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CHAPTER ONE

BETH ROGERS stared at her office wall, reliving Friday night over again in all its horrifying splendour. She blew on her tea as she absently tucked a stray strand of blonde hair back into her theatre cap.

A pair of vivid green eyes, the exact shade of the peridot in her favourite pair of earrings, had haunted her all weekend. Crinkly caramel hair styled into a trendy just-got-out-of-bed fashion had continually flashed on her inward eye. A well-modulated English accent had replayed relentlessly. The aroma of popcorn, coffee and shortbread lingered even now.

How could she have done that? She’d never had a one-night stand in her life. Never.

At thirty-eight, no doubt there were some out there that would think that terribly boring. But having had her life defined by an even worse error of judgement at fifteen, she’d always shunned the casual sex scene. At least this time round she’d made sure they’d used protection.

‘Here she is.’

‘Where else would she be at seven in the morning, even though as NUM she doesn’t start till eight?’

Beth looked away from the very fascinating wall to find her two sisters lounging in her doorway. She smiled at them, plastering an all-is-well-with-the-world look on her face and banishing those peridot eyes. ‘Good morning to you both, too.’

Rilla and Hailey entered and threw themselves down on the low lounge chairs that sat against the wall opposite the desk.

‘Well, I know why I’m here this early—’ Beth began.

‘Because you’re a workaholic,’ Rilla interjected.

Beth ignored her. ‘But why are you both here so early?’ Like she needed to ask. Rilla and Hailey had been hovering for days. ‘I thought you were on days off, Rilla. And, Hailey—you don’t start till one. Wet the bed?’

The sisters looked at each other. ‘Come on, Beth. We’re just worried about you,’ Hailey said, putting all her best counseling skills into the conversation. ‘We’re family. When you hurt, we hurt.’

‘Yes,’ Rilla agreed. ‘We’ve been fretting all weekend about you.’

Beth looked at her sisters and felt their love and concern. They were so different from her. She was lanky and blonde, like the few photos she’d seen of her mother. They were darker and curvier, like Penny, their mother. But she’d been part of the Winters family for over twenty years and, blood bond or not, she was as close to them as any sisters.

She shook her head and smiled at them. ‘I’m fine guys, really. This is a tough time of year for me. I know you know that better than anyone else and I appreciate your concern.’

The sisters exchanged looks again. Beth’s words were reassuring but they knew how bruised her heart was still, even twenty-three years down the track. Had lived through that tumultuous time all those years ago as well and even though they’d both been quite young, Beth had been unbearably sad and it had left a lasting impression.

‘So did you go and see that movie Friday night?’ Hailey asked.

Friday night. No, she was trying not to think about Friday night. ‘Yep,’ she said, hoping to sound nonchalant.

Rilla looked at, Beth waiting for more information. None was forthcoming. ‘Was it able to distract you like you hoped?’ she prodded.

The movie hadn’t but what had happened afterwards certainly had! It had kept her distracted all weekend. ‘Yep,’ she said again.

Rilla and Hailey exchanged yet another look. ‘I didn’t think an action movie would hold your attention for long, you’re more a foreign-film buff,’ Rilla persisted.

‘Oh, yes, all that blowing up stuff.’ Beth nodded convincingly, ‘very good distraction.’

‘What did you do afterwards? I hope you didn’t go back to your house and brood all night. You know we would have come over.’ Hailey frowned, her concern all too obvious.

Yes, she knew. But she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of it. Her sisters’ efforts to keep her mind off the baby she’d given birth to twenty-three years go would only have served to focus her mind on it more. They’d been there to witness the aftermath of that turbulent time and their presence alone would have been enough to stir the memories.

Beth decided to throw them a crumb to sidetrack them. ‘I actually walked ou t of the cinema into a medical emergency. A woman had collapsed into a diabetic coma and then she started to fit. This…’ Beth paused slightly while she searched for an adequate description. ‘Guy and I, rendered some first aid while we waited for the ambulance.’

‘Guy?’ Rilla and Hailey said in unison, recognising the significance of Beth’s hesitation, sensing a juicy titbit.

Damn it! She shouldn’t have stumbled over how to explain him. She should have known her sisters would jump on that part of the information.

‘What was he like?’ Rilla asked.

‘What’s his name?’ Hailey pressed.

‘What’s he do?’ Rilla added.

‘Spill!’ Hailey demanded.

Hot. He was hot. Amazing green eyes, beautiful mouth and a way with her body that had made her weep in his arms.

‘He seemed nice enough,’ she fobbed them off, hoping her nose wasn’t growing. ‘His name is Gabe. He’s English. He’s a teacher.’ They were looking at her expectantly and she knew how tenacious they could be so she threw them another crumb.

‘We had coffee.’

And he made me laugh. He made me forget. And he was flirting and he had desire in those amazing eyes and something else, something sad, and when he suggested I go back to his hotel room I did because I couldn’t bear to be alone with the memori es, and we had sex. All-night sex. Last-night-alive-on-earth sex. Armageddon sex. Until I slunk out of his room at dawn.

‘Coffee?’ the sisters said in unison again, looking at Beth speculatively.

‘Do you fancy him?’ Rilla asked.

Beth rolled her eyes. ‘He’s…younger than me.’

‘How much younger?’ Hailey demanded.

‘Thirty-three.’ But he hadn’t looked a day over twenty-eight.

‘So?’ Hailey shrugged.

Her sister’s words triggered a Friday-night flashback.

‘Look, I’m flattered but you’re a little young for me,’ she had said and had laughed nervously.

‘So?’ Gabe had said, staring at her with desire and heartbreak in his eyes.

‘Don’t you think you should be playing with girls your own age?’ she’d practically squeaked.

‘No.’

And he’d been so sure of what he’d wanted and yet still kind of vulnerable, her insides had melted and she’d taken his proffered hand and followed him without any further argument.

‘Is he married?’ Hailey’s persistent voice broke into her wandering thoughts.

Beth gave her sister a scandalised look. ‘No.’

‘So?’ Hailey stated again.

Beth looked from one to the other, her head spinning. She was glad her instinct to keep Friday evening’s full story to herself had kicked in. For as long as she could remember her sisters had been trying to set her up with men. It was their payback for years of her mothering them. But the last thing she needed was them constantly questioning her about Gabe.

She didn’t want to be frequently reminded of her completely out-of-character actions. She already had a son out there somewhere to remind her of that. Her one-night-stand-man was best left at the hotel.

‘So nothing. We had a pleasant chat.’ Beth waited for a lightning bolt to strike her. ‘He’s in Australia for seven months. I’m never likely to see him again.’

‘What sort of a teacher is he?’

‘I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about our jobs,’ Beth said wishing she was wearing a theatre mask to hide the heat she felt rising in her face. She’d slept with someone she barely knew. They’d talked about the movies and books and music. And then they hadn’t talked about much at all.

Beth was saved any further interrogation by the arrival of the Brisbane General’s Chief of Staff. She’d never been so happy to see the man who’d been more like a father to her than the man who had actually given her life.

‘Ah, not one daughter but all three,’ John Winters said, beaming at his girls. He didn’t have to ask why they were altogether—he knew why.

‘Hi, Dad.’ Rilla and Hailey rose to hug their father and he gave them a big grateful squeeze each. He winked at Beth over the top of their heads. ‘How are you darling?’ he asked gently.

Oh, God, not you too. ‘I’m good, John. Really, I’m OK.’

John moved into the office and Beth rose to embrace him. He was tall and broad and handsome still, his hair greying nicely at the sides. She lingered in the circle of his arms, thankful every day that John and Penny had taken her in and given her a second chance at life.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure of your hallowed company?’ Beth teased. ‘It’s a bit far down from the executive suites to the bowels of the hospital, isn’t it?’

John chuckled and sat on the corner of her desk. ‘I’m just showing the visiting neurosurgeon around. He’s meeting me here shortly.’

‘Dr Fallon?’ Beth asked.

‘The English guy? The one who’s leading the neuro team to separate the Fisher twins?’ Hailey piped up. ‘What’s he like?’

‘He has an impeccable reputation. He’s only thirty-three but has a very bright future. He’s worked on some real cutting-edge stuff in Oxford and has a very successful private practice. He’s been involved with separating two sets of craniopagal conjoined twins already. The Fishers are lucky to have him. The General is lucky to have him.’

‘That’s not what she meant, Dad,’ Rilla said, laughing at her sister.

John’s eyes twinkled. He’d known exactly what his youngest daughter had meant. ‘Well, he doesn’t do much for me but I guess you young things would call him a hottie. Why, interested?’

‘No way,’ Rilla said vehemently. ‘But Beth, on the other hand…’ she turned to look at her older sister ‘…needs a good man.’

‘Hey!’ Beth protested. ‘If anyone needs a man around this joint, it’s you. It’s about time you started moved on. It’s been seven years since Luca left.’

‘Absolutely,’ Hailey agreed.

‘You can’t talk,’ Rilla said turning to her younger sister to deflect the attention from her. ‘How long has it been for you?’

Hailey laughed. ‘Give me a break. I only got back into the country eight weeks ago.’

‘You’re normally faster than that,’ Rilla pointed out.

Hailey started to protest and then figured it was a little rich to be outraged by her sister’s comment when it was essentially true. She’d had a string of boyfriends. But things had changed in London. ‘I’m mellowing in my old age.’ Hailey shrugged.

They all laughed and Hailey joined them. It was good to be back home among the family again. She’d missed them on the other side of the world and their familiarity was like a soothing balm to her burnt-out soul.

Dr Gabriel Fallon heard their laughter all the way down the corridor. He looked up at the sign that jutted out from the wall above the door where all the noise appeared to be coming from. It read ‘O.T. Nurse Unit Manager.’ Definitely where John had told him to come. Looked like the Brisbane General was going to be a fun place to work. It would make a nice change from the gloom he’d left behind in England.

He approached the office and knocked quietly on the door. John was sitting on the desk, two women were sitting in the chairs against the wall and another, behind the desk—John’s daughter, he presumed—was obscured from his view by her father.

‘Am I interrupting something?’

Beth felt the laughter die a sudden death on her lips. That voice. That accent! She’d know it anywhere. The same voice that had asked her to his hotel on Friday night. The same voice with the sexy accent that had whispered outrageous things to her all night.

‘Gabriel,’ John said, rising to his feet and ushering the newcomer inside. ‘Pardon us. Clan gathering. Meet my daughters. This is Rilla. She’s the middle child. She works down in Accident and Emergency.’

‘Rilla.’ Gabe nodded extended his hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you.’

Beth watched Rilla blush under Gabe’s gaze and knew exactly how she felt. His accent flowed over her like warm icing on a hot cake. Oh, God, oh, God! What the hell was he doing here? Gabe? Teacher Gabe? Her Gabe was the new hotshot from the UK? No wonder he’d been so good with the diabetic. First-aid course, my fat eye!

‘This is Hailey, the youngest child. She’s just started on the kids’ ward. She’s been away for three years in your neck of the woods.’

‘Oh, whereabouts?’ Gabe asked, shaking her hand.

‘London,’ Hailey confirmed.

Oh, God, it’s me now. Beth wished she could hide under the table as she watched her father and Gabe turn towards her. Time ground to a halt as their actions appeared to unfold in slow motion.

‘And this is the woman in charge around here. She’s also done quite a bit of travelling and even worked in Oxford. This is my oldest daughter—’

Gabe’s eyes widened as recognition dawned. ‘Beth!’ he supplied before John had a chance.

Gabe couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The woman who’d been on his mind all weekend was standing in front of him. Her hair may be obscured by a cap, her lithe body covered in baggy theatre greens, but he’d remember that flawless complexion, those eyes, that mouth anywhere. Hell!

Beth swallowed, trying to moisten her suddenly parched mouth. Nothing had prepared her for the impact of seeing him again. On Friday night he’d worn jeans and a polo shirt. Today he was wearing dark grey trousers, a striped business shirt and an impeccably matching tie. But she knew neither were a match for what lay beneath.

‘Hello, Gabe.’

John frowned. ‘You two know each other?’

Intimately. Gabe had thought about no one else since he’d woken alone in his bed on Saturday morning. He’d slept with the boss’s daughter? A colleague? Oh, good move, Gabriel! He saw a burst of panic flare her pupils and her blue eyes darted nervously to John and then back to him. She didn’t want her family to know. ‘We…met on Friday night.’

Beth could see Hailey and Rilla exchange looks in her peripheral vision as his green eyes captivated her, making it impossible to look away.

‘You’re the guy who helped her with the diabetic?’ Rilla exclaimed.

Among other things. Gabe smiled at Rilla and then turned back to Beth. ‘Yes. We made quite a team.’

John was looking at Beth and she quickly filled him in with an abridged version of events, ignoring the familiar undertone in Gabe’s voice.

‘Well, then. No introduction needed,’ John said.

Gabe saw a slight hint of pink adorn Beth’s high cheekbones. Definitely no introduction needed. He wondered if John Winters would have been so welcoming had he known just how well acquainted he was with Beth.

‘It’ll be a pleasure working with you,’ Gabe said.

Beth nodded, unable to speak, trying not to focus on the word ‘pleasure’. Was it just her hyperactive imagination or had he emphasised it slightly? Her body was still tingling in places from the pleasures they had shared.

No! This couldn’t be happening. If she’d known she was going to have to work with him, she would never have thrown common sense and a lifetime of caution to the winds and slept with him. The one thing, the only thing, she’d managed to comfort herself with over the weekend had been she’d never have to see him again.

‘Well, we’d better be getting on,’ John said. ‘I believe Dr Fallon has an afternoon list, Beth?’

Beth looked at John and nodded. She forced herself to concentrate on only him, ignoring both Gabe’s and her sister’s speculative. ‘Starts at one.’ She leafed through some papers on her desk and handed one to Gabe.

‘Thanks,’ he said softly as he took the theatre list. He watched her intently as she avoided his gaze. ‘I guess I’ll see you after lunch.’

Beth gave him a quick smile, which she hoped appeared friendly, and made a show of straightening the papers on her desk. Rilla and Hailey were shrewd. Too shrewd. If she ignored him, started acting weirdly, they’d be onto her. She could tell they were already bursting to get her alone.

John gestured for Gabe to exit first. ‘See you later, girls.’ John smiled at his daughters as they left the office.

Beth sat, her shaky legs dubiously supportive. She adjusted a few things on her desk and then risked a look at her sisters. They were looking at her with grins on their faces.

‘What?’

‘You didn’t mention that Gabe was so gorgeous,’ Rilla stated.

‘Very sexy,’ Hailey concurred. ‘Slip your mind?’

‘He’s OK, I guess.’ she shrugged.

‘You guess?’ Hailey laughed. ‘That man is so damn cute I thought about slipping into a diabetic coma just to grab his attention.’

Beth grinned at the image and then sobered. ‘Well that man is now apparently a colleague so the rest of it doesn’t matter.’

‘Thought you said he was a teacher?’ Hailey said.

Beth shrugged. ‘That’s what he told me.’

A great start to their working relationship. Not only had they slept together but he’d lied to her. Had the flirting and flattery been lies too? To get her into bed? He had confessed to her, as they’d eaten from room service at three in the morning, that he’d never done anything so spontaneous before. Had that been another lie?

She had suppressed the impulse to question him further at the time knowing that a few hours in bed with a stranger did not permit her access to the intimate details of his life, and now wished she hadn’t. She’d known what had driven her to act so outrageously—what had been his excuse?

Beth groaned inwardly. What did his reasons matter? The more important question was how she was going to work with him. The next six months stretched before her interminably and she wished they were over already.

‘Well.’ Rilla grinned and winked at Hailey. ‘Looks like Gabe’s going to be around for a while. You never know what could happen in that time.’

Beth looked from one to the other. Their brown eyes sparkled mischievously at her. ‘No.’

Rilla and Hailey’s grins widened.

‘No,’ Beth repeated, more emphatically this time.

‘Oh, come on, Beth,’ Hailey cajoled. ‘I think he fancies you.’

Beth tried not to remember just how much he’d fancied her on Friday night. ‘I’m not interested.’

‘Liar, liar pants on fire,’ Rilla teased.

‘I do not date colleagues.’

‘Oh, Beth,’ Rilla chided. ‘You do not date, full stop.’ She made a chicken noise and flapped her arms a couple of times. Hailey giggled.

Beth fixed her sister with a glare. ‘Rilla, you of all people should know how disastrous relationships at work can be.’

Rilla’s smile died and Hailey’s laughter cut off abruptly. Her sisters looked at her as if she’d slapped them, and Beth knew she’d stepped over the line. Damn Gabe Fallon! She’d done nothing but mother and dote on them since she’d entered their lives twenty-three years ago. Rilla ha been seven at the time and Hailey five.

‘I’m sorry, Ril,’ she said immediately, getting up from behind the desk and crouching beside her sister’s chair. ‘I spoke without thinking.’

Rilla blinked and smiled weakly. ‘It’s OK, Beth. I know you didn’t mean it that way. Just because it didn’t work out for me, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a bad thing. You have to stop punishing yourself. It’s been twenty-three years…’

It was both incredible and daunting to have two other human beings who knew everything about you and loved you anyway. Who knew what kind of ice cream you liked or what you wished for when a falling star crossed your path or how you’d cried yourself to sleep for a year. Despite their physical differences, despite their different surnames, Hailey and Rilla were her family. She didn’t know what she’d do without them.

Beth looked into Rilla’s earnest brown eyes. She took her sister’s hand and gave it a squeeze. She reached for Hailey’s and did the same.

‘Listen, guys. I love you both but I don’t need fixing up. I like my life. I have a great job and my own place and I can do what I like, when I like. I’m happy.’

Beth knew it was hard for her younger sisters to grasp. They were both still at an age when marriage and children were possible. Two years off forty, she’d given up on the often desperate need to hold a baby in her arms and her dreams of becoming a mother again. And she’d mourned that for a while but in the last couple of years had found some peace with it.

‘Now, come on, you two,’ Beth said, breaking away and standing up. ‘Thanks for coming but go away now. I have work to do.’

Rilla and Hailey stood and they all huddled together for a group hug, their foreheads touching.

‘You could just use him for sex,’ Hailey suggested. ‘He looks like he’d know some pretty slick moves.’

Rilla burst out laughing and Beth joined in despite shaking her head at Hailey. You have no idea, sister, dearest!

‘Goodbye you two.’ Beth kissed both her sisters and returned to her desk, pleased to be alone again.

She put her head on the desk and groaned. Now what? How was she supposed to see Gabe every day and act like she hadn’t seen him naked?

The day got worse. Kerry Matthews, her second in charge and the scrub nurse rostered to work in Theatre Four with the new neurosurgeon, went home at lunchtime with a migraine. The other two nurses allocated to the theatre were junior and as such had had little experience in neurology cases.

Beth had cut her teeth in neurosurgery. She’d worked for two years at the internationally renowned Radcliffe in Oxford when she’d first gone traveling, and had been working there again when she’d come home for Rilla’s wedding eight years ago and decided not to go back.

So, with the other theatres staffed and running smoothly, Beth resigned herself to having to scrub in. She stood at the washbasins outside Theatre Four and put her mask on. She could do this, she thought briskly as she tied the paper straps. Just hand him the instruments as he asks for them and try and anticipate his needs. Nothing she hadn’t done for any other surgeon in the past eighteen years.

Except she’d never slept with any of the surgeons she’d worked with. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t had her share of opportunities. Because she had. But she didn’t do that. She didn’t sleep around. At all. And certainly not with colleagues.

Sure, there had been some relationships. But her past had made her very reserved and distrustful so nothing had been successful for long. And no one had got past the detached veneer to the softness beneath.

Letting that go long enough to let someone in was a big step for Beth. Too big. It meant giving up some hard-won control and that terrified her. Too many things had happened in her younger years that she hadn’t been able to control. Being fostered by the Winters had put her back in charge of her life and it had been the gift she’d treasured most from her new family.

Beth flicked the taps and pushed the surgical scrub dispenser with her elbow. Green liquid squirted into her hand and she began the three-minute routine she could perform in her sleep, trying not to think about having to stand close to Gabriel Fallon for the next few hours.

‘You ran out on me.’

Beth started. She hadn’t heard him approach. The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention as his presence loomed beside her. She turned her head to see him lounging against the sink, applying his mask. Looking at her.

‘Yes.’ What else could she say?

‘I was hoping to…have a late breakfast. Maybe make a weekend of it.’

Beth faltered in mid-scrub. A whole weekend in bed with Gabriel Fallon. The mind boggled.

‘You lied to me. You said you were a teacher.’

Gabe turned to face the sink and flicked the tap on. ‘I do a little lecturing.’

Beth glared at him over the top of her mask.

Gabe chuckled. ‘Look. I’m sorry. I don’t usually tell people I’m a neurosurgeon. I’m good at my job but it takes up so much of my life. I have a killer schedule and I so rarely get the chance to socialise. When I do, I like to keep my work at work. And it can get weird. People know you’re a doctor and they always want a consultation.’ He scrubbed at his soapy hands for a few moments. ‘Would you have stayed if I’d told you I was a neurosurgeon?’

She could hear the smile in his voice and she didn’t have to look at his peridot eyes to know they’d be laughing. Beth snorted. ‘I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you if I’d known you were a neurosurgeon.’

He nodded as he scrubbed at his wrists. ‘I’m glad I was…economical with the truth, then.’

Beth worked the soap down towards her elbows, ignoring the way the mask muted his voice, accentuating the accent, making it sound husky as hell.

Time for a few home truths. ‘I don’t do one-night stands.’

He’d known that the minute he’d suggested she go back to his room. He could still recall how totally shocked she’d looked for those seconds before something had changed in her eyes and she had taken his hand. ‘I never intended it to be a one-night stand.’

‘I don’t do two-night stands either,’ she said primly, horrified by the leap her pulse took at his statement.

He laughed and the noise caused a flutter inside her and she scrubbed harder at her arms. ‘This is not funny. This is a disaster.’

Gabe frowned. ‘No, a disaster would have been if we’d slept together and it had been awful. And it wasn’t.’ He looked down at her and their gazes clashed. ‘It was good. It was very, very good.’

Beth heard her breathing go all funny. She couldn’t refute it, no matter how much she knew she had to get this conversation back on an impersonal level.

She cleared her throat and turned back to concentrate on her scrub technique. ‘Be that as it may, we have to work together for the next seven months so I think we need to establish some ground rules.’

Gabe smiled behind the mask. ‘This should be good.’

‘One. Forget Friday night happened.’ She looked at him for confirmation.

He nodded.

‘Two. No references to Friday night—ever.’

Gabe nodded again.

‘Three. Be professional at all times. I will call you Dr Fallon and you will call me Sister Rogers. Four—’

‘Rogers?’ Gabe interrupted, frowning. ‘I thought John said you were his daughter? Oh, God…you’re not married, are you?’ She hadn’t mentioned a husband and she hadn’t been wearing a ring. Maybe that’s why she’d looked so panicked?

‘No!’ Beth said indignantly. Did he really think she would have slept with him had she been married? ‘John is my foster-father. I’ve been with them since I was fifteen.’

Gabe struggled with relief and curiosity. ‘Ah. I see,’ he said, even though he didn’t really.

Beth pressed on. ‘Where was I?’

‘Number four, I believe.’

Beth nodded. ‘Four. No fraternising outside work—’

‘Look, Beth, let me spare you the rest of the list,’ Gabe interrupted. ‘I happen to agree. Relationships at work should be avoided.’

Not that it was a strict rule for him. He’d had relationships with colleagues before but they’d always known the score. Relationships with women who didn’t, women like Beth, were to be avoided at all costs.

‘I have no intention of continuing where we left off. I live on the other side of the world. I’m here for seven months only. There would be very little point.’ Except for the pretty amazing sex, of course. ‘You have no need to fear. I will be nothing but professional.’

‘Good.’ Beth held her arms up under the tap and let the water run down them from her fingertips to her elbows, sluicing the soap off. ‘We’re both on the same page, then.’

She shut off the taps with her elbow and waited for the excess water to drip off her arms squashing the traitorous flutter of disappointment at his easy capitulation. She flapped her arms, briskly to dispel it altogether, keeping her arms bent. And then she turned on her heel, her now sterile arms held out in front of her.

Gabe watched her go, pushing open the theatre doors with her shoulder, her green theatre scrubs accentuating the length of her thighs and the slimness of her hips and bottom. He shook his head as he watched the last drips of water fall from his elbows.

That morning Beth had been thrown but this afternoon she’d been back in control. All business. Where was the woman who had struck such a chord with her sad eyes on Friday night? Who had come apart in his arms? Who had wept as she had come down from the heights they’d climbed?

Something had been up with Beth Rogers on Friday night. Maybe it had been his own recent grief that had made him sensitive to her inner turmoil but something had made her act completely out of character. Impulsively. As had he.

He’d known after about five minutes in her company that she wasn’t the type to sleep with a virtual stranger. And yet after her initial shock she had followed him willingly—surprised the hell out of him—and given him everything she had.

He could still hear the gut-wrenching quality of her sobs as she had curled herself into a ball beside him. There had been such misery in her outpouring. Heartbreak and sorrow and grief. It had come from something buried deep inside. And, with his own emotions still a little raw, it had affected him more than he wanted to admit.

Beth Rogers was certainly a conundrum. Not that he had the time or the inclination to find out what made her tick. She was right. They were colleagues and he didn’t need any complications messing with his burgeoning career. Separating conjoined twins was complicated enough.

He flicked off the taps and drew a mental shutter on their one-night stand. He had an aneurysm to clip.