send you to cheer me up?’
Not exactly the conversation opener Kate had expected but it would do.
‘Yes, she did. She’s worried about you. We’re all worried about you.’
Deep breath!
‘Actually, to be honest, she’s worried about me too. She thinks I work too hard, but the SDR meeting was interesting. Blake had brought along an army bloke who has been working on a new emergency response tent. You know, one of those ones that fold up and can be dropped into disaster zones and comes complete with all our medical needs. Apparently, he has a new prototype he wants to trial next time we have a callout to somewhere fairly isolated.’
‘Not close to a local hospital or, say, in a bushfire where the hospital’s been damaged or destroyed,’ Harriet said, picking up on the idea immediately. ‘I’ve seen army ones on exercises we’ve taken with other teams. They really are a complete package, right down to food, water and accommodation for the first responders—enough for them to be self-sufficient for a fortnight.’
Taking the words as a small spark of interest, Kate said, ‘Shall I tell you about it? Will we sit down?’
Harriet was frowning slightly, but as Kate perched on the sofa, her hostess dropped into an armchair. The frown was understandable. Here was this neighbour, who’d been in the apartment block for two years yet had never ventured over the threshold, making herself at home.
And talking, talking, talking—
The doorbell shrilled, and Harriet’s frown deepened.
‘It must be someone from another apartment because they didn’t ring at the front door.’
It shrilled again.
‘Would you like me to get it?’ Kate offered, her heart going out to the woman she’d only known as lively and active, now a pale shadow of her former self.
A shadow with her injured leg still in its ungainly brace.
‘No, I’ll go.’
Harriet rose to her feet and limped to the door, opening it to reveal the person Kate was still telling herself not to think about.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ came the deep growl from the doorway. ‘I’m Angus Caruth, and Blake gave me Kate’s address, and then Alice said she was here and that you wouldn’t mind if I popped in to say hello. I barely recognised her earlier, at the meeting. I don’t think I’d ever seen Kate with dry hair.’
Kate’s gut had twisted more with every word he spoke, but she’d regained some control over her mind, so as Harriet ushered in her new visitor, she used anger to mask all the other reactions that had rioted inside her since the meeting.
‘Blake gave you my address?’ she demanded. ‘Whatever happened to staff confidentiality?’
‘Oh, I’d blame Sam for that,’ Harriet said, obviously intrigued by this second visitor. She waved her arm towards the sofa, and invited Angus to sit. ‘Ever since she and Blake got together, she’s been seeing the world through a pearly haze of love.’
She turned to Kate and smiled—smiled properly!
‘So what’s with the wet hair?’
The smile was the first sign of the old Harriet that Kate had seen so she felt obliged to reply.
‘Angus and I met in a cyclone. Everyone had wet hair.’
She kept her eyes on Harriet as she spoke, for all the good that did her. Her body was as aware of Angus as it would have been if he had been sitting on top of her—her skin prickling with something she’d rather call discomfort than—
No, it couldn’t possibly be attraction...
How could this have happened?
Why did it have to be her hospital he’d turned up at?
And why, after all this time, could he still affect her like this?
But now he was talking again, and if she closed her eyes—
She straightened in her seat.
‘“Angus and I met in a cyclone” hardly covers it,’ he was responding, smiling at her before turning to Harriet. ‘We were stuck in the dining room of a resort hotel and a tree had crashed into one glass wall, so we had about sixty panicking people to deal with. Kate calmly organised the wait staff to tear tablecloths into bandages and once we had all the injured settled as well as we could, she started everyone singing. I think trying to manage “Come to dinner” sung in four parts certainly took their minds off the howling gale and thunderous winds outside.’
Refusing to yield to the memories, Kate tried desperately to ignore the man on the sofa beside her—to ignore all the signals that were zapping between their bodies.
She had to get away, to sort out what was happening and why, after three years, she should still feel this way about a man she barely knew.
It was the coward’s way out but she turned to Harriet.
‘Angus is the man I was telling you about, the one with the new tent, and now he’s here, he can tell you about it himself.’
She pushed herself to her feet, hoping her face wasn’t revealing the torrent of emotions roaring inside her—hoping her legs would hold her up and, most of all, hoping Angus couldn’t see the quivering mess his presence had made of her body.
‘I really should go,’ she added. ‘It’s my turn to cook dinner.’
She strode to the door, opening it and pausing briefly to waggle her fingers in farewell.
And to take in the face of the man who’d haunted her dreams for the past three years.
Angus!
Closing the door behind her, she leant against the wall in the hall, eyes shut so she could see him again on her eyelids—check him against her memories.
No, he hadn’t changed. Still the same dark, almost shorn hair, black quirky eyebrows above deep-set blue eyes, slightly crooked nose, the result she knew of a youthful brawl, and lips—
She wouldn’t think about his lips—not the shape of them, or the paleness, or the way they’d felt as they’d brushed across her skin...
Her heart fluttered and for a moment she was back on the island—back in his arms—lost in blissful sensation...
She pushed angrily away from the wall. How dared Blake Cooper give out her address? How dared Angus walk back into her life like this?
* * *
Angus felt her absence, which was ridiculous given he hadn’t seen her for three years, for all he’d thought about her. Wondering where she was, what she was doing, thinking about contacting her, but how?
And why?
To hurt her as he’d hurt Michelle—never being there for her when she’d
