A Love Worth Saving

by Amanda Canham

  A Love Worth Saving

  Amanda Canham

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  A Love Worth Saving

  Amanda Canham

  Have you taken a night shift at St Mary’s yet?

  Ana Reed has been offered her perfect job—managing a new portable diagnostic sleep service. The only problem: it means working with Dr Brad Lewis, the only man she’s ever loved, and the one man she can never keep.

  Brad has always loved Ana, but when he’s around her, he’s constantly reminded of a past he desperately needs to forget. However, he knows Ana is good at her job, and he refuses to stand in the way of her passions. He will put aside the past, so that she can have her future. After all, they are both professionals, both adults, and their patients have to come first. Surely they can work together without their shared history getting in the way…

  About the Author

  Always the straightest arrow in a creative family, Amanda left her imagination in the hands of the very skilled authors she grew up reading. After completing a degree in psychology, she moved to Brisbane, Queensland, where she focussed on a career as a sleep scientist. Two children later, she turned her hand to writing her first romance and was more surprised than anyone to discover she had a very active imagination! Now she splits her time between writing, working as a scientist and mothering her two young children.

  Acknowledgements

  No book writes itself, and no author exists in a vacuum (though sometimes we’d like to).

  This story wouldn’t have been told without the support of my wonderful family. In particular, I’d like to thank my children Zachary and Josephine, my husband Chris, and my mother, Marianne Curley. They’ve each played a special part in the creation of this novel:

  My children displayed magnificent forbearance in listening to the songs on my writing playlist ad nauseum (you can check out the playlist here:

  youtu.be/IxxstCcJlsc?list=PL4hrfD2ZqJkzLpTk3ZT69l1oDN2dL7BA6);

  My husband provided unwavering support and carefully-worded critiques;

  And my mother was at her brilliant beta-reading best.

  Neither would I have the opportunity to share this story with you if it wasn’t for my wonderful publisher. To Kate Cuthbert, Kirsten Delaney and the awesome team at Escape Publishing thank you for all your hard work, support and belief in this story.

  For my perfect little princess,

  I love you more

  XX

  Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  Prologue

  Brad Lewis stared at the peacefully sleeping woman beside him, her fine features smooth and relaxed in slumber, and felt a cold sweat of regret break across his skin. He tried to slide his arm out from beneath her shoulders without disturbing her, but his watch almost caught in her short, dyed-black hair. Thankfully she wriggled, rolling over at just the right time and he was able to slip free.

  Scouring the darkened room for his discarded clothes he made short work of slipping on his pants and buttoning up his wrinkled dress shirt before pocketing his wallet and phone from where they lay on the bedside table.

  Beside him, the sheets rustled as the woman rolled over. Pausing in his headlong rush out the door, he took one last look, his heart contracting at the sight.

  Without a thought, he found himself leaning forward, brushing a soft, tender kiss across her forehead. He lingered, inhaling deeply, his olfactory senses submerged in a mixture of stale alcohol, sweat and her favourite perfume, storing the scent in the depths of his memory bank.

  It was the last thing he did before racing out the door.

  His cowardly departure wasn’t because the sex had been bad. It never was with her.

  And it wasn’t that he didn’t like her.

  For fuck’s sake, he loved her. Always had. Always would.

  But they could never be together. He could never be the man she needed him to be.

  A lifetime ago she’d called him her hero. But it wasn’t true. He wasn’t a hero.

  How could taking another man’s life ever make him a hero?

  Chapter One

  Ana Reed was running late.

  Well that was nothing new, she conceded, as she rustled though the overflowing vanity drawer. She was always running late.

  But she had thought, considering this was a work meeting, that she would be out the door on time. Why she’d thought that would make any difference she wasn’t sure, but she had. She’d been wrong though. Her magically disappearing hair comb had made sure of that.

  Slamming the bathroom drawer shut, she glanced into the vanity mirror, the sharp ovals of her dark brown eyes staring at her. Maybe she could get away with a quick finger-comb, she decided, running her fingers through her short dyed-black hair which was now kinking and slightly knotted.

  Eurgh! No, that didn’t work—her hair looked even worse now.

  Backtracking out of the bathroom, Ana headed to the bedroom she occupied in her brother’s house, scanning the room for the elusive comb. It wasn’t anywhere to be seen. What she did see, though, were the bright red digits of her alarm clock.

  4:35. She groaned, her shoulders sinking. She was supposed to be in her car by now. She really was going to be late.

  Normally, it only took Ana ten minutes to drive from her brother Travis’ house in Paddington—where she was currently bedding down—to the South Brisbane hospital where she worked as a sleep medicine nurse. But that was when her shift started at seven pm, after all the peak hour traffic had disappeared.

  Today her appointment with Jenny, the sleep laboratory manager, was at five o’clock—right in the middle of peak hour. She’d wanted to give herself a good half-hour to get there, to be safe.

  So much for that plan.

  Grabbing an elastic band off her bedside table, Ana reached up and pulled the coarse strands back into a short ponytail. Boring, but it was all she had time for, considering she still had to pack her dinner.

  She was halfway down the hallway when the creak of a door opening halted her in her tracks. Where had the sound come from? There was no one else home, yet Ana could have sworn the sound had come from the kitchen. Maybe the wind had pushed a door open?

  No, that wasn’t possible. She’d made sure all the doors were closed and locked before she jumped in the shower. She always did.

  Icy fear swept across her skin, freezing her in place. Holding her breath, ears pricked, she focussed her entire being on listening to the sounds—if any—coming from the kitchen. There was silence for a moment or two and Ana felt some of the fear start to subside. Her breath whistled slowly out of her body. Maybe she had been mistaken, maybe—

  A door slammed shut, the noise reverberating through the still house, and Ana’s heart almost exploded inside her chest. The sound was followed by a quiet, distinct shuffling across the floor.

  Someone was definitely here. Ana wanted to race back into her bedroom, jump into bed and hide under the doona, but she couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. All she could do was think as a thousand questions raced through her mind.

  Who was here? Were they coming to find her? What did they want? Were they going to kill her? Why wasn’t Travis hom
e?

  Travis. Travis. Maybe it was her brother. Maybe he’d come home early today and was sitting in the kitchen unwinding. That was the most logical explanation.

  Except Travis never finished early. He was the most dedicated doctor she knew, usually starting early and finishing late.

  The shuffling ended with a dull bang, as though whoever was in the other room had run into the island bench. Ana stood still, listening, waiting for the person’s next move, but there was none. The only sound coming from the other room was deep, heavy breathing.

  Okay, so it was unlikely that the heavy breather was a thief, a rapist or a murderer. She was probably safe. At least, safe enough to find out who was in the other room.

  Spine stiff with fear, Ana crept silently down the hallway, eyes peeled on the entrance to the kitchen. By the time she reached the doorway, the heavy breathing had become heavier, but no other sounds punctuated the silence.

  Bracing herself for the worst, Ana poked her head through the doorway, scanning the wide, open-plan kitchen area, searching for the intruder.

  Kelli, her brother’s new girlfriend, leaned against the kitchen bench, her long golden curls cascading towards its surface. Her face a picture of pure bliss, she had her back arched, her bra-clad breasts pushing past the gaping flaps of her open shirt as though they were searching for the ceiling. Travis was on his knees in front of her, his hands ruching her skirt up to her waist, his head buried—

  Eurgh!!! GROSS!!!

  Ana slapped a hand across her mouth to prevent the scream from escaping. She had not been prepared for that!

  Slamming her eyes shut, she quickly backtracked out of the kitchen and down the hallway, sinking against the wall as soon as she was out of sight.

  Eurgh. The image was still burned into the back of her retinas.

  It wasn’t that she thought Kelli was gross; quite the opposite. A sleep and respiratory physician like Ana’s brother, Kelli was stunning, with long golden corkscrew curls and a natural olive skin tone Ana would kill for. She was nice and funny to boot. And she’d done wonders for her brother since coming into his life.

  But to walk in on them doing that! Right there on the kitchen bench where Ana had been preparing her dinner not thirty minutes earlier was so, totally gross!

  And they were still doing it. Right now, while she was sitting here, no more than two metres away! She should storm in there and put a stop to it. It would serve Travis right if she did. He should know better than to do this with her here.

  If she did interrupt them though, Travis would be hideously embarrassed. And if that happened, then it might make him more cautious and inhibited with Kelli, which would not be a good thing. She wanted things to work between them. Her brother deserved his own happy ending.

  Besides, it was his house; he should be free to do what he wanted. She was the interloper.

  Suppressing a groan she gingerly pushed herself off the ground and slipped back into her own room. Throwing the necessities into her handbag, she quietly scurried towards the front door. She had just pried it open when she remembered the dinner she’d prepared, sitting on the kitchen bench, right next to Kelli and Travis.

  Should she sneak in and grab it? Did she want to risk getting caught?

  ‘Stop. Travis,’ the breathy sound echoed across the open-plan living room. ‘Travis, can you hear that?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘It sounds like a door whooshing open. Is Ana still here?’

  ‘Relax, Kel. Ana’s got an interview at five. She’s long gone, I promise.’

  ‘Okay,’ Kelli answered, the word turning into a moan of pleasure as Travis presumably got back to business.

  Eurgh! No way was she going back in after that.

  Cringing in a mix of horror and embarrassment, Ana stepped outside and slowly, carefully closed the door before sprinting to her car. She turned the engine of her bright yellow VW Bug over and the time lit up on the dashboard. Four forty. If she was lucky, she might actually get to the hospital on time.

  ***

  ‘Thank you so much for seeing us,’ the grey-streaked blonde woman said as she sat down in one of two patient chairs in Brad Lewis’ consulting room.

  ‘I’m just glad I was still here,’ Brad assured the older woman. He’d been finishing off the notes for his last patient of the day when reception had patched through Shirley’s panicked call.

  ‘He refused to go to the hospital—’

  ‘I told you, woman, it’s just a bit of heartburn,’ the grumpy, dishevelled man who’d trailed in behind her said as he sat in the remaining vacant seat. ‘I had that spray you gave me—’

  ‘Nitroglycerin?’ Brad checked.

  ‘Yeah, that one. I took it three times but it didn’t do anything, that’s why I figured it’s just some heartburn,’ Ralph explained to Brad, wiping at the beads of sweat across his forehead.

  Concern for his patient amplified within Brad with every word he spoke. Ralph Templeton had suffered a myocardial infarction six months before, and despite optimal medical treatment, his recovery had been anything but smooth. ‘Where is this pain your feeling?’

  ‘It’s just a bit of a dull throb in here,’ Ralph pressed his fingers against the centre of his breast bone, his hand automatically turning in soothing circles against the pain. ‘Like there’s a big rubber band tightening around my chest.’

  ‘How long has it been hurting?’

  ‘Maybe an hour, at the most. I kind of woke up from my nap with the pain.’

  ‘He was doing the whole gasping, snorting thing and then he woke up and started grabbing his chest,’ his wife added, her face cloaked in fear.

  ‘Have you felt it before?’

  ‘No.’ Brad could see, despite the bravado he’d been clinging to, Ralph was almost as concerned as his wife.

  ‘Alright, I’m going to take your blood pressure now and then we’ll run an ECG test and see if we can get to the bottom of this pain.’

  ‘That’d be good. I’ve been doing everything you told me to—walking, cutting the fatty foods, I’ve stopped smoking,’ Ralph informed him as Brad set up the machine, wrapping the cuff around the patient’s arm. ‘I’ve even lost a couple of kilos.’

  ‘That’s a great start,’ Brad answered, watching the numbers on the machine rising as the cuff inflated.

  ‘And I’ve been taking all the meds you guys have been telling me to, so I should be completely healthy by now.’

  But the truth was Ralph was far from healthy. His blood pressure was still through the roof and the latest pathology results had shown no improvement in his heart function. There had to be another issue at play and Brad was pretty sure it was sleep apnoea.

  ‘Have you heard from the sleep lab yet?’ Brad had sent a referral through to the public hospital sleep lab for Ralph three months ago.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’ll give them a call, see what the hold up is.’ Brad didn’t hold out much hope of the phone call making a difference. There were hundreds of GPs like him, referring thousands of patients just like Ralph onto the over-burdened system. It was a damn shame the Templetons weren’t in a financial position to use the private health system, because there was virtually no waiting list with some of the private sleep clinics.

  If only Brad’s new cost effective home monitoring service was up and running, the Templeton’s lack of private health cover wouldn’t be an issue. Working with one of the sleep physicians from St Mary’s Hospital, Brad had spent the last couple of months designing a primary care-based diagnostic service. They were almost up and running—they had the equipment, the processes. All they needed was an experienced staff member to run the service, but finding the right person was proving nigh on impossible.

  The machine beeped, drawing his attention.

  ‘Wow, that’s the lowest it’s been in years,’ Ralph exclaimed as Brad unwrapped the cuff from his arm. ‘Maybe the meds are finally starting to work.’

  ‘Maybe…’ but more likely the
low reading indicated that Ralph was in fact suffering from unstable angina.

  ‘Can you lie down on the examination table and open your shirt?’ Brad instructed his patient. ‘I’ll be back in a minute with the ECG machine.’

  Once he’d wheeled the portable device in, Brad attached the electrodes with practised ease to Ralph’s torso, wrists and ankles. While the machine performed the test, Brad pulled up Ralph’s previous ECG onto the computer screen for comparison. The device buzzed when it was done, and Brad printed out the results.

  One look was all it took. Reaching for the phone on his desk, he buzzed through to reception. ‘Stephanie, can you call an ambulance, please?’

  ‘What? Why?’ his patient gasped.

  ‘I need to get you to the hospital, Ralph. Now.’

  ***

  4:58. Just in time.

  Ana turned off the engine, slipped from the car and crossed the darkening car park to the back entrance of St Mary’s Hospital. It was rather surreal to be entering the hospital while the late afternoon sun still streamed towards the door.

  A sudden bout of nervous tension washed through Ana. Too skittish to wait for the elevator, she made short work of the five flights of stairs up to the sleep laboratory floor. Despite the mid-autumn crispness outside the building, the stairwell was warm and stuffy, the stench of concrete strong. Keen to escape its confines, Ana pushed heavily on the fire exit door.

  Instantly the cool, dry comfort of the air conditioned office surrounded her, and she strode into the empty waiting area with a cheerful, confident smile plastered across her face.

  ‘Hiya,’ she greeted Jan, the supremely organised administration officer manning the front desk.

  ‘Hi, Ana,’ Jan answered. ‘Jenny told me to send you straight through.’

  ‘Great.’ Ana made her way down the hushed corridor to the manager’s office. Jenny was sitting at her computer, eyes glued to the screen. Ana knocked on the open door and her manager swung around, straight blonde hair swinging over her shoulder in the process.