‘I’ll deal with your sister after you,’ Jake told her, and glanced between the two of them. There was more going on here than a healing back and pregnancy. Why was Kirsty so terrified?

Susie was so thin.

‘Is anything else hurting?’

‘My pride,’ Susie told him, and some of her bravado was fading. ‘I have mud everywhere.’

‘Can we take her inside?’ Kirsty demanded in a voice full of strain, and Jake glanced at her again. OK. Enough of the mud.

He stooped and lifted Susie up into his arms. Despite her pregnancy, she was so light she alarmed him even more.

Kirsty gave a sigh of relief and started tugging the wheelchair forward, but instead of placing Susie into it he turned toward the gate.

‘Hey,’ Kirsty said. ‘Put her in here.’

‘The chair’s wet,’ he said reasonably. ‘And we still have to get past the truck.’

‘You can’t carry her.’

‘Why not?’

‘You should say Unhand my sister, sir,’ Susie told her sister, and Kirsty’s eyes widened. She seemed totally unaccustomed to her sister even speaking, much less making a joke.

‘My stupidity with the car blocked your path,’ he told Kirsty, sending her a silent message of reassurance with his eyes. Relax, he was telling her. We need to get your sister warm. The least I can do is provide alternative transport.

And it seemed that finally she agreed with him.

‘Well, if you think you can bear the weight…’

She was trying to smile, but he could still see the fear.

‘We Aussie doctors are very strong,’ he told her, striving to match her lightness, and at last she managed to smile. He liked it when she smiled, he decided. She had a great smile.

A killer smile.

‘Australian doctors are trained in weightlifting?’

‘Part of the training-just after learning where lungs are. But if you want to see strong… I have it on good authority that the man you’re about to meet was an all-time champion cabertosser in his youth. Small but tough is our Lord Angus.’