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going to be the circulating nurse in there with me?'
    'I sure am. Now.. .1 understand you've got an empty stomach but, to be on the safe side, Dr Frazer will probably want to put down a gastric tube. He may do that while you're under the anaesthetic. Here comes Dr Frazer now. . .and the other guys are getting scrubbed.'
    As another powerful contraction swept over her, Lisa was not able to suppress a moan of pain.
    Leonora gripped her hand. 'Hang in there, honey. You'll be getting something for pain real soon. Everything's going to be just fine.'
    She closed her eyes and rode out the pain with difficulty, trying to blot it out. Lisa felt her mind floating back to the time when she had worked in this unit, in the gynaecology and obstetrics OR. So much for trying to keep him out of her mind—it was impossible here. Because it was here that she had met Richard.. .all of two and a half years ago... Dr Richard Decker. As though she were still living in that time, she could clearly recall the sound of his voice, what he had said...
     
    'Hi, there! And who might you be, you gorgeous creature? I thought they didn't come like that any more!'
    Those had been the first words that Richard had said to her. Although she had tried to pretend to herself that she'd not been flattered, she had been kidding herself.
    From the moment she'd turned to look at him she'd been smitten. She had never set eyes on him before, and she had been blissfully unaware of the momentous part he was to play in her young life.
    'You're a welcome sight on a wet Monday morning, with a bloody great operating list ahead of us,' he'd said, looking at her with undisguised admiration.. .a look that she'd learnt later he'd perfected very well. It had been a look of burning intensity, as though the object of that intent regard had been the only thing that had mattered to him in the entire world. It had also been blatantly sexual. And it had had the effect of winding her, psychologically speaking.
    It turned out that he was doing a six-month rotation as a resident in obstetrics and gynaecology, before starting his training in accident and emergency medicine at University Hospital. As she turned to look at him enquiringly in that first moment, to meet his penetrating green eyes which were regarding her with intense interest above the surgical mask that he wore, she experienced a peculiar shock, like a sense of recognition. Yet she had never seen him before in her life.
    I must be desperate for a man, she thought musingly then. After the long, enforced deprivation, being away from civilization...
    'What's your name?' he repeated, standing close to her and watching her work. He was very tall. The short-sleeved scrubsuit top that he wore did nothing to disguise the rippling muscles of his tanned arms. Almost then and there, she realized in retrospect, she had become infatuated with him.
    'I'm Lisa Stanton,' she said, with feigned calm. 'I've been out of the country for a few weeks. I'm really an old hand.'
    'I can see that you are,' he murmured, his voice deep and caressing. After watching her for a few moments, during which his eyes seemed to bore into the small of her back, he said baldly, 'Are you spoken for?'
    She stopped her activities. 'What? What do you mean?' she said.
    'Have you got someone? Have you got a man?'
    The atmosphere seemed charged with electricity as she stared at him in shocked silence while he stood tensely, watching her. Even then there was something proprietorial about him, as though he had a right to possess her. Only later had she seen it as predatory. With other men, so far, she had found that assumption annoying, sometimes laughable. Big egos were not always endearing. With this man it was suddenly overwhelmingly exciting, almost as though he had reached forward and touched her, taken possession of her.
    'No...no, I haven't,' she found herself saying, as though the question were reasonable on a first meeting.
    'Great!' he said, as though something