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Not that that meant she hadn't known where he'd been or what he'd been doing. Given that she'd gone on to train in the same field, and he and his team at Harvard were among the dominant influences, in the modern practice of heart medicine, she couldn't have helped following his career.

'I dislike the thought of people knowing and discussing personal things about me,' she added reasonably. 'Please, try just for once seeing things from my point of view. If someone asks you outright, fine. I know you won't lie and I'm not asking you to. All I'm asking is that you don't volunteer our history unasked.'

'Fine.' He spoke wearily. 'If that's the sort of thing that pushes your happy buttons these days, so be it. Anything for an easy life. Can we get on with the tour now, please?'

'But before when I said just that—' Calculating from his narrowed eyes that to continue would have been unwise, she broke off before she reminded him that it was he who'd interrupted her tour earlier and he who'd sustained their confrontation when she'd tried to make him turn from it.

Turning her back on him, she walked off down the corridor again. 'Paediatrics down there,' she informed him, determined to do the job properly regardless of what, if any, attention he paid to her spiel. 'Two full wards as well as a twelve-bed specialist children's surgical unit and paediatric intensive care. Kids having major surgery still have two dedicated acute beds in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit, then they're transferred here when they're stable.

'You'll find the nurses are very switched on down here. They're the best I've ever worked with. There's an eight-bed neonatal unit for our babies and off there to the right are the rest of the administration offices, as well as a few suites for out-of-town parents and anyone staying over.'

She felt him following her through into the main five-storied ward block. 'Outpatients, exercise and ECG rooms and X-Ray, where you'll find three catheter labs.' The cardiac cath. suite was basically a theatre unit used for sterile procedures within the X-Ray department. 'You'll find basically everything you'll need for outpatients down here.'

Built in a cross-like shape, each floor of St Peter's had four wards or departments branched off the central core, which contained waiting areas and the lifts and stairwells. Not happy with the idea of being stuck with Luke in a confined space, she veered away from the bank of lifts and made for the heavy door that opened onto the stairwell.

'Medical and Surgical Intensive Cares,' she recited carefully as they rounded the landing on the first floor. 'Largely just for ventilated patients, although when we're busy we tend to stretch that. Coronary Care's here, too, plus the transplant unit, although to get to that you have to go via the airlock doors around the other side. The transplant ward itself and all cardiac surgery wards, plus Pathology and all the labs,' she said briskly, as they reached the second floor.

'Four medical wards,' she explained at the next floor. 'J, K, M and P. You'll probably end up, like me, with most of your inpatients on either J or M. You'll find your way around them quickly enough even if you can't remember them now. Most of the offices are here, too, along the north wing, but I assume you'll be taking over Harry's big one which is up on the top floor.

'Private medicine and day surgery,' she continued, opening the door on the top floor for them because it seemed preferable to spending more time in the narrow stairwell. 'That's it really, I think, apart from a couple of buildings scattered around the grounds here and there, including the library, post-graduate centre and the student teaching rooms. Mostly, though, we tend to use the ward seminar rooms for small-group teaching. The staff canteen's down near Rehab but there's a shop and public cafe in the reception area near Outpatients which both do better food than the hospital stuff.

'Well, that's it, then.' She wiped her hands together carefully. Luke hadn't spoken since their confrontation in the, corridor and his expression now wasn't encouraging, but he was here to stay now for however long he chose to remain at St Peter's and she'd go mad if she let herself keep worrying about what he was thinking. 'I expect you'll find it easier to see the place in more detail when you're actually working. Feel free to ask anybody anything. You might think you don't know many of us yet, but all of us know who you are.'

'Where are you going now?'

'Home.' She cut him off before he could repeat his earlier suggestion that they meet outside the hospital then checked her watch with deliberate thoroughness. 'In fact, I'm in rather a hurry. I have an early start in the morning so unless you've any questions about the hospital...?' When he said nothing she added quietly, 'I do appreciate you making the effort to call me Annabel, Luke. I realise it's another syllable you'll have to add into your busy life but if you say it quite fast it's not so much effort and it means a lot to me.'

'You can go now.' He opened the door they'd just come through for her. 'I get the message,
Annie.
Loud and clear.'

Annabel opened her mouth to voice some protest about his use of 'Annie' again, but the silent warning in his eyes made her decide to close her lips again and, with careful dignity, she fled.

'What
did you think of him?' Geoffrey asked, cornering her the next morning in her office before her ward round.

Annabel stiffened. 'Who?'

'Oh, come on.' Her colleague's eyes blinked owlishly at her behind his round horn-rimmed spectacles. 'The big American. The brilliant Professor. Dr Superman. Didn't you go to the reception yesterday? What do you think? How is he?'

'What did
you
think?' Annabel asked guardedly.

'I haven't met him yet.' Geoffrey rolled his eyes as if he found it incredible—although she couldn't imagine why— that she hadn't realised
that.
'I've been away for six days. You've been covering my patients. Earth to Annabel. Earth to Annabel. Are you with me yet?'

'Sorry.' She felt herself flush. 'I forgot.' Geoffrey had been at a conference in Bristol and had eschewed the commute in favour of staying at the conference hotel until late the night before. She shook her head a little, hoping that might help clear it. 'He seems fine,' she said slowly.

Geoffrey rolled his eyes again. 'Fine,' he echoed cheerfully. 'She thinks he's fine. Come on, Annabel, you must be able to do better than that. You're the third person I've asked this morning. The first one said she was still swooning from passing him in the corridor on Friday morning and the second one's contemplating divorcing her husband and three children so she can make a play for him with a clear conscience.

'Now, much as I appreciate you trying to protect my
fragile ego, you can tell me what you really think, you know. I won't challenge the man to a duel or anything like that. At least, not unless he tries to sweep you off your feet.'

Annabel choked. For a few seconds they were both distracted, she with coughing and then getting her breath again and Geoffrey with finding her some water to swallow. 'The one thing in this world,' she pronounced hoarsely, after swallowing a generous mouthful of the drink he rushed her from the cooler outside the office, 'that I can promise you without hesitation is that the only place Luke Geddes will ever contemplate sweeping me is out of his way.'

'Phew!' Grinning, Geoffrey made a mock forehead-wiping gesture. 'That's a relief. You didn't think much of him, then?'

'He's an attractive man,' she conceded cautiously, since to deny that would obviously be suspicious.

'But not your type?'

'Definitely
not my type,' she avowed. She doubted she'd ever be completely over Luke but there'd been a time when she'd loved him so blindly her passion had rendered her oblivious to the irreparable flaws in their relationship. Romantic emotions and sex couldn't sustain a marriage when a couple had such different expectations and were as fundamentally incompatible as she and Luke had been. If she'd only realised that sooner she could have saved him considerable inconvenience and herself a great deal of anguish.

Geoffrey, on the other hand, was—
nothing
—nothing, like her ex-husband. Which was probably why she liked him so much. Geoffrey was mild and undemanding, supportive, kind and sweet and entirely lacking Luke's particularly ruthless brand of driving ambition. Geoffrey was a wonderful colleague and, more than that, he was a friend, and since she didn't have many of those these days she treasured him doubly.

On an impulse she reached up and touched his smooth cheek. 'You're a very nice man,' she said softly.

'Marry me, then,' he came back swiftly.

She recoiled. 'Geoffrey—'

'Sex would do in the meantime while you think about it.'

Her eyes went so wide they hurt. She took another hasty step back. 'Geoffrey, I really would prefer you didn't say those sorts—'

'I know. I know.' Backing away, he held up his palms defensively although he'd started laughing. 'Relax, Annabel. You know I'm only teasing. But if you ever decide to unlock that metaphorical chastity belt of yours...'

'You could do much better than me, you know.' Flushing hotly, Annabel collected the last of the notes she needed and followed him to the door. 'Why don't you try Miriam Frost?' she asked, referring to the charge nurse on one of the paediatric wards as she pulled her office door shut behind her. 'She still seems interested in you. She's very pretty.'

'I like Miriam but she doesn't have big grey pools of eyes and a body to die for,' he pronounced mournfully.

Annabel froze. 'Have you been drinking?'

'Pepsi.' He grinned. 'It was all that was left in the machine and I had a couple of cans. I'm high on sugar and caffeine.'

'I think you might be extremely high.'

'Which doesn't mean you don't have a figure to die for.'

She stared at him, bewildered. 'Geoffrey, you don't know anything about my body. You've never even seen me in a swimming costume.'

'I'm a man, aren't I? I've got X-ray eyes.' Still grinning, he scanned her figure with cheeky assessment. 'Behind those long dresses and that big white coat there's a taut, silky young body, begging to be let loose.'

Annabel rolled her eyes. 'With an imagination like that you should be in cosmetic surgery, not cardiology. I'll see you in clinic.' After their respective ward rounds they were both due in Outpatients for the rest of the morning. 'Are you going to make it to the Dean's lecture?'

'Wouldn't miss it for the world.' He waved as he strode away, his grin telling her he hadn't forgotten it was her turn do deliver the weekly lunch-hour lecture session that day.

Her registrar and senior house officer were waiting on the ward. Part of being a specialist heart hospital was that all junior medical staff had to have obtained their full medical registration. Because that meant they couldn't appoint junior house officers, routine ward work was generally the domain of the senior house officers, qualified doctors who'd already done one or more years of post-graduate training.

The hospital functioned as a tertiary referral centre— meaning they took referrals from other hospitals rather than through self-presentations or the ambulance services—so they had no walk-in emergency department. Apart from direct referrals from other hospitals—from London as well as the rest of the UK and frequently abroad—the only other routes for admissions were through GPs when the patients were known to them already or via the outpatient clinics held by the various consultants attached to St Peter's.

Her senior house officer had just finished reviewing a woman Annabel had admitted directly from her clinic the afternoon before. 'Daisy's improved a lot overnight, Dr Stuart.'

Annabel nodded. Daisy Miller was a twenty-year-old woman with heart failure secondary to a dilated cardiomyopathy, essentially a condition where the heart became so enlarged and stretched it couldn't function properly.

Hundreds of possible causes for Daisy's illness were known, including exposure to myriad toxins and viruses and other infections and even immune reactions to insect bites. But with Daisy, just as in more than three-quarters of Annabel's other young patients with the same condition, none of the tests she and her predecessor at St Peter's had performed had given them any information about what the specific cause had been in her case.

Daisy had been waiting now almost two years for a heart transplant. When Annabel had seen her urgently the day before she'd been severely breathless from a build-up of fluid on her lungs and around her body.

'Her chest X-ray this morning's definitely clearer.' The younger doctor held two films up to the back-lit X-ray screen so Annabel could assess them and compare the changes. 'She wants to ask you if she can please leave the ward to go out with a special friend to a movie tonight.'

'A
special
friend?' Annabel, agreeing with the other doctor's assessment of the X-ray, looked away from it, her brows lifting. Friends, with Daisy, invariably meant men friends. 'What's happened to poor Jason?'

Hannah, her registrar, pulled a face. She drew a dramatic finger across her throat. 'Ditched,' she pronounced. '"Too clingy", Daisy decided. There's been one in between, but if you ask me this latest one's the best yet. He's a football player. A real, professional one. And it seems serious. Daisy met him at that fund-raising telethon a couple of months ago. I saw him last night and I can understand the attraction. He's got a body you would not believe.'

Annabel smiled. 'Trust Daisy,' she said lightly. Despite struggling with a heart condition that would have kept most people housebound, Daisy, a gorgeous and lively young woman, threw every tiny ounce of energy she could muster into maintaining her busy social life and fund-raising for one of the charities supporting research into heart disease. 'Well, considering she was too breathless to talk yesterday, let alone walk, if she's well enough this morning to be wanting to go out to movies we've done some good. Let's go and see her.'