The Doctor's One Night to Remember

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘Oh, God, I’m going to die out here.’

  ‘No.’ One of the workers lifted his head with a smile. ‘Is not problem. Not bad spider.’

  ‘Irritado,’ the other added, making an itching action with his hands. ‘No es venenoso.’

  A collective sigh went around the group. Most of them were clearly relieved, but a couple looked a little disappointed not to be treated to a more exciting show. Isla wasn’t surprised when Nikhil took charge, reclaiming all the passengers’ attention and getting the tour back on track as their guide moved them a little further from the action.

  Isla crouched down carefully by her patient.

  ‘Are you known to be allergic, Mr...?’

  ‘Camberwell.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘You’re sure it isn’t venomous? I feel sick. I think I’m going to die.’

  ‘Can we get him to shelter?’ Isla asked as Nikhil materialised by her side. ‘And maybe a chair, and some ice?’

  He barely seemed to lift his hand before a couple of plantation workers hurried over, listening intently as he rattled off a few commands to them in Spanish. Firm, yet not imperious—typically Nikhil, as she was beginning to understand.

  ‘Sí, sí.’ The men made a chair with their hands and proceeded to carry the still overwrought Mr Camberwell from the plantation area to the processing plant.

  Isla and Nikhil followed quickly.

  ‘I still want him checked over properly,’ Nikhil murmured.

  ‘Of course,’ she confirmed as the workers settled her patient onto a rickety chair.

  She shot them a smile. ‘Gracias.’

  ‘De nada.’

  She turned her focus to her patient, not surprised when Nikhil launched into his own conversation with the men. But Mr Camberwell was her priority. She swung her little daysack off her bag, complete with some emergency medical supplies.

  ‘All right, sir, let’s check you over. I’m just going to take your pulse.’

  Methodically, Isla checked her patient’s pulse, breathing and reactions, applying an ice pack as soon as it arrived from the workers.

  His blood pressure seemed fine, and the initial shock of the bite seemed to be wearing off now. Carefully she lifted the ice pack up and checked the area. There was perhaps the beginning of a little redness and swelling.

  ‘It itches,’ Mr Camberwell grumbled, trying to push her hand away to scratch it.

  ‘Of course, sir—’ Isla flashed her best smile ‘—but try not to scratch it, as that can make it worse. I’m going to clean it out for you now and apply a little antibiotic ointment, and then I think it’s best to get you back to the ship and to the medical bay, just to check you over again.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Mr Camberwell nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Okay, so in the meantime I’m also going to give you an antihistamine to help with the itching.’

  She began to quickly clean the area to prevent infection, keeping the man talking as she did so, more and more confident that it wasn’t going to develop into something any more serious. Finally, she stood up and drew Nikhil to one side.

  ‘Shall I return to the ship with Mr Camberwell?’

  ‘What’s the probability that his situation is going to develop?’

  Isla wrinkled her nose. ‘I can’t say with absolute certainty, of course, but I’m confident that it’s just a bite that’s going to hurt and itch for a few days. I’d still like him kept under observation in the medical centre for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘So you’re better staying with this tour group, in the event of any other emergency,’ Nikhil confirmed.

  Isla nodded. ‘Agreed, although Mr Camberwell should have someone to accompany him back to the ship.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Turning back to the party, Nikhil beckoned one of the shore excursion staff, who seemed only too eager to race over to him, her doe eyes growing wider as Nikhil began to instruct her.

  One could only hope that she herself didn’t look so besotted when talking to Nikhil, Isla thought irritably as she concentrated on the understandably still concerned Mr Camberwell. Not helped by the unwelcome thrill that she’d felt when she’d realised she would still get to spend another couple of hours of this excursion with Nikhil.

  What was wrong with her that she couldn’t push him into her past, the way he seemed to have done so easily with her? Was his appeal so great?

  It had to be. Even now, she couldn’t stop herself from admiring the way he was so effortlessly able to take control in any given situation. Calming yet authoritative.

  And almost universally adored, of course. Men and women, passengers and crew. That certainly helped his appeal—and none of them had slept with him.

  So what chance did she stand?

  Especially when she couldn’t shake the thought that, for all his words about never crossing that line between personal and professional, when he talked to her there was still an intensity in those dark, expressive eyes that she’d never, ever seen when he talked to anyone else.

  Whatever Nikhil said, he hadn’t quite pushed her into his past the way he would have her—and maybe even himself—believe.

  Perhaps for him it was more about the physical, more about the sexual desire. Maybe he hadn’t got quite that same kick of pleasure at the realisation that they would be spending the afternoon in each other’s company. But neither was he entirely indifferent—and didn’t they say that indifference was worse than anything?

  Shaking her thoughts free, Isla busied herself tending to her patient and making a few notes, but it was no use. Her mind was filling with a slew of memories from that night. So vivid, and so real. That powerful body pressed against hers, making her feel things she’d never felt before. Her body shivered from the sheer memory of it, despite the heat.

  ‘Right Mr Camberwell, let’s get you back to the ship, shall we?’ Nikhil’s voice pierced her thoughts. Bright and firm enough to instil confidence into her worried patient, who looked up instantly, his watery eyes clearing as he took Nikhil’s outstretched arm and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. Gathering up the last of her kit, Isla hurried after them as they headed for the vehicle.

  A few more instructions, and the Jeep was heading off down the plantation path. But when Isla made herself turn around she realised the main excursion party had disappeared, around to some different area of the tightly packed banana stems. Now, she was alone with Nikhil, save for the processing staff who were all too busy concentrating on their production line to pay the two of them any attention.

  ‘Well done,’ he said quietly, turning to face her.

  The full force of his gaze sent a primitive wave of heat crashing through her.

  Isla forced herself to laugh. ‘What for? Doing my job?’

  ‘Doing it so quietly that none of the other guests have felt panicked enough to return to the ship along with Mr Camberwell. It happens,’ he added when she frowned in surprise.

  ‘Oh.’

  It was all she could think of. Her mind had gone blank.

  ‘You are always so discreet, Isla. It’s a surprising quality, particularly on a cruise ship like ours, I find.’

  The compliment was as unexpected as it was sincere, catching Isla off-guard. For a moment she flailed around for a response.

  ‘Careful, Nikhil.’ She swallowed at last. ‘That almost sounded like a compliment.’

  ‘Perhaps because it was a compliment. Though I’m glad to hear you’ve dispensed with the Mr Dara nonsense.’

  Isla opened her mouth to object, but a gurgle of laughter came bubbling out instead. Unintended but, it turned out, the perfect way to break the tension.

  ‘I could have called you sir; you are the First Officer, after all.’

  He let out a low, deep chuckle of his own and before she could stop herself she seized it, filing it away somewhe
re special like the dragon hoarding its treasure. Or the chimera hiding the lost Inca gold, that Reginald had been telling them all about after his return from his day-trip to Peru.

  ‘You wouldn’t call me sir even if you had to,’ he noted. Accurately, as it turned out.

  ‘Not even if you commanded me,’ she agreed.

  But she wasn’t prepared for the way his eyes suddenly grew hot. Hungry. Reflecting all the things she was trying to keep stuffed down, so deep inside.

  ‘And what commands would you obey, Isla? If I uttered them?’

  ‘None,’ she retorted.

  But her voice was hoarser than normal. A fact of which they were both aware.

  She had no intention of adding any more, but then her mouth started talking all of its own accord.

  ‘And what about you, Nikhil? What commands would you obey if I issued them?’

  He took a step closer to her, and the whole world suddenly receded until it was just her and Nikhil. No one else existed for Isla. Not the plantation, not the workers, not even the tour group, only just out of sight around that corner.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  His tone was so heavy, so loaded, that it fired straight through Isla, pooling between her legs. Making her molten in an instant.

  ‘Yes.’ But it was barely more than a whisper.

  It was odd, the way everything seemed so loud and yet so still. She could hear monkeys calling to each other, birds singing the most wondrous songs and insects chirping and squeaking. Yet at the same time she didn’t think she could hear anything above the roaring in her ears.

  She had no idea how long they stood there, staring at each other, some invisible thread binding them together, tighter and tighter, until she couldn’t move.

  Or didn’t want to.

  And still he didn’t answer. He didn’t speak at all. Yet she could hear his thoughts swirling through her. All the things he wanted to do to her, right there. All the things she wanted too.

  Just when she’d begun to think he was never going to speak, he opened his mouth and murmured the words, only loud enough for her to hear.

  ‘Why don’t you try it and find out?’

  And Isla didn’t think twice. She lifted herself up onto her tiptoes, in her heavy, leather walking boots, and she kissed him, the way she’d been dreaming of doing all week.

  * * *

  And then he was kissing her. His lips slipping smoothly over hers, his tongue moving languorously as he tasted her, sampled her. Over and over again.

  Unhurried and unfettered, as if they had hours. Days. Perhaps whole lifetimes. Another level again from the passion of that night they’d spent together, and somehow that made her tremble all the more.

  His fingers traced her jaw, leaving her skin scorched in their wake. He made her feel infinitely precious, and utterly desired. No other man had ever made her feel so...aware. Aware of him. And aware of herself.

  That night, he’d awakened something in her that she hadn’t even known had been lying dormant. She’d told herself that she’d been in complete control of the passion of that night. She’d chosen to pursue the novelty of a one-night encounter with the clichéd tall, dark stranger, leading to her first ever one-night stand. At thirty-two, she’d decided to lose herself in a way she’d never done before.

  But now, here, alone with Nikhil, she was finally forced to concede the truth. She hadn’t been in control at all. It hadn’t been about that night, or that place. It had been about him. Nikhil. She doubted any other tall, dark or handsome stranger would have made her lose herself the way that he had done. He made her feel things she’d never felt before. He made her discover more about herself. And the worst of it was that she wanted to learn more.

  * * *

  This was insanity, Nikhil thought as he knocked on the door to Isla’s cabin.

  He didn’t realise he’d been holding his breath until she opened the door. And stared at him.

  ‘Nikhil?’

  ‘Can I come in? I’d rather not stand here in the hallway outside your room for longer than necessary.’

  Her eyes gleamed at him then narrowed, echoes of their last encounter practically bouncing off the walls around them. And even though her stance was defiant, her voice was careful and low. Discreet.

  ‘If you’ve come to insult me again, like the other day, then I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t need you to come here to tell me that you regret kissing me earlier, and I’d rather you dealt with your guilt yourself. Quietly. In your own room.’

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t tell her that the only thing he regretted was the fact that they’d had to stop, before the tour group walked back around the corner and spotted them. Or that he regretted that the excursion was so long that he’d been forced to carry on with the afternoon as though he was enjoying himself, when the only thing he’d wanted to do was get back here—and come right here, to her room.

  But Nikhil didn’t say any of that. It was hard enough to admit it to himself, without having to admit it to someone else. Even Isla.

  Especially Isla.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he repeated simply.

  She glowered at him a moment longer before sighing heavily. ‘Apparently, I don’t have a choice.’

  He didn’t answer. He merely followed her inside and closed the door.

  ‘Why are you here, Nikhil?’ she demanded, when he didn’t speak. But he didn’t miss the slight quake in her voice. ‘To tell me that you regret what happened at the plantation? Because you’ve already made it clear we should stay away from each other, not give into distractions.’

  And still he didn’t answer. He had no idea what he was doing there, only that his legs seemed to have carried him along the corridors to her room, all of their own accord. The only thing he knew was that a week ago he’d sworn he’d stay away from this woman if it killed him.

  He thought it damned near had.

  How many times had he thought he’d seen her retreating around a corner just as he’d arrived? Or imagined he could smell that soft, lightly floral scent in the air as he walked down a corridor?

  How many times had he found a reason to be near the medical centre when he could arguably have left it to another officer?

  ‘Look, Nikhil—’ she twisted her hands in mid-air in front of him ‘—I made a mistake earlier, and I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want to distract you and mess up your head. Or your career. Or whatever.’

  ‘It’s already messed up,’ he heard himself say, though he didn’t clarify what, precisely, felt messed up.

  Perhaps because he wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that either. He only knew that, oddly, it felt like a good messed-up. As if he was messed up with Isla. How was it that the only time he ever really felt like himself—like the real Nikhil—was when he was with her?

  It should be exactly the opposite. She made him act crazily, when he was all about control. How was that the real him?

  He let out a low sound, not wanting to think about that right now. He just had to fight this impossibly overwhelming urge to put his hands on her shoulders and haul her to him, to claim that pink, perfect mouth with his, just like he had a lifetime ago.

  He seemed to have no control where Isla Sinclair was concerned, and yet suddenly he couldn’t bring himself to care. The rules he’d made for himself—rules that had worked flawlessly all these years—had been in disarray ever since she’d walked onto his ship.

  Or even before that, when he’d been called to that damned bar brawl.

  This wasn’t how things were meant to be. His career wasn’t supposed to merge with his personal life. It couldn’t. Because each needed to be kept in its own box—one that he could pick up easily when it was time and put down just as easily when he needed to. But Isla didn’t fit that black and white mould.

  She didn’t fit any mould.

 
She was too fluid, and vibrant, and...challenging. She was upturning all those carefully ordered boxes, spilling the contents of his life out onto the floor and mixing them up. And, for all his statements about not blurring the lines, he wasn’t really preventing her.

  Worse, he was encouraging her. He was the one who had kissed her back at the banana plantation, and he was the one who had come to her cabin now.

  ‘I came to apologise,’ he lied. Because that hadn’t been in the forefront of his mind when he’d stalked the corridors to get here—though it should have been.

  ‘To apologise?’ Her eyebrows shot up, as if she didn’t believe him either.

  She already knew him too well, and what did it say that he liked the idea of that?

  ‘You’re right.’ He dipped his head. ‘It was me who called you a distraction, but kissed you today. It is me who is seeking you out now, to try to make things...less fraught between us. To make sure that, after this afternoon, I haven’t given you false hope.’

  ‘False hope?’ she echoed again, this time in disbelief.

  Though there was something else in her tone that made him feel he should tread warily. He just couldn’t put his finger on what that something was.

  ‘That there could be a repeat of what happened between us, in Chile.’

  ‘I understood what you were referring to,’ she managed stiffly. ‘Sex. You can use the word, Nikhil, I’m not prudish.’

  No, she wasn’t. A reel of X-rated images rolled through his head, from the unabashed way she’d come apart in his arms to the wild way she’d shattered under his tongue. All of which threatened to break his resolve.

  His body was heating at the mere memory, his heart beginning to drum out a beat in his chest. Low, and deep, and carnal. A call to action.

  She was so close that he could smell the fresh scent of her shampoo, stirring his memories and telling him that she’d only recently emerged from the shower. Giving him a whole new set of images to contend with. Testing his apparently already fragile resolve.

  ‘Sex then,’ he growled, fascinated at the way she fought not to react.