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      PROLOGUE

      THE PATIENTS LIKED her, though.

      Emergency Consultant Ethan Lewis glanced up as an elderly lady in a wheelchair, with a younger woman pushing her, approached the nurses’ station and asked if Penny Masters was working today. The lady in the wheelchair still had her wristband on and was holding a bag of discharge medications and a tin of chocolates.

      ‘I think she’s on her lunch break,’ answered Lisa, the nurse unit manager. ‘I’ll just buzz around and find out.’

      ‘No, don’t disturb her. Mum just wanted to give her these to say thank you—she really was marvellous that day when Mum was brought in.’

      ‘It’s no problem,’ Lisa said, picking up a phone. ‘I think she’s in her office.’

      Yes, Ethan thought to himself. Unlike everybody else, who took their lunch in the staffroom, Penny would be holed away in her office, catching up with work. He’d been trying to have a word with her all day—a casual word, to ask a favour—but, as Ethan was starting to discover, there was no such thing as a casual word with Penny.

      Ethan had been working in the emergency department of the Peninsula Hospital for more than three months now. It was a busy bayside hospital that serviced some of Melbourne’s outer suburbs. The emergency department was, for the most part, a friendly one, which suited Ethan’s laid-back ways.

      For the most part.

      He watched as Penny walked over. Immaculate as ever, petite and slender, her very straight blonde hair was tied back neatly and she was wearing a three-quarter-sleeve navy wraparound dress and smart low heeled shoes. The female equivalent of a business suit perhaps, which was rather unusual in this place—most of the other staff, Ethan included, preferred the comfort and ease of wearing scrubs. Penny, though, dressed smartly at all times and gloved and gowned up for everything.

      ‘Mrs Adams, how lovely to see you looking so well.’ Ethan watched as she approached her ex-patient. Without being told, Penny knew her name. Though the greeting was friendly, it was a very professional smile that Penny gave and there was no tactile embrace. Penny stood there and enquired how Mrs Adams was doing with more than mere polite interest, because even though they had clearly just left the ward, the daughter had a few questions about her mother’s medication and Penny went through the medication bag and easily answered all of them.

      ‘Thank you so much for explaining,’ Mrs Adams’s daughter said. ‘I didn’t like to keep asking the nurse when I didn’t understand.’

      ‘You must keep asking.’

      Yes, the patients loved Penny.

      They didn’t mind in the least that she was meticulous, thorough and incredibly inflexible in her treatment plans.

      It was the staff that struggled—if Penny wanted observations every fifteen minutes, she accepted no excuses if they weren’t done. If Penny ordered analgesia, it didn’t matter to her that there might be a line-up at the drug trolley, or that there was no one available to check the dose, because her patient needed it now.

      Penny walked Mrs Adams and her daughter to the exit, and stood talking for another couple of moments there. As she walked back through the department, Jasmine, a nurse who also happened to be Penny’s sister, called her over to the nurses’ station.

      ‘What did you get?’ Jasmine asked.

      Penny glanced down at the tin she was holding. ‘Chocolate macadamias,’ she said, peeling off the Cellophane. ‘I’ll leave them here for everyone to help themselves.’

      She wasn’t even that friendly towards her sister, Ethan thought as Penny put down the chocolates on the bench and went to go. He would never have picked Penny and Jasmine as sisters—it had had to be pointed out to him.

      Jasmine was dark and curvy, Penny blonde and very slim.

      Jasmine smiled and was friendly, whereas Penny was much more guarded and standoffish. Ethan refused to play by her silent, stay-back rules and he called her as she went to head off. ‘Can I have a quick word, Penny?’

      ‘I’m actually at lunch,’ Penny said.

      The very slow burning Taurus within Ethan stirred a little then—his hazel eyes flashed and, had there been horns hidden under his thick black hair, Penny would now be seeing her first glimpse of them. It took a lot to rile Ethan, but Penny was starting to. Ethan had always known that there might be a problem when he had taken this job—two of the department’s senior registrars had also applied for the consultant position.

      Jasmine’s new husband Jed was one of them.

      Penny the other.

      Knowing the stiff competition, Ethan had been somewhat taken aback when he had been offered the role. He had since learnt that Jed had taken a job in a city hospital, but Penny was still here and, yes, it was awkward. Ethan often reminded himself that her ego might be a touch fragile and that it might take a little while for her to accept him in the role that she had applied for.

      Well, it was time that Penny did accept who was boss and, for the first time, Ethan pulled rank as she went to head back to her lunch.

      ‘That’s fine.’ He looked into her cool blue eyes. ‘But when you’re finished, can you make sure that you come and find me? I need to speak with you.’

      She hesitated for just a second before answering. ‘Regarding what?’

      No, there was no such thing as a casual word with Penny. ‘I’m on call next weekend,’ Ethan said.