Cameron sucked in a breath, pulling in the once familiar scent of antiseptic and the lavender detergent she’d used in her former life mixed with a warm fragrance she could only describe as Ian. She’d thought she’d forgotten how warm and intoxicating he smelled. Apparently, she’d been wrong. With his arms wrapped tightly around her, he rubbed his large hands up and down her back. She squeezed her eyes tighter as new tears assaulted her. Tears, not for her daughter or even Brodie, but tears for the life she’d walked away from and the man she’d once believed loved her.
Placing her hands on the solid wall of Ian’s chest, she pushed away. Ian was her past. He needed to stay there. Yes, he’d shown up today and saved her daughter. Maybe that could be enough to stop hating him, but it wasn’t enough to forget he hadn’t loved her or wanted their daughter. Straightening, she swiped at her remaining tears.
“It never crossed my mind they’d send you.” If it had, would she have still called? Yes. To save Ara and Brodie, she would do anything—even give up a few of her secrets.
A muscle in his jaw jumped. “It never crossed my mind I’d find you when I got here,” he countered.
Fair enough.
She sighed. “Thank you for coming. For saving her.”
“You could’ve done it. You would have if you’d needed to.”
She didn’t want him to soothe her. She just wanted to thank him, then put him on a boat and send him away from her home.
For years, this island had been her refuge—from him, from her past. It could hardly serve as a sanctuary with him present.
Without answering, she pushed from the couch, then started across the room to the door. “I’m going to see if she’s awake, if she—”
“Are you just going to pretend?”
At his words, she stopped in the doorway.
“You’ve been gone for five years, Cam. Fiveyears.” His voice cracked, causing him to curse under his breath. “Don’t I get anything? An explanation? A—”
Glaring at him over her shoulder, she replied, “I owe you nothing.” Maybe her words weren’t entirely true, but he certainly had no right to demand anything from her.
He shoved to his feet. “Nothing?” he yelled. “How about the life we planned? The future you took away when you left?”
Anger surged in her veins. “You didn’t want that future, that life. You certainly didn’t want me. I did you a favor.”
He stumbled back as if her words physically struck him. “You did me a…” Squeezing his eyes shut, he shook his head. “Are you fucking kidding me? You crushed me, fucking gutted me. How can you stand here so goddamn cavalier and claim to have done me a favor?”
Tears swam in his eyes and filled his voice. Her own eyes blurred with the emotions rising within her, but she wouldn’t let him sway her. He could say what he wanted, claim to be heartbroken. She knew the truth. She’d seen him with Mallory and heard his declaration. No words he said now would mean anything to her.
“Thank you for coming. Thank you for saving my daughter. I can’t repay you, but I’ll forever be grateful.” She turned to flee.
He wrapped a large hand around her bicep and jerked her to face him. “You can repay me by explaining why the hell you left. I don’t understand. I searched for you. I mourned you.”
“I’m not dead.”
His gaze scraped over her body. “Obviously. I thought differently.”
She nodded. “Hang on to that thought.” She wrestled her arm from his grasp.
“We’ll be here for the next few days. Don’t think I’m leaving without answers.”
“I don’t have answers for you. I’m here. I have a life here. You might be around for the next few days, but that doesn’t mean I have to have anything to do with you.”
“Doc… Doc… Where’s Doc?”
Keso. Thank God.
Her body sagged with relief at the sound of Keso’s voice coming from the front of the clinic. He was safe. Alive. Every time someone had entered the clinic with news throughout the day, she’d feared she’d hear Keso had suffered a fate like Brodie’s. Relief only lasted a moment before panic took over. Her gaze swung from the doorway to Ian. Her former fiancé narrowed his eyes, obviously seeing something on her face he didn’t like.
He moved closer. “Cam, what’s wrong?”
She backed away and into a solid wall of male. Keso spun her around, then crushed her to his chest. “Gracias a Dios,” he murmured against her hair.
She wrapped her arms around his lean waist and held him to her. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself a moment to just listen to the strong, steady beat of his heart. The familiar, reassuring sound had often been the last thing she heard before drifting off to sleep those first few months on the island. That steady thump thump assured her everything would work out, despite what nightmares from her past may have appeared.
Keso pulled away, holding her at arms’ length. His green eyes roamed her face and body, inspecting her for injury. “I was so scared. I worried you and Ara were on the beach—”
At the mention of their daughter, tears again filled Cameron’s eyes.
Keso’s grip tightened on her shoulders. “What? Doc, what is it? What happened to Ara?”
When she opened her mouth to assure him their daughter was fine, only a sob escaped. She struggled to rein in her emotions, but she kept seeing the plane exploding and fire raining down. The panic and fear she hadn’t allowed earlier invaded. Her body shook. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Ara’s fine.” From somewhere behind her, Ian’s voice answered Keso’s question. “Cam’s understandably upset, but I assure you Ara’s okay and resting well.”
Keso’s body had stiffened when Ian called her Cam. No one on the island called her Cam. She was Doc. Doc C to some. Occasionally Cameron to Keso, but she couldn’t recall the last time he’d called her anything but Doc.
“Who are you?” Keso asked.
Oh shit. Cameron forced herself to straighten. She had to get control of this situation. Keso knew everything about the relationship she’d been running from when she met him. Everything except the name of the man who had wrecked her heart and that he was standing right in front of them.
“Ara was hurt by some of the debris,” she blurted, cutting through whatever response Ian intended.
“Debris? What the hell?” Keso’s attention returned to her.
She breathed easier. “We were on the beach. She and Creek were hiding. When Luci found her, a piece of metal was stuck in her side.” She swallowed the fresh batch of tears ready to fall. The sight of her baby bleeding and hurting, unable to move because of the metal impaling her, would forever be seared in her memories.
“Cam stabilized her.” Ian took over the storytelling. “Until my team and I could arrive and remove the obstruction. Ara has two cracked ribs, some major bruising and quite a gash. But I believe she’ll make a full recovery with minimal scarring.”
Ian’s voice dipped at the mention of scarring. Beneath her borrowed clothes, Cameron’s own scars tingled.
“You’re team? You’re from the States?” Keso spat those last words, not bothering to hide his distrust and distaste for anything and everyone American.
Ian’s brown eyes narrowed. “That’s right. I’m a doctor from—”
“He saved Ara,” she interrupted. The less Keso knew about the doctor who saved their daughter, the better. In a week, two at the most, Ian and Wes and the rest of their team would return to their homes and their lives. If Keso knew the truth about Ian’s identity, the knowledge would likely cause a larger rift in their small family. And for what? Ian’s presence was temporary, but the trouble caused by Keso knowing could be permanent. No, she’d just have to keep the two men away from each other until Ian left.
She slipped her hand into Keso’s and tugged him toward the small room next to her office. “Why don’t we go check on Ara?”
Raising a brow, Keso looked down at their joined hands, then back to her face. “Yeah. Okay.”
Thankfully, he allowed her to lead him next door to Ara’s room. When she pulled back the curtain and caught sight of their daughter, pale against the white pillow and almost lost in the enormity of the hospital bed, her body trembled. She could’ve lost the little Nereid today. What would Cameron’s life be worth then? Since abandoning her old life, she no longer prided herself on being a doctor or cared to be known as anyone’s lover. Here, now, she was Arabella Lawrence’s mother. What would she be if she no longer had that?
Luci sat by Ara’s bed. At their entrance, she lifted her head. The older woman’s eyes lit when she spotted Keso standing by Cameron’s side. She rose from the chair and ambled across the room. “She’s been sleeping,” she whispered. “The doctor said she probably won’t wake up until morning. He gave her some medicine to help her rest.”
When Luci reached them, she patted Keso’s cheek. Her hand made a scratching noise over the multiple days’ growth. “We worried about you. I prayed you didn’t end up like Brodie, I couldn’t—” A sob choked her. She clamped her mouth shut.
“Brodie?” Alarm flooded Keso’s normally slow, calm voice. His gaze swung to Cameron. “What happened to Brodie?”
Taking a deep breath, she tried to slip into the role of detached doctor. But this was her friend. Her family.
“Doc, what happened? Is he—”
“The debris from the plane . . . it landed on Brodie’s boat,” she choked out.
Keso’s eyes widened.
“When I got to him, he was submerged. His legs were pinned. Crushed. He was unresponsive.”
Keso shook his head, his blond curls bouncing. “What does that mean? Explain it to me. I’m not a doctor.”
Closing her eyes, she tried to summon the courage to continue, to relive what would go down as some of the worst moments of her life. “When I got to him, he was unconscious. Something hit him in the head, and his legs were trapped. We mostly managed to keep his head out of the water. Edmund and Pauler freed him. We lost him once, but I got him back.”
Tears swam in Keso’s sea-green eyes, making them even more mesmerizing than normal. Those eyes, the same eyes their daughter so lovingly looked at her with every day, were what had first drawn her to the man who’d saved her.
“So, he’s okay? He’s alive? He’s . . .” Hope tried valiantly to break through the despair in his words. Keso knew life wasn’t that forgiving.
“For now,” she answered. Her heart ached. “We kept him breathing until the doctors arrived with equipment. A machine is helping to make breathing easier for him now.”
Keso’s body sagged. “Will he ever be able to breathe on his own? Will he wake up?”
Cameron’s jaw trembled with the force of holding back her tears. “I hope so.”
Keso straightened, visibly pulling himself together. “Can I see him?”
“Of course.” She squeezed his hand. “But we . . . we couldn’t save his legs.”
Keso’s head jerked up. He blinked at her. “You what?”
She swallowed. How many times would she have to tell this story? “His legs were crushed. I did what I could, but I couldn’t save either leg.”
As long as she lived, she’d never erase the horror on Keso’s face from her memory.
“But you got him out?” After the way he’d looked at her, his words surprised her.
She nodded.
“Then you gave him a chance. Thank you.”
Her vision blurred as Keso pulled her against him. He kissed the top of her head. “Thank you.” He released her.
“I’ll take you to his room.” Luci patted Keso’s arm, reminding them she still stood watching their conversation.
Keso stepped away, following the other woman. Their footsteps padded down the hall.
“Is he Ara’s father?”
Cameron jumped. Startled by Ian’s voice. “It’s impolite to eavesdrop.”
Entering the room, Ian came to stand beside her. He didn’t wait for her response. “She has his eyes. The two of you, are you married?” His gaze dropped to her naked fingers.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of the oversized work pants Edmund had given her.
“My family, my life, are none of your business. Do your job and go home.” She turned to face him fully, blocking his view of her daughter and what Ian no doubt saw as a betrayal of the promises she’d made him. Maybe her heart broke to look at the man she’d once loved with all her being and realize they were now strangers. And maybe her stomach twisted with the realization time hadn’t diminished the love she still held for him. But she’d be damned if she’d let him know the truth of either.
“I won’t leave here without answers,” he warned her.
Her heart sped, pumping fear through her veins. “Yes, you will,” she bit out. “Because I’ve got nothing for you, and you can’t stay here.”
She didn’t wait for his response. The capability to keep her emotions contained had long passed. She pushed past him and raced out of the clinic. As soon as she made it through the door of the hospital, she ran. It was only a matter of seconds before the dam inside her broke, and she wanted to be as far away from Ian and Keso as possible when that happened. She ran, legs pushing, arms pumping until her feet met the sand, and her sobs made it too difficult to breathe. Dropping to her knees, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and the emptiness she still felt there after six years. When she closed her eyes, she saw Ian, his gaze haunted and dark as he sat with her hand in his at the side of her bed in Africa. She’d stopped herself from asking if their daughter was okay, because the devastation in his eyes had been answer enough. As she’d rolled away from him, ignoring the pain that raced through her body at the movement, she’d been surprised the pain registered at all when she’d felt as if she were already dead.
She opened her eyes now, forcing herself to see something other than that makeshift hospital room where she’d come to years before and the sad eyes of the doctors who’d been her friends and yet unable to save her unborn child. Tears slid down her dirty cheeks and though she tried, she couldn’t contain her sobs. Cramming her fist into her mouth, she screamed—against the pain she felt then, against the loss of her child, the man she’d loved, and the life she’d planned. And now she screamed against the fear of losing Arabella and the uncertainty of how to face Ian. She braced herself and let the storm inside her rage. Then she wiped the tears from her face, smearing the day’s blood across her skin. Pushing to her feet, she began the trek to her cottage to shower before she would return to her daughter.
Through her turmoil, she didn’t see the shadow of a man who watched her at the edge of the trees.