‘Lucy.’ She jumped at the sound of her name being called out. ‘You got some explaining to do! Where are you? You know the aim of the game is to get the opponent’s flag, right?’

  She had to bite down hard on her lip to avoid the retort she wanted to throw back at him. Smug git. He knew she was there and was trying to get into her head.

  Nice try...wrong woman.

  ‘Lucy!’ he sang out again. The competitor in her was well and truly fired up by this Neanderthal. He’d really got under her skin for some reason. She wasn’t used to it, and the fact he was good-looking was a distraction.

  Behind them, a volley of shots rang out, raised voices bouncing off the trees around them. Lucy couldn’t make out the voices. She hoped it wasn’t Annie getting taken down.

  ‘Sounds like your team to me,’ Jackson teased. ‘Best of three, eh, Lucky Shot?’

  Not on your life, she fumed inwardly.

  She focused back on him, just in time to see him move from behind his cover. Now or never, she realised. This is for lunch. For the red team. For women doctors everywhere.

  Holding in a jagged breath, she closed one eye, focused on the trigger and squeezed.

  Pop-pop-pop!

  ‘What the...? Son of a—Ow!’

  She scrunched down tight as he came into the clearing with a jump, holding his backside. He pulled off his mask, his head scanning the terrain, and she could see the anger in his expression. ‘Lucy! Where are you?’

  She stood up, waggling her gloved fingers in his direction.

  ‘Right here, my favourite yeti. I win again, it seems.’

  ‘You didn’t win! You shot me in the butt—what do you mean, “yeti”?’

  The siren rang out in the distance. Lucy saw Jackson’s scowl deepen, and she saw why when she followed his gaze. A huge plume of red smoke was floating above the trees. Turning back to him, pulling off her own mask and letting her blonde hair fly free, she grinned triumphantly. He was glaring at her, rubbing at a spot on his rump.

  ‘Like I said, we win.’

  She could hear the others laughing and celebrating a short distance away, and she turned to join them. She was already looking forward to her spoils—a good lunch and an early shower after this enforced activity day.

  She was almost out of ear shot when Jackson’s words stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘I was telling you something earlier when we got interrupted.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she called out, not bothering to turn around.

  ‘Yeah,’ he half-growled back. ‘I was telling you that I’m the new A&E department head.’

  Turning on her heel, she looked him dead in the eye. It was intoxicating, all this winning. She felt as if she could take on the world right then. He was still rubbing at his backside, and she pushed away the pang of remorse she felt at shooting the man yet again—the first cute man she’d seen in a long time too, worse luck. Good job she didn’t have time for all that romance anyway. Somehow, work always got in the way somehow or the other. Even winning today had become a bit of an obsession, she realised.

  ‘Congratulations on the job,’ she told him earnestly. ‘Perhaps your new staff can patch you up when you get back. Just don’t tell them a little bitty woman did it, eh?’ She bit at her lip, realising she could be a little nicer in victory; Harriet, her sister, was always telling her that. ‘Listen, it’s just a game. I got carried away, you were being smug... Let’s go get some—’

  ‘Smug? You shot me—twice—in two very painful places! I know your type; you have to win, don’t you, have to come on top? Seriously, you didn’t even want to play the game!’

  ‘Says you! You were acting like the SAS, all testosterone and macho pecs.’

  ‘Macho pecs? Who do you think you are?’

  ‘I think I know your type. Your fragile male ego can’t take being outsmarted, with your big old manly chin, and your growly voice. It’s paintballing, not war.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, it is.’ He snorted. ‘You taking a shot at my posterior saw to that. We’ll be seeing each other again, so it looks like you’ll be seeing my manly pecs on a regular basis.’

  Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sure we can survive lunch without killing each other.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’ He laughed softly. ‘A&E at your hospital, Lucy.’ He half-limped over to her. ‘I’m starting at Leeds General on Monday.’

  She felt her jaw drop. ‘My hospital?’

  This time, it was Jackson doing the grinning. ‘Yep. You’re looking at the new Head of A&E.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she admitted, her eyes wide with realisation.

  ‘Yeah, well, that was obvious.’

  ‘I thought Ronnie would get the job.’ She said this half to herself, thinking about her sister’s husband. She knew he’d gone for the job.

  Another reason to hate this dude.

  ‘So I don’t deserve the job?’

  ‘Well, no, but Ronnie is already there—part of the team.’

  ‘I interviewed fair and square. Take it up with HR if you don’t like it.’ He folded his thick arms against his chest, still bristling with anger. ‘It was Ronnie who told me about the job in the first place, if you must know.’

  ‘You know Ronnie?’

  He laughed. ‘You could say that, yeah. I thought he was joking about you, but I can see now he underplayed his description.’

  What? Ronnie had told this jackass about her? Why was he telling people about her?

  Her defences were well and truly up now. She’d been up for flirting with this guy, and he’d already known who she was. She didn’t like it. ‘Yeah,’ she countered. ‘Well, Ronnie said nothing about you, and my world was better for it.’

  She couldn’t help but smirk, seeing him pout. He raised a dark brow when he saw her mocking expression. His eyes flashed bright, which made her smirk all the more. It was quite fun, sparring with him. At work, people tended to just do as she asked. She wasn’t mean, but her need for perfection and absorption in her job often made her come across as curt, aloof. It was kind of nice to butt heads with someone. ‘Don’t pout, Jackie boy. With shoulders as big as those, I would have thought you could carry an insult a little better.’

  He huffed out a laugh. ‘Yeah, well, with little sparrow legs like yours, I would have thought you would be used to running to keep up with the crowd.’ They both stood there, lips twitching with the need to suppress their laughter. She was enjoying this, but so was he, she realised when he grinned back at her wolfishly.

  What is going on here? Why hadn’t Ronnie told her about this guy, about him being here today? Was her sister matchmaking again?

  ‘Yeah, well, good things come in small packages. I could run rings around you any day of the week. Don’t think that I’ll give you an easy ride when you come to General.’ She fixed him with her sternest gaze. ‘We don’t play games at work, and if you got the job over Ronnie, well, you had better earn it.’ Family was important to her, something to be protected. They didn’t need a fox in their hen house, disturbing things, ruffling feathers. When was change ever good, other than in medicine?

  ‘Earn it, eh?’ His playful look was long gone now. He was closed off. She might have mourned it if she hadn’t been so guarded. ‘Well, time will tell, little lady.’ He side-stepped her on his way to meet the others. ‘I’m Ronnie’s brother, by the way—Jackson Denning. I’m sure he mentioned me.’

  Lucy almost fainted on the spot.

  His brother? Oh, my God.

  It clicked. Ronnie’s older brother, Jackson, was a doctor, working overseas. Harriet had babbled on about him moving back to the UK. As usual, Lucy hadn’t listened. ‘You’re...’ She was stumbling over her own tongue now. ‘You’re his brother, Jackson.’

  It was his turn to smirk now. He’d turned around and she could see it now—the Denning jawline, the chocolate hue of his eyes. ‘Didn’t I just say that?’ The fact he was still nursing his bottom while pinning her with his gaze made her face flush for more reasons than one. ‘See you at work. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Trigger.’

  He waggled his fingers behind him as if he was pressing a gun trigger, and for the first time in her life Lucy understood what people meant when they said their blood was boiling. Something about the big idiot currently walking away from her made her want to grind her teeth down to stumps.

  ‘You’re being childish,’ she called after him. ‘I didn’t know who you were!’

  ‘“You’re being childish”,’ he mocked back in a squeaky voice. ‘Be seeing ya, Lucy. Real soon.’

  He disappeared out of sight, and she stood alone in the forest.

  ‘Hell,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Well, you’ve done it now, Bakewell.’

  She started her slow trudge towards camp. Ronnie and Harriet were going to have a field day when they heard.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Five years later

  ‘HARRIET, YOU KNOW I’ll try.’

  Lucy allowed her forehead to rest against the large glass window for a moment, listening to her little sister’s trademark slow sigh. The one that told Lucy in no uncertain terms that her sister was disappointed. She’d been doing it since they’d been fresh-faced teenagers, taking very different paths despite there only being a couple of years between the pair.

  ‘I know,’ Harriet said down the line. ‘I get it. I just wanted you there. You know it’s just us.’

  Lucy lifted her head when a nurse came to check a patient history with her. ‘Just a sec, Harry.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed with the nurse. ‘Monitor her every hour and call the parents to update them. I sent them down to get something to eat while the tests were being done.’ The nurse nodded, leaving Lucy alone again in front of the viewing window of the SCBU—Lucy’s little haven, where she came to remind herself why she did the job in the first place. Why she was probably going to miss her niece’s second birthday, and why she was currently getting the sigh from her younger sibling. To remind herself why she annoyed her family with the sacrifices she made again and again.

  ‘I’m back, Harriet, but I have to get back to the ward. And you are not allowed to play the “dead parents” card—no other family guilt trip for another month at least. I promise, I will try my best to get there. I already changed my shift, but you know what it’s like.’

  But Harriet didn’t, not really. She’d been a teaching assistant before having Zoe; now she was a full-time mum. She’d never been one for all-consuming careers and motherhood together. She was happy to have taken a few years off to raise Zoe full-time. She’d wanted family more than anything else, and now she was a mother herself—a great mum; the kind who used Pinterest and made handmade gifts and elaborate cupcakes every Christmas. The polar opposite of Lucy, who was a workaholic with half a cucumber and a bottle of vodka in her fridge as opposed to real food.

  When their parents had passed away when they’d been younger, Lucy only just an adult, they’d both veered off in different directions. Lucy had devoted herself to medicine and looking after her teenage sister, and Harriet had grown up wanting family life more than ever. The one thing they had in common though, was their fierce love for each other. Trauma was a pretty strong glue, and it held people together.

  ‘Well, Jackson’s coming; he took the day off.’

  Lucy turned to look back at the special care babies, feeling her irritation grow tenfold at the mention of Dr Perfect. She scowled at the floor, wishing he could feel her scorn through the layers of brick. Being an A&E doctor was hard—and, sure, running a department was hardly a doddle; she could attest to that herself. But still, did he have to make her feel like an idiot in front of her sister?

  His Mr Wonderful routine over the last few years had really got on her nerves, if she was honest. He still insisted on calling her Trigger, which made her want to peel off her own skin. He pulled faces at her like a petulant toddler whenever she alone was looking, and he seemed to revel in the fact that he irritated the ever-living hell out of her just by existing in the same proximity. Sure, she did the same to him, but still—he was the jerk in this situation. Sometimes she even wished for a paintball gun, just so she could pop one off again. That day had set the tempo of their working relationship. They were like stagnant embers around each other, fired into life by the other’s presence. Every time she crossed paths with him at the hospital, she had to consciously work on not strangling him with her stethoscope.

  To make matters worse, he was liked by everyone else. Of all the people to be her sister’s brother-in-law, of course it had to be the flashy doc who loved to wind her up at every opportunity. The one guy she secretly fancied even while he was the biggest pain in her butt.

  They’d become family after that day. She’d been maid of honour at Ronnie’s and Harriet’s wedding and he’d been the best man. He was there every time they did something as a family. Family holidays were quite often torture, with Jackson in his bathing shorts, tanned and beautiful, being ogled by women around the pool, while Lucy stuck her head in a book and slathered herself in suntan lotion.

  She knew he at her looked too; she could see him run his eyes over her sometimes. He’d make little comments about a new dress. He always seemed to notice when she had her hair cut or did something new with it. It had been five years of tension between them, sexual and otherwise, and it showed no sign of stopping. But he was family, her sister’s brother-in-law, uncle to her niece, so she did what she usually did—she buried it. Focused on the fact that, despite the fact he made her pulse quicken, he also well and truly got on her wick.

  ‘Yeah, well, he would.’

  Of course Jackson was going. He never put a foot wrong, did he? Jackass. Whenever he worked late and missed a family occasion, he was given a free pass by her own sister.

  ‘What was that?’ Harriet said down the phone line.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lucy half-sang back. ‘Listen, I have to go, but I’ll see you there, okay?’

  ‘Fine.’ Harriet breathed. ‘Love you, sis.’

  ‘Love you too.’ Lucy smiled back. ‘Give Zoe a big hug from her favourite aunt.’

  ‘You’re her only aunt.’ Harriet laughed. ‘I will. See you soon.’

  Lucy glanced at the time on her phone before going back to paediatrics. If she was going to try and get to that birthday party, she had to get going.

  * * *

  ‘Cute, aren’t they?’

  Jackson took in the little sleeping bundle in the back of his brother’s car. Her hair was stuck up in little tufts, and she was sweaty from the afternoon’s exertions. She was adorable.

  ‘Yeah, but I couldn’t eat a whole one.’

  Ronnie chuckled, wiping a stray blob of chocolate off his daughter’s cheek. She stirred, her eyelashes fluttering, before her head dropped again.

  ‘You’re the worst, you know that, right?’

  ‘Of course. That’s why I don’t procreate like you.’ Jackson leaned in, brushing Zoe’s little warm hand. ‘She is all your wife, though, right down to those baby blues.’

  Ronnie wasn’t offended in the slightest. ‘I know. Good genes.’ Jackson watched his little brother’s contented grin turn devilish. The pair of them were standing by Ronnie’s car in the car park of the local soft play area where they’d just partied. Well, if he could call ten very enthusiastic toddlers screeching and whooping for two hours on a sugar high partying.

  ‘Speaking of genes, here comes Auntie Lucy!’

  Jackson’s lip curled into a smile before he could stop himself, seeing Lucy turn into the car park. She practically screeched to a stop a few spaces away. Seconds later, the door was flung open to a chorus of, ‘Sorry, sorry! I had an emergency at the last minute I couldn’t hand off!’

  Jackson watched her face fall when she took in the scene, Zoe tuckered out and sound asleep.

  ‘Oh, no! I missed the whole thing? Really?’

  She scooped a huge cellophane-trimmed basket from the back seat and huffed her way over. Jackson saw the tension in her shoulders; she was wrapped up tighter than the over-the-top birthday gift.

  ‘Sis, I told you not to go mad!’ Ronnie, as ever, was thrilled to see his sister-in-law, who looked like his pretty blonde wife. They had the same hair colour and cute little brows sitting over bright blue-green eyes.

  That was where the similarities ended, however. Harriet was always calm, collected. The twisted-up pretzel stomping over to them was someone who played a whole different ball game. Even at a kid’s party, her face looked pinched. Her eyes roved over the party goers leaving with their progeny, who were all either half-asleep in their parents’ arms or still bouncing up and down from their cake and fun overload. Jackson watched her watching them and wondered what was going on in that pretty head of hers. It was kind of a hobby of his, working her out.

  Ronnie took the gift basket from her, his eyes boggling at the array of clothes and toys stuffed into the gift. ‘This is ridiculous. She’s only two, you know, not leaving for uni with the need for a capsule wardrobe. Did you leave anything in the shop?’

  She rolled her eyes with a good-natured smirk, and Jackson watched silently as her shoulders started to dip.

  ‘Well, I don’t see her as much as I’d like. I have to spoil my only niece, right?’ The furrow between her brows returned with a vengeance when she spotted her in the back seat. ‘She’s asleep.’ She looked...disappointed. Jackson could see it written all over her face, just before she hid it behind the expression he was most accustomed to seeing—that of the closed-up professional. The expression that had given her the nickname Medusa at work. Not that anyone dared say it in her proximity; that would be professional suicide. If her glare didn’t turn them to stone first, her tongue lashings were strong enough to strip the hide from a rhino.