‘How can I help you?’ he asked, his tone gentling. Hell, they had it hard, these single mums. A little boy, maybe four years old, was clinging to a fistful of her T-shirt, and she carried a baby that looked no more than a few weeks old.

‘I’m not here to ask for help.’ Her tone was as weary as her face. She seemed like someone at the end of her tether. ‘I’m here to hand over what’s yours.’ She lifted the baby toward him. ‘This is Mia. She’s four weeks old and she’s yours.’

Silence. The silence went on and on, stretching into the evening. Outside a kookaburra started laughing in the clump of eucalypts hanging over the river and the laughter seemed crazily out of place.

Would he help?

Gemma was feeling sick. Everything-her entire future-hung on what happened in the next few minutes.

Was he as irresponsible as her sister?

He looked…nice, she decided. But, then, Fiona had looked ‘nice’ and where had that got her?

Maybe, like Fiona, he was too good-looking for his own good. He was seriously handsome, in a way that could make him a candidate for the next James Bond movie. Tall, with great bone structure and a deeply tanned complexion, his size didn’t make him seem aloof. His burnt red hair was coiling forward over his brow in an endearing twist, and his deep green eyes sort of twinkled even when he wasn’t smiling.

He had great bones, she decided-the sort of bones that made a girl want to…

Whoa. She wasn’t going down that road. Never again. That was the sort of feeling that got her into this mess in the first place. The sort of feeling Fiona had had…

And on the other side of the desk…

She was a nutcase, Nate decided. Heck, as if he didn’t have enough on his plate.

Donna was waiting.