Bachelor Cure

CHAPTER TWO

THE girl was quite lovely.

The clock on the wall said three o’clock, and Tessa’s hospital bed was bathed in afternoon sunlight. Mike had stuck his head around the door three or four times during the morning but each time Tess was still sleeping soundly. Now she opened her eyes as he entered, blinked twice and tried to smile.

Tess was in a single hospital ward, small and comfortably furnished, with windows looking out over a garden to rolling pasture beyond. It was cattle country, if she had the energy to look.

She didn’t. She stared across at Mike as if she was trying to work out just who he was.

This was a different Mike to the one she’d seen the night before. He’d told her he was a doctor and, after his treatment of her shoulder, Tess had had no grounds for disbelief. But now… In clean clothes, his black curls brushed until they were almost ordered, a white coat over his tailored trousers and a stethoscope swinging from his pocket, he was every inch the medico.

He still had the bedside manner she remembered from the night before. He stood at the door and smiled, and Tess was forced to smile back.

And then her gaze dropped in astonishment. A vast liver and white basset-hound was sauntering into her room beside him.

‘Awake at last?’ Mike’s lazy smile deepened as he strolled over to her bed, trying not to appreciate her loveliness too much as he did. The fact that the look of her almost took his breath away didn’t make for a placid doctor-patient relationship at all. ‘Welcome to the land of the living, Miss Westcott.’ His eyes were warm and twinkling. ‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘It seems fine.’ She kept on staring at Strop. ‘So there really was a dog,’ she said. ‘I thought he was part of my nightmare.’

‘What, Strop?’ Mike grinned. ‘He’s no nightmare. He’s solidly grounded in reality. So well grounded, in fact, that if he gets any closer to the ground we’ll have to fit him with wheels.’

‘You keep a dog in the hospital?’

‘He’s a hospital dog. He has qualifications in toilet training, symptom sharing and sympathy. Just try him.’

Strop looked up toward the bed. His vast, mournful eyes met Tessa’s, limpid in their melancholy. He gave a faint wag of his tail, but went straight back to being mournful.

‘Oh, I can see that.’ Tess chuckled. ‘He’d make any patient feel better immediately. Like they’re not the only ones feeling awful, and they couldn’t possibly be feeling as awful as that!’

Strop flopped himself wearily down on the bedside mat. Mike shoved him gently aside with his foot-the dog slid under the bed without a protest as if this was what happened all the time-and then Mike turned his attention back to his patient.

That wasn’t hard to do.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Strop steals my limelight all the time. Your arm, Miss Westcott. How is it?’

Tess wriggled it experimentally and winced. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s bruised but it’s fine. You must have put the humerus right back in or it’d hurt a lot more than this.’

‘The humerus…’ Mike’s face stilled. Last night he’d suspected she had obstetric knowledge, and now… ‘You’re a nurse, then?’

‘Nope.’ She smiled and it was like a blaze of sunshine. ‘Guess again.’

‘A physio? An osteopath?’

‘Try doctor.’

‘A doctor!’ He stared.

‘Females can be,’ she said, still smiling. Her voice was gently teasing. ‘In the States, medicine’s about fifty-fifty. Don’t tell me you still keep women in their place down under.’

‘No. But…’ Mike thought back to the crazy red stilettos. He stared down, and there they were, parked neatly side by side under the bed beside Strop. Crimson stilettos. And… A doctor?

‘And doctors are allowed to wear whatever they like,’ she told him, following his gaze and knowing what he was thinking in a flash. ‘There’s no need for us to put on black lace-ups when we graduate-so you can take that slapped-by-a-wet-fish look off your face, Dr Llewellyn. Right now.’

‘No. Right.’ He took a deep breath and managed a smile. ‘You’re a practising doctor, then?’

‘That’s right. I work in Emergency in LA.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, that’s put me on my mettle.’ He had himself back in hand now. Almost. ‘Doctors are the worst patients,’ he said, and tried a grin. ‘They’re almost as scary to treat as lawyers.’ He sat on the bed beside her and tried to ignore the weird feel of intimacy his action created. Hell, he sat on all his patients beds! ‘Your shoulder’s really OK?’

Tess moved it cautiously against the pillows and winced again.

‘It’s sore,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s definitely back in position. It’s just bruised.’

‘Can I see?’

‘Sure.’ There was no reason why he shouldn’t. There was no reason why she should blush either as he loosened her hospital gown and gently examined the shoulder and the bruising of her arm. He was just a doctor, after all…

His fingers were gentle and sure, and his eyes watched her face as he carefully tested the injured arm. ‘Do you have full movement?’

‘I can wiggle everything,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t want to.’

He smiled. ‘I don’t blame you. In a day or two it’ll look really spectacular.’ He ran his hands over the bruised arm, trying to block out his thoughts of Tessa the woman and turn them back to Tessa the patient. Usually he had no problem with differentiating work from personalities, but Tessa was something else! And her blush didn’t help at all.

‘You may not want to wiggle, but you’ll live,’ he pronounced finally. He pulled the sheet back to cover her and tucked her in.

It was a caring gesture that he made every day of his working life but suddenly the gesture was far, far different. Intimate. He stood looking down at the girl in the bed, struggling to maintain his lazy smile.

‘You might even feel like living after your sleep,’ he said finally, shoving away the strange sensations he was feeling and striving hard to sound normal. His smile deepened. ‘Fifteen hours’ straight sleep isn’t bad.’

‘I don’t think I’ve slept since I knew Grandpa was missing,’ she admitted. She grimaced. ‘And to sleep fifteen hours now, when I should be out searching for Grandpa…’

‘There’s no need for you to be out searching, Tess. The police and the locals are all looking as hard as they can, and they’re being thorough.’

‘I know the farm, though. I know the places he loved to go.’

‘But-’

‘But what?’ She glared up at him. ‘What? Why do you sound like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you’re trying to scotch any ideas I might have of where he might be.’

He sighed. This was hard. Bloody hard. But, then, telling families the worst was something he’d had to face many times.

‘Tess, your grandfather has mitral valve disease and atrial fibrillation,’ he said softly. ‘He’s been missing for over four days now. It’s my guess… Well, that farm of his is as rugged as any around here. There’re plenty of places a body could lie for months and not be found. Your grandfather is eighty-three years old. If he went out and had a heart attack…well, my guess is that’s exactly what’s happened. His truck’s still at the house. He had his goats tethered and Doris due to deliver. If he was going away, he’d have organised people to care for them.’

‘I know that,’ Tess said. She stared up, and any trace of her gorgeous smile had completely disappeared. Her distress was obvious. ‘But… I didn’t know he had heart disease.’

‘Have you been in contact with him recently?’ he asked. ‘I was under the impression he had no contact with his family.’

‘He and my dad didn’t get along,’ she said bleakly. She was obviously still taking the heart disease bit on board and was thinking it through as she talked. She turned and stared out the window, fighting to get her face back in order, and it was as if she was talking to herself. ‘Dad and Grandpa fought. Dad went to the States when he was twenty. He met my mom there and he stayed. He died when I was sixteen, without ever coming back here.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. Don’t be. My family history has nothing to do with you.’ She sighed again and shrugged, turning back to face him. ‘Dad was always against me coming back, but he was pig-headed and…well, he was stubborn enough to make me wonder whether the disagreement had all been one way. So when Dad died…Mom said I should know my background so she sent me out to stay. I spent a summer vacation here with Grandpa. I stayed here for three months, just after high school.’

Three months. When Tess was sixteen…

He must have been away at medical school then, he thought. Otherwise he’d surely remember this girl.

‘Since then we’ve kept in touch,’ Tess said. ‘I write often, so does he, and now I ring him every Saturday. We seem to be getting closer the older he’s getting. It’s like he’s finally acknowledging he needs family. Anyway, when I didn’t get an answer this week, no matter how many times I rang, I contacted the police and was told he was missing. So I came.’

So she came. She came halfway across the world to check on her grandfather. That was some commitment.

‘But…I didn’t know he had heart disease,’ she said slowly. ‘You would have thought he’d tell me. How bad is it?’

‘I guess he hasn’t wanted to worry you. He’s been taking digoxin and is fairly much under control, but if he was over-exerting himself with no tablets, and if he got too far away from the house…’ He hesitated but there was no way to gloss over the truth or make it any easier. ‘His pulse rate’s been up around a hundred and twenty or so, and without digoxin or even aspirin…’

He didn’t continue. He didn’t need to.

Tessa’s heart wrenched within her, and he saw the pain. His hand came up to touch her lightly on her cheek.

‘Don’t, Tess,’ he said softly. ‘I’m hoping that your grandfather’s heart just quietly gave out and the end was fast. That’s what he would have wanted, to die in the bush he loved.’

‘Yes, but…’

But… But they didn’t know. They didn’t know he had died quickly. The alternative was unspoken between them-the thought of the old man lying helpless in the bush and dying a slow and lingering death.

‘Sergeant Morris and a heap of the locals have scoured the farm,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been out there, too. We’ve been everywhere we can think of and we’ve found nothing. We’ve called, Tess. If your grandfather was alive then he could have called back. He could be somewhere we’ve overlooked, but surely he’d be within earshot.’

‘Not if he’s had a stroke. Not if he can’t make his voice work.’ Her voice broke off and she choked in distress. ‘Mike, I need to look. I need to search myself. There are places… One special place…’

‘Yeah? Is this somewhere the police would have found?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought of it all the way here. Grandpa showed it to me when I was here as a teenager, and he talked as if it was a really special privilege for me to know about it. It was his secret. It’s a cave…’

‘In the hills?’

‘Yes. I remember it as being just past the boundary of the farm, where the hills start turning rugged. I can’t remember much more. In fact, I can’t even remember which direction it was. There was no way I could tell the police about it on the phone. And when I got to the farm last night I thought how stupid it was to come all this way on a hunch. Things have changed and my memory’s playing tricks on me. Maybe…maybe I can never find it or maybe it’s accessible now and someone’s already looked. But that’s why I came. I want to check. Just as my own contribution to the search.’

She sighed and turned to stare sadly out the window. ‘I know my dad and Grandpa disagreed, but Grandpa sort of saw things in the same way I do.’ Then she managed a fleeting grin as she turned back to face him. ‘Me and my dad fought, too.’

‘Don’t tell me. Your dad had red hair as well?’

‘And a temper to match. My dad could say some pretty unforgivable things. And Grandpa was…is…a redhead, too.’

‘I see.’ But he didn’t see at all. He stared down at this amazing woman in confusion. She’d come from the other side of the world to search for a grandfather who was probably dead. She had a good job in the States. Had it been OK-just to walk away?

‘Hey, my mom’s behind me in this,’ Tess said quickly. ‘She always felt bad about my dad never coming home. She’s paid half my airfare.’

‘Bully for your mom.’ He hesitated, thinking things through, and he raked his fingers thought his thick hair in thought. Tess had come so far, and she needed to conduct her own personal search, but he hated the thought of her scouring that bushland alone. The locals reckoned they’d searched every inch of the farm. Tess would be on her own now.

For her to be alone was unthinkable! And even if she found her grandfather alone…well, that was more unthinkable.

Finally he nodded, flicking through his mental diary at speed. OK. He and Strop could do it.

‘Tess, I need to do a couple of hours’ work right now,’ he told her. ‘Have a meal and rest for a bit. Ted’s brought your car in. It’s parked in the hospital car park and your gear’s being brought inside as soon as the orderly has a spare minute. So get yourself into some sensible clothes.’ He eyed the stilettoes with caution. ‘And some sensible shoes. I’ll be back in two hours, and after that I’ll come out to the farm with you.’

‘You don’t have to come with me,’ she started, but he stopped her with an upraised hand.

He had work piled a mountain high in front of him, and he was dead tired-the labour he’d looked after last night had been long and difficult and he’d managed all of two hours’ sleep-but the thought of Tess searching by herself for what he feared she’d find was unbearable.

‘I want to, Tess,’ he told her. ‘So let me.’

He clicked his fingers. Strop heaved one end up after the other and lumbered to his side, and they left.

Which was just as well. If he’d stayed in that room for one minute longer, with that look on her face-half scared, half forlorn and as courageous as hell-he would have gathered her in his arms and hugged her.

And where was the professional detachment in that?

‘I should have refused his offer of help,’ Tess told Bill Fetson two minutes later. The hospital’s charge nurse had come to check on her and had found her pacing in front of the window. ‘Mike was up half the night with me and Doris, and didn’t he say he had a baby to deliver after he brought me in? What’s he doing, offering to spend hours tonight searching for someone he’s sure is dead?’

‘He cares about your grandfather.’

‘I guess…’

Her voice sounded totally confused, Bill thought, as though there was something about Mike she didn’t understand in the least. Well, maybe that was understandable. Mike was a fabulous-looking doctor, with a smile that could turn any girl’s head, a dog that was just plain crazy and a presence that played havoc with Bill’s nursing staff.

But this girl was different. Bill watched the emotion playing over her face and strange ideas started forming in the back of his mind. Well, well, well…

‘Would you like a tour of the hospital?’ he asked mildly-innocently. He was busy, but something told him it might be important to get to know this girl…

Tess showered and dressed, then explored the little hospital. It had fifteen beds, eight of them nursing beds and seven acute. It was a tiny bush nursing hospital, efficient, scrupulously clean and obviously beautifully run. It was almost new, and the man who introduced himself as Charge Nurse showed Tess around with pleasure.

‘It’s all thanks to Dr Mike,’ Bill Fetson said with obvious pride, as he showed Tess though a tiny operating theatre with facilities that her made blink. These facilities would be more in place in a big city teaching hospital. ‘Mike fought the politicians every legal way-and a few illegal too, I’ll bet-to get this place, and he practically bullied the community into fundraising. Now we have this hospital, though, well, there’s no way we’re losing it. The valley’s never had a medical service like this.’

‘How long’s he been here?’ Tess asked.

‘Three years, but in a sense he’s been here much longer. Mike’s a valley kid and he started fighting for this before he even finished his medical training.’

‘And…’ There were so many things she didn’t understand here. ‘He’s always had Strop?’

Bill grinned. ‘Strop was an accident. Mike drives an Aston Martin-the sleekest car in the valley. The salesman brought it up here for a test drive and drove it too fast, putting it through its paces. Strop was lumbering across a road on a blind bend and the salesman couldn’t stop. Mike felt dreadful, and then the woman who owned him said he was a stupid dog anyway and seeing Mike had hit him then Mike could put him down. As you know, the Aston Martin only has two seats. The salesman drove to the vet’s with Mike carrying Strop, and by the time they reached the vet’s there was no way he was being put down. So in one afternoon Mike got the sleekest car and the dopiest dog in Christendom.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No way. And, believe it or not, he is a great dog.’ Bill’s grin deepened. ‘The patients love him and all the valley knows now that if Mike pays a house call then so does Strop.’ He paused, and his smile faded. ‘But what about you? I gather you’re practically a valley girl yourself. I’m not local myself, but Mike says you’re Henry Westcott’s granddaughter. And he also says you’re a doctor…’

His eyes asked all sorts of questions, but he didn’t voice them. Not yet.

Finally, his tour at an end, Bill showed her into a gleaming little kitchen, introduced her to Mrs Thompson, the hospital cook, and left her to be fed. A meal was no trouble, Tess was assured. No trouble at all.

She certainly needed it. Tess ate Mrs Thompson’s meat pie with potato chips and lashings of salad. She washed everything down with two huge tumblers of milk and she hardly felt the meal touch sides. Thinking back, she couldn’t remember when she’d last had a meal. Maybe she’d fiddled with something on the plane, but how long ago was that? Too long, her stomach said.

Replete for the moment, Tess tentatively broached the idea of she and Mike taking food out to the farm with them. With the size of this hospital, a sole doctor must be run off his legs, and she was starting to feel really guilty about dragging him away.

She needn’t have worried about the reaction of the cook. Mrs Thompson practically beamed.

‘That’s a really good idea,’ the middle-aged lady told her, hauling a picnic basket out of a top cupboard. ‘Doc Llewellyn hardly stops to eat, and he’ll miss dinner entirely if you don’t bully him into it. Either that or he’ll eat six pieces of toast and three eggs at midnight, which is his usual way. No, dear. I’ll pack you a meal fit to feed six of you, including dog food for that misbegotten hound of his, if you promise to see he eats it.’

‘He works too hard?’ Tess asked cautiously, and the woman nodded with vigour.

‘Driven-that’s what our Dr Mike is,’ she said. ‘There’s demons driving him, that one. He’ll end up in an early grave, mark my words.’ Then her look softened. ‘But you’ve more to be worrying over than our Dr Mike. Oh, child, I’m so sorry about your grandfather. I just hope…’ She sniffed vigorously. ‘I just hope the end was quick!’

‘Thank you,’ Tess said weakly. She didn’t know what else to say.

While her picnic was being prepared, she retreated to her bedroom. She needed the privacy. The hospital was abuzz with who she was, and every nurse and patient in the place was burning with the need to know more. Like…did she have any ideas where her grandpa was?

And there was so little she could tell them.

Mike collected her an hour later.

He walked into her room and stopped in stunned amazement at the transformation. He’d seen Tessa bloody and exhausted and in pain. He hadn’t see her like this.

Tess was certainly a beauty in anyone’s book. He’d thought so last night and he’d thought it when he’d seen her asleep in her hospital gown. In fact, he thought it every time he looked at her.

She wasn’t a classical beauty, but she was a beauty none the less. She was slim and neat and her legs stretched on for ever. In her figure-hugging jeans, she seemed all legs.

Or all eyes, depending on which end you looked at, he thought. Tessa’s face had the pale, creamy complexion of a redhead and she’d come straight from the end of a United States winter. There was a faint spread of faded freckles over her nose-echoes of last summer. Tessa’s mouth was rosebud-shaped, her nose pertly snub and her face almost all eyes, the greenness framed by her red-gold hair.

She was thin. Well, maybe not too thin, he thought to himself. She was just…just well packaged. She was thin where it counted and not thin where it counted more! In her figure-hugging jeans and close-cut T-shirt, her figure was revealed to perfection. She had an old windcheater draped around her waist, and the trainers on her feet were nearly as old as the clothes he’d changed into, but the age and the casualness of her clothes didn’t detract from her beauty one bit.

It was all he could do not to whistle.

He didn’t, though. He paused for one millisecond-and then caught himself, smiled and picked up the picnic basket.

‘Provisions, Dr Westcott? Hasn’t the hospital fed you?’

‘Mrs Thompson has personally insisted I eat enough to feed a small army,’ she assured him. ‘But I wouldn’t be the least surprised if I feel the need to eat again quite soon. Even my toes seem hollow.’

He grinned. ‘No anorexia, then? Excellent. I like a girl with a healthy appetite.’

‘Do you want a cure for anorexia?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve just invented it. Put a girl on a plane for thirty-six hours with airline food for company and fear in her stomach, and then toss her among pregnant pigs and dislocate her shoulder. Then put her to sleep for fifteen hours and-hey, presto-you’ve a girl with a healthy appetite. Magic, Dr Llewellyn! I think I’ll write it up as a new wonder treatment for one of our prestigious medical journals.’

‘You’ll make your name as a medical whizkid,’ he told her.

‘I know,’ she agreed, and fluttered her eyelids in assumed modesty.

Whew! Good grief! He smiled at her, and Tess chuckled-and when Tess Westcott smiled, his body started to heat from his trainers up.

‘OK, then, Tess,’ he told her finally, and only a faint hesitation under his words hinted at what he was feeling. ‘You’re fed and rested. Are you ready to face the farm?’

Tess nodded. ‘I’m ready.’

‘OK. Strop’s waiting in the car. Let’s go.’

She set her face, and Mike saw grimness replace the laughter behind her eyes. Hell, she had courage. She knew what could lie ahead of them.

This was some woman!

And suddenly he wasn’t the least sure he was ready to spend any time with her. There was something deep inside that was telling him he should run a mile.

But there was something else that was telling him to stay.

The farm was dreadful. Even Strop, having made the first half of the trip straddling the gearstick and the second half where he really wanted to be-sitting high on Tessa’s lap with his ears flapping out the window-seemed depressed by the place. His mournful ears flopped lower and his eyes welled with moisture. Good grief, you just had to look at the dog and you’d burst into tears! He lumbered off to sniff in the bracken and Tess was pleased to see him go. She was depressed enough without him.

They made a courtesy call on Doris first. She was too preoccupied with her eight babies to notice human visitors. Jacob had done his job well. Mike had rung him early this morning and asked him to make sure the sow was fed and watered, and there was nothing more she needed. Now she had everything she could want, except maybe a spare set of teats.

After paying their social call on Doris, they tackled the house.

There was nothing here to help them-no clues as to where Henry could be. The place was deserted, but it still held the signs of an occupant who hadn’t intended to leave. There was milk curdling in the refrigerator. Someone had taken a heap of sausages from the freezer and left them by the stove to defrost. That had been four or five days ago and they were starting to stink.

They cleared up in silence and Mike thought he was glad he hadn’t let Tess face this alone. It was only bad sausages, but there were so many dreadful thoughts crowding in, and the smell of rotting meat didn’t help one bit.

‘Where do we search?’ he asked, as they came outside again, and she shook her head.

‘I don’t know. I can’t think. I’m trying to remember. It was ten years ago. I… It’s like going back in time. I’ve lost my bearings.’

‘Let’s eat, then,’ he told her gently, watching her distress with concern. It was early for dinner but they needed to get some fresh air into their lungs after the dreary house, and Tess needed time to get her emotions under control before they tackled the walk, even if she remembered where to go…

Afterwards-after they’d searched-they might not feel like eating at all.

They spread their picnic under a massive gum tree beside the shed. Tess was so depressed she was close to tears. Even Mike’s comforting presence, and the way Strop cheered up at the sight of sandwiches, couldn’t help this deadening misery.

The sun was sinking lower in the sky and she didn’t know where to start, what to do. She was aware that Mike was letting her decide, carefully holding back from what he saw as her domain, and she was grateful that at least she didn’t have to concentrate on small talk. It made for a cheerless silence, though.

But it also made for thinking. She was hardly hungry after her meal two hours before. She lay on the picnic rug and watched Mike demolish the picnic-and thought back to when she was sixteen years old and she and her Grandpa had roamed this farm together.

And then…

He was watching her and Mike saw the instant when remembrance hit. The feeling that this place was familiar.

‘I remember we walked down by the creek,’ she said softly. ‘I know… So that’s east. If I can start…’ She pushed herself up to stand and gaze out to the distant hills.

‘Mike, this is probably useless,’ she said slowly. ‘But… I think I might remember the way. It’s a long hike.’

‘A hike?’ He poured coffee from a Thermos and handed her a mug. ‘That’s fine by me. This picnic idea was great, but we need a hike now to walk it off, and Strop definitely needs exercise. That’s four sandwiches you fed him. Do you remember the way entirely?’

‘No.’ She shook her head and took a couple of sips of coffee while her eyes still roamed the hills. Her mind was working at a thousand miles an hour, dredging up memories of the past. ‘I shouldn’t ask you…’

‘Ask anything. I want to help-remember?’ he told her. ‘I don’t like not knowing your grandfather’s fate almost as much as you don’t.’ He placed his coffee-mug aside and stood up beside her. ‘I’ve just been hoping if I shut up long enough you might think of something useful to do.’

‘I don’t know whether I have.’

‘But?’

She finished her coffee before she replied. Mike didn’t push. ‘There’s all the time in the world,’ he told her.

‘That’s not true.’

‘This is important, Tess,’ he said softly. ‘There might be things that need doing, but it’s your grandpa’s life at stake here. Take all the time you need.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ she said softly. ‘Of all the doctors I know, you’re not like…’ She shook her head, confused, but Mike didn’t say more. He knelt and stroked Strop and waited-and finally remembrance came.

‘It’s coming back,’ she whispered. She stared out at the surrounding countryside. It had always been a tussle to keep this land cleared. The little farm had been neglected for the last few years and the bushland was reclaiming its own. There were only Henry’s six goats to keep it down.

‘It was definitely east of here,’ she said surely. ‘I’m sure I remember. But the country’s rough.’

‘I’ve bought a backpack,’ he told her, bending to throw the picnic things back in the basket. ‘It’s in the car.’

‘But… We don’t need provisions. It should only take an hour.’

‘I’m taking medical equipment,’ he said curtly. ‘Just in case…’

‘But…you still think he’s dead?’

‘If he was somewhere safe and dry and then collapsed…’ He shook his head. ‘Who knows? But if there is such a place then I guess there might be a chance. I just wish to hell I’d been able to contact you when this whole mess happened. If I’d known…’

Tess looked curiously up at him. ‘You really care,’ she said softly-wondering. ‘Mike, Grandpa’s your patient but he’s an old man with nothing whatever to do with you except in a professional capacity. You must have two or three thousand patients on your books, yet you care enough to come out and untether Grandpa’s goats and check on his pig at midnight. You care enough to rescue a weird and ridiculous dog from death-and you care enough to come with me now.’

‘Yeah, well…’ He gave a shrug, feeling embarrassed, and Tess stared some more.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply.

‘No. If I’d contacted you, you might have been able to tell me…’

‘I couldn’t have described where the cave was, even if I’d thought of it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t know for sure that I can find it now. But I hope…’

She paused and he stood and took her hand strongly in his, pulling her over to stand beside him. His arm came around her waist in a gesture of reassurance and comfort.

‘Then let’s do that, Tess,’ he said gravely. ‘Let’s hope.’

The cave was further away than she remembered, and by the time they found it the last of the light was fading behind the hills. The sunset had been spectacular, and there was still a fading glow around the sky.

It was instinct rather than knowledge that led her to the cave. She couldn’t have described the route if she’d tried. Instead, Mike watched as she simply let her mind drift back to her last summer’s afternoon with her grandfather, set her eyes on the hills and let her feet rewalk the route they’d taken. He didn’t say a word, sensing her need to let her instincts take over.

And her instincts didn’t fail her.

Resting high in the hills in dense bushland, where a small creek trickled down over vast boulders, two massive rocks stood sentinel to a third. The rear rock looked as if it had been almost blasted into the cliff face-a part of a rock wall which was sheer and impregnable. It was only when you slipped behind the front two rocks, then walked around a small outcrop to the side, that a small opening behind the rear rock could be seen. It was just big enough for a man to fit.

Tess found it wordlessly, her face reflecting hope and dread. What if her grandfather wasn’t here?

And what if he was?

Strop was sniffing the entrance, his floppy ears pricked as much as it was possible for basset ears ever to prick. Mike looked down at his dog and his face tightened. He placed a hand on Tessa’s shoulder and gently propelled her forward. ‘It won’t get better for the waiting,’ he told her softly. ‘Come on, Tess. I think your grandfather might be here-and I’m right beside you.’

And thank God he was. There was no way he wanted Tess to face this on her own. He badly wanted to tell her to stay back now-let him find whatever was inside-but he knew she’d have none of that, so he took her hand and Tess let hers lie in his as he led her forward. She had brought Mike here, but now she was clearly grateful to let him be in charge. She squeezed through the gap as his hand pulled her on, and he could feel the tension in her fingers.

Inside, the cave was so big it might almost have been the vaulting roof of a cathedral. There was a crevice above that, open to the evening sky, and the rosy hue of sunset shimmered around the smooth rock walls and lit the cavern in a dim and misty haze.

Tess didn’t waste time admiring the beauty. At the rear of the cave there was a chamber, dry and filled with sand, closed to the weather but just open enough to the light so as not to be frightening. It was a comfortable place for a wounded thing to lie and tend its wounds.

Courage was no longer an issue. She dropped Mike’s hand and stumbled quickly across the rough cave floor to reach the inner entrance, with Strop and Mike left to follow.

And inside she found her grandfather.