between the storage cupboard and the door frame. She wasn’t really sure his legs would fit if he tried to fold into the space.
He didn’t attempt to sit and it was probably a good choice.
There was still something about his behaviour that was a little...odd. Did he feel they didn’t want him? ‘Dr Southwell, your presence here is very much appreciated.’
It took him a couple of seconds to answer and she used them to centre herself. This was her world. No need to be nervous. ‘We were very relieved when someone accepted the locum position for the month.’
He didn’t look flattered—too flash just to be referred to as ‘someone’, perhaps?
Ellie stepped forward. Bit back the sigh and the grumbles to herself about how much she liked the old ones. ‘Anyway, welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Most people call me Swift, because it’s my name and I move fast. I’m the DON, the midwife, emergency resource person and mediator between the medical staff and the nursing staff.’ She held out her hand. He looked at her blankly. What? Perhaps a sense of humour was too much to hope for.
His expression slowly changed to one of polite query. ‘Do they need mediation?’ He didn’t take her hand and she lowered it slowly. Strange, strange man. Ellie stifled another sigh. Being on the back foot already like this was not a good sign.
‘It was a joke, sorry.’ She didn’t say, ‘J. O. K. E.,’ though she was beginning to think he might need it spelled out for him. She switched to her best professional mode. The experience of fitting in at out-of-the-way little hospitals had dispatched any pretensions she might have had that a matron was anyone but the person who did all the things other people didn’t want to do. It had also taught her to be all things to all people.
Ellie usually enjoyed meeting new staff. It wasn’t something that happened too often at their small hospital until Dr Rodgers had retired.
Lighthouse Bay was a place more suited to farming on the hills and in the ocean, where the inhabitants retreated from society, though there were some very trendy boutique industries popping up. Little coffee plantations. Lavender farms. Online boutiques run by corporate women retreating from the cities looking for a sea change.
Which was where Ellie’s new clientele for Maternity rose from. Women with considered ideas on how and where they wanted to have their babies. But the town’s reliable weekend doctor had needed to move indefinitely for medical treatment and Ellie was trying to hold it all together.
The local farming families and small niche businesses were salt-of-the-earth friendly. She was renovating her tiny one-roomed cottage that perched with two other similar crofts like a flock of seabirds on the cliff overlooking the bay. She’d found the perfect place to forget what a fool she’d been and perfect also for avoiding such a disaster again.
Ellie dreamed of dispensing with the need for doctors at all. But at the moment she needed one supporting GP obstetrician at least to call on for emergencies. Maybe she could pick this guy’s brains for ways to circumvent that.
She glanced at the man in front of her—experience in a suit. But not big on conversation. Still, she was tenacious when there was something she wanted, and she’d drag it out of him. Eventually.
In the scheme of things Lighthouse Bay Maternity needed a shake up and maybe she could use him. He’d be totally abreast of the latest best-practice trends, a leader in safe maternity care. He should be a golden opportunity to sway the sticklers to listen to the mothers instead of the easy fix of sending women away.
But, if he wasn’t going to sit down then she would deal with him outside the confines of her office. She stood and slipped determinedly past him. It was a squeeze and required body contact. She’d just have to deal with it. ‘Would you like a tour?’
* * *
Lemon verbena. He knew the scent because at the last conference he’d presented at, all the wives had been raving about the free hotel amenities and they’d made him smell it. It hadn’t resonated with him then as it did now. Sam Southwell breathed it in and his visceral response set off rampant alarm bells. He was floundering to find his brain. There was something about the way her buttoned-to-the-neck, long-sleeved white shirt had launched a missile straight to the core of him and exploded, and now the scent of her knocked him sideways as she brushed past.
The way her chin lifted and her cool, grey eyes assessed him and found him wanting, giving him the ultimate hands-off warning when he hadn’t even thought about hands on—hadn’t for a long time until now—impressed him. Obviously a woman who made up her own mind. She wasn’t overawed by him in the least and that was a good thing.
He stared at the wall where ‘Swift’ had stood a second ago and used all of his concentration to ram the feelings of sheer confusion and lust back down into the cave he used for later thought, and tried to sound at least present for the conversation. She must be thinking he was an arrogant sod, but his brain was gasping, struggling, stumped by the reaction he was having to her.
She was right. Being jammed in this shoebox of an office wasn’t helping. What an ironic joke that his father had thought this isolated community would help him return to normal when in fact he’d just fallen off a Lighthouse Bay cliff. His stomach lurched.
He turned slowly to face her as she waited, not quite tapping her foot. He began to feel better. Impatience wasn’t a turn-on.
‘Yes. A tour would be excellent,’ he said evenly. She must think he was the most complete idiot but he was working to find headspace to fit it all in. And he could work fast.
The place he could handle. Heck, he could do it in his sleep. He had no idea why he was so het up about it. But this woman? His reaction to her? A damnably different kettle of fish. Disturbing. As in, deeply and diabolically disturbing.
‘How many beds do you have here?’ A sudden picture of Ellie Swift on a bed popped into his head and arrested him. She’d have him arrested, more likely, he thought wryly. He was actually having a breakdown. His dad was right. He did need to learn to breathe.
SAM HADN’T SLEPT with a woman for years. Not since his wife had died. He hadn’t wanted to and in fact, since he’d used work to bury grief and guilt, with all the extra input, his career had actually taken off. Hence, he hadn’t had the time to think about sex, let alone act on it.
Now his brain had dropped to somewhere past his waistline, a nether region that had been asleep for years and had just inconveniently roared into life like an express train, totally inappropriate and unwelcome. Good grief. He closed his eyes tightly to try and clear the pictures filling his head. He was an adolescent schoolboy again.
‘Are you okay?’ Her voice intruded and he snapped his lids open.
‘Sorry.’ What could he say? He only knew what he couldn’t say. Please don’t look down at my trousers! Instead he managed, ‘I think I need coffee.’
She stopped. Dropped her guard. And as if by magic he felt the midwife morph from her as she switched to nurture mode in an instant. No other profession he knew did it as comprehensively as midwives.
‘You poor thing. Of course. Follow me. We’ll start in the coffee shop. Though Myra isn’t here yet. Didn’t you stop on the way? You probably rushed to
