Reunited with His Long-Lost Nurse

‘You talk of my father and my grandmother. You speak of love, and how it’s a powerful emotion. Shall I tell you what I know of love?’ He practically spat the word out, as if the very taste of it was toxic in his mouth. ‘I know that people use it to excuse their behaviour. My father used his love of my mother to excuse the way he treated me.’

‘You father doesn’t know what love is.’

‘My grandmother told me she loved me,’ he continued, as though Talia hadn’t even spoken. ‘She promised that she’d always be there to protect me from my father, and then she simply abandoned me to him. And then there’s you.’

‘No... Liam...’

Talia knew exactly where she was going before he said any more. Her heart punched into her chest, almost winding her. But there was nothing she could do to stop it.

‘You were the one who spoke of love,’ he said harshly. ‘But love is about more than words. It’s about actions. And you proved to me, beyond all question, three years ago that you don’t know anything more about love than I do.’

A kind of desolation began to fill her. She wanted to argue but found she couldn’t.

‘You claim to love me, Talia, but you were the one who walked out back then without even a word.’

Just like his grandmother had, she realised. Liam didn’t actually say the words but they hung there in the air, strangling and weighty, all the same.

‘You know that was because I’d just had the call from my mother.’

‘I understand why you had to leave,’ he countered grimly. ‘I’m pointing out that the way you left isn’t love. You could have told me. You should have.’

‘Yes, well, hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?’ There was a bitter hint to her own tone that she hadn’t been expecting.

‘Tell me one thing, Talia. If the circumstances were the same, would you change things or would you make the same decision over again?’

She wanted to answer. She wanted to tell him there was so much that she would change if she could. But as much as the thoughts swirled and crammed in her head, nothing came out of her mouth.

How could she change any of it? Maybe if her mother hadn’t been ill, and she hadn’t had to return home. Perhaps if her father hadn’t fallen into depression and her brothers hadn’t needed her help. Or conceivably if Liam had been able to tell her once, just once, that he loved her.

But a do-over changed none of those factors. So how could she choose any other path but the one she had chosen before?

‘Just as I thought,’ he answered for her, when it was clear she couldn’t—wouldn’t—answer for herself. And she thought it was that wholly dispassionate tone that hurt the most. ‘Which is why you aren’t what I want.’

Misery swelled inside her but she forced it back. His words were intended to cause maximum effect, hurting her the way she’d hurt him three years ago. He wanted to push her away and a few weeks ago, when he’d first arrived on the island, it might have worked. She might have believed him.

But they’d spent so much time together since then that the words no longer fitted. He cared for her more than he wanted to admit to her. Possibly more than he wanted to admit to himself.

‘Do you even know what you do want, though?’ she asked gently.

He offered a scornful laugh, but it sounded too hollow for her to believe.

‘I’m a surgeon, Talia, I save lives every day. How could I want anything more than that?’

Her heart might well have broken at the loneliness of that image. He was the most intelligent, skilled, handsome man she’d ever known. The most incredible surgeon she’d ever watched perform any operation.

But somewhere deep inside him there were still traces of that broken kid he’d once been, and he thought it was too late to fix that. He thought he was too damaged. And she was partly to blame for that.

She owed to him—and to herself—to fight for him this time.

‘You’re also a man, Liam. A human being.’ She was almost pleading with him. ‘We aren’t designed to be completely alone. There’s a reason they say that everybody needs someone.’

‘And there are always exceptions to every rule.’

‘Even if that’s true, you aren’t that exception. You think you’re too damaged to ever love or be loved. But that isn’t true.’

‘Believe me when I tell you that you are wrong.’ And it was the bleakness in his gaze that cut her deepest. ‘I am more damaged that you can ever imagine.’

‘You’re not,’ she whispered. ‘You’re good, and kind, and self-sacrificing.’