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Mark went to the bar for a fresh supply of drinks. Robin lifted an eyebrow at Gillian in almost imperceptible query and she gave a slight shake of her head, smiling. She didn't want to dance again just yet. He turned to Louise.

He was a very good dancer. Watching as he whirled his lovely partner about the floor in expert, slightly extravagant style, Gillian recalled that her friends had always envied her whenever Robin took her to a hospital dance. The eagerness with which Louise had accepted his invitation and the ease with which she. followed his lead and his intricate footwork proved that they had danced together on many occasions.

He was obviously popular, well-liked. He had established himself in the town as a capable and caring GP and he had acquired some very influential friends in the process. One day in the not too distant future, he would probably be a pillar of local society. As an extremely eligible bachelor, he could probably take his pick from the pretty girls in the district. But it seemed that he still loved her, still wanted to marry her.

Gillian wondered why the prospect didn't delight her as it should. She wondered wryly if she was suited to marriage, to husband, home and family. She loved nursing. Greenvale seemed to promise a great deal of job satisfaction. She had been reluctant to give up her career to marry Robin, three years before. She was still reluctant. If she couldn't carry on nursing after marriage then she didn't feel that she was in any hurry to marry at all ...

'I wonder what brought you to Greenvale,' Mark said softly, taking the chair by her side.

Gillian looked at him, startled. She had been so lost in her thoughts of an uncertain future that she hadn't noticed his approach with the tray of drinks.

'Sorry ...?'

'Was it McAllister?'

'Pure chance,' she retorted, proud. Did he think she was the kind of girl to run after any man?

'I'm not a great believer in chance,' he drawled.

She shrugged. 'I'm not very interested in your beliefs,' she said coldly.

'Then you don't want to hear that I do believe in unconscious association.' He sat back in his chair and swirled the whisky in his glass.

Gillian stiffened. 'Meaning?'

He regarded her thoughtfully. 'You've been ill, perhaps a little depressed. Maybe there hasn't been anyone of importance in your life since you broke with McAllister. I think you were hoping to pick up old threads when you applied for a job in a town where a former flame happened to live.'

'You're mistaken. I didn't know that Robin lived anywhere near Greenvale.'

'I think you did,' he said quietly.

She was about to argue. Then her innate honesty came to the fore. 'Yes, I knew—three years ago when he left Kit's. I'd forgotten it completely.

'Your conscious mind had forgotten it,' he amended.

Gillian glared at him. 'I'm not chasing him!' she said indignantly.

He smiled. 'There isn't any need, is there? He's standing still, waiting to be caught. Why didn't you marry him three years ago? Oh, don't tell me! I'm not really interested in your reasons,' he added indifferently. 'I expect they were valid at the time. You must be feeling very flattered that he still cares for you. Don't let it go to your head, will you?'

She was suddenly furious. 'Will you mind your own business!' she flared. 'What an impossible person you are! How dare you interfere in my personal life!'

'I don't want to lose a good theatre nurse just when I've found her,' he drawled lightly. 'You think
I'm
a chauvinist, don't you? Marry McAllister and see if he'll allow his wife to carry on with her own career.'

Before she could throw a retort at him, Robin and Louise came off the dance floor, hand in hand, laughing. She saw a faint frown in Mark's eyes and wondered if he was jealous of their obvious liking for each other.

It was difficult to imagine him as a man in love, she thought dryly. He was attentive to Louise but not in the least lover-like. She wondered if he really wanted to marry the beautiful girl or if it was just ambition. She felt that Louise was determined to marry him and wondered why. He was very attractive, very eligible. He wasn't
lovable!

He didn't seem to notice that she was very annoyed with him. That was only one of the more infuriating traits in the man, she decided bitterly, forced to smile, to reply to remarks so obviously addressed to her that she couldn't ignore them. But she didn't have to dance with him.

Refusing his invitation meant that she couldn't instantly get up to dance with Robin. They were both disappointed. Damn Mark Barlow! He was out to ruin her evening, she thought crossly. She just didn't understand why he had attached himself and his girlfriend so firmly to them when any newly engaged couple ought to want to be on their own.

Listening to the conversation, she learned that it was Hugh Penistone's sixtieth birthday at the weekend. She supposed that the engagement announcement was being timed to coincide with it. Neither of them mentioned it. The whole town seemed to know but it was obviously still unofficial. Louise wasn't wearing a ring on the hand that she tucked into the surgeon's arm so possessively.

He smiled at her and then glanced across the table at Gillian, the smile lingering in his grey eyes. Her heart gave an odd little jump and for the first time she admitted the enchantment in that stow, warm smile and understood why so many women wanted him.

She looked away, troubled by the stirring of a new and unwelcome feeling. That smile hadn't even been meant for her, she reminded herself firmly. She was a fool to be so moved by its charm. She was worse than a fool if she allowed herself to love a man who meant to marry another woman ...

It was late when Robin took her home. In the car, he put an arm about her and tentatively sought her lips. Gillian kissed him but her heart wasn't in it. She knew that he was waiting for her to ask him into the flat. She knew that he wanted to make love to her. He was very much in love and the years without her couldn't have been easy for him.

Gillian's heart went out to him with warm and tender affection. But her body shrank from the thought of his lovemaking. She knew that she couldn't respond as he would naturally wish—and she just wasn't ready to commit herself so irrevocably to any man.

Maybe she would marry Robin, given enough time to be sure that it was what she wanted and that they could be happy. But she didn't want to go to bed with him at this stage.

She kissed him again and laid her hand lightly along his cheek in a gesture of affection.

'I'm very tired, Robin,' she said gently. 'It's been a full day…'

He understood immediately. She knew he was disappointed but he didn't protest or argue or make any attempt at persuasion. Letting herself into the flat and turning for a last wave as his car drew away from the kerb, Gillian wondered if Mark Barlow would have been so easily deflected from his purpose if he had brought her home with the intention of making love to her.

She felt rather guilty at the realisation that she might not have sent
him
away with so little regret.

She didn't dare to wonder if she would have sent him away at all ...

The
next morning Gillian reported for work on the female surgical floor, carefully punctual. When Helen Irving left Greenvale at the end of the month, she would take over her job as senior theatre nurse, working in close liaison with Mark and Steve as a professional team. In the meantime, it was arranged that she should stand in for Helen on her off-duty days..

Things were working out quite well, Gillian decided. It suited her to have a brief breathing space to adjust to the new job and new colleagues and to be sure that she was really fit for the demands of working in Theatre. And it would give her more time to adjust to the way she felt about Mark.

That feeling was disturbing and dangerous, and much too persistent for her liking. She found that she was thinking about him instead of her work, very often. She found that she was remembering too vividly everything he had said and done in the short time that she had known him, little of it endearing yet apparently unforgettable. She found that her body could still quicken at the memory of his touch, his kiss, his nearness. She might despise that weakness in herself, but that didn't stop the wanting, she. thought ruefully.

It was infuriating to recall her scornful contempt for the many women who sighed over the handsome surgeon and realise that she was just as foolish. Heaven knew what it was about the man but he certainly exercised a very potent magic and Gillian determined to keep him safely at arms' length. For there could be no future in wanting a man like Mark Barlow.

She didn't love him. She might have been able to understand and forgive that wanton weakness for him if she had fallen in love with Mark. But as he just wasn't the kind of man that she could ever truly like or admire let alone love, it was despicable that he could fill her with that tempestuous, throbbing desire. She didn't mean to give way to it. She hoped that he wouldn't offer her any more temptation...

It was a novel experience for Gillian to be nursing patients after she had assisted at their operations. At Kit's, she had seldom seen their before their brief sojourn in Theatre. After surgery, they had been returned to the dedicated care of the ward staff. She found that she liked the continuity and the greater involvement with the patients.

Beverley Jakes was not a good patient, however. She was making a great deal of fuss about a very minor gynaecological correction. She insisted that she was in pain while showing very little evidence of it and she obviously intended to enjoy a lengthy and quite unnecessary stay. She rang her bell constantly and for the most trivial of reasons.

Gillian had nursed private patients before and knew that they could be difficult and demanding. She didn't mind the extra work. She did mind that Beverley behaved as though she was a domestic servant entirely at her back and call throughout the day. Being a well-trained nurse, she smiled and said nothing as she retrieved a magazine from the floor or passed a box of tissues that was within reach, or adjusted the window blind or plumped pillows or poured fresh orange juice for a patient perfectly able to do such things for herself. But she seethed, deep down.

The spoiled, self-centred Beverley was not only ungrateful for everything that was done for her, constantly finding fault, she was also a snob. She looked down her slender nose at Gillian and the other nurses in their pale green uniforms, talking down to them with a very irritating condescension in voice and manner. She was much disliked.

Gillian had never allowed such people to get under her skin in the past. During five years of nursing in a big hospital, she had met all kinds and learned to accept and understand different types of behaviour. Now, she wondered if she disliked and resented Beverley so much because Mark seemed to like her and find her amusing. He seemed to be in and out of her room quite unnecessarily during those first few days after the girl's operation.

Surgeons at Kit's had their housemen on the wards who saw much more of the patients than they did, making routine rounds to check and report on progress. At Greenvale, it was apparently Mark's practice at least to be in constant and reassuring touch with his patients. People who were paying for the privilege of his surgical attention liked to feel that they were getting value for money, of course.

And Beverley was a personal friend who basked in the flattering warmth of his liking and concern and frequent attention.

By contrast, Mrs Maddox was a pleasure to nurse. She was so cheerful and uncomplaining, so friendly and so interested in everyone, a real favourite with the nurses who wouldn't have minded how many demands she made on them. In fact, she was shy of asking for even the smallest of services. Everyone was anxious to do as much as possible for her as a result. Gillian liked her very much and made excuses to enter her room during the day for a few moments of relaxed chat.

In all fairness, she had to admit that Mark was as attentive to one patient as the other, even if he did seem to lack the traditional type of bedside manner. She felt he was brusque with Mrs Maddox. The big woman was making satisfactory progress after the hysterectomy and Mark was reassuring about the condition of her heart. But high blood pressure was causing some anxiety and there were other problems due to her obesity. He was impatient with her apparent inability to observe the diet he had prescribed for her and which she circumvented via her husband and various visiting friends.

Mrs Maddox only chuckled when he scolded, made any number of promises for the future, and reached for a forbidden fancy as soon as he was out of sight. She had been fat all her life, she declared happily, and didn't know why everyone made such a fuss about it.

After the surgeon's visits, she seemed quite unable to talk sensibly about anything but his good looks, his charm, his cleverness and, more often, his rumoured wedding plans, for some considerable time. Those were the times when Gillian found that she was much too busy, to stay and listen.

On one such occasion, he came back into the room as Gillian finished making the big woman comfortable against her pillows, meaning to make her escape before she could get into full stride.

If Mark knew that his patient was enthusing about him as he walked in, it didn't show in his expression. He had returned for his pen, left lying on the bedside table. It was slim, gold and very distinctive. A present from a grateful patient, one of the nurses had said, referring to the expensive pen. A present from a grateful Louise, another nurse had amended with a cynical laugh. Whichever it was, he seemed to value it.

'You wouldn't like to lose that, I daresay,' Mrs Maddox said with a knowing smile as he restored it carefully to his breast pocket, betraying that she also assumed that it had been a gift from the girl he planned to marry.

'It has a certain sentimental value, I must admit,' he agreed carelessly.