This was killing her. She wiggled her foot with care. The worst of the throbbing had stopped. That was because she wasn’t standing on it, she thought.

Okay, she wouldn’t stand on it. She wrapped the rug around her, slid off the settee and wriggled on her backside over the floor. Her shoulders complained but what the heck-what was morphine for? She’d put too much into saving this dog to stop now.

She reached the doorway and peered round. Dom was intent on the dog. He’d set up a high bendy light so he could see. He was setting up a dripstand.

She paused, taking in the whole scene. Her dog was lying in the hallway. With the morphine aboard Erin could focus on her surroundings now, taking in the wide, old-fashioned hall, the high ceilings, the massive architraves. And she could also get a good look at this doctor. Dominic Spencer?

He was youngish, she thought. Mid-thirties? His dark chocolate-brown hair was a bit too long, a bit wavy, with some of it flopping down over one eye. Not too far-like he was a week or so overdue for a haircut. And a day or two late for a shave. And a year or so overdue for an iron. He looked rumpled, she thought. She was used to the men in her life being…groomed. This guy was wearing faded jeans, ancient trainers and an old cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a frayed collar. His top two buttons had disappeared long since.

He didn’t look like a doctor, she thought. If the sign on the brass plate out the front-plus his actions since she’d arrived-didn’t bear out his introduction she’d have guessed maybe he was the doctor’s artist-brother, who’d maybe cadged a bed over Easter because he was living on the smell of an oily rag.

But in what he was doing, this guy was proving every inch a doctor. His lean face looked absolutely focused.

He looked…wonderful. It must be the morphine talking, she thought, dazed. She didn’t respond to men like this. Of all the stupid, hormonal reactions…