Bride by Accident. Marion Lennox

      She’d reached him.

      She was right by him. Her arm was brushing his.

      She glanced sideways up at him.

      Mistake.

      The smile had faded. He was looking down at her with such an expression…

      She stopped. Of course she stopped. When a man was looking at a woman as Dev was looking at her…

      ‘Dev.’

      ‘I can’t,’ he told her, and she felt her heart twist within. His words held a pain that was well nigh unbearable.

      ‘I’m just a woman, Dev,’ she said softly. ‘What’s the problem?’

      Marion Lennox was born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows weren’t interested in her stories! Marion writes Medical Romance™ as well as Tender Romance™. Initially she used different names, so if you’re looking for past books search also for author Trisha David. In her non-writing life Marion cares (haphazardly) for her husband, kids, dogs, cats, chickens and anyone else who lines up at her dinner table. She fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost!). She also travels, which she finds seriously addictive. As a teenager Marion was told she’d never get anywhere reading romance. Now romance is the basis of her stories, her stories allow her to travel, and if ever there was one advertisement for following your dream she’d be it! You can contact Marion at www.marionlennox.com

      Recent titles by the same author:

      RESCUED BY A MILLIONAIRE

      (Tender Romance)

      THE DOCTOR’S SPECIAL TOUCH

      (Medical Romance)

      THE DOCTOR’S RESCUE MISSION

      (Medical Romance)

      THE LAST-MINUTE MARRIAGE

      (Tender Romance)

      Bride by Accident

      Marion Lennox

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CONTENTS

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      HE WAS here.

      Just as she saw him in her dreams, he was beside her. His face was more deeply tanned than she remembered. Laughter lines were deeply etched at the corners of his eyes.

      She couldn’t remember laughter lines.

      He had a lovely face, she thought mistily, struggling through the fog of returning consciousness. Strong. Seemingly almost chiselled. His eyes were the same deep, impenetrable grey she’d fallen in love with the moment he’d smiled at her. And his gorgeous mouth. He’d kissed so well, before…before…

      The fog receded. He couldn’t be here.

      But he was. His eyes weren’t smiling, but she hadn’t expected that. Not any more. She could scarcely remember the time when those eyes hadn’t been clouded in despair.

      But something was different. He was looking at her in concern. As if it was possible for him to care.

      It was she who should be concerned. She was the one who cared. She’d loved him to despair and back again.

      She’d lost.

      But now, magically, he was here. His hands were gripping hers as he tried to make her focus. She could feel the warmth of him. The strength.

      The strength?

      ‘Corey,’ she murmured, but his face didn’t change. Still there was a concern that she didn’t recognise—didn’t understand.

      ‘Is your breathing OK?’ he asked. ‘Does it hurt to breathe?’

      It wasn’t Corey. The voice wasn’t the same. It was deeper. Older?

      What cruel joke was this?

      She was so confused. She tried to make herself speak, but it was so hard.

      ‘Let me be,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll be fine, Corey. I’m always fine.’

      A voice called then from behind them. It was another voice she didn’t know, loud and male and fearful.

      ‘You’ve gotta come, Doc.’

      It was over. The dream was receding, as she knew it must. Corey—her Corey—put a hand on her forehead and smoothed her dark curls back from her face.

      ‘Lie still,’ he told her. ‘Help’s coming.’

      Sure.

      It was the sort of disaster every doctor dreaded.

      Dr Devlin O’Halloran rose from the woman he’d been checking and stared around, trying desperately to decide where to go next. The woman was dazed but her breathing was fine, which was all he had time to check. Everything else had to wait.

      Triage. Priorities. The problem was there was only one doctor—him—and this disaster might well need a dozen.

      This place was so isolated.

      Karington National Park, a Queensland paradise where rain-forest met sea, was said to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. The locals who lived here loved it. Tourists thought it was magic.

      But the steep cliffs and high mountains meant that the roads here were treacherous, especially at the end of the rainy season when the roadsides were sodden and liable to crumble. The logging truck had come around the bend too fast. One logging truck with an unstable load meeting one school bus with twenty kids on board.

      And one tiny, two-seater car with a pregnant driver.

      These trucks weren’t supposed to use this route, Dev thought savagely. It might be more direct than the inland road, but it was far more dangerous. By the look of it, the truck had swerved to miss the car. It hadn’t, quite. It had clipped the front, then slammed into the cliff. The logs had been thrown off with force, and they’d rolled down against the school bus. The logs were vast eucalypts from the farmed timberlands north of the national park. They’d crushed the side of the bus and they’d pushed it sideways off the road.

      Towards the sea thirty feet below.

      They were desperately lucky that the bus