Forbidden Nights With The Boss. Anna J. Stewart

was a very obvious evasion, Cam guessed, but he didn’t say so. Whatever Jo had been thinking about was her business, not his, although he did hope she wasn’t regretting hiring him before he’d even started work.

      And it was probably best not to consider that hope too closely—could it be more than the surf that made him want to stay on here?

      It couldn’t be the woman—they’d barely met …

      And it certainly wasn’t the accommodation!

      Although thinking about waking in the rose bower did make him smile: waking up in the flat would certainly be a far cry from a desert camouflage tent.

      But even as he smiled he wondered if he shouldn’t leave right now, before he got as entangled as the roses in the bower. It wouldn’t be fair to any woman to be lumbered with him the way his mind was—the nightmares, the flashbacks, the doubts that racked him.

      Jo beeped the car unlocked, then looked at Cam in vague surprise as opened her door and held it.

      ‘Not used to gentlemen in Crystal Cove?’ he asked, discovering that teasing her was fun, particularly as a delicate rose colour seeped into her cheeks when he did it.

      Jo refused to answer him. Okay, so he was a tease. She could handle that. She just had to get used to it and to take everything he said with the proverbial grain of salt. And she had to learn not to react.

      Not to react to anything to do with the man.

      Already she was regretting suggesting she show him around.

      She pulled into the hospital car park, enjoying, as she always did, the old building with its wide, sheltered verandas and its view over the beach and the water beyond.

      Today must have been ‘putting up the decorations’ day for the veranda railing was garlanded with greenery while red and green wreaths hung in all the windows.

      ‘Great hospital!’ Cam said.

      ‘It’s a triumph of local support over bureaucracy,’ she told him. ‘The government wanted to close it some years ago and the local people fought to keep it. We’ve even got a maternity ward, if you can call one birthing suite and a couple of other rooms a ward. It’s so good for the local women to be able to have their babies here, and although we don’t have a specialist obstetrician we’ve got a wonderful head midwife, and Tom’s passionate about his obstetrics work.’

      ‘I vaguely remember him being keen on it during our training,’ Cam said, while Jo hurried out of the car before he could open her door and stand near her again.

      She really needed to get away—needed some time and space to sort out all the strange stirrings going on in her body, not to mention the fact that her mind kept enjoying conversations with her new employee. It was almost as if it had been starved of stimulation and was now being refreshed.

      Impossible.

      Was she away with the fairies that she was even thinking this way?

      She was saved from further mental muddle by Tom, who was not only at the hospital, checking on the moped driver, but was delighted to meet up with a friend from bygone times.

      ‘I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than hang around listening to us play “Remember this”,’ Tom told Jo. ‘How about you leave Cam here and I’ll drop him back up at your place later?’

      Jo’s relief was out of all proportion to the offer Tom had made, but she hoped she hid it as she checked that this was okay with her new tenant and made her escape.

      He was just a man—Cam, not Tom, although Tom was also a man, though not a man she thought of as a man.

      This particular dither was so ridiculous it told her just how far out of control her mind had become. She drove home, made herself a cup of tea—very soothing, tea—and sat on the deck to try to sort out what was happening to her.

      Was it because it was a long time since she’d been in a relationship that her new employee was causing her problems?

      Three years, that’s how long it had been.

      There’d been the odd date in that time—very odd, some of them—but nothing serious. Nothing serious since Harry had declared that no power on earth would persuade him to live in a one-horse, seaside town for the rest of his life, and if she wanted to leave Sydney and go back home, that was fine by him.

      He’d been so underwhelmed by her departure from their relationship she’d wondered if he’d already had a replacement woman lined up.

      Not that she’d wondered for long. So much had happened after she’d returned home. Jill’s death within a few months, for a start. Jo had been devastated. Fortunately she’d had the distraction of helping Lauren set up the refuge, then her father had fallen in love, then she’d taken over the practice. More recently, she’d started worrying about the refuge closing. A new relationship had been the last thing on her mind.

      Not that the town was teeming with men with whom she could have had a relationship if she’d wanted one, and relationships in small towns—well, they had their own set of problems.

      She was aware enough to know that the refuge, building it up and working for it, had helped her through the worst of the pain of Jill’s death. Perhaps now that there was a possibility of it closing, was she subconsciously looking for a new diversion?

      A six-foot-three, broad-chested, blue eyed diversion?

      She didn’t think so.

      Besides, the refuge wasn’t going to close, not while she had breath in her body to fight it.

      And if she was fighting, then she wouldn’t—shouldn’t—have the time or energy to consider her new tenant, not his chest, or his eyes, or anything else about him …

      ‘Who are those people who arrange marriages in some countries? Wedding planners? Marriage consultants?’

      It was a strange conversation to be having with someone she barely knew, but Jo was glad the man—the one with the eyes and chest she was going to ignore, however hard that might be—had brought up a topic of conversation for, when she’d met him in the lunch-room after morning surgery, she’d wondered what on earth they could talk about.

      They could talk about patients, of course, but lunchtime was supposed to be a break and unless something was urgent—

      She frowned at the man, well, not at him but at not knowing the answer.

      ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, ‘although I do know the kind of people you mean. An old-fashioned form of internet dating, I suppose. I think the family went to the woman and she organised the—matchmakers, that’s what they were called. Or are called if they still exist.’

      She was intrigued enough by now to actually look at the man who was sitting across the table from her. His face was freshly shaven so quirky lips and pale blue eyes were clearly visible, and his hair, though still long, was shiny clean—brown streaked with gold.

      He was more handsome even than his photo, which had made him look formal and a little stern, while this man would have every woman in town booking in for appointments.

      Best to stop considering his looks and get back to the conversation.

      ‘Why do you ask?’

      He grinned at her, making her forget her decision to stop considering looks just long enough to add super-smile to the catalogue of his appeal.

      It also caused just a little tremor in her stomach.

      Well, maybe more than a little tremor, but it was still small enough to ignore.

      ‘Just that every patient I’ve seen this morning, the men included, would find it a perfect career choice. Some were more subtle than others, but before I’d written a script, every one of them knew my marital status—single—my career prospects—doubtful