by Helen Hardt
No pressure, Master Po.
Isla Tortuga Verde loomed straight ahead, a green, rounded mountain rising from the turquoise depths. In the later afternoon sun, it was dappled with shadow and light. The ferry followed the curve of the island to a wide cove split by a long wooden dock. On one side, a white sand beach was framed by palm trees and a few wooden structures. On the other side was…a town? Crooked streets lined with buildings—some neatly painted, some slanted as if a giant had tried blowing them over, none taller than two stories. Shops? Homes? I couldn’t tell. I didn’t see anything that looked like a medical clinic.
Dread settled over my shoulders like a fifty-pound mantle. I slumped down on the bench, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.
“This is your stop.” The friendly local who’d tried picking me up jerked his thumb toward the back of the boat where a few other people were waiting to step off the ferry.
I forced myself up, tugging the straps of the backpack over my shoulders. Add another thirty pounds. The pack held my laptop, a video camera and digital camera—both waterproof—and a digital voice recorder. Pens, notepads, my money and wallet, and a string of just-in-case condoms.
I could dump those overboard right now. The probability of a holiday hook-up wasn’t looking good.
“Enjoy your visit, miss.” The captain, a craggy-faced man with a faded Scottish accent that matched his gone-gray ginger curls, waved from the pilothouse.
One of the crew, a slender young man with inky skin and a lilting island accent, carried my suitcase to the end of the wooden pier. “Dr. Stanic, he be meeting ya. Cap’n McDougal radioed ahead for ya.”
“Thanks.” I tipped the crewmember, adjusted the backpack, and looked around for Luka Stanic. There hadn’t even been time to read his bio. God, I hoped he wasn’t a lush or some kind of quack or a witch doctor who believed in black magic. Wasn’t voodoo a thing in the islands?
I glanced over my shoulder as the ferry pulled away and pictured myself running down the pier, yelling, “Stop. Come back. Take me with you.”
I pictured Seymour, in a Rush T-shirt and flannel button-up, firing me and then I’d have to get a job taking orders from people who wanted it their way.
I turned and took a step.
I pictured Mona and Nick popping a huge balloon that spewed pink and blue glitter because…twins!
I turned around and gripped the straps of the backpack until my knuckles were white, inhaling and exhaling to regain control. I popped the handle on my roller bag and went in search of Dr. Stanic. The sooner I started this assignment, the sooner I’d be off this godforsaken rock.
4
Luka
“Doctor Man. Psst! Hey, Doctor Man.”
I pulled out my earbuds as Martina peeked around the doorjamb and rested my hand on the grant application I’d been filling out, the tinny sound of 2CELLOS’ cover of “Smooth Criminal” echoing out of the headphones.
“Der’s a pretty lady here. Says she needs a doctor.”
“Shit!” I launched out of my chair and hurried to the front door. I was supposed to meet the advertising executive at the dock and then got distracted by the paperwork. Doc Rodriguez’s warning that the clinic’s future was in jeopardy goaded me to look for other funding options. I’d become a bit obsessed. “Where is she, Martina?”
“Right behind you.”
The honeyed feminine voice was like a feather being trailed over my spine. I shivered at the unexpectedly sensual effect of her words. Good manners dictated I turn around. Two and a half years of celibacy insisted I wait to see if she’d say something else.
“Dr. Stanic?” All business.
I wheeled around and forgot what came next.
She was gorgeous. Long sangria-red hair framed a heart-shaped face. Wide light-green eyes, tilted up at the corners. Delicately arched brows a shade lighter than her hair. An expressive mouth, the lower lip lush and pouty. She had the fair complexion of a natural redhead, and a dainty gold ring pierced her left nostril. She wore navy walking shorts, a white sleeveless blouse, and white leather sandals. About five-six, she was slim. Plump, firm breasts—a C-cup or better—saved her figure from being boyish.
“Britt—” I couldn’t remember the rest of her name.
“Connolly.” Her eyes crinkled as the corner of her mouth tilted up. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No. I…er…I…” Was that really me stammering? “I was in the middle of something and lost track of time. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to meet you at the dock.”
“The island isn’t that big. It wasn’t hard to find the clinic.” A note of derision in her voice cooled my libido.
“How was your trip?”
“Long. I’d like to get to the hotel…or wherever I’m staying.” She jutted a hip, planted a hand on it, and cocked her head. “Is it true you don’t have WiFi? That’s going to make it very difficult to do my job if there’s no internet here.”
I bristled at her patronizing attitude. “Grab your stuff, and I’ll show you to your thatched hut. We put up a new hammock just for you, and the women checked every inch of your mosquito netting to make sure there are no tears. We wouldn’t want you inconvenienced by something like a bug bite or no internet.”
She glared at me, and I glared back. I didn’t want to be the Care For All spokesman, and I didn’t want to deal with a spoiled city girl throwing a temper tantrum because she couldn’t check her social media. The commitment I’d made out of respect for Doc felt like rough rope binding my hands and feet and neck. It chaffed and burned and made it hard to breathe.
“Doctor Man not so good at da hospitality.” Martina popped out of the kitchen. She bustled down the hall and wedged herself between us.
Britt Connolly’s gaze dropped to read Martina’s T-shirt and then jumped to me, a pink blush tinting her cheeks.
Hah. I’d teased Martina about the slogan this morning.
Doctors Do It with Skill and Love
“You stay with Oz and Nina. They da owners of Sandcastle Bungalows. Nice place. Good food.” Martina shrugged. “Maybe technology.”
“Maybe?” Britt looked past Martina to me. She dipped her head.
“Our infrastructure is limited.” I regretted my own outburst. “A power plant built in the eighties provides enough electricity for fourteen hours of service each day. There’s no power before seven a.m. and or after nine p.m., although Oz has a generator he uses for paying guests. BrightStar Telecommunications provides satellite internet access to most of the islands in the Caribbean, but the signal isn’t reliable.”
“Thank you for explaining.” She lifted her backpack. “If you’ll give me directions to this bungalow place, I’ll check in.”
“Doctor Man, he show you da way.” Martina glowered at me, giving me no choice. She could make my life miserable if she wanted to.
It was easier to comply.
It would also give me a chance to clear the air with Miss Connolly. I resented being thrust into the role of spokesman. I disliked Big Pharma and distrusted Corporate America. Even nonprofits like Care For All made me leery. Too many rules and too many hoops meant people went without timely, affordable medical care.
Bureaucrats cared about money. I cared about people.
I’d agreed to work with CFA because Doc asked me to and because the islanders would suffer if I let pride get in the way. I could suck it up for two weeks. That fact that Britt Connolly was hot as hell might even make it fun.
I swooped down to grab the suitcase before she could add it to her load. The backpack looked like it carried bricks, the straps digging into her shoulders, pulling her blouse tight against her breasts. Tight enough reveal the lacy pattern of her bra.
Blood raced to my groin, my cock engorged in seconds. I flashed back to life in the States and the casual availability of sex. Young women at nightclubs in slinky dresses or on beaches with everything hanging out. Singers and performers whose careers exploded, not because of talent, but how well
they bounced their tits and ass. The infamous Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
Don’t misunderstand. Totally not judging. I love eye candy just as much as the next guy.
There aren’t many eligible women my age on this or any of the nearby islands, so my visual sweet tooth has long gone unsatisfied. Catching sight of Britt’s bra was a tease, a tiny bit of deliciousness, like the corner broken off a chocolate bar and laid on your tongue to slowly melt.
“Are you hungry, Miss Connolly?” I led her out the front door, down the short walkway, and out to the street. “Because I am suddenly ravenous.”
5
Britt
Dr. Stanic took a right outside the clinic, and I followed. Left would have taken us away from town, the narrow coastal road that eventually curved behind a rise of land. In the direction we were going, the two-laner wound through the hodge-podge assemblage of structures and then continued along the cove and disappeared around a bend.
Luka was not what I expected. I’d pictured Jimmy Buffet with a stethoscope. Instead, I got dark and brooding. Luka was at least six feet tall, with thick longish black hair that fell over his forehead, and dark, intense eyes under dense brows. A heavy scruff emphasized the angular hollows of his jawline, and dark hair covered his arms and legs. His name and features hinted at an Eastern European heritage, maybe Croatian. Definitely vacation fling material, except he was grumpy as hell and I was here to work.
From an advertising perspective, he’d make a great spokesman—intense, charismatic, capable. The more I side-eyed hot Doctor Man, the more he reminded me of a swoony TV drama doc.
“Does this road go around the whole island?” I pulled on the straps of the backpack to lessen the drag on my shoulders. The weight of my exhaustion, combined with the pack, pressed down so heavy each step felt like slogging through mud—the kind that sucks at your foot like it doesn’t want to let go.
“Yes. Isla Tortuga Verde is only three square miles. There’s the perimeter road and then another that leads up the mountain. Lots of dead-end dirt roads off that for the inland homes and farms.”
“How many people live here?”
“Three hundred, give or take.”
“That seems like a manageable population for your clinic to serve.”
“It would be, except we’re the closest medical resource for about five times that many.” He raised his arm and pointed from one end of the horizon to the other. “There’s a dozen or so small islands like ours scattered over a two-hundred-mile area. If someone gets sick or hurt, it can take an hour to get here by boat. If it’s an emergency, we have to call for an air ambulance.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Once, in the two and a half years I’ve been here. One of the day visitors had a heart attack.”
My dad had a heart scare a couple years ago. I remember the ambulance careening away, siren blaring, rushing him to Denver Health Medical Center, less than ten minutes from our house. How scary would it be to have that happen when you were hours away from emergency care?
“Did he make it?” I asked.
“No.” Luka’s jaw clenched. “If we’d had a defibrillator, he might have survived.”
He stopped in front of single-story white stucco building and knocked on a wooden screen door. “Hello. Oz? Nina?” When there was no response, he said, “Come on.”
We went around the back of the house, up a short winding path through a patch of dense vegetation and palm trees to a rise of land where three tiny bungalows sat in a row. Each was painted a different color—sky blue, coral pink, and sunflower yellow.
“Pick one. Oz and Nina don’t have any other guests right now.”
“How do you—”
“It’s a small town.” Head cocked, eyes sharp and bright and fixed on my face, he gave me an assessing look that made my belly somersault. “Let’s go with yellow.” He crouched to retrieve a key from under a flowerpot outside the door of the tiny house, giving me an impressive view of his muscled back and shoulders under the black T-shirt he wore.
Propositioning the Care For All spokesman for a few nights of sweaty sex probably wasn’t a good idea.
He unlocked the door and set my roller bag inside.
“Give me a minute.” I shut the door, leaving him on the doorstep.
The bungalow consisted of one room with a double bed, table and chair, and private bath. The walls matched the yellow exterior, and a tall window looked out onto the town and cove. I set the backpack on the chair, dug my toiletries out of the suitcase, and freshened up. It didn’t do much for my fatigue, but at least I felt human again.
Luka was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest when I came out.
“Ready?”
We walked from one end of the cove to the other. Luka gave me a choice between Fred’s Place or Ginger’s Palace after explaining the bars, which stood nearly side by side, were owned by a divorced couple who had an entertaining love/hate relationship.
“To avoid favoritism, I patronize both.” He stood on the sand, feet shoulder width apart, hands on his hips with the fingers angled toward his crotch, as if he had all the time in the world.
“Whose turn is it?” I didn’t need to be starting trouble on my first day.
“Ginger.”
Decision made, he led the way to a bunch of wooden tables and benches grouped under a huge, weathered tarp suspended from four posts. Each was painted a bright color—red, yellow, orange, and blue. We sat across from each other, and I kicked off my sandals so I could dig my toes into the sand beneath.
“Hey, Luka.”
A tiny woman, not more than five feet tall, with a long gray plait down her back and deep creases at the corners of her friendly brown eyes bopped out from the dim interior of the bar, which was open its entire length. A long counter with stools for seating ran parallel to the front of the place. A TV with a staticky display was tuned to Spanish telenovela, the volume loud enough to catch an occasional phrase from the actors on the screen.
So far, we were the only people in the place.
“Hi, Ginger. How’s Fred?”
“Validating my decision to divorce his skinny behind.” Ginger dropped a peck on Luka’s check, brushed a bit of sand off the table, and bent her leg to kick the bench behind her back into place. She looked me up and down. “Is this the advertising chickie? I thought they’d send someone older. With balls. They always think the ones with balls can get the job done better.” She shook her head and winked at me. “Women do it just as well as men, except backwards and in high heels.”
She reminded me of a hummingbird—suspended in mid-air as if unmoving until your eyes found the blur of their wings. She darted around the table, pulled my fingers into a quick handshake, and then zipped back into the restaurant.
“People around here really do know everyone else’s business.” I looked around for a laminated page or chalkboard listing options. “Is there a menu?”
“There’s a drink menu for tourists in search of cocktails like a Painkiller, Hurricane, or Pina Colada. If you like beer, they have Corona. If you want something different, something light and refreshing, I’ve got you covered. As far as eats, there’s jerk chicken, burgers, conch fritters, pulled pork, or fish tacos.”
“Order for me. Nothing too exotic and no mayonnaise. I hate mayo.” Just saying the word was enough to make me shudder.
“I like to dip my fries in it.” His eyes gleamed, as if he’d made the comment to deliberately taunt me.
Ginger came back with chilled bottles of water and a basket containing napkins, plastic eating utensils, and condiments.
“We’ll have the fish tacos and bellinis.” Luka opened his water and took a swig, his tanned throat rippling with each swallow.
Ginger whizzed away.
Watching his Adam’s apple bob emphasized his masculinity. Maybe it was the setting or maybe it was the man, but Luka’s virility was raw and real, stripped down to the core of his manhood. His
hands were big and strong, callused and capable. The muscles in his arms and legs were well developed and wiry, clearly earned through hard work, manual labor, and sweat equity. Walking over to the bar, I’d noticed how his khaki shorts hung off lean hips and the sculpted plane of his abdomen revealed by the close fit of his T-shirt.
I went for guys who were meticulously groomed and maintained a nice physique by working out three times a week in an air-conditioned gym. Sophisticated urbanites who paid as much for their skincare products as I did. Ambitious white-collar professionals who wanted the same things I did—a luxury condo in one of Denver’s up-and-coming neighborhoods, a summer vacation to somewhere exotic and a winter vacation to one of Colorado’s ski towns, kids after thirty, a strategic investment plan that allowed for the purchase of a second home and retirement at fifty.
“Do you ski?” The question popped out before I knew I was wondering.
“No. Never had an interest.”
Ginger returned and plunked down two tumblers filled with an orange liquid topped with a fizzy froth.
“I thought bellinis came in champagne flutes.” I lifted the glass and examined it.
“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.” He raised his drink in a mocking salute.
“Bellinis are a girly drink. The kind of thing served at brunch or a baby shower.” Or a gender reveal. “You seem more like the type to order a Red Stripe or shots of tequila with a side of lemon and salt.”
“Can’t a guy show his softer side?” He took another sip and smacked his lips. “I like the bubbles and the sweetness of the mango. Ginger plucks them from a tree out back and juices them by hand.”
“I’d love to see you order a bellini during happy hour at the sports bar back home.” I swirled the Prosecco and mango puree.
