‘Come here and I’ll show you again just how perfect you are.’

He pulled her into his arms, sliding his hands under her T-shirt as he kissed her, leaving her head spinning. He hadn’t rejected her. He’d called her perfect. In wonder, she kissed him back while her body melted beneath his touch. Thoughts twirled in her mind until, out of the kaleidoscope of images and words, one truth emerged and flashed behind her closed lids: she was in love with Ned. She was in love with this gorgeous, thoughtful daredevil of a sweet-talking firefighter.

And although she was still scared, although it had been years since a man—or anyone except her sister—had seen her naked, the shock of her realisation was enough to jolt her into action as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. He hadn’t rejected her—and from the way he was talking would it be so very foolish to start hoping this might be more than a one-night stand?

Emily Forbes is the pseudonym of two sisters who share both a passion for writing and a life-long love of reading. Beyond books and their families, their interests include cooking (food is a recurring theme in their books!), learning languages, playing the piano and netball, as well as an addiction to travel—armchair is fine, but anything involving a plane ticket is better. Home for both is South Australia, where they live three minutes apart with their husbands and four young children. With backgrounds in business administration, law, arts, clinical psychology and physiotherapy, they have worked in many areas. This past professional experience adds to their writing in many ways: legal dilemmas, psychological ordeals and business scandals are all intermeshed with the medical settings of their stories. And, since nothing could ever be as delicious as spending their days telling the stories of gorgeous heroes and spirited heroines, they are eternally grateful their mutual dream of writing for a living came true.

They would love you to visit and keep up to date with current news and future releases at the Medical™ Romance authors’ website: http://www.medicalromance.com/

Recent titles by the same author:

WEDDING AT PELICAN BEACH

THE SURGEON’S LONGED-FOR BRIDE

A MOTHER IN THE MAKING

EMERGENCY AT PELICAN BEACH

Dear Reader

Life is full of competing wants, needs and desires: having designs on that chocolate versus knowing we’ve vowed to resist temptation; wanting to stay home on the couch in our slippers when we’ve already accepted an invitation.

So it’s vital that sometimes life makes things easy, with no debate about what we should do. No internal struggle. No guilt. Just pleasure.

It’s in whole-hearted support of this Pleasure Principle that I give you Ned Kellaway, the charismatic firefighting hero of THE PLAYBOY FIREFIGHTER’S PROPOSAL.

If you’ve read my last book, EMERGENCY: WIFE NEEDED, you’ve already made Ned’s acquaintance. Ned is a shameless playboy with a life-is-for-the-living attitude, and—I admit it—I was his from the first. I just had to spend more time with him.

Ned was born with a thirst for all things action. He’s the team leader for the Fire Service’s Emergency Response team. Built to make any girl feel protected, he’s also scorching in the looks department. And, although no woman has been able to get inside his head, none are complaining about getting inside his bed. It’s going to take a pretty special woman to make him question his playboy lifestyle and get him to face his own past. Is Sarah Richardson, emergency consultant, the woman to do it?

So grab some chocolate, find somewhere cosy, turn the page and meet Ned Kellaway. And when you’re interrupted, as you surely will be, ignore all demands and put your nose back in the book! Trust me, the right to indulge in a book is definitely enshrined as a Pleasure Principle.

Love

Emily Forbes

BY

EMILY FORBES

My darling littlest daughter, you came into our lives just as this book was being finished, so it’s only right this one is for you. We waited a long time for you, and the moment we saw you it all made sense: we were meant to be together. You have enriched our world in so many ways already, daily bringing us joy and sunshine and laughter. May the future shower you with every blessing and may you always know how very dear you are to all of us and how greatly you are loved.

From my heart to yours and back again,

Your loving Mummy

CHAPTER ONE

NED KELLAWAY scanned the racecourse from his vantage point in the grandstand, absorbing the impact as the disarray grew before his eyes. It was chaos, utter chaos, and far worse than he’d anticipated.

He was loving every minute of it.

He’d love it even more if he could get down there into the thick of things. Instead, when the emergency services and medical response teams arrived on site, he’d have to sit back and watch as they responded to the crisis. ‘Sit back and watch’were not words in his vocabulary.

His gaze swept the area again as he marvelled at how all his planning had successfully brought this to fruition. Littering the ground in front of him were dozens and dozens of prostrate bodies, some immobile, many struggling to their feet, most bloodied. Voices carried up to him on the breeze as people called out in pain. Just as many were lying silently.

The adrenalin coursing through his body made it an almost impossible feat to simply stand and observe. The mass casualties would require medical attention and there were fatalities, too, requiring a response of a different sort. He mentally checked off the list of things that needed to happen, including the task of overseeing the rollout of all the emergency response teams, a role that would normally be his since his skills in this area were second to none. Today, his expertise was exactly the reason why he wasn’t down there, taking control. He was needed for another task. But that didn’t mean he was finding it easy, sitting here, excluded from the action, prevented from taking control and restoring order, watching someone else do his job.

In the midst of the chaos was a fifty-seater bus, now containing considerably fewer than fifty seats, and this drew his focus. The bus’s left-hand side had been ripped open by the force of the explosion, the metal casing peeled back like a tin can, its interior exposed. Above the back wheels, where there should have been a row of seats, was a gaping hole. Luggage was strewn on the ground around the bus and lying amongst the bags were the injured passengers.

In the time Ned had taken to process the scene a few passengers had gathered their wits and were now moving between the prone figures. It wasn’t clear if they were trying to offer assistance, staggering about in shock or simply searching for people lost in the confusion.

To his right, a second bomb had detonated inside the bus terminal and more people were pouring out of the building, further congesting the space around the damaged bus. Visibility was compromised by smoke, a fact that would create another set of problems for the emergency teams.

The noise was increasing now as people realised what had happened. Voices rang out, yelling over the top of one another in an effort to be heard, growing louder and more desperate as the seconds ticked on.

Ned took a deep breath, anticipation of the imminent arrival of the emergency service vehicles sending more adrenalin through his system. He rubbed his hands over his head, leaving his short hair sticking up at all angles, as he cast his gaze across the scene once more.