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'Blast,' responded the unseen Betty. 'Taken, then, is it?'

'There's plenty of room,' Mike said grudgingly.

'Nah—wouldn't want to cramp your style, mate. You got here first,' replied the youth. 'I know another place that'll do us.' Clearly shelter from the rain wasn't their first priority.

'Fancy them two—at their age,' giggled the girl as they scampered off.

'What the hell! Our age indeed,' muttered Mike, glaring after them.

Yona peered round him. 'They don't look more than fifteen,' she decided. 'Ah, well, they'll learn.'

'Learn what?' he asked, smiling down at her.

'That sex has its downside—like every other pleasure in life.' She was in control again now.

So was Mike. 'You don't look like a disillusioned old cynic,' he told her half-jokingly.

'I dare say that's because I'm not one—yet! How long do showers usually last in these parts?'

'Three days is the record.'

'Good grief! I'm not staying in this place for three days. I'm off to fetch your car. The path's wide enough for it as far as the foot of this track.' She was halfway down it by then.

'You'll be stopped at the gate,' Mike shouted after her.

'Trust me to think up a good excuse,' she called back.

The gatekeeper insisted on going with Yona to make sure she was telling the truth about her injured friend—and that she didn't drive over the grass. When they dropped him off, Mike asked her how much she'd tipped the man.

'Not a penny—so now which one of us is the cynic?' she asked, laughing. 'I just told him the facts and he was very sympathetic.'

'Bemused, more likely, if you fixed him with those amazing eyes of yours.'

'If you want to think of me as some sort of siren, feel free. It's better than being thought a road hog!'

'I can honestly say I've never thought of you as a road hog,' Mike said firmly.

'Well, that's something, I suppose,' she said demurely as the heavens opened again.

When she'd parked Mike's car in its accustomed place in the underground car park at the flats, she said pertly, 'I do hope you've enjoyed your little airing.'

'You're sounding like a nurse again,' he said sadly.

'That'll be because that's how I feel about you...'

'I don't know any nurses who kiss their patients quite so beautifully as you do,' he murmured.

'You may have a point there,' she allowed.

'On the other hand, asking me up to your place for a nice cup of tea would be a very nursely thing to do.'

'Why my place and not yours?'

'Because a change of scene is very therapeutic.'

'You've got an answer for everything, have you not?' she challenged.

'Not always,' he admitted. 'But I'm working on it.'

'I'm going to get into some dry clothes,' announced Yona as soon as they reached her flat. 'What about you?'

'I don't think anything of yours would fit me.' He grinned.

'Idiot.' She chuckled appreciatively. 'I was offering to fetch something for you from your own place.'

'No need—I dried off pretty well in the car.'

Yona ran a hand down his thigh. 'Your jeans are still quite damp.'

'Careful! For a heady moment there I thought you were making advances.'

'I have never found it necessary to take the initiative,' Yona told him very firmly.

Mike said he could believe that and if she insisted, he'd go and change his trousers while she made that tea she'd promised him.

Yona wondered if his obvious reluctance had anything to do with Fran's promise to come back later so she claimed to know better now than to try ordering him about.

'You're getting my measure.' He chuckled. 'Shall I go and put my foot up, then?'

'You're learning, too,' she said.

So she put on the kettle, popped some scones into the oven to warm through and went to change into stretch pants and a sensational clinging sweater. Then she buttered the scones with one hand, while blow-drying her hair with the other. It was fluffed out round her head like a russet cloud when she carried in the teatray.

Mike looked up and stared, transfixed. 'You're amazing,' he said slowly.

She'd have preferred beautiful or wonderful or gorgeous, but amazing would do for now.

'You didn't make these,' he said when he saw the scones.

'No—but I can when I've got the time! Actually, my mother sent them—along with the shortbread and the Dundee cake. She's convinced that the English don't know how to bake and she didn't want me to starve.'

'Poor little exile in a strange land where not all the natives are friendly,' he said softly.

'Got it in one!'

'You were supposed to say, 'I know one native who is
very
friendly,' Mike reproved gently, as he pulled her down on the couch beside him.

'If you want me to be a yes-woman, you'll have to write me a script,' she warned.

'I want you just the way you are, you fascinating, exotic foreigner,' he murmured, kissing her neck with far-reaching results.

It was the summerhouse in the botanies all over again, but this time there were no teenage lovers to intrude. He was getting to her again with a speed and ease which no other man ever had. It was wonderful and it was scary and Yona had never felt less in control. I shouldn't, but I know I will, she was thinking confusedly when Mike suddenly stiffened and loosened his hold on her with a heavy sigh.

He was regarding her with something like anxiety in his eyes as he admitted, 'It's high time I told you something you're not going to like.' His arms tightened round her again. 'Promise me you'll not be angry.'

'How can I if I don't know what it is?' she asked.

'It's just that I'm so afraid... Today has been so wonderful. Much, much better than I dared to hope when I—'

'The suspense is killing me,' she told him, trying to lighten the moment.

'OK, then, it's like this,' he began, just as there came a thunderous knocking and ringing at the door. They stared at one another in amazement and went to answer it together.

It was Fran standing there, and her eyes were great pools of sorrow and reproach. 'So Angie was right after all,' she breathed. 'You
are
here!'

'As you see,' Mike said tightly. He was rigid with anger. 'Aren't you supposed to be at a party?'

'I came round to tell you that my father is in the Royal. He fell and broke his hip—and he won't let anybody fix it but you!'

Yona recovered first. 'I'll get your jacket, Mike,' she said quietly.

'Yes, I have to go,' he said woodenly as he took it from her.

'I realise that. I'm so sorry about your father's accident,' she told Fran.

'Why?' asked Fran coldly. 'You don't know him.' She turned back to Mike, her eyes anxious and watchful.

'I have to go, Yona,' Mike repeated, 'but I'll phone you later. We haven't finished our conversation.'

Yona had not forgotten that, but as she shut the door she thought, There's no need now. I know what you were going to say. It was obvious that Fran was more to him than just the old friend he'd claimed she was.

'You're
late, Doctor,' observed Sister Evans gleefully when Yona looked into her office just before nine next morning.

'No, Sister. It's just that most days I'm early. Are there any special problems?'

Either there weren't or Sister was too surprised to say so in the face of Yona's crisp comeback.

Actually, Yona was feeling anything but crisp that morning. Last night Nonie had whisked her off to a lively members-only club, where several unaccustomed vodkas had helped to take her mind off the puzzle of Mike Preston and his old friend Fran, although the din of the disco had also given her a headache.

Mike had promised to phone her later—and he hadn't. So, naturally enough, Yona had been asking herself what was a mere six weeks' acquaintance—no matter how strong their mutual attraction—compared with years of friendship and love? Because there
was
love there—on Fran's side at least. Also, Fran was a doormat, and Yona felt she knew enough of Mike's views by now to know that was really how he liked his women.

In the doctors' room she pulled her mind back on course to ask, 'Any problems, Chris?'

'Not for us,' he said, 'but there was a call from Ortho a few minutes ago. Mr Preston thinks that one of our mutual patients may be about to have a flare-up. So I said that you'd go and check her over when you had time.'

'Mr Preston? But I thought... Is he not off sick?'

'Not according to his houseman. He was in at the crack and did a quickie ward round, before going to Theatre to operate on an old friend of his.'

'But, surely, with a serious injury to his foot...'

'You specialists.' Chris laughed. 'OK, so a ruptured Achilles tendon is no fun, but they mend all right in plaster. Mine did, and I did mine in exactly the same way. I've given it up now, though.'

'Given what up?' asked Yona, now thoroughly confused.

'Squash. It's the worst thing for it, apparently. Didn't you know that?' he asked, noting her dazed expression. 'Fancy me knowing something you don't! That gives me no end of a kick.'

Yona felt as though she'd been kicked, too—right smack in the teeth. What the hell had Mike thought he was doing—letting her take the blame for a sports injury she'd had nothing to do with? And then stringing her along like that, exacting penance the way he had! God, how he must have laughed at her! He'll not be laughing by the time I've finished with him, Yona vowed fiercely. She was desperate to tackle him, but had no chance. Personal problems must be on hold for the next eight hours or so.

'I believe you have a patient for me, Sister,' she was saying to Sister Evans's opposite number on Orthopaedics about ten minutes later.

'Yes, Dr MacFarlane. As you know, Mrs Rathbone had excision of the metatarsal heads, right foot, last week, and now she's complaining of pain in her left knee. Mr Preston has seen her and he's fairly sure it's not a generalised problem but, knowing how keen Professor Burnley is to catch them early...'

'Point me in the right direction, Sister, and I'll give you my opinion—for what it's worth.'

Yona had been speaking as normally as she could because this nice woman had no idea that the visiting doctor would much rather give the wonderful Mr Preston a fist than an opinion!

'The knee is certainly swollen and slightly red, but I can't detect signs of activity in my other joints, Sister,' she said later, 'but an ESR should confirm or exclude that.'

'I thought you'd say that so I've made out a form for you to sign.'

'Bless you and your second sight,' Yona told her gratefully. What a nice change she was from her counterpart on Rheumatology.

'There is a large, noisy crowd of medical students hanging about outside the doctors' room, waiting for you, Dr MacFarlane,' Sister Evans was quick to tell Yona when she got back to base.

'Good,' said Yona, unruffled. 'I hate to be kept waiting.'

'Please, don't let them upset the beds, Doctor.'

'Or the patients either, if I can help it, Sister.'

'And Mr Preston was on the phone while you were absent from the ward.' She made it sound as though Yona had gone AWOL. 'He wishes to see you in his consulting room at your earliest convenience.'

Did he indeed? 'Thank you, Sister. Outside the doctors' room, I think you said...'

Yona slipped into top teaching gear. 'Last week,' she reminded the students, 'you sat in on a clinic and saw how we assess patients who have never been to us before. Today we'll be looking at ward patients. Would anybody care to tell me what sort of problems you can expect to see?'

She may as well have asked them the time of the next bus to the moon for all the response she got. Desperately afraid of saying the wrong thing, she guessed, remembering her own student days.

'Let me put it another way. What do you definitely not expect to see?'

'Multiple fractures,' said somebody at the back. Not quite right when you remembered Mrs Teale and her osteoporosis, but Yona knew what he meant.

'Respiratory failure.' That was the next suggestion.

'Transplant patients.' That was the third.

'We're narrowing it down,' agreed Yona, raising a weak giggle and breaking the ice as she'd intended.

During the next couple of hours she gave them an insight into the routine treatment of the acute phase of rheumatoid arthritis. She also taught them to recognise the radiological differences between the main types of arthritis and then discussed the pros and cons of the various drugs available.

'On Wednesday I shall expect each one of you to take a history from a patient and make a tentative diagnosis,' she warned, 'so spend some time in the library before we meet again.'

When they had gone, Yona glanced at her watch and saw it was almost lunchtime. Good! No time now to answer Mike's summons—and if he followed routine, he'd be taking a clinic at the General Hospital this afternoon.

'How was Windermere?' asked Ted when Yona joined him for their usual Monday sandwich lunch before the week's biggest clinic.

She looked blank.

'Windermere,' he repeated. 'Big stretch of water. Largest lake in England. You were going there yesterday with that sleezy media bloke you've made such a friend of.'

'It just wasn't the day for it.' It sounded better than saying that she'd completely forgotten the arrangement. Another spot of accounting in store, then. 'Poor Gil!' she protested for the look of the thing. 'That's a terrible way to describe him.'

Ted obviously didn't think so, judging by his expression. 'OK, so what did you do instead?' he wanted to know.

'Went for a walk in the afternoon and got thoroughly wet—and then Nonie Burke took me to one of her clubs in the evening.'

'You'd have been better spending the day with us,' Ted said firmly. 'Incidentally, you'll have heard by now, of course.'

'Heard what?' Yona was expecting him to say something about Nonie, but he went on, 'How Mike really got his ankle injury. That must have been a great relief to you.'

'Oh, that... Yes, it was. I'd have hated to be up before the bench on a charge of road rage.'