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his touch. 'Are you not feeling well?'
    She raised bruised turquoise eyes to look at him. 'You're shortlisted for the Ackerman money.'
    'What? How did you—' A terrible dread clenched his stomach with the realisation that the receptionist had not been wrong. 'Oh, no. No way. The eating disorder unit. Not you?'
    'Me.'
    The shock robbed him of breath. 'I had no idea.'
    'Neither did I. Not until this afternoon when they let slip that the third candidate had dropped out and my only remaining competition was Dr Cameron Kincaid's self-harm facility.'
    He hated the harshness and distance in her voice. 'Ginger—'
    'Don't, Cameron. This changes everything.' She rose and gathered her things. 'Excuse me, I have a train to catch.'
    Panic gripped him. 'Ginger, please. You can't just dismiss what's happening between us.'
    'What happened. Past tense,' she corrected, and he could see the pain in her eyes, feel the answering hurt and disbelief crushing his insides as she physically and emotionally withdrew from him.
    He caught her arm, desperate to detain her, disbelief making his brain sluggish, hurt paralysing him. 'It's not going to go away. Sweetheart, we can sort something out. Please.'
     
    'We can't, Cameron. This isn't just about us now.' Ginger shook her head, moving to break the contact between them, fighting to gain the strength she needed to do what had to be done. 'We're on opposite sides now. Enemies. I can't let anything or anyone come between me and the needs of my patients.'
    'I can't let my patients down, either.'
    'I know. That's what I mean.'
    Ginger recognised the steely determination mixed with regret in his voice. His shock had been genuine. She believed that he hadn't known the disaster that had awaited them, but she couldn't allow his arguments, his persuasiveness, her own desire for him to weaken her resolve. Her patients had to come before her own desires.
    Any joy she had experienced at the success of her presentation that afternoon had been crushed with the shock of hearing Cameron's name, and the dawning realisation that he was her sole remaining competition for the funding that would mean the success or failure of her project and affect the well-being of the patients who depended on her. How could she take her own pleasure in him when the achievement of one of them would ultimately destroy the other? She had to think of the wider issues at stake, not of herself, her own selfish wants.
    'Listen, Ginger—'
    'No. I can't. Your victory would mean disaster for my patients and put an end to all my hard work and dreams to fulfil their needs. I'm sorry. We can't do this.' Her voice trembled, threatened to break. 'It's over. Goodbye, Cameron.'
    Forcing herself to move while she still could, Ginger turned and headed for the exit, the image of his pain and shock imprinted on her brain. Tears blurred her eyes but she blinked them away, ignoring the hurt confusion in Cameron's despairing voice as he followed her and called her name one last time.
    'Ginger...'
    Blindly, she stepped into the first taxi on the rank outside the hotel and closed the door with a thud, separating herself for ever from the only man who had ever touched her heart and her soul.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    'I wish I was dead.'
    'I hope you don't mean that, Tess.' Ginger frowned as she observed the tear-stained face of the painfully thin, dark-haired girl opposite her. 'Things seem bleak and lonely at the moment, without hope, but we shall do everything we can to help make those feelings better. If you'll let us and work with us.'
    The fifteen-year-old wiped the back of her hand across her face, smudging her already running mascara. 'I don't know.'
    Ginger handed her another tissue and watched as the girl shredded it in her lap, her dark eyes awash with misery. She never failed to be moved by the stories of pain and despair the young people who came to her confided. It was up to her to change that, to give them new hope for a brighter future. Not that it was