Second Chance with Her Island Doc

by Marion Lennox

  ‘There might be,’ she said diffidently.

  ‘There isn’t. You’ve done enough. That you had the castle ready...that was a miracle in itself. We can’t hope for more.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, and let the word settle for a while. Let her thoughts settle.

  There’d been time for thinking in the hours she’d sat by Tomas, listening to the noises from outside her new theatre, the sounds of a medical team working hard, the distant cries of distressed relatives. She’d have to prepare a reception area out of earshot of the emergency centre, she’d decided. She’d thought of that during the long hours and she’d thought of a lot more.

  ‘I might need to talk to Victoir,’ she said diffidently, and waited. She wasn’t sure Leo was in the mood to listen to plans.

  She wasn’t sure of anything.

  ‘Why would you talk to Victoir?’ His voice was flat, disinterested. Defeated?

  ‘Because he’s dishonest.’

  ‘Sorry?’ He turned to face her then, looking confused. Good, she thought. Anything to shake him from his distress.

  ‘You know Martin went through the books while he was here?’ she said, still diffidently. ‘Victoir’s been lining his own pockets for years, in all sorts of constructive ways.’

  ‘So what’s that got to do with now?’

  ‘Because it seems that two weeks from now I’m holding a celebration,’ she told him. ‘A party to end all parties, a day to mark the opening of the castle to the island.’

  ‘What... A celebration?’

  ‘You haven’t heard about it yet? How odd.’ She ventured a smile. ‘Okay, the place isn’t near finished but I’m impatient and I want a party now. So it seems I’ve been planning one for weeks. I may need to do a bit of sleight of hand in my diary. The trustees do need the letter of the law to be followed but they’re not about to inspect too closely.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘But I do,’ she told him, willing the grief and shock to fade from his face. ‘We’re having an Open Castle Party to show everyone what we’re doing. Any islander wanting to come will be welcome. It’ll be awesome, and of course we need food. Lots of food.’

  ‘Anna, I hardly think—’

  ‘That talking parties now is appropriate? It is,’ she told him. ‘It must be. Hear me out. Leo, you may not know it but my cousin and my uncle seem to have been paranoid about supply. There’s room here to store enough food to feed an army. There’s a massive stockroom under the castle. Right now it holds tins of baked beans that are fifty years out of date. So many tins. We have a bank of freezers with enough space to store food for the castle for a year or more, and they’re currently unused.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘So tonight I’ve been trying to figure a way I can help the injured fishermen. Their treatment, their rehab will cost a fortune. The terms of the Trust won’t let me help, but if they were working for me...’

  ‘They were fishing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said, and smiled again, pleased with the neat plan she’d devised. The night had been totally miserable until she’d found this sliver of an idea. ‘So here’s my plan, aided by the not-so-honest Victoir. There’ll be a document discovered tomorrow, dated...a couple of days ago? I’ll leave it to Victoir to figure the niceties. It seems two days ago I requested two Tovahnan boats to put to sea to catch sufficient fish to stock my freezers. There’ll also be backdated requests for hiring chefs, and there’ll be menus discovered that might just contain the fish destroyed in last night’s accident.

  ‘I agree, it’s complex. It’ll take a few people crossing their fingers behind their backs, and co-operation by the locals, but the bottom line will be that all those injured were employed by the castle. By me. For my personal pleasure. Therefore the Trust is responsible for all their ongoing medical care.’

  There was a long silence. A stunned silence.

  ‘Do you know how much we’re talking?’ Leo asked at last. ‘Treatment by the best burns units. Specialist care. Rehab. And then there’s Giulio. He died, Anna. There’s his funeral, plus he and his wife lived on the boat. If he was on your payroll...’

  ‘Leo, can I get it into your head that I don’t consider this place mine? The money doesn’t seem mine either, and compared to what’s in the bank this’ll be peanuts. I can’t see myself doing much more than dinting the capital, no matter how I try. But I have to try. My relatives bled this island dry to fill the castle coffers and it’s not my money. It belongs to the islanders. So... Dr. Aretino, is it a good idea or is it not?’

  He stared at her, stunned. ‘It’s a brilliant idea,’ he admitted at last. ‘If you really mean it.’

  ‘Of course I mean it. Do you think the islanders will come to my party?’

  ‘When it’s explained what it’s for...you won’t keep them away.’

  ‘Excellent.’ She sighed and rolled her shoulders and thought of her bed. She was bone weary, but to go to bed now... She wouldn’t sleep. And neither would Leo, she thought. She watched his face and saw her exhaustion reflected there. But she also saw more.

  Her help was appreciated, but underlying everything was the fact that he’d lost an islander tonight. One of his own.

  She glanced downward at the waves gently lapping the shore under the castle walls. The morning sun was just starting to create its early-morning sparkle.

  She felt tired and dirty and dispirited, and Leo must be feeling the same, only so much more. Left to his own devices he’d head back to the other hospital.

  There was nothing major there. The nurses could cope. He had his phone—they could ring if anything came up.

  If he put the ringer on loud they could hear it over the water.

  So why not?

  ‘Leo, I’m going for a swim,’ she threw at him. ‘Want to come?’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘You were heading for a shower, right? There’s a freshwater shower down below. You can swim and shower and then you’re on your way. Coming?’

  He was torn. She could see it, but she wasn’t about to push further.

  ‘I’m heading down,’ she told him. ‘I even know my own way now. Three sets of stairs from here, turn left, halfway along there’s a wooden door with huge brass bars. Lift the bar and you’re at the castle swimming pool—you know it’s sea bath hewn from rock with a channel at the end to swim out to the sea if you want? I do want. I might not think of this castle as belonging to me, Leo Aretino, but right now I’m thinking of that pool as mine, all mine. So join me if you want, the choice is yours.’ And she headed for the stairs and disappeared.

  * * *

  He should go home.

  He should check on his mother and then head back to the hospital.

  His aunt was with his mother—bless her. And the hospital...

  He made two fast phone calls. He wasn’t needed.

  Still, he should go home. There were so many reasons he should try for a couple of hours’ sleep before the next crisis.

  He glanced at the steps. From down below he heard a splash.

  He glanced over the parapet, half expecting Anna to be waving up at him. Instead he saw her head down, stroking purposefully toward the end of the pool.

  Almost naked. She was wearing knickers, nothing else, and her lovely, lithe body was streaking through the water like an otter’s, as if swimming was second nature. Where had she learned to swim like that? It was almost as if she was an islander.

  She wasn’t an islander, he reminded himself harshly.

  He should go.

  But the sight of her swimming through the clear, sapphire water...the shock of the night...exhaustion... His head wasn’t working as it should.

  He wanted a swim. More, he wanted a swim with Anna.

  He swore softly to himself, torn between sense and desire.

  He was t
oo tired for sense to prevail. He was too shocked, too exhausted, too needful.

  His body only wanted one thing and his head had no power to resist.

  He wanted to be with Anna.

  * * *

  The water was a blessing. It had always been.

  Her mother had swum as if she’d been born to the water, and from the time she could remember swimming had been part of their lives. There’d been all sorts of complications in Katrina’s life but when things had got truly bad somehow she’d end up at a beach or a lake or a swimming pool.

  ‘You can forget when you swim,’ she’d told her little daughter. ‘Don’t let yourself think how cold it is, or what you have waiting for you after. Let yourself be a sleek, shiny fish, and the water’s all yours. It’s your home, baby. It’s your safe place.’

  As she’d grown older, as she’d realised how few safe places Katrina had, Anna had learned to almost fear her mother’s passion for swimming. She’d arrive at Anna’s apartment totally out of control, after some disastrous love affair, or a drug bust, or some other catastrophe. ‘Get me to a swimming pool, darling. Or, better, get me to the beach.’

  There’d been midwinter swims at stony beaches. There’d been break-ins to local pools at midnight, and Anna had mostly gone along because she’d known that in the water her mother was at peace.

  And now at the castle she knew why. Her mother’s childhood had, by all accounts, been solitary and miserable, but in the water under the castle Anna had found a similar peace.

  It wasn’t cold here. There were no fences to break. The water practically welcomed you in. For the six months she’d been here she’d swum every day and, like her mother, the time in the water was her time out.

  She’d left Leo on the parapet. She had no idea whether he’d join her but it almost didn’t matter. She put her head down and swam.

  And he did join her.

  She was in the ‘swimming pool’, which was simply a hollow hewn out of rocks at the base of the castle. As long as an Olympic pool, its waters were constantly refreshed by the waters lapping over the edge at high tide. The base at the shallow end was sand. At the far end, sea grasses attached themselves to the rocky floor, and tiny fishes, safe in here from larger predators, darted among the fronds. Their bright colours glinted in the morning light.

  Anna saw them as she passed, but her mind had gone into the almost meditative state that swimming induced in her.

  But then Leo was swimming beside her and meditation went right out the window.

  He was as strong a swimmer as she was. Maybe even stronger. She’d been swimming hard and fast, as she always did at first, until the troubles of the outside world subsided. There weren’t many who could keep up with her but Leo did it easily. They swam stroke for stroke. Side by side.

  There was no need for them to swim side by side. The pool was almost as wide as it was long, but she didn’t move apart and neither did he.

  He was wearing only boxers. His body was so close if she edged a couple of inches to her left she’d brush his chest.

  Skin against skin.

  She was wearing panties. Nothing else. Bras were useless when you swam, they didn’t stretch enough, making her feel constricted. She could have headed back to her apartment and donned a swimsuit when she’d left Leo but the pool was hidden from view from the windows above, and all she’d wanted was to be in the water.

  And now...their swimming was in such synchronisation it was as if they were almost one.

  She knew every inch of this man. His body...oh, she remembered his body, but now he was ten years older. His frame was stronger, the delineation of muscles more striking. He was a gorgeous Apollo of a man.

  She wanted his body against hers. She wanted to say, Mine.

  She wanted him.

  She couldn’t have what she wanted. Hadn’t she learned that the hard way? Ten years of making do.

  She hadn’t been miserable for those ten years. After the first few appalling months she’d set to and made the most of what she had. She’d built herself a great career. She’d had some very nice boyfriends.

  She’d always felt that part of her had been ripped away.

  He was still beside her and the tension was suddenly unbearable. Enough. She swerved and headed for the cut leading to the open sea.

  The bay wasn’t quite as private but it was close. This bay was protected by two headlands, both within the castle keep. Last night’s permission for islanders to use the castle jetty had been a one-off. It was glorious, it was safe and it was hers.

  That was a jarring thought. She wouldn’t think it and she desperately hoped that Leo wasn’t thinking it.

  Maybe he was still in the pool. She wasn’t looking. This whole night had her so disconcerted that her mind couldn’t get anything straight. There was only the water, deep and clear and beautiful.

  Rocks jutted up to the left, tiny islands, their surfaces worn smooth by the wash of high tides—or by generations of Castlavarians using them to sunbathe. Had ancestors sunbaked?

  Sunbathing was free, therefore her ancestors probably had, she decided, and the thought of the miserliness of generations of Castlavarans had her kicking with extra strength.

  She was filled with strange sensations, formed from the dramas and pressures of the night, the skills she’d had to dredge up, the sadness, and now the fatigue, the drop in adrenalin. But overriding all was the thought that Leo was somewhere behind her.

  In the same ocean.

  In the same world.

  Will you marry me? The words were suddenly resonating.

  He’d asked that of her ten years ago and she’d said yes. They said wedding vows were inviolate. Maybe, for her, engagement was the same. Maybe she’d felt part of this man for ever.

  Which was nonsense. She kicked out again, heading across the bay, fast and hard, letting the water cool something heating inside. Something she couldn’t put a name to.

  There were fish swimming under her, seeming almost to use her surge of power to carry them along. That was what she started to focus on. She wasn’t alone, she had fish.

  And her dogs back at the castle.

  She didn’t need Leo.

  She reached the final rock before the open ocean and surfaced—and Leo was just behind her.

  He was very large and very male and very wet. His body was glistening in the morning sunlight. He reached her rock and held on.

  Their bodies brushed, skin against skin.

  She wanted her bra back on. It’d been dumb to swim without it.

  Actually, she wanted more. What was she doing, swimming almost naked? It was as if she’d issued an invitation. She should head to shore, grab her clothes and run.

  She couldn’t. She was winded, or at least that was what she told herself.

  She tugged herself up onto the rock and dripped and stayed completely still. And waited.

  He pulled himself up and sat beside her.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said. ‘Your swimming.’

  ‘It’s one of the few legacies of any value my mother left me.’

  ‘Swimming—and a castle.’

  ‘Is that of value?’ she said, because suddenly it had to be said. ‘When it’s messed with my life?’

  ‘How does it mess with your life?’

  ‘Because it stopped the man I love from wanting me.’

  And there it was, out in the open. Said.

  ‘Anna...’

  ‘Just shut up,’ she said, because she couldn’t bear it one moment longer. He was too wet, too gorgeous, too close.

  He was too Leo.

  ‘Can we not talk?’ she asked. ‘Just...for now? I don’t know about you but this time, this moment... I’m done. Right now I have only one need in the world and that need is you. Kiss me, Leo, before I go out of my mind.’

  *
* *

  Of course he kissed her. How could he not?

  She was simply the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, inside and out. She was naked apart from a sliver of lace panties. Her gorgeous, burnt-red curls were wisping wetly around her face. Her nose still had just the right number of freckles. Her body was brushing his, every curve just right.

  Her lovely green eyes were gazing at him with what was surely a challenge.

  Kiss me, Leo, before I go out of my mind.

  Ditto, he thought. How can I not kiss her?

  And he did.

  * * *

  She belonged to him, as simple as that. She’d made a vow ten years ago and that vow was as strong now as it had been then. Every nerve in her body confirmed it for her. She’d given her heart to this man and it still belonged to him.

  He was hers.

  It wasn’t even a vow, she thought. It was simply a fact, a knowledge so deep and so strong that nothing could change it.

  She shouldn’t be out here. She shouldn’t be almost naked, kissing a man she’d had nothing to do with for ten long years.

  But her body said it was right. Her hands held the wetness of his body against hers, she felt her breasts mould against his chest and she felt like...she’d come home.

  This man. This body.

  Hers.

  His hands were holding her, claiming her, pulling her closer. His mouth was possessing hers, her passion answered by his and more. The warmth of him, the heat, the strength... This was right. This was where she wanted to be.

  Her man.

  * * *

  He couldn’t do this.

  He was doing it. He was loving the woman he wanted with all his heart. But deep within, the ingrained learning was still there, and almost the moment he felt her body mould to his, the age-old lessons resurfaced. Like a ghost, taunting him from the past, refusing to be exorcised.

  She was a Castlavaran.

  Even as he took her into his arms, even as he succumbed to pure desire, the events of the night were still with him. The distrust of the men on the water. His demand that they trust.