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reasons for sympathy that she'd thought that was all it had been.
    Even standing there, watching in some alarm as he'd lurched against the wall of the corridor to shore himself up and given a hiccup that had been far more like a sob, and feeling her hands literally ache and itch to reach up and smooth the unkempt dark hair from his forehead, or massage the lines of tension and pain from his face, she'd thought of her touch on his skin purely as healing, not as sensual.
    She even started to lift her hand. Somehow, they were standing very close. She could have reached him without moving. Did that mean that she was the one to initiate what happened? Unconsciously, with just that one tentative and uncompleted gesture?
    Because her hand never got as far as his forehead. Instead, a second later, it was crushed between her chest and his as he pulled her desperately into his arms and started to kiss her. Oh, those kisses! Hungry, frantically sensual, trembling, moist, passionate. They swamped her at once, almost threatening to drown her.
    She was hardly able to breathe...and then she didn't want to. Even unshaven and smelling of wine as he was, his kisses were like heaven. She'd never been kissed like that before.
    Or since.
    If she'd had any idea beforehand that he would feel so good, so right, perhaps she'd have been able to summon the strength to resist, or the mental space to work out how wrong and impossible this was. But she hadn't, and there was simply no room in her whirling brain for anything but sensation, wonder and growing physical arousal.
    He wasn't a very gentle or patient lover that night. The whole thing plunged along like a runaway horse, swift and unstoppable. Hands everywhere. Sobs of hunger and desperation. Torn fabric. If there was any chance to pause for thought or words or breath then one of them might have been able to call a halt.
    She didn't care that he wasn't gentle, though, and he didn't hurt her. He just closed his eyes and disappeared into the same turbulent world of the senses that she was experiencing.
    And when it was over, and she was still gasping and pulsing with its aftermath, she didn't pause either. She pulled away from him, too stunned and overwhelmed to touch his heated skin any longer.
    She scrambled to her feet and gabbled, 'I'm going to have a shower.'
    Which she did in the small en suite bathroom that opened off her bedroom, standing under the hot needles of water for a good ten minutes as if this might have the power to wash the clock backwards and undo what she and Malcolm had just done.
    How is he going to feel in the morning? she thought over and over again. Just how much is he going to hate himself? And me? How much wine did he have? Enough that he won't remember at all? Oh, please, let it turn out that he doesn't remember! I can live with it, but can he? I must do whatever is necessary so that this doesn't add to everything he already feels about Bronwyn and Gabrielle.
    Six years later, and that huge need to protect him, to spare him, hadn't gone away. What it meant now was very simple.
    There are only two ways he must think of me—as a nurse, and as Charlotte's mother. And that's how I must think of him, too—the head of the department I'm working in, and the father of my little girl's best friend.
     

CHAPTER THREE
    Malcolm stopped Lucy in the A and E entrance the next afternoon, just as she was leaving.
    The promised change had come earlier than expected the day before, and the sense of tense anticipation had subsided. Casualties from the bushfires had been fewer than feared, and the hospital had treated only two cases of serious burns and one of smoke inhalation. Still, there was a lot of fuel around for fires, and the bushfire season was by no means over.
    'Thank goodness!' Malcolm said. 'The boss wouldn't have been too happy if I'd had to report I'd just missed you.'
    'The boss?' Lucy frowned. Was this some administrative problem delivered from on high, concerning her