from the urn where he’d been making a coffee—holding out the cup to Caroline, who shook her head.
‘Yeah, we had a call from the nurse there, whipped over and collected the lad, then to top it all off we were caught in a very nasty crosswind on the flight home. I know we have to expect that at this time of the year—it’s the start of cyclone season—but heaven help us if there’s an emergency call tonight.’
‘You’re the only pilot?’ Caroline asked, sitting down on the couch across from Jack.
‘Sorry, I’m supposed to make the introductions,’ Keanu said. ‘Jack, this is Caroline, new nurse. Caroline, this is Jack Richards and, yes, at the moment he’s our only pilot. Although there’s relief on the way Friday when the second flight for the week comes in. That’s right, isn’t it, Jack? A FIFO coming in to give you a break?’
‘Yeah, young Matt Rogers is due to come in on Friday’s flight.’
‘You don’t like him?’ Caroline asked, unable to not hear the distaste in Jack’s voice.
‘Only because he’s younger, and fitter and better looking than our Jack here,’ Keanu teased, ‘and they both share a very keen interest in the beautiful Anahera.’
‘Who at least ignores us both equally,’ Jack said with such gloom Caroline had to smile.
‘I can’t blame any man being attracted to her—she is beautiful,’ Caroline said, now wondering if the nurse was ignoring these two suitors because she had her eye on someone else.
Someone like Keanu?
And if Vailea’s daughter fancied Keanu and Vailea was thinking him a good match, maybe that’s why she’d shown such animosity to Caroline. Everyone on the island would know the two of them had grown up together …
She must have sighed, for Keanu said, ‘Come on, you’re tired. I’ll walk you up to the house.’
Jack straightened up in his chair.
‘The house?’ he said. ‘Like the Lockhart mansion? Since when did our nurses get lucky enough to stay there while important blokes like me sleep in little better than prefabricated huts?’
‘Since their surname is Lockhart,’ Keanu said, enough ice in his voice to stop further speculation. ‘And all the hospital buildings are prefabricated, as you well know. It makes it much easier to pack them into shipping containers and land them here, then it only needs a small team of men to put them together.’
He turned to Caroline.
‘Prefab or not, the staff villas are really lovely so just ignore him.’
Jack was ignoring them both. He was still staring at Caroline.
‘You’re a Lockhart?’ he said with such disbelief Caroline had to smile.
‘Did you think we all had two heads?’ she asked, but Jack continued to stare at her.
Maybe she had grown a second head.
But two heads would give her two brains and she only needed one—even a part of one—to know she didn’t want Keanu walking her home. Her feelings towards him were in such turmoil she doubted she’d ever sort them out.
For years she’d hated him for his desertion. Hadn’t he realised he’d been her only true friend? Even after they’d both gone to boarding school, he’d still been the person to whom she’d poured out her heart in letter after letter.
Her homesickness, the strange emptiness that came from being motherless, the pain of her time spent with Christopher, who couldn’t respond to her words of love—writing to Keanu had been a way of getting it out of her system.
So he knew everything there was to know about her life, from her envy when other girls’ parents came to special occasions to the realisation that, for her father, Christopher and the hospital on Wildfire were more important than she was.
She’d told Keanu things she’d never told anyone, before or since, then suddenly, he’d been gone.
Nothing.
Until now, and although the confusion of seeing him again had at first been confined to her head, since he’d held her—if only to warm her—it was in her heart as well.
Damn the man.
‘I don’t need you to walk me home,’ she said when they’d left the staffroom. ‘I do know the way.’
‘And I know there are a lot of unhappy Lockhart employees—or ex-employees—on the island at the moment, and while I don’t think for a minute they’d take out their frustration on you, I’d rather be sure than sorry.’
So he was walking her home to protect her. Looking after Caroline as his mother had always told him to when they’d been children.
She felt stupidly disappointed at this realisation then told herself she was just being ridiculous.
As if that kind of a hug meant anything. And anyway she didn’t want Keanu hugging her.
That just added to her torment.
‘What employees and ex-employees are upset?’ she asked to take her mind off things she couldn’t handle right now.
‘Just about all of them,’ Keanu replied. ‘But mostly the miners, and although some of them are from other islands, a lot of them live in the village. They’ve had their hours cut and the ones who’ve been sacked haven’t been paid back wages, let alone their superannuation.’
‘But if Ian’s gone, who’s here to pay them or to cut hours? Who’s running the mine?’
‘Who knows? Ian’s disappearance, as you may have gathered, is fairly recent. He was here last week, then suddenly he was either holed up in the house or gone.’
‘Gone how?’ Caroline asked as they reached the front steps of the house, where Bessie had left a welcoming light burning.
‘Presumably on his yacht. It was a tidy size. One day it was in the mine harbour and the next it was gone.’
‘But the mine’s still operating?’
Keanu nodded.
‘Then we should go down and check it out.’
‘Go down to the mine?’ Keanu demanded.
Caroline grinned at him.
‘Not right now, you goose, but tomorrow or whenever we can get some time off together. That’s if you want to come with me.’
‘Well, I damn well wouldn’t let you go alone, although why you want to go—’
‘Because I need to know—we need to know. Without the mine there’s no way we can keep the hospital going, not to mention the fact that the entire population, not just those here on Wildfire, will lose their medical facilities as well as their incomes.’
She
