The Man She Could Never Forget

‘Antibiotics and tetanus injections in the locked cupboard,’ Keanu told her as he examined the wound in the patient’s foot. ‘And bring some saline and a packet of oral antibiotics as well. Everything’s labelled as we get a lot of agency nurses coming out here for short stints. I’ll use the saline to flush the wound before we dress it.’

He worked with quick, neat movements, cleaning the wound, putting the dressings on—usually, in her experience, a job left to a nurse—before administering the antibiotic and a tetanus shot. He even pulled a sleeve over the foot to keep the dressings in place and keep them relatively clean.

‘Now all we have to do is get you back to your accommodation,’ Keanu said. ‘Keep off the foot for a couple of days and find your workboots before you go back on the job. If you don’t have any you can phone the mainland and have some sent out on tomorrow’s plane. Nurse Lockhart and I will help you out to a cart and I’ll run you back down the hill.’

‘I’ve got workboots,’ the man said gruffly. ‘And I’ll phone my mate to come and get me, thanks. The foreman on the job doesn’t like strangers on the site.’

‘Strangers on the site? What site? What’s happening at the research station, Keanu?’

He touched her on the arm.

‘Leave it,’ he said quietly, and the touch, more than his words, stopped her questions.

Since when had her body reacted to a casual touch from Keanu’s hand?

It was being back on the island …

It was seeing him again …

Remembering the hurt …

Caroline closed her eyes, willing the tumult of emotions in her body to settle. She was here to heal, to find herself again, but she was also here to work.

She cleaned up, dropping soiled swabs into a closed bin marked for that purpose and the needles into a sharps box. Their patient was now sitting on the examination table, chatting to Keanu about, she found as she edged closer, fishing.

Well, it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss right now, and as she needed time to sort out her reactions to seeing Keanu again, she slipped away, heading back down the track to the airstrip to collect her suitcase.

She could walk up to the house on the path behind the hospital and so avoid seeing the source of her confusion again. And once she was up at the house—home again—she could sort things out in her head—and possibly in her body—and …

And what?

Make things right between them?

She doubted that could ever happen. He had disappeared without a word, returned her letters unopened.

But now she’d have to work with him. Was she supposed to behave as if the life they’d shared had never happened?

As if his disappearance from it hadn’t hurt her so badly she’d thought she’d never recover?

Impossible.

She’d reached the airstrip and grabbed her case by the time she’d thought this far and as further consideration of the problem seemed just that—impossible—she put it from her mind and started up the track, feeling the moisture in the air, trapped by the heavy rainforest on each side, wrap around her like a security blanket.

She was home, that was the main thing.

The track from the strip to the big house led up the hill behind the hospital and staff villas.

Staff villas?

Keanu.

Forget Keanu!

For her sanity’s sake, she needed to work—she’d already sat around feeling sorry for herself for far too long as a result of another desertion.

And another nurse would always come in handy on the island even if they couldn’t afford to pay her. She had her own place to live and some money Steve hadn’t known about tucked away in the bank.

And wasn’t this what she and Keanu had always planned to do?

He would become a doctor, she a nurse, and they’d return to Wildfire to run a hospital on the island. As children, they’d shared a picture book with a doctor and a nurse that had led to this childhood dream. Had it seemed more important because they had both lost a parent who possibly could have been saved if medical aid had been closer?

Half-orphans, they’d called themselves …

But as she hadn’t existed for Keanu once he and his mother had left the island permanently, seeing him here, and seeing him carrying out his part of their dream, had completely rattled her.

Trudging up the track, she shook her head in disbelief at his sudden reappearance in her life, especially now when all she wanted to do was throw herself into work as an antidote to the pain of Steve’s rejection.

Could she throw herself into work with Keanu around? Even seeing him that one time had memories—images—of their shared childhood flashing through her head.

Helen, his mother, had died not long after leaving the island. Caroline’s father had passed on that information many years ago, but he’d offered no explanation the year Caroline had found out she wouldn’t be going to the island for her holidays as Helen and Keanu had left and there’d been no one to care for her.

And despite her grief at Helen’s loss, she’d felt such anger against Keanu for not letting her know they were leaving, for not keeping in touch, for not telling her of his mother’s death himself, that she’d shut him out of her mind, the hurt too deep to contemplate.

‘I’ll take that.’

Keanu’s voice came from behind her, deep and husky, and sent tremors down her spine, while her fingers, rendered nerveless by his touch, released her hold on the case.

Why had he come back?

And why now?

But it was he who asked the question.

‘Why did you come back?’

Blunt words but something that sounded like anger throbbed through them—anger that fired her own in response.

‘It is my home.’

‘One of your homes,’ he reminded her. ‘You have another perfectly comfortable one in Sydney with your father and your brother—your twin. How is Christopher?’

She spun towards him, sorry she didn’t still have the suitcase to swing at his legs as she turned.

‘How dare you ask that question? As if you care about my brother. People who care for others keep in touch. They don’t just stop all communication. They don’t send back letters unopened. I was twelve, Keanu, and suddenly someone who had been there for me all my life, someone I thought was my friend, was gone.’

Keanu bowed his head in the face of her anger, unable to bear the hurt in her eyes. Oh, he’d been angry at her reappearance, but that had been shock-type anger. He’d returned to Wildfire thinking her safely tucked away in Sydney, enjoying a busy social life.

Then, seeing her appear out of nowhere, so much unresolved anger and bitterness and, yes, regret had churned inside him he’d reacted with anger. But that anger should have been directed at another Lockhart. It was regret at the way he’d treated her—his betrayal of their friendship—that had added fuel to the fire.