Nikhil clamped his jaws together so hard that it was almost painful. But he refused to let anyone see how his old mentor’s words got to him. He refused to show any weakness. And these...feelings he had for Isla Sinclair were surely a weakness.
‘And, you know, it couldn’t have come at a more fortuitous time, actually,’ the Captain confided suddenly.
‘Is that so?’
Nikhil didn’t really want to know. He didn’t care. He just wanted to end the conversation so that he could go over and wrap her arm through his—staking his claim on her in front of all these would-be suitors, like a damned dog marking its territory.
‘One of the other fleet Captains is retiring at the end of the year. We’ve all been asked to put forward potential candidates for promotion. I wanted to put you forward.’
‘You wanted to?’ Nikhil frowned, his mind struggling to keep up, when all it really wanted to do was snap straight back to the woman across the room.
‘I have no doubt that you’re the best officer for the role, Nikhil, but Head Office prefer their Captains to be married, or widowed. They don’t like single, even one as dedicated and professional as you.’
Finally, Nikhil’s gaze stopped trying to fight its way back to Isla. He stared at the Captain. ‘You’re saying that they wouldn’t consider me for promotion without a wife?’
‘Archaic, isn’t it?’ The older man shrugged. ‘The one thing you’ve avoided all this time is going to be the thing that gets you the promotion you’ve been working for, your entire career.’
Nikhil watched her move. Her lithe body rippling under the sequinned fabric, arresting heads—and other, more carnal parts of the male anatomy. She was magnificent. Incomparable and, apparently, the key to getting everything he’d ever wanted.
His own ship.
So why did he know, without even thinking about it, that there was no way he could use her like that? He’d been fighting their attraction because he’d always prided himself on his professionalism, yet it seemed that resisting temptation would be his downfall, not his success.
So why not give in to it? Why not give in to Isla, and gain two things in the process?
Because she deserves better than that, a voice insinuated itself into his head. And he didn’t exactly try to silence it.
Instead, he watched as she circled the room, apparently doing all she could to avoid moving to the point where he stood, still with the Captain. Now she was with the woman who declared herself to be Isla’s mother.
He could certainly see the resemblance. The high, fine bone structure, the delicate nose and those oh-so-expressive eyes. But Marianna had a worldliness to her that Isla didn’t possess. And though they both had an intelligent sharpness in their gaze, he could read the honed intellect in Isla’s expression that simply wasn’t present in that of her mother.
For over an hour he watched her move between guests, charming people and laughing with them, and he told himself that he didn’t feel jealous, or possessive, or indeed anything at all.
He wasn’t sure that he fell for it, for a moment.
And then, suddenly, she was right in front of him and every cell in his body zinged with awareness.
‘Nikhil, I want to introduce you to my mother, Marianna Sinclair-Raleigh-Burton. Mother, this is Nikhil Dara.’
‘Nikhil Dara.’ Isla’s mother held her hand out for him to take as he smiled politely, wholly unprepared for the blow he was about to suffer. ‘Surely no relation to the delightful Daksh Dara of DXD Industries?’
* * *
Isla had no idea why she was standing there, unable to breathe, as Nikhil and her mother stood face to face, each weighing up the other in their different ways.
Her mother on one side, as glittery and charming as ever on the outside, but with the lethal blade of a smile that only Isla knew was being wielded as a weapon. And Nikhil on the other, a hard edge to his body that she’d never seen before, an expression she couldn’t read playing across his harsh features.
There was no reason for her to have wished so fervently that things would go well between the two of them during these introductions, and yet that was exactly how she’d felt.
It had been like some insane torture, watching Nikhil from across the room and not being able to talk to him for fear of betraying every one of these bizarre, hectic feelings that swirled inside her. Despite everything she’d said about staying away from each other.
It didn’t matter where she went, or where he went for that matter, she seemed to be constantly aware of him. Helpless to stop herself from tracking his movements around the room. Telling herself that she was just imagining the fact that he was deliberately avoiding her. She probably didn’t even factor into his consideration at all, as he moved from group to group, playing the eligible yet professional First Officer to perfection.
But he factored into her consideration.
She felt perpetually on edge. On fire. As if there was a burning in her chest that roared louder the nearer he came. It thrummed through her veins, humming along her entire body, leaving her aching...right there.
Wanting him with a hunger she’d never experienced before. Ever. And it didn’t seem to matter how many times she told herself that she was acting crazily, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. It was as if a maelstrom of emotions was raging inside her and Nikhil was at the very centre of it.
Her only saving grace was the fact that no one knew her well enough to see that. And she couldn’t work out if that was particularly lucky, or particularly sad.
Yet now here she was, at a Captain’s gala with her mother and the man she couldn’t stop thinking about—fantasising about—and they were eyeing each other like sworn enemies. Surely the last couple of minutes couldn’t have gone any worse? Like some kind of terrible nightmare.
‘You’re not at all like your brother, are you?’ Marianna spoke.
‘I am not.’ Nikhil’s voice scraped over Isla, though she couldn’t have said why. ‘One of us is the exemplary, irreproachable Dara brother; the other is the Dara brother whose moral standing lies in tatters on the ground. We are not to be confused with each other.’
Isla tried to speak, to somehow shatter the tension of the moment, but all she could do was watch the scene unfold with increasing horror. This car crash of an introduction that she couldn’t seem to avert; that shouldn’t even matter to her. Finally, she watched her mother slip her arm through the Captain’s—who had come to the rescue like some kind of perfect white knight in his ship’s uniform—and the two of them wandered off.
She waited until they were out of earshot.
‘What the hell was that all about?’
Nikhil turned to face her and she was sure she saw a brief flash of regret in his eyes before he switched up a blank expression.
‘I believe your mother observed how dissimilar my brother and I are. I merely agreed.’
She wasn’t sure why, but she had never felt so much like crying. Not even when she’d discovered how Brad had been using her. Using her connections, and her money, to get to where he wanted to be. Some might argue that was just the way her mother had behaved, with her series of husbands. The difference was that her mother had never feigned love.
Bradley had. And she’d been the damned fool who had believed him.
Which only made it all the more laughable that she’d actually heeded her mother’s advice for once and dressed tonight with Nikhil in mind.
Not for him, she had told herself as she’d stood in front of the mirror, eyeing her reflection critically. But with him in mind, all the same. Going against the last thing she’d flung at him, about staying away from each other—because she’d thought that she’d begun to understood a little more of what made him tick.
And now she might as well be looking at a stranger.
‘You deliberately made yourself sound like...like...someon
e else. Someone I don’t recognise.’
‘No.’ His voice was harsh. Much too harsh, Isla thought faintly. ‘I didn’t make myself sound like anyone else. This is who I am, Isla. You just don’t know me at all.’
‘I know that wasn’t you.’ She held her ground.
‘You know no such thing.’
‘Is this because she asked about your brother?’ Isla had no idea why that popped into her brain, but suddenly there it was.
And even though Nikhil didn’t respond, the sudden set of his jaw and coldness in his eyes was answer enough. Also, oddly, there was a bleakness to his expression which made her heart twist for him, even as she didn’t understand why.
Before she could say another word, Nikhil had taken her by the elbow and was manoeuvring her out of the ballroom and into an anteroom.
‘What the hell do you know about Daksh?’ Nikhil rasped. ‘Did your socially climbing mother think I was her route to him? Your route to him?’
‘I didn’t even know he existed until tonight,’ Isla managed, valiantly holding back the tremors that threatened to roll through her body like its own version of seismic activity.
‘I told you I had a brother,’ Nikhil cut her off.
‘You made him sound like he was dead,’ she cried.
His stony expression seemed to harden even further beneath her gaze. His voice all the more implaccable.
‘Is that what you’re going to claim?’
‘It’s the truth. And anyway, my mother didn’t know I had met you back in Chile, least of all that I spent that night with you.’
‘And I am to believe that?’
And finally—finally—she felt that hint of steel inside her that she’d begun to think had deserted her. Grabbing hold of it, she made herself face Nikhil.
‘I can’t say that I care what you believe,’ she heard herself say, although she barely recognised her own voice.
Every sweep of his eyes over her made Isla feel as though she didn’t fit her own skin any more. Everything was shifting around her and she couldn’t seem to make sense of it. And still she wished, more than anything, that she could read what was going on in Nikhil’s head right now.
‘You were right earlier, Isla,’ he growled, out of the blue. ‘We should stay the hell away from each other.’
CHAPTER TEN
THE GONDOLA RIDE up through the rainforest canopy had to be one of the most incredible experiences Isla thought she’d ever had. Sloths could be seen, hanging from the higher limbs of stunning towering trees. Bats and brightly coloured birds clung to the enormous leaves and, a few moments earlier, she’d even seen a monkey leaping from tree to tree, as if keeping up with the gondola’s ascent.
‘...such is the neotropical diversity of this rainforest.’
Isla tuned back in to their tour guide, trying to chastise herself for missing what he was saying. But surely it was impossible not to get caught up in the magical beauty of this place.
‘Even to date we are still finding new species in the rainforest,’ he continued. ‘Especially insects. And now it’s time for your aerial zip wire.’
‘Not for me—’ she laughed ‘—I’m here as the excursion doctor. That’s all.’
‘Surely you aren’t going to be so disappointing as to bottle it, Dr Sinclair?’
Emotion rushed through her, devastating her. Her heart started pounding, though not in her chest. More like in the vicinity of her throat. And she despaired of herself.
Carefully, Isla steeled herself for the first sight of Nikhil in over a week—ever since that awful night at the Captain’s gala. She’d also spent the past week avoiding her mother—not too difficult, since Marianna and the Captain appeared to have hit it off entirely too well that night and, as far as she could tell, her mother had barely been back to her palatial stateroom since.
Taking a deep breath, she slowly—so slowly—turned around...and promptly despaired of herself. How could it be that she still wasn’t ready for the way her breath whooshed out of her lungs as her eyes seemed to drink in the sight of him?
Worse, when he inclined his head in a wordless instruction for her to move away from the crowd, to the far end of the summit station, she instructed herself that the ludicrous thrill that chased through her right at this moment was revulsion, not some sick kind of pleasure at seeing him again.
And she certainly didn’t notice the dark rings around his eyes, or the taut lines by his mouth, as though he hadn’t been sleeping much better than she had this last week.
‘I’m on duty,’ she managed, forcing herself to hold her position and smile. Though most of the group had already descended on the zip wire, there were still a few passengers awaiting their turn and she had absolutely no intention of alerting them to the fact that there was any tension between their doctor and the First Officer. ‘I can’t stray far from this group.’
‘If there’s a medical emergency, then the senior tour guide will be alerted on his radio and we’ll soon know about it.’
Reluctantly, Isla forced herself to move off to the side with Nikhil, enough that they couldn’t be overheard.
‘I didn’t request this excursion, before you ask. It was another...’
‘Another one of your predecessor’s choices. Yes, I am aware of that fact. I had the good doctor’s trip schedule emailed to me after Ecuador.’
‘Of course you did.’ She shouldn’t be surprised. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised.’
‘I didn’t come here to fight with you, Isla.’
‘Did you not?’ She raised an eyebrow, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the party couldn’t see her. ‘I’m agog to know why you did come, then.’
‘I came to apologise.’
Isla’s heart stopped. She must have misheard.
‘Sorry?’
‘This is your career too. I should never have asked you to transfer.’
‘Then why did you?’ She couldn’t seem to help herself.
There was a beat of silence, but it felt like a lifetime.
‘Perhaps it was an excuse to be with you again,’ Nikhil bit out suddenly.
There was no way his words should be able to worm their way inside her so easily.
‘Your excuse?’
‘I think I probably convinced myself that if you were going to the Hestia, the way you’d been intended to do, then we would no longer be immediate colleagues. We could indulge this...attraction between us.’
‘There’s bed-hopping going on every night. From the lowliest crewman right up to the senior officers. And yet you’re worried about us indulging with each other, and only each other?’
She could see the internal battle going on in Nikhil’s head. She could read it in every tautened sinew of his impossibly perfect body. But she refused to let her head go there. Not now.
‘I never indulge, Doctor. You know that.’
‘Actually, I don’t know that,’ she heard herself snap out abruptly. More because his use of Doctor made her feel things she didn’t want to be feeling. ‘I don’t know that at all. I’ve heard rumours, but that’s all they are. I don’t know the first thing about you, Nikhil.’
‘You know me probably better than anyone else on this ship.’
‘Then I find that profoundly sad. Not least because I didn’t even realise that your brother was still alive. Let alone that you’d been scheduled to meet him in Chile, the day that we met.’
Nikhil stiffened. A lesser woman might have quaked at the incandescent expression on his face. Isla had no idea how she managed to hold her ground.
‘How do you know about that?’
‘More to the point—’ she refused to answer, though it took all she had ‘—how is it that in all our conversations about my family, you never once offered anything more about yours?’
‘It wasn’t...isn’t your busines
s,’ he gritted out. ‘It’s nobody’s business.’
‘It’s a detail. A minor, insignificant detail perhaps.’ She carefully ignored the fact that her mother had told her the brothers were estranged. ‘But a detail nonetheless.’
Let Nikhil tell her that. Let him at least acknowledge the fact that Dax existed. And again, he hesitated. So long, this time, that Isla feared he wasn’t going to answer her at all.
‘Perhaps it’s self-preservation,’ he growled at last.
‘It isn’t self-preservation,’ she made herself reply. ‘It’s control. You set up these little parameters around yourself every day. That particular, irrelevant scrap of information was withheld purely because you get some kind of kick about no one knowing the slightest thing about you.’
‘And yet I told you it was my birthday,’ he reminded her.
Isla faltered. He had told her that, hadn’t he? And yet she’d assumed he was making it up.
Nikhil was quick to exploit his advantage. ‘I didn’t tell you about my brother—’ she was fairly certain he fought to keep his tone even, yet that hint of acrid rage slid through all the same ‘—because he is irrelevant to me. That is all. No great secret.’
‘It’s hardly usual,’ Isla snorted.
‘Many families part ways. Your close relationship with your former stepsister is more unusual than any fallout I may or may not have had with mine.’
‘Which, I feel obliged to point out, is you deflecting—’ she couldn’t decide whether to feel smug or sad ‘—the way you always do.’
‘I disagree.’
‘It’s exactly what you do.’ She refused to be swayed. ‘In fact, you turn the conversation back on the other person, or you simply dismiss them.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ he began, but whatever else he was going to say was cut off by the low, insistent ring of a mobile. Nikhil’s mobile.
As he stepped away to answer, Isla took the opportunity to slip past him and back to the group.
Or, more accurately, she forced her shaking legs to carry her away from him—every step feeling heavier than the last—as she tagged onto the end of the last few passengers waiting to enjoy the thrill of their zip wire experience.
The Doctor's One Night to Remember Page 12
