Wildfire Island Docs: The Man She Could Never Forget / The Nurse Who Stole His Heart / Saving Maddie's Baby / A Sheikh to Capture Her Heart / The Fling That Changed Everything / A Child to Open Their Hearts

Tension she hadn’t been aware she was feeling eased a little, but she hated the thought of the possibility of this young lad losing a leg.

‘Okay, everyone out except Mina,’ Sam said, using a shooing motion with his hand. ‘She and I can handle it from here. Keanu, you might introduce our newest staff member to Jack. And Hettie, if you’re not too tired, I’ve left Caroline’s details on your desk, but you might want a chat with her yourself.’

Great, Caroline thought. A perfect end to a perfect day—an interview with a woman who obviously hated her entire family.

But Keanu had taken her elbow, and all thoughts but her reactions to his closeness fled from her mind.

‘Come out and meet Jack Richards,’ he said. ‘There’s a staffroom through here—we can have a coffee or a cold drink.’

A bit social for an introduction, Caroline thought, but apparently the pilot called Jack usually made for this staffroom when he returned from a flight. And, yes, he was sitting there, legs outstretched on a tilting lounge chair, draining the last dregs from a can of cola.

With his head tilted back, she could see a jutting jaw, and the breadth of his shoulders suggested muscle rather than fat. Here, in the light, she saw he was tall, but solid rather than rangy. His dark hair was cropped close to his scalp as if he ran an electric razor over it every now and then by way of hairdressing.

He had a strong face, a slightly skewed nose that suggested football in his youth, and smooth olive skin. But by far his most arresting feature was a pair of dark blue eyes, which, Caroline guessed, missed very little.

He set the empty can down on a small side table.

‘God, I needed that,’ he said. ‘The day was a disaster from beginning to end. First the consequences of the disappearance of the drugs and the nurse from Raiki. You can imagine how angry the residents were. Then we headed over to Atangi because there are two nurses there and Hettie hoped one of them would cover Raiki until we got someone.’

‘Did you get someone?’ Caroline asked, intrigued by this idea of a helicopter flitting between the islands as casually as a city commute.

‘Yes, I think so. Hett’s still negotiating. Anyway, who do we find but a mum who’d mistaken clinic days and brought in a toddler for vaccination? A toddler who hated needles. Poor kid, who doesn’t? He screamed like a banshee as Hettie gave him his triple antigen. Of course, the father came in and got stuck into Hettie and the scene developed into something like an old-time TV comedy, only it wasn’t really funny because the poor kid was genuinely terrified.’

‘Then French and the ulcer,’ Keanu said, turning from the urn where he’d been making a coffee—holding out the cup to Caroline, who shook her head.

‘Yeah, we had a call from the nurse there, whipped over and collected the lad, then to top it all off we were caught in a very nasty crosswind on the flight home. I know we have to expect that at this time of the year—it’s the start of cyclone season—but heaven help us if there’s an emergency call tonight.’

‘You’re the only pilot?’ Caroline asked, sitting down on the couch across from Jack.

‘Sorry, I’m supposed to make the introductions,’ Keanu said. ‘Jack, this is Caroline, new nurse. Caroline, this is Jack Richards and, yes, at the moment he’s our only pilot. Although there’s relief on the way Friday when the second flight for the week comes in. That’s right, isn’t it, Jack? A FIFO coming in to give you a break?’

‘Yeah, young Matt Rogers is due to come in on Friday’s flight.’

‘You don’t like him?’ Caroline asked, unable to not hear the distaste in Jack’s voice.

‘Only because he’s younger, and fitter and better looking than our Jack here,’ Keanu teased, ‘and they both share a very keen interest in the beautiful Anahera.’

‘Who at least ignores us both equally,’ Jack said with such gloom Caroline had to smile.

‘I can’t blame any man being attracted to her—she is beautiful,’ Caroline said, now wondering if the nurse was ignoring these two suitors because she had her eye on someone else.

Someone like Keanu?

And if Vailea’s daughter fancied Keanu and Vailea was thinking him a good match, maybe that’s why she’d shown such animosity to Caroline. Everyone on the island would know the two of them had grown up together …

She must have sighed, for Keanu said, ‘Come on, you’re tired. I’ll walk you up to the house.’

Jack straightened up in his chair.

‘The house?’ he said. ‘Like the Lockhart mansion? Since when did our nurses get lucky enough to stay there while important blokes like me sleep in little better than prefabricated huts?’

‘Since their surname is Lockhart,’ Keanu said, enough ice in his voice to stop further speculation. ‘And all the hospital buildings are prefabricated, as you well know. It makes it much easier to pack them into shipping containers and land them here, then it only needs a small team of men to put them together.’

He turned to Caroline.

‘Prefab or not, the staff villas are really lovely so just ignore him.’

Jack was ignoring them both. He was still staring at Caroline.

‘You’re a Lockhart?’ he said with such disbelief Caroline had to smile.

‘Did you think we all had two heads?’ she asked, but Jack continued to stare at her.

Maybe she had grown a second head.

But two heads would give her two brains and she only needed one—even a part of one—to know she didn’t want Keanu walking her home. Her feelings towards him were in such turmoil she doubted she’d ever sort them out.

For years she’d hated him for his desertion. Hadn’t he realised he’d been her only true friend? Even after they’d both gone to boarding school, he’d still been the person to whom she’d poured out her heart in letter after letter.

Her homesickness, the strange emptiness that came from being motherless, the pain of her time spent with Christopher, who couldn’t respond to her words of love—writing to Keanu had been a way of getting it out of her system.

So he knew everything there was to know about her life, from her envy when other girls’ parents came to special occasions to the realisation that, for her father, Christopher and the hospital on Wildfire were more important than she was.

She’d told Keanu things she’d never told anyone, before or since, then suddenly, he’d been gone.

Nothing.

Until now, and although the confusion of seeing him again had at first been confined to her head, since he’d held her—if only to warm her—it was in her heart as well.

Damn the man.

‘I don’t need you to walk me home,’ she said when they’d left the staffroom. ‘I do know the way.’

‘And I know there are a lot of unhappy Lockhart employees—or ex-employees—on the island at the moment, and while I don’t think for a minute they’d take out their frustration on you, I’d rather be sure than sorry.’

So he was walking her home to protect her. Looking after Caroline as his mother had always told him to when they’d been children.

She felt stupidly disappointed at this realisation then told herself she was just being ridiculous.

As if that kind of a hug meant anything. And anyway she didn’t want Keanu hugging her.

That just added to her torment.

‘What employees and ex-employees are upset?’ she asked to take her mind off things she couldn’t handle right now.

‘Just about all of them,’ Keanu replied. ‘But mostly the miners, and although some of them are from other islands, a lot of them live in the village. They’ve had their hours cut and the ones who’ve been sacked haven’t been paid back wages, let alone their superannuation.’

‘But if Ian’s gone, who’s here to pay them or to cut hours? Who’s running the mine?’

‘Who knows? Ian’s disappearance, as you may have gathered, is fairly recent. He was here last week, then suddenly he was either holed up in the house or gone.’

‘Gone how?’ Caroline asked as they reached the front steps of the house, where Bessie had left a welcoming light burning.

‘Presumably on his yacht. It was a tidy size. One day it was in the mine harbour and the next it was gone.’

‘But the mine’s still operating?’

Keanu nodded.

‘Then we should go down and check it out.’

‘Go down to the mine?’ Keanu demanded.

Caroline grinned at him.

‘Not right now, you goose, but tomorrow or whenever we can get some time off together. That’s if you want to come with me.’

‘Well, I damn well wouldn’t let you go alone, although why you want to go—’

‘Because I need to know—we need to know. Without the mine there’s no way we can keep the hospital going, not to mention the fact that the entire population, not just those here on Wildfire, will lose their medical facilities as well as their incomes.’

She was so excited her eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and it was all Keanu could to not take her in his arms again, only this time for a different reason.

But if holding her once had been a mistake, twice would be fatal.

And he was still married—or probably still married, even if he hadn’t seen his wife for five years.

Did that matter?

Of course it did.

He could hardly start something that she might think would lead to marriage if he couldn’t marry her.

So forget a hug.

‘We can’t run the mine,’ he said, far too bluntly because now a different confusion was nagging at him.

She shook her head in irritation.

‘Then we’ll just have to think of something.’

He had to agree, if only silently. The continued survival of the hospital—in fact, of all the health care in the islands—depended on support from the mine.

‘I imagine once we know what’s happening we can find someone who can,’ he said, reluctantly drawn in and now thinking aloud. ‘Some of the local men have worked there since it opened, or if they’re not still there we could find them. We want men who trained under Peter Blake or maybe beg Peter to come back.’

‘And pay him how?’ Caroline demanded.

Keanu held up his hands in surrender.

‘Hey, you’re the one who wanted to think of something. I’m just throwing out ideas here. You can take them or leave them.’

He saw the shadow cross her face and knew he’d somehow said the wrong thing.

‘Is that how you felt about me back then? That you could take me or leave me? Yes, Ian obviously hurt your mother, but what did I do to you to make you cut me out of your life?’

She was angry—beautiful with anger—but he stood his ground, then he leaned forward and touched her very gently on the cheek.

‘You were never right out of my life, Caro,’ he said quietly, his hand sliding down to rest on her shoulder. Momentarily. He turned and walked swiftly back down the track, not wanting her to see the pain her words had caused written clearly on his face.

But she was right. He had come back to see what he could do to save the hospital, and saving the mine should have been the obvious starting place.

But joining forces in this crusade would mean seeing more of her, working with her outside hospital hours, feeling her body beside his, aware all the time of the effect she had on him, aware of her in a way he’d never been before, or imagined he ever would.

Physically aware of the one woman in the world who was beyond his grasp—the woman whose trust he’d betrayed when she’d been nothing more than a girl …

Caroline watched him stride down the path, long legs moving smoothly and deliberately over the rough track, stance upright, broad shoulders square …

Was it just the length of time since they’d seen each other that was making things so awkward between them, or was Keanu still brooding over whatever had happened to make him stop writing to her? Even stop reading her letters …

‘Bother the man,’ she muttered to herself, climbing the steps and wandering through the house towards her bedroom.

Her bedroom. Still decorated with the posters of the idols of her teenage self.

Of course, with Ian gone, she could have the pick of any of the six bedrooms in the house, but her room felt like home, even if home was an empty and lonely place without Keanu in it. Helen and Keanu. Their rooms had been in the western annexe, but the whole house had been her and Keanu’s playground—the whole island, in fact.

Stupid tears pricked behind her eyelids as memories of their youth together—their friendship and closeness—threatened to overwhelm her.

Pulling herself together, she ripped the posters off the walls. One day soon—when she’d done the things she really needed to do, like visit the mine, she’d find some paint and redo the room, maybe redecorate the whole house, removing all traces of the past.

Except in your head, a traitorous voice reminded her.

But she’d had enough of traitorous voices—hadn’t one lived with her through most of her relationship with Steve?

She’d learned to ignore it and could do so again.

Although, with Steve, maybe she’d have been better off listening to it. Listening to the whisper that had questioned his protestations of love, listened to the niggling murmur that had questioned broken dates with facile excuses, listened to her friends …

Had she been so desperate for love, for someone to love her, that she’d ignored all the signs and warnings?

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, get with it, girl!’ she said out loud, hoping to jolt herself from the past to the present.

There was certainly enough to be done in the present to blot out any voices in her head.

Work was the answer. Nursing at the hospital, and during her time off finding out exactly what had been happening on the island.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PREVIOUS EVENING Hettie had disappeared by the time Caroline had finished talking to Jack, so she wasn’t sure if she was employed or not. Deciding she had to find out, she walked down to the hospital at seven-thirty the next morning.

It was already hot and the humidity was rising. Jack’s mention of cyclones had reminded her that this wasn’t the best time of the year to return to the island—although she’d spent many long summer holidays here and survived whatever the weather had thrown at her.

Hettie was in a side ward with the patient she’d brought in the previous evening, and it was, Caroline decided, almost inevitable that Keanu would be with her as she examined the wound.

‘Will you have to cut away the ulcerated tissue?’ she asked, walking to the other side of the bed and peering at the ulcer herself.

Hettie looked up, beautiful green eyes focussing on Caroline.

Focussing so intently Caroline found herself offering a shrug that wasn’t exactly an apology for speaking but very nearly.

‘I came down to see if you had work for me to do—a slot in the roster perhaps, or some use you could put me to?’

Hettie was still eyeing her warily, or maybe that was just her everyday look. She was neat—a slim figure, jeans and a white shirt, long dark hair controlled in a perfect roll at the back of her head—and attractive in a way that made Caroline think she’d be beautiful if she smiled.

‘What do you know about Buruli ulcers?’ Hettie asked, and, breathing silent thanks for the instinct that had made her look them up on the internet, Caroline rattled off what she’d learned.

Then, aware that the internet wasn’t always right, she added, ‘But that’s just what Mr Google told me. I haven’t had any experience of them.’

To her surprise, Hettie smiled and Caroline saw that she was beautiful—that quiet, unexpected kind of beauty that was rare enough to sometimes go unnoticed.

‘You’ll do,’ Hettie said. ‘Welcome aboard. It’s hard to work to rosters here, but there’s always work. Maddie, one of our FIFO doctors, usually does the checks on the miners but she didn’t come in and the checks are due—or slightly overdue. You’d know the mine, wouldn’t you? Perhaps you and Keanu could do that today?’

Excitement fizzed in Caroline’s head—the perfect excuse to go down to the mine.

‘What kind of checks do we do?’ she asked Hettie, ignoring Keanu, who was arguing that she was too new in the job to be going down to the mine.

‘Just general health. They tend to ignore cuts and scratches, although they know they can become infected or even ulcerated. And we’ve got a couple of workers—you’ll see their notes on the cards—who we suspect have chest problems and aren’t really suited to working underground. But you know men, they’re a stubborn lot and will argue until they’re blue in the face that they haven’t any problems with their lungs.’

‘Stubborn patients I do understand,’ Carolyn said, smiling inwardly as she wondered if seemingly prim and proper Hettie had experienced many run-ins with stubborn men in her own life. She certainly seemed to have some strong opinions when it came to men in general.

‘As a matter of course,’ Hettie continued, ‘we check the lung capacity of all the men and keep notes, and those two aren’t so bad we can order them out of the mine. Yet. The hospital is, in part, funded by the Australian government, and the health checks at the mine are a Workplace Health and Safety requirement.’

‘More paperwork for Sam,’ Caroline said, and Hettie smiled again.

‘He does hate it,’ she agreed before turning to Keanu. ‘You’re not tied up, so you can take Caroline down there. You can show her where all the paperwork is kept, and the drugs cabinet we have down there.’

‘If Ian didn’t pinch it when he left,’ Keanu muttered, but Caroline couldn’t help feeling how lucky they were, to both have this excuse to visit the mine.

And although more time with Keanu was hardly ideal, this was work, and all she had to do was concentrate on that.

If she was gathering whatever impressions she could of what was happening at the mine she’d hardly be aware Keanu was there.

Hardly.

Stick to business!

‘So, who do you think will be in charge of the mine now Ian’s gone?’ she asked Keanu as they took the path around the house that led to the steps down to the mine.

He stopped, turning around to take her hand to help her over a rough part of the track where the stone steps had broken away.

‘Ian’s never really been hands-on, leaving the shift bosses to run the teams. Reuben Alaki is one of the best,’ he said, speaking so calmly she knew he couldn’t possibly be feeling all the physical reactions to the touch that were surging through her.

‘I remember Reuben,’ she managed to say, hoping she sounded as calm as he had, although she was certain there’d been a quiver in her voice. ‘His wife died and he had to bring his little boy to work and your mother looked after him. We treated him like a pet dog or cat and he followed us everywhere.’

Fortunately for her sanity the rough bit of track was behind them, and Keanu had released her hand.

‘That’s him, although that little boy is grown up and is over in Australia, getting paid obscene amounts of money to play football.’

Then of course Keanu smiled, which had much the same result on her nerve endings as his touch had.

‘Good for him,’ Caroline said cheerily. ‘Maybe you should have gone that way instead of becoming a doctor.’

Then you wouldn’t be here holding my hand and smiling at me and totally confusing me!

Lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t realise Keanu had stopped. He turned back to face her, his face taut with emotion.

‘We had an agreement,’ he reminded her, and now a sudden sadness—nostalgia for their carefree past, their happy childhood—swept over her.

‘What happened to us, Keanu?’ she whispered, forgetting the present, remembering only the past.

‘Ian happened,’ he said bluntly, and continued down the path.

Guilt kept him moving, because he could have kept in touch with Caroline, but in his anger—an impotent rage at his mother’s pain—he had himself cursed all Lockharts.

Of course it had had nothing to do with Caroline, but at the time fury had made him blind and deaf, then, with his mother’s death, it had been all he could do just to keep going. Getting back in touch with Caroline had been the last thing on his mind.

‘All the files are in the site office,’ he said, all business now as they reached the bottom of the steps.

He pointed to the rusty-looking shed sheltering under the overhang of the cave that led into the mine.

‘That’s Reuben there now. Let’s go and see him.’

He knew Caroline was close behind him, aware of her in every fibre of his body, yet his mind was crowded with practical matters and he needed to concentrate on them—on the now, not the past …

The rumbling noise from deep inside the tunnel told him the mine was still being worked, but who was paying the men? And the crushing plant and extraction machine were standing idle, so they could hardly be taking home their wages in gold.

‘Who’s paying the men?’ Caroline asked, as if she’d been following his train of thought as well as his footsteps.

‘Reuben will tell us.’

Reuben stepped out of the shed to shake Keanu’s hand, then turned to Caroline.

‘New nurse?’ he asked.

‘But old friend, I hope, Reuben. It’s Caroline Lockhart.’

Reuben beamed with delight and held out his arms to give Caroline a hug.

‘You’ve grown up!’ Reuben said, looking fondly at her. ‘Grown up and beautiful!’

And from the look on Caroline’s face, it was the first friendly greeting she’d received since her return.

‘And your father? How is he?’ Reuben asked.

‘Working too hard. I hardly see him.’

‘Working and caring for that poor brother of yours, too, I suppose. Same as always,’ Reuben said. ‘Me, I did that when my wife died but later I realised pain didn’t go away with work. I have a new wife now and new family, and my big boy, he’s rich and famous in Australia—sends money home to his old man even.’

‘That’s great, Reuben,’ Caroline said, and Keanu knew she meant it. Her affinity for the islanders had always been as strong as his, and they had known that and loved her for it.

‘So, what’s happening here, Reuben?’ he asked to get his mind back on track. ‘Well …’

Reuben paused, scratched his head, shuffled his feet, and finally waved them both inside.

‘The men working the bulldozer and crusher and extraction plant hadn’t been paid for more than a month so they walked off the job maybe a month ago.’

He paused, looking out towards the harbour where machinery and sheds were rapidly disappearing under rampant rainforest regrowth.

‘The miners are in the same boat, but they believe they’ll eventually be paid. I think their team bosses sent a letter to your dad some weeks ago and they’re waiting to hear back, hoping he’ll come. They’re happy to keep working until they hear because most of them—well, they, we—don’t need the money for food or fancy clothes. It just puts the kids through school and university and pays for taking their wives on holidays.’

The words came out fluently enough but Keanu thought he could hear a lingering ‘but’ behind them.

‘But?’ Caroline said, and he had to smile that they could still be so much on the same wavelength.

‘The miners—they mine. It was the crusher team that did the safety stuff. Your uncle’s been putting off staff for months, and he started with the general labourers, saying the bulldozer boys and crusher and extraction operators could do the safety work when the crusher wasn’t operating, but now they’ve gone.’

‘Then the miners shouldn’t be working,’ Keanu said. ‘You’ve got to pull them out of there.’

Reuben shook his head.

‘They’ve got a plan. They’re going to stockpile enough rock then come out and work the crusher themselves for a month and that way they can keep the mine going. The miners, they’re all from these islands, they know the hospital needs the mine and they need the hospital and the clinics on the islands. Because they’re younger, a lot of them have young families—kids. Kids have accidents—need a nurse or a doctor …’