‘I was wrong,’ she bit back. ‘About a lot of things.’
He frowned. It sounded as though she was having a go at him, but he couldn’t imagine for what.
‘You’re referring to me? You were wrong about me?’
She shrugged, but didn’t answer.
‘I thought I was about the only thing that remained consistent throughout,’ he pressed, not liking the inference but unable to put his finger on quite why it rankled the way it did.
‘Is that what you think?’ she demanded suddenly.
‘I told you who I was, what I believed, from the outset. I never wavered on that.’
She glared at him for another long moment.
‘No.’ She blew out a breath at last. Long and heartfelt. ‘I don’t suppose you did.’
But it sounded less appreciative than Liam might have expected. And then she threw herself back in the seat and turned her head to stare out of the window, the conversation clearly over.
So much for trying to establish some kind of working connection.
Because, of course, this was what today had been about, that sly voice insinuated in his head.
He found he didn’t care for it much. He cared even less for the fact that it was right. Accepting the medical case had been as much about coming to Talia’s home island as it had been about the challenging surgery. And that, in itself, was an issue.
Yet, like every other reservation he’d had in the past couple of weeks, Liam thrust it aside and turned back to the creature he couldn’t seem to shake from his head, no matter how he tried.
‘Okay, where now?’
‘Now?’ She didn’t exactly squeak it, but her voice sounded a fraction higher than normal.
She cleared her throat again and checked her watch. Liam suspected it was more for something to do than because she actually needed to. Still, a faintly relieved expression skittered over her lovely features as she realised the time, tapping on the panel to the driver and issuing some polite instruction before sitting back in her seat next to him.
‘Now we go and get lunch.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
BEING WITH LIAM was even harder than she’d anticipated, Talia admitted to herself an hour later as they threaded their way through the colourful, loud Williamtown streets. And she hadn’t expected it to be easy to start with.
She’d tried to be a good guide, showing him the St Victoria that she would have been proud to show to any other visiting surgeon. But, then, Liam wasn’t any other surgeon, was he? He was Liam Miller, the man who had always been able to twist her inside out.
It seemed that nothing had changed.
It didn’t help that the tour itself felt altogether too much like a date. At least, it did to her. So much for having told herself that it was just two old friends offering an olive branch to each other, no more and no less. Who had she been kidding, anyway? They’d laughed their way around the island—her island—and it had felt good.
And odd.
And conflicting.
Seeing St Victoria through his eyes had been something of a revelation. Almost a chance to see the island afresh. And, in line with everything she’d been feeling more and more this past year, she began to wonder why she’d ever been so desperate to leave in the first place. Or why, when she’d felt those pangs of homesickness in North Carolina, she’d stuffed them down and instructed herself that they hadn’t existed.
She pretended that she didn’t know that the answer to the latter was walking right beside her. So close she could actually feel the heat bouncing off his body into hers. Seeping right through to her very bones and making her wonder if—as mad as it sounded—should he suddenly turn around over lunch and ask her to return to Duke’s with him she wouldn’t agree.
Could she really sacrifice the island that held her soul for the man who held her heart? Because, whatever she’d pretended to herself, the truth was that he did still hold it. She could claim she was over him as much as she liked, but it didn’t make it true.
Some tour guide you are, she berated herself, trying to drag her focus back to the task in hand.
They were going for lunch.