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No, he hadn’t forgotten that. Neither had he forgotten how fiercely loyal the Stockton siblings were, how they’d been trained to be soldier tough from the time they’d worn diapers. Although Amelia’s father had been civil when their paths had crossed recently, Cole suspected the majority of the Stocktons despised him.
All but Clara.
Then again, his former fiancée was the only one who knew the truth of what had transpired between them.
Cole stepped into the privacy of the surgical suite just off the sick ward, wondering if he’d really known what he was getting himself into when he’d finagled the assignment on board the USS Benjamin Franklin. He’d thought he had, but now, after seeing Amelia again, he had to wonder at his logic. Had he made a horrible miscalculation?
“I thought that went surprisingly well, considering.”
He glanced at the corpsman serving as his guide. “Considering?”
Had word already gotten out? The military community, especially the military medical community, was small, but surely his and Clara’s wedding fiasco hadn’t been such a hot topic that two years later folks were still talking about it?
“Considering you obviously upset Dr Stockton in a former life.”
“Obviously,” Cole muttered, knowing exactly what he’d done that had upset the lovely Dr Stockton and wishing circumstances had been different, that their relationship hadn’t taken the disastrous course it had. Tagging along with him and Clara, frequently working beside him during residency, she’d been like the kid sister he’d never had. Only, his feelings for his fiancée’s little sister had developed into something much more intense than those of a big brother.
Something so intense that no matter how he’d tried fighting those feelings, how long he’d denied them, he’d had to face facts. He had been engaged to the wrong Stockton daughter. He’d wanted Amelia. Deep down, all-consuming, wanted her with a passion he’d never felt before or since.
“She’s usually even-keeled,” Richard continued, looking intrigued. He crossed his arms, leaning against the bulkhead. “I’ve never seen her lose her cool, or even come close as she almost did when you walked into the sick bay. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone could rattle her infamous Stockton stoicism. What happened?”
“Between Dr Stockton and I? Nothing.” Cole took in his shipmate’s “yeah, right” expression and clarified. Better to get his version of the truth out before the rumor mill started something nasty that would add fire to Amelia’s hatred toward him.
“I was engaged to her older sister. It didn’t work out.”
Didn’t work out. Such an understatement, but what had happened between Clara and himself wasn’t his secret to tell. He’d promised he’d never reveal that she’d been the one to call off their wedding. Yes, only because she’d beaten him to it, but she had spoken up before he had. She’d also sworn him to secrecy. Cole hadn’t told a soul. Not even Amelia when he’d gone to her that night, desperately wanting to explain, to beg her to forgive him.
“You were engaged to Clara Stockton?” Richard whistled, looking impressed. “How come I never knew that?”
Cole shrugged.
“I met her, when I was inland. She was stationed nearby and joined several of us for drinks.” He whistled again. “She’s a looker.”
“Yes,” he agreed. Clara was a beautiful woman. On the day they’d met, she’d charmed him with her smile, her intelligence, her inherent toughness that was so in contradiction of her beauty-queen looks. She’d had a passion for medicine that matched his own and had professed to want the same things out of life. For the first time, he’d connected—really connected—with a woman.
For the first time, he’d felt a part of a family.
A wonderful, admirable family that would take on the world to protect each other.
Or to keep from disappointing each other.
Cole had longed for such a family his whole life. To be a part of something so strong.
He and Clara had studied together, worked together, laughed together. On the occasions they’d visited with her family, the Stocktons had welcomed him into their ranks with open arms. During their second year, asking her to marry him had seemed the logical thing to do. Becoming a real, permanent part of the Stockton family had seemed the most desirable thing he could imagine. He’d loved the time spent with them. With Clara. And Amelia.
Especially Amelia, he’d realized too late.
All the Stockton children were close, but Clara and Amelia shared a special bond, more best friends than sisters. Cole had spent as much if not more time with Amelia than he had Clara after Amelia had started medical school. Had gone from treating her as a kid sister to looking at her and seeing a woman who inspired fantasies.
“What happened?” Richard prompted when Cole stayed lost in his thoughts too long.
Cole inwardly sighed, but kept his shoulders square. He’d known coming aboard this ship would open old wounds. Wasn’t that one of the reasons he’d come? To open those wounds so they could finally properly heal? “Clara and I realized we’d made a mistake in becoming engaged and broke things off. I’ve not seen her since.”
Because Clara had completely changed her life plans and signed up to serve as a flight surgeon, going to helicopter flight school rather than a military hospital or aircraft carrier medical unit. They e-mailed on the rare occasion, but even that had grown further and further apart.
Richard’s brows rose. “That would have been, what? Two? Three years ago?”
“Yes.” Two long and torturous years where a single weekend had forever changed the course of his life. Two long and torturous years in which he’d tried to forget the Stocktons. Yet here he was, seeking out the Stockton he couldn’t forget. He glanced around the surgical suite, taking in the neutral tones of the room. Dull gray bulkheads and metal cabinets of sturdy construction. “Tell me, where are the laparoscopic instruments? I’ll put together a laparoscopic appendectomy set to my preferences. Then I want to go through and make sure the staples match the handles and check out the rest of the equipment so I don’t run into any surprises midprocedure.”
Accurately sensing Cole’s desire to change the subject, the corpsman explained the day-to-day basics in the surgical ward.
Not much different from what he’d expected, even better equipped than some of the sites he’d worked at prior to being deployed. Yet he couldn’t recall his palms sweating and his heart racing at any other new assignment.
He knew the reason why.
The same reason he’d finagled his assignment on board this ship when doing so could cost him everything.
Amelia Stockton.
Chapter Two
LATER that morning, Amelia grimaced at the oozing wound on Corporal Wright’s left inner thigh. “How long has the area looked like this?”
He shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Yesterday the spot was a little red. Today it looks like I got shot and the place festered all to hell.”
The abscess looked nothing like a real gunshot wound, but she didn’t bother explaining that to the eighteen-year-old. She hoped he never had reason to learn otherwise.
She turned to the cabinet that contained the appropriate supplies, pulled out a bottle of one percent Xylocaine, and drew up a syringe full of the numbing agent. “Are you allergic to any medicines?”
“I’m not allergic to anything.” He shook his head, eyeing the syringe with pale-faced dread but trying not to show his dislike of needles. “What are you planning to do, Doc?”
“I’m going to open the area, drain the abscess, then pack the wound with special sterile packing gauze that will stay in the opened area for a few days.”
The corporal swallowed, his gaze lingering on the syringe. “Will it hurt?”
Amelia could laugh at the irony of his question. The men she dealt with had been through so much with their training, could endure great hardships, yet wave a needle and syringe in front of the biggest, baddest of the lot and he just might turn green in the face.
“Just a stick and some burn when the numbing agent is injected. After the medication, you shouldn’t feel a thing,” she explained.
She swabbed the area with an antiseptic solution then stuck the needle bevel up into the raised red area, numbing the overlying skin. Once she’d finished injecting the area, she dropped the used syringe into a sharps container then smiled at her still-pale patient.
“While the numbing agent is taking effect, my nurse, Tracy, is going to set up a surgical tray so I can open the area and drain the abscess. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll get this taken care of.”
Tossing her protective gloves into the appropriate waste receptacle, she left the small exam area and went into the room that served as the medical office.
Her gaze went to the computer on her desk and she winced.
Unless her sister was out in the field, she’d have an e-mail from Clara. She didn’t want to tell her sister that her runaway groom was on board, that for the next few months Amelia would be working alongside him, spending more time with him than she’d like.
Than she’d like?
She didn’t want to spend any time with Cole.
None. Never again.
If she’d never met the blasted man that would have been just fine.
Better than fine.
Her life would have been better. Less haunted by twinkling blue eyes and a sexily timbred voice that belonged to a man she’d once idolized. How could fate have been so cruel as to assign him to serve on the same ship?
“Need help?”
She spun, coming face-to-face with the source of her agitation. “Not from you.”
His brow arched.
“Sir,” she added, in deference to his higher rank.
Cole’s gaze narrowed. “That’s not what I was getting at.”
“No? Not tossing around your weight, sir?”
“No.” He said the word slowly, studying her.
Hello, she was not a bug under a magnifying glass and could he please just go jump overboard? Anything, just so long as she didn’t have to look at him, didn’t have to remember.
Her fingers clenched into tight fists. “Then what were you getting at, Dr Stanley?”
He crammed his hands into his pants pockets. “I suppose asking you to call me Cole would be useless?”
“You suppose correctly, sir.”
Her eyes had to be tiny slits of disdain because she was holding back none of her anger, none of her frustration. However, she desperately held back all of her hurt, all of the pain she’d felt at his sudden absence from her life two years ago when he’d been such an integral part of her very being for the majority of her university days. God, how she’d hurt, ached to her very core.
“Amelia.”
“I did not give you permission to call me Amelia.” She did not want to hear her name on his lips. Memories of another time, another place, of him whispering her name echoed through her mind, twisting her insides with feelings she’d denied for so long, feelings she didn’t want. Not then. Certainly not now.
“Actually, you did,” he reminded her, his gaze not leaving hers, pinning her beneath intense blue. “Just because time has passed, it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten.”
That she understood. Two years certainly hadn’t been enough time for her to forget a single thing about Cole. Sometimes she wondered if forever would be long enough or if she was doomed to spend eternity remembering every detail about the man looking so intently at her.
“We were friends once.” The color of his eyes darkened to a deep blue. “Good friends.”
Gritting her teeth, forcing her breathing to remain even, calm, she busied herself picking up a stack of papers from her desk and thumbing through them, reminding herself that she’d likely be thrown in the brig if she didn’t get her emotions under control. How could he say that after…after…?
“Well, I have forgotten,” she lied for pure self-preservation. “We were never friends. You’re just some joker who had a laugh at my sister’s and my expense and walked away from my family without a backward glance.”
“Amelia,” he began, then sighed, glanced over his shoulders down the narrow corridor leading off the sick ward to the office. When his gaze met hers next, steely determination had settled in. “We need to talk.”
She crossed her arms, glared. He wasn’t going to intimidate her if that’s what he was trying to do. “Was the surgical suite not to your satisfaction?”
“I haven’t been satisfied in years, Amelia.”
“Call me Dr Stockton.” She emphasized each word. “And I fail to see what your lack of satisfaction has to do with me.”
“Don’t you?” he asked softly, laughing with more than a hint of irony.
“Go away.” She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. How dared he bring that up, that crazy night, weeks after the non-wedding, when he’d come to see her and she’d eventually sent him packing? Besides, if he was trying to tell her he hadn’t been with anyone for two years, she’d never believe him. Not in a million years. Which meant he was trying to play her for a fool. Again. She touched the desk, running her fingers over the smooth surface, collecting her wits before glancing up. “I never wanted to see you again.”
“You made that obvious.”
“Yet here you stand,” she needlessly pointed out, riffling through papers as if she was bored with their conversation. Truth was, she needed to get away from him, needed to breathe. She couldn’t breathe with Cole standing so close, with him eyeing her with such intensity.
“Unless orders come stating otherwise, I’m here for the full deployment. Dr Lewis has been assigned landside.”
Six months. That was the usual duration of a surgeon on board a ship. Anything longer than that and their surgical skills might become rusty. Their usual days consisted of elective procedures such as vasectomies or ingrown toenail extractions, with the occasional gallbladder and appendix removal thrown in for good measure. Usually nothing as intense as working in a hospital setting like Cole must be used to.
“Good for you.” She kept her tone level but, as she had for much of the day, inside she screamed. Loud and fierce and full of frustration.
Six months she was stuck working with him. Six whole months. Fine. She could do anything for six months. She was a Stockton.
“Which means we need to work through your anger for me.”
She glanced up, met his gaze. “There’s nothing to work through.”
“You don’t hate me?” He didn’t look convinced. “Because I’m picking up pretty strong vibes that you’d like to dump me overboard.”
He was picking up on that, was he? Good, maybe he’d take the hint.
“You don’t rate that much of my thoughts.” Liar, liar, pants on fire, but she couldn’t admit that she’d thought of him often during the past two years.
Way too often.
“You’ve forgiven me?” He looked skeptical.
“For breaking my sister’s heart and making a mockery of her the night before her wedding?” she asked, laughing cynically. For making me look at you with stars in my eyes and breaking my heart right along with Clara’s? Never. “One thing you should know about us Stocktons, we’re a loyal bunch. We look after our own and don’t take kindly to anyone who messes with our family.”
“I remember. You have an exceptional family.” He smiled as if from fond memories. “Your father is one of the greatest men I’ve ever met.”
“Yes, he is.” No one was more dependable or loyal than her father and Amelia loved him with her whole heart. He deserved her love because a finer man had never lived. John Stockton ruled with an iron fist and expected everyone to jump to his tune. Everyone did, all the Stockton children included. “He thinks you’re a piece of no-good trash.”
Cole flinched, but she felt no pleasure that her barb had hit home. She should be pleased, should want him to feel as much pain and remorse as humanly possible for the cruel way he’d treated her family.
Yet all she felt was the desire to be far away from him, to actually still be in her bunk, fast asleep, to wake up and find Cole’s presence on board to be a horrible nightmare rather than her current reality.
Tiring of whatever game he played, she took a deep breath. “What is it you want, Dr Stanley?”
