‘You don’t need to do this,’ Abbey told him in a voice that was subdued. In fact, she was tired almost beyond belief. The pain and the shock of the accident was taking its toll, and Ryan’s offer to take her home to bed was sounding so good that she wanted to give in to it.

Only she couldn’t.

‘I do,’ Ryan told her. Abbey was stretched out on the back seat of his car again and he was talking to her over his shoulder as he drove. ‘Believe me, Abbey, I’ve looked at it from every angle and I don’t see that I can get out of it. You said yourself that the accident was my fault. I was driving too fast.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t look-’

‘And you now have a massively bruised leg and I have a guilty conscience. So let’s fix both, shall we?’

‘By letting you be a martyr?’ Abbey’s voice was sharper than she’d intended and Ryan winced.

That was just how he was feeling-a martyr. Another twinge of guilt hit home.

Should he call what he was doing here martyrdom? This was his home town after all. And he had just squashed the local doctor. Well, Sapphire Cove had been good to him as a child. He owed it something so maybe he could give it, without calling himself a martyr.

‘It’s not martyrdom, Abbey,’ Ryan said, in a voice that was gentler than any he’d used before. ‘Let me do it. Please.’

‘Be doctor here for a week?’

‘Or longer, if you need me.’

‘But… you are here on your honeymoon,’ Abbey said cautiously. ‘Everyone knows that. That’s why your dad said you were coming.’

‘You still know my father?’

‘Of course I still know your father.’ Abbey cast him a strange look. ‘He’s a good friend of my mother-in-law. He spends a lot of time with us, and as far as knowing how he is-well, I’d imagine I know him better than you do.’