was between them had been a long time ago. Right now he needed to focus on medical imperatives. A woman he’d met years before was being carried into his emergency room on a stretcher.
He was a doctor and he had to deal with whoever needed to be treated. He needed to haul himself together and go see what the problem was.
The medical problem.
Wow, her head hurt.
The thump against stone had been stupid and entirely predictable. When she’d insisted she wanted to see everything—she now owned a castle and who wouldn’t want to see it all?—her late cousin’s agent had given her a torch.
‘Watch your head,’ he’d told her as he’d led her deep into the depths of Tovahna Castle.
What she’d seen had been a maze of tunnels, some built almost a thousand years ago. Secret passages led in and out from the castle walls, to be used in times of siege. There were hidden living areas, ventilation shafts, storage spaces for weapons, for food and water, all dark and dusty and so fascinating it was no wonder she’d finally forgotten to watch her head.
The thump had been solid and the results immediate. The world had spun and then disappeared. She’d surfaced to find blood oozing down her forehead. Victoir, the agent, had been useless, torn between wanting to help and not wanting to get blood on his suit. Finally she’d ripped off her windcheater and applied pressure herself, then had him help her to the surface.
‘I don’t want paramedics coming down here,’ she’d told him. ‘This looks worse than it is. You’ll have a team of split heads instead of one.’
But emerging to daylight, Victoir’s authority reasserted itself. ‘I’ve called the ambulance,’ he told her. ‘I said those passages were dangerous. They need to be closed off, filled in, before someone’s killed. Kids get in and we can’t stop them. You’ve seen the parts that are crumbling. And now this…’
And then a rattletrap ambulance had come blaring down the cobblestoned street to the castle forecourt, and Anna had been bundled inside before she could object.
She could hardly blame them, she decided. She probably did look like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and, to be honest, she was still a bit woozy. So she’d lain back and let the paramedics put in a drip to compensate for blood loss. She’d felt every bumpy cobble as they’d made their way who knew where, until finally she’d been carried into what looked a plain, businesslike emergency entrance.
‘The doctor’s on his way,’ a middle-aged nurse told her. She didn’t attempt to remove the windcheater-pad Anna was still holding. ‘Don’t worry. Our Dr Leo’s on duty and he’s the best we have.’
And her bad day suddenly got worse.
Dr Leo. No! Please…
But then the door swung open and a guy in a white coat was beside her trolley. ‘Maria, what do we have here?’
And her worst fears were realised.
Leo Aretino. Her first love.
Her greatest love.
How could you be truly in love at nineteen? You couldn’t be, she’d decided. What they’d had had been a teenage fling.
He’d broken her heart, but teenagers’ hearts were made to be broken. She’d told herself that over and over in the years between then and now. She’d met other men. She’d even fancied herself in love with them, but the thought of Leo had always stayed with her. Tall, dark, intense, speaking the language of her mother, making her laugh, studying with her, making her body sing…
And then walking away…
She closed her eyes. Her head felt like it was about to explode and it wasn’t just the pain from the accident.
She’d guessed she might meet him when she came here, but to meet him now, like this…
‘It’s Anna Raymond.’ The nurse’s voice held suppressed excitement. ‘Anna Castlavara. Katrina’s daughter. Victoir was showing her the tunnels under the castle.’
‘Of course.’ Leo’s voice was smooth, unfussed, as if the name meant nothing to him. Had he known she’d be in the country? He must have, she thought. For Tovahna this must have been big news.
It had been big news to her. Her cousin’s death. An inheritance so huge she could hardly take it in.
Leo.
‘Anna and I have met before.’ Leo still sounded calm. Professional. Like she was one of the scores of patients he saw each day. She was a fellow student he’d had a casual fling with ten years ago. No more.
A fellow student who’d inherited most of his country?
‘Anna.’ His voice gentled and he spoke in English. ‘Are you with us?’
‘I’m with you.’ She couldn’t keep ten years of resentment from her voice. ‘Unfortunately.’
‘Can you open your eyes?’
‘I can but I don’t want to.’
‘Because the light hurts?’
‘Because I don’t want to see you.’
And the man had the temerity to chuckle.
‘Still the firebrand I remember, then, Anna? Okay, keep those eyes closed and I’ll check out the rest.’
His hand was on her wrist and the touch made her…what? She should want to pull away.
She didn’t do that either.
He didn’t touch the pad on her head. He was doing an overall assessment, she thought, checking the IV line, blood pressure, the paramedic notes. Taking in the whole picture.
He was a fine doctor. She remembered that comment at their graduation ceremony. Leo hadn’t been there. As soon as his last exam was behind him he’d left to do a fast track course in surgery before heading home. To Tovahna. But at the graduation his name had been read out with pride by the head of the medical faculty. ‘Dr Leo Aretino has topped almost every class during his time here and he intends returning to serve his country. He’s a doctor we can be proud of, now and into the future.’
So she was in good hands. Leo’s hands.
She hurt.
‘Is it just your head?’ The laughter was gone now—he was all doctor—and that gentle voice she remembered so well was almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. ‘Anna, have you hurt anything else?’
‘Just m-my head,’ she managed, and was ashamed it came out as a stammered whisper.
‘Do you remember what happened?’
‘There was a cavern with ancient pottery urns. I bent to see and then stood up.’ She managed to dredge up a bit of indignation but it was directed at herself. ‘Victoir said it was dangerous and I didn’t listen.’
‘The notes said you lost consciousness.’
‘Victoir said I was out of it for a few seconds, but all I can remember is bang and then feeling dizzy.’
Leo would be thinking of internal bleeding, she thought. Did they have the facilities to treat that here?
She’d read about Tovahna over the years—of course she had.
Still almost a feudal economy, with one family controlling much of the wealth. Most of the population pay rent to the Castlavaran family, and little is put back into infrastructure. Schools, hospitals, public services are minimal, to say the least.
Tourist sites reported on the medical facilities, too.
Travellers