‘You know him well, then?’

‘I told you, I lived here. I haven’t been near Oscar for years but he won’t have changed.’

‘If you don’t live here now, where do you live?’

‘Will you quit it with the inquisition?’ she said, her voice muffled by the lamb again. ‘I hate the smell of wet wool.’

‘So don’t stick your nose into wet sheep.’

‘There’s a medical prescription for you,’ she said and she grinned. Which somehow…changed things again.

Wow, he thought. That was some smile. When the lines of strain eased from around her eyes she looked…beautiful?

Definitely beautiful.

‘Why are you here?’ she demanded, hauling her nose off the lamb as if the question had only just occurred to her and it was important.

‘I told you. I’m here as a locum.’

‘We’ve never been able to get a locum before.’

‘I can’t imagine why not,’ he said with asperity, releasing the brakes then braking again to try and get some traction on the awful track. ‘This is real resort country. Not!’

‘You’re seeing it at its worst. We had a doozy of a storm last week and the flooding’s only just gone down.’

‘It’s not bad,’ he conceded, staring out at the rolling hills and bushland and the deep, clear waters of the lake below. Sure, it was five hours’ drive to the nearest city, to the nearest specialist back-up, but that was what he’d come for. Isolation. And the rugged volcanic country had a beauty all its own. ‘Lots of…sheep,’ he said cautiously.

‘Lots of sheep,’ she agreed, looking doubtfully out the window as if she was trying to see the good side, too.

‘If you think sheep are pretty.’

She twisted to look over her shoulder at the morose-looking ewe in the back of the truck. As if on cue, the creature widened her back legs and let go a stream of urine.

‘Oh, yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Sheep. My favourite animals.’

He was going to have to clean out the back of his truck. Already the pungent ammoniac smell was all around them. Despite that, his lips twitched.