clinic as well as anything else needed to run a small one-doctor practice.’
Fran felt her breathing go out of whack as he hunkered down in front of her. He was wearing his gunbelt complete with handcuffs and mobile phone and radio, adding to his dangerous, don’t-mess-with-me air. Her shoulder was still tingling from the pressure of his large warm hand, the nerves beneath her skin tap-dancing in delight. She couldn’t help staring at his hands. His fingers were twice the thickness of hers, long and tanned with neatly clipped square nails. The knuckles of his right hand were grazed, and she wondered if he had got that in the line of duty or doing some sort of handyman job.
‘Ouch!’ She jerked back as he dabbed her scraped knees with the cotton wool.
‘Sorry, but, believe me, this is hurting me more than it’s hurting you.’
Fran peered at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you laughing at me, Sergeant Hawke?’ she asked.
He gave her a glinting half-smile that did strange things to her stomach, making it tip upside down like a quickly flipped pancake. ‘Now, why would I do that, Dr Nin?’ he asked.
She scowled as he continued to dab at her knees. ‘I wish you would stop calling me that.’
He met her gaze in between dabs. ‘Too formal for you?’
She blew out a sigh. ‘I don’t feel like a doctor any more…at least I don’t want to.’
He placed two pieces of sticky plaster on each knee before he straightened. ‘So you’re going to throw away all those years of study to do what? Go on endless holidays?’ he asked, a disapproving frown narrowing the distance between his eyes as he looked down at her.
Fran stood up gingerly, conscious of how close he was standing to her. She could smell his male smell, warmth, a hint of citrus and a hint of perspiration full of sexy male pheromones, which was dangerously attractive. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a deliberately airy tone. ‘I’m still thinking about it.’
He scrunched up the wrappers and tossed them in the pedal bin near his feet. ‘Well, while you’re thinking about it, why not think about this?’ he said, locking his gaze with hers. ‘There are people living here who need a doctor, not next week, not next month, but today. You don’t have to put in a ninety-hour week—no one is asking you to. But why not just a couple of hours, once or twice a week until a replacement is found?’
Fran would have pushed past him but it would have meant touching him and that she wanted to avoid. She’d had enough trouble keeping her head while he’d been tending to her knees. Feeling his gentle touch had switched on sensations she could still feel charging through her body. She lowered her gaze and ran her tongue over her lips, feeling cornered and confused. ‘I’m not interested, Sergeant Hawke,’ she said with as much firmness as she could muster, which wasn’t much.
Something about him made her feel deeply disturbed. It wasn’t just his male presence—it was also his commanding air of authority. He was a man used to getting his own way. She could see it in the carved-from-stone contours of his jaw, not to mention the ice-hard focus of his gaze when it locked on hers.
The phone on his belt began to ring and Fran let out a sigh of relief as he moved past her to answer it. Her reprieve was brief, however, for in less than thirty seconds Jacob was back, his car keys already tinkling in his hand.
‘There’s been an accident out on Valley Road,’ he said. ‘A teenager has fallen off her horse—sounds like at the very least a broken leg. The ambulance is away, taking Ella Pelleri to Wollongong Hospital, so the clinic receptionist has called in Careflight. We’ll drop by the ambulance station and pick up their trauma bag. You can stabilise the victim until the chopper arrives.’
‘But I—’ Fran quickly bit back her protest. What would be the point in saying she couldn’t handle it, that two emergencies in one day was asking way too much of her? She could see from the look in Jacob’s eyes there was no way he was going to take no for an answer.
Chapter Three
WITH the police siren screeching, Jacob hit speeds Fran had only seen at her Formula One medical training days in Melbourne a couple of years ago. Thankfully the breakneck pace took her mind off everything but surviving the journey in one piece. Even though he had supposedly only been in town only a few months, he seemed to know his way around the back roads, she thought as they arrived at a large property with white post-and-rail fences in less than ten minutes, notwithstanding their detour to the ambulance station for the trauma kit.
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