Accidental Mistress. CATHY WILLIAMS

even stop to think that she was lucky—that things could have been worse.

      Her leg was hurting badly, with a red-hot pain that made her grit her teeth, and in between the pain she had images of the plane taking off and merrily winging its way to sunny climes without her, and depositing all of its passengers onto the tarmac at the other end, less one, because here she was, lying on the ground, with what felt very much like a broken leg. Or at any rate a leg that wasn’t going to do much walking for a little while yet.

      She moaned heavily, noticing that quite a crowd appeared to have gathered around her and also that her suitcase had thoughtfully split open and was revealing its cargo of sodden clothes to whoever cared to look.

      ‘I’ve called an ambulance from my car phone,’ a voice said from next to her and she turned her head slowly towards it. ‘It will be here any minute.’

      The onlookers were crowding in to hear what was said, and the man, whoever he was, made a swift, authoritative movement with his hand. They shuffled back and within a few minutes most of them had dispersed.

      Lisa looked at him. He had black hair, plastered against his face because of the rain, although that didn’t appear to bother him unduly, and the lines of his face were harsh and aggressive. Aggressive enough to have sent the circle of bystanders skittering away.

      He looked down at her and the fuzzy, fleeting impression of someone quite good-looking crystallised into the most amazingly masculine face she had ever seen in her life. His features were hard, his eyes startingly blue, the face of a man born to give orders.

      ‘Are you an airport official?’ she asked faintly, and a glimmer of a smile curved his mouth.

      ‘Do I resemble an airport official?’ he asked. He had a nice voice, she thought, deep, lazy, with an undertone of amusement running through it that lent it a certain indefinable charm.

      She heard the wail of the ambulance pelting towards them.

      ‘I hope it stops in time,’ she said with weak humour, no longer thinking of the missed holiday, simply relieved that she would soon be able to have some wonderful, numbing injection to take the pain away, ‘or else there will be a few more broken bodies lying around than they’d bargained for.’

      The man, who was still bending over her and was not an airport official—stupid question really since she could see his expensive grey suit underneath the flaps of his overcoat and since when did airport officials wear expensive grey suits?—laughed. He had, she thought, closing her eyes and feeling rather light-headed and faint, a rather nice laugh as well. Warm and rich and vaguely unsettling. Or maybe the pain was just making her hallucinate slightly.

      Then, through the swimming haze, she heard voices and the sounds of things happening and she felt someone carefully examining her, feeling her leg—but so skilfully that it didn’t hurt—and then everything moved quickly. Painkillers were administered, she was carried by stretcher into the back of the ambulance, still with her eyes closed, and that was all she remembered.

      The next time she opened her eyes she was on a small bed, in a small room, with a doctor bending over her and a thermometer sticking sideways out of her mouth.

      ‘I’m Dr Sullivan,’ the man said, smiling, while the nurse who was standing next to the bed whipped the thermometer out of her mouth, looked at it, and then shook it so vigorously that Lisa, staring, felt quite faint. ‘Do you remember how you got here?’

      She dragged her attention away from the nurse, now writing up some notes. ‘Hit by a car,’ she said with a faint smile. While clutching my battered suitcase, she could have added, and feeling terribly thrilled at the prospect of a holiday abroad.

      ‘You’ve suffered a fracture to your leg,’ the doctor said, ‘and quite a few bruises which will look far worse than they feel. I need not tell you that you were very lucky indeed.’

      ‘I would feel luckier if it hadn’t happened in the first place,’ Lisa said seriously, and the young doctor threw her a bemused look before smiling politely.

      ‘Of course you would, my dear,’ he said kindly, straightening up and consulting his watch. ‘But unfortunately these things happen. It does mean, however, that you’ll be with us for a couple of weeks, while everything knits back together. Nurse will show you where everything is, and I shall be back to have a look at you later on today.’

      Nurse was smiling efficiently and as soon as the doctor had left she fussed around the bed, pointing out where the alarm call was, the light switch, the television switch, and then she said, as she was leaving, ‘You have a visitor, by the way.’

      ‘A visitor? What visitor?’

      The nurse smiled coyly, which only served to deepen Lisa’s bewilderment.

      ‘I thought he was your young man, actually. He travelled behind the ambulance to the hospital and he’s been waiting here ever since.’

      Lisa would have liked to ask a few more questions, including what had happened to her suitcase, last seen baring its contents to all and sundry, but the nurse was already leaving and in her place walked the man who had been bending over her on the road. Her visitor. The man with no name who had taken control of everything until the ambulance had arrived.

      She looked at him as he shut the door quietly behind him and felt a quiver of pleasure surge through her. She also felt quite surprisingly shy and tongue-tied and she had to make a huge effort to tell herself that she was being silly.

      She was a grown woman now. No longer the child trailing behind her parents, no longer the gauche adolescent with no experience of the opposite sex, no longer the young girl deprived of that network of giggling contemporaries who dropped her eyes and pulled away the minute a boy started taking an interest in her. Those years were behind her now. She told herself that quite firmly and felt better.

      She furtively eyed her visitor as he pulled the one and only chair over to her bed, sat down, and proceeded to give her the full benefit of his attention.

      ‘I believe the last time we spoke no introductions were made,’ he said, and his voice was precisely as she remembered. Dark and somehow inviting you to give all your attention back to him. Willing it, in fact. ‘How are you feeling?’

      He had dried out. His hair, she saw now, was thick and black, as were his eyelashes, and he had removed his coat and jacket and rolled the sleeves of his white shirt up to the elbows, so that she could see his forearms, with their sprinkling of fine dark hair.

      ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘A bit restricted, but I suppose I’ll get used to that in due course.’

      ‘I’m Angus Hamilton, by the way,’ he said with a smile, stretching out his hand to her and then grasping hers so that she felt her skin tingle, and she hurriedly shoved it away under the starched sheet as soon as she could.

      ‘Lisa Freeman,’ she said, blushing slightly. ‘Nurse said that you came here after the accident. There was no need, really.’

      ‘Oh, but there was every need.’ He sat back in the chair, which seemed far too small to accommodate him. ‘You see, it was my driver who knocked you over. I’m afraid he didn’t see you soon enough. You stepped out in front of the car and he tried to brake in time. The rest is history.’ He was looking at her intently as he said all this, his blue eyes fixed on her face.

      ‘Oh.’ She paused. ‘I should have used the pedestrian crossing,’ she said frankly. ‘I was in a dreadful rush, though.’ She thought about the wonderful holiday and her frantic preparations and felt a lump of regret swell in her throat. ‘What happened to my suitcase?’

      ‘I collected the lot and gave it to the nurse. Were you on your way to catch a plane?’

      ‘Lanzarote.’ She was normally quite a self-contained person but right now she felt emotional, with tears brimming up behind her eyes.

      ‘I’m really very sorry,’ he said, and to her embarrassment he reached into his pocket and extracted a fresh white handkerchief which he handed