so much. Set back from the sand line was a grass hut, its roof thatched with dried sugarcane leaves, and he strode towards it quickly, anticipation humming through his veins. His family was waiting for him. He stepped up onto the lanai but instead of cane chairs there was a stretcher. Bewildered, he stepped over it and walked into the fale, expecting to see the daybed, but instead he was in an operating theatre that looked like a set from MASH, with patients lined up row upon row, some with sheets pulled over their heads. Voices shouted but he didn’t recognise the words, and he turned back, wanting to run, but the lanai had vanished, leaving splintered timber as the only evidence of its existence.
Deafening noise roared and his arms came up to protect his head and then his eyes were suddenly open and the television was blaring out so loudly the walls vibrated. He must have rolled on the remote, taking the volume to full blast, and he quickly pumped it back to a bearable level, but the ringing in his ears took a moment to fade. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the buzzing, and thought perhaps bed was a better option than the couch—not that he wanted to sleep because the dreams would terrorise him.
As he swung his feet to the floor, a woman’s scream curdled his blood. He quickly shoved his feet into his shoes, grabbed a torch and ran outside.
He heard a wire door slam and he moved his torch round to the house on his left, the house owned by the hospital. With a start he saw a tall, barefoot woman dressed in a long T-shirt standing on the steps, her arms wrapped tightly around her.
He jogged over as the outside lamp cast her in a pool of yellow light. ‘Poppy? What the hell happened? Are you all right?’
She shuddered, her height seeming slightly diminished. She swallowed and it was if she had to force her throat to work. ‘Mice.’
He knew his expression would be incredulous. The woman who’d stormed into his department with an approach similar to a man marking his territory had been reduced to a trembling mess by a mouse. For months he hadn’t been able to laugh and now he had to try hard not to. ‘You’re scared of a mouse or two?’
Her head flew up and a flash of the ‘take no prisoners’ woman he’d met nine hours ago surfaced. ‘Not generally, no. But I opened the wardrobe to hang up my clothes and mice streamed out, scurrying over my feet, into my case and …’ She took a steadying breath. ‘I defy anyone, male or female, not to let out a yell of surprise when confronted by fifty of them.’
His mouth curved upwards, surprising muscles stiff from lack of use. ‘That has to be an exaggeration of about forty-eight. Are they in the kitchen too?’
‘I don’t know!’ Her voice snapped. ‘I didn’t stop to enquire if they’d taken over in there as well.’
Don’t get involved. But he couldn’t resist a dig. ‘I did suggest you settle in to the house earlier in the day.’
Her chin shot up and she gave him a withering look. ‘I am not exaggerating, and if that is the extent of your useful advice then I suggest you shut up now and leave.’
She crossed her arms and he suddenly noticed she had breasts. Small but round and … He hauled his gaze away. ‘It’s been a few months since anyone’s lived here, although I would have thought someone would’ve checked out the house before you arrived. Who did you talk to in Administration?’
She stepped back inside, her gaze darting left and right and her long legs moving gingerly. ‘No one.’
He followed. ‘No one?’ Usually Julie was very efficient.
‘Me coming up here was—’ She stopped abruptly for a moment. ‘I rushed up here because the town was desperate. The fax telling you I was coming probably only arrived a few hours before me.’
They’d been desperate for weeks so her hasty arrival without the usual planning didn’t make a lot of sense and he was about to ask her about it when a mouse raced out from under the couch.
Poppy leapt into the air, her long T-shirt rising up to expose creamy white thighs.
Matt tried not to look and instead marched like a foot soldier on patrol, punching open the kitchen door. Every surface was covered in mouse scats.
He heard Poppy’s shocked gasp from the doorway but by the time he’d turned, her face was the usual mask of control, although she had a slight tremble about her.
‘Just fabulous. This really is the icing on the cake of a stellar few days, and yet the poets wax lyrical about the bush.’
A startling fragility hovered around her eyes despite her sarcasm and he had an unexpected moment of feeling sorry for her. He shrugged it away. ‘Living with a few creepy-crawlies is all part of the Bundallagong allure.’
‘Not from where I’m standing it isn’t. I think we have definition conflict on the word “few”.’
Again he found himself wanting to smile yet at the same time a feeling of extreme restlessness dragged at him. He flung open cupboards and found mice squeaking and scurrying everywhere amidst bags of pasta, cereal, oats and biscuits, all of which had been chewed and their contents scattered. He slammed the doors shut. ‘OK, you were right. It’s a plague and with this many mice it probably means you don’t have a python.’
Her eyes widened like the ongoing expanse of Outback sky and her hands flew to her hips. ‘No snake? And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Hell, and they give surgeons a bad rap about their bedside manner.’
This time the urge to smile won. ‘Actually, a python would have meant fewer mice. I haven’t seen an infestation like this in years. Your predecessor must have left food and I guess the cleaners figured it was non-perishable and left it for the next occupant. Thing is, time marched on and the mice moved in. Julie can get the exterminator to come in the morning.’
‘The morning.’ The words came out as a choked wail loaded with realisation. Another mouse shot past her and she stiffened for a second before hastily retreating to the lounge room.
Matt crossed the kitchen and leaned against the architrave, watching her. She had her back to him and was standing on tiptoe, reducing her contact with the floor to the bare minimum. One hand tugged at the base of the T-shirt in an attempt to make it longer, and the other pressed her mobile phone to her ear as she spoke briskly.
‘Yes, I need the number for motels in Bundallagong. I don’t have a pen so can you put me through direct?’
He thought about the suit she’d worn when they’d met and how it had been followed by surgical scrubs. Both garments had given her a unisex look, but the baggy shirt she wore now hid little. Poppy Stanfield might sound like a general but she had the seductive curves of a woman.
Heat hit him, making him hard, followed immediately by a torrent of gut-wrenching guilt. He loved Lisa. No woman could match her but for some reason his body had disconnected from his brain and was busy having a lust-fest. He hated it and every part of him wanted to get the hell out of the house and away from Poppy Stanfield and that damn T-shirt. But he couldn’t leave, not until he knew she was settled in a motel. So he moved instead, putting distance between them by crossing the room and tugging his gaze away from the sweet curve of her behind that swelled out the T so beautifully that his palm itched.
He stared at the blank walls and then at the couch with a ferocious intensity he’d never before given to decor. He noticed a significant-size hole in the material covering the couch and realised the inside was probably full of rodents too. It would take days before baits and traps took effect, making the house liveable again.
He started making plans in his head to keep his mind off those long, shapely legs. As soon as he knew which motel she’d got a room at, he’d set the GPS in the hospital vehicle for her so she wouldn’t get lost at this late hour. There’d be no point driving her because she’d need the car to get to and from the hospital.
Yeah, that, and you don’t want to be in a car alone with her.
Poppy’s voice suddenly went silent and