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‘No husband.’
And just like
that something...shifted between them. She felt it with every raised, fine hair on her skin, and in every cell of her body. And she felt it in the way the air thickened around them. As if creating some bubble around her and Kane. An airwall between them and the rest of the world.
He took a step nearer to her. So close she could feel the heat seeping from his body into hers. Melting her. He dipped his head, centimetres from hers, then stopped, his warm, vaguely minty breath dancing over her skin.
He was going to kiss her and, heaven help her, she wanted him to.
‘What went wrong?’ he asked softly, making her blink.
What was wrong with her? He was after answers and all she could think about was kissing him. She was such an idiot.
‘That’s none of your business.’ She sucked in a sharp breath.
What was she going to tell Kane? That she’d spent ten years thinking she’d got over him, thinking that she’d found the perfect man in George Blakeney, only for her to look up and imagine—at her damned wedding rehearsal dinner—that she’d seen Kane standing in that room.
As shameful as that was.
She could still remember that awful night with heart-breaking clarity. Even now, if she closed her eyes, she could remember exactly how she’d felt standing on that stage next to her future husband, a gentle sort of happiness fizzing inside her as they’d addressed their guests and looked forward to their wedding the following weekend. She recalled smiling out into the sea of loving, happy, laughing faces, all the well-wishers who had travelled so far to be with them, and how that bubble had popped in an instant the moment she’d thought she’d seen Kane standing at the back—as bleak and imposing as ever.
Worse still was the dangerous thrill that had rushed her entire body at the thought that he had finally, finally come back to her.
She remembered swaying. Clutching at George’s arm just to stop herself from toppling off the stage. She’d turned to look at George and then back into the crowd, and in that instant Kane had disappeared. Gone up in a puff of smoke, which was apt since he’d never really been there in the first place. She’d been imagining him, conjuring him up because really, deep down, however happy she’d been with George, there had always been that cloud, hovering just in her periphery. However much she’d loved her fiancé, there had always been that little piece missing.
She’d spent fourteen years pretending otherwise, but the simple fact was that Kane Wheeler had stolen the very core of her heart years ago, and she’d never really had it to give to anyone else.
But that didn’t mean she had to stand here like the gauche, helplessly-in-love teenager she’d once been. She was a successful doctor. An army major. It was time to act like it.
‘You were right, Kane,’ Mattie bit out. ‘I should get back to work.’
‘Mattie...’ His voice corkscrewed around her, twisting her, bending her to his will the way he always had done.
She couldn’t let him.
It was...interesting to see you again.’ She forced herself to take a step back and break all contact. It made things a little better, though not enough for her liking.
‘I’ll buy you a coffee,’ he announced abruptly, his tone suggesting that his brain hadn’t entirely engaged with his mouth when he’d blurted out the offer, such as it was.
It was ignominious how tempted she was to agree. Had it ever been so hard to shake her head instead of nod?
‘Sorry, but right now I have work to do. A long shift so I won’t even be finished until the early hours.’
What did she say that for?
‘Tomorrow night, then.’
She wanted to say yes. Oh, how she wanted to.
‘Tomorrow night, I’m meeting friends. And, Hayden, it’s a celebration.’ Stop waffling, she ordered herself. Sucking in a breath, she made her brain focus. ‘Thanks for the offer, though. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again in another fourteen years.’
And then, before the less rational part of her brain could talk her round, she turned and left.
Walking away from Kane for the first time ever.
CHAPTER TWO
‘PATIENT IS ASHLEY, a female in her thirties. Traumatic c-spine injury. Knocked off her bike at approximately eleven o’clock this morning; driver witness reported she was travelling downhill at approximately twenty miles per hour and was thrown over the handlebars, landing head first. No loss of conscious noted at the time, and when we arrived she had a GCS of fifteen out of fifteen. She’s able to move her extremities and is tender to palpation over the second vertebra. She also has a fractured left clavicle.’
