Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride

by Amy Andrews

  Isobella shook her head. ‘I had one before tea.’

  They reached their door. ‘I’ll wait here until you’ve changed,’ Alex murmured. He hoped it sounded casual, and that the slight tremor in his voice could be put down to his damaged vocal cords instead of images of Isobella stripping down to her leopard print underwear.

  Isobella nodded, not looking at him, her hand stilling on the doorknob. A squall of emotions rivaling the force of Mary lashed her insides.

  Alex saw her hesitation. ‘I can sleep in the lab,’ he offered. How was he going to sleep anyway, with her and her damn lingerie only metres away? Even way down on the beach sleep had proved elusive the last two nights.

  She shivered, the erotic scrape of his voice teasing her bowstring-taut nerves back into languid relaxation. She opened the door to their room and the wild wind howling around the building rattled the taped window with ferocious intent, snapping her nerves tight again.

  She’d be lying if she didn’t admit that being on a small tropical island about to be sideswiped by a mighty cyclone didn’t freak her out a little. Having never lived in the tropics, she’d hadn’t fully appreciated the sheer raw power of weather. Her nights were too often filled with ICU flashbacks as it was. She really didn’t want to ride out a cyclone alone.

  ‘No. Mike wants us to all stay together.’ She didn’t look back as she entered the room and closed the door behind her.

  She took the light with her, and Alex was left in the pitch-black of the narrow hallway. He leaned back into the wall, trying not to think about the fact that she was getting out of her voluminous sarong and shapeless shirt and into God knew what. The last couple of days it had been tense between them, since their argument. But it hadn’t stopped him wanting to strip away her clothes and look at the real her. And not just the physical, but at whatever it was that lay behind the mask she showed to the world.

  And quite why he wanted to know her like that he wasn’t about to even analyse. All he knew for sure was that Isobella Nolan had intrigued him from the beginning, and her elusiveness only made him want to know more. He couldn’t remember if any woman had ever got to him this much. Not even Sonya. But then no one had ever really played so hard to get.

  ‘You can come in now.’

  Alex heard her muffled words and took a few seconds to brace himself against the solidness of the wall behind him before he faced her. He was more than aware it might be the only stable part of his night. A cyclone raged outside, and a battle to rival it was raging inside him.

  The glow from the lamp greeted him as he opened the door. He deliberately paid no attention to Isobella, although he could see she was lying on her bed with her knees drawn up and some papers balanced against them. He foraged through his bag on the top bunk, gathering a change of clothes quickly.

  Isobella was excruciatingly aware of the solid warmth of Alex’s body within touching distance. She turned her head, even though she’d been determined not to. His body from armpits down was right there. She could look her fill and he’d never know. His flat abs beneath his snug-fitting T-shirt. His narrow hips and the enticing bulge beneath his boardies. Her fingers tingled. What would he do if she reached out and touched him?

  ‘I’ll just hit the shower,’ Alex said, stepping back so he could peer down at her.

  Isobella snapped her eyes forward, shocked at her wayward thoughts. Was the disrupted weather pattern altering her personality? Like a full moon? Short circuiting her tightly controlled sensibilities? ‘Okay,’ she said, with as much uninterest as she could muster.

  Alex had almost tripped at the look that had been on Isobella’s face before she had turned away. Even through her giant glasses he had seen the treacle consistency of her molasses gaze. He reached the bathroom, his heart thundering as he climbed in the shower and turned it on cold.

  Isobella tapped her foot against her mattress, waiting for Alex to return. Wanting it and not wanting it at the same time. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. The research figures in front of her blurred. She sighed and placed them back on her nose, forcing herself to concentrate on the report about the effects of global warming on the Crown Of Thorns starfish population of the Great Barrier Reef, which Theresa had given her to read.

  The room was warm, and she shifted restlessly beneath the sheet. Without the benefit of being able to open the window and let in the cool sea breeze the humidity made lying under covers uninviting. But damned if she was going to kick them off. This was as exposed to Alex as she was ever going to be, no matter how much her raging libido urged otherwise. Maybe when he’d settled for the night she could kick her leg out.

  He entered the room again and she steadfastly ignored him. His satiny boxers drew level with her line of peripheral vision, his powerful quads beautifully delineated and sprinkled with dark hair an arm’s length away, and she gripped the edges of the report to stop herself from looking or touching. She breathed a sigh of relief when he finally hauled himself up onto his bunk.

  The metal-framed bed squeaked and swayed a little as he moved around, getting comfortable. Her bunk moved in rhythm with his, and she shut her eyes, waiting for him to stop, trying to figure out if the movement or his proximity was causing the room to tilt. She opened them again abruptly as her mind was filled with images of being rocked by Alex in a much more intimate way.

  He finally settled, and Isobella resolutely returned her attention to the paper, ploughing through it determinedly, tuned in to every fidget and page-turn from above.

  After an hour of complete silence Isobella was surprised to find her eyelids growing heavy.

  She would have thought she was too wired to sleep, what with gale force winds howling around the island and rattling the window and Alex’s presence looming large above her, causing its own barometric upset. But the glow from the lamp pushed soft light into all the corners of the room, creating a cosy haven from the inclement elements seething outside.

  She felt peculiarly safe, cocooned in a warm bubble, and although Alex’s proximity was unsettling it was also perversely comforting. Reading like this was…companionable. Intimate. As if they’d been lovers for a long time and didn’t need to fill the silence with words. She smiled to herself as the pages slipped from her fingers and her day of hard graft finally caught up with her.

  At eleven o’clock Alex could stand the pretence of reading no longer. He hadn’t heard any movements from below him for a while, so he assumed Isobella was sleeping. He looked down past the edge of his bed and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  She’d turned on her side, facing the wall, and had half kicked off her sheet. Her top leg angled out of the covers in something resembling the recovery position, and a cheeky portion of her left buttock was on display. Alex lay back against his pillow and groaned. She was wearing the leopard print.

  He shut his eyes hard, curling his fists into his palms, resisting the urge to take another peek. He half sat and pulled his T-shirt off, hurling it to the end of the bed. The room had been warm, but now it was positively stifling.

  He battled with his will for a while longer, admitting finally that he just wasn’t strong enough. He looked again. One long, bare leg greeted him, the gentle light gilding her skin with a creamy finish. The black lace of her knickers had ridden up, barely covering her exposed cheek, revealing the rounded delight of her delicate rump in all its glory.

  Her top had ridden up slightly, to reveal the small of her back. He could see a glimpse of bony spine, the dip of her waist, the curve of her hip. A bare arm and shoulder were just as fascinating, her black bra strap clearly visible beneath the shoestring straps of the singlet top.

  She murmured in her sleep and shifted slightly, and Alex pulled his head back sharply, his heart racing.

  What the hell was he doing? She was a colleague. He was her boss, damn it!

  He raised himself up on his elbow and twisted to turn off the kerosene lamp on the shelf. The room was instantly plunged into inky blackness, and he l
ay wide awake, praying for sleep he knew was never going to come.

  Isobella was dreaming. The same dream. It was dark. The same cloying darkness that waited for her too frequently when she shut her eyes. The darkness that even when she woke, she couldn’t escape. She couldn’t move, couldn’t open her eyes to ward off the blackness before it dragged her under again. She railed against it, moaning her frustration, her fear.

  And the noises were there too. The same noises, echoing around her head. Surreal, disjointed, coming from far away, but trapped in her head for her to relive over and over. Wind and rushing and sucking and spitting and a low-level white noise that never, never went away. She shook her head, desperately trying to wake, to rid her mind of the noises, a sob escaping from her throat.

  And the powerlessness came again. Trapped in the strange no-man’s land between slumber and consciousness she felt it at its most potent. She knew her body wasn’t hers any more, that other people controlled it—the people who were responsible for the noises. It was frustrating, and she whimpered, trying to get them to stop.

  Talking around her as if she was dead, as if she didn’t matter. Snippets of conversation, incoherent words, talking about her. Big words, grave tones. And she couldn’t wake herself up to tell them she was fine. Their talk scared her, and she moaned against the heavy weight of fear settling against her chest, paralysing her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.

  A loud thud outside the window pierced the grip of her dream and she was startled into full consciousness, vaulting up on to her elbows. A mix between a cry and a gasp for breath left her throat before she could call it back.

  Alex’s eyes, not long closed, flew open. ‘Isobella?’

  Isobella stared into the oppressive blackness, completely disorientated. Where was she? She could see nothing. Oh, God, was she still trapped in her dream? Was she still in hospital?

  ‘Isobella?’

  The scratchy voice came again. Alex? What was he doing here, in her dream? Her nightmare? ‘A…Alex?’

  He sat up, alarmed at the tremble in her voice. She sounded terrified. ‘Are you okay?’

  Isobella grappled for orientation. She was on Piccolo. There was a cyclone. The noises hadn’t been in her head, they’d been outside. The howling of the wind, the violent smashing of the waves and the greedy slurping as they clawed at the beach before being dragged back into the ocean. There were no ventilators, no suckers, no nurses or doctors.

  So why was it so dark? She lifted up her hand, waiting for her eyes to adjust so she could see it. But it was no use. Why couldn’t she see it? ‘It’s d…dark.’

  Alex still heard the tremble. ‘Yes. Complete cloud cover. Long way from the bright lights. Are you…are you okay?’

  No, she wasn’t. The night and the noises outside were freaking her out. She took some ragged breaths to stem the spiralling anxiety that his calm explanations had not placated. ‘B…bad dream. Not really.’

  ‘Would you like some light? I can get the lamp going. There’s torches here somewhere too,’ he said, feeling his way down from the bunk and groping around the shelves. His hand briefly came into contact with a torch before it rolled away and then dropped to the floor, narrowly missing his foot.

  The creaking of the metal frame made her jump, and the unexpected noise of the torch smashing on the ground startled her so much she cried out as adrenalin surged through her system.

  ‘Hey,’ he said softly, turning towards the direction of the bed, really concerned now about the state of her mind. He could hear her strained breathing above the wind and the rain and the surf. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘Don’t w…worry about i…it,’ she stuttered, trying to bring her suddenly chattering teeth under control.

  Alex sank to his knees and groped for the edge of her bunk, not caring how appropriate his behaviour was. Isobella was obviously freaked out. ‘Hang on a sec,’ he assured her, ‘I’ll get us some light.’

  ‘No!’ Her hands shook as she groped blindly through the thick cloak of night. He was close, as usual she could feel his presence, and his gravelly voice was giving her something to anchor herself to. She didn’t want him to leave her side. Her fear had gone far beyond her need for light.

  What she needed most now was touch. Human comfort. How many times in the ICU had she been spiralling into panic in the darkness, awake beneath all the drugs, and a soothing stroke to her forehead or a reassuring squeeze to her hand had brought her back from the brink?

  Alex stopped. A hand touched his face, then his shoulder, going from tentative to grasping as she squeezed hard. He could feel her trembling, and he felt an overwhelming urge to pull her close. ‘Isobella?’

  She almost whimpered as she found solid muscle and clung to it. He was just there. The knowledge beat the demons back a little. ‘D…don’t leave.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he assured her, gently placing a hand over hers. Her biting grip on his shoulder eased a little.

  A streak of lightning lit up the sky and Alex got a brief look at Isobella’s wild-eyed face before a thunder clap shook the quarters to their very foundation. He felt the jolt of panic rip through her, felt her muscles leap as she lurched towards him.

  Alex’s heart thudded in his chest almost as loud as Isobella’s terrified breathing against his neck. ‘Hey, hey. Shh,’ he crooned.

  He sat with her awkwardly for a few moments, kneeling by the bed, sitting back on his heels. She was half out of bed; he was trying to support her while the rough seagrass matting bit into his knees. He shifted, trying to relieve the pressure on his knees, and her arms around his neck tightened. This was ridiculous.

  ‘Move over,’ he whispered, and he moved to join her.

  Isobella was beyond thinking rationally about what was appropriate and professional. Or even that she’d spent the last sixteen years shying away from just this kind of situation. Right now, in her freaked-out state, she needed to feel the anchoring comfort of another human being’s arms, and she couldn’t think of a better solution than being totally wrapped up in him. And knowing it was pitch-black, that he couldn’t see her flawed body, gave her a freedom that she hadn’t known in years.

  She shuffled over, closer to the wall, and felt the bed give as Alex’s weight depressed the mattress.

  ‘This is kind of squishy,’ Alex muttered, trying to keep his mind off her leopard print underwear.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  Alex shrugged. ‘I’ve had worse.’

  Despite the cramped conditions Isobella almost cried as relief swamped her body. His presence was warm and solid beside her, and she eagerly pressed her body into the side of his. The fact that he was shirtless was secondary. He lifted his arm and she nestled her head on his chest, his hand resting protectively around her shoulders.

  She could hear the bang of his heart beneath her ear and it was wonderfully grounding. The wild weather receded. The unholy racket made by the howling wind, the pouring rain and the pounding surf all faded away. Just the steady drum of Alex’s heartbeat filled her head.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she whispered.

  Alex shut his eyes. He could hear the tremor in her voice and feel the frantic flutter of her heartbeat against his side like a frightened bird. But with her body pressed against him it was hard to keep her anxiety in focus. He seriously doubted whether he was capable of anything as complex as speech. Breathing at the moment seemed to be a challenge. ‘Do you want to…do you want to talk about the dream?’

  ‘No!’ Adrenalin still buzzed through her system. She just wanted to cling to him and relegate the nightmare to the dark reaches of her brain.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he soothed, patting her shoulder, feeling the fine trembling of her muscles there. ‘So what do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Anything. Anything but that. Say something in Greek.’

  He almost groaned. How many times had he heard that request when sharing a bed with a woman? Somehow he didn’t think Isobel
la had that kind of talk in mind. Alex prayed for restraint. ‘The Iliad, perhaps?’

  Isobella’s laugh sounded strained even to her own ears. ‘Maybe not. A fairy tale or a nursery rhyme? Wasn’t Aesop Greek? Maybe a fable?’

  Alex sighed and launched into The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, not stopping to question the irony of his choice. Here he was, lying next to her, her half-naked body superglued to his side, pretending to be some fine upstanding gentleman rescuing a damsel in distress. When the reality was he wanted nothing more than to strip away her clothes and chase the cyclone into the night with a little earth-moving of his own.

  She was quiet when he’d finished the story and he wondered if she had fallen asleep. He hadn’t consciously realised but he’d been trailing his fingers up and down her arm as he’d spoken, and they stilled now. He strained to hear her breath, gratified to find that it seemed more modulated now.

  ‘Tell me about hospital.’

  Alex’s first instinct was to reject her request out of hand. He didn’t talk about that time. It was private. He hadn’t told anybody about the dark times, when he’d despaired for his life. Not a soul. He’d never got close enough to another human being to feel comfortable enough about unloading.

  But if ever there was a time and a place to do so, now felt pretty right. Her hair was tickling his chin, and the realisation that they were both in unfamiliar territory, both just trying to get through the night, helped. He knew enough about Isobella to know that whatever demons were in her head had to be bad for her to be plastered against him. So maybe she knew something about demons.

  And he needed to keep his mind off her leopard print underwear somehow.

  ‘It was probably one of the most humbling experiences of my life.’

  Isobella had closed her eyes, having given up on him answering. She opened them, staring into the inky darkness. ‘How so?’ she murmured.

  ‘Being the one lying in a bed taught me a lot about medicine that I never would have learned otherwise.’

  ‘Like what?’