Melanie Milburne - Flirting with the Socialite Doc

From as soon as MELANIE MILBURNEcould pick up a pen she knew she wanted to write. It was when she picked up her first Mills & Boon ®at seventeen that she realised she wanted to write romance. After being distracted for a few years by meeting and marrying her own handsome hero, surgeon husband Steve, and having two boys, plus completing a Masters of Education and becoming a nationally ranked athlete (masters swimming), she decided to write. Five submissions later she sold her first book and is now a multi-published, bestselling, award-winning USA Today author. In 2008 she won the Australian Readers’ Association most popular category/series romance, and in 2011 she won the prestigious Romance Writers of Australia R*BY award.

Melanie loves to hear from her readers via her website, www.melaniemilburne.com.au, or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/melanie.milburne

Dear Reader

I love fish-out-of-water stories, where a character—usually the heroine!—is thrown into a situation or environment that is totally foreign to her. Like me right now! I am writing this on a four-wheel drive tour bus in The Kimberleys in Western Australia. The heat is intense, but the scenery and the small friendly communities we’ve travelled through are wonderful examples of the wild frontier of the Outback and the larger-than-life people who make it so special.

Lady Isabella (Izzy) Courtney has taken a four-week posting to Jerringa Ridge after the end of her four-year engagement. She’s not looking for love, but Cupid has other plans.

Sergeant Zach Fletcher is the local cop, who also has a broken relationship behind him and has no interest in anything right now but helping his dad get back on his feet after a quad bike accident. But of course when Zach meets Izzy everything changes—for both of them.

They both learn—as I too have learnt over the years—that it doesn’t matter where you live, as long as the one you love is with you.

I hope you enjoy Zach and Izzy’s story.

Warmest wishes

Melanie Milburne

Flirting with

the Socialite Doc

Melanie Milburne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Alan and Sue Beswick for their continued support of the Heart Foundation in Tasmania.

This one is for you. At last! XX

‘A tale of new beginnings, redemption and hope that will make readers chuckle as well as wipe away a tear. A compelling medical drama about letting go of the past and seizing the day, it is fast-paced and sparkles with mesmerising emotion and intense passion.’

— Goodreads.com on THEIR MOST FORBIDDEN FLING

Recent titles by Melanie Milburne:

DR CHANDLER’S SLEEPING BEAUTY

SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: LEXI’S SECRET * * Sydney Harbour Hospital These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk THE SURGEON SHE NEVER FORGOT THE MAN WITH THE LOCKED AWAY HEART

* SYDNEY HARBOUR HOSPITAL: LEXI’S SECRET * * Sydney Harbour Hospital These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk THE SURGEON SHE NEVER FORGOT THE MAN WITH THE LOCKED AWAY HEART * Sydney Harbour Hospital These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk Sydney Harbour Hospital

These books are also available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER ONE

EVEN THE DISTANCE of more than seventeen thousand kilometres that Izzy had put between herself and her best friend was not going to stop another Embarrassing Birthday Episode from occurring.

Oh, joy.

‘I’ve got the perfect present winging its way to you,’ Hannah crowed over the phone from London. ‘You’re going to get the biggest surprise. Be prepared. Be very prepared.’

Izzy gave a mental groan. Her closest friend from medical school had a rather annoying habit of choosing the most inappropriate and, on occasion, excruciatingly embarrassing birthday gifts. ‘I know you think I’m an uptight prude but do you have to rub my nose in it every year? I’m still blushing from that grotesque sex toy you gave me last year.’

Hannah laughed. ‘This is so much better. And it will make you feel a little less lonely. So how are you settling in? What’s it like out there?’

‘Out there’ was Jerringa Ridge and about as far away from Izzy’s life back in England as it could be, hot and dry with sunlight that wasn’t just bright but violent. Unlike other parts of New South Wales, which had suffered unusually high levels of flooding, it hadn’t rained, or at least with any significance, in this district for months.

And it looked like it.

A rust-red dust cloud had followed her into town like a dervish and left a fine layer over her car, her clothes, and had somehow even got into the small cottage she’d been assigned for her four-week locum.

‘It’s hot. I swear I got sunburnt walking from the car to the front door.’ Izzy glanced down at the tiny white circle on her finger where her engagement ring had been for the last four years. Not sunburnt enough.

‘Have you met any of the locals yet?’

‘Just a couple of people so far,’ Izzy said. ‘The clinic receptionist, Margie Green, seems very nice, very motherly. She made sure the cottage was all set up for me with the basics. There’s a general store run by a husband and wife team—Jim and Meg Collis—who are very friendly too. And the guy who owns and operates the local pub—I think his name is Mike something or other—has organised a welcome-drink-cum-party for me for tomorrow night. Apparently the locals grab at any excuse to party so I didn’t like to say I’d prefer to lie low and find my feet first.’

‘Perfect timing,’ Hannah said. ‘At least you won’t be on your own on your birthday.’

On your own...

Izzy was still getting used to being single. She’d become so used to fitting in with Richard Remington’s life—his meticulously planned life—that it was taking her a little while to adjust. The irony was she had been the one to end things. Not that he’d been completely devastated or anything. He’d moved on astonishingly quickly and was now living with a girl ten years younger than he was who had been casually employed to hand around drinks at one of his parents’ soirees—another irony, as he had been so adamant about not moving in with Izzy while they’d been together.

This four weeks out at Jerringa Ridge—the first of six one-month locums she had organised in Australia—would give her the space to stretch her cramped wings, to finally fly free from the trappings and expectations of her aristocratic background.

Out here she wasn’t Lady Isabella Courtney with a pedigree that went back hundreds of years.