The Doctor's One Night to Remember

by Charlotte Hawkes

  Waiting for the sound of the door closing, Isla wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out of the bathroom. She schooled herself to stay silent, torn between the fact that this was Nikhil’s cabin and it was therefore likely to be ship’s business, and sheer curiosity over what such a late-night call had been about.

  But when she rounded the corner to see Nikhil standing, his face a shade of white to match the towel slung loosely around his hips, she didn’t stop to think.

  ‘What’s wrong, Nikhil? What’s happened?’

  His eyes slid to her, but she had the strangest impression that he wasn’t really seeing her. A moment later, he seemed to refocus.

  ‘It’s nothing.’.

  ‘It doesn’t look like nothing,’ she pressed softly. In truth, he looked tormented. Defeated. And she could feel her insides twist themselves in knots as she fought the urge to go to him and try to make everything all right. Because she knew she couldn’t.

  She wasn’t his girlfriend; she was...little more than a booty call. A supposedly mutually agreeable booty call, but suddenly she wondered if her mother had truly been right all these years.

  Had her marriages always been mutually advantageous, or was it possible that they had been more one-sided than Marianna had ever realised? Or indeed admitted. Could it be that the husbands Marianna had selected had each fallen a little bit in love with her, in their own way?

  Nikhil had warned her that he couldn’t offer her anything more than enjoying each other’s company, and she had agreed on the premise that she’d never wanted to get hurt again after Bradley.

  But really, deep down, Isla was beginning to finally admit a truth she suspected she’d known all along. She had never loved Bradley; she’d barely felt much for him at all, so how could he ever have hurt her?

  Had the emotions she’d held up as evidence of her hurt really been more about humiliation? Because she’d felt more for Nikhil in the last few weeks than she ever had for her ex-fiancé. Which made her fear that her affair with Nikhil wasn’t quite so emotion-free as she’d imagined.

  Certainly not as emotion-free as Nikhil.

  But then, instead of shutting her out as she’d expected him to do, Nikhil suddenly picked up an exquisitely written note and passed it to her.

  ‘That was Roberto at the door,’ he told her woodenly, referring to the concierge. ‘He just delivered this.’

  It was such an unexpected invitation into his personal life, yet Isla wasn’t about to back away now. Her fingers shaking, she read the message. It was short and to the point and as she came to the end it was impossible to name what skittered through her.

  ‘Your brother wants to meet again?’ she stated redundantly.

  ‘At any of the next ports of call.’ Nikhil didn’t even sound like himself. ‘If I name it, he claims he’ll be there.’

  ‘Maybe you should,’ she offered tentatively. ‘Maybe it’s time to find out what he wants.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t care what he wants,’ Nikhil threw back, but she knew he wasn’t angry at her.

  ‘Then think about what you want,’ she tried instead. ‘Or, more pertinently, what you need.’

  ‘I don’t need him,’ Nikhil bit out flatly, staring at her so hard that she felt his gaze was actually imprinting itself on her skin. ‘I might have, a few decades ago. But I don’t any more.’

  ‘What happened, Nikhil?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s long-buried history. I see no benefit in resurrecting it.’

  ‘And yet you chose to tell me about this, when you could have ignored it, as you did the last time he was in touch.’

  Nikhil didn’t answer, yet she could feel his emotions circling the room. Snaking around them, ready to strike. She knew she ought to keep out of it, but she couldn’t. He needed her, whether he recognised it or not.

  ‘What’s your history with your brother, Nikhil?’

  That pulse ticked harder, faster in his jaw, but he still didn’t answer. And then, just as she was about to give up, he opened his mouth.

  ‘He betrayed me, Isla. He was my big brother, and he left me at the very moment that I needed him most. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Really, Nikhil?’ The words spilled from her lips before she could stop them. ‘You think you’re the only one to have been betrayed by someone? People do that. It’s one of the uglier sides to human nature. But you want to know what one of our better qualities is?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me.’

  ‘We pick ourselves up—’ she didn’t let his wry tone derail her ‘—dust ourselves off, and we start again.’

  ‘And who, might I ask, betrayed you? Your loving mother? Your idolising stepsister?’

  And she didn’t know what made her say it; she only knew she wanted to make a point to Nikhil.

  ‘Try my lying ex-fiancé.’

  * * *

  Nikhil bit back whatever response he might have made. He’d spent the better part of a month trying to deny it, but the question of Isla’s ex-fiancé had plagued him ever since he’d seen that light band around her ring finger.

  From that very first day it had begged the question of what kind of man let a woman like Isla Sinclair slip through his fingers. And that was why, from that very first day, he’d realised quite how much trouble he was in when it came to this remarkable, bewitching woman.

  ‘I met Bradley at med school, and I was with him for ten years. The last three of those years we were engaged.’

  ‘Let me guess; he cheated on you.’

  ‘He did.’ She nodded. ‘Many times, I discovered that final week before we broke up. But do you want to know the sickest part? That wasn’t even the thing that hurt me the most.’

  ‘Is that so?’ he managed, fighting not to let her see the unexpected anger which had begun to swell inside him at her admission.

  Indignation on Isla’s behalf. A desire to find this idiot Bradley and show him how duplicitous cowards like him deserved to be treated. But, more than that, Nikhil had to fight a sense that Isla deserved more, better, than to be cheated on.

  Just as she deserves more than being used as a booty call? a voice demanded in his head.

  ‘The worst part...’ She licked her lips as though she was finding this harder than she’d expected. ‘The worst part was that I let him dictate my life. I let him tell me that once we were married I was going to give up my medical career and become the kind of wife that could support his career.’

  Nikhil blinked. Of all the admissions he’d expected from her, this was not one of them.

  Isla was born to be a doctor; she clearly loved her work and she was good at it. It would be like throwing him off a ship and telling him to find a new career on land legs.

  ‘And you agreed to this?’

  She tilted her head to one side thoughtfully. ‘I didn’t disagree. At least, not at first. He was saying all the things that my mother had always wanted, so for a short while I lost myself.’

  ‘I can’t imagine that of you.’

  ‘I was, frankly, an idiot. But I thought I loved him. And I thought that he loved me. It turned out he just loved my mother’s social contacts. I was little more than a means to an end. Albeit one who also looked good on his arm.’

  ‘I still can’t see you being the kind of person who would agree to that.’ Nikhil shook his head as Isla squeezed her eyes shut.

  ‘That’s the point. I was a different person back then. That moment was the catalyst for me to try to turn my life around. To become a ship’s doctor, to tour the world, and to have the career I’d always wanted. I didn’t bank on meeting someone like you.’

  And though he warned himself not to react, that he shouldn’t like the way that sounded, Nikhil found himself carried away by her words.

  ‘I’ve changed, Nikhil. I’m not the girl I was a month a
go. I might not have quite noticed it, but my mother has. And she put it down to you, that night at the gala.’

  And God help him, but he wanted to believe every word that she was saying. He just knew that he shouldn’t.

  He had his own demons. And, unlike Isla, he didn’t have the strength to confront them.

  ‘That wasn’t the agreement,’ he balked. ‘We said no dating, just enjoying time together. We agreed no commitments.’

  ‘And now it has developed,’ Isla pointed out evenly.

  He might have believed her, had it not been for the slight shake in her hands. He gritted his teeth as he fought to harden his heart—whatever heart he had—against her.

  ‘Not for me.’

  He certainly didn’t expect her soft, almost regretful response.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘I don’t know if you’re just lying to me or if you’re also lying to yourself, but you’ve felt something blossoming between us, just as I have.’

  ‘You’re mistaken.’

  ‘No, I’m not. And you can growl at me all you want to, Nikhil, but it won’t change the facts,’ she pressed on, inching her way further and further inside the hollow cavern that was his chest.

  Only he had the oddest sensation that she was shining light and warmth into the corners of it as she went.

  ‘I don’t do intimacy. Or commitment.’

  ‘You didn’t, no,’ she agreed. ‘But you can’t pretend that things haven’t changed between us over the last few weeks. You’re more open, and compassionate. It isn’t a weakness.’

  He had a terrible, wonderful feeling that she was right.

  But she couldn’t be right. Because even if what she said was true, even if he’d started to try to become a different person, the truth was that he couldn’t. He was who he was. His past had made sure of that. Pretending to be someone different—the kind of man who deserved a woman like Isla—wasn’t going to make him different.

  It would be like papering over the cracks. His flaws would still be there, hidden temporarily beneath. And when they finally began to show again, when they finally broke through the surface, they would be all the uglier.

  But the worst part of it was that he wanted to believe her.

  So damned much.

  A part of him thought this might be love—or the closest thing he could ever get to it.

  It felt like giving a kid a detonation device and then stepping back to see what happened. It couldn’t end well. If he cared for Isla at all, he wouldn’t put them in that position. And if that wasn’t a reason to keep his distance...

  ‘You’re seeing what you want to see,’ he practically snarled at her, as if to remind her—remind them both—of the monster that he truly was.

  Instead of cowering, however, his beautiful, powerful Isla merely smiled, making everything inside him begin to shatter.

  ‘I’m acknowledging what you pretend isn’t there. I see you for who you really are, Nikhil, and, no matter what you try to tell yourself, I know you’re a good man.’

  ‘You haven’t listened to anything I’ve told you,’ he roared. ‘I’m not a good man, Isla, and, no matter that you want to pretend differently, it won’t make it true.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Nikhil. You have this one awful image of yourself locked in your brain, I suspect because you think that’s what your brother saw when he was at that funeral. But the Nikhil you hold onto isn’t the man I have ever seen. Not once. You need to meet Daksh and listen to what he has to say.’

  And in that moment he realised he would give anything to be the man that Isla thought he was.

  But that wasn’t him. She was wrong. And so the only thing he could do was protect her from himself. The only way he knew how.

  Snatching up his uniform, he stalked out of the room. He had to go and speak to the Captain now, before he thought better of what he was about to do.

  ‘Lock the door when you leave, Isla,’ he managed. ‘And don’t return.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT WAS ALMOST a week later, when Isla was in the middle of tending to her latest patient, that she was summoned by the Captain.

  ‘Thank you, Gerd.’ She pasted on a bright smile, turning back to her rather glamorously dressed patient, who Isla had initially guessed to be in her mid-to-late sixties, but who had turned out to be a sprightly seventy-four.

  Mrs Berridge-Jones had tripped down the last steps of the staircase in the Grand Lobby and been brought to the surgery because she’d been unable to put any weight on her ankle.

  ‘I’m not disembarking,’ the woman had declared imperiously. ‘I’ve been waiting two years for this cruise. I refuse to be sent home just because I caught my heel in the hem of my wretched dress on the last step of your perfectly easy-to-see staircase. It would just ruin the entire cruise.’

  She’d rolled the r of ruin, and Isla had seen flashes of her mother in Mrs Berridge-Jones.

  Now, Isla helped the older woman swing around on the examination table, taking note of the wince of pain.

  ‘Good news, Mrs Berridge-Jones.’ Isla grinned as she presented the images to her patient. ‘Your X-ray doesn’t show any fractures; I’m confident that you’ve got a sprained ankle rather than a break, so I can say that I have absolutely no intention of ruining your cruise.’

  ‘Jolly glad to hear it. So you’ll patch me up in a jiffy and I can get back to my welcome drink? I’d just ordered a rather decent port.’

  ‘As close to a jiffy as I can,’ Isla answered wryly, checking over the foot. ‘But it’s still swollen and clearly painful, even though the painkillers I have given you are doing their job. There are also clear signs of a reduction of movement, so perhaps you won’t be back upstairs in time to enjoy your port this evening.’

  Mrs Berridge-Jones cast her a distinctly disdainful glance. ‘Oh, just give me a few more pain pills to get me through the next couple of days and I shall be as right as rain.’

  ‘Before you go racing back up there to your port, Mrs Berridge-Jones, I have to tell you that sprains still require care and can be very painful. It involves tearing or stretching the ligaments that help hold your ankle bones together and stabilise your ankle joint.’

  ‘I’m not having a splint for a sprained ankle,’ the woman scoffed.

  Isla smothered another smile as she adopted her best disapproving doctor voice. ‘Self-care is vital, Mrs Berridge-Jones. If you don’t look after a sprained ankle you could end up with chronic ankle pain, ankle joint instability, or even arthritis in the ankle joint.’

  ‘Piffle.’

  ‘I want to see it elevated and wrapped before I let you leave here, Mrs Berridge-Jones.’

  And although the woman blustered, Isla noted she nonetheless obeyed.

  * * *

  Now, an hour later, Isla found herself hammering on Nikhil’s door and practically shouldering him out of the way to step inside, without waiting to be invited, the moment he opened it.

  ‘I’ve just been summoned by the Captain,’ she bit out. ‘He offered me a new job.’

  It was useless pretending that she wasn’t nervous. That her heart wasn’t suddenly pounding, or her mouth dust-dry.

  ‘Right.’

  She hated that he didn’t look surprised. Or concerned. Or anything at all, really.

  ‘The doctor who was originally on this ship wants to resume his post when the new cruise begins.’

  ‘Yes, he retains that right.’

  She didn’t know what she wanted him to say, but it was more than that.

  ‘So they’ve offered me a post on another ship. Better than the Hestia, but not quite the Cassiopeia either.’

  ‘It’s a good career move.’

  Emotions bubbled up in her chest. She’d told herself she was being paranoid, suspecting Nikhil of being s
omehow involved. But now, given his reaction, she was beginning to suspect worse.

  That perhaps he’d been more than just involved. That perhaps he’d been the one to actually instigate it.

  ‘You knew,’ she accused, her chest feeling as though it was about to crack.

  ‘The Captain asked my opinion. It seems you’ve made quite an impression on Dr Turner. He wanted to keep you in favour of the original doctor.’

  The truth walloped her hard, winding her.

  ‘So you said I was better to move ships.’

  ‘I merely pointed out that not letting the previous doctor resume his post might open us up to legal challenges. And your role here was only ever stated as temporary.’

  ‘You didn’t want me here.’ Nausea rose in Isla but she quashed it. ‘You told me to transfer, and when I refused you found some other way to get rid of me.’

  ‘You got a promotion,’ he corrected. ‘To a more prestigious ship than you were meant to have been on in the first instance.’

  She supposed she should be grateful at least, that he wasn’t choosing to lie to her. At least he had the integrity to tell her the truth. But it didn’t make it hurt any less.

  ‘This isn’t about my career, Nikhil. At least have the decency to admit that. This is about you not wanting to open up to anyone. And my arrival messing up all your little rules that you have for yourself.’

  ‘I considered what was best for the company. That’s my job.’

  ‘And thank God it fits with your personal leanings. You’ve been trying to push me away ever since I came on board. And you’ve been hating yourself because you couldn’t do it.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with getting rid of anybody. It has to do with supporting your transfer to another ship when the doctor you were replacing is returning here anyway.’

  ‘No.’ She refused to accept it. ‘That’s a convenient excuse—because it also happens to fit. But it’s a side-effect; it isn’t the main reason. It isn’t your primary motivator. You endorsed that transfer because it also got me away from you. You have feelings for me; you just aren’t prepared to admit them.