A Love Against All Odds
A Love Against All Odds
Emily Forbes
One life-changing moment…Three years ago, Dr Henry Cavanagh walked out of nurse Maia Tahana’s life, unable to allow himself a happy future after his family lost their lives. But now he’s back – and working in her A&E! Worse still, he’s more irresistible than ever…Henry may have sworn off love, but when a powerful earthquake hits Christchurch he’s faced with a prospect he can’t bear…losing Maia forever. Now he has to fight with everything he has to win her back for good!
Praise forEmily Forbes (#ulink_909c7395-737d-5c79-bc39-56e0ff5419b5)
‘… a very interesting medical romance because of a unique setting and really different medical situations.’
—HarlequinJunkie on A Kiss to Melt Her Heart
‘Maia?’
The rounded vowels of his English accent were instantly recognisable. No one else made her name sound like he did—sexy and desirable, full of promise and suggestion.
‘Maia?’
His voice repeated her name and this time she turned around. Three years evaporated in the blink of an eye as her past collided with her present.
Henry was standing in front of her.
He looked exactly the same. Tall, dark, and still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His features were faultlessly symmetrical. His square jaw was chiselled and his full lips were perfectly shaped. He looked just as she remembered. His hair was cut shorter than usual, his dark curls tamed, but he was otherwise unchanged. He was incredibly gorgeous and he was standing five feet away, when she’d thought he was on the other side of the world.
She wanted to reach out and touch him, to see if he really was real, to make sure it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her. If it was, it was extremely good. She resisted the temptation.
‘I’m back.’
Maia’s heart skipped a beat.
Dear Reader (#ulink_7161be82-bab0-598d-be18-dc2c02f27c50),
I have visited Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island several times. It is a beautiful city, but one which experiences a phenomenal number of earthquakes each year, and between September 2010 and June 2011 the city was left devastated by three powerful quakes. I was there in October 2010, not long after the first quake, and saw for myself the damage that Mother Nature can wreak. But along with the heartache and tragedy there were amazing stories of courage, survival and resilience, and Christchurch and her people are slowly recovering.
This is Maia’s story, and it was inspired after talking to survivors of the quake: those who had chosen to stay and rebuild their city despite the dangers.
Maia thinks she’s happy with her life—until it’s turned upside down by two major upheavals. One is the return of her ex—a man who could once make her knees go weak with just a glance, and it seems as if nothing has changed in that respect. And the second is a devastating earthquake. These events force Maia to examine what she really wants out of life, but making a decision is difficult when she knows people are going to get hurt. Her head and her heart aren’t always in agreement, and she’s struggling to decide which one she should listen to. What if there’s more than one right answer?
But Maia has to make a decision—because if she waits too long she could lose everything.
Enjoy!
Emily
EMILY FORBES is an award-winning author of Medical Romances for Mills & Boon. She has written over 25 books, and has twice been a finalist in the Australian Romantic Book of the Year Award, which she won in 2013 for her novel Sydney Harbour Hospital: Bella’s Wishlist. You can get in touch with Emily at emilyforbes@internode.on.net (mailto:emilyforbes@internode.on.net) or visit her website at emily-forbesauthor.com (http://emily-forbesauthor.com).
A Love Against All Odds
Emily Forbes
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my gorgeous nieces: Sophie, Lucy, Kate, Sophie, Grace, Zoe, Harriet, Portia, Lilly, Saskia, Henriette, Alexandra, Charlotte, Georgia and Adelaide, and in loving memory of Georgiana Rose.
Table of Contents
Cover (#uccc71f4b-394a-5885-bb82-aade6ee8b119)
Praise for Emily Forbes (#ulink_03b96d8f-0c1a-58f8-9daa-122406721b8b)
Excerpt (#u862211b5-f207-5df1-9fb2-b61f049d3318)
Dear Reader (#ulink_e54ee14b-49fb-5f01-90bc-b1449e38fafe)
About the Author (#u11381417-fc50-5537-85f7-eea88630863f)
Title Page (#udb77e143-2961-5328-9f14-723bcb2e982e)
Dedication (#uaa627768-5481-509a-a2c7-7e8aa8c090ac)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_811bf52d-6973-5293-a15b-a59dd37e5015)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b62b8303-f95a-5e47-9d6f-b7d4bdb80a91)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_f350a2d6-c2dc-5fc6-b444-73df0917cce2)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_c4e73903-2d4d-5c2c-9df8-c7eefbc11ddc)
‘CHRISTCHURCH HAS BEEN rocked by the biggest earthquake we’ve had for some time. Just after five o’clock this morning a quake measuring seven-point-one on the Richter scale was recorded; its epicentre was forty kilometres west of the city and it occurred at a depth of eleven kilometres. Several old buildings have collapsed but, while there have been numerous injuries, there are no reported fatalities at this stage. Injuries have been caused by falling masonry and glass but—just repeating—there are no fatalities at present. We’re crossing live now to our reporter …’
Maia Tahana pulled the headphones out of her ears as she walked through the automatic doors of the emergency department of the Canterbury Children’s Hospital, cutting the radio journalist off midsentence. The story of the quake wasn’t news to her; she’d been woken by it, jolted out of a comfortable sleep by a deep bass rumble and the sound of breaking glass. Her heart had hammered in her chest as the house shook and the windows rattled in their frames. It had sounded as if a freight train was hurtling past the front door but Maia had known that was impossible. The closest thing to the house was the Pacific Ocean, fifty metres away on the other side of the sand dunes that ran at the bottom of the garden—but it hadn’t been the pounding of the surf that had shaken the house and its foundations.
The noise had been frightening and the movement of the house disturbing but it wasn’t an unfamiliar experience. Maia had lived in Christchurch, New Zealand, all her life; she’d been through this before. Christchurch experienced thousands of earthquakes each year. She remembered hearing it was somewhere in the vicinity of thirteen thousand, which seemed like an enormous number, but she knew that not all of them were felt by people. Some were only detected by seismic equipment, but it was still a huge number, and it wasn’t unusual around here to feel the ground moving beneath your feet.
Minor quakes were something that barely caused the locals to blink, let alone miss a beat. If the power wasn’t interrupted, if no one was hurt and if there was no major damage, then the tremors were mostly ignored. But this one had been big and much closer to the surface. There had been a couple of smaller aftershocks and Maia was pleased to hear there had been no fatalities. Perhaps she could expect a regular shift, if ever there was such a thing for an emergency-department nurse in a busy paediatric hospital.
The emergency department seemed quiet when Maia walked in but she was superstitious enough not to say anything. The moment someone mentioned the ‘q’ word always seemed to be the moment all hell broke loose. She decided to grab a coffee while she had a chance. She needed a double dose of caffeine after being woken by the quake. She and her sisters had been sweeping up broken crockery and glass since four this morning and she hadn’t had a chance to go back to sleep. She checked her watch. She had time.
She walked into the empty kitchen and took a coffee cup from the cupboard. She had her back to the kitchen door but she heard it open as she lifted a new pod from the box on the bench beside the coffee machine. The room filled with the scent of cedar wood and citrus—grapefruit, not oranges. The scent was familiar to her. It was the scent of an ex-boyfriend. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the memories flood back. A slight smile played across her lips as she remembered Henry.
She opened her eyes and mentally shook herself. She didn’t have time to waste on old memories. She dropped the coffee pod into the machine, waiting for the aroma of freshly brewed coffee to clear her mind. Henry was a long time ago. He was her past. Well and truly. Her life had moved on. She had changed. Life had changed her.
But as she pushed the button to start the coffee-making process she could have sworn she heard his voice.
‘Maia?’
The rounded vowels of his English accent were instantly recognisable. No one else made her name sound like he did—sexy and desirable, full of promise and suggestion.
Her imagination was working overtime.
‘Maia?’ His voice repeated her name and this time she turned around.
Three years evaporated in the blink of an eye as her past collided with her present.
Henry was standing in front of her.
He looked exactly the same: tall, dark and still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His features were faultlessly symmetrical. His square jaw was chiselled and his full lips were perfectly shaped. His indigo-blue eyes were the exact same shade as the chest feathers of the pukeko bird. He stood over six feet and he was solid, but in a lean, muscular way. Not fat. He looked just like she remembered—his hair was cut shorter than usual, his dark curls tamed, but he was otherwise unchanged. He was incredibly gorgeous and he was standing five feet away when she’d thought he was on the other side of the world.
‘Henry? What are you doing here?’
She wanted to reach out and touch him, to see if he really was real, to make sure it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her but, if it was, it was extremely good. She resisted the temptation. She wasn’t sure what would be considered appropriate behaviour.
‘I’m back.’ He smiled at her as he gave her his answer and Maia’s heart skipped a beat. He had a little dimple in the centre of his chin that disappeared when he smiled—how had she forgotten about that?
She could see he was back. What she wanted to know was why and when and how long for but all she could do was stare at him.
‘I didn’t know you worked here,’ he said to her.
Maia nodded. Her mouth was dry and her tongue appeared to have glued itself to the roof of her mouth. She forced it free and swallowed as she tried to moisten her throat so she could speak. ‘I left the Queen Liz eighteen months ago,’ she told him.
When Henry had left Christchurch three years ago Maia had been working in the emergency department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital—they both had—but she had quit that job eighteen months ago after her father had passed away. She hadn’t wanted to nurse adults anymore; she’d needed a break and the Children’s Hospital had needed staff.
‘I’m sorry about your dad,’ Henry said, putting two and two together with the timing. ‘He was a good man.’
Henry had always had an uncanny ability to read her thoughts and it seemed as if that hadn’t changed.
‘Thank you,’ she said but she didn’t want to think about her father. She didn’t want to think about the last few months of his life. Her dad had suffered a stroke and Maia had helped to nurse him. It had been a difficult and emotional time, and his death had hit her hard. She had spent a vast amount of the past three years grieving. First for Henry and then for her father. She was only just coming to terms with it all now.
The coffee machine beeped at her and she turned away, grateful for the distraction, grateful for the reason to break eye contact and the chance to gather her thoughts. But her first thought was about Henry.
Why was he back?
The comms system crackled overhead. ‘All ED staff to triage.’ Maia heard the voice of Brenda, the ED director, summoning the staff.
Her hand shook as she added sugar to her coffee and picked up the cup. Henry held the door open and fell into step beside her. She wasn’t going to escape the past that easily.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. When Henry had left Christchurch three years ago she had never expected to see him again. He had never mentioned coming back; he’d made her no promises. He’d gone off to save the world, leaving her behind, and Maia could only assume that she didn’t feature in his future plans at all. That had been a bitter pill to swallow but she’d managed to do it eventually.
‘I’m doing project work in disaster management and the New Zealand government offered me a grant to come back. I’ll be looking at the systems in place in the hospitals and how they would cope with mass-casualty incidents. But I’ll be attached to the Children’s. I thought it was an offer too good to refuse.’
That surprised her. Not his project choice—he was an emergency-medicine specialist and she’d known about his interest in disaster management—but the fact that he was back at all was a surprise. When he’d left he’d had plans that were bigger than New Zealand.
‘Well, your timing couldn’t be better,’ she told him. ‘You got an earthquake to order.’
‘Looks like I did but it hasn’t caused too much havoc—and, although that’s fortunate for Christchurch and her residents, it’s not very useful for my purposes.’
‘I guess you can’t have everything.’
‘I guess not.’
Henry’s indigo eyes searched her face. He seemed able to look through her brown eyes into her soul and his gaze, intense, powerful and passionate, made her knees go weak. She remembered this look. It was the look he would give her when they’d made love. The look that had made her think she was the only girl in the world he would ever need.
She looked away.
That wasn’t the case and she wasn’t that girl anymore.
‘When did you get back?’ she asked.
‘A couple of days ago. I spent yesterday in orientation and induction and now I hope I’m ready to go.’
Yesterday she’d been rostered off. Today her world was changing.
As she and Henry assembled in triage along with the other staff, Maia saw Carrie, her best friend, standing on the opposite side of the group. She raised her eyebrows in a silent question at Maia when she saw who was by her side. Maia gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of her head. She didn’t want Carrie asking questions.
‘If I can have everyone’s attention …’ the ED Director said as she scanned the group, obviously deciding everyone was present and accounted for. Brenda waited for the conversational noise to cease before continuing. ‘There’s been an accident involving a school bus and we’ve got several ambulances headed our way.’
Maia shouldn’t even have thought about it being quiet.
‘Apparently the earthquake triggered a landslide which caused the bus to crash but I don’t have any more detail than that. The bus driver has been airlifted to the Queen Elizabeth and the plan is to bring all the kids to us. There were sixteen primary school children on the bus. Varying injuries—fractures, cuts, bruises, some suspected head injuries and possible spinal injuries—and all of them will be in shock.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘ETA five minutes.’
‘It seems you got your disaster after all,’ Maia said quietly to Henry as Brenda went on.
‘For those of you who haven’t met him yet, I’d like to introduce Dr Henry Cavanaugh. Henry is a UK-trained emergency-medicine specialist with a special interest in disaster management. He did part of his fellowship in Christchurch at the Queen Liz but this time he is seconded to our hospital and he will be looking at our management systems, as well as taking on a clinical workload.’
Maia could see Carrie making a beeline for her and by her expression she could tell she was in for a grilling. She really needed to process Henry’s return before she was ready for it to be dissected in a discussion with anyone, even her best friend. But she knew her chances of putting Carrie off were next to none so all she could do was ensure that the conversation didn’t take place in public.
Henry was about to be swamped by other emergency staff who hadn’t yet met him so Maia headed for the change rooms, deciding she would quickly change into surgical scrubs. Carrie followed her, as she’d known she would. She and Carrie had been best friends since their first year of high school. For thirteen years Carrie had been by Maia’s side. She’d been through everything that had happened to Maia over the past three years and longer.
The moment the door closed behind them, Carrie asked, ‘Did you know he was back?’
Maia stripped off her uniform and hung it on a spare coat-hanger, exchanging her clothes for hospital-issued scrubs. ‘Who? Henry?’
‘Yes, Henry,’ Carrie replied as Maia stepped into a pair of surgical pants and tied the drawstring at her waist.
‘No. You know we haven’t kept in touch.’ They had agreed on a clean break—that had been his suggestion, not hers—and she’d spoken to him exactly twice in three years. He had called her once when her father had suffered his first stroke and again when he had died. That had been their only contact. Henry wasn’t part of her life anymore.
‘How did your date go last night?’ Maia asked as she tugged the pale-blue cotton shirt down over her head.
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘I’m not. Henry being back is not a subject. Not one that affects me anyway.’
Carrie raised an eyebrow. ‘You sure?’
Even though Maia had known the fairy tale hadn’t had the happy ending she’d wanted, and she’d pretended he hadn’t broken her heart when he’d left, it had taken her a long time to recover. But eventually she’d been able to consign him to her past and to think of him without feeling like her heart was being ripped in two. They’d wanted different things in life. Things had worked out for the best.
‘Positive,’ she said as she lifted her hand to gather her long, dark hair into a ponytail, wrapping and tucking the end to make a messy bun. Her engagement ring caught the light, reminding her to remove it, and she slid it off her finger and onto the necklace where she wore it while she was working.
She was engaged to be married. Henry was an ex-boyfriend. Not the love of her life.
‘He’s an ex-boyfriend, that’s all.’
Henry was her past. Not her future.
He wasn’t her Henry any more.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9598d44c-0a1c-57e0-acbc-f44202ac76d1)
TWO AMBULANCES PULLED into the loading bay as Maia and Carrie returned to the ED, creating a flurry of activity. Maia’s fiancé, Todd, was a paramedic. He had a day shift and she peered through the windows of the closest ambulance and scanned the bustling medicos, looking for his familiar figure. Looking for his sturdy frame, his short, neat brown hair and his gentle hazel eyes.
A girl of about eight or nine was pulled from the back of the first ambulance. There was no sign of Todd. The girl’s eyes were closed and she had a firm cervical collar around her neck.
‘Carrie, this child needs a neuro consult, possible head injury. Jim Edwards is on his way down but can you monitor her until he arrives?’ Brenda relayed the paramedics’ summary of the girl’s condition.
‘Sure.’ Carrie had worked at the Children’s since graduating from nursing. She was one of the most experienced emergency nurses and there wasn’t much she hadn’t had to deal with before. She crossed straight to the first stretcher.
The doors of the second ambulance swung open and Maia saw Todd climb out. She headed for her fiancé, closely followed by Brenda. Despite the fact that he’d just come from what she imagined was a complicated and messy motor-vehicle accident with multiple casualties, Todd looked as immaculate as ever. He was fastidiously neat and somehow his uniform had remained clean and still had perfect creases in the trouser legs. In contrast Maia could sense that her thick dark hair was already escaping from the bun she’d fixed it in. She couldn’t count how many times people had uttered the phrase ‘opposites attract’ when they’d been talking about her and Todd.
He pulled a stretcher from the back of the truck. A young boy was sitting up on it. He was alert and seemed quite fascinated by the whole experience. He was dressed in his school uniform, shorts and a T-shirt, and Maia could see that his left knee was swollen. The paramedics had rolled up a towel and stuffed it under his knee to support it.
‘Adam has undiagnosed knee pain,’ Todd told them. ‘And he’s unable to weight bear. Vitals all with normal limits.’
‘Henry.’ Brenda nodded as she called Henry over to join them. ‘Ortho injuries; can you take this one?’ she said as she pointed to Adam. ‘Maia, you go with him.’
She wondered if that was a coincidence or if Henry had requested to work with her. Don’t flatter yourself, she remonstrated as Todd handed her a little green whistle-shaped inhaler.
‘He’s had the Penthrox inhaler on the way here,’ he said.
Maia nodded and tucked the pain-reliever alongside Adam, then put her hands on the stretcher, ready to wheel it away. Before she had moved Todd reached over and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said.
Maia saw Henry watching. His eyes moved from Todd’s hand to Todd and then to her face. Maia blushed under his scrutiny. She almost felt like she shouldn’t have let Todd touch her. Not that she could have stopped him, nor was she sure why she would have wanted to, but his familiar gesture made her feel awkward and uncomfortable under Henry’s gaze. His expression was unreadable but he gave the stretcher a push, starting it moving towards the entrance, and Todd’s hand dropped from Maia’s shoulder with the movement. Henry wasn’t watching her now, he was focused on manoeuvring the stretcher, but Maia knew his movement had been deliberate. She said nothing as she and Henry wheeled the stretcher away and Todd turned back to his other patient, to the girl with the broken collarbone.
‘Hey there, mate, what’s your name?’ Henry had always had a good bedside manner and everyone, young and old, loved him. He had an easy charm. People were starstruck by his arresting looks initially but he always won them over with his personality to match.
She needed to be careful. Before he’d left she’d had him on a pedestal; she couldn’t let that happen again. But, listening to him chat to their young patient, she could tell he hadn’t changed.
‘Adam Evans.’
‘Nice to meet you, Adam. I’m Henry and this is Maia,’ he said. ‘You’ve hurt your knee, have you?’
Adam nodded.
‘We’ll get you comfortable in here and have a look at it. Have you been in hospital before?’
‘No,’ he said. Maia grabbed a blank patient file from the triage desk as they wheeled the stretcher past.
‘Seen it on telly?’
He nodded again as they pushed his bed into a cubicle and Maia pulled the curtain around to give them some privacy.
Maia helped Henry transfer Adam to a hospital bed before she wheeled the stretcher into the corridor. She knew one of the ambulance crew would collect it before they left the hospital but she didn’t want them to have to interrupt, especially if it was Todd. She wasn’t ready to deal with two sets of inquisitive eyes.
‘Maia will attach a few leads to you,’ Henry told Adam as he washed his hands before pulling on a pair of disposable surgical gloves. ‘She’ll check your pulse and a few things like that but I reckon that’ll all be pretty normal, seeing as you’re talking to me.’
They had worked together at the Queen Liz when Henry had been doing his fellowship. They’d worked well together then and slotted back into an easy rhythm now. It didn’t feel like three years since they’d worked side by side.
Maia took a hospital ID bracelet out of the file and wrote Adam’s details on it before fastening it around his wrist. Next she snapped gloves onto her hands, connected Adam to the monitors and recorded his observations—blood pressure, oxygen sats and pulse rate.
‘Do you know what day it is, Adam?’ Henry asked as he shone a penlight torch into Adam’s eyes and checked his pupils.
‘Tuesday.’
‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘I was standing up in the bus when the driver swerved and I went flying, and my knee slammed into the side of one of the seats. It hit that metal bar that made up the seat frame. My brother was on the bus too. Do you know if he’s okay? His name is Bailey.’ Tears welled in Adam’s eyes and Maia could tell he was trying to be brave. She could imagine how she would have felt if she’d been in his situation at the same age.
‘Let’s get you sorted and then we’ll find out about Bailey,’ she told him. She wouldn’t tell him that she was sure Bailey was fine; she couldn’t promise that when she had no idea of the situation. Promising to investigate was the best she could do.
‘All right, Adam, I need to have a look at your knee, but first I want you to tell me about your pain. Can you give it a score out of ten? Where zero is no pain and ten is unbearable.’
‘Maybe a six?’
‘I need to have a feel of your knee but you can hold Maia’s hand if you like and squeeze it tight if your knee gets too sore and you want me to stop. I reckon holding Maia’s hand might help.’ Adam blushed and looked away and Maia almost felt sorry for him until she realised that Henry had started palpating the knee joint and had successfully distracted Adam so that he’d been able to start palpating without Adam even noticing. Obviously he hadn’t struck anything painful yet but as a technique Maia was impressed.
The pain-relieving inhaler was lying where Maia had left it, on the bed. She picked it up and offered it to him. ‘You can use this if you like?’
But Adam shook his head. ‘I’ll be okay,’ he said, still putting on a brave face.
‘Good choice, Adam. I’d choose to hold a pretty nurse’s hand instead too,’ Henry added as he palpated the medial and lateral ligaments and winked at Adam, who grinned. Now it was Maia’s turn to blush but she held out her hand and Adam latched onto it.
As the young boy squeezed her hand, Maia wondered if anyone watching her and Henry would guess they had a history. Henry seemed relaxed; working with her didn’t appear to be throwing him off-kilter. Perhaps it was only her on tenterhooks, only her who still felt the spark of awareness in the air. There was no denying she was still affected by his easy charm.
Henry moved his fingers centrally over the quadriceps tendon and muscle belly. There was marked oedema of this knee compared to the other and Maia watched as Adam grimaced, but he didn’t cry out.
‘Are you a cricketer, Adam?’ Henry asked.
Adam nodded.
‘So, you’d be getting ready to watch the World Cup?’
The World Cup was scheduled to start in India at the end of February. It was only a few days away and New Zealand’s citizens could barely talk about anything else. Maia knew that Henry also loved his cricket. He would slot straight back into the Kiwi culture even if he did barrack for the wrong team.
‘Do you reckon the Black Caps can beat my team—England?’
Henry was having difficulty finding the borders of the knee cap. Adam flinched and his fingers tightened their grip on Maia’s as Henry’s fingers probed his patella but his bravado remained strong as he replied, ‘The Black Caps can beat everyone.’
‘I like your confidence.’ Henry laughed. ‘I’m looking forward to watching some cricket. I’ve been living in America—they’re not into cricket there. See if you can bend this knee for me. I’ll help you.’ Henry had again successfully distracted Adam but his assessment wasn’t over yet. He slipped one hand under Adam’s knee to support it. It was resting in about thirty degrees of flexion and he was able to bend it another thirty degrees before the pain got too much. But Maia knew that flexion of sixty degrees was well off the normal range of one hundred and forty degrees for thin adolescents.
But Henry praised his efforts. ‘Well done, Adam. Now try to straighten it for me.’
Adam tried but he couldn’t do it. His knee got stuck at thirty degrees.
‘Can you lift it off the bed?’
Maia could see from Adam’s expression that he was trying but his quadriceps wasn’t following orders and his leg didn’t budge.
‘These kids are primary school age, yes?’ Henry asked Maia. ‘How old are you, Adam?’ he asked when she nodded.
‘Twelve.’
‘All right. I reckon you might have busted your knee cap; we need to get that X-rayed.’
Maia frowned. Patella fractures weren’t common in children and she wondered why Henry suspected that. He must have seen her doubting expression. ‘I’ve seen a few in this age group, boys more than girls,’ he explained. ‘Once the patella has ossified it’s susceptible to fracture. Can we organise an X-ray? AP and lateral views?’ he asked.
‘Sure. They can bring the mobile X-ray machine in to do that. But we’ll need to get permission first, I suspect. Why don’t you ask Brenda to organise that when you get your next case and I’ll wait with Adam?’ Maia didn’t want to leave the young boy alone. He would be apprehensive, if not scared, and with the added worry of his brother’s whereabouts and potential injuries. ‘And see what you can find out about Bailey,’ she added as Henry pulled the curtain back and stepped out.
She watched him leave the cubicle. His dark hair was neat at the nape of his neck. His back was straight, his shoulders square. He seemed relaxed, unhurried, in control, and Maia knew his calm demeanour was good for the patients.
Henry turned to pull the curtain closed and saw her watching him. He grinned and winked as he tugged the curtain across, cutting off her view.
Maia busied herself checking Adam’s obs again while she waited for the blush that stained her cheeks to fade. She needed something to occupy her mind; she couldn’t afford to fill it with thoughts of Henry.
She heard the curtain move again. The sound of the plastic clips sliding in the rail made her look up. She was hoping to see Henry but it was a lady’s face that appeared.
‘Excuse me,’ the woman said as she ducked around the curtain. ‘Sorry to interrupt—I’m Amelia Cooper, the deputy principal at Canterbury Primary School.’
Maia spotted an identification badge hanging around Amelia’s neck that had her photograph and the school crest printed on it. She hoped she wasn’t a journalist with fake ID. That had happened before, on more than one occasion.
‘Hello, Adam,’ the woman said, and Maia decided she would give her the benefit of the doubt, although she wasn’t sure what she was doing in her cubicle.
‘Is there something I can help you with?’ Maia asked.
‘I need to make sure all the children are accounted for,’ Amelia explained. ‘The school is contacting the parents. Some are already on their way to the hospital, but I was told we might need permission for some treatments. The school has all that information on file.’ She indicated the electronic tablet she held in one hand. ‘It’s all in here.’
She put the tablet down on the end of Adam’s bed and took a thick marker pen from a clipboard which she had been holding in her other hand. ‘I’m also supposed to correctly identify the children,’ she said as she printed Adam’s name onto a sticky label which she peeled off and stuck to his shirt. Some things obviously still had to be done the old-fashioned way, although Maia knew her method of identifying the children was more secure. Adam’s arm would go wherever he went, unlike his shirt, which could easily be removed, taking his ID with it. But she kept quiet. The children could be identified at a glance and another form of ID wasn’t going to create any problems, as long as it was accurate.
‘And I’ll keep a list of their injuries so the parents can check in with me as their initial point of contact. I’ll be the liaison person, according to your ED director that will leave you all free to get on with treating the kids.’
That made sense. Maia filled her in on Adam’s condition and Amelia flipped over the page of sticky labels and jotted a summary on another page of her clipboard.
‘Do you have authority to give permission for Adam to have an X-ray?’ Maia asked.
‘I do,’ she replied. ‘I spoke to Dr Cavanaugh who was in here before and told him.’
‘Okay. Do you have any news about Adam’s brother, Bailey?’
Amelia ran her finger down the list on her clipboard. ‘He’s fine. He’s got some cuts and bruises and he’s waiting for some treatment to clean those up.’
Maia could see Adam relax. ‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve got more good news, Adam,’ Amelia said. ‘The school has spoken to your mother and she is on her way.’
The radiographer arrived and Maia left him to do his job while she went looking for Bailey.
The waiting room had filled with parents and some of the less seriously injured kids who were still waiting to be treated. Maia scanned the room and spotted a boy who, despite the large dressing that was bandaged to the top of his head, looked similar enough to Adam that she walked closer to check the sticker on his shirt. It read, ‘Bailey Evans’.
Maia sought out the ED Director next. She was standing at the whiteboard behind the triage desk, updating the list. ‘Brenda, have you got anyone urgent for me or can I take Bailey Evans?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got his brother having X-rays taken and I think they’d like to be together while they wait for their mother.’
Brenda scanned the board quickly before she nodded. ‘Sure,’ she said as she added a note on the board beside Bailey’s name. ‘According to the ambos he’s got a head laceration that might need stitching. Your call, once you’ve cleaned him up.’
Maia introduced herself to Bailey as she pushed his wheelchair into the cubicle beside Adam’s. They could talk to each other through the curtain while she cleaned Bailey’s cuts—she didn’t think Adam needed to watch that—but once they were both taken care of she could pull back the curtain and they could wait together.
Maia gently lifted the dressing on Bailey’s head. It was soaked in blood from a nasty cut that ran along his hairline. The paramedics had been right; the gash would probably need a few stitches. She re-covered the wound with fresh padding and called for a doctor. The wound would need to be cleaned but she knew the doctor would administer a local anaesthetic and she preferred to wait for that before she started cleaning. She would make a start on his other more straightforward injuries while she waited. She could see several cuts on his hands and knees as well as on his face and head.
‘How did you get all of these cuts?’ she asked him.
‘Some of the windows in the bus exploded when the bus rolled over.’
‘The bus rolled over?’ Maia hadn’t been aware of that part.
Bailey nodded his head.
‘The bus driver swerved so hard to miss the landslide that the bus crashed through the rail on the side of the road and rolled down the hill.’ Adam’s voice came through the curtain, explaining the sequence of events.
‘You didn’t tell me that part before, Adam.’
‘That wasn’t the bit where I hurt my knee,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘The window next to me smashed,’ Bailey added. ‘And then some of us had to break the emergency window and crawl out that way. That’s how I cut my hands and knees.’
Maia picked fragments of glass out of his wounds, disinfected them and bandaged them before she tackled his face and head. She cleaned the cuts and scratches on his face before she carefully unwrapped the dressing on his head.
The curtain rustled on its tracking, flicking open to admit Henry. ‘This is Bailey, Adam’s brother,’ Maia told him. ‘He’s got a laceration on his head that needs cleaning and suturing.’
She removed the dressing again for Henry to take a look. He nodded, agreeing with her assessment.
Maia handed him the local anaesthetic, pre-empting his request, and then prepared a suture kit while they waited for the anaesthetic to kick in. They worked smoothly together, their moves practised as Henry chatted to Bailey about cricket and rugby. Maia loved rugby but didn’t really understand the attraction of cricket and she wasn’t interested in listening to them discuss their favourite teams and players. She was busy thinking about other things. She was standing beside Henry’s right shoulder, snipping the thread each time he finished a stitch. She didn’t need to focus; her mind was free to wander and she let it drift as she watched his fingers pinch and move as he deftly sewed up Bailey’s head wound.
He looked like he was conducting a mini-orchestra. His hands moved to their own silent beat. His fingers were long and slender, his forearms were strong. He was wearing a short-sleeved surgical top, a dark blue one that made his eyes look even darker than usual, and his olive skin was lightly tanned, even though he’d just returned from a Northern Hemisphere winter. She wondered what colour the skin under his clothes was.
That was a dangerous direction for her thoughts to take. She quickly tried to think about something else. She breathed deeply as she tried to refocus her mind. But all that happened was she breathed in Henry. She was standing so close to him that all she could smell was the scent of clean laundry and that citrus-and-cedar aftershave, and every breath she took filled her senses.
‘Henry?’
Brenda stuck her head around the curtain and Maia jumped. She felt a guilty flush steal across her cheeks even though she was guilty of nothing more than wayward thoughts. But Brenda’s appearance was enough to break the spell. Maia took a small step back, putting a little bit of distance between Henry and her.
‘Adam’s X-rays are back.’
‘Okay. Can you put the dressing on?’ Henry asked as Maia cut the final thread. ‘I’ll follow up on Adam.’
Henry swapped cubicles and Maia breathed out. She hadn’t realised that she’d been holding her breath but it must have been protective tendencies. If she couldn’t smell Henry, she could think. It was good that he was gone. She needed a bit of distance. Despite telling herself that Henry’s return didn’t matter and that it wasn’t going to affect her, she knew that was a lie. She hoped he’d spend a lot of time in Theatre and on the wards—anywhere away from Emergency. She didn’t know how she could be expected to function normally if she had to work closely with him.
She put a new dressing on Bailey’s head and pulled the curtain back so the boys could see each other. Henry had his back to her as he studied Adam’s X-rays. He held them up to the light and Maia was about to leave him to it when she heard Carrie’s voice on the other side of the curtain, and another stranger came into the cubicle. Another woman. But this time Maia knew immediately who she was. The boys’ mother. It wasn’t that she looked particularly like them but Maia could tell by the way she rushed in and ignored the adults in the room completely as she sought out her children. Maia might as well have been invisible. The woman hesitated for just a fraction as if trying to choose which of her sons to hug first but chose Bailey. He was closer.
Henry turned around at the sound of a new voice and Maia noted the woman’s double-take when she saw Henry. As concerned as she was for her children, part of her, possibly just her female hormones, still couldn’t help reacting to Henry. It seemed he wasn’t quite as invisible as Maia was. Not that Maia could blame her. There weren’t many people, men or women, who were immune to Henry’s looks. He was a strikingly handsome man. Maia’s glance went instinctively to the woman’s left hand to see if she was single. Not that it was any of her business. She tried not to care but she didn’t want other people noticing Henry. Although she knew that was impossible.
‘Mrs Evans?’ Henry queried as the woman kissed Bailey and then moved over to hug Adam. ‘I’m Dr Henry Cavanaugh,’ he went on when she nodded. ‘I’m an emergency specialist at the hospital and Maia and I have been treating your sons. They are both fine. They’ve sustained relatively minor injuries but, all things considered, they’ve been very lucky. Bailey has a few small cuts that have been cleaned and dressed but he also had one larger gash on his head which required ten stitches—just here.’ Henry touched his own head just at his hairline. ‘He’ll need to get those out in a week. Your GP might be happy to do it or you can bring him in here.
‘Adam has a fractured knee cap,’ Henry continued as he slid one of the X-rays into the light box on the wall. This X-ray showed a lateral view and Maia could see the dark line indicating the break running across the middle of Adam’s patella. Henry traced his finger over the line. His fingers were slender and capable, his hands smooth and hairless. Maia forced her attention back to the matter at hand and listened as Henry told Mrs Evans what had happened. She needed to pay attention; she would need to write discharge summaries for the boys.
‘It’s not serious. A transverse fracture of the patella is not particularly common but it matches with Adam’s age and the injury history. The physio will be along shortly to fit him with a splint and we’ll make an appointment with an orthopod to review his progress in two weeks. He should expect to stay in the splint for four weeks and then he will need physiotherapy. You can take the boys home as soon as the physio has taught him how to use crutches.’
‘Adam gets crutches?’ Bailey sulked.
The boys’ mother laughed. ‘Now I know you’re okay,’ she said.
Henry high-fived both of the boys. ‘Maia, can you ring Outpatients and set up a review for Adam in a fortnight?’
Maia nodded. They had worked well together. No awkwardness. There had been no time to worry about anything other than their patients. She was right—Henry being back wasn’t going to affect her.
Henry scrubbed his hands as he prepared to go into Theatre, taking a few moments to collect his thoughts. He hadn’t had a moment of solitude since he’d bumped into Maia earlier today. If he hadn’t been working solidly with her all morning, he could almost have believed he was dreaming. They’d been treating their young patients nonstop for hours, and his day wasn’t over yet, but he needed just a little time to think.
He hadn’t been completely honest with Maia about his reasons for coming back to Christchurch. He’d been offered a grant, that much was true, but he’d been offered several and he’d accepted Christchurch partly because of her. He hadn’t come back for her but because of her. He had actually been happy here and he had Maia to thank for that. It had been many years since he’d felt truly happy, before Christchurch or since.
Six years ago his world had collapsed and as he’d recovered he’d made a decision. He would save the world, one disaster at a time, and if he couldn’t save the world then he would at least try to make a difference to one family at a time. That had put him on the path to emergency medicine and disaster management. He knew exactly how devastating losing loved ones unexpectedly in traumatic circumstances was and, if he could make a horrible, tragic situation better, then that was what he wanted to do. If it kept him busy day and night, that was a good thing. He had no desire to have a life of his own. His family didn’t get that now—why should he?
He’d been rudderless, almost homeless, for six years now. He hadn’t wanted to stay in one place; he knew that being settled without any family around would make him feel even more alone. Family couldn’t be replaced. Not even by another family. The risk was too great—something might happen to them too.
He’d decided it was better to remain alone, even if it meant being lonely, rather than risk his heart on love.
And then he had met Maia and he’d been tempted to change his mind. But he hadn’t been able to ask her to commit to a life of uncertainty with him when he hadn’t even been sure if he wanted that commitment. Yet he hadn’t been able to resist returning and so he was back in Christchurch. This city held some of his few cheerful memories, without any lurking ghosts, and he was sorely in need of some happiness.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_46aef44b-c692-56e7-b859-75f663db5792)
MAIA LOOSENED HER hair from the bun she’d worn it in all day and let it fall down her back in thick, dark waves as she and Carrie strolled along the banks of the Avon River towards the Stratford-on-Avon. The pub’s picturesque waterside setting, proximity to the hospital and well-timed happy hour all combined to make it a popular watering hole for the staff of the Children’s Hospital.
‘Can you stay for a feed tonight?’ Carrie asked as they pushed open the door and entered the pub.
Maia shook her head. ‘I’m singing tonight. The band has a gig at the Cathedral Square Hotel,’ she said as they ordered two bottles of cider.
Maia loved to sing. If she’d been good enough to make a living out of it, she would have tried, but her father had convinced her to have a career as well and she’d discovered nursing, which she loved just as much. But she sang as often as she could with a jazz band.
The girls took their drinks out onto the deck that overlooked the Avon River. Willow trees lined the bank, their sweeping branches dipping into the calm waters. It was a pleasant spot on a summer’s afternoon. They could watch the occasional punt taking tourists along the river or the university rowing crews on their afternoon trainings.
Today it was a rowing four that glided past as Maia asked, ‘Are you still okay to come to the dressmaker with me next week?’
‘Are you finally going to pick out the dresses?’
‘No.’ Maia laughed and sipped her cider. ‘I’m hoping you’ll do that.’ Carrie was Maia’s maid of honour and along with Maia’s three younger sisters would form the bridal party. The wedding was only six weeks away. Maia needed to stop procrastinating and make some decisions. Todd had done most of the preparation work. Maia had given her opinion but she wasn’t the one driving this.
‘I’m surprised he hasn’t given up on you,’ Carrie said. ‘You’ve made him wait for almost two years.’
‘Maybe he thinks I’m worth it.’ She grinned.
‘I’m sure he does. But what do you think? Is he worth it?’
‘He’s a great guy, anybody would be lucky to have him. I’m lucky to have him,’ she said but even she could hear the uncertain tone of her voice.
‘You don’t need to convince me,’ Carrie replied.
Maia didn’t answer; her mind was wandering, off on its own little tangent. They’d been engaged for eighteen months, since just before her dad had died. Was she lucky Todd was so patient or had she been secretly hoping that he’d get tired of waiting for her? Maia looked down the river as she pondered the question. The water was flat and green. A light breeze stirred the willow trees, making their leaves brush over the water. A rowing eight glided past, young, fit men wearing university colours disturbing the surface of the river as she stared off into the distance.
‘My dad loved Todd. He became like the son he’d never had. He gave us his blessing before he died and you know how important that is to me,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘Family was everything to Dad.’
‘I know that but are you sure you’re marrying him because you want to, not just because your dad approved? Are you sure it’s the right thing for you? Are you ready?’
She knew what Carrie was asking. She and Carrie had been friends for ever. They’d been friends before Maia’s dad had got sick, before Maia had met Todd, before everything. They’d been friends before boyfriends, even, and Carrie had been there every step of the way. She knew which boys had been important, which one Maia had loved and which one had left her heartbroken.
Carrie knew her history with Henry. She knew that Henry had broken her heart—unintentionally, but it had been broken all the same. It had taken a long time for the cracks to heal and Maia knew they could easily be prised apart. But, despite heartache, life went on. Todd had filled a gap for her and somewhere along the way he’d helped her look to the future. A future that was different from what she had dreamed of and hoped for in some ways, but getting married was Maia’s choice. She knew she’d been influenced by her father’s thoughts and feelings, and by circumstances, but it didn’t necessarily mean it was the wrong thing for her.
‘It’s a new year,’ Maia said in reply. ‘And my resolution was to look to the future and be happy with what I have.’ Todd might not have been her first love but he would be a good husband. He was loyal, trustworthy, dependable and he adored her.
But, if she’d known the future was going to bring Henry back into her life, would she have made a different choice? It was too late to ask that question.
‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘everything is booked—the cathedral, the reception venue, the cake, the photographer and the hairdresser.’
‘It can always be un-booked.’
Maia wasn’t so sure. ‘We posted the invitations yesterday.’
The wedding was six weeks away. The sun kept rising and setting, the days kept turning over, and suddenly she was near the end of her engagement. This was it.
Maia closed her eyes as she started another song. It was one of her favourites, made famous by Ella Fitzgerald. She left the microphone fixed into the stand but steadied it with one hand as she swayed in time with the music. She’d chosen to wear a long, black dress tonight and it brushed her calves and ankles as she moved. It was cut low in the front and hugged her curves but a split up one leg to her thigh allowed for movement. Sequins scattered over the dress caught the light. There were more than a few men in the bar who were watching her with interest but, for the moment, she was oblivious to the attention as she let her mind drift.
Tonight the band was performing in the piano bar of the Cathedral Square Hotel in the city centre. This had become a semi-regular gig for her and the band. There were five of them tonight: the pianist, the bass player, the drummer, the trumpeter and her. The band had a different repertoire for the nights when she was unavailable due to nursing shifts and on those nights the pianist became the lead singer.
A spotlight was focused on her but she wasn’t aware of it. When she sang she wasn’t aware of anything except the music and the lyrics. It was one of the things she loved about singing. It transported her to another world where she wasn’t thinking about work or weddings or loss.
The spotlight highlighted Maia’s exotic features. Her English and Maori heritage had blended together, giving her the best of both worlds. Her shape and colouring was courtesy of her Maori background on both sides of her family. Her round face, round cheeks, generous bust and generous hips, along with her masses of thick dark hair and brown eyes, were definitely Maori, as was her skin, with its hint of coffee. Her facial features were the image of her half-English mother, with the same almond-shaped dark eyes, finely arched brows and narrow nose.
She’d done her make-up tonight to suit the atmosphere of the piano bar. She’d painted her lips red and gone with dark, smoky eyes. She wasn’t normally much of a make-up wearer—she was far too lazy to bother most days and she never wore make-up to work—but she made an exception on the nights when she performed with the band. She enjoyed the chance to get dressed up and performing on stage was all about playing a role and she was determined to do her part justice.
Tonight’s performance was going smoothly. The crowd was reasonable; their first set had been well received and the applause was reassuring. Some nights Maia felt invisible on stage despite the spotlight.
She was pleased to have this gig tonight; it meant less time to think about Henry’s reappearance. Despite her reassurances to Carrie, Henry’s return had unsettled her more than she was prepared to admit. She had been twenty-two when they’d met, he’d been her first love and it seemed that neither her head nor her heart had forgotten him. But in a day or two she was sure she’d be fine. In a day or two she would have recovered from the shock of seeing him again.
She was halfway through a song, her eyes still closed, when she felt an odd stirring in the air as if someone had opened a window and let a breeze in. The breeze floated past her, caressing her skin and whispering in her ear. She opened her eyes and looked out into the crowd.
He stood by the bar on the far side of the room, watching her.
She watched him back. There weren’t many things that could distract Maia when she was singing, but there was always one exception to any rule, and she knew this man was it.
He had showered and changed after work and he wore a black business shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Maia’s eyes swept across his chest and followed the line of his arms before drifting down to his narrow hips which were encased in a pair of dark jeans. He had one hand hooked into the pocket of his jeans and in the other he held a glass of beer. He raised the glass towards her in a silent salute. Maia felt the breeze brush over her again and this time it whispered his name.
Henry.
Her breath caught in her throat as their eyes locked and she lost her place in the song. Even at this distance she could see the intensity in his indigo eyes and feel the heat in his gaze. Warmth flooded through her, pooling in her belly, and she couldn’t even begin to try to find the words to continue singing. She had been swaying to the music but now she was worried that her knees were going to give way beneath her. She gripped the microphone stand with both hands as she tried to keep herself upright. She turned her head to look at the pianist, breaking eye contact with Henry in the process. Sean, the pianist, mouthed the words to her and somehow she managed to pick up the pieces and finish the song with a breathless voice and her eyes tightly shut.
As the song wrapped she didn’t give the band a chance to launch into the next one. The moment the music ended, she stepped away from the microphone and said, ‘Can we take a short break, guys?’
‘Is everything all right?’ Sean asked.
Maia nodded. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she lied.
Things were definitely not all right.
She didn’t remember stepping off the stage or walking through the bar but she must have done so because now she was standing in front of Henry.
‘Hello, Maia.’ His British accent caressed her name and Maia’s knees wobbled again. His voice was deep and gentle and his blue eyes were smiling.
Was it only today that he had come back into her life? It felt like he’d never left. It felt like everything that had happened since had been a dream, or perhaps she was dreaming now.
He took her hands and kissed her on the cheek. They were not in the hospital now; there were no concerns about protocol. She closed her eyes and held her breath as her limbs turned to liquid. This was definitely not a dream.
Her heart raced as his lips imprinted on her skin. What was it about him that could do this to her? How was it possible that a simple kiss on the cheek could leave her breathless and excited and make her feel as if she could melt away? As if she could dissolve in a pool of desire? One kiss from Henry and she could feel herself unfurling, coming back to life. She thought she had been doing okay but now she realised she’d been surviving, not living. She’d been getting through her days, but the days had had a dullness about them. One kiss from Henry and the colours began to return.
How could he affect her like this after all this time? How could she let him?
She stepped back as annoyance overrode pleasure and guilt replaced desire. She’d forgotten all about Todd. She found it irritating that Henry could return after three years and immediately influence her like this. But she wasn’t sure who she was annoyed with—him or her.
She wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he still set her heart racing. It had taken her years to put her heart back together and she wasn’t going to let one kiss reopen the scar where it had healed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I was on my way to my room and I thought I heard you singing. I thought I’d check.’
‘You’re staying here?’
He nodded. ‘Just until I can find some decent short-term accommodation close to the hospital.’ He pulled his room card out of his pocket. ‘Have you got time for a drink? My shout.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m working.’
‘Just a quick one, for old times’ sake. We’ve got some catching up to do.’
She looked into his indigo eyes and said, ‘It’s been three years, Henry. That’s a lot of catching up.’
‘Have dinner with me tomorrow, then.’
No. She couldn’t do that, for so many reasons. She didn’t trust herself. Or him. Her best defence was to stay as far away from him as possible, though that would be difficult, given they were working together. But she certainly didn’t have to complicate things further by agreeing to have dinner with him. She glanced back over her shoulder. The stage had been abandoned. The band had taken advantage of her abrupt exit and were taking a break—surely one quick drink couldn’t hurt? ‘One drink.’
There was an empty table beside them. Henry pulled out a chair for her and she sat. It seemed she lacked the willpower to refuse his invitation. No, she admitted, if only to herself, she didn’t lack the will power—she lacked the desire to walk away. She had never been able to resist him.
‘What can I get you? A glass of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc?’
‘No. I don’t drink wine if I’m singing.’ There was always the risk that her sinuses would become congested. ‘I’ll have a vodka, lime and soda.’
Henry signalled to the waitress and ordered Maia’s drink.
‘How was San Francisco?’ she asked, filling in the silence while she waited for her drink.
‘Interesting. I really liked it.’
‘You didn’t want to stay?’
He shook his head. ‘I left there a year ago. I’ve been in Tokyo for the last twelve months, studying the medical implications and response to tsunamis. It was time to come back and put what I’ve learnt about disaster management into practice.’
The waitress placed Maia’s drink on the table. Condensation settled on the outside of the glass and Maia wiped it off with one finger as she thought about all the things that Henry would have seen and done over the past three years. The diamond in her engagement ring caught the light and Henry’s eye as Maia ran her finger over the glass. He reached for her hand and just the barest touch of his fingers on her skin made her catch her breath. While she was connected to him she felt like she ceased to exist. As if nothing else mattered but the two of them. As if they were one.
She knew he shouldn’t have this effect on her still. Three years was a long time. It should have given her time to forget. Time had moved on. She had moved on. But her body didn’t seem to have received the same message.
His thumb rested in her palm as he turned her hand, and the solitaire diamond sparkled. ‘You’re engaged?’
She nodded. She’d taken it off her necklace and had slipped it back onto her finger as she was getting dressed tonight.
‘Anyone I know?’
‘Not really.’ The rapid beating of her heart made her voice sound breathless.
‘What does that mean?’
‘You saw him today but there was no time to introduce you.’ There’d been no reason to introduce them either but Maia knew she hadn’t wanted to.
‘The paramedic who brought Adam in?’
It seemed he had noticed Todd’s hand on her shoulder. Noticed and remembered. Maia nodded.
‘When is the wedding?’
‘Six weeks.’
Henry sat back in his seat and let go of her hand. She noticed he hadn’t congratulated her. What did that mean?
Probably nothing. She couldn’t afford to read anything into the silence. It wasn’t her place to speculate about his thoughts.
‘Timing was never one of our strong points,’ he said.
She studied his expression but it was difficult to read in the dim lights of the bar. Did he have regrets too?
Maia shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ His regrets were no longer her concern. They couldn’t be. Her life had changed when her father had died and it was naive to think things could ever go back to the way they were. Their lives hadn’t fitted together three years ago; it was unlikely they would fit together any better now. Nothing he’d said made her think his priorities had changed.
‘So things have worked out well for you?’ he asked. ‘You’re happy?’
‘Of course.’ She was, wasn’t she? She had nothing to be unhappy about. She was healthy, she loved her job, she had family, friends and a fiancé who loved her.
She didn’t want to think about why Todd was last on her list. Was that where he fitted in her life?
She should be happy. There was no reason not to be yet she knew she was lying. If she was happy why was she sitting here imagining what her life would have been like now if Henry had never left? Or if she’d gone with him? But that had never been seriously discussed.
They’d known at the beginning that their relationship would have an end. Henry’s plans had already been in place. He’d been in Christchurch for a limited time, she’d known the date he was leaving and she had known he wouldn’t take her with him. He travelled alone. That was his choice and, while she didn’t like it, she’d had to accept it. Then, just weeks after his departure, her dad had suffered his first stroke and Maia had known then she would have chosen to stay. But it had been tough, really tough, and in the end she had lost both her father and Henry.
‘Things have worked out differently to what I expected but that’s life, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Things change and you have to change with them.’
She could see the band members making their way back onto the stage. She pushed her chair back and stood. ‘I have to go.’
Henry got up too and came to her side. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said as he leant forward and kissed her cheek a second time, making her stomach flutter.
Oh, God, how was she going to handle this? How on earth had she thought she was over him? Just one kiss and she could feel herself falling again. She needed to get out of here.
Somehow Maia managed to get through two more songs. Henry had stayed for both before leaving the room. She doubted he’d return to the piano bar tonight but she didn’t want to hang around to find out. She told the band she wasn’t feeling well and made an early exit. An exit that felt very much like an escape.
The hotel doorman hailed her a taxi and she spent the ride home thinking about Henry. She thought she had managed to put him out of her mind. She would have thought three years was long enough to stop thinking about him and it should have been long enough for her body to forget him. But her reaction tonight proved that wasn’t the case. Her body definitely hadn’t got the message that three years had passed—her body had sprung to life as if it had been dormant these past few years.
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Emily Forbes
One life-changing moment…Three years ago, Dr Henry Cavanagh walked out of nurse Maia Tahana’s life, unable to allow himself a happy future after his family lost their lives. But now he’s back – and working in her A&E! Worse still, he’s more irresistible than ever…Henry may have sworn off love, but when a powerful earthquake hits Christchurch he’s faced with a prospect he can’t bear…losing Maia forever. Now he has to fight with everything he has to win her back for good!
Praise forEmily Forbes (#ulink_909c7395-737d-5c79-bc39-56e0ff5419b5)
‘… a very interesting medical romance because of a unique setting and really different medical situations.’
—HarlequinJunkie on A Kiss to Melt Her Heart
‘Maia?’
The rounded vowels of his English accent were instantly recognisable. No one else made her name sound like he did—sexy and desirable, full of promise and suggestion.
‘Maia?’
His voice repeated her name and this time she turned around. Three years evaporated in the blink of an eye as her past collided with her present.
Henry was standing in front of her.
He looked exactly the same. Tall, dark, and still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His features were faultlessly symmetrical. His square jaw was chiselled and his full lips were perfectly shaped. He looked just as she remembered. His hair was cut shorter than usual, his dark curls tamed, but he was otherwise unchanged. He was incredibly gorgeous and he was standing five feet away, when she’d thought he was on the other side of the world.
She wanted to reach out and touch him, to see if he really was real, to make sure it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her. If it was, it was extremely good. She resisted the temptation.
‘I’m back.’
Maia’s heart skipped a beat.
Dear Reader (#ulink_7161be82-bab0-598d-be18-dc2c02f27c50),
I have visited Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island several times. It is a beautiful city, but one which experiences a phenomenal number of earthquakes each year, and between September 2010 and June 2011 the city was left devastated by three powerful quakes. I was there in October 2010, not long after the first quake, and saw for myself the damage that Mother Nature can wreak. But along with the heartache and tragedy there were amazing stories of courage, survival and resilience, and Christchurch and her people are slowly recovering.
This is Maia’s story, and it was inspired after talking to survivors of the quake: those who had chosen to stay and rebuild their city despite the dangers.
Maia thinks she’s happy with her life—until it’s turned upside down by two major upheavals. One is the return of her ex—a man who could once make her knees go weak with just a glance, and it seems as if nothing has changed in that respect. And the second is a devastating earthquake. These events force Maia to examine what she really wants out of life, but making a decision is difficult when she knows people are going to get hurt. Her head and her heart aren’t always in agreement, and she’s struggling to decide which one she should listen to. What if there’s more than one right answer?
But Maia has to make a decision—because if she waits too long she could lose everything.
Enjoy!
Emily
EMILY FORBES is an award-winning author of Medical Romances for Mills & Boon. She has written over 25 books, and has twice been a finalist in the Australian Romantic Book of the Year Award, which she won in 2013 for her novel Sydney Harbour Hospital: Bella’s Wishlist. You can get in touch with Emily at emilyforbes@internode.on.net (mailto:emilyforbes@internode.on.net) or visit her website at emily-forbesauthor.com (http://emily-forbesauthor.com).
A Love Against All Odds
Emily Forbes
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my gorgeous nieces: Sophie, Lucy, Kate, Sophie, Grace, Zoe, Harriet, Portia, Lilly, Saskia, Henriette, Alexandra, Charlotte, Georgia and Adelaide, and in loving memory of Georgiana Rose.
Table of Contents
Cover (#uccc71f4b-394a-5885-bb82-aade6ee8b119)
Praise for Emily Forbes (#ulink_03b96d8f-0c1a-58f8-9daa-122406721b8b)
Excerpt (#u862211b5-f207-5df1-9fb2-b61f049d3318)
Dear Reader (#ulink_e54ee14b-49fb-5f01-90bc-b1449e38fafe)
About the Author (#u11381417-fc50-5537-85f7-eea88630863f)
Title Page (#udb77e143-2961-5328-9f14-723bcb2e982e)
Dedication (#uaa627768-5481-509a-a2c7-7e8aa8c090ac)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_811bf52d-6973-5293-a15b-a59dd37e5015)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b62b8303-f95a-5e47-9d6f-b7d4bdb80a91)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_f350a2d6-c2dc-5fc6-b444-73df0917cce2)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_c4e73903-2d4d-5c2c-9df8-c7eefbc11ddc)
‘CHRISTCHURCH HAS BEEN rocked by the biggest earthquake we’ve had for some time. Just after five o’clock this morning a quake measuring seven-point-one on the Richter scale was recorded; its epicentre was forty kilometres west of the city and it occurred at a depth of eleven kilometres. Several old buildings have collapsed but, while there have been numerous injuries, there are no reported fatalities at this stage. Injuries have been caused by falling masonry and glass but—just repeating—there are no fatalities at present. We’re crossing live now to our reporter …’
Maia Tahana pulled the headphones out of her ears as she walked through the automatic doors of the emergency department of the Canterbury Children’s Hospital, cutting the radio journalist off midsentence. The story of the quake wasn’t news to her; she’d been woken by it, jolted out of a comfortable sleep by a deep bass rumble and the sound of breaking glass. Her heart had hammered in her chest as the house shook and the windows rattled in their frames. It had sounded as if a freight train was hurtling past the front door but Maia had known that was impossible. The closest thing to the house was the Pacific Ocean, fifty metres away on the other side of the sand dunes that ran at the bottom of the garden—but it hadn’t been the pounding of the surf that had shaken the house and its foundations.
The noise had been frightening and the movement of the house disturbing but it wasn’t an unfamiliar experience. Maia had lived in Christchurch, New Zealand, all her life; she’d been through this before. Christchurch experienced thousands of earthquakes each year. She remembered hearing it was somewhere in the vicinity of thirteen thousand, which seemed like an enormous number, but she knew that not all of them were felt by people. Some were only detected by seismic equipment, but it was still a huge number, and it wasn’t unusual around here to feel the ground moving beneath your feet.
Minor quakes were something that barely caused the locals to blink, let alone miss a beat. If the power wasn’t interrupted, if no one was hurt and if there was no major damage, then the tremors were mostly ignored. But this one had been big and much closer to the surface. There had been a couple of smaller aftershocks and Maia was pleased to hear there had been no fatalities. Perhaps she could expect a regular shift, if ever there was such a thing for an emergency-department nurse in a busy paediatric hospital.
The emergency department seemed quiet when Maia walked in but she was superstitious enough not to say anything. The moment someone mentioned the ‘q’ word always seemed to be the moment all hell broke loose. She decided to grab a coffee while she had a chance. She needed a double dose of caffeine after being woken by the quake. She and her sisters had been sweeping up broken crockery and glass since four this morning and she hadn’t had a chance to go back to sleep. She checked her watch. She had time.
She walked into the empty kitchen and took a coffee cup from the cupboard. She had her back to the kitchen door but she heard it open as she lifted a new pod from the box on the bench beside the coffee machine. The room filled with the scent of cedar wood and citrus—grapefruit, not oranges. The scent was familiar to her. It was the scent of an ex-boyfriend. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the memories flood back. A slight smile played across her lips as she remembered Henry.
She opened her eyes and mentally shook herself. She didn’t have time to waste on old memories. She dropped the coffee pod into the machine, waiting for the aroma of freshly brewed coffee to clear her mind. Henry was a long time ago. He was her past. Well and truly. Her life had moved on. She had changed. Life had changed her.
But as she pushed the button to start the coffee-making process she could have sworn she heard his voice.
‘Maia?’
The rounded vowels of his English accent were instantly recognisable. No one else made her name sound like he did—sexy and desirable, full of promise and suggestion.
Her imagination was working overtime.
‘Maia?’ His voice repeated her name and this time she turned around.
Three years evaporated in the blink of an eye as her past collided with her present.
Henry was standing in front of her.
He looked exactly the same: tall, dark and still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His features were faultlessly symmetrical. His square jaw was chiselled and his full lips were perfectly shaped. His indigo-blue eyes were the exact same shade as the chest feathers of the pukeko bird. He stood over six feet and he was solid, but in a lean, muscular way. Not fat. He looked just like she remembered—his hair was cut shorter than usual, his dark curls tamed, but he was otherwise unchanged. He was incredibly gorgeous and he was standing five feet away when she’d thought he was on the other side of the world.
‘Henry? What are you doing here?’
She wanted to reach out and touch him, to see if he really was real, to make sure it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks on her but, if it was, it was extremely good. She resisted the temptation. She wasn’t sure what would be considered appropriate behaviour.
‘I’m back.’ He smiled at her as he gave her his answer and Maia’s heart skipped a beat. He had a little dimple in the centre of his chin that disappeared when he smiled—how had she forgotten about that?
She could see he was back. What she wanted to know was why and when and how long for but all she could do was stare at him.
‘I didn’t know you worked here,’ he said to her.
Maia nodded. Her mouth was dry and her tongue appeared to have glued itself to the roof of her mouth. She forced it free and swallowed as she tried to moisten her throat so she could speak. ‘I left the Queen Liz eighteen months ago,’ she told him.
When Henry had left Christchurch three years ago Maia had been working in the emergency department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital—they both had—but she had quit that job eighteen months ago after her father had passed away. She hadn’t wanted to nurse adults anymore; she’d needed a break and the Children’s Hospital had needed staff.
‘I’m sorry about your dad,’ Henry said, putting two and two together with the timing. ‘He was a good man.’
Henry had always had an uncanny ability to read her thoughts and it seemed as if that hadn’t changed.
‘Thank you,’ she said but she didn’t want to think about her father. She didn’t want to think about the last few months of his life. Her dad had suffered a stroke and Maia had helped to nurse him. It had been a difficult and emotional time, and his death had hit her hard. She had spent a vast amount of the past three years grieving. First for Henry and then for her father. She was only just coming to terms with it all now.
The coffee machine beeped at her and she turned away, grateful for the distraction, grateful for the reason to break eye contact and the chance to gather her thoughts. But her first thought was about Henry.
Why was he back?
The comms system crackled overhead. ‘All ED staff to triage.’ Maia heard the voice of Brenda, the ED director, summoning the staff.
Her hand shook as she added sugar to her coffee and picked up the cup. Henry held the door open and fell into step beside her. She wasn’t going to escape the past that easily.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. When Henry had left Christchurch three years ago she had never expected to see him again. He had never mentioned coming back; he’d made her no promises. He’d gone off to save the world, leaving her behind, and Maia could only assume that she didn’t feature in his future plans at all. That had been a bitter pill to swallow but she’d managed to do it eventually.
‘I’m doing project work in disaster management and the New Zealand government offered me a grant to come back. I’ll be looking at the systems in place in the hospitals and how they would cope with mass-casualty incidents. But I’ll be attached to the Children’s. I thought it was an offer too good to refuse.’
That surprised her. Not his project choice—he was an emergency-medicine specialist and she’d known about his interest in disaster management—but the fact that he was back at all was a surprise. When he’d left he’d had plans that were bigger than New Zealand.
‘Well, your timing couldn’t be better,’ she told him. ‘You got an earthquake to order.’
‘Looks like I did but it hasn’t caused too much havoc—and, although that’s fortunate for Christchurch and her residents, it’s not very useful for my purposes.’
‘I guess you can’t have everything.’
‘I guess not.’
Henry’s indigo eyes searched her face. He seemed able to look through her brown eyes into her soul and his gaze, intense, powerful and passionate, made her knees go weak. She remembered this look. It was the look he would give her when they’d made love. The look that had made her think she was the only girl in the world he would ever need.
She looked away.
That wasn’t the case and she wasn’t that girl anymore.
‘When did you get back?’ she asked.
‘A couple of days ago. I spent yesterday in orientation and induction and now I hope I’m ready to go.’
Yesterday she’d been rostered off. Today her world was changing.
As she and Henry assembled in triage along with the other staff, Maia saw Carrie, her best friend, standing on the opposite side of the group. She raised her eyebrows in a silent question at Maia when she saw who was by her side. Maia gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of her head. She didn’t want Carrie asking questions.
‘If I can have everyone’s attention …’ the ED Director said as she scanned the group, obviously deciding everyone was present and accounted for. Brenda waited for the conversational noise to cease before continuing. ‘There’s been an accident involving a school bus and we’ve got several ambulances headed our way.’
Maia shouldn’t even have thought about it being quiet.
‘Apparently the earthquake triggered a landslide which caused the bus to crash but I don’t have any more detail than that. The bus driver has been airlifted to the Queen Elizabeth and the plan is to bring all the kids to us. There were sixteen primary school children on the bus. Varying injuries—fractures, cuts, bruises, some suspected head injuries and possible spinal injuries—and all of them will be in shock.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘ETA five minutes.’
‘It seems you got your disaster after all,’ Maia said quietly to Henry as Brenda went on.
‘For those of you who haven’t met him yet, I’d like to introduce Dr Henry Cavanaugh. Henry is a UK-trained emergency-medicine specialist with a special interest in disaster management. He did part of his fellowship in Christchurch at the Queen Liz but this time he is seconded to our hospital and he will be looking at our management systems, as well as taking on a clinical workload.’
Maia could see Carrie making a beeline for her and by her expression she could tell she was in for a grilling. She really needed to process Henry’s return before she was ready for it to be dissected in a discussion with anyone, even her best friend. But she knew her chances of putting Carrie off were next to none so all she could do was ensure that the conversation didn’t take place in public.
Henry was about to be swamped by other emergency staff who hadn’t yet met him so Maia headed for the change rooms, deciding she would quickly change into surgical scrubs. Carrie followed her, as she’d known she would. She and Carrie had been best friends since their first year of high school. For thirteen years Carrie had been by Maia’s side. She’d been through everything that had happened to Maia over the past three years and longer.
The moment the door closed behind them, Carrie asked, ‘Did you know he was back?’
Maia stripped off her uniform and hung it on a spare coat-hanger, exchanging her clothes for hospital-issued scrubs. ‘Who? Henry?’
‘Yes, Henry,’ Carrie replied as Maia stepped into a pair of surgical pants and tied the drawstring at her waist.
‘No. You know we haven’t kept in touch.’ They had agreed on a clean break—that had been his suggestion, not hers—and she’d spoken to him exactly twice in three years. He had called her once when her father had suffered his first stroke and again when he had died. That had been their only contact. Henry wasn’t part of her life anymore.
‘How did your date go last night?’ Maia asked as she tugged the pale-blue cotton shirt down over her head.
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘I’m not. Henry being back is not a subject. Not one that affects me anyway.’
Carrie raised an eyebrow. ‘You sure?’
Even though Maia had known the fairy tale hadn’t had the happy ending she’d wanted, and she’d pretended he hadn’t broken her heart when he’d left, it had taken her a long time to recover. But eventually she’d been able to consign him to her past and to think of him without feeling like her heart was being ripped in two. They’d wanted different things in life. Things had worked out for the best.
‘Positive,’ she said as she lifted her hand to gather her long, dark hair into a ponytail, wrapping and tucking the end to make a messy bun. Her engagement ring caught the light, reminding her to remove it, and she slid it off her finger and onto the necklace where she wore it while she was working.
She was engaged to be married. Henry was an ex-boyfriend. Not the love of her life.
‘He’s an ex-boyfriend, that’s all.’
Henry was her past. Not her future.
He wasn’t her Henry any more.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9598d44c-0a1c-57e0-acbc-f44202ac76d1)
TWO AMBULANCES PULLED into the loading bay as Maia and Carrie returned to the ED, creating a flurry of activity. Maia’s fiancé, Todd, was a paramedic. He had a day shift and she peered through the windows of the closest ambulance and scanned the bustling medicos, looking for his familiar figure. Looking for his sturdy frame, his short, neat brown hair and his gentle hazel eyes.
A girl of about eight or nine was pulled from the back of the first ambulance. There was no sign of Todd. The girl’s eyes were closed and she had a firm cervical collar around her neck.
‘Carrie, this child needs a neuro consult, possible head injury. Jim Edwards is on his way down but can you monitor her until he arrives?’ Brenda relayed the paramedics’ summary of the girl’s condition.
‘Sure.’ Carrie had worked at the Children’s since graduating from nursing. She was one of the most experienced emergency nurses and there wasn’t much she hadn’t had to deal with before. She crossed straight to the first stretcher.
The doors of the second ambulance swung open and Maia saw Todd climb out. She headed for her fiancé, closely followed by Brenda. Despite the fact that he’d just come from what she imagined was a complicated and messy motor-vehicle accident with multiple casualties, Todd looked as immaculate as ever. He was fastidiously neat and somehow his uniform had remained clean and still had perfect creases in the trouser legs. In contrast Maia could sense that her thick dark hair was already escaping from the bun she’d fixed it in. She couldn’t count how many times people had uttered the phrase ‘opposites attract’ when they’d been talking about her and Todd.
He pulled a stretcher from the back of the truck. A young boy was sitting up on it. He was alert and seemed quite fascinated by the whole experience. He was dressed in his school uniform, shorts and a T-shirt, and Maia could see that his left knee was swollen. The paramedics had rolled up a towel and stuffed it under his knee to support it.
‘Adam has undiagnosed knee pain,’ Todd told them. ‘And he’s unable to weight bear. Vitals all with normal limits.’
‘Henry.’ Brenda nodded as she called Henry over to join them. ‘Ortho injuries; can you take this one?’ she said as she pointed to Adam. ‘Maia, you go with him.’
She wondered if that was a coincidence or if Henry had requested to work with her. Don’t flatter yourself, she remonstrated as Todd handed her a little green whistle-shaped inhaler.
‘He’s had the Penthrox inhaler on the way here,’ he said.
Maia nodded and tucked the pain-reliever alongside Adam, then put her hands on the stretcher, ready to wheel it away. Before she had moved Todd reached over and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said.
Maia saw Henry watching. His eyes moved from Todd’s hand to Todd and then to her face. Maia blushed under his scrutiny. She almost felt like she shouldn’t have let Todd touch her. Not that she could have stopped him, nor was she sure why she would have wanted to, but his familiar gesture made her feel awkward and uncomfortable under Henry’s gaze. His expression was unreadable but he gave the stretcher a push, starting it moving towards the entrance, and Todd’s hand dropped from Maia’s shoulder with the movement. Henry wasn’t watching her now, he was focused on manoeuvring the stretcher, but Maia knew his movement had been deliberate. She said nothing as she and Henry wheeled the stretcher away and Todd turned back to his other patient, to the girl with the broken collarbone.
‘Hey there, mate, what’s your name?’ Henry had always had a good bedside manner and everyone, young and old, loved him. He had an easy charm. People were starstruck by his arresting looks initially but he always won them over with his personality to match.
She needed to be careful. Before he’d left she’d had him on a pedestal; she couldn’t let that happen again. But, listening to him chat to their young patient, she could tell he hadn’t changed.
‘Adam Evans.’
‘Nice to meet you, Adam. I’m Henry and this is Maia,’ he said. ‘You’ve hurt your knee, have you?’
Adam nodded.
‘We’ll get you comfortable in here and have a look at it. Have you been in hospital before?’
‘No,’ he said. Maia grabbed a blank patient file from the triage desk as they wheeled the stretcher past.
‘Seen it on telly?’
He nodded again as they pushed his bed into a cubicle and Maia pulled the curtain around to give them some privacy.
Maia helped Henry transfer Adam to a hospital bed before she wheeled the stretcher into the corridor. She knew one of the ambulance crew would collect it before they left the hospital but she didn’t want them to have to interrupt, especially if it was Todd. She wasn’t ready to deal with two sets of inquisitive eyes.
‘Maia will attach a few leads to you,’ Henry told Adam as he washed his hands before pulling on a pair of disposable surgical gloves. ‘She’ll check your pulse and a few things like that but I reckon that’ll all be pretty normal, seeing as you’re talking to me.’
They had worked together at the Queen Liz when Henry had been doing his fellowship. They’d worked well together then and slotted back into an easy rhythm now. It didn’t feel like three years since they’d worked side by side.
Maia took a hospital ID bracelet out of the file and wrote Adam’s details on it before fastening it around his wrist. Next she snapped gloves onto her hands, connected Adam to the monitors and recorded his observations—blood pressure, oxygen sats and pulse rate.
‘Do you know what day it is, Adam?’ Henry asked as he shone a penlight torch into Adam’s eyes and checked his pupils.
‘Tuesday.’
‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘I was standing up in the bus when the driver swerved and I went flying, and my knee slammed into the side of one of the seats. It hit that metal bar that made up the seat frame. My brother was on the bus too. Do you know if he’s okay? His name is Bailey.’ Tears welled in Adam’s eyes and Maia could tell he was trying to be brave. She could imagine how she would have felt if she’d been in his situation at the same age.
‘Let’s get you sorted and then we’ll find out about Bailey,’ she told him. She wouldn’t tell him that she was sure Bailey was fine; she couldn’t promise that when she had no idea of the situation. Promising to investigate was the best she could do.
‘All right, Adam, I need to have a look at your knee, but first I want you to tell me about your pain. Can you give it a score out of ten? Where zero is no pain and ten is unbearable.’
‘Maybe a six?’
‘I need to have a feel of your knee but you can hold Maia’s hand if you like and squeeze it tight if your knee gets too sore and you want me to stop. I reckon holding Maia’s hand might help.’ Adam blushed and looked away and Maia almost felt sorry for him until she realised that Henry had started palpating the knee joint and had successfully distracted Adam so that he’d been able to start palpating without Adam even noticing. Obviously he hadn’t struck anything painful yet but as a technique Maia was impressed.
The pain-relieving inhaler was lying where Maia had left it, on the bed. She picked it up and offered it to him. ‘You can use this if you like?’
But Adam shook his head. ‘I’ll be okay,’ he said, still putting on a brave face.
‘Good choice, Adam. I’d choose to hold a pretty nurse’s hand instead too,’ Henry added as he palpated the medial and lateral ligaments and winked at Adam, who grinned. Now it was Maia’s turn to blush but she held out her hand and Adam latched onto it.
As the young boy squeezed her hand, Maia wondered if anyone watching her and Henry would guess they had a history. Henry seemed relaxed; working with her didn’t appear to be throwing him off-kilter. Perhaps it was only her on tenterhooks, only her who still felt the spark of awareness in the air. There was no denying she was still affected by his easy charm.
Henry moved his fingers centrally over the quadriceps tendon and muscle belly. There was marked oedema of this knee compared to the other and Maia watched as Adam grimaced, but he didn’t cry out.
‘Are you a cricketer, Adam?’ Henry asked.
Adam nodded.
‘So, you’d be getting ready to watch the World Cup?’
The World Cup was scheduled to start in India at the end of February. It was only a few days away and New Zealand’s citizens could barely talk about anything else. Maia knew that Henry also loved his cricket. He would slot straight back into the Kiwi culture even if he did barrack for the wrong team.
‘Do you reckon the Black Caps can beat my team—England?’
Henry was having difficulty finding the borders of the knee cap. Adam flinched and his fingers tightened their grip on Maia’s as Henry’s fingers probed his patella but his bravado remained strong as he replied, ‘The Black Caps can beat everyone.’
‘I like your confidence.’ Henry laughed. ‘I’m looking forward to watching some cricket. I’ve been living in America—they’re not into cricket there. See if you can bend this knee for me. I’ll help you.’ Henry had again successfully distracted Adam but his assessment wasn’t over yet. He slipped one hand under Adam’s knee to support it. It was resting in about thirty degrees of flexion and he was able to bend it another thirty degrees before the pain got too much. But Maia knew that flexion of sixty degrees was well off the normal range of one hundred and forty degrees for thin adolescents.
But Henry praised his efforts. ‘Well done, Adam. Now try to straighten it for me.’
Adam tried but he couldn’t do it. His knee got stuck at thirty degrees.
‘Can you lift it off the bed?’
Maia could see from Adam’s expression that he was trying but his quadriceps wasn’t following orders and his leg didn’t budge.
‘These kids are primary school age, yes?’ Henry asked Maia. ‘How old are you, Adam?’ he asked when she nodded.
‘Twelve.’
‘All right. I reckon you might have busted your knee cap; we need to get that X-rayed.’
Maia frowned. Patella fractures weren’t common in children and she wondered why Henry suspected that. He must have seen her doubting expression. ‘I’ve seen a few in this age group, boys more than girls,’ he explained. ‘Once the patella has ossified it’s susceptible to fracture. Can we organise an X-ray? AP and lateral views?’ he asked.
‘Sure. They can bring the mobile X-ray machine in to do that. But we’ll need to get permission first, I suspect. Why don’t you ask Brenda to organise that when you get your next case and I’ll wait with Adam?’ Maia didn’t want to leave the young boy alone. He would be apprehensive, if not scared, and with the added worry of his brother’s whereabouts and potential injuries. ‘And see what you can find out about Bailey,’ she added as Henry pulled the curtain back and stepped out.
She watched him leave the cubicle. His dark hair was neat at the nape of his neck. His back was straight, his shoulders square. He seemed relaxed, unhurried, in control, and Maia knew his calm demeanour was good for the patients.
Henry turned to pull the curtain closed and saw her watching him. He grinned and winked as he tugged the curtain across, cutting off her view.
Maia busied herself checking Adam’s obs again while she waited for the blush that stained her cheeks to fade. She needed something to occupy her mind; she couldn’t afford to fill it with thoughts of Henry.
She heard the curtain move again. The sound of the plastic clips sliding in the rail made her look up. She was hoping to see Henry but it was a lady’s face that appeared.
‘Excuse me,’ the woman said as she ducked around the curtain. ‘Sorry to interrupt—I’m Amelia Cooper, the deputy principal at Canterbury Primary School.’
Maia spotted an identification badge hanging around Amelia’s neck that had her photograph and the school crest printed on it. She hoped she wasn’t a journalist with fake ID. That had happened before, on more than one occasion.
‘Hello, Adam,’ the woman said, and Maia decided she would give her the benefit of the doubt, although she wasn’t sure what she was doing in her cubicle.
‘Is there something I can help you with?’ Maia asked.
‘I need to make sure all the children are accounted for,’ Amelia explained. ‘The school is contacting the parents. Some are already on their way to the hospital, but I was told we might need permission for some treatments. The school has all that information on file.’ She indicated the electronic tablet she held in one hand. ‘It’s all in here.’
She put the tablet down on the end of Adam’s bed and took a thick marker pen from a clipboard which she had been holding in her other hand. ‘I’m also supposed to correctly identify the children,’ she said as she printed Adam’s name onto a sticky label which she peeled off and stuck to his shirt. Some things obviously still had to be done the old-fashioned way, although Maia knew her method of identifying the children was more secure. Adam’s arm would go wherever he went, unlike his shirt, which could easily be removed, taking his ID with it. But she kept quiet. The children could be identified at a glance and another form of ID wasn’t going to create any problems, as long as it was accurate.
‘And I’ll keep a list of their injuries so the parents can check in with me as their initial point of contact. I’ll be the liaison person, according to your ED director that will leave you all free to get on with treating the kids.’
That made sense. Maia filled her in on Adam’s condition and Amelia flipped over the page of sticky labels and jotted a summary on another page of her clipboard.
‘Do you have authority to give permission for Adam to have an X-ray?’ Maia asked.
‘I do,’ she replied. ‘I spoke to Dr Cavanaugh who was in here before and told him.’
‘Okay. Do you have any news about Adam’s brother, Bailey?’
Amelia ran her finger down the list on her clipboard. ‘He’s fine. He’s got some cuts and bruises and he’s waiting for some treatment to clean those up.’
Maia could see Adam relax. ‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve got more good news, Adam,’ Amelia said. ‘The school has spoken to your mother and she is on her way.’
The radiographer arrived and Maia left him to do his job while she went looking for Bailey.
The waiting room had filled with parents and some of the less seriously injured kids who were still waiting to be treated. Maia scanned the room and spotted a boy who, despite the large dressing that was bandaged to the top of his head, looked similar enough to Adam that she walked closer to check the sticker on his shirt. It read, ‘Bailey Evans’.
Maia sought out the ED Director next. She was standing at the whiteboard behind the triage desk, updating the list. ‘Brenda, have you got anyone urgent for me or can I take Bailey Evans?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got his brother having X-rays taken and I think they’d like to be together while they wait for their mother.’
Brenda scanned the board quickly before she nodded. ‘Sure,’ she said as she added a note on the board beside Bailey’s name. ‘According to the ambos he’s got a head laceration that might need stitching. Your call, once you’ve cleaned him up.’
Maia introduced herself to Bailey as she pushed his wheelchair into the cubicle beside Adam’s. They could talk to each other through the curtain while she cleaned Bailey’s cuts—she didn’t think Adam needed to watch that—but once they were both taken care of she could pull back the curtain and they could wait together.
Maia gently lifted the dressing on Bailey’s head. It was soaked in blood from a nasty cut that ran along his hairline. The paramedics had been right; the gash would probably need a few stitches. She re-covered the wound with fresh padding and called for a doctor. The wound would need to be cleaned but she knew the doctor would administer a local anaesthetic and she preferred to wait for that before she started cleaning. She would make a start on his other more straightforward injuries while she waited. She could see several cuts on his hands and knees as well as on his face and head.
‘How did you get all of these cuts?’ she asked him.
‘Some of the windows in the bus exploded when the bus rolled over.’
‘The bus rolled over?’ Maia hadn’t been aware of that part.
Bailey nodded his head.
‘The bus driver swerved so hard to miss the landslide that the bus crashed through the rail on the side of the road and rolled down the hill.’ Adam’s voice came through the curtain, explaining the sequence of events.
‘You didn’t tell me that part before, Adam.’
‘That wasn’t the bit where I hurt my knee,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘The window next to me smashed,’ Bailey added. ‘And then some of us had to break the emergency window and crawl out that way. That’s how I cut my hands and knees.’
Maia picked fragments of glass out of his wounds, disinfected them and bandaged them before she tackled his face and head. She cleaned the cuts and scratches on his face before she carefully unwrapped the dressing on his head.
The curtain rustled on its tracking, flicking open to admit Henry. ‘This is Bailey, Adam’s brother,’ Maia told him. ‘He’s got a laceration on his head that needs cleaning and suturing.’
She removed the dressing again for Henry to take a look. He nodded, agreeing with her assessment.
Maia handed him the local anaesthetic, pre-empting his request, and then prepared a suture kit while they waited for the anaesthetic to kick in. They worked smoothly together, their moves practised as Henry chatted to Bailey about cricket and rugby. Maia loved rugby but didn’t really understand the attraction of cricket and she wasn’t interested in listening to them discuss their favourite teams and players. She was busy thinking about other things. She was standing beside Henry’s right shoulder, snipping the thread each time he finished a stitch. She didn’t need to focus; her mind was free to wander and she let it drift as she watched his fingers pinch and move as he deftly sewed up Bailey’s head wound.
He looked like he was conducting a mini-orchestra. His hands moved to their own silent beat. His fingers were long and slender, his forearms were strong. He was wearing a short-sleeved surgical top, a dark blue one that made his eyes look even darker than usual, and his olive skin was lightly tanned, even though he’d just returned from a Northern Hemisphere winter. She wondered what colour the skin under his clothes was.
That was a dangerous direction for her thoughts to take. She quickly tried to think about something else. She breathed deeply as she tried to refocus her mind. But all that happened was she breathed in Henry. She was standing so close to him that all she could smell was the scent of clean laundry and that citrus-and-cedar aftershave, and every breath she took filled her senses.
‘Henry?’
Brenda stuck her head around the curtain and Maia jumped. She felt a guilty flush steal across her cheeks even though she was guilty of nothing more than wayward thoughts. But Brenda’s appearance was enough to break the spell. Maia took a small step back, putting a little bit of distance between Henry and her.
‘Adam’s X-rays are back.’
‘Okay. Can you put the dressing on?’ Henry asked as Maia cut the final thread. ‘I’ll follow up on Adam.’
Henry swapped cubicles and Maia breathed out. She hadn’t realised that she’d been holding her breath but it must have been protective tendencies. If she couldn’t smell Henry, she could think. It was good that he was gone. She needed a bit of distance. Despite telling herself that Henry’s return didn’t matter and that it wasn’t going to affect her, she knew that was a lie. She hoped he’d spend a lot of time in Theatre and on the wards—anywhere away from Emergency. She didn’t know how she could be expected to function normally if she had to work closely with him.
She put a new dressing on Bailey’s head and pulled the curtain back so the boys could see each other. Henry had his back to her as he studied Adam’s X-rays. He held them up to the light and Maia was about to leave him to it when she heard Carrie’s voice on the other side of the curtain, and another stranger came into the cubicle. Another woman. But this time Maia knew immediately who she was. The boys’ mother. It wasn’t that she looked particularly like them but Maia could tell by the way she rushed in and ignored the adults in the room completely as she sought out her children. Maia might as well have been invisible. The woman hesitated for just a fraction as if trying to choose which of her sons to hug first but chose Bailey. He was closer.
Henry turned around at the sound of a new voice and Maia noted the woman’s double-take when she saw Henry. As concerned as she was for her children, part of her, possibly just her female hormones, still couldn’t help reacting to Henry. It seemed he wasn’t quite as invisible as Maia was. Not that Maia could blame her. There weren’t many people, men or women, who were immune to Henry’s looks. He was a strikingly handsome man. Maia’s glance went instinctively to the woman’s left hand to see if she was single. Not that it was any of her business. She tried not to care but she didn’t want other people noticing Henry. Although she knew that was impossible.
‘Mrs Evans?’ Henry queried as the woman kissed Bailey and then moved over to hug Adam. ‘I’m Dr Henry Cavanaugh,’ he went on when she nodded. ‘I’m an emergency specialist at the hospital and Maia and I have been treating your sons. They are both fine. They’ve sustained relatively minor injuries but, all things considered, they’ve been very lucky. Bailey has a few small cuts that have been cleaned and dressed but he also had one larger gash on his head which required ten stitches—just here.’ Henry touched his own head just at his hairline. ‘He’ll need to get those out in a week. Your GP might be happy to do it or you can bring him in here.
‘Adam has a fractured knee cap,’ Henry continued as he slid one of the X-rays into the light box on the wall. This X-ray showed a lateral view and Maia could see the dark line indicating the break running across the middle of Adam’s patella. Henry traced his finger over the line. His fingers were slender and capable, his hands smooth and hairless. Maia forced her attention back to the matter at hand and listened as Henry told Mrs Evans what had happened. She needed to pay attention; she would need to write discharge summaries for the boys.
‘It’s not serious. A transverse fracture of the patella is not particularly common but it matches with Adam’s age and the injury history. The physio will be along shortly to fit him with a splint and we’ll make an appointment with an orthopod to review his progress in two weeks. He should expect to stay in the splint for four weeks and then he will need physiotherapy. You can take the boys home as soon as the physio has taught him how to use crutches.’
‘Adam gets crutches?’ Bailey sulked.
The boys’ mother laughed. ‘Now I know you’re okay,’ she said.
Henry high-fived both of the boys. ‘Maia, can you ring Outpatients and set up a review for Adam in a fortnight?’
Maia nodded. They had worked well together. No awkwardness. There had been no time to worry about anything other than their patients. She was right—Henry being back wasn’t going to affect her.
Henry scrubbed his hands as he prepared to go into Theatre, taking a few moments to collect his thoughts. He hadn’t had a moment of solitude since he’d bumped into Maia earlier today. If he hadn’t been working solidly with her all morning, he could almost have believed he was dreaming. They’d been treating their young patients nonstop for hours, and his day wasn’t over yet, but he needed just a little time to think.
He hadn’t been completely honest with Maia about his reasons for coming back to Christchurch. He’d been offered a grant, that much was true, but he’d been offered several and he’d accepted Christchurch partly because of her. He hadn’t come back for her but because of her. He had actually been happy here and he had Maia to thank for that. It had been many years since he’d felt truly happy, before Christchurch or since.
Six years ago his world had collapsed and as he’d recovered he’d made a decision. He would save the world, one disaster at a time, and if he couldn’t save the world then he would at least try to make a difference to one family at a time. That had put him on the path to emergency medicine and disaster management. He knew exactly how devastating losing loved ones unexpectedly in traumatic circumstances was and, if he could make a horrible, tragic situation better, then that was what he wanted to do. If it kept him busy day and night, that was a good thing. He had no desire to have a life of his own. His family didn’t get that now—why should he?
He’d been rudderless, almost homeless, for six years now. He hadn’t wanted to stay in one place; he knew that being settled without any family around would make him feel even more alone. Family couldn’t be replaced. Not even by another family. The risk was too great—something might happen to them too.
He’d decided it was better to remain alone, even if it meant being lonely, rather than risk his heart on love.
And then he had met Maia and he’d been tempted to change his mind. But he hadn’t been able to ask her to commit to a life of uncertainty with him when he hadn’t even been sure if he wanted that commitment. Yet he hadn’t been able to resist returning and so he was back in Christchurch. This city held some of his few cheerful memories, without any lurking ghosts, and he was sorely in need of some happiness.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_46aef44b-c692-56e7-b859-75f663db5792)
MAIA LOOSENED HER hair from the bun she’d worn it in all day and let it fall down her back in thick, dark waves as she and Carrie strolled along the banks of the Avon River towards the Stratford-on-Avon. The pub’s picturesque waterside setting, proximity to the hospital and well-timed happy hour all combined to make it a popular watering hole for the staff of the Children’s Hospital.
‘Can you stay for a feed tonight?’ Carrie asked as they pushed open the door and entered the pub.
Maia shook her head. ‘I’m singing tonight. The band has a gig at the Cathedral Square Hotel,’ she said as they ordered two bottles of cider.
Maia loved to sing. If she’d been good enough to make a living out of it, she would have tried, but her father had convinced her to have a career as well and she’d discovered nursing, which she loved just as much. But she sang as often as she could with a jazz band.
The girls took their drinks out onto the deck that overlooked the Avon River. Willow trees lined the bank, their sweeping branches dipping into the calm waters. It was a pleasant spot on a summer’s afternoon. They could watch the occasional punt taking tourists along the river or the university rowing crews on their afternoon trainings.
Today it was a rowing four that glided past as Maia asked, ‘Are you still okay to come to the dressmaker with me next week?’
‘Are you finally going to pick out the dresses?’
‘No.’ Maia laughed and sipped her cider. ‘I’m hoping you’ll do that.’ Carrie was Maia’s maid of honour and along with Maia’s three younger sisters would form the bridal party. The wedding was only six weeks away. Maia needed to stop procrastinating and make some decisions. Todd had done most of the preparation work. Maia had given her opinion but she wasn’t the one driving this.
‘I’m surprised he hasn’t given up on you,’ Carrie said. ‘You’ve made him wait for almost two years.’
‘Maybe he thinks I’m worth it.’ She grinned.
‘I’m sure he does. But what do you think? Is he worth it?’
‘He’s a great guy, anybody would be lucky to have him. I’m lucky to have him,’ she said but even she could hear the uncertain tone of her voice.
‘You don’t need to convince me,’ Carrie replied.
Maia didn’t answer; her mind was wandering, off on its own little tangent. They’d been engaged for eighteen months, since just before her dad had died. Was she lucky Todd was so patient or had she been secretly hoping that he’d get tired of waiting for her? Maia looked down the river as she pondered the question. The water was flat and green. A light breeze stirred the willow trees, making their leaves brush over the water. A rowing eight glided past, young, fit men wearing university colours disturbing the surface of the river as she stared off into the distance.
‘My dad loved Todd. He became like the son he’d never had. He gave us his blessing before he died and you know how important that is to me,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘Family was everything to Dad.’
‘I know that but are you sure you’re marrying him because you want to, not just because your dad approved? Are you sure it’s the right thing for you? Are you ready?’
She knew what Carrie was asking. She and Carrie had been friends for ever. They’d been friends before Maia’s dad had got sick, before Maia had met Todd, before everything. They’d been friends before boyfriends, even, and Carrie had been there every step of the way. She knew which boys had been important, which one Maia had loved and which one had left her heartbroken.
Carrie knew her history with Henry. She knew that Henry had broken her heart—unintentionally, but it had been broken all the same. It had taken a long time for the cracks to heal and Maia knew they could easily be prised apart. But, despite heartache, life went on. Todd had filled a gap for her and somewhere along the way he’d helped her look to the future. A future that was different from what she had dreamed of and hoped for in some ways, but getting married was Maia’s choice. She knew she’d been influenced by her father’s thoughts and feelings, and by circumstances, but it didn’t necessarily mean it was the wrong thing for her.
‘It’s a new year,’ Maia said in reply. ‘And my resolution was to look to the future and be happy with what I have.’ Todd might not have been her first love but he would be a good husband. He was loyal, trustworthy, dependable and he adored her.
But, if she’d known the future was going to bring Henry back into her life, would she have made a different choice? It was too late to ask that question.
‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘everything is booked—the cathedral, the reception venue, the cake, the photographer and the hairdresser.’
‘It can always be un-booked.’
Maia wasn’t so sure. ‘We posted the invitations yesterday.’
The wedding was six weeks away. The sun kept rising and setting, the days kept turning over, and suddenly she was near the end of her engagement. This was it.
Maia closed her eyes as she started another song. It was one of her favourites, made famous by Ella Fitzgerald. She left the microphone fixed into the stand but steadied it with one hand as she swayed in time with the music. She’d chosen to wear a long, black dress tonight and it brushed her calves and ankles as she moved. It was cut low in the front and hugged her curves but a split up one leg to her thigh allowed for movement. Sequins scattered over the dress caught the light. There were more than a few men in the bar who were watching her with interest but, for the moment, she was oblivious to the attention as she let her mind drift.
Tonight the band was performing in the piano bar of the Cathedral Square Hotel in the city centre. This had become a semi-regular gig for her and the band. There were five of them tonight: the pianist, the bass player, the drummer, the trumpeter and her. The band had a different repertoire for the nights when she was unavailable due to nursing shifts and on those nights the pianist became the lead singer.
A spotlight was focused on her but she wasn’t aware of it. When she sang she wasn’t aware of anything except the music and the lyrics. It was one of the things she loved about singing. It transported her to another world where she wasn’t thinking about work or weddings or loss.
The spotlight highlighted Maia’s exotic features. Her English and Maori heritage had blended together, giving her the best of both worlds. Her shape and colouring was courtesy of her Maori background on both sides of her family. Her round face, round cheeks, generous bust and generous hips, along with her masses of thick dark hair and brown eyes, were definitely Maori, as was her skin, with its hint of coffee. Her facial features were the image of her half-English mother, with the same almond-shaped dark eyes, finely arched brows and narrow nose.
She’d done her make-up tonight to suit the atmosphere of the piano bar. She’d painted her lips red and gone with dark, smoky eyes. She wasn’t normally much of a make-up wearer—she was far too lazy to bother most days and she never wore make-up to work—but she made an exception on the nights when she performed with the band. She enjoyed the chance to get dressed up and performing on stage was all about playing a role and she was determined to do her part justice.
Tonight’s performance was going smoothly. The crowd was reasonable; their first set had been well received and the applause was reassuring. Some nights Maia felt invisible on stage despite the spotlight.
She was pleased to have this gig tonight; it meant less time to think about Henry’s reappearance. Despite her reassurances to Carrie, Henry’s return had unsettled her more than she was prepared to admit. She had been twenty-two when they’d met, he’d been her first love and it seemed that neither her head nor her heart had forgotten him. But in a day or two she was sure she’d be fine. In a day or two she would have recovered from the shock of seeing him again.
She was halfway through a song, her eyes still closed, when she felt an odd stirring in the air as if someone had opened a window and let a breeze in. The breeze floated past her, caressing her skin and whispering in her ear. She opened her eyes and looked out into the crowd.
He stood by the bar on the far side of the room, watching her.
She watched him back. There weren’t many things that could distract Maia when she was singing, but there was always one exception to any rule, and she knew this man was it.
He had showered and changed after work and he wore a black business shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Maia’s eyes swept across his chest and followed the line of his arms before drifting down to his narrow hips which were encased in a pair of dark jeans. He had one hand hooked into the pocket of his jeans and in the other he held a glass of beer. He raised the glass towards her in a silent salute. Maia felt the breeze brush over her again and this time it whispered his name.
Henry.
Her breath caught in her throat as their eyes locked and she lost her place in the song. Even at this distance she could see the intensity in his indigo eyes and feel the heat in his gaze. Warmth flooded through her, pooling in her belly, and she couldn’t even begin to try to find the words to continue singing. She had been swaying to the music but now she was worried that her knees were going to give way beneath her. She gripped the microphone stand with both hands as she tried to keep herself upright. She turned her head to look at the pianist, breaking eye contact with Henry in the process. Sean, the pianist, mouthed the words to her and somehow she managed to pick up the pieces and finish the song with a breathless voice and her eyes tightly shut.
As the song wrapped she didn’t give the band a chance to launch into the next one. The moment the music ended, she stepped away from the microphone and said, ‘Can we take a short break, guys?’
‘Is everything all right?’ Sean asked.
Maia nodded. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she lied.
Things were definitely not all right.
She didn’t remember stepping off the stage or walking through the bar but she must have done so because now she was standing in front of Henry.
‘Hello, Maia.’ His British accent caressed her name and Maia’s knees wobbled again. His voice was deep and gentle and his blue eyes were smiling.
Was it only today that he had come back into her life? It felt like he’d never left. It felt like everything that had happened since had been a dream, or perhaps she was dreaming now.
He took her hands and kissed her on the cheek. They were not in the hospital now; there were no concerns about protocol. She closed her eyes and held her breath as her limbs turned to liquid. This was definitely not a dream.
Her heart raced as his lips imprinted on her skin. What was it about him that could do this to her? How was it possible that a simple kiss on the cheek could leave her breathless and excited and make her feel as if she could melt away? As if she could dissolve in a pool of desire? One kiss from Henry and she could feel herself unfurling, coming back to life. She thought she had been doing okay but now she realised she’d been surviving, not living. She’d been getting through her days, but the days had had a dullness about them. One kiss from Henry and the colours began to return.
How could he affect her like this after all this time? How could she let him?
She stepped back as annoyance overrode pleasure and guilt replaced desire. She’d forgotten all about Todd. She found it irritating that Henry could return after three years and immediately influence her like this. But she wasn’t sure who she was annoyed with—him or her.
She wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he still set her heart racing. It had taken her years to put her heart back together and she wasn’t going to let one kiss reopen the scar where it had healed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I was on my way to my room and I thought I heard you singing. I thought I’d check.’
‘You’re staying here?’
He nodded. ‘Just until I can find some decent short-term accommodation close to the hospital.’ He pulled his room card out of his pocket. ‘Have you got time for a drink? My shout.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m working.’
‘Just a quick one, for old times’ sake. We’ve got some catching up to do.’
She looked into his indigo eyes and said, ‘It’s been three years, Henry. That’s a lot of catching up.’
‘Have dinner with me tomorrow, then.’
No. She couldn’t do that, for so many reasons. She didn’t trust herself. Or him. Her best defence was to stay as far away from him as possible, though that would be difficult, given they were working together. But she certainly didn’t have to complicate things further by agreeing to have dinner with him. She glanced back over her shoulder. The stage had been abandoned. The band had taken advantage of her abrupt exit and were taking a break—surely one quick drink couldn’t hurt? ‘One drink.’
There was an empty table beside them. Henry pulled out a chair for her and she sat. It seemed she lacked the willpower to refuse his invitation. No, she admitted, if only to herself, she didn’t lack the will power—she lacked the desire to walk away. She had never been able to resist him.
‘What can I get you? A glass of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc?’
‘No. I don’t drink wine if I’m singing.’ There was always the risk that her sinuses would become congested. ‘I’ll have a vodka, lime and soda.’
Henry signalled to the waitress and ordered Maia’s drink.
‘How was San Francisco?’ she asked, filling in the silence while she waited for her drink.
‘Interesting. I really liked it.’
‘You didn’t want to stay?’
He shook his head. ‘I left there a year ago. I’ve been in Tokyo for the last twelve months, studying the medical implications and response to tsunamis. It was time to come back and put what I’ve learnt about disaster management into practice.’
The waitress placed Maia’s drink on the table. Condensation settled on the outside of the glass and Maia wiped it off with one finger as she thought about all the things that Henry would have seen and done over the past three years. The diamond in her engagement ring caught the light and Henry’s eye as Maia ran her finger over the glass. He reached for her hand and just the barest touch of his fingers on her skin made her catch her breath. While she was connected to him she felt like she ceased to exist. As if nothing else mattered but the two of them. As if they were one.
She knew he shouldn’t have this effect on her still. Three years was a long time. It should have given her time to forget. Time had moved on. She had moved on. But her body didn’t seem to have received the same message.
His thumb rested in her palm as he turned her hand, and the solitaire diamond sparkled. ‘You’re engaged?’
She nodded. She’d taken it off her necklace and had slipped it back onto her finger as she was getting dressed tonight.
‘Anyone I know?’
‘Not really.’ The rapid beating of her heart made her voice sound breathless.
‘What does that mean?’
‘You saw him today but there was no time to introduce you.’ There’d been no reason to introduce them either but Maia knew she hadn’t wanted to.
‘The paramedic who brought Adam in?’
It seemed he had noticed Todd’s hand on her shoulder. Noticed and remembered. Maia nodded.
‘When is the wedding?’
‘Six weeks.’
Henry sat back in his seat and let go of her hand. She noticed he hadn’t congratulated her. What did that mean?
Probably nothing. She couldn’t afford to read anything into the silence. It wasn’t her place to speculate about his thoughts.
‘Timing was never one of our strong points,’ he said.
She studied his expression but it was difficult to read in the dim lights of the bar. Did he have regrets too?
Maia shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ His regrets were no longer her concern. They couldn’t be. Her life had changed when her father had died and it was naive to think things could ever go back to the way they were. Their lives hadn’t fitted together three years ago; it was unlikely they would fit together any better now. Nothing he’d said made her think his priorities had changed.
‘So things have worked out well for you?’ he asked. ‘You’re happy?’
‘Of course.’ She was, wasn’t she? She had nothing to be unhappy about. She was healthy, she loved her job, she had family, friends and a fiancé who loved her.
She didn’t want to think about why Todd was last on her list. Was that where he fitted in her life?
She should be happy. There was no reason not to be yet she knew she was lying. If she was happy why was she sitting here imagining what her life would have been like now if Henry had never left? Or if she’d gone with him? But that had never been seriously discussed.
They’d known at the beginning that their relationship would have an end. Henry’s plans had already been in place. He’d been in Christchurch for a limited time, she’d known the date he was leaving and she had known he wouldn’t take her with him. He travelled alone. That was his choice and, while she didn’t like it, she’d had to accept it. Then, just weeks after his departure, her dad had suffered his first stroke and Maia had known then she would have chosen to stay. But it had been tough, really tough, and in the end she had lost both her father and Henry.
‘Things have worked out differently to what I expected but that’s life, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Things change and you have to change with them.’
She could see the band members making their way back onto the stage. She pushed her chair back and stood. ‘I have to go.’
Henry got up too and came to her side. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said as he leant forward and kissed her cheek a second time, making her stomach flutter.
Oh, God, how was she going to handle this? How on earth had she thought she was over him? Just one kiss and she could feel herself falling again. She needed to get out of here.
Somehow Maia managed to get through two more songs. Henry had stayed for both before leaving the room. She doubted he’d return to the piano bar tonight but she didn’t want to hang around to find out. She told the band she wasn’t feeling well and made an early exit. An exit that felt very much like an escape.
The hotel doorman hailed her a taxi and she spent the ride home thinking about Henry. She thought she had managed to put him out of her mind. She would have thought three years was long enough to stop thinking about him and it should have been long enough for her body to forget him. But her reaction tonight proved that wasn’t the case. Her body definitely hadn’t got the message that three years had passed—her body had sprung to life as if it had been dormant these past few years.
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Emily Forbes
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: One life-changing moment…Three years ago, Dr Henry Cavanagh walked out of nurse Maia Tahana’s life, unable to allow himself a happy future after his family lost their lives. But now he’s back – and working in her A&E! Worse still, he’s more irresistible than ever…Henry may have sworn off love, but when a powerful earthquake hits Christchurch he’s faced with a prospect he can’t bear…losing Maia forever. Now he has to fight with everything he has to win her back for good!