Tempted By Dr Patera

“Yes.”

She waited for him to elaborate, or tell her how long he’d lived there, but he didn’t. By the time she tried to think of something else to break what was becoming an uncomfortable silence they were at the front door. Dark and heavy, it loomed over the small porch.

Or maybe it was her thoughts that were dark.

The main house hadn’t seemed ominous before.

He opened it, motioning her through the entryway, and the feeling instantly went away. White tile flooring blended into equally white walls. It might have come across as spartan and cold except for the touches here and there of an azure blue that reminded Lea of the warm ocean waters that surrounded the island. It was there in a painting. In the pillows she could see through the arched doorway of the living room. It had been professionally decorated.

“I didn’t expect the inside to look like this.”

She couldn’t stop the words. She thought the cottage was lovely and homey, but this was head and shoulders above the quaintness of where she was staying. It was ultra-formal and elegant. And somehow it didn’t match Deakin at all.

He should be surrounded by brown furnishings and dark shadowy corners.

No, he shouldn’t. That would be depressing.

Except it wouldn’t. It would match what she sensed was inside him: hidden recesses that he revealed to no one.

She tensed. Hadn’t she come across that before? Looking back, she wasn’t sure how she could have missed those signs in Mark. Only she’d been young and in love, and Mark had had a way of flashing that carefree smile of his in a way that had seemed so genuine.

Wasn’t that how emotional scars in people were overlooked until it was too late?

As if on cue, Deakin turned back, his scars appearing in stark contrast as the light from the doorway poured over them. “How did you expect it to look?”

“Don’t get me wrong...it’s extremely elegant.” There was no way she could give voice to her thoughts from a moment earlier. No way. No how. “It’s just very different from the cottage.”

“My aunt had a hand in decorating the cottage. It’s where I normally live when I come here. The house is rented out most of the year. The people who were going to rent it this month backed out because of the earthquake.”

“Your aunt didn’t help decorate the main house.”

It was a statement. Not a question. There was no way the same person had had a hand in this house, although a skilled interior decorator could probably pull off two such divergent spaces.

“No.” He swept a hand around the foyer. “This was all my parents’ doing.”

He said it as if it was not the way he would have done things.

“Are you going to redo it?”

“No.”

The single word answer didn’t invite discussion. Instead she studied the textured paint on the walls and the pricey rugs on the floor and changed the topic to something a little more neutral.

“Your guests must love staying here.”

His eyes closed for a split second. In gratitude? She had no idea.

He tossed a set of keys and the remote he’d had at the cottage onto a nearby console table. “They seem to like it.”

“Is there another remote for the alarm at the cottage?” She allowed a glimmer of a smile to play across her face. “In case I decide to cook again at some point?” The scent of something warm and inviting curled around her nostrils. “Although if that heavenly aroma is what I think it is I may have to hire your aunt to cook all my meals for me.”

“I’m sure she would be happy to.”

Lea had a feeling he might be happy if she did that as well.

“Seriously, do you want the cottage stove to be off-limits? Just say the word. I don’t want you to worry about me setting the place on fire every time I’m in the kitchen.”

“I’m not.”

He wasn’t what? Worried? Because the stiff set of his posture as he walked in the direction of the living room said something different.

“I’ll give you a quick tour while dinner finishes heating.”

They went through the archway, and her eyes tracked from thing to thing.

“This space is pretty obvious...”

The blue pillows she’d noticed earlier were set in precise rows along the back of the couch. It reminded her of suture lines. She did her best to hide the shiver that went through her. It was only her imagination. Or maybe just a reaction to the whole smoke alarm encounter.

She almost hadn’t noticed that he’d shaved the stubble off his face sometime this evening. His hair was still on the longish side, but it was thick and glossy now, and her fingers suddenly itched to touch one of the dark wavy locks as he came to a stop. The man looked like a Greek god out of a legend.

She dragged her gaze back to the room when he turned to face her, and tried to shut the door on the shot of pure hormones that jetted through her.

Dust. Look for dust. A cobweb. Anything!

The perfectly square coffee table in front of her held a stack of magazines about boats, a white plaster lighthouse and a tray that held three blue candles. Not a speck of dust.

“Does your aunt clean the place after guests leave?”

“No, I hire a service to come in once a week. My aunt must have asked them to come in for my arrival.”

So he’d known exactly when he was coming home? Why had no one warned her before he arrived? “Does Theo know you’re here?”

“Not yet. I didn’t give him my exact itinerary. I figured I’d stop in at the clinic and then come straight home if it wasn’t overrun with patients. I hoped to catch him there, but obviously not if he’s taking a personal day. I’ll call him in the morning.”

“Patients seem to come in spurts. Some days we can hardly keep up. Other days we’re twiddling our thumbs—like this afternoon.”

“How are you getting to and from the clinic?”

She shifted her weight to the other foot. “Well, there’s a...um...a bicycle stored behind the cottage. I hope you don’t mind I’ve been borrowing it?”

“Why don’t you take the car? It’s there for guests—surely Cecilia told you about it?”

“She did, but I was worried about aftershocks right after I vacated my hotel. I figured I could navigate a bicycle off the road in case of a car accident or a traffic jam. And then, once that danger had passed, I’d just got used to riding in. It helps me enjoy the beauty of the island.”

“It’s not quite as beautiful as it once was.”

“You should have seen it right after the quake hit. It was awful.”

The memory of the ground shuddering beneath her feet, of plaster cracking and sheeting off the walls in her hotel room, stopped any lingering feeling of attraction in its tracks. She’d crawled under the bed, hoping the roof wasn’t going to cave in on top of her. It had seemed like forever before the ground tremors had subsided, when in reality it had probably only lasted a few minutes.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Her brows went up. “I’m sorry anyone had to go through it. It was terrible.”

“I’m sure it was.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “There was no way I could have come any sooner—my contract was unbreakable. I saw the reports on the news when I was sitting in a bar in Africa. Theo called as I was watching, and once I got off the phone with him I called everyone I could think of to see if they were okay.”

They walked through the door to the dining room—another opulent space, where a huge glass-topped table crouched beneath a low chandelier. The surface, like the coffee table in the living room, was devoid of dust or even a single smudged fingerprint.

It bothered her, somehow. This didn’t look like a place where a family might recount the minutiae of their day. Or where a child might spill a glass of milk and not live in fear of messing up something. Instead it reeked of formal place settings and expensive crystal. A place where business negotiations were hammered out.

Had Deakin eaten here as a child? God, she hoped not. She could just picture him eating a bowl of breakfast cereal all by himself. But maybe it hadn’t been that way at all. Maybe he was from a big family who laughed their way through life.

“Do you have more family on the island?”

“You mean siblings?” He shook his head. “Nope. I’m an only child.”

So no under the table kicking of a little sister or brother. No food fights or handing non-tasty morsels to the family dog. There was no sign that a pet of any kind had ever lived in this house.

Lea’s childhood home had been messy and chaotic, with dogs and rabbits and horse shows through the local club. But she wouldn’t trade it for the world. Medical school had been too grueling for her to have pets, but she certainly planned on having one or two once she got settled. In fact she and Mark had visited a shelter one time, just a week before he died.

Thank goodness they hadn’t adopted a pet that day.

A fresh bout of anger went through her, even though he’d been gone more than a year. Ten years from now she would probably feel just as bewildered, could understand the grief and anger of other loved ones who’d been left behind just as suddenly.

“I’m an only child as well.”

She wasn’t going to delve beyond that, because she didn’t know enough about him to trade childhood snapshots. Not yet, anyway. And probably not ever, since she wouldn’t see him again once she’d left the island.

A pang went through her at the thought of going back to Toronto. As much as she loved her parents and her adopted city, she had put down the first tiny threads of roots on Mythelios. The second she’d stepped onto the island there’d been a sense of home. Of belonging. Maybe because of her Greek heritage. But her savings would eventually run out and she would have to go back to work.

The question was where.

He stopped in the doorway of the kitchen and turned toward her, propping his left shoulder against the door frame and crossing his arms. “It must have been quite an adjustment moving to Canada, then.”

She had to backtrack for a second to realize he was talking about her being an only child.

“In some ways. But I think it made it easier for me to adapt. Toronto has a lot of immigrants, but I went to school. I had to learn English quickly in order to survive. Sink or swim. I swam.”

And Mark hadn’t.

He pursed his lips. “You’ve left your position there, though. Where are you off to next? Back to Canada?”

It was as if he’d read her mind. “I’m not sure yet. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

Her parents were there. And yet the last thing she wanted to do was face her and Mark’s old apartment. She’d have to, though, even if just to pack up her things. His belongings were long gone. Mark’s mom and dad had been tasked with the heartbreaking job of sorting through everything and deciding what to do with his personal items. She’d spent the week in a hotel to give them some privacy. That had been many months ago, but the sharp sting of those days still remained.

“I understand how that is.”

His arms dropped to his sides, his posture opening up as if he really did understand her uncertainty.

Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “I think dinner is probably just about ready. Are you okay with eating out on the back deck? It should be cooling off outside by now.”

“Outside sounds wonderful.” She hoped her tone didn’t give away how relieved she was they were not to be seated at opposite ends of that enormous table.

The right side of his mouth kicked up in a way that said he was just as glad. “Good. Then if you’ll get the plates out of that cabinet by the sink, I’ll get the pan out of the oven.”

Opening the glass-fronted cabinet, she pulled down two ornate pieces of china, giving a quick wrinkle of her nose that she hoped he wouldn’t see. Maybe their conversation would be a little less brittle than the dinnerware. Maybe they could even put that awkward first meeting behind them and get off on a better foot. For as long as they both were here.

She grimaced at how close that was to another sentence. If Mark had lived they would be married. But he hadn’t. And they weren’t. And Lea had no plans to leap into another romance anytime soon.

Right now she just needed to focus on putting that painful period in her life behind her. While she never would have wished Mythelios’s earthquake on anyone, it had served to take her mind off herself and focus on doing good for those on the island. Didn’t she always tell her patients that giving back to others was a great way to derail self-pity? She should have taken a page from her own book months ago. But she hadn’t been ready to let go of the apartment which was a last connection to her fiancé.

She took a deep breath and accepted the steaming plate Deakin handed her with a murmured thank-you.

One thing was for sure, though. She was never getting involved with another man who carried a truckload of baggage. If she dated again, she was picking someone fun. Someone full of sunshine and light.

No brooding. No past trauma.

She gave a mental pinky-swear...to herself.

Happy, cheerful, and an eternal optimist. That was the best prescription she could think of.

And what better place to start than with herself?

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