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Taming Dr Tempest
Meredith Webber
Taming
Dr Tempest
Meredith Webber
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u2f560d65-2db6-5380-9724-37cdaa57cc66)
Title Page (#u196203f6-9379-5216-825a-6e287379c6f5)
About the Author (#uf8f009b1-2426-54b2-a607-f5629b09d63f)
Chapter One (#u82472eff-8a3f-527c-b20e-82e0cb9eda32)
Chapter Two (#u43028b0d-fb75-53f3-b330-092ce363a3f7)
Chapter Three (#uc91083d3-c0a8-5653-af31-5222e1ecaa1f)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
‘You don’t want to talk?’ Nick asked, contrarily put out that she was going to ignore him. ‘I thought this might be a good time to get better acquainted.’
Annabelle turned towards him and raised dark, expressive eyebrows.
‘We’re going to be living together for the next two months, not to mention driving huge distances together and camping out together—don’t you think we’ll have enough time then to get acquainted?’
Annabelle wasn’t sure why she was being so scratchy. Was it the shock of finding out that Nick Tempest was going to be her companion for the duration of the appointment?
Or the slightly uncomfortable feeling she’d always experienced in his presence?
Not that she knew him well—more by reputation than in person. But the reputation—playboy, womaniser, ambitious workaholic—made him the last person in the world she’d want to get to know. Not to mention the least likely person in the entire hospital—if not the planet—to be on this plane, heading for a two-month stint in the far Outback settlement of Murrawalla.
About the Author
MEREDITH WEBBER says of herself, ‘Some ten years ago, I read an article which suggested that Mills and Boon were looking for new Medical
Romance authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’
CHAPTER ONE
ANNABELLE made the flight by the skin of her teeth. Kitty, who had volunteered to drive her to the airport, had insisted on taking ‘shortcuts', so here she was, clutching an armful of carry-on bags, hurtling down the aisle towards the one vacant seat she could see right near the front of the small regional plane.
Fortunately it was an aisle seat so she could flop straight into it and stuff her belongings underneath before the flight attendant arrived to check her seat belt.
But the late arrival meant the plane was taxiing before she turned to look at her fellow-traveller.
To look, then look again…
‘Dr—’
Typhoon, hurricane, cyclone—what in the name of glory was his real name?
‘Tempest,’ he said coolly, peering at her as if she were a complete stranger—maybe a patient he’d seen briefly in A and E. ‘Nick Tempest.’
‘Tempest, of course,’ she mumbled hurriedly. ‘I knew it was…’
She stopped before she made a bigger fool of herself, but her agitation was growing. What was the man they called Storm doing on this flight?
Was there more than one possible answer?
Hardly!
‘You’re going to Murrawalla?’
She couldn’t stop the question popping out, or hide the disbelief in her voice.
The plane lifted off the ground, the wings tilted, and it flew a wide, lazy arc over the city, but Annabelle barely noticed the houses growing smaller below her because as she looked past her companion towards the window, she discovered he was studying her.
Intently.
‘Hang on, aren’t you the new nursing sister? Been around for about four months? The one they call Belladonna?’
The hesitancy in his voice suggested he was far from certain it was her, but although Annabelle hated the nickname, she had to acknowledge he’d worked out who she was.
‘It’s Annabelle,’ she said, turning so she could look into the blue eyes that had most of the female population of the hospital swooning every time he walked into a ward—blue eyes that had snared more than one man’s share of female attention—or so the stories went. ‘Annabelle Donne.’
‘Ah!’ He nodded to himself. ‘I often wondered where it came from. You didn’t strike me as being a walking, talking, deadly poison. More a target of some kind, I would have thought, from the number of times some sick child threw up all over you, or some drunk puked on your shoes.’
He wasn’t smiling as he spoke so she took it as criticism and was about to point out that someone had to look after the patients with stomach upsets when he spoke again.
‘But you’ve cut off all your hair. That’s why I didn’t recognise you. No long schoolgirl plait trailing down your back, no tight little knot thing at the back of your head.’
Schoolgirl plait indeed, but, annoyed though the comment had made her, Annabelle could think of no suitable retort.
She made do with giving him a dirty look, though that didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest.
He studied her for a moment longer, then said, ‘Not that it doesn’t suit you, but hair that length must have taken ages to grow, so why cut it all off?’
There was a surreal aspect to sitting in a plane high above the earth, having a relatively personal conversation about her hair—the loss of which she deeply regretted—with a man she barely knew.
And assumed she wouldn’t like if she did know him…
Yet she found herself answering him.
‘Have you ever smelt bore water?’
He frowned at her, but shook his head.
‘It smells like rotten-egg gas and, as far as I’ve been able to discover, there’s no shampoo yet made that can mask the smell. I did it as much for you—if you are the doctor heading for Murrawalla—as for myself. Travelling long distances in a car with someone who smells like bad eggs isn’t pleasant.’
Nick Tempest stared at the woman in the seat beside him, a woman he knew yet didn’t know. In the A and E department of the big city hospital where both of them had worked, he’d seen her as a calm, competent nurse, quietly spoken and so self-effacing he’d wondered if anyone knew her well. Because she hadn’t been there long they hadn’t shared many shifts, never working on the same team, so maybe his impressions were all wrong. What he did know was that she never shirked the dirty work some other nurses—and doctors—avoided, and that her gentle but firm manner with patients could nearly always avert trouble.
But that woman—the nurse—was very different to this slight but curvaceous woman in the seat beside him. Was it because she was wearing worn jeans and a slightly faded checked shirt instead of a uniform that for the first time he actually registered her as a woman?
Or was it the way her newly cropped hair clung to her head like a dark cap, accentuating the size of her brown eyes, the straight line of her nose and the curve of beautifully defined lips?
No, hair had nothing to do with lips.
Realising his thoughts had strayed into dangerous territory, he made his way carefully back to where this introspection had begun.
‘You cut your hair off so it wouldn’t smell?’
The lips he’d been trying to not look at curled into a teasing smile which, as a man who’d consigned all women to the ‘only when needed’ bin, he shouldn’t have noticed at all, let alone registered as sexy.
Belladonna sexy?
More dangerous ground?
Definitely not! Lack of sleep, that was all it was. He’d been up half the night at the hospital, finishing reports and case-notes, and, naturally enough, though he’d not been on duty, answering calls for help when emergencies came in.
‘Mostly for the smell but also the dust,’ his companion was saying. ‘Dust?’
This conversation was rapidly getting out of hand. He knew she was speaking English, so it couldn’t be that parts of it were lost in translation, but—
‘Bulldust,’ she added, as if this explained everything.
In Nick’s head it just added another level of confusion, and he was sorry he’d started the conversation, although politeness alone meant he’d had to say something to her.
‘Is that an expletive? A slightly more proper form of bull—?’ he heard himself ask.
This time she didn’t smile, she laughed.
How long since he’d laughed?
Laughed out loud in that carefree way?
Relaxed to the extent that a laugh could be carefree?
‘You’ve never been out in the bush before, have you?’
He heard this question, too, but was too distracted by the laughter—the laughing face of the woman beside him and his inner questions—to respond immediately. Besides, the captain of the flight was introducing himself and telling them when they were expected to arrive in Murrawingi, adding that the weather there was fine and warm, and he didn’t expect any turbulence on the flight.
‘Murrawingi?’ Nick found himself repeating. ‘I thought the place we were going to was called Murrawalla. That’s assuming, of course, you’re the nurse half of the hospital team.’
‘No airport at Murrawalla,’ the nurse half explained. ‘As far as I know, the pair we’re replacing will take this plane back to Brisbane, leaving us the hospital vehicle to drive to Murrawalla.’
‘Well, that’s fairly stupid!’ he muttered, annoyed he didn’t know all these things—or perhaps annoyed that she did!
Or was he more unsettled than annoyed? Unsettled?
Because he didn’t know? Control had become important to him—he did know that!
Control had kept him on track when his world had imploded, Nellie ripping out his heart as casually as she’d—
Control!
But the pain he still felt in his chest when he thought of the baby was beyond control. No wonder he didn’t laugh out loud these days.
‘It’s fairly stupid, having to drive to Murrawalla?’ the woman queried.
‘No,’ he grumbled, clamping down on the pain, dismissing his unsettling thoughts and catching up with the conversation—reminding himself that he was looking to the future, not the past—and that he was heading west to learn. ‘Calling places by nearly the same names.’
His companion smiled again.
‘It happens all the time when aboriginal names are used. Further south, there’s Muckadilla and Wallumbilla right next door to each other and both are fairly similar names so it’s hard to remember if someone comes from one or the other.’
‘Were you the geography whiz at school?’ he asked, not because he wanted to know but for some perverse reason he wanted her to keep talking.
So he didn’t have to think about the past?
Probably, but, for whatever reason, it was weird when he considered he tuned out a lot of the conversations going on around him without any problem.
Idle chatter irritated him—although had it always?
More questions buzzing in his head! No wonder he felt unsettled…
‘Just well travelled,’ Bel—no, he had to start thinking of her as Annabelle—said.
The attendant came through to ask if anyone wanted a newspaper or magazine, but although Nick said no, Annabelle took the morning paper.
