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And, heaven help her, but she wanted to hang onto it for just a little longer.
The sound pierced his eardrums, his body rocking from the force of the impact. Through the painful buzzing that came in the wake of the explosion he could hear the cursing of his companions. The screaming.
‘Get out!’
‘Get down!’
The ping of bullets ricocheting off the metal of their armoured vehicle came faster. An unearthly shriek from someone who had been struck ripped through the sounds of chaos.
Of panic.
He could feel the heat now. Not just the normal strength-sapping attack of the desert sun but the kind of heat that could sear flesh. A lick of flames that could bring death with far more suffering than a bullet.
The dust was thick. Getting thicker. The chop-chop-chop of a nearby helicopter was stirring the ground. Bringing assistance, but it was going to be too late. It was getting hard to breathe. He could smell the dust. Taste it. Dust mixed with blood to become a suffocating soup.
His companions needed help. The driver was slumped over the wheel, others bleeding. The young paramedic was crying. Facing death and terrified.
He could feel that terror reach out and invade his own mind. He was frozen. Becoming aware of the pain in his own leg. Terrible, unimaginable pain. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move …
They were his brothers, these men. All of them. And he was going to watch them die.
He was about to die himself. He could see the enemy emerging from the clouds of dust, their bodies shrouded with the clothing of the desert, their faces disguised by heavy, dark beards. He could see the cruel muzzles of the weapons they were pointing at him but he couldn’t move.
Couldn’t even breathe …
The sound of his own scream was as choked as the air around him.
Arghhh!
The desperate, strangled sound that finally escaped his throat was, mercifully, enough to wake him. Even as his eyes snapped open, Luke was throwing back the covers on his bed, swinging his legs over the edge so that it was a continuous, flowing movement that had him sitting, hunched on the side of his bed, his head in his hands as he struggled to drag in a breath.
The feeling of suffocation—of imminent death—was still there.
He couldn’t afford to stay still. He knew what he had to do.
The warm, fleecy trackpants were draped over the end of his bed. His shoes were right there to shove his feet into. Running shoes.
It wasn’t real, he reminded himself as he pulled the laces tight. It hadn’t even happened that way. He had never seen the enemy. He had been able to move. To drag his companions to shelter behind the vehicle as the helicopter hovered overhead. He had staunched the flow of blood and kept airways patent. None of them had died.
But the nightmare was always the same.
He was watching his own brother die. Feeling the fear. Unable to help.
Matthew. Mattie. The clumsy kid with the happy grin who’d had to tag along with his older brothers and do everything they did. Crash.
Oh … God! What on earth had possessed him to suggest that Anna Bartlett use that precious nickname for that skinny, ridiculous-looking dog?
What was she doing with a dog in the first place? How could she keep a pet that needed so much time and love with the kind of hours he already knew she put into her career? She did love it. He had seen that in the way she held it and soothed it. The way her face had brightened with joy at finding a name she really liked.
He had now pulled on the coat hanging by the door. Within seconds he was lurching down the rough track that led to the beach. It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the night. His night vision was better than most people’s and he was getting very familiar with this route.
Maybe it didn’t matter that he’d given his brother’s name away to a dog. It wasn’t as though he was planning to visit that unlikely little cottage again and they were hardly likely to be chatting about it at work because they never talked about anything remotely personal.
In fact, he was having enormous difficulty reconciling the woman who was his assistant head of department with the person he’d found on the floor of that room cuddling … Crash.
Sea air so fresh that it bit into his lungs and numbed his face barely penetrated his awareness. He could feel the shifting of sand beneath his feet and hear the sound of the surf crashing in right beside him but his mind had fastened onto that picture of Anna on the floor.
With her hair in a soft tumble of curls. Her arms holding a vulnerable creature. Comforting it. Protecting it. He had felt the love. That was what had hit him in such a poignant place. What had reminded him of the kid brother who had never come home.
He’d reached the end of the beach now. Turned to go home again. He might even manage another couple of hours’ sleep before daylight came. Usually, by the time he had done this punishing circuit, the nightmare had faded.
And it was only then that Luke realised he hadn’t had to fight the remnants of that terrible dream the way he always did. From even before he’d left his house, all he’d been thinking about was Anna.
Or rather the two Annas.
Now that he’d seen her at home, he’d be able to recognise what he’d missed at work so far, surely? Some signs that hidden beneath that power-dressing, uberprofessional, calm, cool and collected surgeon was … the most compelling woman he’d ever met in his life.
He was watching her. And he was puzzled.
Anna could feel the unasked questions hanging in the air between them.
Had it been real? Had he really found her wearing scruffy clothes, with her hair in an untidy mop, living in a shambolic house with a rather large and definitely unhygienic animal? Did she really have a sense of humour?
It was easy to emanate denial because that wasn’t who she was at work. She’d also had years of practice in deflecting any line of communication that threatened to become personal. Patients could be so useful.
Like first thing on Monday morning when the anticipation of seeing Luke for the first time since he’d been in her house was making Anna feel more nervous than she had since her junior years as a doctor when she’d had to perform in front of some eminent consultant.
Luke hadn’t looked any different.
‘Good morning, Anna. How are you?’
‘Very good.’ She wasn’t going to return the query. Luke wasn’t one of her patients.
‘How’s—?’
Crash? She knew that was coming next and she had to stamp on that topic of conversation before it could start. The temptation to talk about her puppy was too strong. She wanted to tell Luke that Crash had learned to sit. That he had stepped on an overturned lid of a paint tin and made a giant pawprint on her wooden floor and it had been such a perfect signature she’d been reluctant to clean it off. Would that make him smile again? She couldn’t afford to find out.
‘Mrs Melton?’ She interrupted smoothly. ‘Finally getting to Theatre, thank goodness. I know it’s your slot this morning but I’m more than happy to do the surgery. Or assist.’
‘It’s a long time since I did a CABG.’ He knew exactly what she’d done in changing the subject. She could see him taking it on board that her private life was not up for discussion. Could see the focus as he let it go. ‘Might be a good idea if you assisted.’
Was this a challenge? To see if she did trust him to operate safely on his own? A sideways glance as Luke fell into step beside her made her notice that his hair was damp. Just out of the shower? That image was disturbing. Anna dragged in a breath, only to catch a whiff of something fresh and clean. Like a sea breeze. Good heavens, she could almost imagine Luke had just been for a dip in the ocean. In the middle of winter? Who would be that crazy?
Her senses were threatening to override her train of thought. What had he asked? Oh, yes … Was he offering her the opportunity to observe and judge his capabilities in Theatre or might he want her company for an entirely different reason?
‘I can’t imagine that you’ll have any problems,’ she said calmly. ‘But I am a little concerned about the quality of her saphenous veins. I’m wondering about harvesting the lesser saphenous or possibly upper extremity veins, in which case I could probably be more helpful than a registrar.’
Your choice, she threw at him silently. I’m available.
He simply nodded. ‘Excellent. Have we got time to review her films? I’d like to have a word with her as well and introduce myself.’
‘Sure. I’m heading to the ward right now.’
Mrs Melton was thrilled to hear that the head of department would be doing her surgery. She beamed at Luke.
And he smiled back. Anna was watching and she could see that it was a purely professional sort of smile. It still softened his face and reminded her of when he’d smiled at her but it wasn’t anything like the same. It didn’t make his face come alive. It didn’t come anywhere near his eyes.
She found herself watching him just as intently as she suspected he was watching her. She saw him smile in greeting colleagues. She saw him smile in satisfaction when he was informed of how well a patient was doing. He even smiled directly at her on one occasion. All mechanical gestures. Done because it was expected and it would be impolite not to.
Anna wanted to know what those shadows in his eyes were from and why they were dense enough to smother real smiles. She wanted to know who the real ‘Crash’ had been and why talking about him had cracked open the armour Luke wore.
For that was what it was. Anna could recognise it because she had her own. By the end of their second week of working together, she had the weirdest sensation that they were like actors. Playing their part on stage but with each of them knowing perfectly well that the role the other was playing was not the real person.
Even more disturbing, Anna was becoming obsessed with wondering about the real Luke. The man that had really smiled at her. Why did he come to work each day with his hair damp and smelling of the sea? The temptation to ask was becoming unbearable. Or maybe it was the desire to touch his hair … to press her face against it and see if that was where the impression of the outdoors and punishing exercise came from.
She wanted to know why he refused to admit that his leg hurt even when it was obvious it did. When there were lines of pain in his face at the end of a long day that she could feel herself. She could smooth those lines away. With her fingers. Or her lips. If he let her.
If she let herself …
The intrigue refused to go away. The pull became stronger but Anna was fighting it. Anyone seeing Mr Davenport and Dr Bartlett together would see nothing more than a purely professional association. Reserved but respectful. Discussions might be animated but they were only about their patients. Their work. Current research. New technologies. Endless topics to talk about.
A seemingly endlessly fascinating man to talk to.
If it wasn’t for the puzzle that Anna represented, Luke might have been tempted to admit defeat.
Every day was the same. Enclosed within the walls of an institution that sometimes felt like it was filled with people who had created their own illnesses. Heavy smokers who seemed surprised that they’d had heart attacks because of their damaged blood vessels. Morbidly obese people who still expected lifesaving surgery.
What for? So they could carry on with their meaningless lives? Lie in bed and keep eating junk food?
‘I’m not going to operate on Walter Robson,’ he informed Anna after a ward round late that week. ‘I refuse to spend my time patching someone up just to give them longer to indulge in slow suicide by their appalling lifestyle choices.’
If he’d hoped to get under her skin with such a terse and controversial statement, he was disappointed.
‘I agree he’s a poor candidate for surgery,’ she said calmly. ‘Maybe that will be enough of an incentive for him to stop smoking and lose some weight. If we can reduce his level of heart failure and get his type-two diabetes and cellulitis under control, it will reduce the surgical risk.’
Luke almost exploded. Thumped the wall beside them or walked away from his colleague. Told Anna what he was really thinking.
That she knew nothing about risk. Real risk—the kind that young, healthy people took for the benefit of their brothers-in-arms, if not for the much bigger human-rights issues. That patching them up was the kind of lifesaving surgery that had some meaning.
But that would open floodgates that had to remain shut. It would take Anna into a life that didn’t exist for him any more except in his nightmares, and winning freedom from those nightmares was the hurdle he had to get through to survive.
He had discovered a new way of dealing with both the terrors of the night and the feeling of suffocation he could get ambushed by at work. He could distract himself by thinking about Anna. Just for a few seconds. Like a shot of some calm-inducing drug.
Her voice became a background hum as she talked about dealing with Walter Robson’s anaemia and whether his chronic lung problems would improve if he carried through his vow to quit smoking.
Luke let his gaze stroke the sleek hair on top of Anna’s head and then rest on the tight knot nestled at the nape of her neck. That clip thing would be easy enough to remove. The hair might still be twisted and squashed but he could bury his fingers in it and fluff it out until it bounced onto her shoulders.
His breath came out in a sigh. It was enough … the feeling of desperation was fading again.
‘Luke?’ Anna had caught the sigh. Fortunately, she misinterpreted it. ‘The decision has to be on medical grounds, not moral ones.’
‘Of course.’
This wasn’t the place to discuss the ethics of what represented a significant part of their careers. Much of the workload was genuine and worthwhile. He knew that. He used to get more than enough satisfaction from it.
Why did everything have to be so different now? So difficult?
And why couldn’t he see what he knew was there— hiding behind the person Anna was within these walls?
She wouldn’t let him. That was why. The boundaries had been marked and were being reinforced every time she changed the subject if he tried to talk about something personal, like the puppy he had named for her. Or had she even kept the name?
No wonder James had sounded puzzled back on his first day when they had been scrubbing in together. As though he had no idea of what Anna was like out of work hours.
Maybe Luke was the only person here who’d had a glimpse of that side of Anna. He liked that notion. He liked it a lot.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I’M HAPPY to cover Christmas Day.’
‘So am I.’ Luke’s nod was matter-of-fact. ‘Thanks, Anna. That’s the holiday roster issues sorted, then. Let’s get on with the rest of the agenda.’
Anna couldn’t help but notice the look that passed between James and Charlotte Alexander, who were sitting together in this departmental meeting. No mistaking the look of relief. Joy even at the prospect of spending a special day together with no danger of being called in to work.
The movement of Charlotte’s hand was probably unconscious. She seemed to be listening carefully to Luke as he introduced a new grading system for cardiac patients.
‘It’s hoped that this will be brought in nationwide to try and standardise criteria and address the increasing numbers of people that are dying while on waiting lists for surgery. We’ve been asked to implement this at St Piran’s as of the first of January as part of a multi-centre trial, so your feedback is going to be important.’
Anna was listening, too, but she’d already read the proposal and she and Luke had discussed it at length. It was hardly surprising that she caught that movement from Charlotte in her peripheral vision. A hand that gently smoothed the loose fabric of her top, gathering it up as it came to rest cupping her lower belly. There really was no doubt now that she was pregnant. It would be a special Christmas for them, wouldn’t it, with the extra joy and dreams that came with knowing they were about to become a family?
‘As far as degree of valvar dysfunction goes, we’re staying with the New York Heart Association functional classes. As you can see, mild is class one and scores two. Severe is class three and scores fourteen. If there is coronary artery disease present as well, it puts it into class four and we can add ten to the overall score.’
Luke had the score sheets projected onto the wall. He was going to cover all the non-coronary revascularisation type of patients like valve replacements and then he’d run through the more complex scoring system for patients who had arterial disease. He was being clear and methodical and making sure everyone understood. People were nodding approvingly. A system like this could make prioritising people on the waiting lists much more straightforward.
Charlotte was one of those nodding. As though she would be only too happy to be filling in the score sheets on her patients and adding her comments to the feedback that would be required. But how long would she be around to be doing that?
It was all very well having secrets but it was also annoying. When were they planning to share the information and allow arrangements to be made for Charlotte’s absence for maternity leave? For James to be covered at the time of the baby’s arrival? For a new member of staff to be advertised for, if necessary?
No wonder there was such prejudice against women in top positions. Imagine if she was pregnant herself? Even if she worked up to the last possible moment and then took minimal maternity leave, the disruption to the department would still be huge.
Unthinkable. It always had been.
So why was she watching Charlotte surreptitiously right now instead of focusing on the information Luke was presenting? Wondering what her colleague was thinking and how she’d come to the conclusion that having a baby was more important than her career. What it might be like to feel a new life growing and moving within your own body. To face the enormous responsibility of caring for that baby when it was born.
The disturbing niggle was annoyance, not envy. Luke needed to know. He had quite enough on his plate settling back into running such a busy department and working the kind of hours he did with the extra stress of recovering from a major physical injury. Maybe it wasn’t her place but Anna wanted to warn Luke. She could help him put arrangements into place to make sure they could cope with the inevitable disruptions.
Her gaze was on the head of department now. He was talking about the Canadian Cardiovascular Society’s criteria for grading angina.
‘The class is assigned after appropriate treatment, not at the time of admission or diagnosis.’
Luke stood tall but relaxed and his voice was clear and authoritative. What was the X factor in the way he presented himself that got people on side so easily? Anna found herself biting back a smile. It certainly wasn’t his warm and friendly countenance. He was always so serious, often looking grim, and he could be downright impatient with staff who couldn’t get up to speed quickly enough. He was utterly closed off on a personal level and yet he drew everyone in.
Already this department felt more cohesive than it had under her own leadership. There was enthusiasm for all sorts of projects that might otherwise have been seen simply as more paperwork and stress. In the space of just a few short weeks they had a new rostering system in place, had been chosen for this pilot centre for an important national initiative and several new research projects had been kicked off.
Maybe that X factor was because of the sense that Luke was driven, despite—or perhaps because of—the physical challenges it now incorporated. Anyone could see how hard it was for him to be on his feet all day and keep up with such a demanding schedule. This job was his life and he was going to do it so well that anyone who chose to get on board would have an unexpectedly satisfying ride.
And she was one of them. Funny how the resentment she’d felt at Luke returning to take his leading role in the department had faded so quickly. Perhaps it had been pushed away completely because she’d been watching him so carefully and the more she saw, the more compelling this man was becoming. Had she really thought she wouldn’t learn from him? It wasn’t just his technical excellence in Theatre. Apart from that momentary wobble on his first day back, Anna hadn’t seen anything that would have undermined her opinion that he was one of the best in his field. It was rare for someone so good on the practical side to be so competent at administration, but Luke really seemed to enjoy the challenge of running a large department effectively.
Yes. The closer she could stay and work with Luke the more she could benefit. She wanted them to be a close team.
How close?
The odd question came from a part of her brain that was normally closed off at work. The kind of disruptive thought that had never been a problem in the past but, curiously, had started to plague her out-of-work hours lately. She couldn’t distract herself easily right now either. She was trapped, motionless, and she had already been distracted by the people around her.
‘Scores for the ability to work or give care are a little more subjective,’ Luke was saying. ‘Especially the middle category when it’s threatened but not immediately.’
Anna’s concentration was certainly threatened. She didn’t need a sideways glance at the Alexanders to remind her of married couples amongst her colleagues. It happened all the time. Didn’t they say that you were most likely to meet the person you were going to marry amongst the people you worked with?
It wasn’t going to happen to her. The desire for a husband and family—if it had ever been there—had been dismissed long ago. About the time she’d discovered the passion she had for surgery and it had become obvious that if she was going to have any chance of getting to where she wanted to be, it had to be the only thing that mattered in her life.
Adopting a puppy had been extraordinary enough. A substitute baby? No. You couldn’t leave a baby in the house for a helpful neighbour to collect and care for while you were at work. Or leave a pile of newspaper on the floor so you didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to deal with toileting issues. She still had to factor in collecting Crash every day from the yard he shared with June and Doug’s dogs. To take him for a walk on the beach and spend time training and playing with him. To listen to the snuffles and odd whimpers in the night from his bed in the corner of his room. All in all, it was a major upheaval in her life. Not that she wasn’t getting a lot of pleasure from it. And if it was a substitute child it was as close as she ever wanted to get, that was for sure.
No family, then. And what was the point of a husband if you weren’t planning on having a family?
A partner was something different, however.
A lover.
At this point in the meeting Anna very uncharacteristically stopped listening to anything being said around her. She was watching Luke’s hands as he shaped the size of whatever it was he was talking about. Strong, tanned, capable hands.
She couldn’t stop herself imagining them running down the length of her spine. It would be no effort to fit the curve of her bottom into their grip and he would be able to pull her against his own body with no more than the slightest pressure. It would feel lean and hard, like his face.
And he would have turned that blinding focus onto her. Those incredible blue eyes would be on her face. On her lips as he dipped his head … slowly … to kiss her.
Oh … dear Lord … With a huge effort, Anna managed to tune back into her surroundings just as the meeting was wrapping up. People were closing diaries and starting to chat. Charlotte pushed back her chair and stood up.