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       To Kath. For the past, the present and the future.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ABBY had five seconds to recover from the shock of seeing Nick again. Five heartbeats before his heavy eyelids fluttered open and he focussed on her. She could have done with ten at the very least.

      The working clamour of the A and E department receded to the very edge of her consciousness. There was only Nick now, propped up on a trolley, one leg free of the cellular blanket that covered him, and his eyes dull with pain.

      Somehow she got her legs to work and she took two steps forward into the cubicle and pulled the curtain shut behind her. Glancing at the A and E notes in the vain hope that somewhere there was another fireman with trauma to the knee who she was really supposed to be examining, she saw his name printed at the top. Nick Hunter. How on earth could she have missed that?

      ‘Abby?’

      ‘Nick.’ This was no good. She should be calm, in control, not red faced and staring at him as if she’d just seen a ghost. She wrenched her gaze from his dark, suede-soft eyes. ‘I’ve been called down from Orthopaedics to see you. I gather you’ve been waiting a while.’

      ‘They’re pretty busy with the guy I pulled out of that car. How is he? He didn’t look good…’

      ‘They’re working on him.’ Abby almost snapped at him, and she took a deep breath and started again. ‘I’ll see if I can find out for you. But first we need to get you sorted out.’

      ‘Okay. Thanks.’ He was watching her intently. Waiting for her next move.

      What on earth was her next move? Nick wasn’t just a patient, he was a… what? Not a friend any more. He’d seen to that when he’d cut off all contact with her six months ago, not returning her calls and disappearing out of her life like a puff of smoke. He wasn’t a lover. He’d never been that, even if at one time Abby had wanted it, more than she now cared to admit.

      He was a guy that she’d met at the swimming pool, got to know, along with the group he swam with, and then gone on a couple of casual dates with. That was all. Hardly a close personal relationship, although at the time it had felt a lot like it.

      All the same, she had to put this onto a professional footing. Keep it there. ‘Right, then. A and E is very busy tonight and I’ve been called to see you as my speciality is orthopaedics…’ She licked her lips. He knew all that. ‘So, are you happy for me to examine you?’

      He shrugged and Abby’s stomach twisted. She’d obviously made a lot more of this than it actually was. ‘Of course…’

      ‘Because I can get another doctor…’ Easier said than done at seven o’ clock on a Friday evening, when everyone else was either busy or had gone home, but she’d deal with that if she came to it. ‘We know each other, Nick. If you have any objection to me examining and treating you then you should say so now. It’s quite okay…’

      ‘I’d rather it was you, Abby.’ His gaze seemed to soften. ‘You’re better qualified than anyone here to treat a knee injury, and from the looks of it I’ll have to wait a while to see anyone else. I’m fine with it… as long as you are?’

      He shot her a look that made her heart hurt. But she’d been down that road before and Abby wasn’t going to be seduced by his smile again. If he could get past what had happened, so should she. It had probably meant nothing to him anyway.

      She concentrated on the facts. Act always in the patient’s best interests. Right now, it was clearly not in Nick’s best interests to wait another three hours for treatment, just because of what had gone on in her head six months ago. Nothing even remotely inappropriate had happened. She had to pull herself together and get on with her job. ‘So it’s just your knee, then. Nothing else?’

      ‘Just my knee. I think I’ve twisted it badly.’

      ‘How did it happen? You were underneath the car when you did it or did you fall?’

      ‘No, the frame of the car buckled as I was crawling back out from underneath it. Caught my knee here.’ He indicated an angry red haematoma.

      ‘Did you twist the leg at all?’ Keep it on this level. Details of his injury. His medical condition. They were a welcome barrier, standing between a woman and the man who had hurt her.

      He grinned. ‘Probably. I was concentrating on moving as fast as I could at that point.’

      Unwanted respect flared in Abby’s chest. Crawling into the tangled remains of a car to get someone out of the wreckage took a special kind of courage. ‘Okay, let me take a look at it. Tell me if I’m hurting you.’

      Pulling a pair of surgical gloves from the dispenser, she gently probed the swelling around the knee, lifting it slightly to check the movement of the joint. His sharp intake of breath stopped her, and when she swung round she could see his fingers gripped tightly around the bars at the side of the bed.

      ‘I said tell me if it hurts, Nick. I’m not a mind reader.’

      ‘Right. Yeah, it hurts.’

      ‘And this?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Okay. What’s this scar, here? It looks as if you’ve had some surgery.’

      ‘I had an operation on the knee four years ago to repair torn cartilage.’

      ‘How did you do that?’

      He managed to muster a grin and the temperature in the cubicle shot back up suddenly. ‘Put my foot through a floorboard