‘I am sorry,’ he said with a rueful grin.
‘It’s all right for you people who can leap tall buildings at a single bound, but us mere mortals have to work a little harder at it,’ she grumbled. ‘I’ve always wished I was taller, then I wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep the weight off because it wouldn’t show so much.’
‘You do not need to lose any weight!’ he exclaimed. ‘Your body is exactly right for…’ He stopped abruptly, as though he’d only just realised what he was saying.
This time there was no mistaking the dark colour that flooded his face and Emily almost felt sorry for him. Almost, because she couldn’t help being absurdly delighted that he’d said something so complimentary.
‘I am sorry. It is not my place to make personal comments,’ he said formally, and laughter bubbled out of her.
‘Oh,
please
, don’t apologise! That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me. When you’re only five feet six and tend towards…shall we call it chubbiness…the compliments are rather few and far between.’
‘Then the men you know are all idiots,’ he growled. ‘A real woman is not a handful of bones covered in skin. She
has curves and softness so that when she holds her child…’ He shut his mouth with a snap then muttered something under his breath before saying, ‘I am sorry,’ again and gesturing for her to precede him into the arrivals hall.
Emily knew that her smile must be stretching from ear to ear but she really didn’t care—in fact, crazy as it sounded for someone of thirty years of age, her feet hardly felt as if they were touching the ground because Zayed had just said that a real woman should have curves and softness and he thought her body was exactly right.
T
HE
rest of that week soon disabused Emily of the idea that Zayed had any special interest in her.
He kept up a brutal pace.
She knew that he arrived at St Piran’s in the early hours of the morning to deal with the unending office work entailed in the organisation of such a specialist unit, because he was always there before she arrived for her shift. He then continued through a twelve-hour shift of ward rounds, consultations, assessments and operations, and in between all that he still managed to find time to speak to worried parents and play with the children or just give them a comforting cuddle.
The only time she could be almost certain that he wouldn’t be involved right up to his neck at the hospital was in the early evening, when the sun slid down over the western horizon. Then, unless there had been some sort of emergency on the ward or he’d been called down to consult in A and E, she knew she would probably be able to find him down on the wave-flattened sand on the beach in Penhally.
It was totally self-deluding, she knew, but that was when she’d come to think of him as
hers
, and of that time
as their special time together, even though he never so much as glanced in her direction.
It had started the very evening after his back had seized up on him.
As usual, she’d been to visit Beabea, but as her disease was progressing, she was alert for less and less time as the morphine kicked in. Rather than sit there staring at the visible signs that her beloved grandmother was fading away in front of her eyes, Emily had taken to running from the hospice unit down to the beach.
She was honest enough to admit to herself that it wasn’t just displacement activity so that she could switch off from what was happening up in that almost silent room. It had rapidly become an essential part of her day to see that tall, tanned figure stride down onto the sand and strip off to begin his self-imposed routine.
Today was no different.
She’d actually caught herself clock-watching when it had looked as if she might have to stay late, and her concern wasn’t just that she might not arrive until Beabea was already asleep. But here she was, once more sitting in the shadows among the rocks, with her pulse tripping with crazy excitement at the prospect of seeing the man she’d been working with all day.
‘So, this is where you hide,’ said a familiar voice, and she almost leapt out of her skin.
‘Zayed!’ she squeaked when he loomed over her, silhouetted against a spectacular peach and lavender sunset, then coloured even more furiously when she realised that once again she’d actually used his given name to his face.
‘I saw you looking at your watch earlier today, just after you had been holding Abir, and then you disap
peared,’ he complained. ‘I was not certain whether you were on late duty this evening or whether you would be here as my guardian.’
Emily suddenly realised that she’d never explained the special dispensation she’d been granted by Mr Breyley and felt a sharp pang of concern that her current freedom from on-call duties might not continue.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Khalil, I should have told you about that,’ she started to babble, her brain totally scrambled by the possibility that she might not be able to visit Beabea for days if the arrangement were rescinded. ‘Mr Breyley arranged that I should be allowed to live so far away from St Piran’s so that I would be able to visit my grandmother. That’s why I’m not on the on-call roster at the moment, but when…as soon as…’
‘Hush, hush! Calm yourself,’ he soothed in exactly the same way that he calmed their little patients when everything became too much for them. ‘There was obviously some good reason why the arrangement was made this way, and I have no complaints about the work you do when you are on duty. Now…’ His tone of voice changed completely. ‘Are you just going to watch me or are you going to do some exercise, too?’
Emily’s emotions were in complete turmoil.
She didn’t think she would ever be able to talk about her grandmother’s illness and her inevitable loss without choking up, but at the same time the fact that this handsome, charismatic man seemed to be inviting her to keep him company this evening was enough to double her pulse rate in seconds.
‘Have you already been running?’ he asked, as if she weren’t standing there with her mouth hanging open and
her eyes glued to the expanse of taut male flesh he was uncovering right in front of her.
‘Uh, n-not yet,’ she managed to stammer, finally managing to drag her covetous gaze away. She could remember all too clearly just what that skin and those muscles felt like and her fingertips were tingling with the desire to touch them again.
‘Well, then, if you go for your run now, you could join me when I am ready for my swim,’ he suggested. ‘You do swim, do you not?’
Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Beabea never allowed me down to the beach by myself until I could prove that I could swim well enough. Then I completed a lifesaving course so I could be useful if anyone else got into difficulties. The lifeguards can’t be on duty twenty-four hours a day.’
‘And that is why you insisted on watching over me when I was breaking all the rules,’ he said with a nod of comprehension, but Emily wasn’t going to tell him that it wasn’t only the fact that he’d gone in to swim on his own that had prompted her to wait for him to emerge that first evening. There was no way she would be admitting that it had also been the prospect of catching another glimpse of that beautifully sculpted body.
Emily had set off for her first trip to the end of the beach when she wondered whether it would be a good idea to go swimming with Zayed after all.
Although he’d seemed perfectly friendly so far this evening, she had definitely been aware that he’d created a deliberate distance between the two of them after their last encounter.
Had he resented her presence here? After all, Penhally
was a rather long way to go if he only wanted to find a beach to do his exercises and finish up with a swim. It might be that he’d deliberately come this far so that there was less likelihood of bumping into anyone who would recognise him.
There was also the isolation factor.
This late in the season there were far fewer holidaymakers about, especially the school or university students who might linger on the beach that much later in the day. This would almost guarantee that he wouldn’t have an audience while he pushed himself to the limit to regain his strength and flexibility.
He certainly wasn’t struggling so much this evening, she noticed as she passed him for the third time, only now allowing herself to notice that, as she was sticking to the very edge of the firm sand, she was between him and the dying sun and was therefore not limited to seeing him as a silhouette. In fact, this was the clearest view she’d ever had of him, apart from the glimpse of firm male flesh she was treated to when he leaned forward in his V-necked scrubs.
Just then he turned to pick up his towel and as she got her first good look at the injury that had made his struggles so necessary, she almost tripped over her own feet.
Dear Lord, what
had
happened to him?
She’d felt the irregularity of his skin when she’d been working out the knots in his muscles—she hadn’t been able to avoid feeling it—but in the poor light she’d never realised just how livid the scarring had been, or how extensive.
‘It was an explosion,’ he said suddenly, and she was horrified to realise that she’d been standing there staring at his injuries.
‘That would explain the type of scarring,’ she said, finally managing to grab hold of a little of the control she’d learned during her training. ‘Did you need a great deal of surgery and skin grafts?’
‘Not as much as I might have done if the spinal cord had been severed,’ he said prosaically, and the image of such a vital man being confined to a wheelchair made her shudder.
She wanted to know more. In fact, she wanted to know everything there was to know about this man, but before she could formulate the next question he was gesturing towards the sea.
‘Ready to swim?’ he invited.
She actually put both hands to the hem of her top, ready to strip it off over her head, before she remembered the reason why she couldn’t.
‘I’m not wearing a costume under my clothes,’ she said with a grimace, and the feeling of disappointment was immediate. If she’d thought about it earlier, she could have run back to Beabea’s cottage to change. It had been so long since she’d swum with anyone, and the thought of sharing this stretch of the sea with him was…
‘You are wearing sports clothes under those things, are you not?’ he asked, gesturing towards the casual clothing she’d donned before she’d left the hospital. ‘Can you not swim in those?’
‘Why not?’ she exclaimed with a grin when she suddenly remembered that her sports bra and pants were the sort of utilitarian shape that wouldn’t look unlike a modest bikini.
Before she could second-guess herself and realise that she was exposing far more than she ought to the man, she
stripped her cotton knit top over her head and shoved the drawstring trousers over her hips to pool around her ankles.
With the sort of burning awareness that told her he was watching her every step, she sprinted for the water. Barely waiting for the waves to reach above her knees, she dived through the next line of surf and came up with her arm already poised for the first fierce stroke.
It was some time before she realised that Zayed had stopped swimming and was now standing in the fading light on the beach.
This time he’d been the one standing guard while she’d ploughed backwards and forwards across the mouth of the bay until her muscles began to quiver in a way that told her she’d regret this in the morning.
‘I hadn’t realised just how much I’d missed that. Have you been waiting a long time?’ she asked, panting as she splashed her way through the shallows towards him. It was only when he didn’t reply that she looked a little more closely and realised that he seemed to be transfixed by her appearance…her almost naked appearance as the waning light rendered her coffee-coloured clothing all but invisible against her tanned skin, and the cool sea breeze puckered her nipples into tight little beads.
‘Here,’ he said gruffly, holding out his own towel in her direction, then dragged his gaze away to stare fixedly towards the fading horizon.
Emily’s breath caught in her throat as she stepped close enough to take the nubby fabric from him to wrap it around her shoulders, wishing she was able to see his expression more clearly.
For just a second it had seemed as if there had been something almost…almost predatory in those dark eyes
as they’d skimmed over her, and the thought that he’d been looking at her with sexual intent sent an atavistic thrill right through her that was waking all sorts of primitive responses.
‘Why do you…?’
‘What is it…?’
They both hurried into speech to fill the uncomfortable silence stretching between them, and both halted at the same time.
‘What did you want to know?’ he offered as he pulled the edges of his shirt together and began to button away the sight of that impressive chest.
‘Oh, I just wondered…’ What
had
she been thinking about while her body had still been reacting to the thought that he might have liked what he’d seen? Oh, yes. ‘Why do you come all the way to Penhally to swim? Is it because it’s far enough from St Piran’s so that you’re unlikely to bump into someone who’d recognise you?’
‘If that was the reason, it obviously did not work,’ he said wryly. ‘But, actually, it is because it is convenient for me as I have a house up there.’ He gestured towards the far end of the beach, to the cliffs beyond Penhally Bay.
Emily knew the area he meant and knew the sort of houses that had been built up there.
‘The view must be spectacular,’ she said, even as she silently acknowledged that only someone wealthy enough to set up a specialist unit would be able to afford one of those houses. They were a far cry from Beabea’s little cottage.
‘And what is it that has you hurrying to Penhally every day?’ he asked as he accepted the neatly folded towel from
her and tucked it under one arm. ‘I saw you looking at your watch today, just after it was time for you to leave. Do you have a man waiting impatiently for you to come—?’
The shrill sound of a mobile phone cut through his unexpectedly personal question and Emily reached for it, recognising the ring tone. She caught sight of the name of the person ringing her and her heart suddenly leapt into her mouth.
‘Hello?’ she said, breathless with dread.
‘Hello, Emily, love.’ Her grandmother’s gentle voice filled her ear with the reassurance that she hadn’t gone yet. ‘Staff Nurse let me use her phone to tell you that I’m awake if you want to visit. I didn’t know if you might have given up on me and gone back—’
‘Of course I want to see you,’ Emily cut in. ‘I’ve just been for a swim on the beach down below you, but it won’t take long for me to get there. Five minutes. Ten at the most.’
She ended the call and turned to the silent shadow standing beside her with a smile. ‘That’s the reason why I hurry to Penhally every day.’
‘Your boyfriend expects you to stop what you are doing to come when he calls?’ he asked, and in the darkness his voice sounded almost disapproving.
‘No.’ She chuckled. ‘That wasn’t a demanding boyfriend. That was my grandmother.’ She was struck by the sudden urge to introduce the two of them to each other. It would be interesting to see what Beabea made of the man who’d begun to fill her every waking thought. ‘Would you like to walk up with me to visit her? She had to move into the hospice a few days ago and…’
‘The hospice? She is ill?’ She was almost certain he’d intended refusing the invitation until that moment.
‘She has inoperable cancer,’ Emily told him, the words no easier to say than the first time she’d ever said them. ‘She’s unlikely to live until October.’
‘Surely she will not want a stranger to intrude upon her?’ They were walking while they were talking and she could see his expression a little better now that they were climbing closer to the lights along Harbour Road, well enough to see that he was intrigued.