Chapter 1

The waiting room had been packed with patients waiting to see the doctor that Saturday morning.It was January in Mystic Falls when the summer was at its peak, and Mystic Falls was known for its extreme temperatures. But Elena Gibson succeeded in projecting an image of cool, calm professionalism in her nurse’s uniform.

Rachel Robert was the last patient in the waiting room as at lunch break. Elena had just finished attending to her. She was a woman in her sixties with grey hair combed back into a neat bun. She was engrossed in the daily papers, when she looked up to find Elena’s eyes resting on her, she closed the papers she had been paging through and placed it on the table beside her chair.

‘I’ve sold Rose Garden’, she said chattily, but there was a deep sadness in her eyes. ‘Mike and I never had any children and there is no point in staying alone at the farm now that he is no longer alive’.

Elena Gibson’s greatest weakness as a nurse had always been her inability to distance herself from the suffering of others.

‘Where will you go?’ she asked the woman whom everyone in Mystic Falls knew as Lady mint.

‘My sister is also a widow, and she has invited me to stay with her at Sweet Water for a while’. There was a hint of despair in the vague gesture she made with her small hands. ‘If I like it there then I might buy a property of my own later’.

Did you sell the farm to a local? Elena asked the older woman conversationally, while she closed the appointment book and began to straighten her desk.

‘No, I sold it to a doctor from Riverdale who made me a better offer than any one else in the district. Lady Mint frowned in concentration, ‘ I haven’t met the man, but I remember my lawyer said his name is Stephan Lynch’.

Stephan Lynch! Elena reeled mentally as if she had been dealt a vicious blow, and the blood drained from her face, leaving her looking pale. There could be not more than one Stephan Lynch in the medical profession, and the name alone conjured up memories which were still too painful to dwell on. She had thought that they would never meet again, but for some obscure reason, life was bringing him here to Mystic Falls.

‘You look ill’, Lady Mint was saying as if from a great distance away. ‘Are you feeling faint?’

Elena took a deep breath and made a supreme effort to pull herself together. ‘No, I’m fine.’

‘It’s this terrible heat,’ said Lady Mint, placing her own interpretation on the cause of Elena’s paleness. ‘It took me years to get used to this extreme heat.’

A pregnant young woman emerged from the consulting room. Her appearance created a mild diversion, and it gave Elena those extra few seconds to regain complete control of herself before she rose behind her desk with Lady Mint’s file in her hands.

‘You may go in now, Lady Mint,’ she announced, her chaotic feelings carefully hidden behind an outwardly calm expression as she held out her hand to help the older woman out of the chair.