Shit. He didn’t need Cameron thinking he was poaching her daughter for information.
Cameron turned, her eyes meeting Ian’s. “Why do you want to know where Keso lives?”
“I don’t,” he replied. “I mean, I asked when she said he didn’t live with you, but it was just conversation.”
As she turned to her daughter, her blue eyes narrowed.
“I want to go home,” Ara told her mother, employing the same wide-eyed gaze she’d tried to use on him.
“I told her you’d probably be busy here, but maybe if her father were home, she could go in a day or two.” He almost strangled on the words her father. He didn’t know Keso Lawrence, but he envied the man.
“Keso usually stays on his boat or the big island when he’s not with us.” Without looking his way, Cameron stepped away, directing her attention to the boy she’d brought in.
* * *
Ian’s gaze bore into Cameron’s back, urging her to turn and confront him, but she refused. When she’d walked in and spotted him with her daughter, her heart had dropped to her stomach. These two people from two separate parts of her life were never supposed to meet. She’d stayed on this island, sure her daughter and former fiancé would never cross paths. And now. Well, now she had him to thank for saving the girl’s life.
Behind her, Ian laughed, followed by a soft giggle from Arabella. She glanced over her shoulder to see his mouth stretched wide in a grin as he focused on her daughter and whatever story she spun. Cameron’s eyes warmed. She’d pictured Ian and their daughter together so many times—imagining how they’d interact, wondering if he’d love her as much as she did. Their daughter would be only slightly older than Arabella. If she let herself, she could forget, for a moment, all that had happened and pretend Ara was their daughter. She could let herself pretend Ian had truly loved her and wanted her. That maybe he still did. Shaking her head, she forced those thoughts away. Ian was an impossible dream—one she’d given up years ago.
She turned back to her patient. “If you’ll stay here, I’ll go get what I need to patch you up.”
“Oh, he’ll stay,” the boy’s grandmother assured her.
Tommy just nodded, still holding the bloody cloth to his forehead.
Cameron hurried down the short hall to her “office” and the locked storage cabinet. Locking the cabinet was pointless. If someone wanted to get into it, they’d have no problem. Besides, if someone were desperate enough to go through the trouble to break in for gauze, numbing gel, sutures, and the like, they probably needed the items more desperately than she did. Still, she unlocked the cabinet, then began searching for what she needed to stitch up the boy’s head.
“Why doesn’t Keso live with you?”
Startled, she jumped, banging her head on the metal door. Wincing, she rubbed the tender spot. “What?”
“Why doesn’t Keso live with you? Why does he stay on his boat or another island?”
“Is that part of Ara’s medical examination?” She forced her voice and breathing to remain steady as she turned and met his dark eyes. They always reminded her of good whiskey, and she hadn’t forgotten how easily she could get drunk on them. That same dizziness washed over her now as she breathed him in. The scent of coffee and mint brought back memories of lazy Sundays on the couch and the comfort of being loved.
“No. I want to know. If he’s Ara’s father, why doesn’t he live with you?”
Because he grew tired of waiting for me to get over you and love him.Of course, she’d never tell Ian that. Not because the words weren’t true, but because he didn’t deserve to hear them. Once, she’d given him her love, wholly and unconditionally. In return, he’d stomped on her heart. So just because she couldn’t stop loving him, didn’t mean he had to know.
Straightening her spine, she forced herself to meet his gaze. “Keso is none of your business.”
Something dangerous swirled in those whiskey eyes as they narrowed on her. “You had a child with him.” He stepped toward her.
Cameron retreated until her back bumped the cabinet.
Ian pressed closer. “He had a child with the woman I love. The woman who should’ve had my child.” His warm breath whispered across her cheek, making her shiver. “I’ll have answers, Cam. Before I leave this island, your secrets will be laid bare.”
The dark, possessive look in his penetrating gaze promised to bare more than her secrets. Fine. Maybe she could handle, even enjoy, him baring her body, stripping her down and drowning her in the pleasure she’d missed through the years. But her secrets. She’d never let him that close.
He pressed closer, his chest skimming her breasts. “The two of you aren’t together, are you?”
Her traitorous nipples tightened, begging for more. “He’s Ara’s father.” Why couldn’t her damn voice have sounded stronger?
“Not what I asked.” He slid his hand to her waist. His fingers tightened, kneading the flesh above her hip. “If you were mine, I’d spend every night in your bed.”
Suddenly she remembered the nights after her attack. Nights she’d slept alone, while Ian worked late or fell asleep on the couch. Reality cleared away the blanket of arousal he’d begun pulling over her.
She pushed against his chest. “You’re a liar.”
His eyes widened. In his surprise, she managed to move him away. “I was yours, Ian. I was one hundred percent, completely yours. You didn’t spend every night with me then. If I hadn’t been hurt in Africa, you would’ve sent me an ocean away from you. Alone. While you stayed behind with . . .” No. She wouldn’t go there. They didn’t need to have this argument. Or any other, for that matter. They were over. Their relationship had ended the moment he first turned to Mallory. Cameron just hadn’t known. Now, she couldn’t unknow.
She shoved past him, ignoring the heat from his skin and the small tingle of awareness at being near him again. “I have a patient. This might be some quick adventure for you to come play superhero, but this is my life. Excuse me.”
Hurrying from the room on trembling legs, she prayed he’d have the good sense not to follow her and cause a scene. She loved and trusted the people on this island, but she hadn’t shared her past with them. They didn’t know about her failed relationship or her lost baby. They couldn’t. The truth would create questions with answers she and Keso had been careful to bury.
When she reentered the room, Tommy still sat on the stool, holding the cloth to his head. Across the room, Ara had lifted her gown to show the boy’s grandmother her stitches.
“I think I might have a scar,” she told the woman with a smile. “Then I can be like Mommy.”
Cameron’s vision blurred. Leave it to a child to find beauty in the mess of her ravaged skin. The older woman turned to her, her lips turning up slightly. Yeah, adults didn’t have quite the same reaction.
Cameron turned her attention to Tommy, then motioned for him to take away the compress. Across his forehead was a wide gash. The skin around the cut was already blue and purple.
“You hit the board or something else?” She leaned in closer as she squirted saline into the cut.
He winced. “I think it was just my board. There weren’t any rocks. I don’t think.”
“What about debris? A plane exploded and landed in that water yesterday. You know that, right? Who were you with?” She ignored his protests as she cleaned the wound. No one should be out trying to surf while bodies and debris still floated in the water.
The boy didn’t answer for a moment.
“Were you by yourself again, Tommy?” She stepped back to better see his face.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” he whined.
Cameron shook her head. “What if you had been knocked out? You would’ve drowned. Do you get that?”
Tommy flinched at her harsh tone, but after what she’d seen yesterday, she couldn’t ignore the very real threat of the water surrounding them.
“You heard about Brodie?”
Tommy nodded.
“He was unconscious. Trapped. He might not wake up. If you get hurt or trapped in that water alone, that could be you.” Tears strangled her. “I don’t want to have to pull you out, Tommy. I don’t want to have to pray you’ll wake up.”
The boy’s dark eyes swam. He blinked away the tears, then nodded. “Yes, Dr. C.”
Giving into her emotions, Cameron pulled the teen into her arms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I worry about you. About all of us. We think we’re safe on this island. Usually, we are. But we never know when something else, something from beyond this island, will turn our world upside down.”
As she spoke, she couldn’t shake the growing feeling that, for her, Ian’s presence, not the plane crash, would be what flipped her world.
* * *
An hour later, Cameron ushered Tommy and his grandmother out of the clinic with strict instructions for the boy to stay out of the water until Cameron removed his stitches. A part of her was tempted to leave them in longer than needed just to keep him out of the water. After watching the pair disappear into the jungle, Cameron turned to find Wes standing by the door. His gaze tracked her movements as she crossed the grass to a picnic table by the cliff.
He made his way through the foliage toward her. “I can see why you chose this as your hiding spot. It’s beautiful.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Of course not.”
She slid atop the picnic table, then planted her feet on the bench below. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his loose khakis, Wes leaned a hip against the far end of the table. Neither of them spoke. They’d often sat like this in her old life. Nights when they’d finally finished working on patients in some far-off hellhole, they would sit by a fire, share a drink, and say nothing. But this. This wasn’t one of those easy silences. Tension filled this quiet.
Finally, Wes spoke. “I did everything I could to save your baby, Cam. I went for her first, knowing you’d want that. I couldn’t save her.” His voice cracked, matching the fracture in her heart.
Tears blurred her vision, but she continued to stare out over the water. Even after six years, she wasn’t ready for this conversation. She wasn’t ready to examine what had gone wrong. She wasn’t ready to let go of the anger and hurt that she’d clung to. In her soul, she knew Wes wouldn’t have done less than his best to save her unborn baby, but if she no longer had the anger to hold onto, she might not have anything left inside her.
“You didn’t have to leave Ian over it,” he continued. “I would have stayed away. I love you both, but if letting go of those friendships would’ve saved your relationship, I wouldn’t have hesitated.”
She shook her head against his words. Wes staying away wouldn’t have changed anything. She couldn’t have stayed with Ian after what she’d seen in the jungle. Even if the baby had survived, she couldn’t have returned home and pretended he still loved her.
“I didn’t leave because of you,” she finally answered. “I couldn’t stay there. You staying away wouldn’t have mattered. I told you—we were over before we left Africa.” Hell, maybe they’d been over before they went to Africa. She had no way of knowing how long Ian and Mallory had betrayed her. Or if Mallory was the first.
“Because of the baby? Cam, you two had so much—”
“Stop it.” She held up a hand, as if the gesture could keep his words at bay. “Before the baby. I was on my way to back to camp to pack up and leave Africa. I planned to be out of Ian’s life by the time he made it back to the States.”
“What?” Wes stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the ocean. “You knew you were leaving him? How could you have pretended so callously—”
“No.” Pushing up from the table, she stood nose to nose with her former friend. “If anyone was pretending, it was Ian. Pretending he loved me. Pretending he wanted our child. Pretending he gave a damn when she died.”
“He grieved.”
She snickered. Turning, she pushed her fisted hands on her hips and paced away. Of course, he grieved. Even a selfish bastard would be upset that his own flesh and blood, a child not even given the chance to live, had died. But his grief wasn’t the same as hers.
“You should’ve stayed, so the two of you could’ve helped each other heal.”
She spun to face Wes. “I didn’t want to help him heal.” A sob broke her yell. Tears blurred her vision. She’d never admitted that truth aloud. Everyone had expected her to be Ian’s rock, to help ease his pain. But he deserved every ounce of pain he felt.
Wes stared back at her. His mouth opened wide. Finally, he clamped his lips together and shook his head. “Who are you? It’s like I never even knew the real you.”
She smirked. “No. Neither of us ever knew the real Ian. He fooled us, made us believe. I don’t know. Maybe he genuinely cares about you, but he didn’t give a damn about me or our child.” That knowledge still had the power to crush her. Even now, six years later, the thought that he’d so expertly deceived her left her feeling stupid and empty.
“He’s been a fucking wreck since you left.”
Guilt. She wouldn’t let herself believe he felt anything else.
“He wanted to save me,” she whispered. “He thought he could snap me out of my funk.” She air quoted the last words, because that’s what people who didn’t know what it felt like to have your entire world literally blow up called it. A funk. As if she simply had a bad day and could just decide to feel better.
“Of course, he wanted to save you. He loved you.”
She shook her head. “He loved fixing things. Playing God. Isn’t that what you surgeons do?”
Wes’s eyes narrowed. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
“He couldn’t save us, Wes. He was what screwed us up. He was the reason I was in that jungle. Why I was distracted.”
The other man tensed, then stepped forward. “Ian was in the jungle?”
Oh yeah, he was. Hiding in the brush with Mallory wrapped around him like a damn vine. She nodded.
“But when I found you, you were alone. Ian and Mallory were at the hut when I brought you in.”
Nausea swirled in her stomach. She’d suspected Ian had still been with Mallory, perhaps protecting her from the chaos, as Cameron lay burnt and bleeding in the jungle with their baby dying inside her. But hearing Wes’s confirmation made her heart ache with fresh wounds.
“I saw them before,” she told him. “I guess they were able to by-pass the destruction.”
Wes cocked his head, as if the shift would make understanding her easier. “Them? They were together in the jungle? What are you saying, Cam?”
She’d never told anyone what she’d seen before the attack. Maybe she’d been embarrassed. Maybe she’d hoped that not saying the words aloud would somehow make what she saw untrue. Either way, she’d remained silent while Ian played the role of doting, concerned fiancé.
“I saw Ian and Mallory in the jungle. They were—” Emotion rose, tightening her chest, making speaking impossible.
Wes’s jaw clenched and he stepped toward her. “They were what?”
Even all these years later, the thought of Ian touching another woman made her stomach churn. She wiped at her stinging eyes with a shaking hand. “They were kissing. He had her in his arms. I saw him kiss her.”
Her friend stared back at her. His expression never changed. Just when she thought maybe he hadn’t heard her, he shook his head. “Bullshit.”
Anger replaced her earlier sadness. She’d had several reasons for keeping Ian’s betrayal to herself. Not being believed had never crossed her mind.
She blinked. “Excuse me.”
Wes shook his head harder. “You didn’t see Ian with Mallory. That didn’t happen. He didn’t . . .” He stared back at her. Defeated. “He loved you. He still loves you. Why the hell would he do that?”
“He didn’t want the baby.” Her voice trembled with the truth. “I heard him. When I was leaving, trying not to see anymore, I heard him tell her he didn’t want a child.” And maybe that’s what had hurt the most. After they’d returned from Africa, maybe Ian had wanted to help her heal. Maybe he’d wanted to stay with her and move forward. But he only wanted her because she was no longer pregnant. She couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been relieved she’d lost the baby. And she hated him for it.
“Cameron.” Wes met her gaze. His eyes were serious, unwavering. “Are you sure? This doesn’t make sense.”
“I know what I saw. I know what I heard. So, I left so he could stop pretending to love me.” A brave tear finally fell over her lashes, making the way for a flood of others. “I wanted him to be happy, Wes. I didn’t leave to punish any of you. I wanted to stop punishing myself.” Living in that apartment, seeing the life she’d never have with Ian, had been an exercise in daily suffering.
She swiped at the tears on her face. She despised crying, but over the past two days, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. As if the plane incident and seeing Ian again weren’t traumatic enough on their own, they’d had to coincide.
“I believe you saw what you say,” Wes told her. “But I can’t believe he didn’t want you or the baby.” He ran a hand through his full blond hair, leaving tracks in his wake. “You haven’t seen him the last few years. He still mourns both of you. When I went to tell him about this assignment…” He clamped his mouth shut, then looked away.
She rested her hand on his shoulder. “What?”
He released a sigh, wrestling with whatever inner conflict held him back from telling her. “He was in the nursery. In that rocking chair.”
Spinning away, she tried to block Wes’s words. She could still picture the antique rocker she’d coveted for months before Ian surprised her with it for their anniversary. How many times had she imagined rocking their daughter in that chair as she nursed?
“He’s still in that apartment. Still waiting for you to come back. Still holding on to the life you planned. Drinking himself to death.” He mumbled this last piece. No doubt the drinking was a bone of contention between the men.
She remembered the angry scar on Ian’s side. “He was in an accident.”
Wes snorted. “You mean a suicide mission? He’s damn lucky. He should’ve died. I think he’s still pissed he didn’t.”
Her heart ached. Ian may have shattered her heart, but that didn’t mean she wanted him miserable. She knew how it felt to want to die. She didn’t wish that on anyone. Especially not the man she still loved. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes at the thought. She’d known before Ian arrived that she still loved him. The emotion was just easier to ignore when he was hundreds of miles away.
“I didn’t want that for him. I wanted him to be happy.”
“He’d be happy if you came home. We all would.”
She met her former friend’s watery gaze. She’d never meant to stay away forever, just long enough to figure out how to move forward and shore her heart up against Ian. But then Arabella had been born, and she’d been unable to leave the island.
“I can’t. Ever. It’s best everyone realizes that. My life is here now.”
Wes nodded slowly. “If you say so.”