by Kate Hardy
Time’s running out...
...on their Highland fling!
Pediatrician Georgie Jones knows how she’s going to deal with the pain her cheating late husband caused—move to Edinburgh! The last thing she needs is to share a house with gorgeous consultant Ryan McGregor, but living under the same roof only intensifies their attraction! Their stolen kiss under the northern lights is inevitable, and potentially life changing if Georgie chooses to let her heart lead the way...
Changing Shifts
Swapping lives, finding love!
In London, widowed pediatrician Georgie is struggling with everyone’s sympathy when no one knows her husband was having an affair.
In Edinburgh, pediatrician Clara’s dreams of having a family lie in tatters as her ex parades his new love around.
Through a job-swap website, Georgie and Clara impulsively swap cities and hospitals to escape their real lives and embark on new adventures!
But when they arrive at their new destinations, both women find the last thing either wants or expects—romance!
Read Georgie’s story in
Fling with Her Hot-Shot Consultant
And Clara’s story in
Family for the Children’s Doc
Both available now!
Dear Reader,
Scarlet Wilson and I really wanted to write a duet together, with our heroines being complete fish out of water—and we came up with the idea of a job swap. So we plotted together, and my London-based heroine falls for her heroine’s best friend in a tiny cottage in the gorgeous countryside outside Edinburgh, while her heroine falls for my heroine’s brother smack in the middle of a posh bit of London.
But why would you want to swap jobs and lives with someone in the first place? In Georgie’s case, it was to escape her past, and in doing so, she helps Ryan to overcome his past. They start off completely at odds with each other, but, with a bit of canine help, discover that maybe they aren’t as bad together as they thought.
Add in men in kilts, the northern lights, a gorgeous beach in Edinburgh, Scottish castles and some very nosy sheep—and I hope you enjoy Georgie and Ryan’s journey.
With love,
Kate Hardy
Fling with Her Hot-Shot Consultant
Kate Hardy
Kate Hardy has always loved books, and could read before she went to school. She discovered Harlequin books when she was twelve, and decided that this was what she wanted to do. When she isn’t writing, Kate enjoys reading, cinema, ballroom dancing and the gym. You can contact her via her website: katehardy.com.
Books by Kate Hardy
Harlequin Medical Romance
Miracles at Muswell Hill Hospital
Christmas with Her Daredevil Doc
Their Pregnancy Gift
Unlocking the Italian Doc’s Heart
Carrying the Single Dad’s Baby
Heart Surgeon, Prince...Husband!
A Nurse and a Pup to Heal Him
Mistletoe Proposal on the Children’s Ward
Harlequin Romance
A Crown by Christmas
Soldier Prince’s Secret Baby Gift
A Diamond in the Snow
Finding Mr. Right in Florence
One Night to Remember
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To Scarlet—always great fun working with you!
Praise for Kate Hardy
“Ms. Hardy has definitely penned a fascinating read in this book...once the hero confesses to the heroine his plan for a marriage of convenience, I was absolutely hooked.”
—Harlequin Junkie on Heart Surgeon, Prince...Husband!
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
EXCERPT FROM FAMILY FOR THE CHILDREN'S DOC BY SCARLET WILSON
PROLOGUE
GEORGIE HAD BEEN secretly haunting the website for a week now.
Job swap.
The idea was that you’d swap your job and your house with a stranger for six months. Various health trusts across the country had signed up to the initiative, so all you had to do was find a match. Someone who did the same job as you; someone who maybe wanted some experience in a different place to enrich their working life.
Was it running away? Or was it just what she needed to give her a fresh start?
It wouldn’t be without complications. She’d be letting Joshua down, for a start. Her elder brother was a single dad who relied on her for help with childcare for his daughter Hannah—and Georgie loved her brother and her niece dearly. She didn’t want to let them down.
But over the last year London had become more and more of a prison; and she was oh, so tired of being seen as Poor Georgie, widowed at twenty-nine and being so brave about carrying on. Poor Georgie, who hero husband Charlie had been part of a team of emergency doctors helping after an earthquake and had been killed trying to save someone.
Poor, poor Georgie...
If only everyone knew the truth about Charlie. But how she could shatter everyone’s illusions? His family and friends didn’t deserve that. The way she saw it, they should be able to mourn the man they’d loved without seeing the side he’d kept hidden. Which meant she had to keep his secrets. So far, she’d managed it, because in a weird sort of way keeping that secret was protecting her, too; but she was getting to the point where she felt as if she’d explode if she didn’t get away from all the memories and the pity.
So today she’d look at the website again to see if there was a match. If there wasn’t a suitable match for her, she would take it as a sign to stay exactly where she was and stop being so pathetic and just get on with things. If there was a match, then it was a sign she should leave.
Location.
That meant hers: west London.
Position.
So far, so good: paediatric registrar.
Desired location.
That was harder. ‘Anywhere’ meant just that. And, even though she wanted to get out of London, she didn’t want to go somewhere really remote. Not, she supposed, that there were that many remote hospitals. That field was probably meant for the GPs—ones who maybe wanted to swap an isolated rural practice to gain experience in the fast pace of a city practice; or maybe those who were burned out by inner-city medicine and craved a country idyll for a while.
Somewhere by the sea...
No. She could’ve run away to her parents’ at any time, but she hadn’t taken that option then and she wouldn’t take it now. This was the chance to make a fresh start. She shook herself and chose the ‘anywhere’ option.
Time frame.
That was an easy one. Now.
Then she clicked the ‘Find Your Match’ button.
The system thought about it. And thought some more.
Clearly there wasn’t a match, or perhaps the system was down. Georgie was about to give up and close the page when the screen changed.
One match found.
She clicked on her result. Edinburgh? She’d never been to Edinburgh.
All she really knew about the place was that it was the capital of Scotland and it had a castle, a very famous comedy festival and an amazing Hogmanay party.
One match. Meaning that this was fate gi
ving her a little nudge to keep trying.
She clicked ‘connect’ and wrote a short email, doing her best to sell her job in London. And everything she wrote was true: the Royal Hampstead Free Hospital was a great place to work, her colleagues in the paediatric department were utterly lovely, and her comfortable flat in Canary Wharf with its balcony and fold-back doors overlooking the Thames was only a short walk from the Tube station.
Put like that, it would make anyone wonder why she wanted to leave. What wasn’t she telling? What was the catch in what looked like a perfect life?
The whole truth wasn’t something she wanted to tell anyone, let alone a complete stranger. ‘Personal reasons’ was too vague and likely to net her a rejection. So, instead, she stuck to a simplified version of the truth.
I was widowed almost a year ago and I feel I need a fresh start, away from the pity.
Pity that would be so much worse if people knew the truth. Charlie had been cheating on her with Trisha for months; his mistress, who had been killed in the landslide with him, had been pregnant at the time.
In Georgie’s view, nobody, but nobody, needed to know about Trisha and the baby.
She stared at the words for a while. And then she took a deep breath and pressed ‘send’.
It didn’t mean she was definitely going to leave. The other paediatric registrar might not want to live in this part of London, or might change his or her mind about doing the job swap. But she’d made the first move. If this didn’t work out, her next attempt would be easier. And then, for the first time since she’d learned the truth about her husband, Georgie could stop feeling as if she was weighed down by the whole world.
CHAPTER ONE
Two weeks later
GEORGIE COULD STILL hardly believe it had all happened so quickly. Clara Connolly had been happy to swap her job in the paediatric department of St Christopher’s Hospital in Edinburgh for Georgie’s job at the Royal Hampstead Free in London, and she too wanted to start the swap as soon as possible.
Perfect.
Telling Joshua had been the hardest part. Her brother had been so upset. He’d accused her of bailing on them when he and Hannah really needed her. In the end, Georgie had been forced to tell him why she needed to get out of London, and the truth about how Charlie had cheated on her and lied both to her and to his mistress. Joshua had been horrified that she’d kept it to herself for so long, then guilty because he felt he hadn’t supported her well enough for her to tell him the truth earlier. But they’d pretty much worked it through, he’d promised to keep it to himself, and she was going north with his blessing.
Though her brother’s insistence that she should send him a text every time she stopped for a break was driving her crackers. Why did he have to fuss so much? OK, so she hadn’t driven that much for a while—in London, she didn’t really need a car—but she was perfectly capable of driving the seven or so hours from London to Edinburgh on her own. Actually, she was enjoying it hugely. She’d hired a bright orange convertible Mini for a fortnight, to give her enough time to work out whether to buy a car for the rest of the job swap or extend her lease; driving on the motorway on the bright autumn day, with the roof down and the stereo turned up loud with a playlist of happy, bouncy music, was the most fun she’d had in months. And she stopped every two hours at a service station to stretch her legs, grab a coffee and text Joshua that she was absolutely fine.
The navigation system was working well; not that she really needed it on the motorway, because it was pretty obvious she was just heading north up the M1 to Scotland. Apparently Clara’s cottage was at the edge of a village outside Edinburgh, about thirty minutes away from the hospital; although Georgie was pretty sure she’d be able to pick up supplies in the village, she decided to get some bread, milk and instant coffee on her last stop, just to tide her over in the first minutes when she arrived.
Edinburgh.
Her new life.
Freedom.
She’d still be doing a job she loved and trying to make a difference to the world, but she would no longer have to pretend all the time. And, just in case Charlie’s ghost was listening, she instructed the car’s sound system to play The Proclaimers’ ‘I’m On My Way’ and sang along with it at the top of her voice. She was definitely driving away from the misery she’d felt in London, and nothing was going to stop her enjoying her new life in Edinburgh. Being happy.
An hour later, she revised that.
The persistent rain had made her put the hard top on the car. It was already dark—a good hour before it got dark in London—but there were no street lights in sight so she had to rely on her headlights, and the narrowness of the road and the multiple bends meant she was driving at practically a crawl. The satnav didn’t seem to have a clue where she was and kept telling her, ‘You have reached your destination,’ when she clearly hadn’t. And she’d reversed down what felt like the same narrow, muddy track twice now.
Clara had said that her cottage was on the edge of the village. Obviously Clara’s definition of ‘edge’ wasn’t the same as Georgie’s. Possibly neither was ‘village’: a pub, a church, a school, and a renovated courtyard of barns, which was apparently a farm shop and in whose car park she was now sitting as she tried to make sense of her bearings. How on earth was that a village?
Everything seemed to be firmly closed at seven o’clock on a Saturday evening—even the pub, which she could hardly believe—so she couldn’t ask anyone for directions. In London, her local shops were open before dawn and closed after midnight. Did that mean she’d have to drive for half an hour to get supplies if she ran out of milk?
According to the sign on the barns, they sold fruit, veg, award-winning dairy and meat. There was a bakery and a café, and local crafts and gifts.
All crammed into a few barns in the middle of nowhere.
This was starting to feel like a huge mistake rather than a fresh start. Saturdays shouldn’t be this difficult. And thank God she’d bought milk and coffee at the service station. The first thing she’d do when she got to her new house would be to put the kettle on and make double-strength coffee. Maybe treble.
OK. She’d make one last attempt to find the cottage; if that failed, she’d give in and call Clara and ask her just where the cottage was.
She drove up the narrow track as slowly as she could. And, this time, was it her imagination or was there a chink of light at the side of the road—something which might mean people? She drove even more slowly until she saw an opening that led into a yard, then carefully pulled in. There was a large four-wheel drive car already parked there, so obviously this wasn’t Clara’s cottage. But at least it looked as though there was someone in residence—someone who might know where Hayloft Cottage actually was and could give her directions.
She parked next to the other car, made her way to the door of the cottage and banged on it.
No answer.
But there was a deep woof. Definitely not Clara’s cottage, then, because Clara hadn’t said anything about a dog. A neighbour’s, then. She hoped the neighbour was friendly. In London, you hardly even saw your neighbours. Would it be different here?
She knocked again. More woofing. And this time the door was dragged open by a man who looked very fed-up indeed and was wearing nothing but a bath towel slung round his hips.
Her mouth went dry.
He had pale skin, grey eyes, slight stubble and wild, slightly over-long dark hair. Add in the light dusting of hair on his chest and his perfect six-pack, and he could’ve been the star of an action movie. He was the first man who’d made her mouth go dry like that since Charlie, and it put all her senses on full alert: this was dangerous.
‘What do you want?’ he snapped.
Oh, help. He had that lovely Scots accent too. The sort that melted your bones.
And her brain cells must have been temporarily scrambled from the long drive
to make her focus on his unexpected gorgeousness instead of solving her problem. What on earth was wrong with her? The man must think she was some kind of tongue-tied idiot.
‘I—I’m sorry to bother you,’ she managed to get out finally, cross with herself for being so pathetic. ‘I’m a bit lost. My satnav has been telling me for the last five miles that I’ve already reached my destination, I’ve been on the road since nine o’clock this morning, and to be honest I’ve had enough. Could you please tell me where I can find Hayloft Cottage?’
‘Hayloft Cottage,’ he repeated. There was another woof behind him, and he turned to the dog. ‘Shh, Truffle, it’s all right,’ he said.
Was he scowling because he hadn’t heard of the cottage? Or maybe this place was like the village where her parents lived in Norfolk, where something had an official name but everyone local called it something completely different. ‘Clara Connolly lives there,’ she added, hoping it would help.
‘And you are...?’
‘Georgina Jones—Georgie.’
‘You,’ he said, ‘aren’t due to arrive until tomorrow.’
She couldn’t quite process this. What did he mean? ‘Tomorrow?’ she asked, confused.
‘Your job swap thing. Clara said you weren’t coming until tomorrow.’
‘You know Clara?’
‘Aye.’
The penny suddenly dropped. He knew Clara. He knew she was expected. So this had to be Hayloft Cottage. ‘Are you Clara’s friend? The one she said might be staying?’
For pity’s sake—he knew who she was, now. Couldn’t he just let her in so she could get a cup of coffee and warm up a bit?
She realised she’d spoken aloud when he raked a hand through his hair. ‘Yes. Of course. Sorry. I was in the shower. I’ll get something sorted out.’ His towel nearly slipped as he reached behind him to grab the dog’s collar, and Georgie’s pulse went up a notch. ‘This is Truffle. She’s a bit nervous, but she’s friendly when she gets to know you.’
