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 Page B

with the barbeque. I’ll bring Kate when we finish here.’
    Brian’s assertions cut across her thoughts, so it seemed that even if she’d wanted Hamish as her tour guide, she wasn’t going to get him.
    By the time they’d seen the hospital, met dozens of staff, completed the forms Brian required for insurance purposes and walked back to the house, the party on the back veranda was in full swing. The smell of searing meat hung in the air, while sizzling onions tantalised Kate’s taste-buds.
    ‘After a dry biscuit for breakfast and some sandwiches for a meal at afternoon teatime, that certainly smells good,’ she said to Brian, who had put his arm around her waist to guide her into the crowd.
    Cal was there, so she headed towards him, anxious to know when Jack’s operation would take place, only realising who he was with as she drew closer.
    ‘So, seen all you need to of the hospital?’ Hamish asked, frowning at a point over her shoulder.
    ‘More than I could take in,’ Kate told him, feeling a new touch on her back and realising Brian had followed her. ‘It’s far bigger than I thought and I’ll be getting lost for at least the first week.’
    ‘I’m sure you won’t,’ Cal said kindly. ‘Did you look in on Jack?’
    ‘He was still sleeping and Charles was with him so I didn’t go in. When’s the op? Have you heard?’
    Cal shrugged.
    ‘Between ten and twelve’s the best timing we’ve got so far,’ he said. ‘Though we should know more by nine when the surgeon in Brisbane is due to start the last patient on his list.’
    Brian had moved to her side and was asking if she wanted a drink, and politeness decreed she answer him.
    ‘Something non-alcoholic—I haven’t had much sleep,’ Kate told him, pleased he would have to move away so she could ask Cal about the operation. But to her astonishment Brian simply turned to Hamish and said, ‘Hamish, would you get a squash for Kate?’
    Hamish—Cal, too, for that matter—seemed equally surprised, but Hamish moved obediently away, while Brian, perhaps sensing everyone’s reaction, explained, ‘I don’t live here so don’t want to be poking around in their kitchen.’
    It was an acceptable excuse, yet Kate felt uncomfortable that Brian was sticking to her like Velcro. She knew it was probably kindness on his part—after all, she was the new face in this gathering of friends and colleagues—but the discomfort remained.
    Although being uncomfortable about Brian was certainly distracting her from thoughts of Hamish.
    Setting both aside, she returned to her mission—finding out from Cal what lay ahead for Jack.
    ‘I’m virtually doing a hip replacement. We have prosthetic devices here because we have a visiting orthopaedic surgeon who comes once a quarter, operating in Croc Creek to save the patients travelling to him. It will depend on the damage to the neck of the trochanter. If the bullet is deeply lodged, the orthopod in Brisbane suggests we take if off completely and insert a new-age ceramic replacement and ceramic acetabular socket for it.’
    Cal smiled at her.
    ‘Want to watch?’
    Kate shuddered.
    ‘I had to do a certain amount of theatre work during my training, but the noise of the saws in orthopaedic work put me off that kind of surgery for life.’
    ‘Besides, she needs to sleep,’ Gina put in, arriving with Hamish and the lemon squash. ‘She’ll need all her wits about her to judge the pool entries tomorrow.’
    Hamish handed her the drink, and somehow he and Gina managed to detach Brian from her side. Kate wasn’t sure but she felt it had been deliberate, a sense confirmed when, a little later, Gina whispered, ‘Brian makes a play for all the new female staff and Hamish felt you might be too polite to escape his tenacious clutches.’
    Hamish felt that, did he?
    Kate scowled at the man in question who’d moved, with his arm around Brian’s shoulders, over to the barbeque. She was about to launch into a ‘What right had he