confused thoughts about Nathan’s troubling reappearance in her life…not to mention his very different recollection about their time together and their distressing parting.
In truth, she had been on edge since Frazer and Callie’s wedding. A doctor and paramedic respectively, on the local air ambulance crew, her friends had married at Strathlochan Castle on Christmas Eve, withAnnie as maid of honour. The day had ended with Callie’s bridal bouquet flying through the air and landing squarely in Annie’s reluctant arms. A shiver ran through her as she relived the moment. At the time she had felt uneasy, as if it was a bad omen instead of the good luck tradition proclaimed. Now, three weeks later, Nathan had shown up, confirming her premonition.
Whilst Annie had been thrilled at her friends’ happiness, their wedding had brought back memories, making her wonder what her own life would have been like had things turned out differently. The reality was that she was now unlikely ever to marry and have the family she had always longed for. Nathan had stolen her dreams when he’d broken her heart, and she would never trust another man again.
Maybe things had happened for the best. She’d certainly progressed much further in her career than she had expected, because she had used hard work as an escape, a comfort, a protection against the pain. The kind of debilitating pain she never wanted to experience again. Even now it hurt too much to think of what could have been—what should have been, had Nathan loved her as much as she had loved him. As much as he now claimed to have done. She had to remember old hurts and be wise to the lessons of the past, lest she fall for Nathan’s charm all over again.
Conscious of him watching her, she made her way to Reception, collected information on the next patient waiting to be seen and called her through from the crowded waiting area. Focusing on the young child—who had somehow managed to wedge a couple of polystyrene packing chips up her nose, where they were well and truly stuck—Annie determined to set the problem of Nathan from her mind. At least for the time being. Unfortunately, though, however much she might wish it, she didn’t think he was going to go away any time soon.
Consumed with frustration, Nathan watched Annie draw a curtain around the cubicle into which she had shown a worried mother with a tearful young daughter.
Every time he was close to Annie his heart started hammering in his chest, his breath felt trapped in his lungs, and his palms dampened. Let alone what happened further south, his body tightening and hardening in an instinctive reaction to her presence. She still aroused in him equal parts physical, gut-tingling desire and crippling emotional uncertainty, just as in the past.
Five years on they still had a connection, and worked well together on a professional basis, but it was clear he was going to have a difficult time making any headway with Annie personally. It had been a mistake to be drawn into a disagreement so soon. He shouldn’t have let her rile him. But her stubbornness and her inability to see another point of view drove him to distraction.
Sucking in a breath, he struggled for calm. There was so much he and Annie needed to talk about, to resolve. That they were far apart in their perception of the events of the past was obvious, and it was not going to be easy to get her to listen. However, he had to try. If he ever hoped to move on, with or without her, he needed to settle things in his head…and his heart…once and for all. But none of that was going to happen immediately. Until he could get Annie alone, away from the hospital, he needed to focus on the job and devote his full attention to the patients who needed him.
The next few hours sped by, as he worked through the assorted cases assigned to him. A series of common and familiar complaints, such as infections, angina, sprains, fractures, cuts and an asthma attack, were interspersed with two further calls on him to join the resus team. The first was a serious road accident, involving several cars on the motorway, which brought the A and E department almost to breaking point. The second serious incident involved a twenty-year-old man who had suffered a worrying head injury in a fall from some scaffolding. As soon as he was stable enough, he had been transferred by air ambulance to the neurological unit in Glasgow.
Nathan was well aware that Annie was avoiding him. He doubted she would have voluntarily worked with him at all had it not been for the resus emergencies and Robert Mowbray’s directive that she help him settle in. He didn’t need a minder, but anything that placed him around Annie was good. Her reaction to the consultant’s decision and her sharp words after they had treated Len Gordon had been the only hints of weakness, the only signs that his presence here disturbed her in any way and she was not as indifferent as she would have him believe.
It was early afternoon by the time he had a chance for a break to grab a quick lunch. His stomach rumbled. Breakfast seemed a lifetime ago, and then he’d only managed a banana and a glass of fruit smoothie because he’d been so churned up about seeing Annie again. Annie was nowhere in sight in the department, or in the staffroom, so he decided to try the canteen in the hope of catching up with her there. Seeing Olivia Barr waiting by the lifts, Nathan pushed open a door marked ‘staff only’ and slipped into the seldom-used rear stairway, determined to avoid the predatory nurse and her unwelcome attentions.
Aside from the fact that Olivia hadn’t let an opportunity go by in the last two days to come on to him, he had doubts about her as a nurse. During his short time in the department he had seen that although she had good clinical skills—when she focused on her tasks—she wasn’t a team player. And the way she spoke to and interacted with some patients left a great deal to be desired. On a personal level he had rejected several advances, making it clear that he was not interested and that if she persisted he would have no choice but to be blunt. Olivia represented everything he found unattractive in a woman, from her vampish flirting and sly insincerity to her falsely pouting lips, heavy makeup and silicone-enhanced breasts. Annie, by contrast, was the embodiment of everything that was natural and feminine, with no artificiality about her.
Annie…
As if he had conjured her up from his thoughts, he had just reached the landing of the floor that housed the canteen when the door opened, forcing him to step back, and Annie emerged into the otherwise deserted stairway. He noted her startled expression when she saw him, her nervousness apparent as the door closed behind her and she realised they were alone. She glanced around, clearly searching for some avenue of escape, but he wasn’t about to allow it. Who knew when he’d have another chance to catch her attention?
As she backed up against the door, he slowly closed the distance between them. ‘You’ve been avoiding me, Annie.’
Her chin lifted in defiance at his challenge, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘I’ve been doing my job—not thinking about you at all.’
‘Right.’ Stepping closer, he flattened both his hands on the door, one either side of her head. ‘So there’s nothing to stop you spending some time with me now?’
‘I have to get back to the department. You know how crazy it is today,’ she excused, the unsteady note in her voice betraying her unease.
‘Meet with me later, then.’
‘I can’t.’ He saw the irregular beat of her pulse at the hollow of her throat, noted the bloom of colour warm her ivory skin. ‘There’s no point in this, Nathan.’
He couldn’t resist leaning closer, so he could savour her tantalising jasmine scent. ‘There’s every point,’ he argued, everything in him craving a taste of her, something he had been denied and had yearned for for five long years.
‘Nathan…’
‘We need to talk, Annie,’ he insisted, not prepared to be fobbed off this time.
Her own palms flattened on his
