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'Everything sorted out?' Mr Carstairs asked with false jollity, rising from a chair in the waiting room, wiping a monogrammed white handkerchief over his bald head, evidence of the effects of the summer heat combined with the stress and embarrassment of the circumstances.

'Will you take this note to Reception, Tess? They'll give you an appointment card for Friday.' Ginger handed the paper work to the girl. 'Thank you.'

When she was out of earshot, Ginger turned to the parents. She had not forgotten how rude Mr Carstairs had been to her assistant, Sarah, or his gruff and unhelpful attitude when she had spoken with him on the telephone on her return to the office last Friday. At least she had persuaded him to bring Tess for the appointment today, but she couldn't let the girl's parents think it was all plain sailing and far from serious.

'Can you help Tess?' Mrs Carstairs demanded without preamble.

'I hope so. It's not an exact science and there won't be miracles overnight,' Ginger cautioned. 'There will be a lot of hard work, not least for Tess. She needs to know she has understanding and support.'

'We don't know why she's doing this to us.' Mr Carstairs shifted from foot to foot, puzzled and angry. 'Tess has never been any trouble before.'

Ginger curbed a flash of irritation. 'Tess isn't doing this to you. She's not being naughty or vain or difficult or silly. She has an illness and she's hurting emotionally. If we don't help her now, she could become very ill indeed.'

Tess may have been given everything money could buy but what the girl needed and wanted most of all was some love. From what Nic di Angelis had told her, and she had been able to piece together from Tess today, the parents had high expectations in terms of academic achievements and future prospects, dismissing the girl's own dreams and wishes, leaving her feeling overwhelmed, unheard and unable to measure up.

With low self-esteem, feeling swamped and ignored, Tess had responded by punishing herself and exerting control in the only area she could— her food intake.

'Your daughter is pretty and intelligent, but she is also very unhappy and lacking in self-worth,' Ginger continued, watching for Tess's return to ensure she did not overhear the discussion. 'It means a commitment from you to bring Tess to us once a week for the regular appointments she needs. Sadly we have no residential places at the moment.' Another reason why she was so angry at the department closure next year and doubly determined to open her own clinic. 'We have a good success rate here and we'll do everything we can to help Tess.'

'Thank you.' Mrs Carstairs was clearly taken aback, the seriousness of her daughter's situation slowly sinking in.

Mr Carstairs cleared his throat, a frown of dissatisfaction on his face. 'Friday, is it, you want to see Tess again, Dr O'Neill?'

'That's right.' Ginger smiled as Tess rejoined them, her movements slow and listless. She rested a hand on the girl's narrow shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. 'Friday mornings at ten o'clock, weekly for the foreseeable future. We'll need longer for the first few appointments as Tess will be meeting more of the team who will be working with her and setting up a treatment programme.'

'What about school?' Mr Carstairs posed a further complication, showing his doubt about Tess's need for help. 'I don't want Tess falling behind with her academic work.'

Reading the girl's tension under her hand, Ginger remained calm but firm. 'I'll talk with Tess's head teacher in strictest confidence, but we've never had any problem with schools being unwilling to cooperate in helping improve health and well-being.'

'Thank you, Dr O'Neill.' Mrs Carstairs flashed a glare at her husband. 'We'll do all we can. We want our daughter to be well, too.'

Hoping harmony would prevail and they would all be working together to support Tess, Ginger watched as the unhappy family left. There was a long road ahead and today was just the first step on that journey. Returning to her room, Ginger made a few more notes to discuss with her team before Tess returned on Friday and then called in her final appointment of the morning, hoping she could regain her focus and banish the painful images and thoughts of Cameron that were a constant distraction.

Head down, lost in thought, Cameron made his way back to his car. It was Wednesday, exactly a week since he had first seen Ginger on the train to London and his life had irrevocably changed.

He couldn't get her out of his mind. He had been through an unhappy marriage and acrimonious divorce, he had suffered an unimaginable loss from which he'd wondered if he would ever recover, but he had never experienced the kind of disappointment and soul-deep ache that had been with him since Ginger had walked away from him.

Was she right? Did the fact that they were both vying for the Ackerman funding for their respective projects make them enemies? He shook his head. Competitors, yes, but never enemies. They could have worked, if only she had believed, if she had wanted it as much as he did. It was true that he had refused to consider another relationship after the debacle with Lisa, and commitment was out if it meant his personal life impinged on his work—his patients were the main focus of his life. He had never intended to get involved with a woman again, not seriously. But all that had been before Ginger. She was different, special, and the pain of being without her, of never seeing her again, making love with her, laughing with her, was too much to bear, making him question his rigid rules.

He glanced up at the small maternity unit he had just visited, spying Iain watching him from an upstairs window, and he waved before he climbed into his car. Maxine had finally given birth to a healthy baby boy with a powerful set of lungs and a fuzz of red hair on the crown of his head. They made a wonderful family. Cameron shied away from his memories, thankful that Iain and Maxine had been so engrossed in Harry's arrival that they had failed to notice his own distraction and unhappiness.

Sighing, he started the car and exited his parking space, sparing a glance at his surroundings. The maternity unit was only a decade old and sat in its own grounds adjacent to the main hospital. Strathlochan had grown beyond recognition over the decades with a rising population and now served the town residents, as well as a large and widely dispersed rural area, taking pressure off hospitals in places as far away as Edinburgh, Glasgow and throughout the southern and Border regions. The main hospital provided a comprehensive range of care and services through numerous and varied departments and clinics, including a busy A and E department. He would start work here on Monday, affiliated to the psychological services unit, conducting part-time consultations alongside his private patients and his self-help groups until his own facility was up and running.

He had more than enough on his plate to keep him busy and he could not let his focus slip. He would never forget why he was doing this, why he had left the trauma department and dedicated his life to working with and helping patients who harmed themselves. Nothing and no one had ever threatened that focus before...so why could he still not put Ginger O'Neill out of his mind? She haunted his every waking moment and fired his dreams by night. But Ginger was gone. Somehow he had to get over her, had to shut out the pain and ignore the memories of the most erotic and amazing night of his life. He needed to get his head together and put his patients before his own raging desire for the beautiful, sexy woman who had rejected him.

'Ginger, are you all right?'

She glanced up to see that the concern in Pip's voice was matched by the frown on her face. 'I'm just a bit tired,' she lied.

'That trip to London last week seemed to take an awful lot out of you,' her friend fretted. 'Are you sickening for something?'

'I'll be fine.' If she ignored her broken heart, and the fact that she couldn't sleep at night because Cameron invaded her dreams.

Her plan to throw herself with even more force and commitment into her work certainly hadn't helped so far. Every moment stretched painfully slowly and full of hurt. Why had she met someone so wonderful and perfect only to have him turn out to be the one man she could never be with? It wasn't fair. It was Friday, eight days since she had last seen Cameron and the hurt and disbelief etched on his face as she'd walked away from him for ever. The eight longest days of her life. Not only had she left behind the one man who had driven her mad with desire, she had found out he was her sole competition for the funding she so desperately needed. She was still dazed, shocked, bemused...and eight days on she had still not succeeded in pulling herself out of that befuddled state.

Renewed pain lanced through her. She had to try and look on what had happened with Cameron as a fairy-tale interlude, something magical that many people never experienced. The memories had to sustain her, because she wouldn't see him again. But it hurt so much. She still wanted him so desperately. And she hadn't even been able to experience the full intimacy of being with him, joined completely. Now she would never know what it was like to really make love with him.

'Ginger?'

'Sorry?' Pip was still frowning, she discovered, and she searched for something that would divert her Mend's attention. 'I was thinking about Tess Carstairs. I'm worried about her. It's going to be a long struggle if she has so little support and understanding at home. Any more thoughts about her?'

Cradling her mug of tea, Pip sat down. 'I liked her. She's intelligent but very sad—under a lot of pressure, from what I could tell.'

'That's my impression, too. It's not a body image thing with her, is it?'

'I don't believe so. She seems almost unaware of her looks, it's all about punishing herself for not being what her parents want her to be—maybe an element of punishing them, too, for the pressure they put on her. When I talked with her, I had a sense she wanted to hold on to childhood when things were easier and less was expected of her to achieve and succeed,' Pip offered, her brow knotted in concentration. 'She doesn't seem to be able to talk to her parents at all about her own needs. Instead, they are propelling her towards a life she doesn't want and her anorexia and episodes of bulimia are her cry for help, her way of exposing her inner pain.'

Ginger nodded in agreement, her own assessment of the teenager mirroring Pip's. 'I'm worried she'll end up in hospital if we can't sort out her eating fairly quickly. She is seriously underweight.'

'Yes, I know. Andrew spent a lot of time with her today, talking about food and nutrition and encouraging her to adopt a more sensible eating pattern. I'll be interested to review her weekly diary next Friday,' Pip added, getting up and crossing to the sink to wash her mug.

'With Tess we need a combined approach, building up her self-esteem, helping her to confront her emotions and to discuss her issues with her parents. She needs to assert her own plans for her future, as well as regulating her eating and restoring herself to a normal weight. One goes hand in hand with the other. We'll need to do some work with the parents, too.' Ginger sighed, removing the clips from her hair and running her fingers through the flyaway strands. 'I wish we had the facilities available here to have her in for residential care. We could achieve so much more.'

'When do you think you might hear about the Ackerman money?' Pip probed, her gaze sharp as she took her seat again and turned the conversation back to the new clinic.

Ginger stared down at her untouched drink, fighting a new surge of emotion. 'It will be a while, I think. They said they wouldn't be making a decision in a hurry.'

'What was he like?'

'Who?' Her voice sounded sharp and unnatural to her own ears and she struggled to control it.

'The generous benefactor! Who did you think I meant?'

Ginger's cheeks warmed at Pip's teasing. 'Sir Morrison Ackerman was interested in what I had to say but he gave nothing whatever away. Neither did his staff of lawyers and whoever else all the people were. It was so nerve-racking, Pip, like walking into the lion's den.'

Had Cameron felt that, too? Had he stumbled with nerves over the first part of his presentation as she had done? She doubted it. He was so confident and composed, she couldn't imagine anything fazing him—and yet he'd been far from composed and confident the last time she had seen him, hadn't he? Then his grey eyes had been dark with pain, his throaty voice full of despair, a tortured expression on his face. Ginger sucked in a breath and stared unseeing out of the window at the hospital's inner courtyard.

'And what about this Dr Kincaid?'

Pip's unexpected question sent a fresh jolt of pain through her. 'What about him?'

'You seem very tense and defensive whenever his name's mentioned.' Pip watched her closely, making her uncomfortable. 'Did something happen between the two of you?'

'Of course not. I only met him briefly, and I didn't realise who he was at the time,' she prevaricated, spinning half-truths.

'You got stuck in the lift together!'

She didn't want to be reminded of that night. 'Not for long, thank goodness. I'm not very keen on confined spaces.'

'And you said you had dinner,' Pip continued, apparently determined to draw out every torturous detail.

'The hotel insisted.'

'I'm not meaning to badger you, lovey, but you've been so strange since you came back, I'm worried about you,' the intuitive, motherly nurse admitted. 'This Dr Kincaid seems to have upset you.'

'Well, he wants the money I need, doesn't he?' Ginger hoped the funding issue would satisfy Pip. 'The lump sum being talked of, and the annual income for running costs thereafter, is vastly more than I could ever have dreamed of. It will mean this project could really go ahead—if we are chosen. Dr Kincaid wants to win it as much as I do.'

'Was he horrible about it?'

'No, not at all.'

No way was she telling Pip how fantastic Cameron had been, neither could she even hint at what had happened between them, that she had enjoyed the most incredible night of her life doing amazingly erotic things with a man she didn't know. She had never done anything so appallingly reckless before, not in terms of sex and relationships, anyway. Not that they'd had a relationship. Or even full sex for that matter. And that was impossible now they were competitors on opposing sides. Somehow she had to put Cameron out of her mind and her life for good.