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on her. Probably not, she decided. It was just an absent-minded gesture on his part, a subconscious desire to make her feel better, nothing more, but it filled her with awareness of him, and made her wish that she could lean her head back against his chest and absorb his strength and support.
    'I've never known you to make a mistake,' she said, 'but I've made so many.. .the man with the tumour, the other day. My sister's boyfriend, Ryan. I didn't do anything about his head injury and that's why he's in a coma now. Perhaps I should have taken more note of his deteriorating level of consciousness and given him medication to lower the intracranial pressure. If I had acted sooner, he might not be in the condition he is now.'
    'You did what you could for him at the time. You needed to concentrate all your efforts on his other, more immediate injuries, and you shouldn't blame yourself for his condition now. He's lucky to be alive.'
    She doubted whether Mark would have been remiss as she had been. He always managed to think on several fronts at once. 'I don't think my sister will see things that way. When she comes to question why he's not responding to treatment, she'll want to know how it came about.'
    'I think you're being too hard on yourself.' He gently turned her around so that she swivelled in her chair to face him. 'Why do you punish yourself this way?'
    'Don't you agree with my judgement of myself?' she countered. 'When we were at the monthly meeting the other day, talking about ways to increase throughput in A and E, you had no qualms about dismissing my objections to Shaun's suggestion. I had the feeling that you didn't rate my comments very highly. You seemed to be very much taken with Shaun's ideas and ready to casually disregard mine.'
    'You feel that way because you don't know me very well.' His mouth made a wry shape. 'I believe in challenging people, in making them think, trying to draw the best out of them.'
    'I think maybe you went about it the wrong way with me. I'm not good at cynicism and confrontation. I'm more for working as a team and helping each other out where necessary.'
    'There's nothing wrong with that.' His mouth curved into a crooked smile. 'It's pretty much the way I think, too.' He looked into her eyes for a moment, and then, leaning forward, he dropped a light kiss on her mouth. She was so stunned by his unexpected action that her eyes widened and her lips parted in dazed wonderment.
    He was very still, looking at her consideringly, and he must have decided that the experience was worth repeating because he moved closer and drew her to him, kissing her with a thoroughness that took her breath away. She closed her eyes and absorbed the sensation, feeling the tingling response of her lips and an answering heat that rippled through the length of her body. His hands moved over her, shaping her to him.
    It felt unbelievably good and she melted into his embrace, wanting the kiss to go on and on. It was madness, of course, but she had never known this deep-seated feeling of belonging in her life before, and it all seemed so right, so perfectly natural.
    She was lost, taken up with absorbing this irresistible wave of new sensation, so that when he finally dragged his mouth from hers she felt the loss as keenly as if he had taken her into the middle of an ice rink and left her there.
    She opened her eyes and stared up at him, startled, enchanted, tantalised and wanting more, but she was so bemused by what had happened that she said nothing, Instead, she simply watched him and wondered what could have drawn him to do that.
    He stepped away from her. 'I don't know,' he said, as though she had spoken. 'Don't ask. I've no idea what came over me.' He looked as though he was almost as mystified as she was.
    He backed away some more, looking at her guardedly. She still hadn't recovered enough to say anything and he added, 'Perhaps it happened because we shared so much tonight, stumbling across the mother and child