He gave a resigned nod as he stripped off his jacket. “Fine by me.”
He tried to keep his face neutral. Last time he’d shared a bed with Amber, he’d barely known her, but had been acting on the flirting and glimmer of attraction between them. She hadn’t known his hang-ups and he hadn’t known hers. This was different. This was another step. They’d already kissed. In among this disaster there was something in the air between them. Something he hadn’t quite managed to get his head around yet. He knew he acted like a control freak sometimes. He knew that Amber had her No Doctor rule in her head. But where did that really leave them?
“Fine by me.” Amber’s words echoed his as she sat down at the edge of the bed and took off her boots.
Jack smiled at the back of her head. They’d reached an uneasy truce, and somehow he knew he wouldn’t sleep a wink.
*
She was sharing a room with Jack Campbell. In the midst of chaos someone had obviously decided they were together and given them a temporary room in an apartment—the hotel was literally under siege as it now had to accommodate people who had lost their homes. So it had seemed churlish to object.
Lack of power was still the main issue. The power companies were working hard to safely restore power to the island. But they were stretched beyond capacity. And safety was more important than being able to turn on your lights at night.
But it meant that nights could be long.
They’d reached an easy compromise. They worked wherever the disaster relief coordinator sent them. Her little outburst and subsequent bristliness couldn’t be helped. The work was constant and exhausting. She’d managed to track down all of the close contacts for meningitis and ensure they had antibiotics. Aaron now seemed to be on the slow road to recovery. Zane’s progress was picking up. For a short while there had been a question over septicemia and how it was affecting his hands and feet. But the blood flow had improved and the toxins seemed to be leaving his system.
Amber was still concerned that in among the chaos there could be more cases that might be overlooked. There were so many voluntary agencies now that coordination of information seemed nigh on impossible.
Her director at the DPA had supported her decision to stay for the next week and told her that he trusted her. That meant a lot.
“Amber, do you know if we have any food in this place?”
It had been four days since the hurricane. By the time they got back to the apartment at night they were too tired to even talk. Most of the local businesses were waiting for insurance assessments before opening again, and there was only one tiny corner shop that had managed to open its doors.
Jack was staring at a box of cornflakes they’d eaten for the last two days straight. It was empty.
“I think we had soup.” She walked across the kitchen and opened a cupboard. Empty. There were four other emergency service workers sharing the apartment—any one of them could have eaten it. “Maybe not.” She shrugged as she closed the door. Her stomach grumbled loudly.
She put her hands on the counter and stretched out her sore back. “I guess the only place we can go is back to the hospital, or to one of the evacuation centers. At least we know the school kitchens are open.”
Jack pulled a face. “Is it wrong if I say I can’t stand the noise?” He rubbed his eyes. “I’ve spent most of the day surrounded by bedlam. I’d kind of like five minutes of quiet.”
She paused for a second as Jack’s stomach grumbled loudly then burst out laughing. “Well, there’s no food at the inn. So, we have to go somewhere. Hospital or school?”
He sighed. “Okay, then.” He grabbed the keys for the emergency vehicle they were still using. “Let’s go to the school.”
Ten minutes later they reached the high school that was still doubling as an evacuation center. Although all people who were evacuated when there was a hurricane had been told to bring enough food with them for seven days, the logistics of trying to store and manage that amount of food was more difficult than anyone had previously predicted.
After two days, the high-school kitchens had been opened with volunteers and aid agencies cooking in shifts. Further emergency supplies of food and bottled water had been shipped in so that no one was left hungry or thirsty.
Jack was right. It was beyond noisy. A constant clamor of people all trying to be heard above one another. Amber noticed a little family holed up in a corner, a dark-eyed woman trying to get two small children to sleep on a mat and blankets on the floor. “What must it be like in here at night? Do you think all these people have damaged houses?”
Jack seemed to follow her gaze. “Maybe. One area had some flash flooding too. I was down helping earlier today. Some of the houses were virtually washed away.”
She frowned. She’d spent part of the day in ER, part with Aaron and Zane, and part in a temporary clinic. It was hard to keep track of everything. “What were you doing there?”
“It’s a bit further away and some of the people were desperately trying to salvage what they could from their homes. Lots of dirty water, some of it waist-high.”
Amber nodded. “Dirty water, dirty wounds. High chance of infections.”
“Exactly.”
They joined the line for food at the kitchen. Jack picked up a couple of bottles of water for them both. “How much longer will you stay?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. The director was happy for me to stay for a week in the first instance. But I don’t know how much leeway I’ll get after that. What about you?”
“I’m officially on leave. Holidays. Then I need to look for another job. So I can stay as long as I’m needed.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I heard Ron asking you earlier about surgeries. Are you going to help out?”
He nodded. “Probably starting tomorrow. There are lots of bone injuries and I got loads of orthopedic experience in Afghanistan. One of the hospital surgeons was injured himself, and another’s had an MI. So, they’re kind of desperate.”
They reached the front of the line and took the plates offered to them. Amber lifted the plate to her nose and inhaled. “It’s some kind of curry. It smells great.”
All the seats were taken, so they walked back through the foyer and outside. For the first time in days the rain had finally stopped. The sky was dark again but now they could see a smattering of stars glistening above.
Amber looked from side to side. Disaster still echoed around them. Remnants of the roof were still lying on the football field. A few broken windows in the school were boarded up. But the wind that had whipped around them for days had eventually died down and the night seemed almost peaceful, even if the place around them wasn’t.
They walked over and sat on one of the stone walls near the front of the school. The car park behind them was littered with emergency vehicles and cars.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. “When do you think this will ever get back to normal? I can’t believe that the beautiful place we landed in a few days ago has changed so much.”
Jack stopped eating and put down his plastic fork. “I didn’t even really get a chance to appreciate the beauty due to the jet lag. My eyes were closed the whole way from the airport. Seems like such a waste now.”
Amber sighed. “I heard in the hospital today that a hotel on one of the other islands collapsed. We’re lucky that didn’t happen here.” She held up one hand. “But look now. The rain and wind have gone. If we were lying on the grass right now looking up at the sky, we might think that nothing had ever happened.”
There was a loud clatter and some raised voices behind them. Jack smiled and glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, and then you hear the noise.”
Amber nodded in agreement. “Yeah, the noise. Or how different it is.”
“What do you mean?”
She smiled. “I mean, no mobile phones. Limited electricity. No TV. No Internet. No music.”
Jack groaned. “And no real water.”
&nb
sp; Four days on there were still no mobile masts and it didn’t look as if they could be replaced anytime soon. None of the regular utilities were working properly and the apartment they were staying in only had water switched on for two hours a day. It meant limited showering and limited toilet facilities.
“I can’t wait to get back to a hotel at some point and just stand in the shower for an hour.”
Jack laughed. “I don’t see that happening in the next few days. I’m not sure we’ll even get back to the hotel. Did you leave anything important there?”
Amber couldn’t help but pull a face. “Just business suits, other clothes and my laptop. Nothing that can’t be replaced. There’s only one thing I’m keen to get back and it’s a locket my mom gave me for my twenty-first birthday. I’d left it in the safe.” She turned to face him on the wall. “What about you?”
He blinked for a second and breathed out slowly. “Like you, clothes, a laptop.”
“And?” She knew. She just knew there was something else.
He stared up into the sky for a few moments. “It’s nothing that I couldn’t replace. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
He looked back down and stared at the plate still in his hands. “A photo. A photo of Jill from years ago. She’s sitting in the camp in her army fatigues, laughing at something someone said. We had quite a lot of photos together. You know, it’s a modern world. Everyone has a phone constantly. But after…the photo that made me catch my breath was this one. We’re not in it together. I have no idea what we were doing at the time. Probably just taking a five-minute break between scrubbing for Theater. But it’s her. It captured her essence, the person who she was.”
Amber bit her lip. Her heart ached for him. The grief seemed raw. Was that wrong two years on?
But before she had a chance to say anything, Jack continued. “I know it’s stupid. It’s just a photo. I don’t carry it in my wallet. It’s in my suitcase.” He let out a wry laugh. “Jill would call me an idiot. But, sometimes, when I get carried away with things, it helps to remind me why I do this.”
“You do this for her?”
He leaned forward and put his plate on the ground, then rested his head in his hands. “I do this for them all.” He turned his head toward her and looked sideways through wounded eyes. “The wound dressing—the science behind it. It was all so much easier than realizing I’d lost Jill.” His voice broke and he sat up and held out his hands. “I don’t even know what would have happened. We might have stayed together. We may have grown apart. The one thing I am sure of is that we would always have been friends.”
Her heart twisted inside her chest. She’d never felt a pull to someone like that she felt toward Jack Campbell. It didn’t matter that it was all wrong. It didn’t matter what her brain told her. What made her heart twist was the fact she was sitting with him and he was talking about another woman. One who’d obviously meant a lot to him.
“Friends is good,” she said, trying to keep any emotion from her voice.
Jack kept his brown gaze fixed on her. “Is it?”
Her skin prickled. “What do you mean?”
“Are we friends?”
She shifted on the wall. “Well, I’m not sure…” Her brain couldn’t think straight. Was that the word she would use for the guy she’d met barely a few days before, shared a bed with, kissed and quarreled with? “Are we?”
Jack was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his gaze unwavering from hers. When he spoke his voice was hoarse. “What if, for the first time in a long time, I’ve looked at someone and wanted to be more than friends?”
The words swept over her skin. Half warming, half making every tiny hair on her body stand on end. Was that even possible?
Her hands automatically crossed her body and started running up and down her arms. “But I don’t date doctors.” It was like her default answer. She’d been saying it for so long that her brain found it easiest to resort to the familiar.
“I know. But you kiss them.”
Her mouth opened. She hadn’t quite expected him to be so direct. “You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.” He straightened. There was a glint in his eye that seemed to be highlighted by the stars above them.
The world around them was a wreck. They were both wrecks.
But underneath them and underneath the land around them was a beauty that was hinting to get back out—to get back to the surface and let itself be revealed.
He drew in a deep breath. She tried so hard not to let her eyes fall to his broad shoulders and chest. To drink in the stubble on his jaw, and the way the expression in his eyes was so deep it just seemed to pull her in, like some kind of leash.
“I don’t know what this is.” The edges of his lips curled upward. “I know that our timing sucks. I know you think you shouldn’t date a work-obsessed doctor.” He put his hand on his chest. “I know that I’ve spent the last two years virtually avoiding all contact with anyone of the opposite sex. Some might call me work-obsessed.” He ran one hand through his hair. “But it’s so much easier to focus on work. To let it take over. To let it consume all your thoughts.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure you’re doing a good job of convincing me that we should be friends.”
He nodded and stood up, stepping in front of her and gently taking her by the elbows so she was facing him. They were only a few inches apart.
“How about if I tell you that I’m confused? How about if I tell you that my judgment may be skewed by hurricanes, lack of sleep, lack of food, forced proximity and a hypnotic smell of rose and orange that seems to follow me around?”
Her scent. He was talking about her perfume. She couldn’t help but smile. “I’m still not sure about the friends thing. I have standards, you know.”
“What kind of standards?”
“You know, they have to like the same books, the same movies and, most importantly, the same chocolate.”
“Ah.” He raised his eyebrows. “These could be impossibly high standards. I could be suspicious that you’re trying to stack the odds against me because I’m a doctor.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Quit stalling for time.”
He lifted his hands and rested them gently on the tops of her arms. “The answers would have to be crime, sci-fi and…a kind of chocolate that is only available in Scotland. I’m very loyal.”
She wrinkled her brow and gave her head a shake. “Oh, no, we’re not a good match for friends at all. It has to be romance, action movies and old-fashioned American chocolate bars every single time.”
He smiled and leaned a little closer. “I have another way we can check our compatibility level.”
“You do?” Now she could smell him. A mixture of earthy tones and soap.
His eyes were serious but he was still smiling. And she couldn’t help but smile too. She slid her hands up his chest as he leaned in toward her, and she tilted her chin up toward him. This time there was no dark store closet.
This time there was a background of noise, and a smattering of stars in the sky. Last time around things had been more tentative. This time, Jack didn’t hesitate. His lips were on hers straightaway. His fingers tangling through her loose hair, tugging her even closer to him.
She breathed in, pushing all the confusing thoughts from her head. She knew exactly where she was. She knew exactly what she was doing.
It didn’t make a bit of sense to her. But she’d spent the last few days with this man at her side. And even though they weren’t together, even though they weren’t a couple and even though he carried a photo of someone else in his suitcase, she still didn’t want to step from his arms.
His kisses were sure, pulling her in and making her want more. His body was pressed against hers; all she could feel were the strong muscular planes next to her curves. It wasn’t often that she met a man who wasn’t intimidated by her height. In general she could look most men square in the eyes. On a few occasions
, heels had been a complete no-no on a date. But with Jack she had to tip her head upward to meet his lips. Her eyes barely came to his shoulders.
As he kissed her, his hands slid from her hair to her waist. If she were anywhere else she might be tempted to wrap her legs around him, but somehow, in the middle of a disaster, and in front of a school, it just didn’t seem appropriate.
She actually laughed and took a step back.
“What? What is it?” Jack glanced around as if he’d missed something.
She shook her head and held out her hands. “We’re in front of a school that’s currently an evacuation center for around two thousand people. And… I’m still trying to decide if we are friends or not.” She was smiling as she said the words. Parts of her brain were screaming, but other parts of her were warm.
Jack sounded ready to move on. It seemed as though he’d looked inside and realized he’d spent too long blocking out the world and just focusing on work. Maybe now he would take a breather and decide what he wanted to do next.
That could be anywhere, with anyone. But that flicker of something she’d felt that first night in the bar was igniting wildly.
So when he held out his hand toward her she didn’t hesitate to take it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE’D KISSED HER. He’d kissed her again and again even though his brain couldn’t seem to formulate any clear thoughts.
Then they’d gone back to the apartment and kissed some more.
They’d fallen asleep with their arms wrapped around each other just as they had the first night. Except Jack hadn’t slept much.
He’d been too busy caught between staring at the woman in the bed next to him and looking out of the window at the bright stars above.
He felt…different. He’d spent so long focused on work and shielding his heart from any hurt that he’d never even thought about connecting with someone again.
And this had just crept up on him. Out of nowhere, really. One minute he was jet-lagged at a bar; next he was focused on the woman with the pink-tipped hair striding across the ballroom. And everything after that he just couldn’t really work out.
Locked Down with the Army Doc Page 13