Bloody hell. He really had intended just to have a meal together.

If only he hadn’t slept with her. He felt more ensnared by strands of the searing memory of last night and the almost desperate pure lust he’d let loose than he could possibly hope to deal with. It wasn’t just her strong, sweet face or her innate calmness that had captured him.

He shook his head. It was nothing. Just fascination.

As if he could seriously fall in love with this woman in one night.

That was crazier than him being here in Alice Springs to work instead of back in Sydney. This was all temporary. He and Roslyn had grown up in the same world, but even that hadn’t turned out perfectly. What hope did he and an outback midwife have to live happily ever after?

He’d stop this. Ava had gone, and despite there being a crossover of their professions, he was an emergency doctor and she an agency nurse for maternity. There wasn’t much chance they’d interact. He wouldn’t ring her number, and he had the solid belief she would wait for him to call first.

His hand reached to the back of his head and pulled the hair at the nape of his neck until it hurt. He needed to wake up. Shake it off. A one-night stand in a place thousands of kilometres from where he lived?

It wasn’t too bad.

He could handle that.

He decided to go for a run. Wear himself out and then get a couple of hours’ sleep before he started work tonight. And. Forget. Ava.

Sixteen hours later, just after midnight, Alice Springs Emergency Department looked like the floor of the stock exchange during a financial crash, with arms raised and voices loud. The dozen or so partially curtained cubicles surrounding the central office had reached capacity, the staff had doubled with call-ins, and there were trolleys bearing patients in the walkways around the central computer hub where nobody had time to sit to type or even answer one of the insistently ringing phones. The majority of the patients came from a busload of inebriated young footy players. Most had not been wearing seatbelts and had been thrown violently forward when their vehicle had ploughed into an unfortunate camel herd out of town. The impact had catapulted passengers down the bus corridor and resulted in broken bones, multiple lacerations and some magnificent bruises. They’d arrived in a convoy of ambulances to enliven the night.