Dangerous Love Read Free Page B

girl.”
    As she hurried back to A&E, she wondered what on earth Georgie thought she was doing tonight. And she had to try to figure out some way of curbing her daughter’s wild streak.

    “I tell you I’m fine!” The voice stopped Regan dead in her tracks. That voice! No mistaking it. She shook her head and carried on. Tiredness and worry was making her delusional. She’d been thinking rather too much about Bram tonight, that was all. There was no way he was here in her hospital, no way on earth. When she’d sent him away, he’d gone for good and he’d been most adamant he wouldn’t be coming back.
    Way back then he’d looked up at her from his wheelchair, his bruised, battered and stitched face changed almost beyond recognition. He’d looked far from beautiful, but it wasn’t his beauty she’d fallen in love with. If he’d had a face like the back of a bus she would still have been in love with him and the scars and bruises made no difference to how she felt about him. If anything they made her love him more which made it hurt even more and it was a pain she just couldn’t bear.
    They were just back from their friend Tom’s funeral, still in their black clothing. Regan had brought Bram back to the hospital to continue his treatment and the funeral had exhausted him. Regan could not get the image of Tom’s widow at the graveside out of her mind. She stood erect and pale, flanked by her two white-faced weeping children as they watched their hero being lowered into the ground. Their dead hero. Regan didn’t want a dead hero – she wanted a living, breathing man in her life. Bram had almost died and as well as his physical injuries from the sea rescue that had gone so dreadfully wrong, he had psychological scars that would never heal.
    He’d kept Tom afloat, struggled to keep him above water, but Tom had already been dead and Bram almost lost his own life hanging on to a corpse.
    “If I walk out that door, Regan, it’s the last you’ll see of me, I promise you that.”
    “Fine,” she’d said hotly. “Then hurry up and go. I can’t wait.”
    He hadn’t walked and he wasn’t going anywhere but back to the ward. What he had actually done was to spin his wheelchair around and wheel himself towards the door, battering at the sensor switch until it opened, then it had shut softly behind him and the steady squeak of his wheels had been silenced.
    She’d wanted to run after him, grab the handles of the chair and turn it round, but what would be the point? He’d said as soon as he was recovered he’d be back on duty on the lifeboats and she’d told him to choose. She’d given him her ultimatum, fired up by grief and fear. Just be a vet, she’d said, be content to save the lives of dogs and cats – give up the RNLI, the rescues, the danger. Give it up or go.
    “If you knew anything about me, Regan,” he’d said. “You’d never demand I make a choice like that.”
    “And if you really loved me there would be no choice to make.”
    “I could say the same thing,” he’d said sadly.
    And he had made his choice. When she swallowed her pride and went to see him at the hospital a few days later, he’d gone and no one seemed to know where. But he was wrong about her not seeing him again. She saw him every day in the face of their little girl.
    The voice crashed into her thoughts again.
    “This is just a waste of time – it’s just a bit of bruising! I’ve had a bruised spine and believe me, this is not it! This is minor. Just let me go home, love, eh?”
    Regan turned round and took a step towards Resus where Josie was standing at the open door looking out at her, her face a mask of anguish as if she couldn’t stand any more shocks.
    It couldn’t be, Regan thought even though her ears and Josie’s expression was telling her otherwise. No way. He’d gone. He’d promised not to come back.
    “First of all, I’m the doctor here and I will decide whether or not your injuries are minor,” Karen