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Gillian tried to stifle the pain and dismay she felt that his plans for the future certainly didn't include her and she turned gratefully to the comfort that Robin and Steve Offered during those first difficult days of knowing that she had fallen in love with a man who would never love her.

She knew that Steve liked and admired her very much. She didn't think that he meant to fall in love with her and she was thankful. Robin loved her too much and that made her feel guilty, knowing that she would never care enough to marry him. Perhaps she should never have met Mark Barlow and discovered just what had always been missing from her feelings for Robin and every other man. Love without sexual longing was a romantic theory that didn't promise to be very lasting, Gillian decided, facing up to facts. Sexual desire without love had proved to be impossible for her, after all.

She didn't know why she loved Mark. He was arrogant, autocratic. He wasn't endearing. He was cold and critical and contemptuous. He took too much for granted. But there had been moments when she felt that he could be a very different man caring and concerned, warm and tender and reassuring, kind and thoughtful, if he ever allowed himself to love.

It was that other Mark, so well hidden from the world by a cloak of arrogance and reserve, that Gillian had recognised and instinctively loved long before she admitted that her dislike of him was just a defence for her too-vulnerable heart. She hadn't wanted to accept that he was the man she was destined to love. For she had known from the first that she had little chance of happiness with such a man.

Loving him, longing for him, pretending not to care that he flirted with other girls and meant to marry Louise, she went about her work at Greenvale with a smile carefully pinned to her lips and an apparently light heart. She was thankful for the training that had taught her to discipline her emotions and push personal problems to the back of her mind when she was on duty. She was thankful for the pride that protected her from hurling herself at his head like too many other women.

Later that week, she was sent to Theatre for the day to stand in for Helen Irving who was off duty.

Preparing the theatre and the necessary equipment for the day's list, longer than usual, she was almost too busy to notice Mark's arrival. She was checking the array of instruments and swabs and gallipots on a prepared trolley, mentally running over the procedure for the first operation on the list, when he paused by her side on his way to the changing-room.

'Good morning, Gillian. Everything under control?'

'Certainly,' she returned lightly, chin tilting as though something in his tone had doubted her efficiency. In fact, he was almost friendly. It was the first sign of a thaw in days.

'Good. I've changed the running order, by the way. Sorry it's short notice. I've decided to do the breast biopsy first thing. I've a feeling it will lead to a partial mastectomy at least. It might even need a radical.'

She looked at him quickly. 'You'll carry on if it proves necessary?'

'We've Mrs Hume's permission to do so and it will spare the traumatic build-up to another operation. Steve can keep her lightly under while we wait for the lab result and they've promised to rush it through. She's very anxious to get it over, of course. Women care deeply about these things, don't they?' In his deep voice was the warm understanding and the genuine compassion that every good surgeon must possess.

Gillian nodded. 'Most women are very brave, I've always found. But it seems to leave psychological scars that last much longer than the surgical ones ... losing a breast.' She gave an unprofessional little shudder. 'I'd hate it myself. And Mrs Hume isn't very much older than I am, is she?'

'Twenty-eight. It's very unfortunate. But she seems to be facing up to the threat very sensibly. She'll need sympathetic nursing and a lot of help from her husband if I'm right.'

He watched while Gillian counted swabs. He was very conscious of the femininity of her slight figure in the loose green gown of a theatre nurse, most of her pale hair hidden by the loose cap. He was enchanted by the fair prettiness of her small face, the delicate features and striking blue eyes that could be too expressive, leaving him in no doubt that her feelings were very mixed where he was concerned.

She was on his mind, day and night. Wanting her was a torment. Constantly threaded through that fierce desire was a strong strand of need that deepened with every passing day. He had always been utterly self-sufficient, needing no one, content with his bachelor way of life and cherishing his freedom. Since meeting Gillian, he had discovered that there was something lacking in his life, after all. He wasn't yet ready to commit himself entirely and irrevocably to loving her. But he was very near to it.

It was damnable that she continued to deny the existence of a flame of mutual attraction that had leaped to life almost at their first meeting and burned fiercely ever since. It was frustrating that she rebuffed every attempt on his part to bring them closer with the inevitable and very necessary result.

Mark was a proud man. He had never found it necessary to swallow his pride to get what he wanted from life, women or anything else. But Gillian was a very special woman. She seemed to be more important to him than his pride. So he would have to go on trying to win her liking and respect and friendship even at the risk of further rebuffs.

He had never been a patient man. But what Gillian offered promised to be worth all the waiting that it took.

'How do you feel? Any nerves?' he asked lightly.

'None at all. You've forgotten that I'm very used to theatre work,' she said briskly, knowing she mustn't warm to the unexpected smile in his eyes or the friendliness in his voice. He would only disappoint her again.

'And getting used to me?' he suggested. 'You've already had the worst of my tongue and my temper, after all.' He smiled. 'You know me better than you did if not as well as I'd hoped.'

Gillian glanced at him, a little colour stealing into her face. He sounded regretful. But he had quickly consoled himself with the pretty girl in pink—and he had certainly been flirting with Beverley Jakes for days. How could she believe that he was genuinely interested in her—or that he promised anything but a few golden hours in his arms?

'I may know you better. I don't trust you any more than I ever did,' she said slowly.

'Could it be that you don't trust your own feelings, Gillian?' He was direct.

She was silent, checking the carefully labelled hypodermic syringes with their dosages of different drugs that were always kept in readiness for any emergency while the patient was on the operating table.

Steve came through the swing doors from one of the ante-rooms, gowned and booted, ready for the day's work, his auburn hair rebelling beneath the green cap and gleaming in the bright overhead lighting.

'Chatting up my girl again!' he demanded in mock outrage, eyes dancing. 'Hands off! Anyway, you're too late. She's going out with me tonight.'

Mark smiled thinly and strode away to scrub-up, abruptly reminded that a patient would soon be needing his attention, his surgical skill and his entire concentration. An operating theatre was not the place to talk his way into Gillian's favour—and it seemed that he couldn't compete with the light and obviously successful touch of his colleague.

However light-hearted he might be about everything else, Steve took his job very seriously. He went over to the complicated arrangement of valves and cylinders that were his responsibility and began to check that everything was in order before the arrival of the first patient on that morning's list.

Gillian hurried away to explain to the rest of the theatre staff that Mrs Hume was first on the list instead of the appendicectomy they had been expecting. She rang down to check that the patient had been given the pre-med in good time and asked the nurse in charge to send her up to Theatre without delay.

Mrs Hume was received in an ante-room by the surgeon and his anaesthetist. She was drowsy from the pre-med, quite untroubled by anxiety, sure that she would be in good hands. Within seconds, she was deeply asleep from the injection that Steve had skilfully given into her hand while he talked to her reassuringly.

She was taken into the theatre and lifted on to the table and Gillian prepared the site of the biopsy for the surgeon's knife. Steve was busy with the anaesthetising process.

Mask in position, Mark waited for the go-ahead from his colleague. Gillian stepped back from the operating table. He glanced at her and she nodded to indicate that the preparations were complete and everything was in readiness for the operation.

For a moment, tense and expectant, their eyes met and held above the green masks. Grey eyes looked deep into blue, seeking a glimmer of a smile, a trace of encouragement that would allow him to hope that he was more important than the other men in her life.

Gillian's heart trembled suddenly. There was a glow, a fire, a flame in his eyes that she had never seen before.

It was gone in a moment.

For Steve spoke, lightly declaring that the patient was well and truly under and there were no problems.

Mark turned to his work, suddenly impersonal.

Gillian became so absorbed that she quite forgot to be emotionally involved with the man behind the mask. For the time being, he was just a skilled surgeon and she was a trained nurse who efficiently anticipated and supplied his every need..

It was neither the time nor the place to wish that he needed her beyond the coldly clinical surroundings of an operating theatre ...

Gillian
enjoyed the evening with Steve. He took her to a concert at the Floral Hall in the nearby seaside town. They had a similar taste in music. They seemed to have lots of things in common and he had become a very good friend.

After the busy day in Theatre, she was glad to relax in his undemanding company. He was so nice, so easy to be with. She liked him and she appreciated his lightness of heart and his easy handling of their relationship.

By unspoken consent, they didn't talk about Greenvale or Mark Barlow or the day's work. There were times when Gillian wondered if Steve was sensitive to her unwilling love for the surgeon. She was just a little surprised that this man with a reputation for being something of a Casanova made so few demands on her. His kisses were light and merely affectionate, entirely acceptable to her. She never felt that he regarded her as a possible sexual conquest. He was either content to keep things on a friendly footing—or he was biding his time.

She wished that she could keep all her relationships with men on such a comfortable basis for the time being. She just wasn't ready for loving with all its difficulties and demands, she mourned ruefully, busy in the clinical room on the following day.

She was a fool to have fallen headlong in love with Mark, for instance. She might stir his senses but he didn't seem to like her very much. The dangerous flame apparently didn't need mutual liking for its spark.

In any case, he was going to marry the beautiful Louise Penistone. Gillian didn't wonder if he loved the girl. He was probably incapable of loving any woman for real, she thought heavily. He was too cold, too critical, too cautious to commit himself to that kind of caring. He meant to marry Louise because he was ambitious and hoped to gain eventual control of the clinic that her father had founded. Hurt and unhappy, Gillian decided that she despised him for it.

But it wasn't contempt that caused her heart to leap when he entered the room in obvious search of her. Knowing that he was about, she had taken refuge in a routine task, determined that she wouldn't be tempted into crossing his path in some way. She was afraid that the need to see him, if only at a distance, was becoming too obvious.

She paused in the act of taking sterile instruments from the autoclave and glanced at him, wary. The room was very light and spacious. It suddenly seemed much too small for two people. She could cope with the quickened beat of her heart and the turmoil of her senses when they only met briefly in a corridor or in the antiseptic surroundings of the theatre. Now, she feared that she might betray the upheaval of her emotions that he could cause without even trying.

'Can I help you?' she asked formally, carefully setting down the tray of instruments.

'You can give me your attention,' he said, dryly.

'What is it?' She refused to be distracted from a very automatic chore that she had carried out a thousand times. She preferred to be busy, the efficient nurse who never allowed personal feelings to get in the way of her work.

Mark went directly to the point. 'You're a very popular lady, aren't you? Much in demand. Robin McAllister. Steve. Others I don't know about, I expect. Whose turn is it tonight?'

Gillian stiffened at the hint of disapproval in his tone. She resented the arrogance that assumed he could question her behaviour. 'I shall probably stay in and wash my hair,' she said airily.

He reached to tuck a strand of the pale hair back under her cap. 'It doesn't seem to need it.' His fingers lingered lightly at the nape of her neck in that almost-caress that threatened to be her undoing.

With her heart pounding uncomfortably against her ribs, wishing he wasn't so unpredictable and so unsettling, Gillian moved from him in involuntary reaction to his touch. She began to arrange the newly sterilised instruments in their respective trays, her slender hands shaking slightly in the thin surgical gloves. The way he affected her was quite absurd, she told herself cross
l
y.

Mark watched her, silent.

Gillian wondered what he wanted, why he had followed her into the room to talk to her. They seemed to have nothing to say to each other, after all.

'I've a message for you, Gillian,' he said at last.

She was surprised by the softening of his tone, by a warmth that seemed to take her name and turn it into an endearment.

But she continued to be busy. 'Oh ... ?' She contrived to sound indifferent.