‘The ambulance is on its way,’ Fitz muttered quietly. ‘This is for his bladder. I’m going out to check the car, I’ve probably got spare clothes in my gym bag in the boot.’
Gratefully, Elle took the blanket and laid it over the boy’s lap, asking him how he felt and trying to note his clarity of answers through Lisa’s panicked interference. It was clearly going to be a lot easier for Elle to make her assessment without Adam’s sister wailing and babbling.
‘Come with me, Lisa,’ Fitz commanded softly, in the tone he used when he needed people to do things he knew they absolutely didn’t want to do. ‘We’ll work it out, but your parents need to know. However mad you think they’re going to be, imagine how upset and angry they would feel if you didn’t contact them.’
Almost against her will, Lisa backed away from her brother, her eyes still locked on his dazed form.
‘I... I guess they’d be even more angry?’
‘I think you’re probably right. Now, my...friend is going to stay with Adam until the ambulance arrives, but you and I need to call your parents together and let them know what’s going on.’
‘And tell them Adam’s going to need to go to hospital for an EEG,’ Elle muttered in a low voice. ‘Tell them to meet Lisa and Adam there.’
‘Understood.’ He turned back to the sister. ‘Right, shall we step outside where it’s a little quieter?’
The sister flip-flopped again.
‘No, no... I can’t.’
Time to take her properly in hand.
‘Lisa, they’re going to find out some time,’ Fitz informed her sternly. ‘Better sooner, don’t you think? If you’d prefer, I can call them for you, but someone needs to do it. Now.’
The girl hesitated, then nodded, silently handed over her mobile, and followed him outside.
* * *
‘Thanks for moving everyone away so quickly,’ Elle said forty minutes later as they watched the ambulance pull away from the kerb. ‘The last thing that kid needed was to come round to find a bar full of nosy people gawking at him.’
‘No problem. You were quite impressive back there. Again.’ He smiled. ‘Shall we go back inside?’
She shook her head.
‘No, I really do need to go. But thanks for the drink.’
Her guarded gaze caught him by surprise. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. The sounds of the music thumped sensually into the street from the live band who had taken the stage early to lift the mood of the still stunned crowd, but neither of them made a move.
‘Ah, okay. I did find one thing odd, though,’ Fitz said, stalling for time. ‘His sister really had no idea he was epileptic?’
‘He might not be.’ Elle cocked her head, apparently happy to be delayed. ‘It isn’t uncommon to have a single seizure and then for it never to happen again for the rest of his life. Especially because he’s seventeen and alcohol can be a trigger. The EEG should help to determine whether or not there is unusual electrical activity in Adam’s brain and he’ll go from there.’
‘And what do you think?’ Fitz asked, admiring the way her eyes lit up when she talked about medicine. Clearly being a doctor was more than just a job to her, it was something she loved.
‘I don’t know without the results, but from everything he said afterwards, I’m thinking he’s had a few absence seizures in the past, which he never really thought much about. Then the combination of alcohol, exams in school, finding it hard to sleep at night was a trigger for more. But that’s just a guess.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Anyway, from your reactions I’m guessing that isn’t the first time you’ve seen a seizure either?’
‘My little sister suffered from epilepsy. From the first year of her life.’
The words were out before Fitz had time to think and he halted abruptly. He never talked about his sister. Never.
The last time he’d even talked about his family—other than to trot out the one, practised sentence that his mother and sister had died a long time ago—had been to Janine. And even then he hadn’t told her the full story, just enough to satisfy her questions after her colonel father had already told her about the car crash.
He’d certainly never told her about those three years when it had just been his mother, his sister and himself in that tiny, cramped flat. The happiest three years of their lives together until his old man had walked back in that night.
‘Suffered? Past tense?’ Elle asked. ‘Did she grow out of it? I think it’s somewhere around ninety percent of children with childhood absence epilepsy can grow out of it by about the age of twelve, although I understand they can sometimes have other types of seizure.’
‘No. She died.’
Elle held his gaze steadily, her expression changing.
‘I’m so sorry. What happened?’
Old, familiar guilt had resurrected itself, and was pressing on his chest like a flatbed truck was crushing him. Images assailed Fitz. Him getting home, the car gone, the phone lying smashed on the floor, the shattered furniture, leaving the house turned upside down. And everywhere the stench of booze. The stench of him. The man who was Fitz’s father in name only.
‘Car crash. She was six, nearly seven. My mother died too.’
He braced himself for the look, pity coupled with discomfort as they quickly changed the topic. Instead, he simply saw quiet empathy, a calmness and genuine interest. It seemed to slice through all the layers of protective armour he’d spent years pulling into place.
‘Fitz, how awful for you. So it was just you and your father?’
‘He was driving.’ Fitz tried to swallow the words. Elle was a stranger and this was no one’s business except his. ‘Drunk. I was the only one left.’
Instead, they kept pouring out, as if they’d been waiting for this moment—for this woman—for half his lifetime.
‘Is that why you wanted to protect me from the drunken bloke who was hassling me at the bar, and his mate?’ she asked softly. ‘So, how old were you?’
‘Sorry?’ he stalled.
This was the longest he’d allowed himself to think about it in a long, long time. And he didn’t want to. Not here. Not now. Not ever.
‘How old were you when your family died?’ she repeated steadily.
‘You ask a lot of questions for a damsel in distress.’
‘I wasn’t in distress. I had my thumb-lock, remember?’ Another smile that twisted in his gut. ‘But that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the solid back-up.’
‘Well, then, that makes me feel better.’ He managed a wry smile.
He should have known better than to distract her. Her gaze never wavered and he was compelled to address her unanswered question.
‘Seventeen. But it was the night of my eighteenth.’
He should have had happy memories of the time but all he had was one of his mother and his sister lying in that hospital mortuary. To this day he didn’t know which of the mass of bruises over his mother’s face had been caused by the crash itself and which had been the result of his drunkard father’s cruel fists. Fitz struggled to breathe, let alone regulate his voice, which sounded a million miles away when he spoke.
‘Listen, this isn’t something I like to talk about.’
A beat passed before Elle answered, but not before reaching out to run a hand over his cheek as if she actually cared. And the oddest thing was, he felt like she did.
‘Maybe you should talk.’
‘I don’t need to talk,’ he bit out.
She gave an apologetic shrug, but it didn’t stop her from continuing.
‘I’m sorry. I know it’s probably none of my business but I’m a doctor. I can see the signs when someone has repressed things for a long time. Especially soldiers who think they’re too tough to need to talk and repress all kinds of bad incidents.’
‘What
makes you think I’m a soldier?’ he asked sharply.
‘Those spare gym trousers you gave to the boy in there after his seizure had made him lose bladder control? I couldn’t help noticing they were military issue. And there’s just something about the way you handle yourself. I’m guessing Infantry?’
The way she smiled, polite but with none of the openness or interest of earlier, made him sure that discovering he was military had put her off. Ironically, his experience with women was that it was usually the other way around.
‘Not Infantry but, yes, I’m army. A colonel,’ he confirmed, technically not a full colonel, a lieutenant colonel, but he doubted that would make a difference to her.
Neither would the fact that until a couple of months ago he’d been a major in a different Royal Engineers regiment. Now he was at the start of his two-year posting as commanding officer of his very own regiment.
Yet right now all he could think was that something about the army meant that Elle was about to walk away from him, and a part of him desperately wanted her to stay. He wondered if she had a brother, a father who had served and been hurt. Or worse.
‘You don’t like it that I’m in the army, do you?’
‘No, no. It isn’t that. It’s...complicated.’
‘Too complicated to finish that drink with me?’
She sucked in a deep breath, as though trying to make her mind up about something. It was unsettling how much he wanted to spend more time with her. A drink, an hour, maybe the rest of the evening, whatever she was prepared to offer. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d ever wanted to spend time with any woman like this. But at least now her determination to leave had faded and she was looking decidedly undecided.
‘After the last hour, I’m guessing both of us would benefit from a bit of fun now,’ he pressed. ‘A bit of a laugh? A drink? Maybe a dance?’
‘I don’t dance.’ She frowned uncertainly but didn’t refuse him.
She was torn. He still didn’t know exactly what had put her off before but she was clearly as attracted to him as he was to her.
It didn’t make sense. He’d had short-term relationships and a handful of one-night stands over the years, all with attractive women of varying intelligence, but there was something different about Elle that seemed to pull at his gut and not just at the other, more...obvious part of his anatomy. Something glowed, like a whisper of wind over dying embers, inside Fitz; somewhere that had been a gnawing void for longer than he could remember.
He snorted silently inside his head. It was physical attraction, pure and simple. It was just the unusual circumstances of their meeting that had given rise to such a fanciful notion. The unexpected memory of his baby sister and the life he’d long since forgotten.
He hadn’t really wanted to come out tonight, the eighteenth anniversary of his mother and sister’s deaths. Its echoes of celebration seemed cruelly hollow. From today, his life had been devoid of their love and laugher and warmth for longer than they had been a part of it. Hardly a night for letting loose.
But he didn’t have a choice. It was a long-standing tradition with the men with whom he’d gone through Royal Military Training Academy—officer cadets over a decade earlier—to come on a final night out before a tour of duty. To have reneged on it would have raised questions Fitz didn’t want to answer.
And so he’d come, and from the minute he’d walked in and headed to the bar to buy the first round, his gaze had snagged on the arresting woman with the stunning red hair. A glorious, waist-length curtain of vibrant golds and reds and coppers that had evoked long-buried memories of the vivid autumn day over a decade earlier when he’d returned, exhilarated and hooked after his first ever tour of duty. It had tugged at something primal, deep inside him, yet...something he still couldn’t quite identify had also held him back from approaching her immediately.
Then those drunken idiots had given him the excuse he’d pretended he hadn’t been looking for, only to find that she could take care of herself with aplomb, and he’d been even more intrigued.
Fitz reminded himself that tonight was about fun, having a good time. In a matter of days he’d be thousands of miles away in a geographically hostile—though for once non-combat—environment and neck-deep in responsibility for his engineers’ role in a crucial, multi-discipline, hearts-and-minds mission. Tonight was his last chance to blow off some steam.
‘I don’t believe you can’t dance.’ He grinned. ‘But if that’s true, how about I teach you?’
‘You dance?’
Her brows knitted together and his stomach pulled tight. Man, she was cute. He shoved his hands into his trousers to counter the sudden impulse to take her face in his hands and kiss the frown lines away.
‘Not like some of those guys in there who can set the floor on fire.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘But I can move my feet and keep a decent beat. So what do you say?’
Chapter Three
FITZ COULD MORE than just hold a decent beat, Elle thought an hour or so later as they took a break from another round of dancing in order to get a much-needed drink. He wasn’t competition standard, but he had a few nice moves and she was enjoying herself far more than she could have dreamed a couple of hours ago. She was glad she hadn’t left.
She’d been going to when she’d realised he was army. Not that she had to, it wasn’t against the rules given their ranks, but it was a complication she wasn’t sure she needed. And then he’d told her about his family and she’d felt a connection to him. The patent physical attraction between them only partially explained the draw; he’d trusted her enough to tell her, and that made it easier for her to feel she could trust him too.
Especially after Stevie.
‘Water, please.’ She nodded gratefully as he asked her what she wanted, trying not to read too much into the fact that his hand was still curled gently around her smaller one. ‘Or an orange juice. I could really go for an ice-cold juice right about now. Wait, I’ll come with you.’
‘Fine,’ Fitz agreed. ‘Just stay close.’
Her heart hammered even harder than it had been doing all evening as he pulled her casually to him and began to lead her through the throng to the bar. Then, reaching for a free sample of a lurid-coloured shot, he sniffed it warily.
‘You sure you just want water? You could try this Diablo’s Poison they’ve been pushing all night. I mean, it looks like some hacked jet engine fuel, smells even worse, and would probably strip your insides for the year, but if you can down it in one go you get a selfie and a photo on their media site. I mean, what’s not to love?’
He faked choking and Elle laughed, a rich feeling that seemed to bubble up out of nowhere, washing away the very last vestiges of the grime and sadness of the last few weeks. She was beginning to feel more and more like her old self with every passing moment. Stevie hadn’t got the better of her, and she wasn’t making quite the fool out of herself with this flirting business, as she’d initially feared. His betrayal had knocked her back but it hadn’t devastated her.
If anything, tonight’s unexpected turn of events had reminded her that Stevie had nothing to do with all the best qualities she prided herself on having: her skill as a doctor; her ability to take care of herself; her appeal to someone like Fitz. She didn’t know what it was about Fitz that seemed to lift her the way he did, she just knew the more time she was in his company the more time she wanted to spend with him.
And the fact that he’d confided in her earlier—things about his family that he didn’t tell many people, if any—had allowed her to let her guard down with him. As though she knew him, rather than had just met him. Another side to the man she could easily see as a strong colonel, a dynamic leader, an inspiring mentor.
‘You look more relaxed than you were earlier,’ Fitz said suddenly, ordering the drinks and then turning to her.
His gaze was unexpectedly more pe
netrating than before, reminding her that her body was tantalisingly close to his.
Abruptly, she ached for more.
They’d been dancing for over an hour, yet it had been so fast-paced that this was probably the closest she’d been to him for any length of time. And her body seemed acutely aware of it.
‘I feel more relaxed,’ Elle admitted, ignoring the irony as she struggled to regulate her breathing, and control the goose-bumps of anticipation from racing over her skin.
‘So, what brought you here tonight?’
She drew in a sharp breath.
‘Why ask that now, particularly?’ she managed slowly.
His mouth curved up into the seductive smile that she’d already discovered turned her insides out.
‘Because, I’d very much like to kiss you.’ He didn’t let her break the gaze for a moment. Direct and concise, just what she’d come to expect from Fitz. ‘But I don’t think that’s what you were looking for when you first came in here.’
‘Astute of you,’ Elle murmured, trying to buy herself some time.
It was as though the evening had been leading up to this point from the moment he’d stepped up to her at the bar. Now it was up to her to decide whether dancing, a drink, a laugh were as far as things went, or if she wanted more with Fitz tonight.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t rush her. He simply waited. And Elle was mesmerised by the way his thumb traced lazy, circular patterns over the back of her hand, as though the two of them had all the time in the world.
With his other hand, he reached between their bodies and picked up her drink from the bar to offer it to her before taking his own.
‘Come on,’ he muttered, turning and leading her back through the mass of rhythmically throbbing bodies and to a quieter corner of the club.
Then he turned back to face her, his gaze snagging hers as easily as before.
Dragging her eyes away, she took a fortifying gulp of orange juice.
Then a second.
Finally, she lifted her gaze back to Fitz.
Tempted by Dr. Off-Limits Page 3
