Jill. The name flickered through his brain. He’d certainly dated more than his fair share of beautiful women and he’d worked all over the world. Something fell into place. London. No. Let’s hope she wasn’t talking about that Jill. Just what he needed—a misguided, loyal friend. If his head wasn’t thumping so much this could almost be funny. Not only that—Ms Misguided was a knockout. A beautiful work colleague would never be a problem. But an angry, venomous one would be. This was a small team. They had to work together. It could be badly affected by two people who didn’t get on.
She wasn’t finished. ‘But I bet plenty of women have called you a heartbreaker before.’
‘Have we met?’ His eyes ran up and down her body and she felt a prickle of disgust—he’d almost mirrored her thoughts from earlier. ‘I think I’d remember.’
A few minutes before she’d had nice thoughts drifting about her head about their new doctor. She’d thought he was handsome. She’d thought he was fit. She’d even thought… No. She hadn’t. She couldn’t possibly have.
He frowned. ‘Jill? Who was she again? Remind me.’
Francesca felt rage build inside her. Arrogant so-and-so. The palm of her hand itched—she wanted it to come into contact with his perfect cheek.
‘Six years ago. London. Blonde model. You took her on your yacht for the weekend.’
‘Oh, that Jill.’ His frown deepened, puckering little lines around his eyes. He turned away, pulling his muddied jacket and T-shirt over his head, and she sensed it was on purpose. She tossed the scrubs and towel onto the bed beside him.
‘Yes, that Jill.’ The volume of her voice increased in proportion to her rage. ‘The one you dumped in the middle of the night in the pouring rain outside your flat. What kind of a man does that?’
He whipped around, the muddied jacket and T-shirt clenched in his fists, leaving his wide brown chest right in front of her eyes. The fury in her voice couldn’t match the venom in his eyes. ‘What kind of a man does that?’ he growled.
She gulped. He was half-dressed, his shoulder muscles tense, his bare abdomen rigid. If they were shooting an action movie right now he would be the perfect poster-boy hero.
All of a sudden the room felt much smaller. Maybe it was the six-foot-four presence. All trembling muscle and eyes shooting fireballs in her direction.
She could feel every hair on her body stand on end. And she hated it.
Because amongst the repulsion there was something else she was feeling—something more—and it went against every principle she had.
She pushed all those thoughts aside. If she ignored them then they weren’t actually there.
He still hadn’t answered. Probably because he was incoherent with rage.
‘What are you doing here anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be some billionaire-type doctor? You don’t actually have to work for a living, do you? Why on earth would you be working on a cruise ship?’
He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. What a surprise. All the usual assumptions, misunderstandings and wrong conclusions. All the things he went to pains to shake off. Normally he wouldn’t care what some stranger thought of him. But this stranger was part of his team and she was going to have to learn who was boss around here—hardly an ideal start. ‘Some things you wouldn’t understand.’ He leaned against the side of the bed, and could feel the pressure inside his head increase.
‘Try me.’
Something flashed across his face. He took a deep breath. ‘How well do you know Jill?’
‘She is my friend. She was my flatmate in London. We lived together for six months.’
‘Six years ago?’ There was an edge to his voice—almost as if he couldn’t believe someone had been friends with Jill that long.
‘Yes. We don’t live together any more but we keep in touch.’ She scanned her brain, trying to think of the last time she’d heard from Jill—maybe a week or more?
‘And how many times did you have to pick her up heartbroken in the middle of the night?’
‘Once.’ Not strictly true. But he was beginning to look too smug. There was a lot not to like. He was too handsome and too sure of himself. And she didn’t like that look on his face—as if he knew something she didn’t.
‘Jill is a really good friend of mine. She helped me when I needed it most. Make no mistake about where my loyalty lies, Gabriel.’
Those words didn’t even touch what Jill had done for her. When her father had died, Jill had dropped everything and flown straight up from London to Glasgow. She’d organised the funeral, dealt with the post-mortem, sorted out the insurance and the contents of the house—all things that Francesca couldn’t possibly have dealt with. Jill had been her rock.
In the past their relationship had always felt uneven, as if Francesca was constantly running after Jill and taking care of her. But when the chips had been down Jill had more than risen to the challenge. Francesca couldn’t have got through it without her.
‘How long are you here for?’
‘I haven’t even done my first shift and you’re trying to get rid of me?’
She shrugged.
‘As long as I want. I took this job at short notice—someone had broken their contract—so I was pretty much offered what I wanted. It’s up to me to decide how long I want to stay.’
Great. Who knew how long she would be stuck with him? ‘You didn’t answer the original question. Why would a billionaire doc like you want to be working on a cruise ship?’
He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Family stuff.’
It was the first interesting thing he’d said.
Yip. The walls in the room were definitely closing in on her. This was her worst nightmare. Working with this man every day was going to play havoc with her senses and her principles. She hated the fact that under other circumstances she might like him. She hated the fact she’d almost flirted with him.
‘I know you’ll have some clean uniforms in your quarters but how about putting these on right now?’ She pointed to the scrubs. She wrinkled her nose at the ruined jacket and T-shirt, still in his hand. ‘I don’t care how good the laundry staff are here, they’re not going to be able to save those.’
Gabriel stood up, his legs feeling firmer than before. He hadn’t even considered his appearance. The pristine white uniform he was holding was covered in remnants of brown sludge. His body hadn’t fared much better. From the port wall perhaps? She was right, no matter what the TV adverts pretended to show, no washing powder on the planet could sort this out.
He grabbed the towel to rub his hair, momentarily forgetting the reason he was there and wincing as the edge of the towel caught his wound.
‘Easy, tiger.’ Francesca pushed him down onto the edge of the bed. ‘Let me do that.’ She took the towel from his hands and gently dried around the edges.
‘Stop fussing,’ he muttered, trying to swat her hand away. ‘I need a shower.’
Francesca was doing her best to push her anger aside. She had a job to do. Whether she liked him or not, he was a patient—one she’d just resuscitated and with a head injury. She was a good nurse. This was straightforward. She could do this. ‘Right now I’m in charge—not you. You can go in the shower when I say so.’ She stuck a tympanic thermometer in his ear. ‘I’m going to do a full set of neurological observations on you, then clean that head wound and either glue or stitch it.’ She glanced at the reading