CHAPTER ONE

      FAKE IT TILL you make it.

      Yes, sure. So easy. She did it all the time.

      Try harder. Remember yesterday’s courier delivery.

      The final lock had been undone. She was free. Single again. Two years of waiting for the legal process to finally be over. Today was the first day of the rest of her life, and it was going to be a doozy.

      That was once she worked out how to proceed with a newer, wiser, not so damned cautious version of herself that yesterday’s delivery must shut the door on. Those baby steps she’d been making were fine, but the time had come to stride out, head high, wearing a ‘don’t mess with me’ attitude. Starting now.

      Molly O’Keefe pasted on a facsimile of a smile and turned to glare into Mr Nathan Lupton’s eyes. And gasped. Those burnt-coffee eyes were spitting tacks. At her?

      ‘What’s wrong?’

       That’s your idea of don’t mess with me? Try again.

      ‘That phone call. Something I need to know?’

      ‘I’ve just spent valuable time ringing round to put specialists on alert at five-thirty in the morning for a patient who’s now been taken to another ED.’ His hands gripped his hips.

      ‘The man found lying by the train tracks?’ Surely not even he was blaming her? They weren’t friends, but this was ridiculous. The thumping starting up in her chest was deafening. No, he wouldn’t be, but he was angry.

       Not at me. I can handle this.

      Really?

      Absolutely. Fake it till—

      Yeah, yeah, she knew that line back to front. Still needed some practice, that was all. Beginning right now.

      ‘I wonder why the ambulance was redirected to another hospital when we’re closest.’

      Nathan was staring at her, though she wasn’t certain he was actually seeing her. ‘That’s something I intend finding out. It’s not happening again.’ He was still angry. Who could blame him when they’d been flat out busy when the initial call had come through? So much for the patients tapering off in the early hours. ‘Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on Archie Banks?’ he barked.

      Odd how on her first day in Sydney General’s emergency department when he’d growled at her to get the defib, which she’d already been in the process of wheeling towards the Resus unit, she hadn’t been afraid of him. Mightn’t like him much, though to be fair she didn’t know him except as a doctor, but she was never on guard around him or ever felt threatened by his grumpiness. Which said a lot. She’d think about that later. Right now an answer was required to placate him, because placating kept everyone happy—except maybe her—but it was an old habit she’d still not managed to dump. Game face, girl. Duh. Two seconds and her promise to herself had flown the coop.

      ‘I was coming to see if you’d take another look at him. His pain level is increasing, not decreasing.’ Nathan had administered a strong dose of painkiller forty minutes ago.

      The anger softened. Of course it did. From what she’d seen around here Nathan adored children. ‘Anything from the lab yet?’

      ‘No, and I’ve only just checked,’ she added hastily, raising one of her grandmother’s glares in case he found fault with her. Another sign she might be getting her act together.

      Dark eyebrows rose in that annoying manner of his that inexplicably riled her beyond reason. Then he swallowed and pulled up a