‘So your dog’s hungrier than mine,’ Rachel told him with a touch of desperation, and there was general laughter. ‘You must starve Digger.’

‘Do I look like a man who’d starve a dog?’

No. He didn’t. He looked really nice, Rachel decided, and she wished all of a sudden that she wasn’t in soiled jeans and sauce-stained T-shirt, that her mass of deep brown curls were untangled and not full of the straw that the organisers had put down as bedding, and that she looked…

Oh, heck, what was she thinking of? This guy had a kid. She was here with Michael and…

‘Rachel, are you feeding Penelope?’

Unthinkingly, she’d raised the feed bowl, and Penelope was launching herself into the hamburger as if there was no tomorrow.

‘Um…Michael.’

Michael, silver-haired, suave and in charge of his world, was elbowing through the crowd and his face was incredulous. No one messed with Michael’s instructions. Pedigree dog food only. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m proving Penelope’s intelligence,’ she told him, chin jutting. Enough was enough and she’d had more than enough of Dr Michael Levering.

Back at Sydney Central, Michael had seemed witty and charming and, as one of Sydney’s top cardiologists, he was extremely eligible. His invitation to go away with him for the weekend had half the staff in Casualty green with envy, and her friends and her family had finally pushed her to accept. ‘Come on,’ her mother-in-law had told her. ‘This is your chance. You know it’s time you moved on. A romantic weekend with a gorgeous bachelor… Rachel, love, you take some precautions and go for it!’

Precautions. Ha! That was the last thing she’d needed. They were supposed to be sharing dog duty. That was another joke. Michael had said he’d sleep in the car because he was too tall to fit in the dog box, but she was starting to have serious doubts about what car he’d slept in. When he’d appeared this morning, ten minutes before Penelope had been due to appear in the judging ring, he’d looked far too clean to have slept in any car. Then he’d said he’d had to make an urgent telephone call. She hadn’t seen him again.