‘Sho’ we did.’ Nyla nodded triumphantly. ‘It took him all his time to come after you, but we al’ays thought he would.’
Whatever foolish glimmer had made her heart thump like a dog’s tail feebly wagging for a scrap was snuffed out in an instant.
‘No.’ She shook her head, trying to sound resolute rather than miserable. Not that she wouldn’t have trusted Nyla to see a little of the torment she was putting herself through, but if she let it in, even just a little, what if she couldn’t shut it off again.
‘He didn’t come here for me.’ Talia forced a smile. ‘He came here for a case. Nate picked him.’
‘Yet he knew this is where you were?’
‘Not exactly.’ Talia frowned, remembering Liam’s words. ‘He didn’t know where I’d gone.’
Nyla let out an incredulous bark of laughter.
‘You believe that, girl? ’Course he knew. This is your home, where else would you be? And after all, he’s here now, isn’t he?’
‘He isn’t here for me,’ Talia reiterated, though perhaps more for herself than for Nyla.
What was the point in false hope? She would only get hurt again.
‘I see.’ The older woman nodded sagely. ‘He said that, did he?’
‘Yes. We had an argument and he was painfully clear.’
‘Aye.’
There wasn’t explicit encouragement in Nyla’s tone, yet Talia heard it all the same. And she couldn’t help herself from admitting more.
‘Then we apologised...’ She bit her lip. ‘He offered me a place on the operating team.’
Nyla didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Eyeing her triumphant expression, Talia felt that tiny flame of hope flicker back into life.
‘He asked me if I’d show him around the island. I said that I’d think about it because it can’t be a wise idea, can it?’
Another sage glance from Nyla had a grin spreading, uncontained, over Talia’s face. She felt the corners of her lips being pulled up, an almost lightness invading her body, swiftly followed by a veritable kaleidoscope of butterflies.
‘You think I should go, don’t you?’ she asked Nyla, who threw up her hands in true dramatic fashion.
‘Don’t ask me, child, I’m just here to listen. If you think you should go, that’s what matters.’
It was hardly the instruction Talia had been looking for, but that didn’t seem to matter. She was shuffling her notes and moving as though spurred into some—any—kind of action.
‘I’ll go and see if my patient and her family have arrived,’ Talia declared.
‘And shall I get the number of the hotel room where the new doc is staying?’ demanded Nyla dryly. ‘You can pop up there after your shift.’
‘No need,’ Talia sang out, already making her way along the corridor to the waiting area. ‘I have their number on my phone anyway. I can just call and leave him a message. It doesn’t have to be a bigger deal that that.’
Because it wasn’t a bigger deal that that, Talia decided firmly. It was two old friends setting aside personal differences and being professional. He was handing her an olive branch by offering her a place on his operating team, there was no reason why she shouldn’t do the same by showing him around the island.
Her island.
It was no more, no less than that.
* * *
‘So these are the Beics,’ Talia told him, two days later, as she pointed across the breath-taking, aquamarine waters of the bay. ‘Three volcanic peaks, or plugs, are linked by the Bec Ridge. The smallest one is around two thousand, two hundred feet high, while the tallest is just shy of three thousand feet.’
‘And they’re called the Beics because they look like bird beaks?’ Liam guessed, trying to pretend his body wasn’t reacting to her all-too-familiar shampoo scent of coconut and hibiscus.