The Midwife's Courage. Lilian Darcy

      

      “I wanted to ask you if there’s any other way I can make up for—”

      “There isn’t,” she snapped. “Short of offering to marry me yourself.”

      Dylan laughed. It was a rich, confident sound. In any other circumstances she would have wanted to join in. “Perhaps that’s exactly what I should do,” he said. “The only thing that would really make the grade, right?”

      “I wasn’t serious.”

      “I dare you, Annabelle.” There was a light of challenge and determination in his expression that made her uncomfortable. “I dare you to consider the proposition.Think about it….”

Dear Reader,

      Even after writing over fifty books, this one was a “first” for me. For the first time, the idea came to me in a dream. I popped awake, and there it all was, already sitting in my mind—the harried and cynical surgeon hero arriving late at his colleague’s wedding; the nervous yet lovely bride heroine, whom the hero has never truly noticed before, even though he works with her for hours every week; the sudden, crazy impulse that leads him to interrupt the ceremony….

      That, of course, was only the beginning. I happened to be making a train journey that day, and I spent most of it scribbling down my ideas about what was to happen next. Does Annabelle swoon into Dylan’s arms, realize that he’s the man she really loves and marry him at once, instead?

      No! Of course not! She’s absolutely furious! Meanwhile, although questioning his own sanity in relation to the timing of his dramatic gesture, Dylan remains utterly convinced that he’s done the right thing.

      Who’s right? You’ll just have to read the book!

      Lilian Darcy

      The Midwife’s Courage

      Lilian Darcy

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CONTENTS

       COVER

DEAR READER

       TITLE PAGE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

      ‘ARE you on your mobile, Dr Calford?’

      ‘Yes, but don’t worry. I’ve only moved three car lengths in the last ten minutes, so I’m not exactly a danger to other road users.’

      ‘I’m sorry, Dr Calford, I didn’t catch that.’

      ‘Never mind, Lesley.’ Dylan Calford raised his voice above the background noise of peak-hour traffic. ‘There’s nothing that can’t wait. We’ll pick it up next week, OK?’

      ‘Enjoy the wedding,’ the orthopaedic clinic secretary carolled cheerfully.

      Dylan swallowed the dampening response that sprang to his lips, saying instead, ‘And you enjoy your weekend, Lesley.’ He knew that, like most working women with a family, she deserved to.

      He flipped his phone shut and concentrated on the traffic. Brisbane roads were like tangled spaghetti at the best of times, and five o’clock on a Friday afternoon was not one of those. Being January, it was a hot Friday afternoon, too. With the sun pouring through Dylan’s front windscreen, the car’s air-conditioning couldn’t keep up, and he felt sticky all over.

      He was already late. Didn’t know why he was going to this wedding in the first place. He was cynical about weddings at the moment. He didn’t altogether want to feel this way, but after the debacle he’d endured with Sarah…There really was something too incongruous about proceeding directly from a meeting with his divorce lawyer to a ceremony designed to shackle two more innocent people together in the dubious bonds of wedlock.

      ‘Like lambs to the slaughter,’ he muttered. A crucial three metres of space opened up ahead and he was able to crawl forward far enough to turn left into a quiet side street which should cut through in the direction of St Lucia.

      Not that Dr Alexander Sturgess remotely resembled a lamb, of course.

      Traffic lights ahead. Red, naturally. Dylan had chronic bad luck with traffic. As a result, he’d learned to be alert and super-competent in the way he navigated the sprawling city. That was a plus. All the same, he would have preferred to have been one of those fortunate souls for whom green lights, empty lanes and parking spaces appeared in his path like magic.

      The sun was spearing into his eyes, half blinding him and making him sleepy. He and Alex had both been in emergency surgery half the night, putting a nineteen-year-old motorbike rider back together after a horrific crash. Head injury, complicated fractures, internal injuries. It was one of those times when you didn’t know whether to even hope that he would live. The metal plates and pins now keeping the young man’s bones in place were the least of his problems.

      As befitted a senior orthopaedic specialist and a man about to get married, Alex had then taken the rest of the day off. Dylan, in contrast, had tackled his senior’s scheduled surgical list, done a three-hour fracture clinic, which had run late, made hospital rounds and met his lawyer. The man was probably on the phone with Sarah’s lawyer right now, presenting the details of the proposed settlement he and Dylan had worked out together.

      Would it pass muster? Dylan suspected not. Sarah apparently valued the support she’d given him during his past two years of specialist orthopaedic training more highly than he did.

      ‘Thank God we didn’t have kids!’ he muttered.

      Were children on the agenda for Alex and Annabelle? He imagined so. Alex would want to perpetuate the Sturgess dynasty. And Annabelle, aka Theatre Sister Annabelle Drew…Didn’t she have a child already? Yes, he was sure she did. Not hers, but one she’d had dumped on her a year or so ago. Her sister’s little boy, or something.

      Dylan didn’t know the exact circumstances. Sister Drew didn’t splash her personal life around during surgery like antiseptic solution, the way some people did. She was one of the few women who, in many ways, actually suited the anachronistic