me?’
‘No—I mean, yes. That is, we knew you were coming, we just didn’t know when.’
He rumbled an admonishing tsk. ‘Don’t you read your emails? I sent my arrival details through a couple of days ago.’
Oh, help. This was going to sound totally lame. ‘Our computer’s anti-virus protection has turned a bit iffy lately. It’s culling messages that should be coming through to the inbox. And a tree fell over some cables yesterday, bringing the internet down. We do the best we can...’
Jack caught her cut-glass English accent and frowned a bit. What kind of a hospital was she running here? Or attempting to run. Switching his gaze from her heated face to the sign on her door, he queried, ‘You are Dr Darcie Drummond?’
Almost defensively, Darcie pulled back from the intensity of his gaze and cursed the zing of awareness that sizzled up her backbone. How totally inappropriate, she admonished herself. And grief! She’d forgotten his name! ‘Yes, I’m Darcie Drummond.’ Moving quickly from the window, she offered her hand.
‘Jack Cassidy.’ He took her hand, easily enfolding it within his own.
Darcie took her hand back, almost shocked at the warmth that travelled up her arm. ‘You must think this is all terribly unprofessional,’ she apologised.
One eyebrow quirked above Jack Cassidy’s extraordinarily blue eyes. ‘Thought of getting someone in to check your computer?’
Of course they had. ‘We’re rather isolated here,’ she said thinly, as if that should explain everything. ‘Technical help is never easy. You just have to wait until they get to you.’
He made a click of annoyance. ‘The hospital should have priority. You should be out there, kicking butt.’
Darcie bristled. She knew whose butt she’d like to kick! And she was puzzled as well. She’d read Jack Cassidy’s CV. That information had actually come through on her email. He’d been working in London for the past year. Surely he hadn’t drifted so far from his Australian roots not to realise their rural hospitals were chronically under-resourced?
‘I take it you do have running water?’
Darcie’s hackles rose and refused to be tamped down.
OK—he was taking the mick. She got that. But enough was enough. ‘We draw water from the well outside,’ she deadpanned.
Jack’s smile unfolded lazily, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Nice one, Dr Drummond. He felt his pulse tick over. The lady had spirit. And she was a real looker. Working with her should prove...interesting.
He lowered himself onto the corner of her desk. ‘I need to make a couple of phone calls, check in with the hospital board. Landline working OK?’
She sent him a cool look. ‘Yes, it is.’ She indicated the phone on her desk. ‘Make your calls and then we’ll see about getting you settled in.’ With that, she turned and fled to the nurses’ station.
And female solidarity.
* * *
Darcie palmed open the swing door and went through to the desk. ‘He’s here!’
Nurse manager Maggie Neville and RN Lauren Walker paused in mid-handover and looked up.
‘Who?’ Maggie queried.
Darcie hissed out the breath she’d been holding. ‘The new MD.’
‘Cassidy?’ Maggie’s voice rose a fraction. ‘I didn’t see anyone come through here.’
‘He must have cut through the paddock and come in the back way,’ Darcie said. ‘He’s in my office, now.’
‘Oh, my stars!’ Lauren’s eyebrows disappeared into her blonde fringe. ‘It must have been him I passed in the corridor. Big guy in combats, flinty eyes, out there sexy?’
Darcie nodded, her teeth meshing against her bottom lip. Lauren’s description was OTT but Darcie supposed Jack Cassidy had come across as very...masculine.
Lauren snickered. ‘I thought he must have been an actor come in for some treatment!’
Darcie and Maggie looked blank until Maggie asked, ‘Why on earth would you think that?’
‘Keep up, guys!’ Lauren said, making a ‘duh’ face. ‘There’s a reality series being shot out at Pelican Springs station. The film crew and cast are living in a kind of tent city. I can’t believe you didn’t know.’
‘All news to me,’ Maggie said cryptically. She flicked a hand. ‘With you in a minute, Darc. We’re just finishing up the report.’ Maggie went on to tell Lauren, ‘Keep an eye on Trevor Banda, please. If that old coot is up and walking—’
‘I’ll threaten him with a cold shower,’ Lauren promised cheerfully. She slid off the high stool. ‘Ciao, then. Have a nice weekend, Maggie.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Maggie muttered, before returning her attention to Darcie. ‘So, we have a new boss at last. Someone to take the flak. What’s he like?’
Absurdly good looking. Darcie gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘He seemed a bit...strutty.’
‘You mean stroppy?’
‘No...’ Darcie sought to explain. ‘Strutting his authority.’
‘Throwing his weight around,’ Maggie interpreted with a little huff. ‘Well, we’ll soon sort him out.’
‘Maybe it’s just me,’ Darcie reconsidered, thinking she had possibly said more than she should about their new boss. ‘He caught me unawares. I looked up and he was just...there.’
Maggie’s look was as old as time. ‘Six feet plus of sex on legs, was it? That’s if we can believe Lauren.’
Darcie rolled her eyes and gave a shortened version of the missing email containing Jack Cassidy’s arrival details. ‘He didn’t seem too impressed with us,’ she added bluntly.
Maggie made a soft expletive. ‘Don’t you dare wear any of that rubbish, Darcie. You’ve been here. Done the hard yards when no other doctor would come outback. And how challenging was that for someone straight out of England!’
Darcie felt guilt a mile wide engulf her. Coming to work here had had nothing to do with altruism, or challenge. It had been expediency in its rawest form that had brought her to Sunday Creek.
She’d more or less picked a place on the map, somewhere Aaron, the man she’d been within days of marrying, would never find her. She knew him well enough to know he’d never connect her with working in the Australian outback.
It was that certainty that helped her sleep at night.
‘I couldn’t have managed any of it without you and the rest of the nurses,’ Darcie apportioned fairly.
‘That’s why we make a good team,’ Maggie asserted, picking up her bag and rummaging for her keys. ‘I can hang about for a bit if you’d like me to,’ she offered.
‘No, Maggie, but thanks.’ Darcie waved the other’s offer away. ‘Go home to your boys.’ Maggie was the sole parent of two adolescent sons and spent her time juggling work, home and family. In the time Darcie had been here, she and Maggie had become friends and confidantes.
Although it was usually Maggie who confided and she who listened, Darcie had to admit. Somehow she couldn’t slip into the confidences other women seemed to share as easily as the name of their hairdresser. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said now. ‘And it’ll be good to have a senior doctor about the place,’ she added with a bravado she was far from feeling.
* * *
Jack was just putting the phone down when Darcie arrived back in her office. ‘All squared away?’ she asked, flicking him a hardly-there smile.
‘Thanks.’