competing for attention in her head and concentrated on the staff roster on Coralie’s desk. Coralie was busy filling in her ward secretary on the legend that was Sam Agostini—the bad boy of the Bay.
‘Gorgeous, he was just gorgeous—darkly handsome with the most arresting blue-green eyes. But wild! You wouldn’t believe the things he’d do. The story is he once swam across the bay for a bet and you know what the sharks are like out there, and he certainly put one of his mates in hospital after a fight. I was there that night. Boy, could he fight.’ She paused. ‘I wonder if Wade knows he’s back in town.’
Meg heard the smugness in Coralie’s voice, and felt sorry for Wade Stephens. The man deserved better than his wife trying to rekindle an old affair with Sam Agostini!
‘We’re still in dire straits with staff—can you do an extra shift?’ she asked the sister, hoping to bring the conversation back to work-related matters.
Coralie’s reply was swift.
‘No way! Not today. I’ve a hair appointment.’
Coralie? Whose hair looked as if she cut it with a knife and fork?
Hair appointment?
Meg forbore from comment, but inwardly she was cursing Sam’s arrival back in town. As if the hospital wasn’t in enough trouble, with the epidemic of summer flu, without women who should know better going dippy over a good-looking scoundrel.
Maybe he had a wife.
Surely he’d have a wife!
She hadn’t noticed a wedding ring…
But, then, she’d barely noticed anything about the man—except that it had been Sam.
‘There are no sharks in the bay—it’s too shallow,’ she told the ward secretary, who was new in town. ‘The sharks just made for a better a story.’
The young woman smiled at her, but the avid way she turned her attention back to Coralie told Meg just how disruptive Sam’s return might be.
‘And this is the medical ward.’
Bill’s voice alerted her to the fact that the guided tour of his precious hospital had caught up with her, but as Coralie rushed forward to welcome Sam, enveloping him in a hug, Meg moved away. She couldn’t avoid giving him a wry smile as she passed him to remind him of their shared revulsion of all things soppy and sentimental when they had been inseparable holiday playmates as kids.
Sam fended off Coralie West, or whatever she was called now, as best he could, offering what he hoped was a disarming but suitably neutral smile.
‘Great to see you,’ he said, while in his head he wondered about his sanity. Bringing his mother back here had been one thing—but after she’d—
He cut off the thought, concentrating instead on the information Bill was giving him. Complex medical cases were transferred to Brisbane, but good visiting specialists meant they could handle most things.
‘And our consultant surgeons are terrific,’ Bill continued, leading him towards the surgical ward. ‘Top class.’
Were they following some hospital round routine that meant Megan was in front of him at every turn? She was bending over the desk, her hair, a darker, richer red than it had been when she’d been young, falling forward so it cast a shadow on her rather stern profile, her tall, lean figure curved towards the girl behind the computer, her long, slim legs bare of stockings and as white as Meg’s skin always was.
As kids they’d stretch out on the beach and she’d rest her leg against his so they could marvel at the contrast of her whiteness against his tanned brown skin.
‘Put more sunscreen on!’ he’d order, and she’d mimic his order to annoy him, but obey, knowing just how burnt she’d get if she didn’t cover up all the time.
‘It goes red then blisters, then peels and we’re back to white!’ she’d complained. ‘Red, white, red, white!’ And for some reason he thought of the tiny panties he’d swung on his finger the previous afternoon.
Meg in a sexy thong?
In his experience women only wore such things for a man.
‘So we can do it.’
He had no idea what Bill had been talking about, and at some stage, while he’d been lost in his memories, Meg had whisked away again.
Bill was called to the phone so Sam continued on his own, wandering into what was obviously the children’s ward. Meg again! Sitting on the edge of a bed, talking to a young lad who had his left leg and right arm hooked up in traction.
Sam paused by the desk.
‘That’s Brad Crosby,’ a nurse who introduced herself as Sue explained to him. ‘Broke both legs and one arm trying to fly off the veranda of his house. He’s always in trouble, that boy. Single p—’
‘Sue!’
Meg’s voice made them both turn, whatever Sue was about to say cut off.
‘Is the physio due to see Brad today?’
Sue checked on her computer as Meg came across to the desk, while Sam moved across to talk to the boy.
‘Flying, huh?’ he said as he drew closer. ‘What did you use for wings?’
‘Garbage bags,’ Brad said with a sigh. ‘The packet said they were extra-tough but they ripped right through the moment they took my weight. Not at the Velcro where I’d stuck them on my clothes but the plastic itself tore.’
‘Tough luck, eh?’ Sam said. ‘Guess you have to rethink the whole idea.’
‘No way!’ Brad told him. ‘My mum’d kill me if I did it again. Besides, Meg said to wait until I was a bit older when I get a bit heavier then I can try kite surfing. You know, on a small board at the edge of the water when a strong wind is blowing. Meg says it’s just like flying.’
‘Meg told you all this?’ Sam turned towards the woman in question, who was now bent over Sue’s shoulder looking at the computer screen.
‘Meg’s cool,’ Brad replied, a hint of hero-worship in his voice. ‘And she doesn’t nag. Not that Mum nags much, and when she does it’s only ’cos she worries about me—that’s something else Meg told me.’
Sam sat with the boy a little longer, learning more of the original uses to which Brad had put his apparently endless supply of Velcro, but when Meg left the ward he said farewell to his new young friend and followed her, catching up with her near an alcove that housed a public phone.
‘Did you cut Sue off to spare my feelings?’ he asked, looking down into a face that was both familiar yet extraordinarily new to him.
‘Cut Sue off?’
The slight flush in her cheeks told him she was prevaricating.
‘When she was about to make a remark about Brad being the product of a single-parent family,’ Sam persisted.
‘I
