‘I didn’t ask him.’ Ava lifted her hand to her forehead, which had begun to ache with renewed enthusiasm.

‘Mother.’ Stella’s voice commanded Mim’s attention. ‘Ava needs pain relief and rest.’ Then she turned to Ava. ‘We’ll go now and come back later and pick you up after lunch, not before. I’ll tell them at the desk. I’m not sure you want to drive yourself to Setabilly on Tuesday, either.’

Ava would drive herself, but there was no use asking her mother not to talk to the nurses. She already had them terrified. And her head did hurt. If she was honest with herself, it was nice not to have to worry about anything when her mother had it all in hand. As long as Stella didn’t have Zac in hand. She couldn’t deal with that at the moment.

‘On one condition,’ Ava said quickly before they left the room.

Her mother stopped and turned back. ‘Condition?’

‘Promise you won’t go see Zac without me.’

Granny Mim and Stella exchanged glances. If she wasn’t mistaken, they both looked disappointed. That was a lucky escape.

‘As you wish.’ Stella gave a firm nod. ‘Now rest. They’ll be in soon with something for that headache.’

Ava took off the wrap she’d put on to visit Zac and laid it across the blanket, then raised the head of the bed with the remote control. She’d been spoiled with a single room, she thought as she climbed up onto the mattress. Thankfully. She couldn’t imagine dealing with this behind the curtain of a shared room within earshot of other patients. A staff bonus. She should be grateful, and she really was trying to be.

Her thoughts turned to Zac once again. She tried to imagine what he must be feeling to wake in a strange place and with a time gap of two weeks. Not knowing how he’d arrived or the people he worked with except a colleague from the past. She guessed she had some luck that it wasn’t common knowledge she’d been sleeping with Zac, now that he’d forgotten her. Something else to be grateful for. She closed her eyes.

After lunch, Ava woke with her headache dulled enough to allow her to make decisions. She would be proactive and fight. Fight for what Zac had believed in enough to fly to her to do. He’d believed so much that he’d proposed they spend their lives together. They needed to recapture the connection that had been so strong from the first moment they met.

Although she could smack Zac upside the head for holding onto telling her he loved her until Yulara, when he could have shared his feelings earlier. Right now, the brief episode of him skirting around asking her to marry him felt like something she’d dreamed up before all this horror started.