Reunited with His Long-Lost Nurse Read online

  The Island Clinic

  Saving lives in St. Victoria!

  Welcome to paradise! Or, as it’s officially known, the Caribbean island of St. Victoria—home to chief of staff Nate Edwards and his private hospital, The Island Clinic. With the motto “We are always here to help,” The Island Clinic was created as both a safe haven for the rich and famous to receive medical treatment and a lifeline for the local community.

  This summer, we’re going to meet The Island Clinic’s medical team as they work hard to save lives...and, just maybe, get a shot at love!

  How to Win the Surgeon’s Heart

  by Tina Beckett

  Caribbean Paradise, Miracle Family

  by Julie Danvers

  The Princess and the Pediatrician

  by Annie O’Neil

  Reunited with His Long-Lost Nurse

  by Charlotte Hawkes

  Available now!

  Dear Reader,

  Of course, I’ve never been to St. Victoria—the fictional island from where my heroine, Talia, hails—but she has certainly made me fall for her homeland!

  It was incredibly good fun to write about this beautiful island, with its volcanoes and rain forests and those seas of turquoise blue. In my head, it is perfectly glorious weather every day.

  So where better to turn up the heat on my heroine and hero, Talia and Liam, who lost their way years ago when they lost each other? I loved finding out how they were going to make their way back to one another.

  I hope you enjoy reading Talia and Liam’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

  I love hearing from my readers, so feel free to drop by my website at www.charlotte-hawkes.com or pop over on Facebook or Twitter, @chawkesuk.

  I can’t wait to meet you.

  Charlotte x

  Reunited with His Long-Lost Nurse

  Charlotte Hawkes

  Born and raised on the Wirral Peninsula in England, Charlotte Hawkes is mom to two intrepid boys who love her to play building block games with them, and who object loudly to the amount of time she spends on the computer. When she isn’t writing—or building with blocks—she is company director for a small Anglo/French construction firm. Charlotte loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her at her website: charlotte-hawkes.com.

  Books by Charlotte Hawkes

  Harlequin Medical Romance

  Royal Christmas at Seattle General

  The Bodyguard’s Christmas Proposal

  Reunited on the Front Line

  Second Chance with His Army Doc

  Reawakened by Her Army Major

  A Summer in São Paolo

  Falling for the Single Dad Surgeon

  A Surgeon for the Single Mom

  The Army Doc’s Baby Secret

  Unwrapping the Neurosurgeon’s Heart

  Surprise Baby for the Billionaire

  The Doctor’s One Night to Remember

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  To my beautiful boys.

  You may never read my books—trust me, you may never read them...understand?—but I love reading your stories about the time-traveling, space-bending rainbows!

  I love you...to infinity.

  Xxx

  Praise for Charlotte Hawkes

  “Ms. Hawkes has delivered a really good read in this book where I smiled a lot because of the growing relationship between the hero and heroine... The romance was well worth the wait because of the building sexual tension between the pair.”

  —Harlequin Junkie on A Surgeon for the Single Mom

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM ISLAND FLING WITH THE SURGEON BY ANN MCINTOSH

  CHAPTER ONE

  LIAM MILLER HAD earned his nickname, The Heart Whisperer, because his extraordinary surgical skill could coax even the most damaged patients’ hearts back to a perfect, normal sinus rhythm.

  It was therefore ironic, he considered, that he’d been battling his own abnormally erratic heartbeat ever since arriving on the stunning island of St Victoria a few hours earlier. Or, more accurately, ever since his seaplane had flown over the stunning three-hundred-square-mile volcanic Caribbean island.

  The views were practically spellbinding, from the emerald green of its rainforest canopy to its breath-taking turquoise waters where the light seemed to burst joyously off the coral reefs and sand.

  But he would not allow himself to be bewitched.

  Even on the short taxi drive from the port to the renowned Island Clinic, Liam had been captivated by the sheer colour and jubilation that pulsed around the island. It was so exuberant, so vibrant.

  And it was so her.

  He tried to push the thought from his head—the way he’d kept memories of her at bay for almost three years—but suddenly, now, he couldn’t seem to hold them back. Whether it was the jet-lag, or the fact that he was actually here on her homeland, Liam couldn’t be sure; all he knew was that this entire island was everything she’d once described to him. And it epitomised her flawlessly.

  Talia.

  The woman who had burst into his life a little over three years ago like a spectacular rainbow striking through the dark clouds that he hadn’t realised, until that point, had been so very cheerless. She hadn’t simply brought colour into his cold life but rather she had pitched it resplendently all over every single wall and surface in his hitherto bleak, grey world.

  She had been the very essence of fun and laughter, and she’d breathed life into his very soul. He hadn’t realised it immediately, but that black, heavy, icy thing that had squatted so heavily on his chest his whole life had begun, bit by bit, to thaw.

  She was the woman who had made him think, against everything his cruel and hateful father had drilled into him his entire life, that far from being to blame, he might actually be as much a victim of his mother’s death as his grief-stricken father had been. She was the woman who’d let him believe that perhaps he wasn’t as damaged and broken and destructive as he’d always thought. That he might just be worthy of being loved for who he was.

  And then, just as abruptly as she’d surged into his life, she’d left. And with her departure every bit of that colour and joy had drained from his life. Only this time it had been even worse because he’d known what he was missing.

  With a snort of irritation Liam jerked his head from the huge picture window that made up one wall of the chief of staff’s office at The Island Clinic, offering magnificent views. Instead he dropped his gaze to his electronic tablet and the patient file that stared at him from the screen as he waited for Nate Edwards to return.

  It galled him that he hadn’t yet managed to banish thoughts of Talia Johnson from his head, even all these years later. But, he reminded himself irritably, he wasn’t on St Victoria to allow memories he’d tried to bury long ago to be stirred up.

  He was simply here for the patients. In particular, Lucy Wells, the fifteen-year-old girl with a congenital heart problem who needed a full aortic arch recon
struction. And he didn’t really have to read the notes on his tablet again, if he was honest. He’d been living and breathing this challenging case ever since the phone call the previous week from the clinic’s chief of staff, Nate Edwards.

  The way he did with every one of his cases—because they all mattered. They would be lying on his OR table, and the very least they deserved was that he knew their case inside out, upside down, and every way in between. Because every one of them could be someone’s child, someone’s husband, someone’s mother—just like his own mother had once been.

  The last place she’d ever been and the first place he’d ever been.

  The start of his life but the end of hers. The cruellest twist of fate for which his distraught father had never forgiven him.

  Never.

  Which was why he had spent his entire surgical career doggedly determined that he would save every life he possibly could.

  As if saving his patients’ lives could somehow make up for his birth having been the reason for his mother losing hers.

  As though there was a magic number that—when he achieved it—would suddenly, magically, absolve him. Maybe it would free him of the torment, and instantly lift all that icy numbness. The way he’d once naively imagined Talia had been starting to do.

  Enough!

  He would only be here for a few weeks, a month at the most, filling in for The Island Clinic’s permanent cardiothoracic surgeon following a minor boating accident—not just for the Lucy Wells case, or the several other patients awaiting surgery, but for any emergencies—but then he would be gone.

  It might not be a huge island, but it was big enough. He wasn’t going to see Talia here. He didn’t even know for sure that she’d returned to St Victoria after she’d disappeared, without a word, from his own life. But even if she had, he wasn’t about to bump into her.

  He could still recall the passion in her voice as she’d described to him her job at the local hospital, across the island towards the more populated area near the capital, Williamtown, but The Island Clinic was isolated. The perfect safe haven for A-listers needing medical treatment in an environment where their privacy could be absolutely assured.

  No, he wasn’t going to bump into Talia here.

  Which was, he assured himself firmly, exactly the way he wanted it.

  * * *

  ‘Hello, Talia. I can’t say I ever expected—or hoped—to see you again.’

  A shiver started on the back of Talia’s neck and shot over her skin, permeating every inch of her goose-bumped flesh, through to her veins, turning her blood to ice. She couldn’t turn around. She could barely even lay the last of the instruments in the metal preparation tray.

  Her mind spun.

  The voice was Liam’s, and yet it wasn’t. She recognised the clipped, unerringly professional tone yet there was also an uncharacteristic hint of ice about it that almost made her want to pull her scrubs tighter around herself. Though whether more for warmth or for protection, she couldn’t quite be sure.

  So he had actually come to St Victoria. Even though she’d known it was happening—even though she was the one who had put Liam’s name forward to her chief of staff—she hadn’t quite believed it. She’d been almost convinced he would turn down the case just because it was on St Victoria.

  The fact that he hadn’t only proved one thing...that she was so insignificant to him that she hadn’t even factored into his decision-making process. A fact she already knew, of course. She’d discovered that three years ago. To her detriment.

  Which was all the more reason why it should make no difference to her whatsoever that he was here, Talia reminded herself desperately.

  She hadn’t recommended Liam to Nate because she’d wanted to see him again—because she absolutely had not—she had simply recommended him because she’d known that Duke Hospital’s famous Heart Whisperer would be the best chance for her young, desperate patient.

  Her own emotions hadn’t factored into the equation at all.

  Not at all.

  So why was her body trembling as though it didn’t believe her?

  You’re immune to him, she reminded herself desperately, preparing to turn around as she pretended that she didn’t feel half as shaky as she did.

  Her one consolation was that at least Liam would never know it had been her who had put his name forward. She had asked Nate to keep that part to himself.

  ‘Is this what you intend to do for the next month, then?’ His low voice reverberated softly around the room, but she wasn’t fool enough to believe that made it no less dangerous to her. ‘Pretend you can’t even hear me? Only I can’t imagine it’s going to be the most successful play you could make.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she murmured, taking one final, steadying breath before she spun around—a bright, if uncharacteristically tight, smile plastered to her lips. It promptly froze in place the moment she met his expression of cool appraisal.

  Pain slammed into her, hard and unyielding.

  This was the man who had taught her what it was to ache, need, sear, just with a look. With a word. Yet right now he was looking at her as though he didn’t know her at all.

  Like she was no one more special than a stranger he was meeting for the first time. It hurt more than she could have ever imagined possible.

  ‘Liam,’ she choked out, the name seeming to stick in her mouth, as though she was trying to savour it just a fraction longer.

  It was enough to make her despair of herself, especially when her eyes locked with his and she was unable to drag them away again. Dark and foreboding.

  Yet it wasn’t just that expression that was proving her undoing. As Talia found herself struggling for breath, fearing her legs would actually buckle beneath her, she reached behind her and gripped the medical trolley for support.

  She’d spent the past three years telling herself that her girlish memories had built Liam up into something far more potent than he could ever truly have been in reality. Yet right now she realised that even her memories hadn’t gone far enough.

  The man was as glorious as he’d ever been. From the six-two frame outlined with those broad shoulders, down the unmistakably honed chest beneath that immaculate suit shirt—in spite of the eighty-five-degree St Victoria heat, Talia could see that nothing had changed. His square jaw was a study in masculinity, and so sharp that she thought it would cut her even from that distance. His thighs still so impossibly muscled that she practically wanted to lick them.

  She swallowed. Hard.

  Yep, forget the dulled memory. If anything, he seemed even more chiselled than ever and his face looked as though it had been hewn from pure granite as he glowered at her. She pretended it didn’t feel like a tight fist closing around her already fragile heart.

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’ His tone was too neutral, his expression giving nothing away. ‘My name? You’re not even going to explain what I’m doing out here?’

  Panic shot through her in an instant, and it was all Talia could do not to show it.

  He doesn’t know, she reminded herself feverishly. He can’t possibly know.

  She tried to dredge up another smile but it was impossible, she’d have to content herself with a controlled tone. One that didn’t betray just how crazily she was shaking inside.

  ‘You’re here to take over one of Isak’s clinical trial surgeries, I believe,’ she managed. ‘I’m sure that’s what the rumour mill said, anyway.’

  His already cold expression changed abruptly, becoming even more closed off than ever. The fist around her heart squeezed tighter. He’d gone from talking to her to shutting her out in an instant. A stark reminder of why she’d made that impossible decision, three years ago, to walk away from the only man she had ever loved.

  Three years, two months, two weeks and four days, if she was going to be precise.

 
Shamefully, she knew it to pretty much the hour, too.

  ‘“That’s what the rumour mill said”?’ he echoed. ‘Is this some game you’re now playing?’

  The question rasped over her skin, scraping against old wounds she’d told herself were long since healed. Yet now, with a few words from Liam, they felt as raw as they had three years ago.

  Leaving Duke’s—leaving him—had been the most agonising decision of her life. Who, in their right mind, would ever leave a man like Liam Miller? He had earned his nickname around Duke’s hospital as the Heart Whisperer for his incredible skill as a cardiothoracic surgeon, but it was equally fitting for the fact that colleagues, patients and relatives alike all fell head over heels for him.

  Practically the whole single, female contingent of the place had wanted to be the one woman to catch Liam’s eye. The one woman who could reach the distant and seemingly lonely surgeon. The one woman who could heal his apparently damaged soul.

  The fact that he’d never dated any of them had only made Liam all the more coveted. It was one of the first things she’d learned from her fellow scrub nurses the moment she’d arrived at Duke’s. The last thing she’d expected, then, had been for Liam to apparently break all his own rules when he’d asked her out on a date.

  And then another.

  She’d felt special. And perhaps she’d let that fact go to her head because she’d fallen in love with him, hard and fast. Moreover, she’d been foolish enough—naïve enough—to let herself believe he actually loved her too. That she had, actually, healed him. That was how much of a fool she’d been.

  Which was why, when her father had called her with the dreadful news, that last day at Duke’s, she’d known that moving away from North Carolina—away from Liam—was the healthiest move all round.

  Yet even though, deep down, she’d understood the logic, it had nonetheless been the most torturous and agonising decision of her life. Especially for a girl who’d once believed in happily-ever-afters, and soulmates, and love conquering all.