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That earned her a mysteriously impatient look but he merely said, 'I'll book to be sure. Make it seven-thirty and we'll grab a snack.'

'Fine.' That at least would save her having to cook. 'Seven-thirty.'

'Great.' Geoffrey grinned and looked as if he was about to add something more but Luke's voice cut in on them.

'Sorry to interrupt, Geoffrey, but I need Annabel for a few seconds.'

'No problem. We're finished.' Although Annabel froze immediately, Geoffrey seemed to find Luke's request unremarkable and he merely nodded and moved out after the last of their colleagues. 'See you tonight, Annabel.'

'Seven-thirty,' Annabel repeated automatically. She waited until he'd left then turned to Luke, feeling herself flush as she met his cool look and realised he'd overheard every word of her conversation with Geoffrey. 'Is this important?' she asked crisply. 'I was just about to leave.'

'Your bleeper's not working,' he said smoothly.

She faltered. 'What?'

'Your bleeper.' With an easy movement he lifted her bleeper out of the breast pocket of her white coat and pressed the test button, demonstrating its lack of response. 'Do you have a mental block about replacing all batteries?'

'It was fine this morning.' Annabel's skin had shivered at the brief brush of his fingers when he'd removed her bleeper and, ignoring his taunt, she took a hasty step back. She'd been bleeped several times during her clinic but now she thought about it she realised it had been quiet most of the afternoon. She took the device back from him and tested it, confirming for herself that he'd been right about the batteries. 'I'll take it to Switchboard. Thank you for letting me know. How did you find out it wasn't working?'

'A GP was trying to get hold of you. When he gave up half an hour ago Switchboard put him though to me as I was on call. He wants us to admit one of your patients, Daisy Miller.'

'Daisy?' Annabel lifted her head sharply. 'Did you tell him to send her in? Is she in failure?'

'She's coming in and it sounds like it,' he confirmed.

'I only discharged her last week,' Annabel said slowly. She chewed at her lower lip. 'She's supposed to be coming to clinic on Friday.' The frequency of Daisy's admissions worried her enormously. It was looking as if they had far less time than they'd hoped to wait for her transplant. 'I'll have a look at her. Did you tell him to send her to M ward?'

'M's full but there's a bed on J so she's going there.' Luke's bleeper shrilled at that moment and he checked the number and went back to the telephone at the desk. 'I imagine that'll be her now,' he told her. 'Let me check.'

His conversation was brief and to the point and Annabel could tell before he'd finished that it was about Daisy and that she was very sick. She left him and started running for the ward.

Luke caught up with her before she got to the stairs. 'I'm on call, Annie.' She was puffing but he wasn't even out of breath. 'You have plans. I'll look after her. Go home.'

'No, I want to see her.' She wasn't worrying about missing the movie. Geoffrey always carried his mobile so she'd be able to get hold of him and let him know in advance if Daisy proved too unwell to leave.

Nurses were hurrying about, fitting monitors and a blood-pressure cuff and drawing up drugs, and the on-call registrar was already with Daisy when they got to the ward. He was trying to put a line into one of the veins in her arm, but didn't seem to be having any luck finding one. He stepped aside quickly when Luke motioned that he'd take over.

Annabel, paling, went forward quickly and took Daisy's cold hand, murmuring words of comfort while she examined her. She'd thought Daisy had been bad on her last admission but she was far worse now. Behind her oxygen mask she was gasping desperately for breath, her blood pressure was ominously low and her skin was thick-looking, doughy and blue-tinged.

Her liver was huge as well, no doubt swollen with fluid. Annabel did her best to manage a reassuring smile when Daisy sent her a grateful grimace between heaving breaths.

'It'll just be a few minutes,' she told her patient. 'We'll get this line in and get the drugs in and you'll start feeling better immediately.' She let go Daisy's hand so she could hold the stethoscope to the young woman's heart and lungs, checking the heart sounds and confirming the severity of her heart failure by the crackles of fluid that could be heard bubbling in her lungs.

Luke had already slid a line smoothly into place and Annabel looked at the nurse holding the diuretic he'd requested. 'Better start with one-twenty,' she said quietly, amending the dose he'd ordered. 'She's on maintenance eighty milligrams as it is. Her blood pressure's up just enough to handle it.'

'Ten of morphine,' Luke ordered, along with an antiemetic to prevent any nausea, nodding acknowledgement of Annabel's suggestion as he gave a second syringe of the diuretic then held Daisy's arm high in the air and massaged it to speed up the movement Of the drugs into her heart. He reached for an ampoule of a drug that would dilate Daisy's blood vessels and help prevent kidney damage and gave it to one of the nurses with instructions on how he wanted it diluted. 'Someone get X-Ray up here stat.'

It took them a very long forty minutes to get Daisy marginally stabilised, but by the time Annabel returned with the ward's portable ECHO machine less than ten minutes later the fascinated way her young patient was gazing up at Luke, busy adjusting one of her infusion rates, told her Daisy was now improving fast. This time at least.

Daisy tore her eyes away from Luke long enough to send a solemn look in Annabel's direction. 'Wow!' she mouthed.

Annabel rolled her eyes. 'Daisy, this is Professor Geddes,' she said evenly, trying not to appear too cynical. 'He's recently joined us here on staff at St Peter's.'

'Oh, I've heard of you,' Daisy gasped, between breaths.

'You're famous. I've read some of the stuff you've written on the net. You're the same as Dr Stuart.' She fluttered her lashes. 'You specialise in heart conditions like mine, don't you?'

'That's right.' Luke turned on a smile that would have made Annabel's heart flip if it had been directed at her and which made her heart tremble anyway even though it wasn't. 'Annabel and I share a similar interest in the field. Tell me, Daisy, what do you think of your cardiac trace now?'

Daisy tore her gaze away from him, tipped her head back and eyed her rhythm dispassionately. 'Don't freak out,' she told him breathlessly. 'That's normal for me. I always throw off dozens of those extra beats, don't I, Dr Stuart?'

'You do,' Annabel confirmed, watching the trace, too. She knew why Luke had asked. He wasn't just testing Daisy's knowledge of her disease. While she had been in acute failure the frequency of extra heart beats had been much higher. He'd been worried about her going into VT then V Fib, potentially fatal disordered heart rhythms. 'Daisy's never had rhythm problems,' she told him quietly. 'At least none we're aware of.'

'Touch wood.' Daisy banged her knuckles on the board behind her head.

While Annabel was setting up to check Daisy's heart with her ECHO machine, Luke left them, murmuring he'd be back in a few minutes after he'd called Daisy's GP and let him know what was happening.

'Is he married?' Daisy whispered, as soon as they were alone.

'He's too old for you and I thought you were going out with a footballer,' Annabel murmured distractedly as she adjusted the settings on her machine.

'I love John but if I thought a guy like Professor Geddes would look at me twice I might have second thoughts,' Daisy told her between breaths. 'Do you think he likes me?'

'Of course.' Annabel smeared jelly across her young patient's chest. 'Everyone likes you.'

'Pity I'm too sick to do anything about it.' Daisy pouted and sagged back against the bed.
'You
could, though, Dr Stuart. Do
you
fancy him?'

Annabel rolled her eyes. 'I suppose you've been racing about like a madwoman this past week,' she mused, moving her probe to get a better picture of Daisy's left ventricle. 'I should have kept you in hospital. All-night raves and champagne breakfasts at the Ritz, I expect.'

'I wish.' Daisy gave a wheezy giggle. 'No, John's quite boring, really. We went out one night to a club but we weren't late.' She paused to catch her breath again. 'He has to be in bed early, you know, most nights. And he's not supposed to drink. It's in his contract. They're very strict.'

'Your ejection fraction's down.' Annabel frowned as she checked the figure calculated by the computer in her machine from measurements she took, comparing the size of her patient's heart before and after a contraction. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and knew Luke must have come back into the room so she went through the scan again for him to watch. 'Definite changes from a week ago,' she told him.

'I'll have a look at the old figures.' He came around to the other side of the bed and checked Daisy's infusion. 'Don't delay your plans for the evening, Annabel. You should have been off duty more than an hour ago. You can leave Daisy to me now. You don't mind, do you, Daisy?'

'Oh, no,' Daisy said huskily, and Annabel registered with resigned irritation the rapt attention with which the younger woman was gazing up at Luke again. 'I'm fine. Don't worry about me, Dr Stuart.'

Annabel resented him involving Daisy in their discussion. 'I thought I'd stay another hour or so,' she said stiffly. 'Just to make sure—'

'Go,' Luke interrupted calmly.

Ignoring Daisy's intrigued expression, Annabel tissued the gel from her chest, disconnected the ECHO machine and moved it away from the bed. She directed a meaningful glare towards Luke then walked carefully towards the door. 'I'm just going to make a phone call at the desk,' she announced coolly. 'I'll be back in a few minutes.'

But Luke got to her before she'd even finished dialling Geoffrey's mobile number. Reaching over her, he disconnected the phone and took the receiver out of her hand.

'What are you doing?' Annabel turned around slowly to confront him, her eyes flashing even if she had to keep her tone low lest the nurses doing their six o'clock drug round in the cubical opposite overheard them. 'For heaven's sake—'

'You're being childish,' he said softly. 'You're fighting me on principle, Annabel, not because there's any need. I'm perfectly capable of handling—'

'I know that,' she interrupted. 'Of course I know that.' She might have had a special interest in Daisy's disease but Luke was a world authority on it. His experience vastly exceeded hers. 'However, she happens to be my patient.'

'You're not on call tonight.'

'I feel I should stay another hour or so to be sure she's stable.'

'You're leaving.' His hands on her shoulders, he steered her with—for him—surprising gentleness, away from the desk and along the ward. 'You're running out of time for your date.'

'It isn't a date,' she protested. 'Why do you keep going on like this? It's just friends, going to a movie. Geoffrey won't care if I cancel—'

With an air of weary impatience Luke pushed her into one of the doctors' offices, turned on the light,, then closed the door behind them. 'Annabel, in the past six years how many lovers have you had?'

How many lovers had she had? Annabel felt sick. 'That's none of your business,' she gasped eventually.

'Ten?' Luke waited a fraction of a second and when she didn't respond he added less tolerantly, 'Five? Two?
One?'

She opened her mouth then closed it again, paralysed with shock.

'None.'
He sighed. He inspected her heavy white coat, the generously cut jacket and full skirt and tights she wore, his regard brutally unflattering. 'What's wrong with you, Annabel? What's happened to the girl I married? What happened to that laughing, sexy girl from that photograph I picked up last week?'

'She was ludicrous,' Annabel said stonily. 'You know that as well as I do. She was young and stupid and sad and pathetic.'

'You left out ten times the woman you are now,' he countered flatly. 'She was warm and spirited and energetic, bursting with life and intensely, lovingly, joyfully sexual.'

'And look what that got her,' Annabel flung at him. 'You! Some good that did either of us!'

'Don't even begin to go there,' Luke warned softly, dangerous sparks flaring in the green depths of his eyes. 'Don't even think about starting on that, Annabel, because we'll be here all night, working through that.'

'I want to get out,' she cried.

'When I've finished.' He leaned back against the door. He looked big and determined and he was obviously not going anywhere. Annabel knew she'd get exactly nowhere if she tried pushing him. 'Before I knew you were working here at St Peter's I meant to look you up when I arrived in London.'

His words surprised her but she kept her expression blank. 'So?'

'So I expected to find you all grown up, contentedly remarried and probably nursing a couple of babies by now.'

'Babies?'
Annabel sucked in her breath.
'What?'

'You looked good holding Tamsin Winston's baby. And you always wanted children.'

'Yes, years ago,' she agreed faintly. She expected most women in love experienced the desire to bear their lover's child. But it was a long time since she'd let herself remember she'd also had those sort of desires. 'But children need two parents.'

'So why aren't you married?'

'I haven't met anyone.'

'Why do you think that is?'

'That's a ludicrous question,' she protested. 'There's no answer. I just haven't.'

'The reason you haven't, Annie,' he said calmly, 'is that in six years you've turned yourself from an exciting, passionate,
living
woman into a repressed, uptight, frustrated zombie with an army haircut and the wardrobe of a woman thirty years your senior.'

His eyes calmly registered the trembling hand she lifted to her cropped hair. 'You've destroyed the house,' he continued gently, his observations rendered somehow more painful for having been delivered in the warmly reasonable, almost kindly tone he'd adopted. 'You've turned a warm, welcoming home into some horror out of a decorating catalogue, and if you hitting me then letting soup boil dry last week are signs that what happened between us that day shook you up a bit I'm glad, because the one thing you need right now is shaking up.'