Sam smiled again before walking on.
‘Poor girl!’ he said. ‘Already damned with faint praise.’
Poor girl indeed, Keanu muttered to himself. If she was still a girl everything would be okay.
Or would it?
She’d been nothing more than a girl when he’d hurt her and for all he’d told himself she wouldn’t miss his letters, and would probably be relieved not to have to write back, given all the friends she would have made at school, he’d never quite believed it.
‘I could take you up to the house and introduce you this evening if you like,’ he offered.
Sam studied him for a minute.
‘Let’s just wait for her to come to us,’ he suggested, then he grinned. ‘And let’s hope she’s early as apparently she’ll have to start work straight away.’
A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG woman with long, lustrous, dark hair piled up beneath a dodgy-looking nurse’s cap, and wearing what was apparently a uniform of green tunic and green three-quarter-length pants greeted Caroline with a smile and, ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for Sam,’ Caroline explained.
‘Rather you than me,’ the woman replied. ‘He’s in the little room he calls his office, probably setting fire to the paperwork. Straight along the passage and on the left.’
Caroline turned to follow the directions.
‘I’m Anahera, by the way, but everyone calls me Ana,’ the dark-haired woman added.
Caroline turned back.
‘Oh, I’ve met your daughter. She’s adorable. I’m Caroline Lockhart.’
Caroline held out her hand but couldn’t miss the hesitation or the look of wariness in Anahera’s eyes before she took the proffered palm and shook it.
But ‘Oh!’ was all she said, turning back into the small ward behind her where Caroline could see four occupied beds.
Farther down the passage she found the room, knocked briefly then answered a peremptory ‘Come in.’
‘Caroline Lockhart, I presume?’
The good-looking man behind the desk looked up briefly from the paperwork he was shoving from one pile to another, then frowned down at it.
‘Never become an administrator,’ he muttered, pushing the lot back together into an untidy heap.
‘Don’t like paperwork?’ Caroline asked, but she was smiling as she said it. There was something immensely likeable about this man.
‘Who does? The problem is I’m already short on staff and I’ve still got to waste time doing blasted paperwork.’
‘Can’t you get the dog to eat it? Isn’t that the classic homework excuse?’ Caroline suggested, seeing the warm brown eyes of the Labrador lying on Sam’s feet under the table.
Sam flashed her a grin.
‘I did try that but the wretch keeps spitting it out. Hospital dogs are too well fed. But let me introduce you. This lazy, too-well-fed beast is Bugsy, Maddie Haddon’s dog. Maddie is one of our FIFO doctors but rather than fly Bugsy back and forth she leaves him here. Unfortunately she can’t make today’s plane and as he usually knows when she’s due in, he’s decided I’m the best substitute for his owner.’
Sam paused and studied Caroline for a moment.
‘I’m also a nurse short, and Keanu told me you were here. Want a job?’
‘As long as it doesn’t involve sorting that mess you’ve made of those papers you’re shuffling. I can certainly help in other ways.’
Humour lit his eyes.
‘Nice back massage? Rub my feet?’
‘In your dreams!’ Caroline retorted, deciding she quite liked this rather strange man.
‘But I could fill in for your missing nurse,’ Caroline added, refusing to be beguiled by gleaming eyes. ‘I’m a nurse and you’re apparently one nurse short.’
‘Keanu said you’re a socialite.’
One more black mark against the man who’d hurt her so badly.
‘Well, you may not have noticed but there’s not that much social life around here, and a socialite without a social set is superfluous to requirements, while a nurse might just fill in for the one who isn’t coming, if you’re willing to give me a chance.’
Now she had his attention.
‘Touchy, are you?’ He looked her up and down. ‘I suppose you have the right bits of paper—degree, references.’
‘Right here,’ she said, pulling the paperwork she’d grabbed and stuffed in her back pocket before leaving the house.
Caroline began to relax.
Well, not relax relax—that would never happen with Keanu somewhere near—but some of the tension she’d been feeling drained slowly out of her.
‘It seems you’ve been away from the island for a long time,’ Sam said, riffling through the papers but, she suspected, speed-reading every word. ‘Why have you come back?’
‘I don’t think that’s relevant but I did hear the island was in trouble.’
‘And you thought coming here to nurse would cure things?’
Caroline shook her head.
‘Boy, are you a grump! I didn’t even know there’d be a nursing position available, although I had intended working here for nothing if necessary, but this place was my home—is my home—and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and let it fall apart without at least trying to find out what’s been happening and what can be done to save it. My dad would be here as well, only he—Well, there’s a family problem.’
Sam raised his head and looked at her.
‘He’s a great man, your father. He does the best he can. Lobbying for government support, fundraising. Ever since the mine stopped paying its promised share for the hospital, I think he’s put his entire salary into it. I just do what I can.’
‘So, do I get a job?’
Sam studied her a little longer.
‘The nurse who was coming was a FIFO—Fly-In-Fly-Out—the term more commonly used in mining communities. It means you’re on duty for two weeks then off for one, and you can take the flight to the mainland for that week off if you wish.’
‘Which leaves you with only one nurse—Anahera—for a week?’
‘Not really. The FIFOs overlap and we have another permanent. You haven’t met Hettie yet—Henrietta de Lacey—only don’t dare ever call her Henrietta, she’ll lop off your head with the nearest implement. She’s our head nurse and is permanent staff and she’s the one you should be speaking to about this job, but she’s doing another clinic run. It’s not usual to do two in one week, but there’s a lot to sort out. The clinic on Raiki is short of drugs, not to mention a nurse, so Hettie’s gone out there to replace the drugs then scour the islands to see if she can get one of the nurses from another island to cover Raiki for a while. How are you in a helicopter?’
Caroline was wondering what had happened to both the drugs and the nurse from Raiki when she realised she’d been asked a question.