Wildfire Island Docs: The Man She Could Never Forget / The Nurse Who Stole His Heart / Saving Maddie's Baby / A Sheikh to Capture Her Heart / The Fling That Changed Everything / A Child to Open Their

And then something else made those memories evaporate as instantly as they’d appeared.

Fear …

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. It was dangerous. She had to protect more than her own heart and that meant she had to find the strength to deal with this and make sure nothing was allowed to change.

Determination gave her focus and an unexpected but very welcome sense of calm. It was Anahera who broke the eye contact and found that both her voice and her hands had stopped shaking.

‘Fine. I’ll put the oxygen on.’

The moment had mercifully been brief enough for no one else to have noticed. Or maybe it hadn’t. Sam looked up after sticking the final electrode into place.

‘This is Anahera,’ he told Luke. ‘Our specialty nurse.’

‘Yes.’ Luke pressed the button on the canister to direct a second spray under their patient’s tongue. ‘We’ve met before.’

‘Of course …’ Vailea was still standing beside them, providing a cool breeze from the palm-frond fan. ‘I knew I’d seen you before. You came here to work in the hospital a few years ago.’

‘I did.’

‘You had to rush away, though … Your wife was ill?’

Oh … God … There it was again. The pain …

‘Yes.’ The monosyllable was curt. Grudging. Maybe Luke didn’t want to remember the way they’d parted any more than she did.

The only blessing right now was that there were only two people in this room who knew what had happened during the few weeks that Luke had been here and only one who knew what the aftermath had been.

Anahera just had to make sure that it stayed that way.

Ana …

Hearing that name had been a bombshell Luke hadn’t been expecting.

Oh, he’d seen the green uniform that looked a bit like a set of scrubs from the corner of his eye and had realised the attending doctor had brought an assistant to help carry all the medical gear, but he’d been so focussed on relaying all the information he’d gathered about Charles that he hadn’t looked properly.

And then he’d heard her name. Had seen the way her hand had been shaking as she’d struggled to get the cap off the GTN spray pump. It had been an unconscious reaction to take the canister from her hand. Ana had been struggling and he could help. The consequence of touching her hadn’t entered his thoughts at all so no wonder it had been another bombshell.

But both of those shocks—hearing her name and touching her skin—were nothing compared to looking into her eyes for the first time in nearly five years.

How could that be so powerful?

They were just a pair of brown eyes and he must have met hundreds of people with that eye colour over those years. How could a single glance into this particular pair make him feel like the ground beneath him had just opened into a yawning chasm?

It was like the difference between putting a plug into an electrical socket and somehow sticking your finger in to access the current directly.

And Ana had felt it, too. He’d seen the shock in her eyes but then he’d seen something he’d never expected to see. Something that squeezed the air out of his chest to leave a vacuum that felt physically painful.

He’d seen fear, he was sure of it.

‘It’s gone.’ The voice of their patient sounded absurdly cheerful. ‘The pain’s completely gone.’

No. Luke rocked back on his heels, his gaze seeking Ana’s again.

Charles might well be feeling fine but Luke had the horrible feeling that, for himself, the pain had only just begun.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f09c977f-faaa-573b-9d65-2c30b2893206)

ANAHERA WASN’T LOOKING back at Luke and it felt like deliberate avoidance.

She had the nasal cannula hanging from her hands, one end attached to the oxygen cylinder, the other end ready to loop around their patient’s ears, and she was looking at Sam.

‘Keep really still for a tick, mate. I’m going to get a twelve-lead ECG printed out and then we’ll see what’s what.’

There were a few seconds’ silence as the life pack captured a snapshot of the electrical activity of the heart and then printed out the graph. Luke looked around, as if he needed to remind himself of why he’d come here when he’d known about the risk. Okay, he’d thought that the worst he would face would be the memories but there’d always been the possibility that Ana might have come home again, hadn’t there? He’d pushed it aside. He was only going to be on the island for a couple of days, in the company of his professional colleagues and a good friend. He wouldn’t be facing anything he couldn’t handle.

But here he was. Facing something he had no idea how to handle.

Anahera was afraid of him?

He’d hurt her that badly?

An unpleasant crawling sensation began to fill that space in his chest. He felt like a jerk. A complete bastard.

His gaze had tracked the other conference attendees standing in a sombre group waiting to hear the verdict on Charles Ainsley’s chest pain but he ended up looking at Anahera again. This time her head was bent close to Sam’s as they both studied the ECG. He could hear her voice.

‘There’s no sign of any ST segment elevation. I can’t see any depression that might show myocardial ischaemia either, can you?’

She was speaking softly, her tone measured. He hadn’t even remembered hearing her speak like this, maybe because the memory of the last time he had spoken to her had been so very different.

She’d been so angry that he’d finally tracked her down and called her while she’d been on shift at that hospital in Brisbane.

‘What’s the problem, Luke? Is London a bit boring? You feel like cheating on your wife again?’

She hadn’t been about to let him say any of the things he’d wanted to say.

‘I don’t want to hear it. I never want to hear from you again. Ever …’

The anger had been contagious in the end. She’d hated him. How could love turn to hate as decisively as if a coin had been flipped?

It couldn’t. That had been the conclusion Luke had come to. It couldn’t happen if the love had been real. Yes, you could throw the coin in the air but there was magic in real love and the coin would always land the right side up.

He could never hate Anahera. Not in a million years. He would have given her the chance to explain. He would have listened.

And forgiven her anything.

Even now, he could forgive the way she was deliberately avoiding his gaze. How could he not when he’d seen that fear in her eyes?

‘It’s looking good, isn’t it?’ Charles was smiling. ‘I told you it was only indigestion.’