burnoose billowed out behind her and the sun glinted off the flying cloud of red hair which she usually kept confined. He realised she was attracting the attention of the raucous local contingent.

      The corner barrel appeared and he almost checked the gait of his animal until he saw she wasn’t going to slow her beast. She skidded around full pelt and he watched in trepidation. Her camel swayed unsteadily and she hauled on the reins to direct it into the turn. The woman was mad—and scared the bejesus out of him when she was like this—but he felt his own blood begin to pound.

      Incredibly, still mounted, she flashed back past him towards the winning post and, as usual, her eyes were wild with exhilaration and the joy that seemed to shine on everything she did. In that instant, the