Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty. Melanie Milburne

sick and injured.

      So far tonight he’d had to deal with the death of a sixteen-year-old girl in a motorcycle accident and a serious stabbing. The girl had been riding pillion on the back of her boyfriend’s bike. It had been her first time on a motorbike and her second date with the boyfriend. She had been the only child of a single mother. Jake could still see the collapse of the girl’s mother’s face when he had told her.

      The stabbing had been a drug deal turned sour. The guy had almost bled out before Jake could stem the bleeding. The guy was twenty-four years old—the same age as Jake’s younger brother, Robbie. Would this be how his kid brother ended up? Found in some sleazy back alley, mortally wounded, stoned and senseless? How could he stop it? What more could he do? Robbie’s refusal to grow up and take responsibility for himself made Jake feel he had failed.

      He had let his family down.

      He had let his mother down.

      Jake glanced at the clock on the wall on his way back from escorting the stabbing victim to Theatre.

      Five minutes to midnight.

      It was about time for the drunk and disorderly to come spilling in. He just hoped Robbie wasn’t one of them.

      ‘Dr Chandler?’ Jake’s registrar Lei Chung approached him while he was washing his hands at one of the sterilising basins. ‘I have a couple of tipsy call girls in Bay Five. One of them has a suspected broken ankle.’

      Jake mentally rolled his eyes as he tugged some paper towels out to dry his hands. ‘They told you they were call girls?’ he asked.

      ‘They didn’t have to,’ Lei said, rolling his eyes. ‘Just wait until you see them.’

      ‘They’re entitled to the same level of care as anyone else,’ Jake said, tossing the screwed-up paper in the bin before reaching for a new pair of gloves. ‘Have you ordered an X-ray?’

      ‘The radiographer will be down in ten minutes,’ Lei said. ‘He’s seeing a patient on the orthopaedic ward. One of his hip patients had a fall.’

      Jake twitched the curtain aside of Bay Five. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Chandler.’

      The girl sitting beside the one lying on the trolley shot to her feet. ‘I’m so terribly sorry about this,’ she said, speaking in a cut-glass London accent that didn’t fool Jake for a moment. ‘I don’t think it’s broken. I’m sure it’s just a sprain. But my cousin is in so much pain I thought we should have it X-rayed. I thought it best if—’

      Jake quirked one brow upwards. ‘Your … cousin?’

      ‘Her name is Julie Banning, and I’m—’

      ‘Hello, Julie,’ Jake said, turning to the girl on the trolley. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

      ‘I was dancing with this guy and his legs got twisted with mine,’ Julie said, with an Australian accent even broader than his. ‘I hit the floor and twisted my ankle. I heard something snap—I swear to God I did. It hurts like freaking hell.’

      ‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’ Jake said.

      He examined the ankle, but found only swelling and tenderness over the lateral ligaments and no obvious fracture. He checked the patient for any other injuries, but apart from a bruise on her elbow she was all clear—which was lucky considering how much alcohol he could smell on her and her posh-sounding little sidekick.

      ‘I’ll order an X-ray just to be on the safe side,’ he said. ‘An orderly will be with you shortly. And go easy on the partying, OK? You could’ve really done some serious damage. You might not be so lucky next time.’ He gave the other young woman a cursory nod and left the cubicle.

      ‘Dr Chandler?’ The young woman spoke from behind him just as he got to his office.

      Jake turned to look at her. ‘Yes?’

      She shifted her weight from foot to foot, looking distinctly uncomfortable. He didn’t know working girls could blush. Maybe she was new to the game. She didn’t look very old. Her skin was porcelain-smooth and her eyes—in spite of the heavy eyeshadow—were clear and bright and a rather stunning shade of grey. Perhaps she was worried he was going to ask for a drug screen on her ‘cousin’, or a blood alcohol level.

      ‘I wanted to say thank you for seeing my cousin so promptly,’ she said. ‘I was worried it might take hours and hours. She seemed in a lot of pain and I—’

      ‘Do you realise the dangers of binge drinking?’ Jake asked, frowning at her reproachfully.

      Her eyes flickered. ‘Pardon?’

      He stripped her with his gaze. ‘You smell like a brewery, the both of you.’

      Her cheeks flushed bright red. ‘I’m not drunk!’

      He rolled his eyes in disdain. ‘Yeah, that’s what they all say.’

      ‘But I’m not!’ she said. ‘Julie spilt her drink on the floor when she fell. I knelt down to help her and got soaked in it. I’ve only had half a glass of champagne the whole night.’

      ‘How much has your cousin had to drink?’ he asked.

      ‘A bit …’ She bit her bottom lip. ‘A lot … quite a lot … loads, actually. It’s her thirtieth birthday. I told her to slow down but she wouldn’t listen.’ She made a self-deprecating movement of her mouth. ‘She thinks I’m too conservative.’

      Jake flicked his gaze over her sinfully short PVC skirt and the black bustier top that showcased a rack that was small but no less impressive. ‘I can see what she means,’ he said dryly.

      Her big grey eyes with their raccoon-like eyeshadow widened in affront and her small neat chin came up. ‘Dr Chandler, perhaps I should take this opportunity to properly introduce myself,’ she said. ‘My name is Kitty Car—’

      ‘Kitty as in Kitty Litter?’ Jake put in, without holding back on his mocking smile.

      Her generously plumped mouth flattened. ‘No,’ she said, those storm cloud eyes flashing at him resentfully. ‘Kitty as in Katherine. Katherine Cargill. Dr Katherine Cargill, to be precise.’

      Jake rocked back on his heels. So this was the new three-month appointment who had been recruited while he’d been away on leave. He’d been wrong about the accent. Funny, but he’d thought it way too posh to be for real. Maybe it was time to have a little fun. Let her get to know the colonial natives, so to speak. God knew he could do with a bit of a laugh after the night he’d had.

      ‘Have things got so bad in the public health system that junior doctors have to moonlight in other less salubrious professions?’ he asked.

      She glared at him. ‘This is not what it looks like,’ she said, waving a stiff hand to encompass her attire. ‘It’s a costume.’

      Jake leisurely ran his gaze over every inch of her outfit, right down her long shapely legs encased in sexy fishnets to the scarily high heels on her dainty feet. ‘It’s very convincing,’ he said.

      She frowned at him. ‘Haven’t you been to a fancy dress party before?’

      ‘Yeah,’ he drawled. ‘I went as the Big Bad Wolf. I huffed and I puffed and brought the whole house down.’

      She gave him a haughty look down the length of her nose that was right out the pages of a Jane Austen novel. ‘At least you wouldn’t have had to go to the trouble and expense of hiring a costume,’ she said. ‘You would have gone just as you are.’

      Jake held her feisty little eye-lock. He felt a stirring in his groin that had nothing to do with her skimpy outfit. There was something about her imperious air and her toffee-nosed accent that made his flesh tingle from head to foot.

      Was it his self-imposed dating drought that had stirred his senses so intensely? He’d made