She hadn’t wanted to borrow it from Grandma Anna’s vast array of baby equipment because it had obviously seen years of service. But Anna had been very persuasive, telling her that it would be difficult to get a taxi down from Chorio, the upper town, to Yialos, the area around the harbour. The hourly bus would be overcrowded and with standing room only. Much better to push Rose in the buggy down the Kali Strata.
Cathy knelt down to take a look at the loose wheel that was now firmly stuck in a deep crevice in the cobblestones. Rose leaned over the side and stroked Cathy’s long blond hair as she struggled to extricate the wheel, gurgling all the while, obviously desperate to communicate her own thoughts on the situation!
“Can I help you?”
The deep masculine voice startled her. She adjusted her sunglasses as she squinted up at the tall figure outlined in the dying rays of the low-lying sun.
“Oh, it’s you! For a moment I hadn’t recognised you in…in your er…casual gear, Dr Karavolis.”
“Please call me Yannis.”
That wasn’t what he’d said that afteroon when she’d disturbed him whilst he’d been operating in Theatre! His eyes above the mask had carried a definite expression of irritation as she’d pushed open the swing door, taken a peek and then hurried away.
Holding onto the buggy handle, she stood up so as not to feel inferior to Dr Karavolis for the second time in one day. Tanya had told her when she’d been contemplating coming out to work at the Ceres hospital that she might find Yannis Karavolis difficult to understand on a personal level. She’d explained that his wife had died in a tragic accident over three years ago and he didn’t seem to have yet recovered. He was an excellent doctor, apparently, but made no effort to socialise.
“Let me take a look at that wheel.”
He bent down just as she was standing up and she felt his arm accidentally brush the side of her breast as she attempted to rise from her crouching position as elegantly as possible. For a second it startled her, the feel of a man’s arm against her body. The hint of masculine scent as he crouched down. She had thought she was now totally immune to instant attraction. But she couldn’t ignore the heightening of her senses, the excitement of being in close contact with a man, the probably imagined increase in her pulse rate.
Heavens above! She would have to get out more so that she could apply her new rules to every encounter with the opposite sex. She’d had her fingers burned so many times before that she wasn’t going to ever—repeat, ever—take another chance with a man. However handsome—and Dr Karavolis was decidedly handsome from where she was now standing. If she wasn’t now so world weary and experienced she might have considered a little dalliance with this man who’d literally just dropped by so suddenly.
Rose was now giggling, having stuck out a chubby, dimpled hand to grasp a clump of the helpful doctor’s thick black hair.
Cathy, glanced anxiously down at the crouching Yannis. Their eyes met. For a moment she felt a definite flutter of excitement. Yes, that’s what it was. Just a simple flutter but enough to make her think that this man must have been quite something in his younger days; before tragedy had turned him into a working zombie.
It was a good thing that she’d given up on the difficult male species or she might at that fleeting moment have found herself advancing her embryonic ideas into something exciting.
His eyes were dark brown, sultry, vulnerable. She’d had time to notice that before he bent down once more to his task.
“Gently, Rose,” Cathy said in Greek. “You must be careful not to hurt Dr Karavolis”
Rose giggled on, completely ignoring her mother’s instructions.
“You’re teaching your daughter Greek? That’s good.”
“Oh, she’ll pick it up like I had to when I came out here for holidays and my cousin Tanya and all the other children used to make fun of me. I soon learned out of self-preservation, I can tell you.”
Yannis gave one more tug at the wheel and removed it from the deeply sunken crevice between the cobblestones.
“Here’s the wheel, but unfortunately it’s come unstuck from the buggy,” he said, gravely. He pulled himself to his full height, holding the wheel in one hand and making sure the buggy remained upright with the other.
Cathy looked up at him. “Well, er…thank you, anyway. I suppose…”
“Look, I was just going to have a drink and watch the sunset so…”
“Great minds think alike. I mean, we were just…”
“Please, why don’t you join me?”
He couldn’t imagine why he’d just said that! Company was the last thing he needed after his long, tiring day at the hospital. Especially another doctor…and a child…
“Both of us?”
He took a deep breath. “Well, we can hardly ask Rose to sit it out in her broken pushchair.”
He was already unbuckling the seat belt and lifting the delighted baby up into his arms. Something about the way he held her daughter told Cathy he adored babies, children in general.
She wondered, fleetingly, if he had children being looked after by a doting grandmother back in Athens, which Tanya had told her had been where he’d been working before he’d come here. Better not ask. She didn’t want to upset the fragile ambience that was building up between them.
Carefully holding Rose, whose fingers, had now transferred from his hair to his ears, he pushed the wrecked pushchair to the side of the path and led the way to the taverna that occupied the rocky peninsula at the beginning of this quiet bay.
The owner came out to the table Yannis had selected, beaming all over his face. He was carrying two glasses half-full of colourless liquid.
“I saw you struggling with that buggy,” he said in Greek. “You need a drink, ghiatro.”
So, the owner knew Yannis was a doctor. Probably this was Yannis’s hideaway when he was off duty, searching for solitude.
“Efharisto, Michaeli.” Yannis proceeded to introduce Cathy as Dr Catherine Meredith.
So Yannis had found the time between operations to check that she’d signed in with the admin department today. Otherwise she doubted whether her arrival on the island had registered with him. Certainly, no one had been expecting her to turn up unannounced today. The staff in the small admin department had told her she was expected to start work tomorrow but she could have a look around if she wanted to. That had been when she’d made her solitary tour of the hospital and barged into Theatre.
She picked up her glass. Realising the clear liquid was ouzo, Cathy decided to ask Michaelis for some water to dilute it. “Nero, parakalor.”
“You’re sure you’re happy with ouzo?” Yannis asked as Michaelis disappeared inside the taverna to get the water.
She smiled. “When in Rome…or rather on Ceres…it’s best to go with the flow. I prefer wine but I don’t want to hurt Michaelis’s feelings. He obviously knows you very well.”
“Oh, yes, we go back a long way. I’ve got a house further along this bay, on the shoreline near Nimborio. This is my bolt hole at the end of the day.”
“I thought it might be.”
Michaelis brought a bottle of water. Yannis, expertly holding the tired child against his shoulder, leaned across and topped up Cathy’s glass.
“Thank you.”
He raised his glass towards her. “Yamas!”
“Yamas!”
Rose’s eyes were closing now. In another few seconds she would be asleep.