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‘This’ll keep that eczema at bay until Christmas.’
    He grinned and greeted Olive Grayson with wry good humour, signed the script and watched the lady depart.
    The waiting room was empty. The receptionist was gone. There was no one but Ben.
    ‘Button...’ she started, and headed towards the kitchenette, but Ben put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.
    It shouldn’t feel like this, she thought, suddenly breathless. Ben touching her?
    For heaven’s sake, she wasn’t seventeen any more. Once upon a time she’d thought she was in love with this man. It had been adolescent nonsense and there was no reason for her hormones to go into overdrive now.
    ‘I hope you don’t mind but I sent her home with our nurse, Abby,’ he said.
    ‘You...what?’
    ‘Abby’s a single mum and the tremors happening when she can’t be with her son are doing her head in. So my mum’s taking a hand. Abby will be having dinner with us, so I suggested she and Hannah—my sister—take both kids back to our place. They’ll have put them to bed, and dinner’s waiting for us. Mum says there’s plenty. I have a few house calls to make but they can wait until after dinner if you’d like to join us.’
    ‘You...’
    ‘I know, I’m an overbearing, manipulating toad,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ve manipulated you into working for us this afternoon and now I’ve manipulated you into a dinner date. But it’s not actually a dinner date in the romantic sense. It’s Mum, Dad, whichever of my siblings are home tonight, Abby, Button and you. It’s hardly candlelit seduction.’
    She smiled back, but only just. This was exactly what she didn’t want, being drawn into island life. She wanted to work on her vineyard. She wanted to forget about being a doctor. She wanted...
    Nothing. She wanted nothing, nothing and nothing.
    ‘Why not medicine?’ Ben said softly, watching her face, and she thought almost hysterically that he always had been able to read her thoughts.
    ‘What...what do you mean?’
    ‘I mean I did some research when I heard you were back on the island. You’ve got yourself a fine medical degree. And yet...’
    ‘And yet my husband died of cancer,’ she said flatly, almost defiantly
    ‘And there was nothing you could do? You blame yourself or your medicine? Is that it?’
    ‘This is not your business.’
    ‘But you walked away.’
    ‘Leave it, Ben. I changed direction. I can’t let the vineyard go to ruin.’
    ‘We need a doctor here more than we need wine.’
    ‘And I need wine more than I need medicine. Now, if you don’t mind...I’ll collect Button and go home.’
    ‘My mum will be hurt if you don’t stop and eat.’
    She would be, too.
    She’d popped in to see Ailsa when she’d arrived back at the island—of course she had. Ben’s mum had always been lovely to her, drawing her into the family, making her time on the island so much better than if she’d been left with the normally sullen adolescent childminders her parents had usually hired on the mainland.
    But she’d explained things to Ailsa.
    ‘I need time to myself—to come to terms with my husband’s death.’ To come to terms with her husband’s betrayal? His anger? His totally unjustified blame? ‘I’m done with relationships, medicine, pressure. I need to be alone.’
    ‘Of course you do, dear,’ Ailsa had said, and had hugged her. ‘But don’t stay solitary too long. There’s no better cure than hugs, and hugs are what you’ll get when you come to this house. And if I know our kids and our friends, it won’t only be me who’ll be doing the hugging.’
    Nothing had changed, she thought. This island was a time warp, the escape her parents had always treated it as.
    She wanted this island but she didn’t want the closeness that went with it. For six months she’d held herself aloof but now...
    ‘Irish stew and parsley dumplings,’ Ben said, grinning and putting on a nice, seductive face. His left eyebrow rose and he chuckled at