He was horrified. Why hadn’t he guessed any of this? He’d never even known she’d been diabetic. And not to control it… ‘That’s practically suicide.’

‘Yes.’ She gave a grim little nod. ‘It is-and by the time she’d finished medical school the effects were starting to show. Then our mother died. Mum and Fiona had fought about Fiona’s diabetic management. Fiona had rebelled but Mum’s death just seemed to make things worse. Things weren’t going right in Fiona’s world and she reacted with anger. Her specialist told her that if she couldn’t keep her diabetes under control then at least she shouldn’t get pregnant. She must have been pregnant within minutes of him saying that. With Cady.’ She shrugged and her eyes seemed to shadow with remembered pain. ‘And her decision to have Cady tore our lives apart.’

Our lives? There was a desperate bleakness in her words and she looked as though she was staring back into a chasm that she couldn’t quite escape.

‘And?’ Nate prodded, and Gemma seemed to shake herself back to reality. To the harshness of now. Her voice became brisk and carefully businesslike.

‘And she darn near died having him. When she didn’t it was as if she was mad at the world. As if she’d been cheated. She was furious that she didn’t die and from then on she was on a downhill spiral of neglect.’

By now Nate was thoroughly confused. He shook his head, trying to reconcile what he was hearing with the vibrant, lovely doctor who’d swept into his life twelve months ago. ‘She seemed fine. I didn’t get any of this when she was here.’

‘No.’ She met his look, her eyes steady and challenging. ‘I guess you only saw what most men saw-the gorgeous Fiona. Fiona the irresistible. But there was another Fiona-the Fiona who walked a fine line between sanity and madness. She had Cady and she walked away from him. She knew…she knew that I’d take care of him. How could I not? But I kept working. After what she’d done to me… I barely managed it but there were glimmers of my former life left.’