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'Come into the library,' he said, putting a hand under her elbow to usher her down a passage that led away from the main hall and the drawing room.

The library was a large, yet intimate-feeling room overlooking a garden, lined on three sides with bookcases in dark oak. A spacious desk and several chairs and smaller tables took up the centre of it. Marcus closed the heavy oak door and turned to her as she walked to the centre of the room on the thick carpet, her agitation evident.

'I can see from the expression on your face that you've come to see me about Dr Richard Decker,' he said, with an equanimity that contrasted strongly with Richard's confrontational manner earlier. Marcus looked at her quizzically, his eyebrows raised. In the casual blue denim jeans that he wore, with a checked shirt open at the neck, he managed to look effortlessly attractive in a very masculine way, quietly dominating as well as sophisticated.

Lisa dragged her eyes away from him, fighting for control, as she only now realized fully the task she had taken on in her decision to confront him. Seeing him again in his own setting, she knew forcefully that she had gradually, insidiously, become more emotionally involved with him.

'You.. .you seem to know me pretty well,' she said, with an uncharacteristic degree of sarcasm, surprised at the calmness of her own voice when the anger inside was building up to an explosive level.

'I doubt that,' he said, walking casually towards her and stopping a few feet away.

'Yes, I did come to talk to you about Richard,' she said with some asperity, trying not to be distracted by his attractiveness. 'I'm glad you got straight to the point.'

'Mmm,' he said. 'I'm sure you are going to do the same.' With his hands in his pockets, he stood regarding her.

'I realize that I have no say in the matter of whom you, as Head of Department, choose to hire.' She launched into her attack, honing her sarcasm—knowing that her face was tight with anger. 'It's just that I had been under the impression that, in a circumstance like this, you might have warned me first. I.. .1 see now that I was expecting too much.'

He looked at her consideringly. 'He hasn't given me a chance, apparently,' he said reasonably. 'I just finished seeing him...' he glanced quickly at his wrist-watch '...less than two hours ago. He must have called you pretty quickly after that.'

'He came to the house,' Lisa said stiffly. 'Just presented himself at the front door.'

'I'm sorry to hear it. I had no idea he would do that,' Marcus said, frowning.

'You might have guessed he would do that, Dr Blair,' she said furiously, 'if you had given it any sort of thought. Why, Dr Blair? Why did you do it? And tell him that I had a baby? I don't understand,' she said, frustration in her voice. 'It's not as though we're short of doctors in the department. It's,. .it's almost like some sort of sick joke— at my expense.'

'You're right about what you said a moment ago—my decision to hire a doctor should not have to depend on the private considerations of one of the nurses,' he said.

Lisa gasped, trying to take in all the ramifications of what he was saying. 'You.. .you mean that you...that you didn't consider me at all?' She faced him, her hands clenched. 'When I am suffering inconvenience, not to mention danger, because a crazy woman has transferred her attentions to me because of you? I.. .1 think that, at least, you could give me some reciprocal consideration.'

'Dr Decker telephoned me in the department yesterday afternoon after you had left. It just came out of the blue. I knew immediately who he was, of course. He has had a lot of experience in emergency work, and we could use an extra pair of hands over the summer months. I do happen to have the money in the departmental budget for an extra short-term salary,' Marcus said reasonably.

'But why him?' Lisa was almost sobbing with frustration. 'There must be any number of doctors known to you who would jump at the chance to work there.'

'Dr Decker told me he needed a temporary job for three months, before taking up a permanent position in the Yukon. I agreed to interview him today. I had to admit I was intrigued. It seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.' Marcus walked slowly over to her, closing the short distance between them, and Lisa felt herself back up until she felt the edge of the huge desk press against her body. Such was the tension that she felt she could scarcely breathe. 'Also, I did.. .um... I guess I saw it as a great opportunity. . .for you,'

'What do you mean—an opportunity for me?' She almost spat the words at him, an awful suspicion forming in her mind that perhaps he was trying to make her life so difficult that she left University Hospital. If she weren't there it was just possible that Miss Damero would be less fanatical. At the same time she chided herself that she was being paranoid.

'It will be the perfect opportunity for you to get together with him again-—to have a father for your daughter,' he said. 'Or to decide, once and for all, what he means to you. Maybe to get him out of your system.. .if that's what you really want.'

'I know what I want, and it isn't that.' She just managed to get the words out. 'How dare you act in such a highhanded manner.'

'That wasn't what you gave me to believe when you last spoke to me of Richard Decker,' he reminded her, a harsh note in his voice now as he stared down at her broodingly. 'You weren't at all sure how you felt about him.'

'That was quite a while ago,' she said hotly, 'I don't want to work with him.'

'I'm afraid that's too bad,' Marcus said, his cool attitude contrasting with her hot-headed outburst. It seemed that all the pent-up distress of the past few months was coming out now. 'I have already hired him.'

'Well.. .you...stay out of my life,' Lisa found herself stammering, 'I.. .I'm grateful for what you did for me. Now just stay out.. .don't interfere.'

'As you wish,' he said quietly, moving abruptly away from her. He walked over to a window, his back to her.

'Do you want me to leave? Is that it?' she blurted. 'You want to make my life so uncomfortable that I'll go? That would simplify things for you.'

He turned to face her, his features stiff, expressionless. 'Of course not,' he said, 'but if that's what you have in mind who am I to persuade you otherwise?'

Tears blurred Lisa's vision as she stood momentarily at a loss.

'There was a tremendous loss of face for Dr Decker, not knowing you had given birth,' Marcus went on relentlessly, his dark, enigmatic eyes boring into her.

'Are you judging me? I lost more than "face", as you put it,' she said bitterly. 'He wouldn't make a good father or a good husband, and certainly not a good friend.'

'You obviously didn't think that when you got involved with him,' Marcus said harshly. 'And, for one who professes not to care for him any more, I'm frankly surprised that you're so...agitated.'

'That has nothing to do with you,' she said angrily. A thought came to her then, a moment of revelation. 'Just because you happen to be anti-woman, maybe because of what happened to you with Lydia Grenville, it doesn't mean that you are in a position to judge me...far from it.'

He grabbed her arm. He stared down at her with blazing eyes. 'What the hell do you know about her?'

'Not much.' She got the words out through gritted teeth. 'About as much, I expect, as you know about me and Richard Decker.' With that, she wrenched her arm out of his grip, backing away. 'Now. . .leave me alone, Marcus... Leave me alone.'

The last word came out on a sob, and then she ran away from him, pulled open the library door and walked swiftly down the passage to the front hall, keeping her face averted from the security guard who stood there. All the time she had the feeling that she hadn't and all that she'd wanted to say, hadn't said things very well. Now the opportunity was over.

Swiftly she ran down the front steps of the house to her car. In moments she was driving away, dimly aware that Marcus had come out to the steps—perhaps to stop her— but she didn't look back.

Near the end of the street she pulled the car over to the kerb, under the shade of a large tree, as tears blurred her vision, making driving dangerous. There was no one about on the quiet, residential street, which was more like a country road, so she let the tears fall. Miserably she knew that she was falling in love with Marcus Blair. What she felt for him was unlike her emotional involvement with Richard, which had centred around sexual attraction. With Marcus there was sexual attraction, all the more powerful because it had been unconsummated and so much more that had sprung from an unconditional caring.

That was why the uncharacteristic harshness of his response to her had been so hurtful. Maybe he was trying to break away from that sense of responsibility he had told her he had for her, and was now starting to push her away. There was no way that she wanted to leave the job she had come to love, yet she would if she had to. She wept then, her head bent forward to rest on the steering-wheel. For her and Marcus there could be no future.

Summer
came with a vengeance, early and hot, with a humidity not usually present so early in the year. Lisa loved the heat after the bleakness of the long winter. In the evenings she played with Emma in the greening garden.

Work was more hectic than ever, falling into a well-ordered routine—as far as emergency work could ever be routine. She and Diane Crane felt that they were now old hands at the job and had also become firm friends, although Lisa hadn't confided her feelings about Marcus to her or anyone else. She did tell Diane that; Richard was the father of her baby.

After she'd left Marcus's house that last time he'd telephoned her at home. As she rushed around at work she often thought of that perfunctory conversation and of how stilted she'd been, not wanting him to know how she mourned the loss of a sense of possibility between them that had tentatively bloomed like a delicate flower.

'When you've definitely made up your mind about Dr Decker,' Marcus had said, 'maybe we can be friends again.'

'Perhaps...' she'd said, not bothering to repeat that she had already made up her mind.

'Dr Decker has done a lot to sap your confidence as a woman, I think,' he'd said shrewdly. 'Am I right?'

'Yes, I expect you are.'

'You're still angry with me?'

'I'm afraid so,' she'd agreed. She had murmured a few more meaningless phrases and hung up, her heart heavy. Since then she'd had no contact with him over the past
two weeks, other than in his capacity as a team member. It was almost as though he was standing back, giving her a mental push in the direction of Richard Decker who'd started work a few days after she'd confronted him. Working with Richard, plus the tension between herself and Marcus, was taking its toll on her. Consequently, she welcomed major accidents, the 'high' of being challenged to the limit, which had the effect of wiping all else from her mind.

Richard had always been a good, skilled doctor. Now he proved himself a useful member of the team. By accident, or deliberate machinations on someone's part, Lisa seldom found herself working alone with Richard. By the same token, although she worked a lot with Marcus they were almost always surrounded by others.

'Lisa, I want to see you in my office in five minutes,' Marcus said to her at the end of one very busy morning, accosting her in the main corridor of the stretcher section of the department. He scarcely paused in his stride as he went past her in the opposite direction so that anyone who might have observed them wouldn't have noticed that he'd spoken to her.

Wracking her brains to think of something she might have done wrong, she finished what she was doing before she headed towards his office. These days it seemed to her that he was becoming more and more like a stranger to her. Very pointedly, he seemed to be avoiding her. Maybe, she told herself frantically, he was giving her a chance to become reconciled with Richard. That, she knew now, could never happen. Too much water had gone under the proverbial bridge.

Marcus was already in his office, with the door open, when she got there.

'Come in,' he said when he saw her. As soon as she entered he shut the door firmly. He looked, she saw, as strained and pale as she was herself—and as tired. His hair, longish these days, looked as though he had impatiently raked a hand through it many times. There was a plate of sandwiches in the room and the usual coffee.

'Have you had lunch?' he asked.

'Um.. .no. I haven't eaten since breakfast at about six this morning,' she said.

'Help yourself to sandwiches.'

'Thank you.' She picked one up and bit into it, feeling faint from hunger.

'Perhaps you'd like some coffee?' he said.

'Well...perhaps just a very quick one, please,' she said. In fact, she was desperate for coffee. His presence seemed to fill the entire room so that she felt suffocated. 'Is there something in particular you have to say to me, Dr Blair? I do have to get back. As I'm part time I don't get more than fifteen minutes' break—not a proper lunch-break.'

'Of course,' he said. Abruptly he turned from her to pour them both coffee. 'I wanted to ask you whether Dr Decker has done anything about getting legal access to your baby.' He placed the full cups on the desk between them.

Swallowing the mouthful of sandwich, Lisa collected her thoughts quickly as he looked at her unsmilingly.

'I. . .haven't actually asked him,' she said hurriedly, 'and he hasn't said anything. Our lawyer said that he would have to apply to the courts for access to her.'

'I see. Do you suppose he will?'

'Knowing him as I do, I think he would have to at least make a gesture,' she said, bending her head. She was unwilling to meet his brooding eyes, wanting him to be the way he had been before. 'I'm actually surprised that he hasn't done anything yet. I doubt very much that he actually wants a baby...'

'Will you let me know if he does? I would like to know.'

'Why, Dr Blair?' she asked challengingly. 'That inappropriate sense of responsibility again?'

'You could say that,' he murmured, giving Lisa the impression that he had really wanted to ask about herself and Richard and whether they were resolving any differences.