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CONTENTS

Cover

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

HOLLY blinked hard on her way into the emergency reception area. The man walking down the corridor with Sue, their consultant…No. Of course it wasn’t David Neave. Plenty of men had dark hair. She hadn’t got a proper look at his face either, just seen the outline of his jaw and nose. So what if they’d reminded her of David? It was highly unlikely that he’d be in the emergency department at London City General.

What was she doing, thinking of him anyway? That part of her life was way behind her. She hadn’t thought of him in years.

Well, months.

Well, she had had that odd dream last week, the one where he’d been kissing her. It had been so real that she’d actually woken up and turned to cuddle into him. Except, of course, there had been an empty space and an unused pillow beside her. She’d almost been able to taste his mouth on hers, feel the familiar tingle as his fingers skated over her skin.

She shook herself. David Neave might have been the love of her life, but he’d also been the big let-down of her life. A glimpse of a stranger—a man who looked vaguely like him but couldn’t possibly be him—shouldn’t get to her like this. She’d moved on years ago. Hadn’t she?

She saw her next patient—a teenager who’d fallen off a skateboard and had gravel embedded deep in the grazes—and then went to the rest room for some much-needed coffee.

When she opened the door, she stopped dead.

The man she’d seen earlier was there. This time she saw his face rather than his profile, and her heart almost stopped.

It was him.

But why here, why now? It had been twelve years since she’d seen him. His dark hair had the odd grey strand in it, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there during sixth form, and his shoulders had broadened, but he still had that charming smile. The one that had almost stopped her heart when he’d come to sit next to her in the sixth form.

That beautiful mouth. The one that had explored every bit of her body. The mouth that had whispered words of love, of passion: promises he’d never kept.

Oh, Lord. One smile and she’d gone right back to being eighteen years old, naïve enough to believe that ‘I’ll love you till the day I die’ really meant that, was more than just the magic words calculated to get him into her knickers.

She reminded herself sharply that she was thirty years old, and a specialist in emergency medicine. Holly the realist, not Holly the dreamer.

God only knew why David Neave was in the middle of the ED rest room at London City General, drinking coffee and chatting to the senior emergency nurse. Unless…A truly nasty thought hit her. Their new senior registrar was due to start today. David, like Holly, had always planned to become a medic. He was in the rest room, not the relatives’ room. QED: he was their new senior registrar.

Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her. She’d changed a lot in the last twelve years, particularly in the first six months. Not that he would have given a damn, because he’d made quite sure he hadn’t been around when she’d needed him.

Oh, who was she trying to kid? Despite the years, she knew exactly who he was. He’d know her, too. Well, she wasn’t going to skulk around. London City General was her patch. She was going to walk into that room with her head held high and not let him faze her. Everyone knew that Holly Jones was tough. Now was the time to prove it.

‘Morning,’ she said sweetly, aiming her smile at Anna, the senior sister, rather than their new medic, and slotted money into the chocolate machine.

The machine took her money and bleeped. The little coil of metal twisted round, but the chocolate bar stayed balanced at the end of its row.

Oh, brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Just when she needed the stuff, even more than she needed coffee. A square of chocolate and she could face the world.

Face David Neave.

‘Is it playing up again?’ Anna asked. ‘I’ll get Siobhan to call Maintenance.’

‘No point. She’ll spend all her time batting her eyes at Mitchell and forget to ask him to sort the machine. I’ll deal with it.’ Holly narrowed her eyes and looked at the machine. ‘Now,’ she said, her voice quiet but very authoritative. She tapped the glass opposite the chocolate bar she’d paid for. And it fell neatly into the tray at the bottom.

‘That’s better,’ she said, unwrapped the foil and broke off a square. Yes. The chocolate rush hit her, and she could cope again.

David wasn’t sure which bit he didn’t believe. The fact that the vending machine had given her the chocolate on her command—or the fact that he was in the same room as her again. The woman who’d broken his heart when he was eighteen. Holly Jones.

Or maybe this woman was her double.

‘Holls, let me introduce you. This is David Neave, our new senior reg. He started this morning and Sue got called away so she asked me to show him round,’ Anna announced. ‘David, this is the woman who scares the chocolate machine into submission. Our registrar—’

‘Holly Jones,’ he cut in. It really was her. Except that her dark hair was now cut in a short, functional style instead of being tied back at the nape of her neck, and her grey eyes were much, much harder.

Or maybe they always had been hard but he’d refused to see it.

Anna blinked in surprise. ‘You two know each other?’

‘We were at school together. A long, long time ago,’ Holly said quickly.

Was it his imagination, or was there a twinge of guilt in her eyes? She’d looked away again almost immediately, as if she was too embarrassed to face him. It was a bit late for an attack of conscience now. She should have thought about that twelve years ago.

And now it looked as if he was going to have to work with her.

Holly Jones was back in his life.

Hell. She was even wearing the same perfume. How could such a tiny thing as a spritz of scent take him spinning right back twelve years? The past, when Holly had been in his arms, kissing him and whispering, ‘I love you.’ Words that had meant everything to him—and absolutely nothing to her.

‘We lost touch,’ David said.

That was one way of putting it. Because the love of his life had walked out on him when they were eighteen. And her timing had been impeccably bad: she’d done it the week before his A-level exams.

Holly could hardly believe her ears. Lost touch? Yeah, right. It had been none of her doing. He’d been the one to lose touch. Deliberately. The first sign of trouble, and he’d been out of there. Hadn’t returned any of her phone calls, hadn’t replied to her letters. When she’d gone to his house to talk it over face to face, he’d been away on holiday. With another girl.

He hadn’t accepted responsibility back then, and he certainly wasn’t going to admit it now.

What a creep.

More proof—as if she needed it—that she was better off without him.

‘So you’re from Liverpool, too?’ Anna asked.

‘I moved away a long time ago,’ David said. ‘I trained in Southampton.’

Holly knew that. She’d been there the day his offer from Southampton had come through. The same day as hers. They’d been offered places for getting the same grades, even. And they’d planned to go to med school together.

Except she hadn’t made it.

And when she’d sat her A levels the following year—and got the straight A grades her teachers had predicted—she’d accepted the offer to train in London. No way could she have faced Southampton, knowing that he was there.

‘I worked in Newcastle for a couple of years, then came here,’ David said.

She knew he was looking at her. Knew he was expecting her to respond. And Anna expected it, too. If Holly followed her instincts and stomped out of the rest room, Anna would start to wonder. And although the senior sister didn’t gossip, the rest of the department did. It wouldn’t take long for rumours to fill in the blanks. The worst thing was, the wildest ones would probably be right on target. ‘I trained here,’ she said shortly.

Then she met his eyes, and wished she hadn’t. Because, for an instant, she’d seen a flash of yearning there. A yearning that was immediately echoed in her own heart.

She slammed the brakes on. There was no going back now. Working with David was going to be awkward, but she didn’t have a choice. Not unless she wanted them both to be the centre of gossip for an uncomfortably long time.

‘You two must have a lot to catch up on,’ Anna said.

Over my dead body! Holly thought. She couldn’t help looking at David, and was surprised to see questions in his eyes. Did he expect her to fill him in on her gap year—what had really happened? He hadn’t cared enough to find out at the time. Why did he want to know now, when it was much too late?

‘Years,’ David said, in answer to Anna’s question.

Though it underlined Holly’s thoughts. It was years too late for them.

‘It won’t take you long to settle in, then, seeing as you know each other. Sue put you on the same team,’ Anna said.

The blood rushed straight from Holly’s head and it was an effort to keep upright, her head was spinning so much. David was going to be working on her team? Given the new shift rotations they were doing, it meant she’d be spending every single moment at work near him. Forty-odd hours a week.

She tried to school her face into neutral and stared at his hands, hoping that she could think of some suitable response quickly enough to stop Anna asking questions. But looking at his hands was a bad, bad move—because she could still remember the pressure of his fingertips against her skin. Still remember what those hands had done to her. Why couldn’t she get him out of her head?

‘Holls? Are you all right?’ Anna asked.

‘Uh—yes. I hit traffic problems so I didn’t get back from Liverpool until pretty late last night. I, um, just need some sleep,’ Holly prevaricated. It was true, up to a point. What she really wanted was time to think, not time to sleep. She gave a huge yawn and hoped it didn’t look as fake as it felt.

Give me time. Give me space to deal with this, she begged. And, right on cue, her pager bleeped. She checked it. ‘Sorry. Gotta dash. Catch you later, Anna, David.’ She gave them both her best smile and left the rest room with indecent haste.

‘Fancy you two knowing each other. Still, at least we don’t have to warn you that Holls isn’t as scary as she seems,’ Anna said.

David frowned. Holly—his Holly—scary? Surely they couldn’t be talking about the same person. Holly had been the epitome of ‘sweet sixteen’. She’d been lovely. A little shy, but once David had got to know her he’d discovered her sense of fun.

Holly Jones, scary?

‘She tells it like it is, and God help you if you make a stupid mistake,’ Anna said, rolling her eyes. ‘But if anyone needs help, she’s the first one to offer.’ She smiled. ‘But I expect you already know all this.’

‘Yes,’ David lied. Maybe he’d been so in love with her that it had blinded him to her real self. If anyone had told him that Holly would dump him without an explanation, he’d have scoffed. He and Holly had told each other everything, even the secret dreams nobody else had known about.

Obviously he’d never really known her. Because the Holly Jones he remembered had planned to be a GP—so she could get to know her patients properly and look after them from cradle to grave. He’d felt the same. They’d even talked about having their own practice, a husband-and-wife team.

Even though he’d chosen his speciality years after their break-up, he hadn’t been able to face a GP rotation. Instead, he’d chosen emergency medicine, where he could do the best for his patients but he could stay uninvolved. He could walk away.

‘Right, now you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll show you round the rest of the department,’ Anna said.

‘Thanks.’ He smiled at Anna. So what if Holly was back in his life? She was probably married—to someone her family thought suitable for her—and used her maiden name for professional purposes. And even if she wasn’t married, David was older and much, much wiser. He wasn’t going to let her get close ever again.

As for her smile making his heart turn over, that was just a reflex action. He hadn’t thought of Holly for ages.

Ha. Who was he trying to kid? At the weekend, when he’d moved into his tiny flat round the corner from the hospital, he’d unpacked a few boxes and come across an old photograph of the two of them together. A photograph he should have thrown out years and years ago. He’d looked at her sweet, shy smile and wondered what she was doing now. Had she become a doctor? Was she married to another GP, with four children and a houseful of cats and dogs and hamsters, living the life they’d always planned, only without him?

Now he knew at least one of the answers. She was a doctor. An emergency specialist. They were going to have to work together and put the past behind them. Somehow.

‘It’s my stomach, doctor,’ Lucy said, doubling over as another spasm hit her. ‘It hurts so much.’

‘Lie back, try to relax and I’ll take a look,’ Holly said gently. ‘Breathe for me. In, out, in, out.’

Gradually Lucy calmed and lay back against the bed.

Holly bared Lucy’s abdomen and palpated it gently. ‘Tell me when it hurts,’ she said.

Lucy flinched wherever Holly touched her. ‘It hurts all over.’

An acute abdomen could mean one of about a dozen things. Holly had to narrow things down. Fast. ‘Have you had any other symptoms?’

Lucy grimaced. ‘I thought it was just a bug—the usual thing, a temperature and a headache and feeling a bit sweaty and tired. I’ve had that horrible summer cough and that makes everyone a bit breathless, doesn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ Holly said.

‘It’s so hot in here,’ Lucy said, then shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m trying not to whine.’

‘You’re not feeling well,’ said Holly. ‘And we all think we need air-conditioning, too.’

‘I was going to see my GP. I was starting to think maybe it was the menopause, even though I’m not quite forty.’

‘Because of the sweats?’

‘And my periods are next to nothing,’ Lucy said. She smiled wryly. ‘And I’ve been getting PMT. I mean, really bad PMT. Oliver’ll tell you, I’ve been a monster.’ Her hand tightened round his. ‘But then I got this pain in my stomach.’

‘I thought it might be her appendix so I brought her here,’ said Oliver, Lucy’s husband.

‘Have you been sick at all?’ Holly asked.

Lucy nodded. ‘And I’ve had a bit of a tummy upset. It might have been something I ate.’

‘She’s been eating like a horse lately,’ Oliver said.

‘I don’t think it’s appendicitis,’ Holly said. She checked Lucy’s temperature and pulse. Lucy’s pulse was definitely up—more than Holly had expected from the fever. ‘Have you had any other pains lately?’

‘She won’t admit it, but she’s had chest pains,’ Oliver said.

‘I am not having a heart attack. Will you stop nagging me, Oliver?’ Lucy said crossly. ‘Besides, I’m managing my weight so my heart’ll be fine. I’m on that new diet and it’s actually working.’ Despite the fact that, according to Oliver, Lucy had been eating a lot more than usual.

‘Have you lost much weight?’ Holly asked.

‘A stone and a half. It’s falling off,’ Lucy said. ‘First time ever.’

‘Probably because you never stop. She’s always on the go,’ Oliver added wryly. ‘She’s just been promoted to head teacher.’

‘So I need to put the hours in,’ Lucy said defensively.

‘I need to do some blood tests to rule out some possibilities,’ Holly said. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’ She smiled and left the cubicle.

‘Miche—just the woman I wanted,’ she said, spotting the staff nurse. ‘Can you give me a hand running some tests, please?’

‘Sure. What do you need?’

‘My patient’s in cubicle eight. Her name’s Lucy. I need some bloods done, first. Us and Es, ionised calcium, full blood count and differential. Ask the lab to check T4, T3 and TSH as well.’ Checking the tri-iodothyronine, thryoxine and thyroid stimulating hormone levels in the bloodstream would help Holly find out if it was a problem with Lucy’s endocrine system, and if so the results would help her give the right dosage of medication to get Lucy’s levels back to normal.

‘What’s this? A patient with thyroid problems?’ a male voice asked beside her.

Damn. She could do with some kind of early warning system so she could avoid David—so she could avoid situations like this when he might catch her off guard. ‘I’m not sure. That’s why I’m asking for T4, T3 and TSH levels,’ she said shortly, and turned her attention back to Michelle. ‘Thanks, Miche. I’d also like to do some BMGs.’ BMGs, or bedside strip measurement of glucose, would check Lucy’s blood-sugar levels. ‘And a mid-stream urine specimen—Oh, and she’s got a bit of a chest infection, so ask the lab to run blood cultures, so we can see what’s causing it.’

‘What are her symptoms?’ David asked.

‘Acute abdomen, losing weight despite eating a lot, chest pains, a fast heartbeat, sweating, volatile emotions and tiredness.’

‘What about her blink rate?’ If Lucy was blinking less than normal, it was another pointer towards a thyroid problem. ‘Any swelling in the tissues around her eyes?’

Holly looked at him and had to fight to get her thoughts back in control. Hell, this was just how she’d imagined him as a doctor. Completely focused on his patients. Caring.

If only he’d been like that about her. ‘I’m doing bloods to check if it’s thyroid,’ Holly said.

‘I nearly specialised in endocrinology before I settled on emergency medicine. I could have word with her, if you like.’

No. I don’t want to work with you and I don’t want you interfering with my patients.

On the other hand, she’d taken the Hippocratic oath. She had a choice of letting David help or trying to get hold of Fabian, the endocrine specialist, who almost never answered his bleep and needed at least three follow-up nags. Her patient came first. Even if it meant that Holly was in the awkward position of owing David Neave a favour. ‘Thanks. I’ll introduce you.’

To her relief, he simply followed her back to cubicle eight. ‘Lucy, Oliver, this is David Neave, our new senior registrar. I’ve been talking to him about what the problem might be, and he’s your man for any questions.’

He used to be my man.

She pushed the thought away. The past was over. Over.

She forced a smile to her face. ‘Michelle, our staff nurse, is going to come and take blood for tests.’ She didn’t quite trust her hands to be as steady as usual if she had to take the blood under David’s gaze, and Lucy really didn’t need half a dozen puncture wounds from an incompetent doctor.

‘Do you mind if I have a look at your hand?’ David asked. He pinched the skin on the back of Lucy’s hand, very gently, as Holly watched. When the skin didn’t flatten again instantly, Holly knew that Lucy was dehydrated.

‘Has anyone in your family had problems with their thyroid gland?’ he asked.

‘Not that I can think of. Why?’ Lucy asked.

‘Holly told me about your symptoms and I think your thyroid gland’s overactive. What you’re suffering from is something called thyroid storm.’

‘Is it serious?’ Oliver asked.

Yes. If it went untreated, one in ten cases would die.

‘We can do something about it,’ David reassured them both. ‘Holly’s arranged the blood tests, we’ll give you some paracetamol to get your temperature down, a saline drip to help with the dehydration, some antithyroid medication to deal with the excess thyroid hormones and some beta-blockers to help slow your heart rate down to what it should be.’

‘Heart medicine? But…’ Lucy shook her head. ‘What’s wrong with my heart?’

‘It’s all to do with your thyroid gland producing too many hormones. The thyroid gland is just here in your throat, underneath your voice-box,’ David explained.

When he touched Holly’s throat, to demonstrate, her pulse went into overdrive and she only hoped that he couldn’t feel the frantic flutter.

‘It produces the hormones that regulate your body’s energy levels and at the moment it’s producing too much.’

‘That’s why you’re eating so much,’ Holly said, hoping her voice sounded less shaky than it felt. ‘Your body’s metabolism is working too hard, making you feel hungry so you want to eat, but you’re still losing weight.’

‘It’s also making your heart beat faster than it should,’ David added.

So’s mine, Holly thought in desperation. And it shouldn’t be. I don’t want it to.

‘Thyroid problems? Isn’t that something old people get?’ Lucy asked.

‘No. It’s more common in women, and usually it’s young to middle-aged women, in their thirties to fifties,’ Holly said.

‘If you’ve got an overactive thyroid but you haven’t been treated for it, and then you get an infection or you’re under a lot of stress, you can end up with thyroid storm. We’ll need to get you admitted because we’ll need to run more tests,’ David said. When Lucy coughed, he said, ‘We also want to know what’s causing your cough, so we can treat that, too.’ He looked at Holly. ‘Can you ask a porter to bring a fan in to make Lucy more comfortable, please?’

‘You don’t have to do that if it’s going to mean someone else will be all hot and sticky,’ Lucy said.

‘It won’t,’ Holly said. If necessary, she’d use the fan from her own office—she could manage without for a couple of hours. ‘We want your temperature down.’

‘Cool air, tepid sponging and paracetamol should do it,’ David explained with a smile.

Lucy groaned. ‘That’s what you do to babies! I feel such an idiot. I should have gone to see my GP when it all started, but I was busy and I didn’t want to waste his time.’

‘It might have saved you ending up in here,’ Holly agreed wryly. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, I would’ve done exactly the same.’

Yes, David thought bitterly, watching her retreating back. Holly had always done things her way, and to hell with the consequences. Even though he had the nasty suspicion that it was going to rake open old wounds, he knew they had to talk.

An hour and a half later—by which time Holly had calmed down a hysterical toddler and removed a bead from his nose, put a dislocated elbow back in place and removed broken glass from a nasty wound and then stitched it—she was in definite need of caffeine.

‘I’m taking five,’ she told Michelle, and headed for the rest room.

She’d just fixed herself a black coffee from the vending machine, poured the top quarter off and added enough cold water so she could drink it straight down, when David walked in.

‘Strong stuff, is it?’ he asked, seeing her holding the coffee-cup beneath the tap on the water cooler.

‘No. Just temperature regulation,’ she said, and drank her coffee. ‘Ah. I needed that.’ A caffeine fix might just jolt her body back into reality and stop it overreacting any time he came anywhere near her.

‘Holly,’ he said quietly.

Unwillingly, she faced him. Looked him in the eye. Was that regret she saw there? ‘What?’

‘I had no idea you worked here.’

She shrugged. ‘Why should you?’

He sighed. ‘I think we need to talk.’

Way too dangerous. On the ward, she could cope; in a quiet corner in a bar, it would be too much like old times. Just the two of them. ‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘We need to clear the air.’

‘There’s nothing to say,’ she repeated. Nothing either of them could say would change what had happened.

He raked a hand through his hair and she watched his fingers, mesmerised. She could still remember them running through her own hair. Hair that she’d had cut short the moment she’d recognised the truth, to wipe out the memories. Except it hadn’t really worked.

‘What happened between us was a long time ago.’

Was this his idea of an apology? It certainly wasn’t hers!

‘And in the emergency department we need to be able to work as a team.’

He’d phrased that very carefully. Good. Because if he’d dared to say anything about being able to rely on each other, she would have murdered him. ‘Of course,’ she said, as neutrally as she could.

‘We’re going to have to work together. And it’s better if we can do it without…problems.’

Did he think that she was going to weep and wail and ask him why he’d done it? No. Been there, done that, worn the T-shirt—when she was eighteen. She was older. Much wiser. So she could feel relieved that she’d had a very, very lucky escape. And she most certainly wasn’t going to act on that flicker of attraction. Blue eyes spelled danger. She didn’t make the same mistakes twice. ‘Of course,’ she said again.

At least he hadn’t suggested that they could be friends. Because she didn’t think she could go that far. Just in case he was entertaining the idea, she leapt in fast to state the ground rules. ‘We’re perfectly capable of being colleagues.’

‘Good.’

Just to underline the point, she added, ‘How’s Lucy?’

‘Fine. I’ve just had the results back and they’re pretty much what I expected, so I’ve written up the drugs and admitted her. How come she didn’t go to her GP before? She must have had symptoms.’

‘She’s just been promoted. She’s been busy at work, thought maybe she was going through the menopause early and she’d picked up a bug that was doing the rounds.’

‘A pulmonary bug?’

Holly nodded, knowing that a pulmonary infection was the most common event that could spark off a thyroid storm. ‘Thanks for seeing her for me.’

‘Pleasure.’

She wished he hadn’t said that word. She scrunched her cardboard cup into a ball and threw it at the bin. It went straight in first time. ‘I’d better get back to my patients. I told Michelle I was just taking five minutes. And we’re short today.’

‘Right.’

She’d half expected him to say, See you. But he hadn’t. Just as well. Because she didn’t want to see David any more than she had to.

Did she?