want to hear people talking about research into tropical diseases had been a blanket denial. There was only one person she would really dread listening to. Or meeting. The visiting medical specialists would only be here for a couple of days, she had told herself. It would be easy to stay out of the way.
Much easier not to even know whether Luke was present.
She’d been right to dread this. Even the sound of his voice was overwhelming enough to have her whole body trembling. What would happen if she looked up and made eye contact?
He was still talking to Sam. ‘… Stable angina but he’s due for a coronary angiogram next month.’
‘Let’s get an ECG,’ Sam said. ‘Have you had any aspirin today, Charles? Used your GTN spray?’
‘I took an extra aspirin for the flight. Forgot my spray.’
‘No problem.’ Having unbuttoned the shirt, Sam reached for the leads that Anahera had attached sticky dots to. ‘Grab the GTN, Ana. And let’s get some oxygen on, too.’
Ana …
Her name seemed to hang in the air. Had Luke heard? Or had he recognised her already and was trying to ignore her presence?
Dammit … her hand was still shaking as she pulled the lid from the small spray pump canister.
‘Open your mouth for me,’ she directed. ‘And lift your tongue …’
‘I can do that.’ A hand closed over hers to remove the canister and there was no help for it—she had to look up.
And Luke was looking right back at her.
For a heartbeat nothing else existed as those hazel-green eyes captured her own with even more effect than the touch of his hand had—and that had been disturbing enough.
Her body froze, and she couldn’t breathe. Her mind froze as it was flooded with emotions that she’d thought she would never experience again. The love she had felt for this man. The unbearable pain of his betrayal.
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.
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,
