regretted the fact that his back was turned towards her so that she couldn’t see his face. Not that the back view was anything to sniff at, all long lean legs and narrow waist topped by broad shoulders. Disappointingly, after her memories of Zach, the sleek dark hair was cut close to the owner’s head.
Zach’s had been quite a bit longer, far too long to satisfy school rules, and the natural curl in it had made it unruly and tempting and…and what on earth was the matter with her? She was in the middle of the road, holding the head of an injured woman, and one false move on her part could paralyse her if she’d fractured bones in her neck. What on earth was she doing, ogling a motorcyclist she’d never seen in her life before and thinking about a classmate she hadn’t seen in more than a decade? Concentrate! she berated herself.
She joined Harry in a sigh of relief when the collar was successfully secured and had to stifle another sigh as she wondered how much longer it would be before she felt free to go to work. Doubtless, she would have to give her statement, too, and her colleagues wouldn’t be pleased if they had to wait hours for her to arrive before they could hand over and clock off at the end of a long shift. None of them would dream of walking out of the department, knowing that their departure would leave it understaffed, but they wouldn’t be happy if they had to stay on indefinitely, especially those with families waiting for them to come home.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, the young officer smiled in her direction and called, ‘Would it be better if I caught up with you at the hospital, Doctor?’
‘Perfect!’ Amy called back, knowing he would be able to see her relief in her answering smile. She might actually be able to get to work on time if she didn’t have to stop to answer questions now. ‘I’m Dr Willmott. Amy Willmott, and I work in A and E.’
Then she bent towards the fragile lady to help slide the backboard gently into position on the wheeled stretcher, hoping that the motorcyclist wouldn’t see her blush and guess at the cause. It was certainly the most blatant she’d ever been, deliberately announcing who she was and where he could contact her if he was as interested as his dark eyes had implied.
‘Thanks for your assistance,’ Harry said as he finally locked one door shut then climbed into the back of the ambulance to join his patient. ‘I’ll probably see you again in a minute, if you’re on duty?’
Amy glanced at her watch and grimaced.
‘I’m due to clock on in about six and a half minutes, so I’ll see you there,’ she confirmed as she reached in her pocket for her keys.
She hurried towards her car, still sitting in front of the pedestrian crossing where she’d left it, although someone had sensibly closed the door so it wasn’t causing quite so much of an obstruction.
Her heart sank when she realised that the motorcycle was no longer beside it. She had to fight the urge to look around for its owner, even though she knew it was crazy to expect him to hang about at the site of an accident just for a chance to speak to her again, then she heard a heavy engine being kick-started into life nearby and her pulse rate soared.
Unable to help herself, she cast a quick glance across, her eyes finding him at the side of the road just in time to see him finish pulling his helmet on over that sleek dark hair while the engine rumbled powerfully between his thighs.
‘Drat!’ she muttered crossly as she fastened her seat-belt, realising that she’d only just missed her chance to see his face.
As she set her car in gear and threaded her way through the tangle of vehicles and strobe-type lights ringing the accident site, she had to suppress the old pang of regret that she’d never been brave enough to ask Zach to take her for a ride on his bike. She’d wanted to, desperately. She’d even dreamed about it, imagining how it would feel to have her hair flying out behind her as they outraced the throaty roar of the engine with her arms wrapped tightly around his lean waist and her head pressed against his shoulder…
‘Just another fantasy, of course,’ she muttered wryly as she manoeuvred her car into a tiny corner space left near the light that would illuminate this part of the staff car park as soon as dusk came. She wriggled out of the door that was so close to the next car that it could only open halfway, grateful that she was still slim enough to do it, and set off at a brisk walk towards the main entrance to the hospital. ‘The reality would probably have been very different,’ she scolded herself. ‘My ears would have got so cold that they made my teeth ache and I’d have got a collection of dead flies in my teeth and up my nose.’
‘You made it, Amy, girl,’ said a softly accented voice as she arrived at the admissions desk, her belongings hastily stuffed in her locker and a white coat pulled on over her clothes to try to disguise the grubby scuffs that had appeared on the knees of her trousers.
‘With a minute and a half to spare, Louella,’ Amy pointed out to the colleague waiting to hand over and get back home to her children before they had to leave for school. ‘I would have been here earlier, but there was an accident—’
‘On the crossing by the supermarket,’ Louella finished for her. ‘Yes, Harry told us when he brought her in. He told us it wasn’t his fault if you were late because you’d volunteered to hold his hand.’
‘As if!’ Amy scoffed. They both knew that Harry was a very happily married man whose paramedic expertise didn’t need any hand-holding either. ‘Who’s looking after the lady he brought in?’
‘Ben Finchley and the new guy starting today.’
Ben was one of the best in the department so she didn’t have to worry that her little lady was getting anything but first-class treatment.
‘New guy? Remind me,’ she demanded as she cast an eye over the multicoloured annotations on the grid of the whiteboard and stifled a groan at the sheer number of patients waiting for attention. ‘I hope he’s not someone still wet behind the ears or we’ll never get through this lot.’
‘Hardly!’ Louella exclaimed as she signed off on the last of the patients she’d treated with a flourish. ‘Apparently, he’s just finished a six-month stint in a huge A and E somewhere in Africa. I think it might have been that big hospital in Johannesburg.’
Amy blinked in surprise at the information, then wondered with her usual feeling of uneasiness if he was one of the doctors who’d been lured to Britain to prop up the ailing health service. When were the bean counters ever going to realise that it would be far more economic to retain their own staff by paying them properly, rather than robbing the rest of the world of their indigenous and desperately needed medical staff.
But there was no point voicing her thoughts here, in an A and E department that was frequently rushed off its feet. She’d be preaching to the converted, both about the effect of poor levels of pay on staff retention and their general dislike of poaching staff from other countries.
‘So, you think he’s going to be worth having on staff?’
‘Even if he isn’t able to pull his weight, he’ll be worth having around,’ Louella said with a decidedly lascivious grin. ‘He’s definitely what the kids would call eye candy!’
‘Louella! What would Sam think if he heard you talking like that?’ Amy chided with a spurt of laughter. Life was never dull with Louella around.
‘Sam knows I’m married, not dead!’ the Caribbean woman declared robustly. ‘And he knows I’ve got good taste because I chose him! Now, let me tell you what you’ve got waiting for you, then you
