Her Holiday Miracle. Joanna Neil

handy.’

      ‘Yes.’ He leaned towards her and spoke confidentially. ‘It’s rent-free, courtesy of my cousin, so I’m more than happy. I owe him—though he’s very dismissive of his generosity.’

      Rebecca returned his smile. Cade couldn’t hear what they were saying, but all the while she felt his brooding gaze resting on her. He obviously felt great responsibility towards his cousin. She understood his concerns, at least in part, but outwardly William was fun and that was what she needed right now. She responded to his lively, engaging manner, but it wasn’t as if she was setting out to capture his heart.

      Emma was in a playful mood, too, unwinding after her busy time at work, and was more than ready to let her hair down. She teased William and laughed with Cade.

      Both girls drank mojitos, and then at Cade’s persuasion Rebecca tried another cocktail, made up of dark rum, lemon juice, grenadine syrup and Angostura bitters. The evening passed quickly and in a bit of a haze after that. She was enjoying herself, but the others had to prepare for work the next day, and so all too soon their night out came to an end.

      ‘I’ll drop by the cabin around three-thirty tomorrow, if that’s okay?’ Cade said as he delivered the girls safely home.

      The moon was a silvery orb, glimmering through the branches of the trees, casting shadows all around and highlighting the night-scented jasmine. The heady fragrance of the white flowers lingered on the air.

      ‘Yes, that should be all right. All being well, we’ll be ready and waiting.’ Emma waved him off as he slid back into the driver’s seat of his car and disappeared into the night.

      Things didn’t turn out quite as they’d expected, though. Rebecca was disappointed when, early the next afternoon, Emma received a text message calling her out to work. Several more people had gone down with the mystery illness in the village high up in the hills, and the nurse in charge wanted extra staff on hand to be available to deal with the ailing patients. They were very ill, apparently, with high temperatures and headaches.

      ‘We think it’s some kind of bacterial infection,’ Emma told Rebecca. ‘We’ll probably have to give antibiotics as a precautionary measure.’