With customary practicality, Ryan searched for a solution. ‘Lexi can come too. The surgery is attached to the house. She can hang out with Evanna and the children. Evanna would be glad of the help, and it will give Lexi a chance to find out something about the island. And I can drive you over to the cottage at lunchtime. I’ll even help you unpack to speed things up.’

‘Mum!’ Lexi spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not spending the morning looking after a couple of babies! I’d rather go to broken pottery camp, or whatever it’s called!’

Ryan struggled to think like a teenager. ‘Evanna has internet access, and the mobile signal is great from her house.’

Lexi gave a wide smile that transformed her face from sullen to stunning. ‘Then what are we waiting for? Lead me to civilisation. Otherwise known as wireless broadband.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘I NORMALLY see Nurse Evanna,’ the old lady said, settling herself into the chair. ‘She knows exactly what to do with my leg.’

Could today get any worse? Feeling mentally exhausted, Jenna scanned the notes on the screen.

Not only did her daughter not want her to be here, the patients didn’t appear to want her either. And doubtless Dr McKinley was also regretting her appointment after that embarrassing scenario on the quay.

And to top it all, having not thought about sex for what seemed like the whole of her twenties, she’d looked into Ryan McKinley’s cool blue eyes and suddenly started thinking about nothing but sex. She’d been so mesmerised by an alien flash of chemistry that she’d almost embarrassed herself.

Jenna cringed at the memory of just how long she’d stared at him. Who was she kidding? She had embarrassed herself. There was no almost about it.

And she’d embarrassed him.

Why else would he have been staring at her?

What must he have thought?

That she was a sad, desperate single mother who hadn’t had sex for a lifetime.

He’d made all those polite noises about her looking too young to have a teenage daughter, but Jenna knew it was nonsense. People said that, didn’t they? People said You don’t look thirty, while secretly thinking you looked closer to forty. She shuddered, appalled at the thought that he might be sitting in his consulting room right now, formulating a strategy for keeping her at a distance. She needed to make sure he knew she didn’t have designs on him—that a relationship with a man was right at the bottom of her wish list.

She was just trying to survive. Rebuild her life.