Option one: the chances were, he’d be able to run faster than she could. So, no.
Option two: brave, but foolish.
Option three: and tell them what, precisely? That a man had parked two spaces away from her? Pa-a-a-thetic.
She went for option four. Stay still and see what he did next. She was in a locked car, so she was perfectly safe where she was.
Lisa pretended to be looking in her handbag for something and waited, watching the red car out of the corner of her eye.
The door opened. The driver got out, shrugged a coat on and headed straight for the hospital entrance. He didn’t even so much as glance in the direction of her car.
Her whole body went limp with relief—and embarrassment. How stupid had she just been? Convincing herself that her Sir Galahad had turned into a stalker. For goodness’ sake! It was obvious that either he worked here or he was visiting someone.
And she’d better get a move on or she was going to be late. On her first day. Not good at all.
She grabbed her handbag and coat, locked the car door behind her and headed for the emergency department.
Ten minutes later Julie, one of the staff nurses, was showing Lisa around the ward. They were just passing the cubicles when a curtain twitched back and a doctor in a white coat emerged.
Lisa blinked hard. She recognised those amazing eyes from the gap above her steamed-up window. And the rest of him was even more gorgeous. Movie-star handsome—high cheekbones, a strong jaw and sensual mouth that made you want to beg him to use it on you. Broad shoulders, narrow hips and capable hands. The kind of man women lost their heads over—big time.
She didn’t think she’d ever seen such a beautiful man.
If he ever went out wearing a black poloneck sweater and black trousers, every woman who saw him would be a quivering puddle of hormones within seconds.
‘Hey, Joel.’ Julie smiled at him. ‘Meet our new SHO, Lisa Richardson. Lisa, this is Joel Mortimer—he’s our registrar.’
‘Sir Galahad.’ Lisa spoke without thinking.
Julie raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I missing something?’
‘He came to my rescue when I got stuck on some ice on the way to work this morning,’ Lisa explained.
‘Oh, right.’ Julie smiled. ‘That figures. Rescuing’s what Joel does.’
Lisa’s pulse missed a beat. Was he a volunteer doctor with the air ambulance crew, too? Would she end up in a helicopter with him, sitting so close that their knees touched? Oh-h-h. Her temperature had just shot up ten degrees.
Before Lisa could embarrass herself by asking, Julie added with a grin, ‘Though usually it’s in his skimpy red trunks.’
Please, please don’t let me be hyperventilating at the idea of a man this gorgeous wearing the skimpiest of clothes, his wet hair slicked back and his body glittering in the sun with droplets from the sea, Lisa begged silently.
Joel groaned. ‘Don’t listen to a word she says. I do not wear skimpy trunks. I’m a coastguard, not a lifeguard.’
Coastguard? Not part of the air ambulance crew, then. Lisa was shocked by the disappointment that surged through her.
‘You wore a pair of skimpy red trunks for the charity auction,’ Julie reminded him, laughing.
‘Only because Beth nagged me into it. And that was your fault. You put the idea into her head in the first place, you horrible woman,’ Joel informed her, smiling back.
Beth? His wife? Lisa glanced at his left hand—no sign of a wedding ring. Though maybe he just didn’t wear one.
‘I suppose at least you didn’t wax your chest. Or bleach your hair and get a fake tan,’ Julie teased.
Beautiful hair, Lisa thought. So dark it was almost black. Glossy, tousled curls which he’d clearly raked back with one hand, though a lock of hair flopped forward over his forehead. She suppressed the urge to reach forward and brush it back. Just.
‘Thanks for stopping and helping me this morning,’ she said awkwardly.
‘No worries. You’re not the first one who’s been caught out on that hill, and you won’t be the last. If I’d realised you were coming here, I could’ve offered you a lift,’ he said with a smile.
And, lord, what a smile. It actually made her knees go weak.
Very, very bad. Joel Mortimer was definitely someone to stay away from.
‘So you’re a coastguard as well as a doctor?’ she asked, hoping that her voice sounded completely normal—though she had a nasty feeling that she sounded breathless and a bit squeaky, like a schoolgirl asking her favourite pop star for an autograph.
He shrugged. ‘As a volunteer. They call me if they need me.’
The air ambulance service here was run on a similar basis, staffed mainly by volunteers. In London, she’d been on secondment to HEMS for six months and had loved every minute of it. Here, the paramedics on the air ambulance crew were full time but the doctors volunteered to do a shift for a couple of days each month, on their off-duty. Lisa didn’t mind working an extra two days a month for nothing: the way she saw it, she was putting something back in.
And maybe her work could stop someone else losing half their family, the way she had when she’d been sixteen.
‘So what made you come to Northumbria?’ Joel asked.
‘I’d finished my stint at HEMS, so it was time to move on.’ She shrugged. Why Northumbria? ‘I came here on holiday with my parents when I was a kid.’ It had been her last holiday with both parents. She’d just finished her GCSE exams, and although all of her friends had been planning to go on holiday together, travelling by rail through Europe for a month before settling down to start their A levels, her parents had asked her to spend that one last holiday with them instead of taking her first steps into the big wide world with her friends.
She’d been torn. If she didn’t go to Europe with her friends, she’d miss out on swimming in St Tropez, eating the best ice cream in the world in Venice and being chatted up by gorgeous Greek waiters. And she’d feel that somehow she was a baby while all her friends had taken that extra step away from childhood.
But she adored her parents. And they weren’t stuffy like most of her friends’ parents. They talked to her as if she were an adult and her opinion mattered, that she wasn’t just some silly little teenage girl.
In the end she agreed to go with her family. And after what happened barely six months later, she was so glad she had. That she’d not done the stroppy teenager bit and refused to hang out with her parents. That she’d enjoyed a holiday of simple English pleasures—the gardens at Alnwick where every breath you took was filled with the scent of roses, so strong that you could actually taste the flowers; poking round ancient castles and second-hand bookshops; walking along part of Hadrian’s Wall and stopping off at little cafés to have stotties for lunch, the huge local bread rolls filled with cheese and ham.
Funny how memories so good could still hurt.
‘I remember the beaches being amazing,’ she said. ‘These huge stretches of sand underneath cliffs with enormous castles.’
‘The beach here is fabulous. And they sell the best fish and chips in the world on the harbour—you really have to try them.’
Was he offering…?
No. And she wouldn’t have accepted, even if he’d asked. She didn’t do relationships.
‘Well, welcome to Northumberland General.’ Joel held his hand out. Lisa took it, and was shocked to feel her fingers actually tingling. She couldn’t