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“If there’s someone else you’d rather I speak with...” Lea put a hand on his arm.
“No. I’m your man. Apologies. There’s just someone I—”
Someone I should’ve kissed ten years ago. Someone I should’ve taken on a proper date. Someone I never thought I’d see again.
He looked down at Lea’s feet and saw strappy sandals not wholly suited to working in a chaotic clinic.
“Here on holiday?”
“I was.” Lea tipped her head and tried to capture his attention. “But now I’m here to help. I don’t have any equipment but I have these.” She lifted up her hands and twisted them as if they were freshly washed for surgery.
“Perfect. Good.”
Wholly distracted, he let his attention shift past Lea yet again.
Cailey face had grown...not thinner...just... Well, even more beautiful, obviously. She’d had quite a lead in that department. Her cheekbones had become more elegantly defined...her lips were still that deep red, difficult to believe it was real and not painted on...
Had she finally come home?
“Dr. Nikolaides...?” Lea’s expression shifted to one of grim determination. “You obviously need to be elsewhere. Now, I haven’t practiced emergency medicine in a while. But I’m definitely up to the cuts and bruises variety of injury—if you’ll just point me in the right direction I can get on with helping patients.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He gave himself a sharp shake. He wasn’t here to ogle ghosts from the past. There were very real, very urgent medical cases that needed help. Now.
“Why don’t you go grab a notebook from Petra? She’s the loving but steel-hearted battleax working the main desk. She’ll give you everything you need to work your way through the queue and categorize people. We’ve got a couple of doctors working just through that archway. It’s makeshift, but we aren’t really kitted out for intensive care. I’ll be there shortly. There are a couple more volunteer doctors from the mainland seeing less urgent cases.”
He looked up to the skylight above them as a medical helicopter flew overhead.
“And a medevac. If we’re lucky, we’ll soon have one very talented nurse on board as well.”
Lea gave his arm a quick squeeze, then headed toward Reception to start work. If she’d said something to him, he wouldn’t have known. All he wanted to know was what had brought Cailey back to the island she’d sworn never to set foot on again.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u7fe11c50-78a5-5354-93e4-ef7a9b2634b7)
“WELL, LOOK WHO we have here. If it isn’t Little Miss I’m-Going-to-Make-a-Difference.”
Theo Nikolaides. As she lived and breathed...barely.
She opened her mouth. She’d prepared for this. Spent hours of her life thinking about what to say when and if she ever saw him again.
Fffzzzzttt! There went her ability to use actual words.
“Come to help out at our little backwater clinic, have you?”
“I...uh...”
Kaboom! An explosion of fireworks she was clearly powerless to resist went off in her chest, then her belly, then her... Well, everywhere, really.
“Cailey? Are you all right? You haven’t been hurt, have you?”
Crrrrassssh! Down came the defenses she’d worked so hard to build up.
She batted away his hand as he reached toward her. She wasn’t ready yet.For that voice. Those words. His kindness.
Her cheeks burned at the memory of their heated exchange all those years ago. She forced herself to swallow the array of comebacks she could’ve spat back, and instead shifted the infant she’d been cuddling back into the arms of his mother.
Prove you’ve grown up. Prove you’ve made something of yourself!
“It looks like a superficial wound to me. Cuts always bleed a lot. Just keep the pressure on and I’m sure the good doctor here will get to you as soon as possible.”
“Absolutely.” Theo gave the mum a quick nod in Lea’s direction. “Dr. Risi will be down in a minute to log the case, and we’ll get someone to see you and this little one as soon as possible.”
Cailey watched, transfixed, as Theo ran his index finger along the infant’s face. How could someone so incredibly caring leave his father to do his talking for him?
Pffft. They’d both been young and stupid. At least she had been. On too many fronts.
Didn’t mean they could kiss and make-up, though.
A vivid image of Theo pulling her roughly to him for a hot, heated kiss swept through her body. And then she crushed it. That was all in the past.
“How funny—you remember my goal.” She turned on her brightest smile. “Mission accomplished. I am here to make a difference, thank you very much. A good one. So, if you don’t mind putting one of the ‘little people’ to work, I’ll happily get out of your way.”
Sea-green eyes bored into her from a face featuring the strong, evenly planed cheekbones she’d dreamt of tracing with first a finger...then her lips...
He was looking at her curiously. She shifted under his gaze, not enjoying the intense scrutiny.
“Here I was, thinking an earthquake would’ve reminded you that we’re all born equal,” he said blandly.
It would’ve been a hell of a touché if she hadn’t known for a fact he thought she was in an intellectual league well below him.
She held her ground, arched an eyebrow that might have looked defensive but was in fact proud and resilient and completely without insecurity. She hadn’t knuckled down for years of painstaking study, work and paying off student loans to get this far only to feel belittled again.
“I think you would probably be most useful working alongside me. C’mon.” He scooped up her backpack, turned and signaled for her to follow him. “Let’s get you some scrubs and then you can show me what you’re made of.”
He put his hand on the small of her back and began steering her through the crowd, using his own body as a shield against the push and surge of people desperate to see a doctor.
While her infuriated brain shot off in one direction Cailey’s body was actively registering Theo’s on a much more primal level. All six-foot-something, long-legged, trim-waisted, white-coated package of complete and utter male perfection kept brushing up against her as if...as if they had already shared an intimacy beyond that one perfect kiss...
“I think I can get scrubs on my own, ta.” She shot him her best I’m-a-big-girl-now look, eyes sparking as they landed on his amused expression.
“No, you can’t. You’ve never been here before.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Yeah, but nothing.” He grinned down at her. “You can quit the ‘city girl’ act, Cailey. You’re home now. Time to see what my little kouklamou of Mythelios is made of.”
It certainly wasn’t sugar and spice. Not these days, anyway.
Despite her rising fury, something in her softened as she stomped alongside him to get kitted out in scrubs.
Beautiful doll. He’d always called her that back then. Sure, she’d just been his kid sister’s friend. Daughter of his family’s housekeeper. But even though they’d never put words to it there’d been something... Something magic between them.
She’d been absolutely sure of it right up until the moment she’d heard him tell his friends that a Nikolaides would never end up with a cleaner.
And that had been that.
Rage at the memory did nothing to stop her insides from fluttering as his hand shifted on the small of her back. How on earth she’d thought she would be immune to him even after all this time was beyond her.
She stole a glance at him as he stepped to the side to avoid a gurney being wheeled through the packed corridor at high speed.
Theo might not be everybody’s cup of tea. He had his flaws. A tiny scar by his eye acquired from daredevil antics in one of his father’s olive groves. Hair that always looked as if it could do with a cut. Another small scar just below his nose that only seemed to add to the strength of his unbelievably sensual mouth. Sensual, but male.
Everything about him screamed alpha. Masculine. It had since they were young—as if he’d been born vividly aware of the world’s mysteries and was just biding his time until the rest of the world caught up. Take it or leave it—that was his attitude. Not cavalier. Or haughty. Simply knowing. As if he’d made a deal with the universe to do his part and in exchange...
That was the mystery. She’d never seen him take anything. Not one single solitary time. That was the Theo enigma.
He might talk the talk of a rich, privileged so-and-so, but she’d always thought the shadows that crossed those sea-green eyes of his betrayed greater depths. Hidden sorrows he’d rather keep secret. He’d never bare the heart behind that insanely touchable chest of his.
He turned back to her with a smile still playing on his lips. Trust him to be all calm and relaxed amidst a level of mayhem that would have rendered any sane person tearing out their hair.
“There’s no need for a tour of the clinic. Shall we just get to work?”
“I think you’re going to want to get out of that top first.”
“I...uh...” She looked down at the white top she was wearing that had somehow magically acquired a layer of grime and rolled her eyes. Kyros. Her brother had been filthy.
Oh, good grief. Where’s your spine? Your vocabulary? Use them!
“It’s not—I’m here to...”
What is wrong with you?
A nurse skidded to a halt beside Theo and put a hand on her chest to stop him. Lucky minx.
“Dr. Nikolaides, we’ve got five patients coming in the next ambulance.”
“Five!”
Two pairs of eyes snapped to her.
“There are only two ambulances on the island. We bring in as many people as they can carry,” Theo explained.
There was nothing in his voice beyond passing on information. Where was the derision? Why was he taking his time with her? When had he become so...so...extra-perfect?
Her eyes fixed on Theo’s lips as he spoke to the nurse. On the tip of his tongue as it touched and retreated from the smooth run of teeth save one crooked one just to the left of center that she’d always liked. Yet another slight imperfection that made him mysteriously even more perfect.
His tongue swept the length of his lower lip before his teeth snagged that lip and pressed down on it while he thought for a moment when the nurse asked where he wanted the patients. It was like being in a slow-motion version of her teenaged fantasies...before the kissing began.
She watched, still mesmerized, as he released his lip and rattled off a list of updates.
A Mrs. Carnosi with a broken arm needed to go to Cubicle Three while her plaster set. A man was in Recovery on the first floor after a heart attack—could someone find his wife down at the harbor? She was helping the baker, he thought. A four-year-old with a head wound could probably do with some crayons to pass the time as the televisions weren’t working. All the children, in fact. There were some in a storage locker along with some paper. He was sure of it. Oh, and he’d organized a water delivery so everyone who entered the clinic could be given a two-liter bottle to see them through their waiting time.
Was there nothing the man hadn’t thought of? All this while also seeing patients? Where was the young man she’d last seen? Arrogant. Elitist. The one who’d turned against her as easily as kicking a door shut. The one who’d compelled her to scrimp and save and study and learn. To leave her homeland pushed by the towering wave of shame that she would never be good enough for a man like him.
She couldn’t have been wrong about him after all of this time. Could she?
Theo reached back and gave her shoulder a little pat and a squeeze as another doctor took the nurse’s spot and asked him to run his eye across some X-rays. A compound fracture. Were they up to performing the surgery the patient would require?
Vividly aware of Theo’s fingers on her shoulder, Cailey was barely capable of lucid thought. Her insides were behaving like electricity cables cut loose in a storm. Sparks flying everywhere. Nothing behaving the way it should.
She squeezed her eyes tight against the warm olive color of Theo’s skin. His toned physique. The perfect, capable hands touching her.
Just imagining the man holding a child, helping a yiayia to cross the street with her shopping or explaining to a daredevil teen that he couldn’t go swimming while his arm was still in a plaster made her insides turn into liquid gold.
Which was all very irritating because she was meant to have become immune to Theo Nikolaides.
She forced herself to open her eyes and meet the mossy hues of his irises whilst trying her level best to ignore the fact that the man was in possession of the longest, darkest lashes she’d ever seen. He also had more than a five o’clock shadow, but that indicated he’d been working hard and—surprise, surprise—made him look more like a rock star than an unkempt layabout.
No doubt about it. As a grown man Theo Nikolaides was a living, breathing example of a mortal embodying the majesty of the Greek gods of legend. Zeus, Adonis, Apollo... Eros...
“Shall we get you out of these things?”
Theo was looking pointedly at her filthy top, but her thoughts and his tone suggested anything but an innocent need to improve her hygiene.
Was he...flirting with her?
This was taking being cool in the eye of a storm to a whole new level.
Just one lazy scan of her dust-covered body and—poof!—just like that she felt naked. Each sweep of his eyes drew her awareness to the cotton brushing against her belly, her breasts, the tingling between her legs that was really, really inappropriate seeing as she’d vowed to remain immune to the Nikolaides effect. Not to mention the scores of patients waiting.
Seeing him looking at her the way he was...hungrily...she felt a brand-new array of fireworks light up her insides and actual electricity crackle between them.
This was all wrong. There was a crisis happening not inches away. People needed help. Patients needed his attention. Her attention.
He’d never looked at her like this before. As if she were an oasis and he’d crawled in from the desert desperate for one thing and one thing only.
The sun abruptly lit up the clinic’s central glass dome, its rays filtering down to them through a tumble of rooftop wisteria like film lighting. Dappled. Hints of gold and diamonds.
When Theo tilted his face, green eyes still locked with hers, it was all she could do not to reach into her chest and give him her heart. It had always been his. He’d just never wanted it.
Before she could say anything, though, he held out his arm to clear a path for her toward the rear of the clinic.
Of course the crowd parted. Things like that happened for the Theo Nikolaideses of the world. And the Patera and the Xenakis families. Not to mention the Moustakas family. The four families who commanded the bulk of the island’s wealth thanks to their business savvy.
Mopaxeni Shipping. The glittering star of the Aegean Seas and beyond. All those businessmen’s sons would inherit untold millions—if not billions. So what on earth was Theo doing here in this small town clinic when the world was his oyster?
“Aren’t you meant to be—?”
