‘Not,’ he said grimly, rubbing the towel over his face and hair and draping it around his broad shoulders, ‘as my lawyer will shortly prove. I thought I already made clear to you that I value my independence. I don’t like being followed.’

He was drying his shoulders now and against her will her eyes followed the contour of his muscles, tracing the perfect curvature which indicated the degree of physical demands that he placed upon himself.

Unlike so many of the doctors she met, Alex Westerling had the body of an athlete, a physique that undoubtedly would have been the envy of most men.

Jenny looked away quickly, horrified by the direction of her thoughts.

Why did she care what sort of body he had?

She didn’t want to notice his physique. She didn’t care about his physique. She wasn’t that shallow.

Looks didn’t matter.

There were other things far more important, such as behaving in an honourable way, something which Alex evidently knew very little about.

Her slim shoulders sagged slightly.

Maybe this whole idea had been a mistake.

It was all very well to want Daisy to know her father, but what if her father wasn’t worth knowing? What if he was the sort of man who never faced up to his responsibilities?

She was about to speak when she heard a shrill scream from further down the beach.

Alex stopped drying himself and stared in the direction of the sound. ‘What…?’

A woman was running in their direction, carrying a little girl who was screaming loudly. ‘Help me!’

Alex dropped the towel and sprinted towards her while Jenny stooped to pick up the rug and Daisy before hurrying to catch him up.

‘What happened?’

‘She trod on a jellyfish—there’s a bit still stuck to her foot.’ The mother started to sob hysterically and Alex’s gaze flickered to Jenny, his message clear.

The mother was making the situation a thousand times worse.

Jenny immediately took the woman’s arm. ‘Try not to panic. Most of the jellyfish in these waters are relatively harmless.’ She flung her rug on the ground and sat Daisy down, thankful that she was still too young to move about. ‘Let me hold your daughter so that Dr Westerling can take a proper look at her.’

The woman relinquished her grip on the child without protest. ‘You’re a doctor?’ She was looking at Alex as though he were an oasis in a desert. ‘Oh, thank goodness. I was so worried—we’re such a long way from civilisation and you read such dreadful things.’

They were on a Cornish beach—Hardly that far from civilisation!

Thinking that the woman was overreacting, Jenny glanced at Alex, expecting him to make a caustic comment, but he didn’t. Instead, he bent down to examine the child’s foot.

‘It’s swollen and it’s obviously going to be causing her pain,’ he said finally, glancing around him with a frown. ‘We need some sea water.’

‘We’ve left buckets and spades over there.’ the woman gestured vaguely across the beach. ‘But I don’t want to leave her.’