Healed By Her Army Doc. Meredith Webber
A shadow with her injured leg still in its ungainly brace.
‘No, I’ll go.’
Harriet rose to her feet and limped to the door, opening it to reveal the person Kate was still telling herself not to think about.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ came the deep growl from the doorway. ‘I’m Angus Caruth, and Blake gave me Kate’s address, and then Alice said she was here and that you wouldn’t mind if I popped in to say hello. I barely recognised her earlier, at the meeting. I don’t think I’d ever seen Kate with dry hair.’
Kate’s gut had twisted more with every word he spoke, but she’d regained some control over her mind, so as Harriet ushered in her new visitor, she used anger to mask all the other reactions that had rioted inside her since the meeting.
‘Blake gave you my address?’ she demanded. ‘Whatever happened to staff confidentiality?’
‘Oh, I’d blame Sam for that,’ Harriet said, obviously intrigued by this second visitor. She waved her arm towards the sofa, and invited Angus to sit. ‘Ever since she and Blake got together, she’s been seeing the world through a pearly haze of love.’
She turned to Kate and smiled—smiled properly!
‘So what’s with the wet hair?’
The smile was the first sign of the old Harriet that Kate had seen so she felt obliged to reply.
‘Angus and I met in a cyclone. Everyone had wet hair.’
She kept her eyes on Harriet as she spoke, for all the good that did her. Her body was as aware of Angus as it would have been if he had been sitting on top of her—her skin prickling with something she’d rather call discomfort than—
No, it couldn’t possibly be attraction...
How could this have happened?
Why did it have to be her hospital he’d turned up at?
And why, after all this time, could he still affect her like this?
But now he was talking again, and if she closed her eyes—
She straightened in her seat.
‘“Angus and I met in a cyclone” hardly covers it,’ he was responding, smiling at her before turning to Harriet. ‘We were stuck in the dining room of a resort hotel and a tree had crashed into one glass wall, so we had about sixty panicking people to deal with. Kate calmly organised the wait staff to tear tablecloths into bandages and once we had all the injured settled as well as we could, she started everyone singing. I think trying to manage “Come to dinner” sung in four parts certainly took their minds off the howling gale and thunderous winds outside.’
Refusing to yield to the memories, Kate tried desperately to ignore the man on the sofa beside her—to ignore all the signals that were zapping between their bodies.
She had to get away, to sort out what was happening and why, after three years, she should still feel this way about a man she barely knew.
It was the coward’s way out but she turned to Harriet.
‘Angus is the man I was telling you about, the one with the new tent, and now he’s here, he can tell you about it himself.’
She pushed herself to her feet, hoping her face wasn’t revealing the torrent of emotions roaring inside her—hoping her legs would hold her up and, most of all, hoping Angus couldn’t see the quivering mess his presence had made of her body.
‘I really should go,’ she added. ‘It’s my turn to cook dinner.’
She strode to the door, opening it and pausing briefly to waggle her fingers in farewell.
And to take in the face of the man who’d haunted her dreams for the past three years.
Angus!
Closing the door behind her, she leant against the wall in the hall, eyes shut so she could see him again on her eyelids—check him against her memories.
No, he hadn’t changed. Still the same dark, almost shorn hair, black quirky eyebrows above deep-set blue eyes, slightly crooked nose, the result she knew of a youthful brawl, and lips—
She wouldn’t think about his lips—not the shape of them, or the paleness, or the way they’d felt as they’d brushed across her skin...
Her heart fluttered and for a moment she was back on the island—back in his arms—lost in blissful sensation...
She pushed angrily away from the wall. How dared Blake Cooper give out her address? How dared Angus walk back into her life like this?
* * *
Angus felt her absence, which was ridiculous given he hadn’t seen her for three years, for all he’d thought about her. Wondering where she was, what she was doing, thinking about contacting her, but how?
And why?
To hurt her as he’d hurt Michelle—never being there for her when she’d needed him, never considering just how hard their separations had been for her?
This new project would take him away even more. Their orders to leave would come within twenty-four hours of a disaster occurring somewhere in the world. Here today and gone tomorrow—how fair was that on any woman, let alone one he’d come to remember as special...?
Then she’d rushed into the SDR room where he had been explaining the new emergency structure, her fingers flipping her hair into a dark halo around her head.
Too far away to see the pale blue-grey of her eyes, but aware they’d widened in shock—
‘I’d rather hear about the cyclone than the tent.’
Harriet’s words made him realise he was still staring at the door through which Kate had vanished.
He caught the speculative gleam in Harriet’s eyes and smiled at her.
‘About the cyclone or about Kate Mitchell?’ he asked, and Harriet blushed.
‘Well, she has always been something of a mystery woman,’ she admitted. ‘I imagine the army is a bit like a hospital where everyone knows everyone else’s business, but Kate...’
She shrugged.
‘Perhaps we’re better talking about the tent.’
Angus smiled again and agreed, although his mind was whirling with questions. Kate a bit of a mystery woman? Blake Cooper had given much the same impression. A loner, he’d said. Yet the Kate Angus remembered had been outgoing and cheerful, shrugging off the pain she must have been feeling when she’d joked about honeymooning alone on the island.
‘Well, I’d booked it and paid for it, why shouldn’t I enjoy it?’ she’d said with a smile that had belied the cloudy sadness in her eyes.
Had he hurt her more?
Caused the change?
Surely not, but something had...
He turned his attention back to Harriet.
‘You probably know all about regular emergency structures but most of them are intended for long-term use, say after an earthquake. The “tent”, as Kate called it, is a smaller affair—an inflatable, easily set-up protected area that combines a trauma unit to act as the ED, a surgical theatre for life-and-limb-saving surgery, and a multifunction unit with drugs and blood products, facilities for lab tests, and sterilisation support. Some of these are “add-on” units in other emergency set-ups, but what we’ve tried to do is provide the best facility possible for first response units like your SDR.’
‘That makes sense,’ Harriet said. ‘Most patients are airlifted, or taken by road transport once they’re stabilised, so you wouldn’t need an intensive care unit or ward beds like some I’ve seen. It sounds like a great idea.’
‘It’s