The Spice of Life. Caroline Anderson

       CHAPTER ONE

      KATHLEEN HENNESSY was spoiling for a fight.

      She had just spent a weekend at home in Belfast dutifully admiring the latest Hennessy grandchild and enduring countless little digs about good Catholic girls and settling down to raise a family instead of racketing about the world enjoying herself—as if it was such a sin to enjoy life, for God’s sake, she thought angrily, and anyway six years as Sister in the accident and emergency department of the Audley Memorial in Suffolk hardly constituted racketing! Anybody would think she was a promiscuous little tart, the way her family reproached her for her single status …

      All except Maria. She understood—mainly because she was only twenty-six and already had four children and another on the way. She had had such a promising career as a physio, Kathleen thought crossly, and now she was trapped at home with her children while her husband powered quietly on up the career ladder, leaving her behind.

      And nothing wrong with it at all, if that was what was right for you, but it wasn’t right for Maria, and it sure as eggs wasn’t right for Kath!

      She turned her little car precisely into a parking place in the hospital car park, climbed out and slammed the door. Damned dictators! Why couldn’t they just understand that she didn’t want to be married and settled with umpteen kids and a mortgage up to the sky and no life to call her own?

      Selfish, they’d called her. OK. That was fine. So she was selfish. Perhaps that was why she worked the hours she did in the most gruelling part of the hospital, picking up the pieces—literally, sometimes—and putting them back together if possible, consoling distraught relatives if not.

      ‘They probably think I’m still carrying bedpans all day!’ she said to no one in particular, and locked her car door with a vicious twist.

      As she did so she glanced towards the entrance of A and E, checking automatically for Jim Harris’s car—except it wouldn’t be there, she remembered with a twinge of regret. Jim had left, moved on to London and was heading up a new Rapid Response Unit there in connection with HEMS, the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service.

      She wondered what his replacement would be like. Well, they’d find out soon, she thought, glancing at her watch, and then stared in amazement as a heavy black motorbike cruised lazily into the consultant’s slot and stopped.

      ‘Well, of all the nerve!’ she muttered, and, yanking her keys out of the door, she shoved them into her bag and marched across the car park, head held high.

      ‘Excuse me, you can’t leave that there!’ she said firmly, and looked him straight in the eye.

      Her first mistake. Even through the streaky visor she could see that he had the most mesmerising eyes—laughing eyes—laughing at her. She looked hastily away—and found her eyes glued to a body that had no business being so magnetically attractive.

      He was still sitting astride the bike, balancing it with his long, lean legs tautly encased in black leather. Hell, the whole man was tautly encased in black leather! His body flexed as he hauled the heavy bike up on to the centre stand, and her heart jerked and accelerated to a steady two hundred beats a minute. Well, that was what it felt like.

      Ridiculous! She dragged her eyes up and watched as, unhurriedly, he stripped off his heavy gloves and laid them across the bike before lifting his helmet off and balancing it in front of him. His hair was dark, almost black, rumpled by the helmet but unruly anyway, and a heavy stubble covered his jaw, lending him a rakish and piratical air. His lips were firm and sensual—and twitching.

      Ignoring the kick of her heart as she met his eyes again without the intervention of the visor, she tried again.

      ‘You can’t leave your bike here, it’s the consultant’s parking space! If he’s needed urgently and he can’t find anywhere to park, he could waste precious minutes while someone’s lying dying for want of his attention!’

      A dark, slender brow arched tauntingly above the laughing grey eyes. Holy Mary, he had lovely eyes! She forced herself to concentrate.

      ‘Aren’t you being rather melodramatic?’ he said in a deep, cultured voice with a deceptively lazy lilt to it. It made her toes curl just listening to him, and perversely that made her even angrier.

      ‘No, I’m not, and if you knew the first damn thing about Accident and Emergency you would know I wasn’t!’ she snapped.

      He inclined his head in a cheeky little salute and grinned. ‘I concede to your superior knowledge, Sister,’ he murmured.

      Oh, that voice!

      ‘Good,’ she said, and was disgusted to notice that her voice was softening. She firmed it up. ‘So, please move your bike.’

      His lips twitched. ‘I really don’t think—’

      ‘Are you going to move it, or am I going to contact the hospital security staff and get them to move it for you?’

      The smile blossomed on