A Love Against All Odds

Praise for Emily Forbes

‘… 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.

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 or visit her website at emily-forbesauthor.com.

A Love Against All Odds

Emily Forbes

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

Praise for Emily Forbes

Excerpt

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘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

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.