Special Deliveries Collection. Kate Hardy

       CHAPTER ONE

       JUST CONCENTRATE ON WORK.

      Jed said it over and over as he ran along the damp beach.

      He ran daily, or tried to, depending on work commitments, but as much as he could Jed factored running into his day—it served as both his exercise and his relaxation, helped him to focus and to clear his head.

      Just concentrate on work, he repeated, because after the last two hellish years he really did need to do just that.

      Jed looked along the bay. The morning was a hazy one and he couldn’t make out the Melbourne skyline in the distance. Not for the first time he questioned whether he had been right to take the position at the Peninsula Hospital or if he should have gone for a more prestigious city one.

      Jed loved nothing more than a big city hospital—he had worked and trained at a large teaching hospital in Sydney and had assumed, when he had applied for jobs in Melbourne, that the city was where he would end up, yet the interview at Peninsula Hospital that he had thought would be a more a cursory one had seen him change his mind.

      It wasn’t a teaching hospital but it was certainly a busy one—it served as a major trauma centre and had an NICU and ICU and Jed had liked the atmosphere at Peninsula, as well as the proximity to the beach. Perhaps the deciding factor, though, had been that he had also been told, confidentially, that one of the consultants was retiring and a position would be opening up in the not-too-distant future. His career had been building up to an emergency consultant position and, his disaster of a personal life aside, it was where he was ready to be. When Jed had handed in his notice six months ago an offer had been made and he’d been asked to reconsider leaving, but Jed had known then that he had to get away, that he had to start again.

      But with new rules in place this time.

      Jed missed not just Sydney and the hospital he had trained and worked at but his family and friends—it had been the first birthday of Luke, his newest nephew, yesterday, another thing he hadn’t been able to get to, another family gathering he had missed, when before, even if he hadn’t been able to get there on the day, he’d have dropped by over the weekend.

      A phone call to a one-year-old wasn’t exactly the same.

      But the decision to move well away had surely been the right one.

      Still he questioned it, still he wondered if he had overreacted and should have just stayed in Sydney and hoped it would work out, assumed it was all sorted.

      What a mess.

      Jed stopped for a moment and dragged in a few breaths.

      Over and over he wondered if he could have handled things differently, if there was something he could have said to have changed things, or something he had done that had been misconstrued—and yet still he could not come up with an answer.

      It was incredibly warm for six a.m. but it wasn’t a pleasant heat—it was muggy and close and needed a good storm to clear it but, according to the weather reports, the cool change wasn’t coming through till tonight.

      ‘Morning.’ He looked up and nodded to an old guy walking his dog. They shared a brief conversation about the weather and then Jed took a long drink of water before turning around to head for home and get ready for work.

      He should never have got involved with Samantha in the first place.

      Still, he could hardly have seen that coming, couldn’t have predicted the train wreck that had been about to take place, but then he corrected himself.

      He should never have got involved with someone from work.

      Jed picked up the pace again, his head finally clearing. He knew what he needed to focus on.

       Just concentrate on work.