Reunited with His Long-Lost Nurse

‘And that made you think I wouldn’t want to hear someone calling us newlyweds?’

She lifted her shoulders, no longer quite as certain.

‘It crossed my mind. We seem to have been getting on so well that I didn’t want anything to...spoil it. Besides, I know how you pride yourself on your reputation for professionalism.’

‘You’re giving me a guided tour—we’re hardly walking down the street, giving people a public show,’ he answered, but his voice was tighter than before and Talia knew the conversation was getting to him.

She wanted to stop it, but it was like opening the lid on an ant farm—impossible to get everything back in.

‘No, but still...’ She splayed her hands out when words failed her.

There was so much more she wanted to ask—to know—but this was hardly the time or place. Perhaps nowhere ever would be now. It was too far in the past.

But, still, as she watched him, a hundred thoughts swirling around her head, she got the feeling he was trying to pull himself back to the present.

It was shameful how fervently she wished she knew what he’d been thinking.

‘I think—’

‘Perhaps it would be better to abandon this conversation.’ He cut her off with forced joviality. ‘Get back to where we were a few minutes ago.’

It was more of an instruction than a question and Talia wondered what he would say if she pressed the point.

But the truth was that she didn’t want to. Today had been so nice, so comfortable, with Liam that she didn’t want to ruin it now. She wanted to hold onto it, for as long as they could.

‘Right.’ It was all she could do to match his level of conviviality. To motivate her body back into action and keep them moving through the market. ‘Good idea.’

As if her heart wasn’t breaking inside all over again.

It shouldn’t surprise her that he was pushing her away again, she told herself. And it really shouldn’t dismay her at all.

Heat shimmered in the already searing air as mouth-watering scents floated tantalisingly towards Liam. One vendor offered some sort of stunning salt-fish dish, another had a glorious soup that appeared to be made from a plant Talia teased him about not even properly recognising.

Yet he felt as though he was moving through a fug.

He’d felt like this all day, all week. Ever since that kiss in his office, if he was being honest. And this latest conversation hadn’t helped. Reminding him that, in spite of every bad thing he knew about marriage, and family, and despite every promise he’d made to himself never to go down such a destructive route, three years ago he’d actually entertained the notion of asking Talia to spend the rest of her life with him.

When she’d left, he’d convinced himself it was if not a good thing then at least for the best. But now that he was here in St Victoria, with Talia, it was becoming harder and harder to remember that.

And though Liam didn’t care to examine why, he could feel this thing that had begun to hum inside him and he couldn’t—didn’t want to—switch it off. A cadence, a rhythm he hadn’t heard in such a long time, like the way the air seemed to pulse with the beat of the fantastic steel drums being played in the park across the way. The marketplace bustling with life and colour, as though the hurricane of several years ago was nothing more than a distant memory, though he remembered it from the news and from the little Talia had told him.

He didn’t like to press her on it. She was clearly trying to lighten the mood from a moment ago, and doing a better job of it than he was.

‘The fried plantains are good. As is the breadfruit when it’s mashed with coconut milk and baked in banana leaves like that.’ Talia’s voice broke through his thoughts, causing a fresh kick inside his chest before he reined it back under control.

It seemed the day together had made him forget to keep his guard up. Perhaps, for both their sakes, he ought to remedy that but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to do it.

‘I recall you telling me once before.’ He smiled.

She blinked at him in surprise.

‘I did?’

‘You did,’ he confirmed. ‘Back at Hal’s Diner, round the corner from Duke’s—you remember? We were having breakfast one morning and you looked at your pancakes and pondered what you wouldn’t give to have a forkful of coconut milk breadfruit for once.’

‘Oh.’

‘You suggested that, should we ever visit your family, you’d introduce me to some typical St Victoria culinary delights.’