Life has taught Dr. Rachel Tilding the hard way that she can’t afford to let her guard down—ever! Except her new boss, Dr. Tom Lavery, hasn’t read the memo. He’s known for sheltering all manner of waifs and strays, and Rachel feels uncomfortably like Tom’s latest project! She should be pushing back, but somehow Tom and his boys are starting to heal her wounded heart…

With thanks to Mary Michele,

whose kindness made this book so much easier.

This book is for Denise, who, with her wobbly mate

Molly, helps make this place home.

CHAPTER ONE

DR RACHEL TILDING enjoyed treating kids. If they couldn’t speak it was often up to Rachel to figure out what was wrong, but in general kids’ needs were uncomplicated. They didn’t intrude on her personal space. If all Rachel’s patients were kids—without parents—she might well be looking at a different career path.

As it was, her aim was to be a radiologist, interpreting results from state-of-the-art equipment and having little to do with patients at all. But the terms of her scholarship specified she had to spend her first two years after internship as a family doctor in Shallow Bay. She’d geared herself to face it.

What she hadn’t prepared herself for was living next to a house full of kids. Their noise was bad enough, plus the yips of excitement from their dog. Then, a mere two hours after she’d moved in, a ball smashed through her window, almost making her drop the carton of glassware she’d been unpacking. The ball landed in a spray of shattered glass in the kitchen sink.

Count to ten, she told herself. These are kids. Don’t yell.

She’d been telling herself that since she’d arrived. These were her new neighbours. It wasn’t their fault that she valued privacy above all else. Someone would call them in for dinner soon. They’d go to bed and she’d have the silence she craved.

But kids as such close neighbours…

Shallow Bay’s nurse-manager had sent her pictures of this little house, a pretty-as-a-picture cottage surrounded by bushland. A five-minute walk took her up to the Shallow Bay Hospital, and five minutes in the other direction took her down to the beach.

What the pictures hadn’t shown, however, was that it was one of three cottages, huddled together in the dip before the bay. Hers was the smallest. The largest was the middle one and that seemed to be filled with boys.

She wasn’t sure how many yet. The noise they were making could have denoted a small army. She’d been trying to figure how she could intervene without turning

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