Читать книгу Rescue At Cradle Lake - Marion Lennox - Страница 9

SHE was lying where he wanted to drive.

Dr Fergus Reynard was lost. He’d been given a map of sealed roads, but sealed roads accounted for about one per cent of the tracks around here. Take the second track left over the ridge, the district nurse had told him, and he’d stared at wheel marks and tried to decide which was a track and which was just the place where some obscure vehicle had taken a jaunt through the mud after the last rain.

Somewhere around here, someone called Oscar Bentley, was lying on his kitchen floor with a suspected broken hip. Oscar needed a doctor. Him. The hospital Land Cruiser had lost traction on the last turn. He’d spun and when he’d corrected there had been a woman lying across the road.

The woman wasn’t moving. She was face down over some sort of cattle grid. He could see tight jeans—so tight he knew it was definitely a woman. He could see ancient boots. She was wearing an even more ancient windcheater, and her caramel-blonde, shoulder-length curls were sprawled out around her.

Why was she lying on the road? He was out of the truck, reaching her in half a dozen strides, expecting the worst. Had she collapsed? Had she been hit before he’d arrived? He knelt, his medical training switching into overdrive.

‘At last,’ she muttered, as he touched her shoulder. ‘Whoever you are, can you grab its other ear?’

Medical training took a step back. ‘Um… Pardon?’

‘Its ear,’ she said. Her voice was muffled but she still managed to sound exasperated. ‘My arm’s not long enough to get a decent hold. I can reach one ear but not the other. I’ve been lying here for half an hour waiting for the football to finish, and if you think I’m letting go now you’ve another think coming.’

He needed to take in the whole situation. Woman lying face down over a cattle grid. Arm down through the grid.

He stared down through the bars.

She was holding what looked like a newborn lamb by the tip of one ear. The ear was almost two feet down, underneath the row of steel rails.

The pit was designed to stop livestock passing from one property to another. A full-grown sheep couldn’t cross this grid. A newborn lamb couldn’t cross the grid either, but this one had obviously tried. It was so small it had simply slipped through to the pit below.

OK. Trapped lamb. Girl lying on road. Fergus’s training was asserting itself. In an emergency he’d been taught to take in the whole situation before doing anything.

Make sure there’s no surrounding danger before moving into help mode.

On top of the ridge stood a ewe, bleating helplessly. She was staring down at them as if they were enemies—as if she’d like to ram them.

Did sheep ram anyone?

The girl obviously wasn’t worried about ramming sheep, so maybe he shouldn’t either. But maybe continuing to lie in the middle of the road wasn’t such a great idea.

‘I could have hit you,’ he said. Then, as she didn’t answer, anxiety gave way to anger. ‘I could have run you over. Are you out of your mind?’

‘No one drives fast on this track unless they’re lunatics,’ she muttered, still clutching the lamb’s ear. ‘Sane drivers always slow down at cattle grids.’

That pretty much put him in his place.

‘Do you intend to stand there whinging about where I should or shouldn’t lie, or are you going to help me?’ the woman demanded, and he decided maybe he should do something.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Squeeze your arm through the bars and catch the other ear.’

‘Right.’ Maybe that was easier said than done. The woman was finely built, which was why she’d been able to reach the lamb. It’d be a harder call for someone heavier. Someone with a thicker arm. Like him. ‘Then what?’ he said cautiously.

‘I can’t get my other arm into position. If I release this ear, he’ll bolt to the other side of the pit and it’ll take me ages to catch him again. If you can grab his other ear and pull him up for a moment, I reckon I can reach further down and get him by the scruff of the neck.’

‘And pull him out?’

She sighed. ‘That’s the idea, Einstein.’

‘There’s no need—’

‘To be rude. No,’ she agreed. ‘Neither is there any need for me to rescue this stupid lamb. It’s not even my lamb. But I just walked out to catch some bucolic air and I heard him bleating. It’s taken ages to catch him and he’ll die if I leave him. I’ve been in the one spot for half an hour waiting for the footy to finish so someone would come along this damned road—and the iron’s digging into my face—so can we cut it out with the niceties and grab the stupid ear?’

‘Right,’ he said, and rolled up his sleeves.

It was even harder than he’d thought. He had muscles, built from years of gym work at his well-equipped city hospital, and those muscles didn’t help now. Up to his elbow was easy but then he had to shove hard and it hurt, and even then he could only just touch.

‘Jump!’ the woman yelled, and he and the lamb both jumped—which gave him access to an extra inch of ear. He got a hold.

They were now lying sprawled over the cattle grid with a lamb’s ear each. Neat, Fergus thought, and turned to grin at her.

She wasn’t grinning. She was pressed hard against him, her body warm against his, and she was concentrating solely on sheep.

‘Let go and you’re dead meat,’ she muttered. ‘On the count of three, we pull our ears up.’

‘We’ll break its neck.’

‘I only want to pull him up a couple of inches or so, in a nice smooth pull—no jerking—and then I’ll grab his neck. If I try and pull by one ear, I’ll break his neck. Ready, set… Now!’

What happened to the one, two, three? But he was ready and he’d gone beyond arguing. He tugged the lamb upward, she grabbed—and somehow she had a handful of wool at the back of the little creature’s neck.

Then she had more orders.

‘Shove your hand under its belly,’ she gasped, as she tugged the creature higher, and he did and thirty seconds later they had a shivery, skinny, still damply newborn lamb rising out of the pit into the late afternoon sun.

‘Oh, hooray,’ the woman whispered. She struggled to her feet, cradling the lamb against her, and for the first time Fergus managed to get a proper look at her.

She was in her late twenties, he thought, deciding she wasn’t a whole lot younger than his thirty-four years. She was five feet four or five, dressed in ancient jeans and an even more ancient windcheater. Her tousled curls were blowing everywhere. Freckles were smattered over a pert and pretty nose. She was liberally mud-spattered, but somehow the mud didn’t matter. She was patting the lamb, but her clear brown eyes were assessing him with a candour that made him feel disconcerted.

She was some package.

‘You’re not a local,’ she said, and he realised she’d been doing the same assessment as him.

‘I’m the local doctor.’

She’d been trying to stop the lamb from struggling as she ran her hands expertly over its body. She was doing an assessment for damage, he thought, but now her hand stopped in mid-stroke.

‘The local doctor’s dead.’

‘Old Doc Beaverstock died five years ago,’ he agreed. ‘The people who run the hospital seem to think they need a replacement. That’s me. Speaking of which, can you tell me—?’

‘You’re working here?’

‘As of yesterday, yes.’

Her eyes closed and when they opened again he saw a wash of pain. And something more. Relief?

‘Oh, thank God,’ she said. Then she set the lamb onto its feet and let it go.

The place where they were standing was deserted. To the west lay lush paddocks any self-respecting sheep would think were sheep paradise. To the west was the ewe. To the east was the cattle pit and dense bushland leading down to a lake formed by an ancient volcano.

West or east?

Some actions were no-brainers. The lamb turned and ducked through the woman’s legs, straight for the cattle pit.

‘Stop,’ she screamed, and not for nothing had Fergus played rugby for his university. He took a flying tackle and caught the creature by a back hoof as it hit the first rail.

Face down in the mud he lay, holding onto the leg for dear life.

‘Oh, well done.’ She was laughing, kneeling in the mud beside him, gathering the lamb back into her arms again, and he thought suddenly, She smells nice. Which was ridiculous. In truth, she smelt of lamb and mud with the odd spot of manure thrown in. How could she smell nice?

‘Don’t let him go again,’ he said weakly, wiping mud from his face as he shoved himself into a sitting position. He’d hit the ground hard and he was struggling to get his breath.

‘I’m so sorry.’ She rose and grinned down at him, and she didn’t look sorry at all.

She had a great grin.

‘Think nothing of it,’ he managed. ‘Take the damned thing away.’

‘I haven’t got a car.’ Holding the lamb in one arm, she offered a hand to help haul him to his feet. He took it and discovered she was surprisingly strong. She tugged, and he rose, and suddenly she was just…close. Nice, he thought inconsequentially. Really nice. ‘I’m about half a mile from where I live,’ she was saying, but suddenly he was having trouble hearing.

‘So?’ He was disconcerted. The feel of her hand… Yep, he was definitely disconcerted. She released him and he was aware of a pang of loss.

She didn’t seem to notice. She was looking up toward the ewe, brushing mud from her face and leaving more mud in its place. ‘It was dumb to let him go,’ she muttered. ‘He and his mum need to go in the house paddock until we’re sure he’s recovered.’

‘How do you get them to a house paddock?’ Fergus asked, and then thought maybe that was a question he shouldn’t have asked. It was tantamount to offering help.

And here it came. The request.

She bit her lip. ‘I don’t think I can herd a sheep and a lamb up to the house,’ she admitted. ‘Ewes aren’t like cows. They might or might not follow, even if I have the lamb.’ She looked at his Land Cruiser and he saw exactly what she was thinking. ‘Can you give me a lift to the Bentley place? That’s where these two belong.’

‘Oscar Bentley’s?’ he demanded, startled.

‘Yes.’ She handed him the lamb and he was so astounded that he took it. ‘Just stand there and don’t move,’ she told him. Then: ‘No,’ she corrected herself. ‘Joggle up and down a bit, so the ewe’s looking at you and not me.’

‘I need to go.’ He was remembering Oscar Bentley. Yes, the lamb’s needs were urgent, but a broken hip was more so.

‘Not until we have the ewe.’ She moved swiftly away, twenty, thirty yards up the slope, moving with an ease that was almost catlike. Then she disappeared behind a tree and he realised what she was doing.

He was being used as a distraction.

OK, he could do that. Obediently he held the lamb toward the ewe. The ewe stared wildly down at her lamb and took a tentative step forward.

The woman launched herself out from behind her tree in a rugby tackle that put Fergus’s efforts to shame. The ewe was big, but suddenly she was propped up on her rear legs, which prevented her from struggling, and the woman had her solidly and strongly in position.

It had been a really impressive manoeuvre. To say Fergus was impressed was an understatement.

‘Put the lamb in your truck and back it up to me,’ she told him, gasping with effort, and he blinked.

‘Um…’

‘I can’t stand here for ever.’ If she’d had a foot free, she would have stamped it. ‘Move.’

He moved.

He was about to put a sheep in the back of the hospital truck.

Fine. As of two days ago he was a country doctor. This was the sort of thing country doctors did. Wasn’t it?

It seemed it was. This country doctor had no choice.

He hauled open the back of the truck, shoved the medical equipment as far forward as it’d go and tossed a canvas over the lot. Miriam, his practice nurse, had set the truck up for emergencies and she had three canvases folded and ready at the side. For coping with sheep?

Maybe Miriam knew more about country practice than he did.

Anyone would know more about country practice than he did.

He put the lamb in the back and started closing the door, but as he did so the little creature wobbled. He hesitated.

He sighed and lifted the lamb out again. He climbed in behind the wheel and placed the lamb on his knee.

‘Don’t even think about doing anything wet,’ he told it. ‘House-training starts now.’

The woman was walking the sheep down the slope toward the track. He backed up as close as he could.

‘Mess my seat and you’re chops,’ he told the lamb in a further refinement of house-training. He closed the door firmly on one captive and went to collect another.

Getting the ewe into the truck was no easy task. The ewe took solid exception to being manhandled, but the woman seemed to have done this many times before. She pushed, they both heaved, and the creature was in. The door slammed, and Fergus headed for the driver’s door in relief.

The woman was already clambering into the passenger seat, lifting the lamb over onto her knee. Wherever they were going, it seemed she was going, too.

‘I can drop them at Bentley’s,’ he told her. ‘That’s where I’m going.’

‘You’re going to Bentley’s?’

‘That’s the plan.’ He hesitated. ‘But I’m a bit lost.’

‘Go back the way you came,’ she said, snapping her seat belt closed under the lamb. ‘I can walk home from there. It’s close. Take the second turn to the left after the ridge.’

‘That’s the second time I’ve been given that direction,’ he told her. ‘Only I’m facing the opposite way.’

‘You came from the O’Donell track to get to Oscar’s?’

‘I’m not a local,’ he said, exasperated.

‘You’re the local doctor.’

I’m here as a locum. I’ve been here since Thursday and I’ll be here for twelve weeks.’

She stared and he thought he could see calculations happening behind her eyes.

‘That might be long enough,’ she whispered, and he thought she was talking to the lamb. She was hugging it close—two muddy waifs.

He wasn’t exactly pristine himself.

Whatever she was thinking, though, she didn’t expand on it. They drove for a couple of minutes in silence and he realised he didn’t even know her name

I’m Dr Fergus Reynard,’ he told her, into what had suddenly become a tense stillness.

‘I’m Ginny Viental.’

‘Ginny?’

‘Short for Guinevere, but I’m not exactly Guinevere material.’

Hadn’t Guinevere been some gorgeous queen? If that was the case…

But maybe she was right, Fergus decided. Maybe Queen Guinevere wouldn’t be splodged with lamb mud.

But there was definitely gorgeous underneath the mud.

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Ginny,’ he told her, figuring he should concentrate on keeping the truck on the slippery track rather than letting his attention stray to this very different woman beside him. It was a hard task. ‘Do you live around here?’

‘I used to live here,’ she told him. ‘I’ve just come back…for a while.’

‘Do your parents live here?’

‘They lived here when I was a kid,’ she said discouragingly. ‘I did, too, until I was seventeen.’

She wasn’t seventeen now, he thought, trying again to figure her age. She looked young but there were lines around her eyes that made him think she’d not had things easy. But something in her face precluded him from asking questions.

‘Oscar Bentley,’ he said cautiously, searching for neutral ground. ‘You’re sure it’s his lamb?’

‘I’m sure. The cattle grid’s on our property but he has agistment rights. Oscar was an ordinary farmer fifteen years back. Now he seems to have lost the plot completely.’

‘He’s hardly made a decent access track,’ Fergus muttered, hauling the truck away from an erosion rut a foot deep.

‘He likes making it hard for visitors,’ Ginny told him. ‘Why has he called you out? Unless that’s breaking patient confidentiality.’

‘I’m not sure there can be much patient confidentiality about a broken hip.’

‘A broken hip?’

‘That’s what he thinks is wrong.’

She snorted. ‘Yeah, right. Broken hip? I’ll bet he’s fallen down drunk and he wants someone to put him to bed.’

‘You know him well, then?’

‘I told you, I lived here. I haven’t been near Oscar for years but he won’t have changed.’

‘If you don’t live here now, where do you live?’

‘Will you quit it with the inquisition?’ she said, her voice muffled by the lamb again. ‘I hate the smell of wet wool.’

‘So don’t stick your nose into wet sheep.’

‘There’s a medical prescription for you,’ she said and she grinned. Which somehow…changed things again.

Wow, he thought. That was some smile. When the lines of strain eased from around her eyes she looked…beautiful?

Definitely beautiful.

‘Why are you here?’ she demanded, hauling her nose off the lamb as if the question had only just occurred to her and it was important.

‘I told you. I’m here as a locum.’

‘We’ve never been able to get a locum before.’

‘I can’t imagine why not,’ he said with asperity, releasing the brakes then braking again to try and get some traction on the awful track. ‘This is real resort country. Not!’

‘You’re seeing it at its worst. We had a doozy of a storm last week and the flooding’s only just gone down.’

‘It’s not bad,’ he conceded, staring out at the rolling hills and bushland and the deep, clear waters of the lake below. Sure, it was five hours’ drive to the nearest city, to the nearest specialist back-up, but that was what he’d come for. Isolation. And the rugged volcanic country had a beauty all its own. ‘Lots of…sheep,’ he said cautiously.

‘Lots of sheep,’ she agreed, looking doubtfully out the window as if she was trying to see the good side, too.

‘If you think sheep are pretty.’

She twisted to look over her shoulder at the morose-looking ewe in the back of the truck. As if on cue, the creature widened her back legs and let go a stream of urine.

‘Oh, yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Sheep. My favourite animals.’

He was going to have to clean out the back of his truck. Already the pungent ammoniac smell was all around them. Despite that, his lips twitched.

‘A farmer, born and bred.’

‘I’m no farmer,’ she said.

‘Which might explain why you were lying on the road in the middle of nowhere, holding a lamb by one ear, when the entire crowd from the Cradle Lake football game could have come by at any minute and squashed you.’

There was that grin again. ‘The entire crowd from this side of the lake being exactly eight locals, led by Doreen Kettle who takes her elderly mother and her five kids to the football every week and who drives ten times slower than you. The last of the eight will be the coach who drives home about ten tonight. Cradle Lake will have lost—we always lose—and our coach will have drowned his sorrows in the pub. There’ll be no way he’ll be on the roads until after the Cradle Lake constabulary go to bed. Which is after Football Replay on telly, which finishes at nine-thirty, leaving the rest of Saturday night for Cradle Lake to make whoopee.’

‘How long did you say you’ve been away?’ he asked cautiously, and she chuckled. It was a very nice chuckle, he decided. Light and soft and gurgling. Really infectious.

‘Ten years. But nothing, nothing, nothing changes in Cradle Lake. Even Doreen Kettle’s kids. When I left she was squashing them into the back of the car to take them to the footy. They’re still squashing, only the squashing’s got tricker. I think the youngest is now six feet three.’ She brightened. ‘But, then, you’ve changed. Cradle Lake has a doctor. Why are you here?’

He sighed. The question was getting repetitive. ‘I told you—as a locum.’

‘No one’s ever been able to get a locum for Cradle Lake before. The last doctor was only here because his car broke down here just after the war. He was on his way to visit a war buddy and he couldn’t get anyone to repair it. He didn’t have the gumption to figure any other way of moving on.’

Fergus winced. He’d only been in the district for a couple of days but already the stories of the old doctor’s incompetence were legion.

‘Your truck’s still operating,’ Ginny pointed out. ‘So why did you stop?’

‘This is the hospital truck. And I ran my finger down the ads in the medical journal and chose the first place I’d never heard of.’

She stared. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted a break from the city.’

She eyed him with caution. ‘You realise you won’t exactly get a holiday here. This farming land’s marginal. You have a feeder district of very poor families who’ll see your presence as a godsend. You’ll be run off your feet with medical needs that have needed attention for years.’

‘I want to be busy.’

She considered him some more and he wondered what she was seeing. His reasons for coming? He hoped not. He tried to keep his face expressionless.

‘So, by break,’ she said cautiously, ‘you don’t mean a break from medicine.’

‘No.’

She eyed him for a bit longer, but somewhat to his surprise she didn’t ask any more questions. Maybe she didn’t want him asking questions back, he thought, and he glanced at her again and knew he was right. There was something about the set of her face that said her laughter was only surface deep. There were problems. Real and dreadful problems.

As a good physician he should probe.

No. He wasn’t a good physician. He was a surgeon and he was here as a locum, to focus on superficial problems and refer anything worse to the city.

He needed to think about a fractured hip.

They were bumping over yet another cattle grid. Before them was a ramshackle farmhouse, surrounded by what looked like a graveyard for ancient cars. About six ill-assorted, half-starved dogs were on the veranda, and they came tearing down the ramp baying like the hounds from hell as the vehicle pulled to a stop.

‘I’m a city boy,’ Fergus said nervously, staring out at the snarling mutts, and Ginny grinned, pushed open the door and placed the lamb carefully on her seat behind her. She closed the truck door as the hounds reached her, seemingly ready to tear her to pieces.

‘Sit,’ she roared, in a voice that could have been heard in the next state. They all backed off as if she’d tossed a bucket of cold water over them. Three of the mongrels even sat, and a couple of them wagged their disreputable tails.

She swiped her hands together in a gesture of a job well done and then turned and peeped a smile at him.

‘You can get out now,’ she told him. ‘The dragons have been slain. And we’re quits. You rescued me and I’ve rescued you right back.’

‘Thanks,’ he told her, stepping gingerly out—but all the viciousness of the dogs had been blasted out of them.

But the dogs were the least of his problems. ‘Doc?’ It was a man’s voice, coming from the house, and it was a far cry from the plaintive tone that had brought him here in the first place. ‘Is that the bloody doctor?’ the voice yelled. ‘About bloody time. A man could die…’ The voice broke off in a paroxysm of coughing, as if the yell had been a pent-up surge of fury that had left the caller exhausted.

‘Let’s see the patient,’ Ginny said, heading up the ramp before him.

Who was the doctor here? Feeling more at sea than he’d ever felt in his entire medical training, Fergus was left to follow.

Oscar Bentley was a seriously big man. Huge. He’d inched from overweight to obese many years ago, Fergus thought as a fast visual assessment had him realising the man was in serious trouble.

Maybe that trouble didn’t stem from a broken hip, but he was in trouble nevertheless. He lay like a beached whale, sprawled across the kitchen floor. A half-empty carton of beer lay within reach so he hadn’t been in danger of dying from thirst, but he certainly couldn’t get up. His breathing was rasping, each breath sucked in as if it took a conscious effort to haul in enough air. The indignant roar he’d made as they’d arrived must have been a huge effort.

Ginny reached his patient before him. ‘Hey, Oscar, Doc Reynard tells me you’ve broken your hip.’ She was bending over the huge man, lifting his wrist. ‘What a mess.’

The elderly man’s eyes narrowed. He looked like he’d still like to yell but the effort seemed beyond him. His breathing was dangerously laboured, yet anger seemed tantamount.

‘You’re one of the Viental kids,’ he snarled. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m Ginny,’ she agreed cordially, and to Fergus’s astonishment she was looking at her watch as her fingers rested on the man’s wrist. Did she have medical training?

‘A Viental,’ the farmer gasped, and he groaned as he shifted his vast bulk to look at her more closely. ‘What the hell are you doing on my property? Why aren’t you dead?’

‘I’m helping Doc Reynard. Plus I pulled one of your lambs out of the cattle grid dividing your land from ours.’ Her face hardened a little. ‘I’ve been up on the ridge, looking over the stock you’ve been running on our land. Your ewes have obviously been lambing for weeks and at least six ewes have died during lambing. They’ve been left where they died. No one’s been near them.’

‘Mind your own business,’ he gasped. ‘I didn’t call Doc Reynard for a lecture—and I didn’t call you. I don’t want a Viental anywhere near my property.’

‘You called Doc Reynard to get you on your feet again,’ she snapped. ‘There’s no way he can do that on his own—without a crane, that is.’

‘Let’s check the hip,’ Fergus said uneasily, and she flashed a look of anger back at him.

‘There’s no difference in the length of Oscar’s legs. He has breathing difficulties but that’s because he won’t do anything about his asthma. He’ll have got himself into this state because he couldn’t be bothered fending for himself so he feels like a few days in the hospital. He does it deliberately and he’s been doing it for twenty years.’ She glanced around the kitchen and winced. ‘Though by the look of it, it’s gone beyond the need for a few days in hospital now. Maybe we need to talk about a nursing home.’

She had a point. The place was disgusting. But still…

‘The hip,’ Fergus reiterated, trying again to regain control.

‘Right. The hip.’ She sat back and pressed her fingers lightly on Oscar’s hips. ‘How about that?’ she said softly, while both men stared at her, astounded. ‘No pain?’

‘Aagh!’ Oscar roared, but the roar was a fraction too late.

Enough. He was the doctor and this was his patient. ‘Do you mind moving back?’ he demanded, lifting Ginny’s hands clear. ‘I need to do an examination.’

‘There’s no need. He’ll have stopped taking his asthma medication. Do you want me to get oxygen from your truck?’

‘I was called to a broken hip,’ Fergus said testily. He didn’t have a clue what was happening here—what the dynamics were. Her pressure on the hips without result had been diagnosis enough, but he wasn’t taking chances on a patient—and a situation—that he didn’t know. ‘Let me examine him.’

Almost surprisingly she agreed. ‘I’ll get the oxygen and then I’ll wait outside. I’ll take care of the sheep. Someone’s got to take care of the sheep. Then I’ll come with you to the hospital.’

He frowned. He wasn’t too sure why she intended coming to the hospital. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her. There was something about this woman’s presence that was sending danger signals, thick and fast. ‘You were going to walk home.’

‘He’ll have to go to hospital,’ she said evenly. ‘He’s drunk, his breathing’s unstable, and you won’t be able to prove he hasn’t got a broken hip without X-rays. How are you planning to lift Oscar yourself?’

‘I’ll call in the paramedics,’ he snapped.

‘Excuse me, but this is the last home and away football match for Cradle Lake this season,’ Ginny snapped back. ‘If by paramedic you mean Ern and Bill, who take it in turns to drive the local ambulance, then you’ll find they refuse absolutely to come until the match—and the post-match celebration—is over. Especially if it’s to come to Oscar.’

Which was why he had come here in the first place, he thought dourly. The call had come in and there’d been no one willing to take it.

‘That leaves you stuck,’ she continued. ‘For a couple of hours at least. Unless you accept help.’

‘Fine,’ he conceded, trying not to sound confused. ‘I’ll accept your help. Can you wait outside?’

‘Very magnanimous,’ she said, and she grinned.

His lips twitched despite his confusion. It was a great grin.

Get on with the job. Ignore gorgeous grins.

‘Just go,’ he told her, and she clicked her disreputable boots together and saluted.

‘Yes, sir.’