The Courage To Love Her Army Doc. Karin Baine

course I take my regulation breaks. Just not usually all at once.’ She omitted to mention she took a packed lunch and did her paperwork through those breaks since it made her sound as if she had no life outside work.

      He made a derisory ‘pfft’ sound through his teeth. ‘Ten minutes off our feet, keeping a baby under observation, isn’t a real break. We need a proper time out to de-stress before our next patients, otherwise how can we do our jobs effectively? You need to learn how to go with the flow, Emily.’

      His cheeky wink only served to irritate her further.

      ‘I thought that’s what I was doing.’ The sigh of self-pity was entirely justified, she thought, after coming all the way out here and taking part in everything thrown at her thus far. If she let herself get carried away too much there was a danger she’d end up completely lost at sea.

      ‘It’s lunch, Emily. It’s not a big deal.’

      It would seem silly to him but in her head it translated to something much bigger—ditching their responsibilities for their own gratification. That was exactly what Greg had done and she’d been the one left to deal with the consequences. It wasn’t a situation she intended to re-create any time soon.

      ‘What about cover? We can’t abandon our post here and leave people without adequate care.’

      ‘We can put a note on the door but, honestly, we won’t be that hard to track down if something happens. Yasi Island has survived all this time without us and I’m sure they’ll cope over one lunchtime.’ He was already scribbling on a piece of paper now he’d made her concerns seem ridiculous.

      She was here for two weeks, had treated one emergency patient so far, and was trying to avoid a shared break under the cover of her ‘they can’t live without me’ excuse. It was no wonder he wasn’t buying it. This was about him, and her fear of spending time with him, and nothing else. She had to get over it or the next fortnight was going to be hell.

      ‘Is there some place we can buy lunch? I don’t recall seeing any fast-food restaurants nearby.’ Her tongue-in-cheek comment was intended to make her seem less of a jobsworth but the practicalities of his proposal were no less important to her. While it was refreshing not to have a coffee shop or burger joint on every inch of land, there was also a distinct lack of grocery outlets. She had literally nothing to bring to the table and it wouldn’t be polite to help herself to Miriama’s meagre provisions.

      ‘Lack of refrigeration is a problem on the island when the only electricity available is via the odd generator here and there so most of the food is fresh. There’s none of your fast-frozen, pre-packed, no-taste, processed muck here. The gathering of food is a communal effort, as is eating it. There’ll be no shortage of hosts to take lunch with.’ He pinned the note to the door and hovered, clearly waiting for her to leave with him.