“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.
“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