The Nurse Who Stole His Heart. Alison Roberts

was Anahera who broke the eye contact and found that both her voice and her hands had stopped shaking.

      ‘Fine. I’ll put the oxygen on.’

      The moment had mercifully been brief enough for no one else to have noticed. Or maybe it hadn’t. Sam looked up after sticking the final electrode into place.

      ‘This is Anahera,’ he told Luke. ‘Our specialty nurse.’

      ‘Yes.’ Luke pressed the button on the canister to direct a second spray under their patient’s tongue. ‘We’ve met before.’

      ‘Of course …’ Vailea was still standing beside them, providing a cool breeze from the palm-frond fan. ‘I knew I’d seen you before. You came here to work in the hospital a few years ago.’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘You had to rush away, though … Your wife was ill?’

      Oh … God … There it was again. The pain …

      ‘Yes.’ The monosyllable was curt. Grudging. Maybe Luke didn’t want to remember the way they’d parted any more than she did.

      The only blessing right now was that there were only two people in this room who knew what had happened during the few weeks that Luke had been here and only one who knew what the aftermath had been.

      Anahera just had to make sure that it stayed that way.

       Ana …

      Hearing that name had been a bombshell Luke hadn’t been expecting.

      Oh, he’d seen the green uniform that looked a bit like a set of scrubs from the corner of his eye and had realised the attending doctor had brought an assistant to help carry all the medical gear, but he’d been so focussed on relaying all the information he’d gathered about Charles that he hadn’t looked properly.

      And then he’d heard her name. Had seen the way her hand had been shaking as she’d struggled to get the cap off the GTN spray pump. It had been an unconscious reaction to take the canister from her hand. Ana had been struggling and he could help. The consequence of touching her hadn’t entered his thoughts at all so no wonder it had been another bombshell.

      But both of those shocks—hearing her name and touching her skin—were nothing compared to looking into her eyes for the first time in nearly five years.

      How could that be so powerful?

      They were just a pair of brown eyes and he must have met hundreds of people with that eye colour over those years. How could a single glance into this particular pair make him feel like the ground beneath him had just opened into a yawning chasm?

      It was like the difference between putting a plug into an electrical socket and somehow sticking your finger in to access the current directly.

      And Ana had felt it, too. He’d seen the shock in her eyes but then he’d seen something he’d never expected to see. Something that squeezed the air out of his chest to leave a vacuum that felt physically painful.

      He’d seen fear, he was sure of it.

      ‘It’s gone.’ The voice of their patient sounded absurdly cheerful. ‘The pain’s completely gone.’

      No. Luke rocked back on his heels, his gaze seeking Ana’s again.

      Charles might well be feeling fine but Luke had the horrible feeling that, for himself, the pain had only just begun.