Denise’s nod said she’d go with Jessamine, and Ava didn’t doubt her friend would try to bring the young woman in later that day. Or they’d make a plan for tomorrow. If she didn’t turn up for a check, at least Ava could say she’d seen the young woman and that she looked well in herself.

Chapter Ten

Zac

On Saturday afternoon, Zac heard the satisfying clunk of the undercarriage not long after the aircraft’s wheels rose from the Alice Springs tarmac. As the plane’s acceleration pushed him back into the seat, his mood lifted with the cabin. He’d missed Ava like a limb, even though she’d only been gone for three days.

Since Ava had left Alice Springs for Uluru, a journey that would take him fifty-five minutes to fly instead of hours by car, he’d had plenty of time to think. And act. And, after she finished work today, they’d have two nights and a day together. He had plans. Not just fly-down-and-see-her plans, but outrageous plans. Him-staying-here-forever plans.

Zac had bought something he hadn’t intended when he’d gone to buy Ava flowers this morning. Strangely, the impulsive purchase had eased an odd, disquieting feeling of impending doom that he’d finished night shift with today.

It was nothing to do with the business of the emergency department, so maybe it had just been that he wanted to be with Ava now and not have to wait until this afternoon. Either way, he’d bought something so special, he couldn’t believe his desire to put himself right out there at the end of a very long tree limb and declare how he felt.

Hopefully, his idea would hold its weight. He could have been fuzzy from lack of sleep on his shopping trip, because while Ava had been gone, his work had been hectic and he’d had trouble sleeping in his silent bed. The apartment had sighed with an emptiness he couldn’t fill.

The four days prior with Ava – well, they’d used up a lot of hours not just making love. They’d laughed at the television together, swum in the hotel pool, and spent hours telling their life stories on the comfy lounge as they’d sat by the window looking over the scrubby distance. They’d fit some wild and woolly night shifts in there, too, saving the world together. It had been perfect, as if he’d found his soulmate. Did the culmination of all that explain the bizarreness of his purchase? Like how the item had shouted to him through a shop window in diamond speak that nobody else could understand, like the snake in Harry Potter? Drawing him to the glass to peer at it and marvel.

Yep, something like that. A ring all by itself on a stand with a backdrop of a pink Central Australian sunrise.

The perfect engagement ring for Ava.