By the time they reached the restaurant, they were ready to rest and enjoy a meal. They both ordered an insalata caprese—a salad of delicious slices of fresh local tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil leaves that was drizzled with olive oil. It came with a basket of fresh, crusty bread and was the most perfect-looking lunch Lisa had ever seen. She had to take a photo of it for Abby.
Hugh ordered Prosecco as well.
‘Think of it as Italian champagne,’ he told Lisa, with a wink. ‘Saluti, cara.’
Cara. Didn’t that mean something like darling or sweetheart? Lisa touched her glass to Hugh’s and met his gaze over the top of the glasses. The warmth in those brown eyes and the echoes of the endearment he had just used stole her breath away and it was at that moment that Lisa realised she was in trouble.
She had known right from the start that this was temporary. That it was just a shipboard fling that was going to end very soon and it was highly unlikely that she would ever see Hugh Patterson again. But she also knew that it was not going to be easy. At this moment, if felt as if it could very well be devastating.
Because she’d fallen in love with him. It had probably happened, without her even realising, that night when he’d managed to make her laugh when she’d been feeling so awful. When he’d taken her to his bed and changed her life for ever. When she’d mistakenly analysed her feelings as lust rather than love, but this was so much deeper than anything purely sexual. Lisa wanted the closeness and connection they’d discovered to last for ever. She wanted, in particular, to freeze this moment in time when it felt like she could fall into that gaze and never want to come up for air.
Maybe it was an omen that a shadow noticeably darkened this idyllic scene as a first bank of clouds drifted overhead to obscure the sun. It was Hugh who broke that eye contact to look up at the sky.
‘Uh-oh,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe that storm’s on its way a bit quicker than they predicted.’
‘Mmm.’ But Lisa wasn’t thinking about bad weather as she made a concerned sound and even suppressed a shiver. She was thinking of something that was going to be a lot less pleasant to endure.
Saying goodbye to Hugh...
* * *
Had Hugh really thought that Lisa Phillips was uptight and controlling?
That she wouldn’t trust anyone else enough to even help her carry her suitcase?
That she was the complete opposite of the type of women he could ever be attracted to?
Oh, man...how wrong could a person be?
As if she’d picked up on his thought by telepathy, Lisa turned from the window of the bus to catch his gaze. There was awe in those amazing eyes, thanks to the view down the mountainside to the town of Amalfi they were heading back to, but there was also a bit of fear at the speed at which the bus driver was taking these hairpin bends on the narrow road.
‘I guess he knows what he’s doing,’ she muttered. ‘He must have done it plenty of times before.’
That was so like Lisa, wasn’t it? She might be afraid to some degree and she might be determined to excel in everything she did but she was still prepared to trust someone else, which gave her a very endearing, almost childlike quality.
She trusted him now. On a very different level from anything he would have imagined them sharing.
He had wanted a certain level of trust from Lisa as soon as he’d realised they were going to be spending a lot of time together for a couple of weeks. He’d wanted to tease her and make her a little less ‘uptight’. He’d wanted to show her that there were things in life that were meant to be enjoyed and she was missing out on most of them.
What he hadn’t realised was that sharing those things with her would make them so different for him. He’d been drinking champagne and having sex with beautiful women, travelling to amazing places and just getting the most out of his life for a very long time now, but doing exactly the same things with Lisa was like doing them himself for the very first time because they felt that different.
The bus was leaning as it took another bend and Hugh could feel the pit of his own stomach dropping as he looked over Lisa’s shoulder to the drop below the side of the road. The bus seemed to be clinging to the road by the edge of its tyres but Lisa’s squeak of terror was half excitement and the way her fingers clutched his arm so dramatically made him smile.
Maybe this was what it was like when you had a child, he thought, and you got to see the world all over again from their perspective. You could experience the sourness of a lemon perhaps as you laughed at the face they made. Or the joy of feeling your body fly through the air that was enough to make you shriek with glee when someone pushed you on a swing for the first time. Perhaps what made this so different with Lisa was that it was an adult version of rediscovery.
The sex had been a revelation every single time. So familiar but so new as well—as if everything had suddenly become colour instead of just black and white. The joy on her face today, when she’d had to stop and simply gaze at the beauty of that walk past the ancient paper mills, and her eyes closing in bliss when she’d had her first mouthful of that mix of tomatoes and cheese and basil...
Hugh had never tasted a salad that good himself and yet he’d eaten an insalata caprese countless times before. It wasn’t that those astonishingly bright red local tomatoes had that much more flavour. Or that the olive oil was especially good. Hugh knew that it was being with Lisa that was making things so different and that was more than a little disturbing.
Because it was true that she wasn’t his “type” at all. That when he had first met her, when he had actually been with the sophisticated Carlotta—who was exactly his type—he wouldn’t have dreamed of asking Lisa out. The notion that he might be able to make love to her time and time again and feel like he could never get enough of her would have been a joke. If he’d had a premonition that doing something as ordinary as sightseeing with her could be so delightful he would have known he needed to stay well clear. He had invented what he thought of as his type because those women were safe. They didn’t want loyalty or commitment or to risk betrayal any more than he did.
It had been too long, hadn’t it? He’d become complacent and hadn’t realised that it was even possible for anyone to get past his protective barriers. He’d considered himself to be completely safe from feeling like this again. That pride in being the one to provide something that gave joy to someone else. That desire that had nothing to do with sex but was a wish to keep providing things like that. To protect someone and cherish them.
That was what falling in love was all about, wasn’t it?
He’d started out seeing Lisa as someone who could be the little sister he’d never had. How could this determined but naïve, petite, shaggy red-haired woman with unusual eyes and freckles to match their hazel brown have become the most beautiful person Hugh had ever known? He’d been in love once before but how he was starting to feel about Lisa had the potential to blow that past love out of the water and make it barely worth remembering.
That was a little terrifying, he had to admit.
Except that Lisa was nothing like Catherine, his ex-fiancée, was she? This was someone who had actually sacrificed probably more than she was letting on in order to care for someone she loved—her sister Abby. Lisa would have that kind of loyalty to anyone she loved, if she ever let someone in to that degree, and she wouldn’t lie about how she felt either. Or, if she tried, he would be able to see immediately that she wasn’t being truthful because he could read her face like a book now thanks to watching it so carefully in her unguarded moments.
And that meant he could trust Lisa. On a level that he’d never thought he would ever trust a woman again. But what, if anything, should he do about that? There was a clock ticking here. In a matter of only a couple of days this woman was going to walk out of his life and back to her own. If he didn’t want that to happen he would have to make some big decis
ions in a hurry. But not yet... He might recognise that he was feeling the way you did when you fell in love but that didn’t mean it had actually happened yet, did it? Or that Lisa even felt the same way.
They were nearly back at sea level now, passing the first houses of Amalfi, and they’d need to hurry to get a taxi back to Salerno and back on board the ship in good time before they left the port. There would be no time for a while to give such a serious matter the amount of thought it needed and Hugh could feel himself releasing his breath in a sigh of relief as they climbed down the steps of the bus. He could just stop thinking about it and enjoy the present for a bit longer. He’d lived this way for long enough to know that it could work.
The smile on Lisa’s face as she skipped a step to catch up with his long stride was enough to make it well worth thinking only about the next few hours. Getting back on board, an evening surgery, dinner and then... Hugh held Lisa’s gaze for a long moment as he sent a silent invitation for her to come to his cabin later tonight. The way her smile faded as the colour in her eyes changed from golden brown to something more molten was enough to let him know that the invitation had been received and accepted.
He couldn’t bring himself to break that gaze. He opened his mouth and he knew that the words that were about to come out would change everything.
Three little words.
I love you...
They were there. In his head. On the tip of his tongue. But something stopped him. Maybe it was the tiny frown line that appeared between Lisa’s eyes when she heard a sound from her phone. She dived into her bag to find it.
‘That’s Abby texting me. She was going back to the house to check things for me today. I hope everything’s all right.’
Hugh could sense that Lisa’s attention was a very long way away from him now. She was back in her real life for the moment. Away from her working holiday fling. In a place he would never belong.
‘Everything okay?’
‘She’s stressing because she’s found a pile of mail behind the door and she’s wants to know if she should open it. I’ve told her to leave it where it is. I’ll deal with it all when I get home.’
Her glance was apologetic, as if she understood that her real life had nothing to do with him. Or that she didn’t want it to have anything to do with him? Hugh took a deeper breath and he could feel his mind clearing noticeably. He was certainly going to miss Lisa when she left the ship in Malaga but he could cope if he had to and that would be a lot easier than grappling with concepts he had given up even thinking about a very long time ago. Things like settling down to a more ordinary job somewhere. Getting married. Having a family.
Good grief... Hugh turned away from Lisa and hurriedly raised his arm to flag down a taxi. Had the thought of getting married actually entered his head in that flash of muddled thoughts? The sooner they were back on board his beloved ship and in his familiar environment the better. He had to put a stop to this before he did something really crazy.
Like asking Lisa to marry him...
* * *
Something had changed but, for the life of her, Lisa couldn’t put her finger on quite what it could be.
They’d had such a lovely day together with that walk up through the valley and the delicious lunch and then exploring the mountain town and that crazy bus ride back to the coast. She was quite sure that Hugh had enjoyed the day as much as she had but he seemed a little edgy when they opened the medical centre for the evening surgery. Was it because the wind had picked up as the ship had eased out into more open sea? Lisa could feel the gentle roll of bigger swells beneath them, although she wasn’t finding it alarming at all.
‘Is it likely to be a problem, getting a storm while we’re at sea?’
‘Hard to say. Sometimes the captain can navigate around the bad weather and modern ships have stabilisers that help a lot, although it’s surprising to a lot of people how rough the Mediterranean can get. Usually they just blow past with nothing more than a lot of people getting very seasick or complaining that some decks and the swimming pools are closed. Thanks for the reminder. I’d better check our supplies of anti-motion-sickness medications.’
‘What do you use?’ Lisa followed him into the pharmacy room.
‘We give out the usual over-the-counter remedies to anyone who asks and they’re also available in many of the shops if there gets to be too much of a queue here. The shops also have things like different forms of ginger and peppermint, which we often advise people to try. Other advice includes eating something, like dry crackers, getting some fresh air on the balcony or deck or going to the centre of the ship where it’s more stable.’
‘And if it’s serious?’
‘We’ve got good stocks of promethazine and metoclopramide.’ Hugh shut and locked the glass-fronted cupboard he’d opened. ‘And plenty of saline if someone gets really dehydrated. Here...’ He scooped a lot of small packages out of a drawer to hand to Lisa. ‘Let’s keep these supplies of Dramamine at the front desk. If they’re mild cases you can dispense this and send them home when you’re triaging.’ He glanced over his shoulder as he led the way out of the pharmacy. ‘You’re not worried about this storm, are you?’
‘Um...no...’ But Lisa bit her lip. ‘I did find some videos online, though, that looked a bit scary. Restaurants with all the tables and even a piano rolling one way and then the other and taking people out on the way.’
Hugh was smiling. ‘Have you seen that movie with the ship and the iceberg? That’s a good one, too. It’s just as well that we don’t get many icebergs in the Mediterranean.’
Lisa loved that smile so much. She loved the way there were crinkles of amusement on either side of those gorgeous brown eyes but, most of all, she loved that he was checking how she was feeling about something and was trying to make her laugh to ease any worry. She did laugh and, suddenly, whatever tension had been in the air this evening evaporated, along with any nerves about stormy weather. She was with Hugh. They could handle whatever came their way.
Including a patient she was worried about the moment she walked into the medical centre and had to snatch a breath even while she was introducing herself.
‘You’re sounding very wheezy, Michelle. Are you asthmatic?’
The young woman nodded. ‘It’s not getting better...so I thought... I’d come in...’
‘Good thinking. Come with me.’ Lisa led her straight to the treatment room. ‘I’m just going to check your blood pressure and heart rate and the oxygen level in your blood.’ She put the clip on his finger. ‘Have you been using your inhaler?’
‘Yes...lots...’
She got Michelle to blow into a peak flow meter as well.
‘What do you normally blow?’
‘On a good day...four hundred.’
She was down to a lot less than three hundred now.
‘I’m sure the doctor will want to start a nebuliser at least. Let’s give you another pillow or two to keep you a bit more upright and I’ll go and find him.’
Hugh was with another patient who had run out of his high blood pressure medication a week ago but had thought it wouldn’t matter until he’d started getting bad headaches, but one look at Lisa’s face and he stood up.
‘Wait there, Jim,’ he told his patient. ‘I’ll be back very soon. We’re going to admit you to our little hospital here for a while so we can keep an eye on you while you have some intravenous medication to bring your blood pressure down in a controlled manner.’
Jim’s wife had come to the appointment with him. ‘I told you it was serious,’ she growled. ‘Don’t you dare move. I’m going back to the cabin to get your pyjamas and toothbrush. You’re going to stay here until the doctor says you’re okay.’
Hugh was right beside Lisa as she sped back to the treatment room. ‘I’m worried that her asthma isn’t responding to her inhaler. She’s not speaking more than
three to four words per breath and her oxygen saturation is down to ninety-six percent. Respiration rate is twenty-five, heart rate is one twenty, and peak flow is not much more than fifty percent of normal for her. Do you want me to set up a nebuliser?’
‘Absolutely. We might need to start some IV corticosteroids as well. And get an arterial blood gas measurement.’
By the time Hugh had listened to Michelle’s chest, Lisa had a nebuliser mask ready, with medication in the chamber and oxygen running through at a high enough rate to produce a good vapour. She slipped the elastic over the back of Michelle’s head and rearranged her pillows to make it more comfortable for her to sit upright.
She worked with Hugh to find and hand him everything he needed to set up an IV line and then the more difficult procedure of inserting a cannula into an artery in Michelle’s wrist so that they would be able to get a far more accurate indication of how much circulating oxygen she had in her blood. It couldn’t be something that Hugh had to do very often but he made it look easy, from putting in some local anaesthetic to find a vessel that was much deeper than a vein, inserting the cannula and then controlling the spurt of blood under pressure as he attached and taped down the Luer plug. He filled a tiny, two-ml syringe with the arterial blood.
‘I’ll page Janet or Tim to pop in and show you how to use the benchtop ABG analysis,’ he told Lisa when he headed back to his other patient a few minutes later. ‘We’re also going to need a hand for a while. Might see what Peter’s up to. I need to get Jim’s blood pressure down so we’ll have two patients that need close monitoring for some time.’ He held her gaze. ‘We could be in for a long night.’
‘I wasn’t planning on being anywhere else,’ she responded.
Except that was only partly true. She might have been planning to be with Hugh tonight but it hadn’t occurred to her that they might not be able to leave the medical centre and spend any time alone together. Not that it mattered. Except that that was only partly true also. There was no question that their patients had complete priority while they were on duty, but they only had a very limited number of nights left that they could find that kind of private time so losing one of them was actually quite a big deal. It felt as if there was a giant clock nearby that might be invisible but Lisa could hear the loudness of its ticking slowly increasing.
Awakening the Shy Nurse Page 11