‘To leave you sitting on the beach all night in pain?’ she challenged. ‘I don’t think so. If you remember, I’ve taken the Hippocratic oath, too. Now, where does it hurt? What have you done to yourself?’
He stayed stubbornly silent for such a long time that Emily began to think that he really was going to refuse her help.
Finally, when there was so little light remaining that it was only the paleness of the silvery sand that showed her where he was, he cleared his throat.
‘I have had reconstructive surgery after an injury,’ he admitted in a voice that clearly contained disgust at his own weakness.
It was very easy for Emily to read between the lines, especially since she’d seen the stubborn way he’d been determined to struggle on in Theatre that day.
‘And at a guess, you’ve been pushing yourself to get fit on top of days filled with a punishing regime of surgery and assessments as well as late nights and early mornings in Intensive Care.’ She shook her head in disbelief at what he’d been putting himself through, before realising that he wouldn’t be able to see it. ‘You were already hurting earlier on today. What on earth made you think you were in a fit state to come down here and push yourself like this?’
Without giving herself time to think about the advisability of what she was doing, she stepped behind him and knelt in the sand to put one hand on each of his shoulders.
‘Where is the pain worst?’ she demanded, refusing to let herself think about the warmth of his oiled-satin skin as she ran both thumbs up his neck, one on each side of his cervical vertebrae.
Emily could feel the tension in every one of his muscles, but whether that was as the result of the pain or because she was touching him she didn’t know. All she knew was that she needed to help him if she could…and if he would let her.
‘Relax,’ she urged as she began to gently massage the knotted muscles at the base of his skull. ‘Is it too painful to bend your knees up and rest your forehead on them?’
Relax?
Zayed stifled a groan as he contemplated his alternatives: humiliate himself by attempting to crawl off the beach on his hands and knees or pillowing his head on his stacked forearms and letting her continue.
Didn’t the woman know she was asking for the impossible? He hadn’t been relaxed since he’d looked up from Abir’s bedside and seen her standing in the doorway.
She’d been like a ray of sunshine with her blonde hair and pale summery clothes sprinkled with flowers, and as for those eyes…their limpid green had seemed cool and soothing as they’d taken his measure across the room, even as they’d sparked something impossible deep inside him.
Impossible?
Yes, he reminded himself bitterly.
She was nothing like Zuleika, and even if she had been, he was not free to do anything about this unwelcome attraction. He would never be free of the guilt.
‘It is not necessary,’ he argued brusquely, hating the weakness that made this unavoidable, then gave in to the inevitable and settled his head on his arms.
‘Yes, it is,’ she countered, ‘unless you’re prepared to spend the night on the beach. And the local police will be around in a while on their patrol to check for drunken kids, and worse.’
‘Worse?’ he repeated, hazily aware that his brain function appeared to be strangely sluggish. All he seemed to be able to concentrate on was the musical sound of her voice, the light floral scent that was swirled around him by the sea breeze and the fact that she was touching him as if she actually cared about his pain.
‘Drugs,’ she said, and for a moment he couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.
Was she recommending analgesia for his pain or…?
‘In some of Cornwall’s coastal towns it’s quite common, particularly during the summer holidays,’ she continued, even as he was still trying to marshal all the reasons why blunting his physical and mental responses wasn’t a good idea. ‘So far, Penhally seems to have escaped, but that’s probably because, in spite of the influx of holidaymakers each year, it’s essentially the same close-knit community it’s always been, with everyone looking out for each other…and keeping an eye on each other.’
He agreed with her assessment of the special charm of Penhally and its inhabitants. It was a major reason why, when he’d decided to set up a unit dedicated to the less fortunate of his little people, he’d wanted it to be close to this area. And when the big house up on the cliff had become available…
Ah, it was so hard to follow a single train of thought.
The things she was doing to his muscles with those clever fingers, searching out each knot in turn and concentrating on it until it finally loosened. It almost seemed as if she had magic in her hands so that, for the first time since he’d rejected the mind-numbing effects of the analgesics his surgeons had prescribed, he was free of the gnawing pain.
‘What happened?’ she asked, her voice so soft that it was barely audible over the rhythmic susurration of the waves over the sand.
Immediately, he felt himself grow tense.
There was no way that he could tell this woman about the violence and destruction that had resulted in his injuries. For all that she was a professional woman, there was something essentially innocent about her that would probably be destroyed if she were to hear of the chaos and misery that he had brought down on his family and friends.
‘I’m not asking what caused your original injury,’ she hurried to add, almost as if she was able to read his reluctance through her fingertips. ‘I meant, what happened today to set this off? You’re not usually this bad.’
‘How do you know I am not always like this?’ he asked, grateful that she wasn’t trying to pry. ‘We only met for the first time this morning. Perhaps I am always this crippled.’
It was her turn to tense up, her fingers ceasing their painful but ultimately soothing ministrations.
He heard her mutter something under her breath but before he could summon up the energy to turn and face her she began speaking.
‘It’s true that we met this morning when I came to the
unit for the first time, but…well, I’ve seen you before, several times. Here, on the beach.’
The final words emerged in a rush, as though there was something shameful about them. He shook his head. It was more likely that she was making things up for some reason of her own.
‘That is impossible. I never come down here until the beach is empty. I deliberately leave it until the light is fading, but I would have seen you.’
‘Not when I’m sitting in the shadows at the base of the cliff,’ she said firmly, her fingers taking up their rhythm again. ‘There’s a place in between the jumble of rocks behind us where I used to come as a child…my thinking place, I used to call it. I discovered it shortly after I came to live with my grandmother.’
‘So, while I have been thinking I have the beach to myself, you have been…’ He paused, tempted to say spying, but that was a harsh word for someone who’d accidentally ended up sharing a public space.
‘I’ve been watching over you, I suppose,’ she confessed, sounding rather uncomfortable about making the admission.
‘Watching over me?’ He hadn’t needed anyone to do that since he’d moved to Cornwall. It had only been in Xandar that he’d had to be surrounded by armed security. And even then it hadn’t prevented the dissidents from…
‘Surely you realise how dangerous it can be to swim alone,’ she rebuked him sternly. ‘Especially when you’ve been pushing your body the way you do. And to do it in the dark is just asking for trouble. If you got cramp, or—’
‘So you appointed yourself my unofficial lifeguard,’ he said wryly, not quite certain how he felt about the idea,
or about the fact that she hadn’t said something about it sooner. After all, they’d been working together for most of the day. Surely she could have said something about seeing him on the beach at Penhally.
‘Actually, I didn’t know who you were until a few minutes ago,’ she admitted, much to his surprise. ‘Because you only ever came down here at sunset, you were always silhouetted against the sky, so I never saw your face.’
‘But, when you saw me at St Piran’s…’
‘If you’d taken your clothes off, I might have recognised you,’ she joked, but the image her words planted in his head made their present situation seem far too intimate, with her hands touching his naked back.
And he didn’t even have the option of walking away from her because he wasn’t yet certain that he could make it to his feet unaided.
‘So, what
did
happen today to get your back in such a painful mess, unless…does it just do this every so often without provocation?’ she asked, returning to her question, and he grabbed the topic like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline.
‘There was provocation,’ he said wryly. ‘I made the mistake of picking one of the patients up.’
‘But you do that all the time.’ She sounded puzzled. ‘I’ve seen you, when you’re examining them. You don’t just ask the parents to put them on the couch and examine them like a bug under a microscope—you make friends with them and put them at their ease.’
‘Until I forgot to take my mask off and the patient panicked,’ he told her, while a strange feeling of warmth spread through him at the approval he heard in her voice. ‘He fought me and I nearly dropped him—’
‘And overloaded your back,’ she finished for him. ‘No wonder it was killing you while you were operating on Abir. You should have rescheduled the surgery until you’d recovered.’
As if anything was that easy.
He suddenly realised that he’d been sitting there for far too long, lazing like an overfed cat while his responsibilities piled up around him, responsibilities that someone as happy-go-lucky as Emily Livingston couldn’t possibly understand. She probably didn’t have anything more pressing on her mind than picking up the threads of the social life she’d left behind when she’d left Penhally to go to medical school.
He grabbed his scant belongings and surged to his feet, amazed that he was actually able to do it without the vicious stab of agony that usually accompanied such precipitate activity.
‘Would you have wanted to be the one to tell Meera and Athar Hanani that the surgery they had been steeling themselves for—the nightmare of having the head of their baby son cut open and part of his skull removed—was not going to happen today because the surgeon had a pain in his back?’
‘Oh, but I didn’t mean—’
‘Go back to your cosy little cottage, Dr Livingston,’ he interrupted rudely as anger froze all the soft warmth that spending time with this woman had created. ‘I will not be requiring your self-imposed offices as lifeguard tonight, so you can leave with your conscience clear.’
As he strode away from her he heard a brief sound of distress carried on the salty breeze but deliberately ignored it, ignored, too, the manners that had been drilled
into him from infancy that demanded he should thank her for what she had tried to do for him.
He couldn’t permit himself to register the fact that for the first time since the explosion his stride was almost perfectly even, or that the warmth of her hands seemed to linger in every cell of his back under the shirt he’d tugged on over his head.
All he could allow himself to think was that he should have known that someone who looked as beautiful as she did couldn’t possibly understand the imperatives of duty and responsibility that were the only way he could assuage the crushing guilt he bore.
In fact, someone like Emily was the last person he needed in his life or on his team. She had been a distraction today, with her soft blonde hair and sparkling green eyes, her womanly body and her ready smile, and he couldn’t afford any distractions.
‘She will have to go,’ he said firmly, startling a couple perusing the menu outside the door of the Anchor Hotel. He could feel their concerned eyes boring into his back for several moments as he continued past the parade of shops towards the promontory where the lifeboat station dominated that side of the bay.
‘I will call her into my office and tell her that it would be better if she looked for a position in her original specialty,’ he muttered as he passed Penhally Bay Surgery and Althorp’s boatyard, and had to fight down a pang of remorse that he wouldn’t get to watch her fledgling but meticulous surgical technique again.
He’d been so impressed when she’d apparently stepped up to the table without a trace of nerves, in spite of the fact that her involvement in the surgery had come com
pletely out of the blue. She was good, and with the right guidance, had the potential to be excellent. It was a shame that…
That what? he challenged himself as he finally reached his car. That she was too beautiful and he was too susceptible? That certainly wasn’t her fault. And neither was the fact that he’d just jumped down her throat for suggesting that he hadn’t been in a fit state to perform Abir’s surgery.
She was probably right, but he’d grown so accustomed to working through the pain that he just hadn’t realised how bad it was going to get until he had already been in trouble.
He swore viciously under his breath when he finally admitted that he wasn’t going to enjoy what he was going to have to do in the morning, glad that since he was using his own language there was almost no likelihood that anyone would be able to understand him.
‘Y
OU’RE
from Penhally, aren’t you?’ asked Nance Penwarden, one of the newer members of staff recruited to the unit who almost seemed to have been waiting for her to step inside the door the next morning.
She was an older woman, who had returned to nursing as a way of supporting herself and her children after the breakdown of her marriage.
‘I grew up there, but I’ve only just returned after going away to train,’ Emily confirmed. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, it’s just that we had one of the Penhally GPs in this morning—Dr Tremayne? He called in to see one of his patients who had to come in to our unit after emergency surgery as a result of an accident on the family farm—his pelvis was fractured and had to be stabilised,’ she added briefly, before hurrying on. ‘Dr Tremayne stayed with the parents for a while, explaining everything and calming them down, then he asked me to show him around the unit and he ended up spending some time talking to some of our older children.’
Her smile was slightly embarrassed and Emily suddenly wondered if one of the reasons why she’d returned
to such a demanding profession had been the possibility of looking for a replacement for her husband.
‘He was really good with them, really patient,’ she continued. ‘He spent ages answering questions and…well, you wouldn’t happen to know if he’s married, would you?’ she asked in a sudden rush, and Emily’s suspicion was largely confirmed.
‘He was married and has several children…three, I think, and all grown up…but I’m almost certain that he’s a widower now.’ Emily had heard a rumour going around Penhally about some sort of a connection between Nick Tremayne and Kate Althorp, but she wasn’t one to spread gossip. Neither did she really have time for this conversation when there were patients to see, and especially with Zayed stalking towards her with a steely expression on his face.
‘Dr Livingston, would you come into my office, please,’ Zayed said, with a rough edge to his voice that had Emily wondering whether he’d had as little sleep as she had, last night.
‘Certainly, Mr Khalil,’ she replied formally and stepped away from the side of Abir’s cot, pausing only to give Meera a reassuring smile as she left the room.
In his long-legged wake she only had time to throw a glance at the pile of files with which she’d been hoping to familiarise herself this morning. With the outpatients and referral clinics yesterday, to say nothing of Abir’s surgery, she hadn’t really had much time to take in the specifics of each of the unit’s little charges.
That was why she’d driven in to St Piran’s a couple of hours before her shift was due to start, but she still hadn’t
arrived before the man who had dominated almost every one of her thoughts for the last twenty-four hours.
No, actually it had been far longer than that, she realised as she followed him along the brightly decorated corridor towards his office. She hadn’t recognised it at the time, but it had been in his persona as the intensely focused man on the beach that he’d first set her hormones humming.
That had been a first for her.
She’d never believed that she was so shallow that she would allow a muscular body or a handsome face to dictate her attraction to a man. But Zayed had that, and more—a keen intellect, a caring heart and a sense of responsibility that…
Oh, who was she trying to kid? It hadn’t been his intellect that she’d been dreaming about so heatedly. It had been the feel of his skin under her hands, the way the swells and curves of his hard-won muscles had filled her palms and the subtle smell of musk that had lingered even after she’d made her way to Beabea’s cottage.
‘Take a seat, please,’ he demanded quietly, dragging her instantly away from her mental images of the bronzed figure silhouetted against the sunset to the professional man in front of her.
Not that it completely drove the thoughts away. How could it when she could see the same lean, powerful body, albeit this time clothed in pale coffee-coloured trousers and a dark bronze shirt that brought out unexpected gleams of gold in those beautiful dark eyes?
His face was every bit as handsome as the first time she’d seen it, but after watching it at intervals for the last twenty-four hours she felt as if she was actually getting
to read some of the emotions that were going on behind the ‘official’ look he seemed to hide behind sometimes.
There was something about his expression this morning that she hadn’t seen before…an uneasiness that sent warning prickles up the back of her neck, especially when he couldn’t seem to decide whether to perch one hip on the corner of his desk or retreat to the plush-looking chair behind it.
It couldn’t be that something had gone wrong with Abir’s recovery. Before she’d set off for the hospital that morning she’d spoken to the anaesthetist who’d been first on call last night, as well as the nurse who’d been specialling him. Both had been very pleased with the way his little body had coped with the trauma of such major surgery, in spite of the fact that he was still very heavily sedated.
And it had only been moments ago that she’d been standing beside his high-tech cot, surrounded by the clicks and bleeps of all the monitors, keen to reread his notes and hold Meera Hanani’s hand reassuringly, even while she knew that nothing less than holding her baby son in her arms, whole and healthy, was ever going to be reassurance enough.
As for any problems with the other patients she’d seen yesterday, she hadn’t had time to get to the pile of case notes so she had no idea what would have put such a buttoned-down expression on his ‘eminent consultant’ face.
So, was it something she’d done…or failed to do?
For goodness’ sake! Guessing just wasn’t her way, she thought impatiently.
‘Is there a problem?’ she demanded forthrightly, just
as the possibility that he was trying to find the words to give her the sack exploded into her brain.
‘I am afraid…There is something…’
He made two false starts and she nearly growled with anxiety, suddenly realising just how much she did
not
want to lose this job.
It wasn’t just that she needed to stay close to her grandmother, although that was essential to her plans for the foreseeable future. No, it was the blinding revelation that, much as she had been enjoying the work she’d been doing in Mr Breyley’s unit, there was something so much
more
in what she’d seen and done yesterday.
And it wasn’t just that her new boss was the most good-looking, sexiest…
Enough!
she chided herself fiercely, knowing those sorts of thoughts were totally inappropriate, especially with her job on the line.
‘I am sorry,’ he said gruffly, and her worst fears were confirmed.
‘Why?’ she gulped, feeling too sick to be able to voice all the questions she wanted to ask.
Why did he want to sack her?
Why wasn’t he willing to give her a second chance?
Why couldn’t he…?
‘I must apologise because I was unnecessarily rude and abrupt last night, and I completely forgot my manners. I totally forgot to thank you for your help.’
Emily was left floundering like a fish out of water, almost certain that her mouth was gaping like a fish’s, too.
‘You’re
not
sacking me?’ She hardly dared to believe it. She’d been so sure that…
‘
Sacking
you? What on earth for?’ he demanded, but
she noticed that he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to meet her eyes.
So he
had
considered it, she realised with a sudden heaviness inside her and a panicked feeling as if she’d only just realised how close her feet were to the edge of an unstable cliff.
Who would have thought that it would matter this much to her that she might never get to work with him again?
Still, he’d obviously changed his mind, the more optimistic side of her nature pointed out firmly. And that meant that she had more time to show him how good a doctor she could be, more time to make herself indispensable to him.
‘You know as well as I do that you proved yourself more than competent in Theatre yesterday,’ he continued, that deep, slightly husky voice sounding almost musical with the liquid syllables borrowed from his own tongue. And as for the unexpected praise…she could already feel a wash of heat sweeping up her throat and into her face.
‘As for your help on the beach,’ he continued, and it was his turn to sound almost embarrassed this time, ‘I am not absolutely sure what you did, but I was able to walk all the way to the car park near the lifeboat station without having to stop, and the improvement seems to have held this morning, too. So I really do owe you my gratitude.’
‘I’m glad you’re feeling easier, and you’re welcome,’ she said, tempted to allow a broad grin to creep from ear to ear. Utter relief took the brakes off her tongue. ‘So, are we going into Theatre again today? Will you be letting me assist again?’
‘Have I created a monster?’ he murmured, but she
could see from the gleam in his eyes that he approved of her enthusiasm. ‘We will be welcoming some new patients this afternoon. They flew into Heathrow airport from Xandar overnight and will be transferring by plane down to St Mawgan where they will be met by a translator and medical staff for the last part of the journey.’
‘Let me guess who will be in charge of documenting their admission,’ Emily grumbled, screwing her nose up at the sheer volume of paperwork that was always involved.
‘You will also be in charge of leading the case conference session when all the different disciplines get their heads together,’ he announced quietly, taking her breath away completely.
‘This is a test isn’t it?’ she said nervously, guessing that at the very least there would probably be a top-flight surgeon from the plastics department as well as the anaesthetist at that meeting.
‘Why not look at it as more of a challenge?’ he suggested. ‘You will have three patients with various problems and you will need to pull together their case histories, such as they are, and put together an up-to-date picture of their problems, their needs and at least one possible course of treatment.’
‘Will that include blood work and X-rays?’ She barely glanced up from the rapid notes she was taking, her heart already pumping at the task ahead.
‘Of course. Everything we will need to make an informed decision about the best way to proceed. And in the meantime,’ he added, ‘do not forget to keep an eye on Abir. I am not expecting any problems, but Meera is delighted that you have been in to visit him. I am certain
she appreciates the fact that you are a woman. Xandar is currently ruled by some very traditional men who continue to make it very difficult for women to feel comfortable in the company of men who are not their husbands or close family members.’
‘She must be feeling very isolated over here,’ Emily said, her heart going out to the young woman all over again. It must be so hard for her to be going through this while she was so far away from the support of her friends and family. ‘That must make the whole situation even more fraught for her if she doesn’t like to ask questions for fear of offending.’
‘Exactly so,’ he said quietly, ‘and the language barrier just makes things even more difficult.’
‘I shall have to learn some of your language,’ Emily announced with a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘Even if I can only manage a few words of greeting, it would be better than nothing. Would you teach me?’
He seemed almost as startled as she was to hear the request coming out of her mouth, but before she could hastily retract it, he was answering.
‘Of course, if you are really interested in learning. But it is not one of the easiest languages,’ he warned.
‘So, you don’t think I’ll be fluent by the end of my time on the unit?’ she teased as a bubble of excitement grew inside her. The idea of learning his language had been a spur-of-the-moment idea but the more she thought about it, the more she liked it, not least because it would mean she would have an excuse to spend more time in his company.
And how stupid was that? she berated herself once she was out of his presence. Ever since she’d first seen him
on the beach there had been something about the man that had drawn her like a magnet. And now that she was working with him, the attraction seemed to be growing stronger so that all she could think about in his presence was the next time she would be with him. And as for her dreams last night, after the interlude on the darkening beach when she’d come to know the textures and warmth of his back as intimately as her own, well, they’d been enough to have her waking up that morning needing a cold shower to cool off.
‘Dr Livingston, where is Mr Khalil? I must see him immediately,’ announced an imperious voice that dragged her away from her vivid memories with a snap.
Of course it was Nasima Osman, his beautiful secretary, as immaculately dressed as ever and with such perfect hair and make-up that it must take her hours to get ready for work each day.
‘He’s just gone into the little conference room to talk with the parents of one of the patients, but he left strict instructions that he didn’t want to be disturbed,’ Emily told her with a glance towards the door, and was horrified when the arrogant young woman immediately headed towards it.
‘Don’t!’ Emily cautioned sharply, but Nasima whirled on one slender heel to face her with an expression that reminded Emily of a spitting cat.
‘His “do not disturb” only refers to
you
,’ she announced haughtily. ‘
I
am
always
welcome,’ and she turned back to open the forbidden door with a flourish.
‘Out! Now!’
Zayed snapped, his dark eyes angry as they met Emily’s across the intervening yards. ‘I told you I was
not
to be disturbed.’
‘But, Zayed,’ the young woman simpered. ‘I have brought you a message that—’
‘It can wait,’ he growled, his impatience only too clear, as was the fact that he was blaming Emily for the interruption. ‘Or give it to Emily. But shut that door
now
.’
The young woman pulled the door shut with a pout and a deliberately loud bang, then started to flounce her way out of the unit.