‘What kind of medical professional?’
‘I used to be a nurse, but I’m not any more...’ Madeline let her words taper off. She didn’t particularly feel like explaining why she’d quit nursing. The thought of it still shamed her, but she doubted the time she’d spent on the wards of St David’s Hospital would help anyone who’d been mauled by a jaguar or hugged by an anaconda in the Amazon.
‘Is this necessary, Samantha?’ Ryan said, after a moment.
His tone was irritated. His arms were still crossed, tighter than ever.
Something in his icy tone made Madeline recall with a flash the other articles she’d uncovered on the internet. Ryan had lost one of his team members five years ago on a sponsored expedition. He’d been twenty-seven at the time. She remembered thinking that she and Ryan were the same age—both thirty-two now.
No one knew the finer details of how or why the young physician Josephine McCarthy had died suddenly out in the jungle. Ryan had clammed up—never shared it with the media. And the medical team with him at the time had also never divulged what had happened—if they even knew.
The rumour mill had been spinning ever since.
Most of what had been printed was hearsay, of course, but Ryan had spent a lot more time in the wild since then, setting up an HIV awareness programme in Africa, arranging vaccinations at schools in Nepal.
Apparently he hadn’t particularly wanted the camera crew to follow him when the concept of Medical Extremes had first been discussed, but the money they paid him helped thousands of villages get the medication they needed. And besides, the world needed to see the importance of doctors operating without borders.
That was what had been announced in the press release, at least.
‘I’m sorry, Ryan,’ Samantha said, interrupting Madeline’s thoughts. ‘A contract is a contract.’
‘I know... I know.’
His jaw twitched in annoyance as Madeline stood awkwardly between them.
‘If you don’t take Madeline with you we’ll only have to send someone else you haven’t even met, and we’re running out of time.’
‘Time has a habit of running out,’ he replied, somewhat mysteriously.
He’s incredibly moody—that was what she’d read. Those rumours must be true at least. Ryan Tobias spent his life touching the lives of many in the world’s most remote locations, but he himself was untouchable. And now Samantha was somehow asking her to accompany him on his next televised medical mission to the jungle?
She wondered whether her telling Samantha that she was now single had anything to do with this. She suddenly regretted telling her agent how Jason had decided to pursue his burgeoning relationship with a young zoologist called Adeline.
‘How can he want an Adeline when he has a perfectly good Madeline?’ she’d said at the time, enraged.
‘Ryan!’
Someone was calling him back towards a camera. He didn’t move. Instead he shot Madeline a narrow look that rattled every nerve-ending in her body. She fixed her eyes on his, determined not to let him know she had a lump in her throat the size of a cricket ball. He didn’t break his gaze—not that she was about to break hers either. She was damned if she’d let another moody man walk all over her, even if he was rich and famous.
‘Well, as you say, a contract is a contract,’ he muttered after a moment, sucking in a breath and letting it out so heavily that Madeline felt her damp hair ruffle.
‘It’ll be great for your profile,’ Samantha told him matter-of-factly, and Madeline caught him rolling his eyes.
‘We’ll see about that. Good to meet you, Madeline.’ He thrust his hand out at her suddenly. ‘We can always do with another nurse around, I suppose.’
‘Oh, like I said, I’m not a—’
‘Ryan! We need you over here, please.’ That voice again.
His face was expressionless as he engulfed Madeline’s hand with his own, and for some reason another episode of Medical Extremes was flashing in her mind. Cambodia. The one where he’d eaten a fried tarantula. It had been a gift from the family of a man he’d helped to save.
Ryan Tobias was fearless—that was what everyone said. Well. She was damned if she’d let him scare her.
‘I’m looking forward to working with you,’ she said calmly.
‘Ryan!’
‘I’m coming, damn it!’
He dropped her hand, turned and strolled across the studio, and Samantha took Madeline’s elbow, leading her to a sofa and coffee table in the corner of the chaos. Both were covered in sheets of paper.
‘You did good. I’m so sorry to spring this on you.’ She poured them both a cup of coffee. ‘But this opportunity wouldn’t have waited. I suggested you the moment I heard what happened to the last ghost-writer...’
‘What happened?’ Madeline realised just how dry her throat was.
‘Fell down some stairs—cracked three ribs, broke one arm. Ironic isn’t the word. Would you like a biscuit?’
She shook her head, glancing to her right. Ryan was walking towards a guy packing a camera into a very large black box on wheels, talking about some supplies he needed but hadn’t seen yet. His voice still sent chills...or was it thrills?...straight through her.
Was she really going to the Amazon?
‘He seems...nice,’ she ventured, sipping her coffee.
‘He’s very nice, when everything goes to plan. So, Madeline, the long and short of it is that Ryan’s contract states that he needs to deliver a memoir and his publishers want it released for Christmas. Only as yet he’s been too busy to write it.’
‘OK...’
Madeline gripped more tightly onto her cup and bit into her cheek. Ghost-writing wasn’t exactly something she was thrilled about doing. Her last book—written under her own name—hadn’t gone too well, though, due to her publisher having no marketing budget, mostly. Her sales had suffered horribly while she’d been out writing the next one in the middle of nowhere in Zimbabwe.
Apparently bad things happened to books if you couldn’t spend twenty-four hours a day on Twitter, telling everyone about them.
Bad things happened to relationships, too, if you stupidly left your boyfriend alone for two months...
Madeline pushed thoughts of Adeline from her head.
Samantha sipped her coffee, then put the cup down on the messy table.
‘Ryan is about to go and shoot the third season of Medical Extremes, as you know, and what with all his appointments he hasn’t got time for the memoir, too. We need someone to help him write the book at the same time as he’s filming—gather quotes, insights, interviews, you know? Am I right in thinking you’re still free to take a week or two, probably three, out of London at the moment?’
Madeline nodded blankly. Ryan was so tall and so commanding without even trying. Everyone seemed to be in awe of him. And although she was a little loath to admit it, after the way he’d just acted towards her, it wasn’t hard to see why.
As well as being the sexiest doctor since George Clooney, Ryan was a millionaire who gave selflessly to charities all over the world. He didn’t have a lot else to spend his riches on, apparently. His father was a heart surgeon, famed for working with those less fortunate in the US. Ryan had taken things one step further by setting up his own non-profit