CHAPTER ONE

      ANNIE was going to be late. Very late.

      ‘Take the lift to the fifth floor,’ the porter had said. ‘Turn right when you get out, then left, then right again, and Obs and Gynae is through the double doors at the end of the corridor.’

      It had sounded so easy—so simple—and it probably would have been if the Belfield Infirmary’s ancient elevator buttons had been working properly, and if what they’d proclaimed to be the fifth floor hadn’t, in fact, turned out to be the third.

      I am not going to cry, Annie told herself as she hurried down yet another of the Belfield’s rambling Victorian corridors in a desperate search for the stairs. Grown-up women of twenty-eight didn’t cry. Jamie hadn’t cried this morning when she’d left him at the day-care centre, and he was only four.

      ‘You will remember to come back for me, Mummy?’ was all he’d said, his blue eyes huge in his little face, his small nose reddened by the cold January wind. ‘You won’t forget?’

      And she’d been the one who’d got all choked up, and now she was on the verge of tears all over again because she was late. Late for the first job she’d had since Jamie was born, and if she messed it up she was never going to get another one.

      ‘It’s full time, you know, Dr Hart,’ the head of administration at the Belfield Infirmary had said, gazing at her uncertainly. ‘And your shifts won’t always be eight until four. There may be some night work, some afternoon shifts…Look, I guess what I’m trying to say is, you have a young child. Are you sure you’re up to it?’

      And Annie had said of course she was up to it—had even gone out and bought two of the most modern medical manuals to make doubly sure she was up to it—and now everything had gone wrong, and she hadn’t even started.

      ‘Whoa, there, where’s the fire?’ a deep male voice protested as she raced out of the door marked STAIRS and cannoned straight into him.

      ‘I’m sorry—so sorry,’ she gasped, temporarily winded. ‘But I should have been in Obstetrics and Gynaecology ten minutes ago, and—’

      ‘Hey, calm down,’ the man interrupted, amusement plain in his voice. ‘So you’re late. It’s hardly a hanging offence, is it?’

      Which was all very well for him to say, she decided, prising her nose out of his rough tweed jacket and looking up. Nothing and no one would ever frighten this man. He was big—seriously big. OK, so at five feet six she wasn’t exactly