But he didn’t have the time-or the inclination-to stand around being disconcerted. He remembered work with relief. Harry was waiting. Amy and her baby would be loaded and ready to go.
‘This is great,’ he said. ‘Pippa, welcome to Whale Cove Hospital. But can we talk about it later? I need to leave.’
‘I’ve sent a message to the ward to hold onto Amy for fifteen minutes,’ Coral said. ‘We have a couple of things to discuss. First, I’ve told Pippa she can move into the medical house. You have four bedrooms. I assume there’s no objection?’
They both stilled at that. He saw Pippa’s face go blank and he thought he hadn’t been part of that equation.
‘You never said I’d be sharing with Riley,’ she said.
‘It’s the hospital’s house,’ Coral said. ‘Riley mostly has it to himself but we occasionally use it for transient staff.’
‘I’m not transient,’ Pippa said.
‘I have a guest coming tomorrow,’ Riley said over the top of her.
‘You have four bedrooms.’ Coral glanced at her watch, clearly impatient. ‘If you have one guest, there are still two bedrooms spare. It should suit Pippa for the short term. I’m not going to knock back a great nurse for want of accommodation. Meanwhile, Pippa would like to work immediately but I don’t want to put her on the wards until I’m sure she’s fully recovered. Cordelia’s not coming in. You need another team member. Pippa needs an overview of the service so I’m sending her out with you. Can you fit her up with a Flight-Aid shirt so she looks official? She can tag along while you can talk her through life here. You’ll be back by late tonight. Pippa, I’ll let you sleep in tomorrow-it’d be a shame to waste that honeymoon suite of yours. You can move into the house at the weekend, you can start here on Monday, and we can all live happily ever after. No objections? Great, let’s go.’
It had happened so fast she felt breathless. She had a job.
She was flying over the Australian Outback in an official Flight-Aid plane. Harry was flying it. ‘Dual qualifications,’ he said smugly when she expressed surprise. ‘Triple if you count me riding a Harley. Riley here doctors and surfs. He has two skills to my three. It’s just lucky I’m modest.’
Harry made her smile.
The whole set-up made her smile.
The back of the plane was set up almost as an ambulance. Harry and Riley were up front. Pippa was in the back with her patients, Amy and baby Riley.
This was the start of her new life.
She was wearing a Flight-Aid shirt. The Flight-Aid emblem was on her sleeve and there was a badge on her breast. She was about to attend a clinic in one of the most remote settlements in the world.
This time last week she’d been planning her wedding. Four days ago she’d been floating in the dark, expecting to die. Now she was employed as a nurse, heading to an Outback community to help Dr Riley Chase.
The man who’d saved her life.
He was a colleague. She had to remind herself of that, over and over. But in his Flight-Aid uniform he looked… he looked…
‘Isn’t Doc Riley fabulous?’ Amy was headed home with her baby, and things were looking great in her world. She was bubbling with happiness. ‘He’s made me see so many things. You reckon one day my baby could be a doctor?’
‘Why not?’
‘I wish I’d gone to school,’ Amy said wistfully. ‘Mum never made me and there were always kids to look after. Then Doc Riley read the Riot Act and now they all go. My littlie’ll go to school from day one.’ She glanced at Amy’s uniform. ‘It’d be so cool to wear that.’
It did feel cool. Wearing this uniform…
Her parents would hate it, Pippa thought. They hated her being a nurse, and for her to be a nurse here…
They still had Roger. They liked Roger.
They didn’t like her.
She was getting morose. Luckily little Riley decided life had been quiet long enough and started to wail. That gave her something to do, a reason not to think of the difficulties back home. She changed the baby and settled her on Amy’s breast. As she worked she marvelled at how neat everything was in the plane’s compact cabin, how easily she could work here-and she also marvelled that she felt fine. She’d had a moment’s qualm when she’d seen how small the plane was. If she was to be airsick…
No such problem. She grinned at mother and baby, feeling smug. Somehow she’d found herself a new life. She’d be good at this.
Flight-Aid nurse. Heir to the Fotheringham millions?
Never the twain shall meet.
‘So do we use her straight away?’
Riley sighed. He was having trouble coming to terms with their new team player, and the fact that Harry was intent on talking about her wasn’t helping.
‘She doesn’t have accreditation,’ he said. ‘She’s an observer only.’
‘But you’ve left her in the back with Amy.’
‘Amy needs company and I’m feeling lousy company.’
‘I can see that,’ Harry said thoughtfully. ‘So is it a problem that we’re saddled with a young, attractive, competent nurse rather than our dog-smelling Cordelia?’
‘Cordelia’s competent,’ he snapped.
‘And Pippa’s not?’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘So you’d rather the devil you know.’ Harry nodded. ‘I can see that.’
No comment.
Riley was feeling incapable of comment. He sat and glowered and Harry had the sense to leave him alone.
So what was the problem?
The problem was that Riley didn’t know what the problem was.
Pippa was a patient. He thought of her as a patient-only he didn’t.
She had the same English accent as Marguerite.
He couldn’t hold an accent over her.
No, but there were so many conflicting emotions.
Lucy was coming. His daughter. She’d have this accent as well.
His hands were hurting. He glanced down and realised he’d clenched his fingers into his palms, tighter than was wise. He needed to lighten up. Before Lucy arrived?
He hauled out his wallet and glanced at the picture Lucy had sent him when she’d contacted him three months ago. His daughter was beautiful. She was eighteen years old and she was so lovely she took his breath away.
He’d had nothing to do with her life. He’d been a father for a mere three months.
Even then… after that one email, sent from an address that had then been deleted, he’d flown to England and confronted Marguerite. Tracking her down had taken time but he’d found her, married to a financier, living in a mansion just off Sloane Square. She was still beautiful, taking supercilious to a new level, and bored by his anger.
‘Yes, she is your daughter but purely by genes. She doesn’t want you or need you in her life. If she contacted you it’ll be because she’s vaguely interested in past history, nothing more. I imagine that interest has now been sated. Why would she wish to see you? I don’t wish to see you-I can’t imagine why you’ve come. No, I’m not telling you where she is. Go away, Riley, you have no place in our lives.’
So tomorrow he was expecting a teenage daughter, coming to stay. And in the back of the plane was a woman called Pippa who was also coming to stay.
Two women. Identical accents.
Trouble.
‘It must be bad, to look like that,’ Harry said cheerfully, and Riley found his fists clenching again.
‘Women,’ he said. ‘Maybe Cordelia’s right. Maybe dogs are the way to go.’
‘Women are more fun,’ Harry said.
