Buch lesen: «The Man She Could Never Forget»

CHAPTER ONE

AS THE SMALL plane circled above the island, the hard lumps of pain and worry that had been lodged in Caroline Lockhart’s chest for the past months dissolved in the delight of seeing her home.

From the air, the island looked like a precious jewel set in an emerald-green sea. The white coral sand of the beaches at the northern end gleamed like a ribbon tying a very special parcel, the lush tropical forest providing the green wrapping paper.

Coming in from the west, they passed over the red cliffs that lit up so brilliantly at sunset that early sailors had called the island Wildfire.

As they flew closer, she could pick out the buildings.

The easiest to find was the palatial Lockhart mansion, built by her great-grandfather on a plateau on the southern tip of the island after he’d bought it from the M’Langi people who had found it too rough to settle.

Lockhart House—her home for so many years—the only real home she’d known as a child.

The house sat at the very highest point on the plateau, with views out over the sea, ocean waves breaking against the encircling reef, and beyond them the dots of other islands, big and small, settled and uninhabited, that, with Wildfire, made up the M’Langi group.

Immediately below the house and almost hidden by the thick rainforest surrounding it was the lagoon—its colour dependent on the sky above, so today it was a deep, dark blue.

Grandma’s lagoon.

In truth it was a crater lake from the days of volcanic action in the area, but Grandma had loved her lagoon and had refused to call it anything else.

Below the house and lagoon was the hospital her father, Max Lockhart, had given his life to building, a memorial to his dead wife—Caroline’s mother.

Around the main hospital building its cluster of staff villas crowded like chickens around a mother hen. And below that again lay the airstrip.

Farther north, where the plateau flattened as it reached the sea, sat the research station with the big laboratory building, the kitchen and recreation hut, small cabins dotted along the beach to accommodate visiting scientists.

The research station catered to any scientists interested in studying health issues unique to this group of isolated islands, and the tropical diseases prevalent here.

The most intensive research had been on the effects of M’Langi tea—made from the bark of a particular tree—and why the islanders who drank this concoction regularly seemed to be less affected by the mosquitos, which carried a unique strain of encephalitis.

As she frowned at what appeared to be changes to the research station, she wondered if anyone was still working there. Keanu’s father had been the first to show interest in the tea—

Keanu.

She shook her head as if to dislodge memories of Keanu from her head and tried to think who might be there now. According to her father, a man she knew only as Luke had been working there for a short time but that had been four or five years ago.

Circling back to the southern end of the island, past the little village that had grown up after Opuru Island had been evacuated after a tsunami, she could just pick out the entrance to the gold mine that tunnelled deep beneath the plateau.

The mine had brought wealth not only to her family but to the islanders as well, but the only sign of it was a huge yellow bulldozer, though it, too, was partly hidden beneath a cluster of Norfolk pines and what looked like a tangle of vines.

Weird.

Dropping lower now, the sea was multicoloured, the coral reefs beneath its surface visible like wavy patterns on a fine silk scarf. Images of herself and Keanu snorkelling in those crystal-clear waters, marvelling at the colours of the reef and the tiny fish that lived among the coral, flashed through her mind.

An ache of longing—for her carefree past, her childhood home—filled Caroline’s heart, and she had to blink tears from her eyes.

How could she have stayed away so long?

Because Keanu was no longer here?

Or because she’d been afraid he might be …

‘Are you okay?’ Jill asked, and Caroline turned to her friend—her best friend—who, from seven hundred miles away, had heard the unhappiness in Caroline’s voice just a short week ago and had told her she should go home.

Insisted on it, in fact, although Caroline suspected Jill had wanted to show off her new little plane, and her ability as a pilot.

‘I’m fine, just sorry I’ve stayed away so long.’

‘In recent times it’s been because you were worried that rat Steve would take up with someone else if you disappeared on him for even a week.’

The words startled Caroline out of her sentimental mood.

‘Do you really think that? Do you believe I was that much of a doormat to him?’

Jill’s silence spoke volumes.

Caroline sighed.

‘I suppose he proved he didn’t really care about me when he dropped me like a hot cake when the story about the Wildfire gold mine being in trouble appeared in the paper.’

But it was still upsetting—wounding.

Could the man who’d wooed Caroline with flowers, and gifts and words of love, who’d wrapped her in the security of belonging, really be the rat her friends thought him?

Had she really been so gullible?

‘Maybe he did meet someone else,’ Caroline answered plaintively. ‘Maybe he was telling the truth.’

‘That man wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the butt,’ Jill retorted, then fortunately stopped talking.

Caroline wasn’t sure if it was because Jill was concentrating on her landing, or if she didn’t want to hurt her friend even more.

Although she’d realised later—too late—that Steve had been inordinately interested in the mine her family owned …

The little plane bumped onto the tarmac, then rolled along it as Jill braked steadily.

‘Strip’s in good condition,’ she said as she wheeled the craft around and stopped beside the shed that provided welcome to visitors to Wildfire Island.

But the shed needs repainting, Caroline thought, her elation at being home turning to depression because up close it was obvious the place was run-down.

Although the strip had been resurfaced.

Could things have come good?

No, her father had confirmed the mine was in trouble when she’d spoken to him about the article in the paper. Although all his time was spent in Sydney, working as a specialist physician at two hospitals, and helping care for Christopher, her twin, severely oxygen deprived at birth and suffering crippling cerebral palsy, the state of the mine was obviously worrying him.

He had been grey with fatigue from overwork and his fine face had been lined with the signs of continual stress from the hours he put in at work and worry over Christopher’s health, yet with the stubborn streak common to all Lockharts he’d refused to even listen when she’d asked if she could help financially.

‘Go to the island, it’s where you belong,’ he’d said gently. ‘And remember the best way to get over pain is hard work. The hospital can always do with another nurse, especially now clinical services to the outer islands have expanded and we’ve had to cut back on hospital staff. Our existing staff go above and beyond for the island and the residents but there’s always room for another pair of trained hands.’

Losing himself in work was what he’d done ever since her mother had died—died in his arms and left him with a premature but healthy baby girl and a premature and disabled baby boy to look after.

‘Maybe whoever owns that very smart helicopter has an equally smart plane and needed the strip improved.’

Jill’s comment brought Caroline out of her brooding thoughts.

‘Smart helicopter? Our helicopters have always been run-of-the-mill emergency craft and Dad said we’re down to one.’

But as she turned in the direction of Jill’s pointing finger, she saw her friend was right. At the far end of the strip was a light-as-air little helicopter—a brilliant dragonfly of a helicopter—painted shiny dark blue with the sun picking out flashes of gold on the side.

‘Definitely not ours,’ she told Jill.

‘Maybe there’s a mystery millionaire your shady uncle Ian has conned into investing in the place.’

‘From all I hear, it would take a billionaire,’ Caroline muttered gloomily.

She’d undone her seat harness while they were talking and now opened the door of the little plane.

‘At least come up to the house and have a cup of tea,’ she said to Jill.

Jill shook her head firmly.

‘I’ve got my thermos of coffee and sandwiches—like a good Girl Scout, always prepared. I’ll just refuel and be off. It’s only a four-hour flight. Best I get home to the family.’

Caroline retrieved her luggage—one small case packed with the only lightweight, casual summer clothes she owned. Her life in Sydney had been more designer wear—Steve had always wanted her to look good.

And I went along with it?

She felt her cheeks heat with shame as yet another of Steve’s dominating characteristics came to mind.

Yes, she’d gone along with it and many other ‘its’, often pulling double shifts on weeknights to be free to go ‘somewhere special’ with him over the weekend.

The fact that the ‘something special’ usually turned out to be yet another cocktail party with people she either didn’t know or, if she had known them, didn’t particularly care for only made it worse.

But she’d loved him—or loved that he loved her …

Jill efficiently pumped fuel into the plane’s tank, wiped her hands on a handy rag, and turned to her friend.

‘You take care, okay? And keep in touch. I want phone calls and emails, none of that social media stuff where everyone can read what you’re doing. I want the “not for public consumption” stuff.’

She reached out and gathered Caroline in a warm, tight hug.

‘You’ll be okay,’ she said, and although the words were firmly spoken, Caroline heard a hint of doubt in them.

Dear Jilly, the first friend she’d made at boarding school so many years ago, now back in the cattle country of Western Queensland where she’d grown up, married to a fellow cattleman, raising her own family and top-quality beasts.

Caroline returned the hug, watched as Jill climbed back into the plane and began to taxi up the runway. She waved to the departing plane before turning to look around her.

Yes, the shed was a little run-down and the gardens weren’t looking their best, but the peace that filled her heart told her she’d done the right thing.

She was home.

Bending to lift her suitcase, she was struck that something was missing. Okay, so the place wasn’t quite up to speed, but where was Harold, who usually greeted every plane?

Harold, who’d told her and Keanu all the legends of the islands and given them boiled lollies so big they’d filled their mouths.

Her and Keanu …

Keanu …

She straightened her shoulders and breathed in the scented tropical air. That had been then and this was now.

Time to put the past—all the past—behind her, take control of her life and move on, as so many of her friends had advised.

And moving on obviously meant carrying her own suitcase up the track to the big house. Not that she minded, but it was strange that no one had met the plane, if only out of curiosity.

Had no one seen it come in?

Did no one care any more?

Or was Harold gone?

How old had he been?

She didn’t like the tightening in her gut at the thought that someone who had been so much part of her life might have died while she’d been away …

Impossible.

Although all adults seemed old to children, she doubted Harold had been more than forty when she’d left—

The blast of a horn sent the past skittering from her mind, and she turned to see a little motorised cart—the island’s main land transport—racing towards her from the direction of the research station.

‘Are you the doctor?’ the man driving it yelled.

‘No, but I’m a nurse. Can I help?’

The driver pulled up beside her and gestured towards his passenger.

‘We phoned the hospital. Someone said the doctor would come to meet us on the way. My mate was fine at first but now he’s passed out, well, you can see …’

He gestured towards the man slumped in the back of the little dark blue vehicle. He had no visible injury—until she looked down and saw his foot.

Clad only in a rubber flip-flop, the foot had a nail punched right through beneath the small toe, and apparently into a piece of wood below his inadequate footwear.

Caroline slid in beside the man and put a hand on his chest. He was breathing, and his pulse—Yes, a bit fast but obviously it had been a very painful wound.

‘I think we should get him up to the hospital as quickly as possible,’ she said, as a figure appeared on the track they would take.

A figure she knew, although the intervening years had stretched him from an adolescent to a man—and for all her heart was bumping erratically in her chest, she certainly didn’t know the man.

Caroline slid out of the cart and took the spare seat in front while Keanu, without more than a startled glance and a puzzled frown in her direction, took over in the back, fitting an oxygen mask to the man’s face and adjusting the flow on the small tank he’d carried with him.

‘Give me a minute to get some painkiller into him.’

Prosaic words but the deep, rich voice reverberated through Caroline’s body—a man’s voice, not a boy’s …

This was Keanu?

Keanu was here?

She didn’t know whether to hug him or hit him, but with witnesses around she could do neither. What she really wanted was to turn around and have another look at him, but the image of that first glimpse was burned into her brain.

Keanu the man.

Now grown into his burnished, almond-coloured skin, his grey eyes—his mother’s eyes—strikingly pale beneath dark brows and hair.

Straight nose, tempting mouth, sculpted shoulders, abs visible beneath a tightly fitting polo shirt.

He was stunning.

More than that, he projected a kind of sexuality that would have every female within a hundred yards going weak at the knees just looking at him.

‘Come back for a break from Sydney society?’

The cold wash of words obviously directed at her fixed the trembling knee thing, while the sarcasm behind them replaced it with anger.

She turned, chin tilted, refusing to reveal the hurt his words had caused.

‘I’m a nurse, and I’ve come back to work, but I am surprised to see you here after the way you cut your connection to the islands so many years ago.’

Fortunately, as Caroline had just realised their driver was listening to this icy conversation with interest, they pulled up at the front of the hospital.

The patient was awake, obviously benefiting from the oxygen and the painkilling injection.

Keanu asked the driver to lend a hand, and the two of them eased the man out of the vehicle.

‘Sling your arms around our shoulders and we’ll help you in,’ Keanu said, and Caroline guessed he was concentrating on the patient so he wouldn’t have to look at her.

Or even acknowledge her presence?

What had happened?

What had she done?

Steely determination to not be hurt by him—or any man—ever again made her shut the door firmly on the past. Whatever had happened had been a long time ago, and she was a different person, had moved on, and was moving on again …

But walking behind Keanu, she couldn’t not be aware of his presence. This man who’d been a boy she’d known so well was really something. Broad shoulders sloping down to narrow hips, but a firm butt and calf muscles that suggested not a workout in gym but a lot of outdoors exercise—he’d always loved running, said he felt free …

She was looking at his butt?

Best she get away, and fast.

But once they had the man on the deck in front of the hospital, Keanu turned back towards her.

‘Well, if you’re a nurse, don’t just stand there. Come in and be useful. Hettie and Sam are on a clinic run to the outer islands and there’s only an aide and myself on duty.’

He stood above her—loomed really—the disdain in his voice visible on his features.

And something broke inside her.

Was this really Keanu, her childhood friend and companion? Keanu, who had been gentle and kind, and had always taken care of her when she’d felt lost and alone?

Back then, his mother’s mantra to him had always been ‘Take care of Caroline’, and Keanu, two years older, always had.

Which was probably why his disappearance from her life had hurt so deeply that for a while she’d doubted she’d get over it.

Head bent to hide whatever hurt might be showing on her face, she took the steps in one stride and followed the three men into the small but well-set-up room that she knew from the hospital plans doubled as Emergency and Outpatients.

Having helped lift the patient onto an examination table, the driver muttered something about getting back to work, and hurried through the door.

Which left her and Keanu …

Keanu, who was managing to ignore her completely while her body churned with conflicting emotions.

‘Nail gun?’ Keanu asked the patient as he examined the foot.

The patient nodded.

‘Never heard of steel-capped workboots?’ Keanu continued. ‘I thought they were the only legal footwear on a building job.’

‘Out here?’ the man scoffed. ‘Who’s going to check?’

‘Just hold his leg up for me, grasp the calf.’

An order to the nurse, no doubt, but even as he gave it Keanu didn’t glance her way.

‘No “please”?’ Caroline said sweetly as she lifted the man’s lower leg so Keanu could see just how far through the wood the nail protruded.

She must have struck a nerve with her words, for Keanu looked up at her, his face unreadable, although she caught the confusion in his eyes.

So she wasn’t the only one feeling this was beyond bizarre.

‘Okay, let it down,’ he said, the words another order.

Maybe she’d been wrong about the confusion.

Only then he added, ‘Please,’ and suddenly he was her old Keanu again, teasing her, almost smiling.

And the confusion that caused made her wish Jill hadn’t taken off again so quickly. She had come here for peace and quiet, to heal after the humiliation of realising the man she’d thought had loved her had only been interested in her family money.

What was left of it.

‘Here’s a key.’

Keanu’s fingers touched hers, and electricity jolted through her bones, shocking her in more ways than one. ‘You’ll find phials of local anaesthetic in the cupboard marked B, second shelf. Bring two—no, he’s a big guy, maybe three—and you’ll see syringes in there as well. Antiseptic, dressings and swabs are in the cupboard next to that one—it’s not locked. Get whatever you think we’ll need. I’m off to find a saw.’

The patient gave a shriek of protest but Keanu was already out of the room.

Slipping automatically into nurse mode, Caroline smiled as she unlocked the cupboard and found all she needed.

‘He’s not going to cut off your foot,’ she reassured the man as she set up a tray on a trolley and rolled it over to the examination table. ‘Hospitals have all manners of saws. We use diamond-tipped ones to cut through plaster when it has to come off, and we use adapted electric saws and drills in knee and hip replacement, though not here, of course. I’d say he’s going to numb your leg from the calf down, then cut through the nail between your flip-flop and the wood. It’s easier to pull a nail out of rubber and flesh than it is out of wood.’

Their patient didn’t seem all that reassured, but Caroline, who’d found where the paperwork was kept, distracted him with questions about his name, age, address, any medication he was on, and, because she couldn’t resist it, what he was doing on the island.

‘Doing up the little places down on the flat,’ was the reply, which came as Keanu returned with a small battery-powered saw and a portable X-ray machine.

‘The research station,’ he said, before Caroline could ask the patient what little places.

‘They’re doing up the research station when there’s not enough money to keep the hospital running properly?’

The indignation in her voice must have been mirrored on her face, for Keanu said a curt, ‘Later,’ and turned his full attention to his patient.

After numbing the lower leg—Caroline being careful not to let her fingers touch Keanu’s as she handed him syringes and phials—he explained to the patient what he intended doing.

‘Nurse already told me that,’ the man replied. ‘Just get on with it.’

Asking Caroline to hold the wood steady, Keanu eased it as far as it would go from the flip-flop then bent closer to see what he was doing, so his head, the back of it, blocked Caroline’s view. Not that she’d have seen much of the work, her eyes focussed on the little scar that ran along his hairline, the result of a long-ago exercise on her part to shave off all his hair with her grandfather’s cut-throat razor.

Fortunately he must have been able to cut straight through the little bar of the nail, for he straightened before she could be further lost in memories.

Caroline dropped the wood into a trash bin and returned to find Keanu setting up a portable X-ray machine.

‘We need to know if the nail’s gone through bone,’ he explained, helping her get back into nurse mode. ‘And the picture should tell us if it’s in a position that would have caused tendon damage.’

‘Why does that make a difference?’ Now he was pain-free—if only temporarily—the patient was becoming impatient.

‘It makes the difference between pulling it out and cutting it out.’

‘No cutting, just yank the damn thing out,’ the patient said, but Keanu ignored him, going quietly on with the job of setting up the head of the unit above the man’s foot.

Intrigued by the procedure—and definitely in nurse mode—Caroline had to ask.

‘I thought the hospital had a designated radiography room,’ she said, remembering protocols at the hospital where she’d worked that suggested wherever possible X-rays be carried out in that area, although the portables had many uses.

Keanu glanced up at her, his face once again unreadable.

‘There is but I doubt you and I could lift him onto the table and with his leg already numb he’s likely to fall if he tries to help us.’

Which puts me neatly back in my place, Caroline thought.

‘Move back!’

Ignoring the peremptory tone, she stepped the obligatory two metres back from the head of the machine, watched Keanu don a lead apron—so protocols were observed here—and take shots from several angles.

That done, he wheeled the machine to the corner of the room, hung his apron over a convenient chair and checked the results on a computer screen.

‘Come and look at this. What do you think?’

Assuming he was talking to her, not the immobile patient, she moved over to stand beside him—beside Keanu, who had been the single most important person in the world for her for the first thirteen years of her life. Important because, unlike her father, or even Christopher, he’d always been there for her—her best friend and constant companion.

Until he’d disappeared.

But this Keanu …

It was beyond weird.

Spooky.

And, oh, so painful …

‘Well?’ he demanded, and she forgot about the way Keanu was affecting her and concentrated on the images.

‘By some miracle it’s slipped between two metatarsals and though it’s probably hit some ligament or tendon, because the bones are intact it shouldn’t impact on the movement of the foot too much.’

‘And don’t look at me like that,’ she muttered at him, after he’d shot yet another questioning glance her way. ‘I am a trained nurse, and have been a shift supervisor in the ER at Canterbury Hospital.’

‘I don’t know how you found the time,’ he said as he headed back to the patient.

She was about to demand what the hell he’d meant by that when she realised this was hardly the time or place to be having an argument with this man she didn’t know.

Her friend had been a boy—was that the difference?

It certainly was part of it given the way her body was reacting to the slightest accidental touch …

‘Okay, so now I need you to swab all around the nail then hold his foot while I try to yank the nail out. I’d prefer not to have to cut it out.’

Caroline put on new gloves, cleaned the areas above and beneath the foot, changed gloves again and got a firm grasp of the man’s foot, ready to put all her weight into the task of holding on if the nail proved resistant.

But, no, it slid out easily, and as the wound was bleeding quite freely now, it was possible the risk of infection had been limited.

‘Antibiotics and tetanus injections in the locked cupboard,’ Keanu told her as he examined the wound in the patient’s foot. ‘And bring some saline and a packet of oral antibiotics as well. Everything’s labelled as we get a lot of agency nurses coming out here for short stints. I’ll use the saline to flush the wound before we dress it.’