They must look a really romantic couple, Morag thought dully. She’d taken such care with her appearance tonight. Although dressed for a barbecue, there was little casual about her appearance. Her jeans were figure-hugging and brand-new. She wore great little designer shoes, high as high, stretching her legs to sexy-long. Her crop top was tiny, crimson, leaving little to the imagination, and she’d swept up her chestnut curls into a knot of wispy curls on top of her head. She’d applied make-up to her pale skin with care. She knew she looked sexy and seductive and expensive-and she knew that there was good reason why every man present had turned his head as Grady had ushered her into the restaurant.

This was how she loved to look. But after tonight there’d never be any call for her to look like this again.

‘Hey, it can’t be that bad.’ Grady reached out and took her hand. He stroked the back of it with care. It was something she’d seen him do with patients.

Two weeks ago a small boy had come into Sydney Central after a tractor accident and Grady had sat with the parents and explained there was no way the little boy’s arm could be saved. She’d seen him lift the burly farmer’s hand and touch it just like this-an almost unheard-of gesture man to man, but so necessary when the father would be facing self-blame all his life.

She’d loved that gesture when she’d seen it then. And now, here he was, using the same gesture on her.

‘What is it, Morag?’

‘My sister.’ She could hardly say it.

Don’t say it at all! a little voice inside her head was screaming at her. If you don’t say it out loud, then it won’t be real.

But it was real. Horribly real.

‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’ Grady was frowning, and Morag knew he was thinking of her mother, the brisk businesswoman to whom he’d been introduced.

‘Beth’s my half-sister,’ Morag whispered. ‘She’s ten years older than I am. She lives on Petrel Island.’