Free The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For by Alison Roberts, Meredith Webber

could be midnight before we get going.’
    ‘Late night for all the staff. Because of the von Willebrand’s you’ll need Alix on hand and Emily for the anaesthetic—do you want me to assist?’ Hamish asked.
    Cal grinned at him.
    ‘You’ll probably be more useful as a babysitter. Knowing Gina, she’ll insist on assisting. I know it’s not heart surgery, but as soon as she heard you’d found Lucky’s father, she’s been itching to get involved.’
    Kate was only half listening to the conversation, aware more of the interaction of the two men and the sense of belonging that being part of a hospital staff engendered. Dangerous stuff—belonging. She finished her sandwiches, drained her coffee-cup and stood up.
    ‘Speaking of babysitting, I’d better get back to Jack,’ she said, and if Hamish looked surprised by her abrupt departure, that was too bad. She’d opted to go through an agency to get this job, rather than applying direct to the hospital. She knew from experience with agency nurses in the hospital in Melbourne that they worked set contracts. They came, they did their jobs, remaining uninvolved with the people around them because they were moving on. Her contract was for two months. Long enough, she’d decided, to find out what she wanted—needed—to know. Then she’d move on.
    Yes, she wanted to find her father, and to learn the circumstances of her birth—she needed to know these things to give her new life some foundation. But her new life would not bedependent on other people. From now on, she was depending solely on herself.
    ‘He’s sleeping, and so should you be,’ Charles told her, when she arrived in Recovery where Jack was being held awaiting his second operation.
    ‘I feel I should stay,’ she said, but Jill, on the other side of Jack’s bed, shook her head.
    ‘I’ll order you to bed if I need to,’ she said, smiling to soften the words. ‘But common sense should tell you, you need to sleep.’
    Kate nodded her agreement but as she walked away she wondered why she felt a little lost now Jack had so many other people to be there for him. This wasn’t how someone who depended solely on herself should be feeling.
    She made her way back to the house, pleased Hamish was still over at the hospital with Cal, then, as she heard voices in the kitchen, contrarily wished he was here so she wouldn’t have to face a roomful of strangers alone.
    ‘Here she is—the elected judge,’ someone said, and Kate looked helplessly around the smiling faces, catching sight, eventually, of Gina’s.
    And CJ’s.
    CJ and Rudolph and another little boy were cutting and pasting something in a corner where the kitchen opened onto the back veranda.
    ‘Elected judge?’ Kate echoed weakly. What on earth were they talking about?
    Gina took pity on her, coming forward and introducing her to Mike—the paramedic chopper pilot Hamish had spoken of—and Marcia, a fellow nurse. There was also Susie, a pretty woman with short blonde curly hair and blue eyes who was apparently the hospital physiotherapist, and Georgie Turner, O and G specialist, a stunning young woman with very short shiny black hair and long legs encased in skin-tight jeans. The only other man there was someone called Brian—someoneKate realised she should have met earlier, as apparently he was the hospital administrator.
    ‘Poor Kate, I bet she doesn’t even know about Wygera and the swimming pool,’ Georgie said. ‘And here we are appointing her judge of the designs.’
    ‘Judge of the designs? I’m a nurse, not an architect.’
    The others all chuckled.
    ‘We don’t need an architect—well, not yet. We need an unbiased person, someone who doesn’t know any of the people of Wygera, to choose the best model or design then we’ll pass it on to an architect to draw up the plans for us.’
    Kate was about to protest that surely the architect should be the judge when Susie spoke.
    ‘We’ve been arguing about it for ages, then decided