The Doctor's One Night to Remember

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘I think you care more than you want to admit.’

  He chose not to answer. Instead he clung onto that old, familiar rage that had started to recede from him ever since she’d walked into his life. But he wasn’t fooled. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to think that it had suddenly disappeared after all these years.

  All that anger, and resentment, and grief. All that debilitating guilt. This unique, incredible woman might have unwittingly chased it off for a moment, but it had to have gone somewhere.

  It would only stay away for so long—until the novelty of someone as different as her wore off. Then it would be back, as dark, and winding, and bleak as ever.

  Which was why he couldn’t let her get close to him. He couldn’t risk taking her down with him, when he eventually fell.

  However hard it was—however much he’d kept this story inside and not told a single soul for almost twenty years—he had to say it now. He had to find a way to say all those ugly, twisted, damning words.

  And the easiest way was to do it quickly. Like ripping off a plaster.

  ‘My brother left me to rot in the home of our drunk, violent, abusive father.’

  ‘Your father hurt you?’

  She looked shocked for a split second, and then caught herself, slipping back that doctor’s mask of hers.

  He told himself there was no need to hate it.

  ‘To be fair, our mother bore the brunt of his alcohol-induced temper when Daksh and I were growing up. But when she died, he found a new punchbag in Daksh.’

  ‘Did he...hit you both?’

  ‘Daksh protected me. He was twelve and I was ten. I guess he thought it was his duty as the big brother.’ Nikhil lifted his shoulders, forcing down that bubbling thing inside him that he feared was too much like emotion.

  ‘For four years, he took the beatings when the old man didn’t have enough money for his boozing—which went from near the end of the month, to halfway through the month, to every day by the end. Daksh was earning money by then—we both were, but he was bringing in the main money for the house—and our father took every penny of it he could get his hands on.’

  ‘For his drinking.’ Isla spoke quietly, her way of encouraging him on, he knew.

  Nikhil tilted his head, the bitterness tasting acrid in his throat.

  ‘Then one day Daksh got offered a couple of months on a fishing vessel. It was a way out, and he took it.’

  ‘Leaving you behind to face your father alone?’

  ‘And the loss of the main source of income,’ he ground out. ‘He was furious. I was battered black and blue, hit with his leather belt—usually the buckle end—and knocked out more times than I can remember that first month. Then he realised I could take over my errant brother’s old job and bring in more money, so he laid off me for a while.’

  ‘The night I turned fifteen, I went out for a celebratory drink with some of the other fishermen—as far as they were concerned I was a working man not a kid, so they gave me little choice. It was just the one drink, and they bought it for me, but my father was in there, and to him I was spending his drinking money.’

  ‘He beat you, didn’t he?’

  She tried not to react, but he heard it nonetheless, and it was oddly soothing, the fact that this beautiful, vivacious woman had had stepfather after stepfather and never once suffered anything like it.

  It also said more for Isla’s mother than he cared to acknowledge. Perhaps it wouldn’t have hurt him to have been a little less abrasive towards her.

  ‘The old man didn’t say anything in the pub, but that night he rolled in, barely able to stand he was so blind drunk, and the belt came off.’

  ‘Didn’t you stop him?’

  ‘No, I took it. It was easier to take it. It would be over quicker that way. But that night he didn’t stop.’ Nikhil blocked out the memory, forcing himself to just say the words, not to actually feel them. ‘The next thing I knew, he’d stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed a knife.’

  Her hand moved to her throat and he heard the stifled sound. And what did it mean that a huge part of him wanted to cross that floor and comfort her?

  ‘Your scar...’ The anguish in her voice made him feel far too good. Not because of her pain, of course. More at the fact that she evidently cared.

  When was the last time anyone had ever cared for him like that? Daksh, before he’d left all those years ago. His mother before that. But otherwise...there was no one.

  ‘He was standing there, waving it around, swaying,’ Nikhil remembered. ‘I thought he didn’t have the strength—or the ability to move in a straight line—to actually do anything about it.’

  He let out a bark of laughter that didn’t hold a hint of humour in it.

  ‘Suddenly, he rushed me. I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, and the next thing I knew I was flying backwards and he had me pinned to the wall. Then he lifted the knife and drove it through my shoulder.’

  He remembered that look on his father’s face. The hateful, smug look of triumph as he’d laughed at Nikhil, pinned to the wall with the knife, unable to move. The threat to leave him there whilst he went to pick up his belt. The fear that once his father started he wouldn’t stop, and Nikhil wouldn’t be able to move, or run. Not that he was about to tell Isla that. It was too brutal, and he didn’t want to subject her to it.

  ‘I grabbed the knife, I don’t know how, and I somehow yanked it out.’

  He stopped as her expression changed. And he hated the way she looked at him in that moment. The horror, the anguish, but also, far worse than any of that, the flash of fear.

  ‘Nikhil...you said the last time you saw your brother was at your father’s funeral...when you were fifteen?’

  ‘You wanted to know what kind of a man I am.’ He threw his hands up. ‘Now you know. I’m not a man at all. I’m the monster people talk about, write about.’

  ‘Nikhil, what happened?’

  ‘You don’t need me to say the words, pyar.’ He laughed again, but this sound was even worse. He’d called her pyar. My love. Where had that come from? ‘You already know.’

  ‘I don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe that. You’re...you.’

  ‘And I’m a monster. And that’s all you need to know. You asked for the truth. I gave it to you. You can’t change it now just because you don’t like it.’

  And even though he’d known what he was all these years, it sounded so horrific falling from his lips in this room, with Isla standing across from him.

  He suddenly realised he’d have done anything not to be the kind of man who’d put that expression on her beautiful face.

  She stared at him a moment longer, then shook her head.

  ‘It was self-defence, surely? How did it happen? Nikhil, please talk to me.’

  ‘To what end?’ He felt as though the words were being torn from his lips. ‘What more do you want me to tell you?’

  ‘I want you to talk me through it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please, Nikhil,’ she cried. ‘You’ve told me this much. What have you got to lose?’

  ‘It was the worst night of my life. You think I want to relive it?’

  ‘I think you’re afraid to.’

  And it was the way she stared at him, unblinking, and so confident in him, that was his undoing. It made him wish for things that could never be. And that was the most hollow, scraping feeling of all. He stared at her, his mind in tumult.

  ‘Even if I wanted to, I don’t remember anything after pulling the knife out of my shoulder,’ he ground out at last. ‘It’s all hazy.’

  ‘What about the police? Surely they were called?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what did they say?’

  She clearly wasn’t going to let it go. He could tell her what she wanted to hear—so easily�
��but that didn’t mean he believed it. A fresh shame threatened to overwhelm him.

  ‘The police exonerated me,’ he offered flatly. ‘Apparently there was a neighbour who told them what my father was. She’d seen it over the years, but she’d been too afraid to ever say anything. When she knew he was dead, she confessed every fight and every beating she’d heard over the years.’

  Isla made a sound that was half a cry and half a shout. He made himself continue.

  ‘When the police wrote their report they simply stated that I had passed out through blood loss, that I would have lacked the strength and so my father must have rushed me, and impaled himself on the knife.’

  ‘So then, you did nothing,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ He shook his head. ‘If I did nothing, then why can’t I remember it? Why have I blocked it out?’

  He didn’t realise she’d closed the gap between them until he felt her hands cupping his face tightly, her expression fierce.

  ‘Because you were suffering from blood loss. You said it yourself.’

  ‘It just feels too...convenient,’ he growled. ‘I’m a monster, pyar.’

  There was that word again. That term of endearment. Suggesting things that could never be his. He wanted her far too much, even now. Especially now. It had to stop.

  ‘I’m a savage, Little Doc. An animal. I always was. He didn’t just rush me; it doesn’t make sense. I remember that final expression on his face. It was me, Isla. It had to be me. Everything else is just too...easy.’

  * * *

  Her heart felt as though it was breaking inside her very chest. For Nikhil.

  She could have just taken him into her arms and made it all okay, Isla realised in that instant. He wanted it—her—she could tell. She could read that hunger in his eyes, and it echoed within her.

  But that was just sex. He might want it, but he didn’t need that. Not just yet. He needed something else entirely.

  Shoving aside her own desire for him, as well as every shred of grief she felt on his behalf, she steeled her voice and glowered at him.

  ‘You’re an idiot, Nikhil Dara.’

  His head jerked up, but she couldn’t relent now. She had to stand her ground.

  ‘This isn’t about what you remember; this is about the fact that you always have to be in control.’

  He frowned. ‘I’m second in command of a floating city. It’s my job to be in control.’

  ‘And you always do that too,’ she made herself snap out.

  His voice might as well have been laden with ice. It was so cold. And hard.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You use your job, your career, as a convenient excuse.’ Still, she had to remain unmoved. ‘But I don’t just mean in control of your professional life. I mean in control of everything. Even the night we slept together, you still had that hint of restraint. It has just taken me until now to recognise it for what it was.’

  ‘You’re reading too much into too little,’ he ground out.

  But this time she refused to be deterred.

  ‘I don’t think that I am. That’s what you do, Nikhil. You’re taking on the guilt of killing your father because a part of you would rather that than admit that you had no control in that situation. Everything with you is about control. You hold it around you like a shroud. Like armour.’

  There was a beat of silence. Long. Promising.

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Abruptly, Nikhil jerked his head out of her hands and took a step away. ‘I’m going for a shower. I suggest that, when I come out, you aren’t here.’

  She watched him stalk across the room; every long, edgy line of his magnificent body was taut with suppressed emotion.

  Her mind turned over for several long minutes after he’d closed that bathroom door behind him. But, far from feeling pushed aside, his actions had only underscored how right she was about him.

  She could hear the sound of the shower running, a sign of Nikhil trying to claw his way back to normality. But Isla knew, even if he himself didn’t realise it, it was too late for him to regain control. She’d already read the maelstrom of emotions in those rich cocoa depths of his eyes. She was so, so close to reaching the real Nikhil.

  Slowly at first, then gaining confidence with every step, she crossed the room and slipped into the bathroom, letting the door click loudly behind her.

  ‘What are you doing, Little Doc?’ Raw emotion sliced through his words, his eyes darkening as he watched her.

  ‘I’m not wrong,’ she said. Softly this time. ‘You wear so much armour that it’s practically suffocating you, and you don’t even know it.’

  And if she wanted to pierce it—if she wanted to reach him—then she was going to have to create a weak spot.

  Slowly, she unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall to the floor, and he swallowed but didn’t speak. His jaw locked, a tiny pulse betraying his otherwise still appearance.

  The rest of her clothing followed. Then she stepped into the large cubicle with him.

  ‘I’ll ask again.’ His ragged breathing bolstered her confidence all the more. ‘What are you doing? Is it that you won’t answer, Little Doc? Or that you can’t?’

  She cocked her head on one side, her eyes meeting his boldly.

  ‘I thought you used to call me that nickname to be sweet. Now I realise it’s your way of reminding yourself of my job; reminding yourself to keep your distance; reminding yourself to stay in control.’

  ‘I don’t need nicknames to stay in control.’

  She didn’t answer. Not at first. She merely took a pace forward, as if silently matching him. And now they were so close that if he’d lifted his arm up he could have touched her. He wanted to touch her; she knew him well enough by now to tell.

  ‘Getting you to relinquish control. Just for once,’ she told him at last.

  ‘Is that so?’ he demanded through gritted teeth.

  Isla made herself smile. ‘It is.’

  Then, reaching up onto her tiptoes, as the waterfall shower cascaded over them both, she pressed her lips to his.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HAD HE BEEN waiting a whole lifetime just to kiss her again?

  It felt like it. And that mere realisation should have made him take stock. Instead it walloped into him, winding him, before turning infinitely softer and moving like a caress over him. It was a smile that made him take another—possibly perilous—step closer.

  As though he was compelled.

  He struggled, trying to pull together some semblance of discipline. Though whether for her or for himself he couldn’t be sure. He’d spent his whole adult life feeling as though there was a monster prowling deep inside him, lurking in the dark, stalking around the edges. He’d thought of himself as some kind of ringmaster, trying to keep that monster in check.

  Now, abruptly, he felt as though he wasn’t the one with the power at all. She was—Isla was—and she was leading him by the nose.

  Or something rather further down.

  As if she was weaving some kind of magic around him, binding him. Worse, he liked it.

  ‘Whatever game you think you’re playing, Isla,’ he ground out, only just able to pull his mouth from hers, ‘it won’t work.’

  ‘And if I’m not playing a game?’

  The suggestiveness in her words licked over him, blood pooling in the very hardest part of him. It was too much to think she wouldn’t notice, when her eyes slid lower and widened that fraction.

  Aside from the running water, the silence was hot, and heavy. Pulling around him, closing in until he felt it pressing on his lungs and stopping him from breathing properly.

  And then, God help him, she licked her lips.

  Nikhil didn’t remember reaching out. He didn’t remember hauling her to him. But suddenly she was there, in his arms, and he was
kissing her as though he was a suffocating man and she was the oxygen he needed to survive.

  Perhaps she was.

  He’d certainly never felt so desperate, so ferocious, so feral before. He slid his tongue against hers, revelling in the way she met him stroke for stroke. The way she took his lip in her teeth and grazed it with just enough pressure.

  Need fired through him. Raw. Unrestrained. It made the beast inside him roar. He would have her screaming his name again, as she had that first night.

  Even the memory of it was intensified, now that he had her in his arms. It took everything he had not to simply lift her in his arms, carry her to the bed and rip her clothes off so he could indulge in every last erotic fantasy he’d had about her.

  ‘I told you.’ She drew back unexpectedly, as if reading his mind. ‘Tonight isn’t about me losing control.’

  He wasn’t prepared for the sense of loss, especially when desire was still unmistakable in her tone, her dark, lust-filled eyes never leaving his.

  He wanted to pull her back to him. He didn’t know how he resisted. Maybe because that male part of him still wanted to make her come back to him. To beg him.

  ‘Then what?’ he bit out; for the first time in a couple of decades he wasn’t sure he trusted himself.

  Every second of silence wrapped tighter around him. He felt more and more wired. And somehow Isla knew it. More than knew it—she was relishing it.

  And just when he thought she wasn’t going to speak, she stretched her hand out and ran it straight down the length of his body. Over his chest, his belly, her eyes never leaving his. Then, slowly and deliberately, she wrapped her hand around him, one long, elegant finger at a time, sliding from root to tip, leaving him forgetting to even breathe.

  ‘Isla...’ he warned. Weakly, if he was to be truthful.

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t come here to lose control.’ He drew in a sharp breath at the sudden wicked glint in her eyes as, without warning, she sank elegantly to her knees in front of him. ‘I came here this time so you would lose control.’

  In that instant Nikhil knew he needed to stop her. He’d had countless women pleasure him this way, over the years, and he’d welcomed it. Encouraged it. Sometimes downright instigated it. But this was the first time he had ever, ever, felt like this. As though she was asking him to surrender to her. And he couldn’t do that.