His Hidden American Beauty

by Connie Cox

  The thought of anyone anywhere hurting Annalise sent a burst of rage through him.

  He teed up another fish ball and swung, hooking this one but sending it further than any of his previous hits.

  Stephen put his hand on Niko’s shoulder.

  “Don’t frown, little brother. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Marcus teed up his own ball. “Because we’ve been taking lessons. Right, Dad?”

  Hearing his brothers’ hearty laughter emphasized how much he had in his family.

  And how much Annalise didn’t have. As she had comforted him, he wanted to comfort her, give her a shoulder, let her know...

  Know what? That he would always be there for her?

  He couldn’t promise that to any woman. The places he went, the things he did made commitment to a woman impossible. He was actually grateful to his ex for showing him the futility of trying to have it all.

  “It’s only fair that I pass on what I’ve learned.” Stephen looked Niko in the eye, more serious than usual. “After all, thanks to my baby brother buying into the restaurant, we’ve been able to hire another manager so I can take the occasional afternoon off now and spend more time with my sons. I can never thank you enough for that, little brother.”

  “After all you’ve done for me, it’s me that is in your debt.” Niko grinned. “But I bet you a beer I can hit this next one farther than you can.”

  “I’ll take a side bet on Niko.” Phoebe grinned at them both. “Don’t you know that doctors know how to play golf? It comes with the diploma. I’ll bet you play at all those fancy resorts you keep running off to.”

  “I’ll take that side bet, Mom. I’ll bet Uncle Niko doesn’t play a lot of golf when he’s out of town.” Marcus gave Niko a strong stare. “Ask his ex-fiancée. He’s not like most doctors.”

  What had his ex told Marcus now? Had she broken her promise to keep his charity work secret?

  Phoebe patted Niko on the shoulder in case he needed comforting. “It will take a strong woman to keep our Niko’s attention.

  Annalise. Why did he think of her when he thought of a strong woman? He didn’t even know her.

  Could she live on canned beans and peaches for ten days straight because the supply truck had been hijacked? Could she sleep on the ground under a mosquito net because the wind was too strong to pitch a tent with a hurricane blowing in off the coast? Could she complete surgery as rebel gunfire threatened to overrun an encampment?

  That’s the kind of superwoman that would fit into Niko’s life.

  He had to grin as he thought of Annalise draping the superhero cape around Sophie’s shoulders. Going from cruise ship to jungle boat would take a superhuman leap—a leap he could never expect anyone to take on his behalf.

  He squared up to hit the last fish-food golf ball into the ocean.

  Sophie jumped up and down and pointed at the splash he’d made. “Hey, look how far Uncle Niko hit it! He just beat everybody.”

  As one, his family turned and applauded him. That’s what the Christopoulos family did when you met expectations. They cheered you on.

  He’d never let them down yet. What would happen when he did?

  * * *

  As Annalise was unlocking the etched-glass doors leading into the medical suite to accommodate Brandy’s off-hours request, the bartender rushed up to her.

  “Doc, you’re here.” Her face showed panic and her voice was on the edge of hysteria.

  Annalise pushed open the doors. “Come in. What’s wrong?”

  “How could I forget? And now...” Brandy bit her knuckle. “Now I think I’m pregnant.”

  “You were fine when we boarded. What happened between then and now?” Annalise tried to put the pieces together. “Did you have unprotected sex recently?”

  “No. Yes. Well, not within the last day or so, anyway.” Brandy wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t have a baby, not the way I live. What will I do with it?”

  A sympathetic knot formed in Annalise’s stomach. She squelched it down, intellectually keeping her own personal experience safely dissociated from her patient’s. Emotionally keeping her distance was more of a challenge. But overlying Brandy’s circumstances with her own personal trauma wouldn’t be good for either of them.

  “Let’s talk about it back here.” Annalise ushered her back to an examination room, seated her in a chair and took out her clipboard with a fresh chart. “How many days has it been since your last period?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t keep up with it, really, since I use the kind of birth control that keeps you from having one very often. But I’ve been feeling a little tired and my roommate says she’s noticed I’ve put on weight.” Brandy patted her gently rounded stomach. “I feel puffy and my breasts are really tender. Once my roommate pointed it out to me, it was obvious. All the signs are there.”

  “What type of birth control do you use?”

  “The patch.” Brandy looked down at the floor. “But I think I forgot to change it.”

  She looked up, desperation in her eyes. “What am I going to do, Doc?”

  Annalise hated that question. She was duty-bound to discuss options, but she knew all too well all the choices would have life-changing consequences.

  Annalise stared down at the blank form, using her analytical training to compose herself. “The first thing to do is take a pregnancy test. Test your urine first thing in the morning when the hormones will be more concentrated. If the test comes back positive, we’ll do an ultrasound to try to determine how long you’ve been pregnant.”

  She took a pregnancy testing kit from an overhead cabinet and handed it to Brandy. Brandy hugged it to her chest like a lifeline.

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll give you some information and you can make some decisions.” Three weeks. They would be out at sea for three weeks. So many things hung in the balance.

  The wild look in Brandy’s eyes worried Annalise. Even though she wasn’t keen on personal touching, she felt compelled to cover the bartender’s hand with her own.

  “A strong support system will help you through this, Brandy. Your parents? Siblings? I can set you up with a ship-to-shore line and you can give them a call.”

  Brandy shook her head. “We’re not that kind of a family.”

  “We can’t all be that lucky, can we?” Annalise thought of the Christopoulos clan. Even though she’d only seen them in action a few times, she knew they would rally round one of their own, giving comfort and security.

  Hesitantly, she asked, “What about the father? Would he be supportive of you?” When she thought about support, why did Niko come to mind? She’d barely met the man. Why did she cast him in the role of protector?

  Brandy looked up at the ceiling, hugging herself tight and rocking back and forth. “I’m still thinking about that one.”

  “Promise me you won’t do anything rash or stupid.”

  Brandy flushed as if Annalise had caught her in the act. She stood, hugging the pregnancy test box to her chest. “I promise, Doc.”

  “See you in the morning, then. Have me paged if you need me before that.”

  With a nod Brandy was gone, leaving Annalise with a quiet, sterile room and too many painful memories.

  * * *

  Needing alone time, Niko rushed through supper with his family. He loved them, each and every one of them. But they were so—so there all the time, like a litter of puppies, rolling over each other, playfully nipping at each other, never letting a littermate out of sight.

  He settled into the lounge chair he’d claimed the night before. Board shorts, barefoot, beer in hand, now he could breathe deeply. He toasted the ocean, thinking of all the toasts his family had just saluted each other with. Too many of those toasts had to do with him fi
nding the perfect woman, settling down, starting a family. They had drunk to his future happiness!

  And to theirs, he’d toasted back, his lemon-twisted water standing out in stark contrast against his brothers’ rich merlots.

  He’d had enough wine the night before to last him a while. Unlike his family’s preference, wine wasn’t his favorite. Just like attending tomorrow’s tour of the cruise-ship kitchens was a field trip he’d opted to skip.

  Only a few days out and he was already prowling the decks. This low level of activity wasn’t good for him, tying him up in knots instead of letting him relax.

  That sixth sense that had kept him safe innumerable times in the past told him she was approaching. Annalise.

  “Is this seat taken?” Something in her eyes looked vulnerable, hopeful. Anxious. “Can I sit here?”

  Something in his heart couldn’t say no.

  Waves of emotion surged through him. What he was feeling for her was more than the foam that short-term flings were made from.

  He could so easily drown in the deep blue depths of her eyes.

  The smart thing to do would be to explain his need for privacy. It was a valid answer. But he found himself saying, “I was saving it for you.”

  And he found himself realizing that’s exactly what he had been doing.

  She looked at him, looked hard enough he felt compelled to push his sunglasses to the top of his head.

  “Hard day?” she asked.

  He flashed her his celebrity smile. “I’m on a cruise ship. Is there such a thing as a hard day?”

  Her eyes said it all. She was disappointed in him for skirting her question. He wanted to redeem himself very badly.

  “I’m not used to doing nothing. It feels so...trivial.”

  “Tell me about Doctors Without Borders.” Gracefully, she sank into the lounge chair without spilling a drop from the cup of hot tea she balanced on her saucer.

  “What do you want to know?”

  She leaned forward, as if she wanted to catch each word before the wind tore it away. As if what he said held great import. As if he were of great import. “Where was your first mission?”

  So he told her about the trauma care facility in Northern Afghanistan and about how hours of operating made a person numb to the dangers around them.

  “The real danger is becoming numb to the people around you. But there was always someone—a father or sister or friend—who reminded you that your patients weren’t just bodies that needed medical attention but loved ones who needed medical care.”

  He couldn’t imagine trying to explain this to anyone else, but with Annalise he could see the understanding in her eyes.

  Her hands clenched and unclenched around her tea cup. “I was in my first semester of rotation in the E.R. during Hurricane Katrina. In my mind, everything runs together after those first forty-eight hours.”

  She took a sip of her tea. “What was your first assignment?”

  “The tsunami.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He talked for hours, longer than he’d ever spoken about his work before. And she listened, asked questions, nodded sympathetically and laughed at the humorous stories the human psyche needed to break up the horror of it all.

  He fell asleep sometime during the evening and when he awoke with the stars gleaming overhead she’d covered him with a blanket against the night air.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SADLY, ANNALISE HAD had no erotic dreams during the night but she had fallen asleep with Niko on her mind and woken up thinking of him, too. She certainly wouldn’t call her night restful. Who would have guessed such a heroic heart beat beneath that pretty boy rebel exterior?

  Annalise went down to the medical suite as soon as the early morning yoga class on deck was dismissed. Brandy was usually in that class, but today she was a no-show.

  It must have been one of the longest nights of Brandy’s life. Annalise’s heart went out to her.

  When Annalise had realized she was pregnant she’d been almost as frightened as when—

  The bell signaling patients arriving kept Annalise from going down a path she’d rather never travel again.

  Like it always did, helping others took her mind off her own concerns. Annalise had a steady stream of patients with sunburn from strong tropical rays that took them by surprise and acid reflux from overindulging, both typical complaints at this point in a cruise.

  Halfway through her shift one of her receptionists delivered a note, sealed and addressed to her, that had been left at the front counter.

  Annalise opened the note. “Not pregnant. Relieved, but kind of sad, too. Am putting on a new patch this morning. Brandy.”

  Simply apply a patch and go on with life. It was an uncomplicated way to handle a shipboard romance.

  So why did Niko and complications pop into her head just as she was confirming her desire for the simple life?

  * * *

  After an hour of wandering around the ship, trying to accidently bump into Niko, Annalise finally spotted him wandering aimlessly around the main pool area. Instead of rushing up to him, she stayed back and observed him for a while. What was it about him that compelled her to watch him? Was it his natural good looks? Or the way his black wavy hair fell onto his forehead in that perfectly casual way? Or the way his

  T-shirt stretched across his muscled shoulders? Or was it the way he moved, strong and lethal like the tiger she saw in his eyes?

  Or maybe it was the way those eyes lit up when he talked about fixing a cleft palate on a little girl and seeing her smile years later when he was reassigned to the same area.

  She tried not to notice as she stood next to a high table near her favorite kiosk and dunked her tea bag into her cup of hot water. But as she stirred sugar into her afternoon tea her attention kept returning to him.

  He sat at the bar for a while, ordered a beer, then moved toward the lounge chairs, but decided to look over the railing instead.

  She had expected to see a playboy on the prowl. Instead, she saw a man alone who didn’t know what to do with himself. She had the strongest urge to offer suggestions—suggestions that included her company.

  As if he could hear her thoughts, he turned from the rail, scanned the crowd and found her.

  “Annalise.”

  Through the noisy crowd she couldn’t hear him, but she could read his lips. In the past, if a passenger wanted to get friendly, she would wave him off and move on, but she couldn’t put Niko into the same class as just another passenger. So when he walked towards her, she stood still and waited for him.

  “Hey, you.” He pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head and gave her a movie-star grin that almost made her swoon. She barely stopped herself from looking around to see who he was really talking to.

  If she had been diagnosing herself, she would have had to say her palpitations were the results a developmentally delayed teenage crush.

  “Hey you back,” she managed to say, pleased that she didn’t sound at all bedazzaled. “Just hanging out at the pool?”

  “I threw a penny in the wishing well a moment ago. That thing really works.”

  “You got your wish already?”

  “Yup. I wished a beautiful woman would come up and talk to me and here you are.”

  Self-consciously Annalise pulled down the hem of her new orange tank top, which she’d layered over her new bright yellow one, and wiggled her newly painted toenails exposed by her new beaded leather sandals. It was silly to feel self-conscious amongst all the string bikinis on deck.

  “Thanks.” She didn’t need the glance in the glass doors that separated the cruise ship’s interior from its exterior to remind her that she was showing a lot more skin than she normally did. She usually only wore tank tops under shirts or
thin blouses. But something—or, if she was honest, someone—had inspired a shopping spree.

  She might not be as sophisticated as that Greek woman but, still, she’d not done too badly, if she did say so herself.

  He kept staring into her eyes. She realized she’d been staring back and blinked.

  “So, what did you do today?”

  He took a deep sip from the drink he carried. “I played bingo with Yiayia for a while this morning. I won a T-shirt and she won a key chain. Then I went to the kids Underwater Explorers’ activity, where we learned about submarines. The twins are on the water slides, but my doctor grounded me from that. And the rest of the family is attending a pastry-making school. Can you believe it? They all cook for a living, but they go on vacation and now they’re cooking again.”

  “I guess they love what they do.”

  “I guess so.” He shrugged, giving her a crooked grin. “If the ship offered a seminar on reconstructing sinus cavities, I’d probably be in the front row.”

  The wry expression on his face made her laugh. “You should drop off that suggestion at Guest Services. They’re always open to new ideas.”

  The smile he flashed reached all the way to his eyes. She hadn’t realized how brilliant those eyes could be. They took her breath away.

  But the sparkle didn’t last long. “I was just wondering what to do next. Any suggestions?”

  She consulted the flyer listing the day’s activities, which she’d picked up after her pedicure, and picked the first thing on the list. “I’m going to the gourmet coffee tasting. Want to come?”

  He leaned in close to read the paper she held. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

  The way he said it, so low and intimate, sent shivers through her. Practically, she wondered how many women he’d practiced on before he’d got that timbre just right.

  He gave her a quizzical look. “What?”

  “Just you and your pick-up lines.”

  “You don’t like them?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She looked up into those glistening eyes. “They just aren’t necessary. I like you fine without all the swagger.”