One Night With Dr Nikolaides

Together she and her brother looked across the street to the bakery. All that was left was the building’s huge and ancient stone-built ovens. And there, undeterred by the open-air setting, was Mythelios’s top baker, pulling loaves out as if working amidst rubble was the most normal thing on earth.

Cailey’s brother smiled down on her. “I’m so glad I saw you. We’re just about to go up to the mountains—see what we can do up there to help the more isolated houses.” He squeezed her tight. “How is the family success story? Does that London hospital know how lucky it is to have you? Have you seen Theo?”

Cailey did her best not to let her smile falter as Kyros held her at arm’s length and waited for answers. What was it with her family and all the Theo questions?

Kyros’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like you eat enough over there.”

“I’m fine!” She batted away his concerns. She ate plenty. There was no keeping her curves at bay no matter how often she ate like a rabbit. “You must be boiling in that suit.”

“This?” He did a twirl in his firefighter’s gear. “I suit it well, don’t I?”

“Still the show-off, I see.”

“Absolutely!” He winked, then just as quickly his expression turned sober. “And now I’d better show off how good I am at helping. There are still a few dozen people unaccounted for. Tourists, mostly.”

“Is it as bad as they say on the news?”

He nodded. “Worse. The more we dig, the more fatalities we find. There are a lot of injuries.” He tipped his head down the street. “The clinic was heaving when I was there last. Have you spoken to Theo yet?”

She ignored the question. “How’s Leon? I tried to ask Mama a minute ago but the line went—”

She stopped talking as a very large, very exclusive, four-by-four, outside just about any mortal’s price range, pulled to a stop beside them. The back window was rolled down centimeter by painstaking centimeter to reveal silver hair, icy cold blue eyes...

Oh, goodness. Theo’s father had aged considerably since she’d seen him last. One of the most powerful men on the island seemed to have been unable to hold back the hands of time.

Just about the only thing Dimitri Nikolaides couldn’t do, Cailey thought bitterly.

“Ah! Miss Tomaras. How...interesting to see you back here.”

Shards of ice shot through her veins as her brain tumbled back through the years to that day when he’d made it more than clear what he and the rest of his family thought of her.

Nothing but a simple house girl. That’s all you’ll ever be.

Her brother leaned in over her shoulder. “Cailey’s here to help, Mr. Nikolaides. She’s a Class-A nurse now.”

“Oh?” A patronizing smile appeared on the old man’s face. “You’re planning on going to the clinic?”

“To help, yes.”

She caught her knees just as she was on the brink of genuflecting and stopped herself.

What was she doing? Was her body trying to curtsey? Good grief! The man wasn’t a king and he certainly didn’t run the island. Even if he behaved as if he did. And yet there was a part of her that still worried she would never be smart enough, good enough, talented enough to come home and do anything other than fulfil the fate Dimitri Nikolaides had outlined for her.

“I’m sure there’s some little corner you’ll be able to help out in. Plenty of cuts and scrapes to tend to.”

Mr. Nikolaides eyes scanned the length of her, as if assessing a race horse. Working class mule, more like. That was how he viewed her family and it was how he always would.

Cailey’s spine stiffened as she forced her static smile not to waver.

“Maternity, wasn’t it?”

“S-s-sorry?” Noooooo! Don’t stutter in front of the man.

“I heard through the grapevine that you help other women with their children. Sweet.”

Coming from his mouth, it sounded anything but. Not to mention bordering on pathetic. Women on Mythelios were expected to do nothing less. Cook. Clean. Bow. Scrape. Sometimes she wondered if the island had ever been informed that the twenty-first century had arrived—an era when women were allowed to be smart and have opinions and love whomsoever they chose!

She stared at the lines and wrinkles carved deeply into his face. Saw the cool appraisal of his unclouded eyes. What made you so mean?

Once he’d successfully bullied her off the island the man should have had all he wanted. A son to matchmake with the world’s most beautiful heiresses. A daughter at an elite medical school. No doubt he knew exactly who she’d marry, too. The daughter of his housekeeper was safely out of the picture, so as not to sully his daughter’s circle of friends or, more importantly, his son’s romantic future.

She forced a polite smile when the silence grew too awkward. “My family usually bundles in wherever help is needed. Leon’s police squad is out saving lives this minute.”

“You don’t look too busy,” Mr. Nikolaides glanced at Kyros. “And your mother? Is she doing anything or simply enjoying her retirement?”

Cailey almost gasped at his effrontery. Her mother had earned her money at the Nikolaides mansion just as she had earned her retirement. And Kyros? Why wasn’t he saying anything? Why wasn’t she saying anything?

She’d never let anyone speak to her like this in London. Not after the years of work she’d poured into becoming a nurse. And definitely not after her years of living away from the island to “protect” a billionaire’s son. As if Theo needed protection from all the European heiresses she’d seen dangling off his arm in the society magazines she might have read accidentally on purpose at the hospital gift shop. On a regular basis.

“Oh, yes. You know us, Mr. Nikolaides,” she eventually bit out. “We Tomarases love helping clear up other people’s messes.”

Mr. Nikolaides blinked. Then smiled. “Yes, we do miss your mother’s deft touch up at the house. I trust she’s well?”

“Couldn’t be happier,” Cailey snapped.

“Mama’s very well, thank you Mr. Nikolaides.” Kyros’s hand tightened round Cailey’s arm. “We’re just off now, sir. Glad to see you weren’t hurt in the quake.”

He turned his sister around and frog-marched her away from the dark-windowed four-by-four, now weaving its way through the rubble strewn along the harborside road as if it had been thrown down by a petulant god.

“What was that all about?” Kyros growled.

“Nothing.”

He wasn’t to know Dimitri had all but packed her bags himself all those years ago. Demanded she never enter the Nikolaides house again. Not as a friend to his daughter Erianthe. Not as a “helping hand” to her mother. And especially not as anything whatsoever to do with Theo, his precious son who was prone to develop “a bleeding heart for the less fortunate.”

She launched herself at her brother for a bear hug. It was the easiest way to hide the lie she was about to tell. “I’m just tired after the overnight flight. Once I get to work I’ll be fine. It’s just weird seeing the island like this.”

“I know, huh?”

She could feel his voice rumble in his chest and cinched her arms just a little bit tighter around him. Once she let go of him she’d have to go and face the other Demon of Mythelios.

Full points to Dimitri for pipping her to the post. But she wouldn’t have been surprised if he was stalking the harbor for interlopers. Huh.

He looked old. The worn-out kind of old that came from emotional strain rather than physical. Proof he was human? Somewhere in there?

Besides, he’d only put a voice to what Theo and his mates had already been thinking, and no doubt Erianthe too, who hadn’t even had the guts to say goodbye to her before winging her way off to her fancy boarding school...

Bah! Enough of putting blame at other people’s doors. She’d believed everything Dimitri Nikolaides had said about her because there had been some truth in it. She wasn’t as smart as the others. She did have to work twice as hard to understand things. Finally figuring out she was dyslexic had helped. A bit. But it hadn’t made all the medical terminology easier to read. She’d just had to face facts. She wasn’t up to Nikolaides standards and no amount of teenage flirtation would change that.

A siren sounded and shouts erupted from a fire truck as it pulled to a stop beside them.

She gave her brother a final squeeze. “Go out there and save some lives.” She went up on tiptoe and gave each of Kyros’s ruddy cheeks a kiss.

“Same to you, Cailey.” He scrubbed a hand through her already wayward hairdo, if you could call stuffing her curls into submission with an elastic band a hairdo. “Welcome back.”

She smiled up at him, praying he wouldn’t see how their run-in with Dimitri Nikolaides had shaken her to her core. “It’s good to be here.”

* * *

“Is that enough?” Theo was impatient to get back to work. Yes, the media could help. No, he didn’t have a moment to spare.

The look on the reporter’s face acknowledged the question was rhetorical.

He undid the microphone and began to walk away, ignoring the pleas of the other reporters. They’d be better off showing footage of the rescue crews hard at work while he figured out how to help patients and simultaneously order the urgently needed helicopters to get the worst cases over to Athens.

He could call his dad.

He could also saw off his own hand. Lifting up that phone would come at a cost. It always did.

“Dr. Nikolaides?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have time for any more interviews—”

“No! I’m not with the press. I’m a doctor. My name is Lea Risi.”

He stopped and turned. The woman was wearing holiday clothes. Chinos. A flowery top. Her accent was not local, but she spoke flawless Greek. Useful, considering there was a heavy mix of tourists and locals pouring into the clinic.

For just a nanosecond he rued the appeal of this gorgeous port town that drew holidaymakers from all around the world. If only they were on a rocky outcrop with a diminished population...

“Dr. Nikolaides!” A paramedic was calling him from the hastily put-together triage area off Reception.

He beckoned to Lea. “Come along, then.”

“Don’t you want to know my credentials?” She ran a few steps to catch up with his long-legged strides.

“Not particularly.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, then pulled the shoulder-length mane back under control with an elastic band he’d picked up somewhere during the course of the day. He didn’t know when, exactly. Sixteen hours’ straight trauma work did that to a man. The details blurred.

“I’m a psychiatrist.”

He nodded. Fine. That meant she had medical credentials. “What do you want? Old or young?”

“Sorry?”

“We’ve got patients coming in from a care home and a school. Both were hit hard. We’re triaging on site and transporting to hospital with limited resources.”

He stopped and wheeled round, holding out his hands to steady her when she lost her balance trying not to collide with him.

“Apologies.” He shook his head. “I’m a bit short on manners today.”

“I totally understand. I just want to help.”

Theo put out a hand. “Good. Help is what we need. Theo Nikolaides.” They shared a quick handshake as he rattled off the necessary facts. “I run the clinic. With the help of some friends. Doctors.”

He silently reeled through the cities in the world where they might be. Was Deakin in Paris or Buenos Aires this month? And Christos...? New York. Definitely New York. Ares? Only heaven knew.

Burn specialist.

Neurosurgeon.

Miracle-worker.

If only they were all pilots. He needed them here. But they’d come...they would come.

“Put me wherever you think I’ll be best placed—”

Lea was about to say something else when his eyes latched on to a set of unruly curls weaving its way through the crowd jamming up the entryway into the clinic.

Christos!

A jolt of lightning would have affected him less.

What was Cailey Tomaras doing here? The last time he’d seen her—

“Doctor?”

“Sorry. I’m a bit frazzled.” He tapped the side of his head. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Leanora Risi. Lea. Just call me Lea.”

Her empathetic smile spoke volumes. She could see he was busy, but she wanted to help—and at this juncture he needed all the help he could get.

His eyes slipped past Lea again. Cailey had left the island to become a maternity nurse, hadn’t she? Good for her. He knew she’d always been interested in medicine—

“If there’s someone else you’d rather I speak with...” Lea put a hand on his arm.

“No. I’m your man. Apologies. There’s just someone I—”

Someone I should’ve kissed ten years ago. Someone I should’ve taken on a proper date. Someone I never thought I’d see again.

He looked down at Lea’s feet and saw strappy sandals not wholly suited to working in a chaotic clinic.

“Here on holiday?”

“I was.” Lea tipped her head and tried to capture his attention. “But now I’m here to help. I don’t have any equipment but I have these.” She lifted up her hands and twisted them as if they were freshly washed for surgery.

“Perfect. Good.”

Wholly distracted, he let his attention shift past Lea yet again.

Cailey face had grown...not thinner...just... Well, even more beautiful, obviously. She’d had quite a lead in that department. Her cheekbones had become more elegantly defined...her lips were still that deep red, difficult to believe it was real and not painted on...

Had she finally come home?

“Dr. Nikolaides...?” Lea’s expression shifted to one of grim determination. “You obviously need to be elsewhere. Now, I haven’t practiced emergency medicine in a while. But I’m definitely up to the cuts and bruises variety of injury—if you’ll just point me in the right direction I can get on with helping patients.”

“Yes. Of course.”

He gave himself a sharp shake. He wasn’t here to ogle ghosts from the past. There were very real, very urgent medical cases that needed help. Now.

“Why don’t you go grab a notebook from Petra? She’s the loving but steel-hearted battleax working the main desk. She’ll give you everything you need to work your way through the queue and categorize people. We’ve got a couple of doctors working just through that archway. It’s makeshift, but we aren’t really kitted out for intensive care. I’ll be there shortly. There are a couple more volunteer doctors from the mainland seeing less urgent cases.”

He looked up to the skylight above them as a medical helicopter flew overhead.

“And a medevac. If we’re lucky, we’ll soon have one very talented nurse on board as well.”

Lea gave his arm a quick squeeze, then headed toward Reception to start work. If she’d said something to him, he wouldn’t have known. All he wanted to know was what had brought Cailey back to the island she’d sworn never to set foot on again.

CHAPTER FOUR

“WELL, LOOK WHO we have here. If it isn’t Little Miss I’m-Going-to-Make-a-Difference.”

Theo Nikolaides. As she lived and breathed...barely.

She opened her mouth. She’d prepared for this. Spent hours of her life thinking about what to say when and if she ever saw him again.

Fffzzzzttt! There went her ability to use actual words.

“Come to help out at our little backwater clinic, have you?”

“I...uh...”

Kaboom! An explosion of fireworks she was clearly powerless to resist went off in her chest, then her belly, then her... Well, everywhere, really.

“Cailey? Are you all right? You haven’t been hurt, have you?”

Crrrrassssh! Down came the defenses she’d worked so hard to build up.

She batted away his hand as he reached toward her. She wasn’t ready yet. For that voice. Those words. His kindness.

Her cheeks burned at the memory of their heated exchange all those years ago. She forced herself to swallow the array of comebacks she could’ve spat back, and instead shifted the infant she’d been cuddling back into the arms of his mother.

Prove you’ve grown up. Prove you’ve made something of yourself!

“It looks like a superficial wound to me. Cuts always bleed a lot. Just keep the pressure on and I’m sure the good doctor here will get to you as soon as possible.”

“Absolutely.” Theo gave the mum a quick nod in Lea’s direction. “Dr. Risi will be down in a minute to log the case, and we’ll get someone to see you and this little one as soon as possible.”

Cailey watched, transfixed, as Theo ran his index finger along the infant’s face. How could someone so incredibly caring leave his father to do his talking for him?

Pffft. They’d both been young and stupid. At least she had been. On too many fronts.

Didn’t mean they could kiss and make-up, though.

A vivid image of Theo pulling her roughly to him for a hot, heated kiss swept through her body. And then she crushed it. That was all in the past.

“How funny—you remember my goal.” She turned on her brightest smile. “Mission accomplished. I am here to make a difference, thank you very much. A good one. So, if you don’t mind putting one of the ‘little people’ to work, I’ll happily get out of your way.”

Sea-green eyes bored into her from a face featuring the strong, evenly planed cheekbones she’d dreamt of tracing with first a finger...then her lips...

He was looking at her curiously. She shifted under his gaze, not enjoying the intense scrutiny.

“Here I was, thinking an earthquake would’ve reminded you that we’re all born equal,” he said blandly.

It would’ve been a hell of a touché if she hadn’t known for a fact he thought she was in an intellectual league well below him.

She held her ground, arched an eyebrow that might have looked defensive but was in fact proud and resilient and completely without insecurity. She hadn’t knuckled down for years of painstaking study, work and paying off student loans to get this far only to feel belittled again.

“I think you would probably be most useful working alongside me. C’mon.” He scooped up her backpack, turned and signaled for her to follow him. “Let’s get you some scrubs and then you can show me what you’re made of.”

He put his hand on the small of her back and began steering her through the crowd, using his own body as a shield against the push and surge of people desperate to see a doctor.

While her infuriated brain shot off in one direction Cailey’s body was actively registering Theo’s on a much more primal level. All six-foot-something, long-legged, trim-waisted, white-coated package of complete and utter male perfection kept brushing up against her as if...as if they had already shared an intimacy beyond that one perfect kiss...

“I think I can get scrubs on my own, ta.” She shot him her best I’m-a-big-girl-now look, eyes sparking as they landed on his amused expression.

“No, you can’t. You’ve never been here before.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah, but nothing.” He grinned down at her. “You can quit the ‘city girl’ act, Cailey. You’re home now. Time to see what my little kouklamou of Mythelios is made of.”

It certainly wasn’t sugar and spice. Not these days, anyway.

Despite her rising fury, something in her softened as she stomped alongside him to get kitted out in scrubs.

Beautiful doll. He’d always called her that back then. Sure, she’d just been his kid sister’s friend. Daughter of his family’s housekeeper. But even though they’d never put words to it there’d been something... Something magic between them.

She’d been absolutely sure of it right up until the moment she’d heard him tell his friends that a Nikolaides would never end up with a cleaner.

And that had been that.

Rage at the memory did nothing to stop her insides from fluttering as his hand shifted on the small of her back. How on earth she’d thought she would be immune to him even after all this time was beyond her.

She stole a glance at him as he stepped to the side to avoid a gurney being wheeled through the packed corridor at high speed.

Theo might not be everybody’s cup of tea. He had his flaws. A tiny scar by his eye acquired from daredevil antics in one of his father’s olive groves. Hair that always looked as if it could do with a cut. Another small scar just below his nose that only seemed to add to the strength of his unbelievably sensual mouth. Sensual, but male.

Everything about him screamed alpha. Masculine. It had since they were young—as if he’d been born vividly aware of the world’s mysteries and was just biding his time until the rest of the world caught up. Take it or leave it—that was his attitude. Not cavalier. Or haughty. Simply knowing. As if he’d made a deal with the universe to do his part and in exchange...

That was the mystery. She’d never seen him take anything. Not one single solitary time. That was the Theo enigma.

He might talk the talk of a rich, privileged so-and-so, but she’d always thought the shadows that crossed those sea-green eyes of his betrayed greater depths. Hidden sorrows he’d rather keep secret. He’d never bare the heart behind that insanely touchable chest of his.

He turned back to her with a smile still playing on his lips. Trust him to be all calm and relaxed amidst a level of mayhem that would have rendered any sane person tearing out their hair.

“There’s no need for a tour of the clinic. Shall we just get to work?”

“I think you’re going to want to get out of that top first.”

“I...uh...” She looked down at the white top she was wearing that had somehow magically acquired a layer of grime and rolled her eyes. Kyros. Her brother had been filthy.

Oh, good grief. Where’s your spine? Your vocabulary? Use them!

“It’s not—I’m here to...”

What is wrong with you?

A nurse skidded to a halt beside Theo and put a hand on her chest to stop him. Lucky minx.

“Dr. Nikolaides, we’ve got five patients coming in the next ambulance.”

“Five!”

Two pairs of eyes snapped to her.

“There are only two ambulances on the island. We bring in as many people as they can carry,” Theo explained.

There was nothing in his voice beyond passing on information. Where was the derision? Why was he taking his time with her? When had he become so...so...extra-perfect?

Her eyes fixed on Theo’s lips as he spoke to the nurse. On the tip of his tongue as it touched and retreated from the smooth run of teeth save one crooked one just to the left of center that she’d always liked. Yet another slight imperfection that made him mysteriously even more perfect.

His tongue swept the length of his lower lip before his teeth snagged that lip and pressed down on it while he thought for a moment when the nurse asked where he wanted the patients. It was like being in a slow-motion version of her teenaged fantasies...before the kissing began.

She watched, still mesmerized, as he released his lip and rattled off a list of updates.

A Mrs. Carnosi with a broken arm needed to go to Cubicle Three while her plaster set. A man was in Recovery on the first floor after a heart attack—could someone find his wife down at the harbor? She was helping the baker, he thought. A four-year-old with a head wound could probably do with some crayons to pass the time as the televisions weren’t working. All the children, in fact. There were some in a storage locker along with some paper. He was sure of it. Oh, and he’d organized a water delivery so everyone who entered the clinic could be given a two-liter bottle to see them through their waiting time.