TWO AND A half hours of pure torture.
Elle squirmed in her seat as the four-by-four finally drew to a halt just outside the buildings of their first local community. It was all she could do not to fling open the door and throw herself out just to get away from Fitz. How was it that in spite of the callous way in which he’d rejected her this last week, she still wanted him? She’d never known it was possible to feel a yearning so intense that it actually physically hurt.
And then she’d fallen under his spell all over again. She’d fallen for the idea of something more with him, even if she had precisely zero idea what that would be. Although she was fairly sure it hadn’t been being cooped up in the back of a four-by-four with him, jolted around so much that their bodies had been in contact the entire journey, yet unable to talk freely because of the driver.
Really, she should pat herself on the back. For two hours, thirty-one minutes and some seconds she had endured Fitz’s solid thigh pressed against her, generating heat that had little to do with the soaring daytime temperatures as it had bounced off each other’s bodies, and withstood the sparks of awareness and the tiniest hairs prickling in response. She had spent two hours, thirty-one minutes and some seconds muffling the maddening military tattoo roll over her heart as his deep voice had rumbled into her ear and through her body to ignite a wanton fire in the depth of her core.
And she had forced herself to concentrate on designs and principles and timings for two hours, thirty-one minutes and some seconds, when all her brain had wanted to do was mull over the intoxicating possibilities that his earlier assertions had raised.
She affected him. He’d said so. He had rejected and humiliated her, proved to her that he could turn it on and off like the twist of a tap, yet her torment was all no longer of her own making.
It had turned out he wasn’t so immune to her after all. Even if she still wasn’t sure where that left them. When they got back home, did he want to date? Would they be colleagues with benefits? And what did she want? Elle wasn’t even sure she knew. Realistically, she and Fitz knew so little about each other, perhaps his olive branch to be friends was just about getting to know each other while they were out here.
It was probably a good idea. But one thing she did know was that, despite the crushing effect Fitz had on her, she had miraculously found a way to push aside her emotions and discuss steadily, and proficiently, all Fitz’s proposed variations to the hospital services layout, even putting forward several improvements of her own. Surprisingly, perhaps even astoundingly, it seemed when it came to working together on their military assignment, she and Fitz made a remarkably strong, united team. A professional team.
She couldn’t help liking the idea of that. But just because they had proved once again that they could still work in harmony on a mission level, it didn’t give them the green light to make their relationship a sexual one again. Even if her throbbing body was trying to convince her otherwise.
Her internal battle had undoubtedly taken its toll—a battle with her own body, and with her very senses, leaving her mentally and physically spent. As the engines were all finally killed and the occupants began to spill from the various vehicles, Elle opened the door and unfurled her shaky legs, furiously berating her wandering thoughts even as she put some distance between herself and Fitz.
She propelled herself towards the ambulance where the supplies for the community sat ready to go. This was what she was here for—helping people, saving lives, health education. In other words, her job as an army doctor. It was what she understood. It was what she was good at.
Reaching for her grab-bag, she slung it over her shoulder and followed their interpreter, and Zi, the sixty-three-year-old widow who had spent nearly a decade volunteering with charities across the border to help educate small villages and communities, and would be working with the army in this region until the charities came in to take over. They were already being eagerly welcomed inside what passed for the community hall, and Elle hurried to catch up. It wasn’t always this easy but today of all days she was grateful for the lack of local resistance. Fitz hadn’t followed her, his own good grasp of the local language allowing him to quickly begin chatting to some of the local men. He, too, appeared to be meeting very little distrust. If every stop they made was this smooth, they’d be heading back to the hospital in half the time.
Elle’s sense of reprieve grew as she looked through the window to see him begin moving around the village to find potential bore sites, and she tasked herself with carrying out the immunisations she was there for. And yet their earlier conversation, his evident thawing towards her, had jump-started previously well-controlled feelings within her, as though the antagonism of the last week was forgotten and they had both been thrown back to the awkward, stumbling yet thrilling feeling of the morning-after-the-night-before.
Not that she’d ever experienced it before for herself, but the way her body was reacting now, like a million teeny-tiny jumping spiders were playing on trampolines in her tummy, it was exactly how she would have imagined it would feel. She felt his presence everywhere, as if the village itself was too small to hold him.
If she’d thought Fitz had got into her head after that first night together, after that incredible sex, after the way he’d made her feel, then it was nothing compared to the way Fitz was cracking open her heart with even the mere hint that he was opening himself up to her on an emotional level.
Looping her stethoscope around her neck, Elle forced herself to quash the tumbling thoughts and beamed at her team.
‘Ready, guys? Let’s help to save some kids’ lives. Look out for anything else we can help with now—diarrhoea, open wounds, you know the drill. Zi will be chatting to the women in the waiting area about latrines, hand washing, basic hygiene—the women are still going to the toilet in the open air so they’ll be the first to get a latrine, but the community’s waste is still getting into the river where they draw their drinking water. So let’s take any opportunity to back up what Zi will be telling them.
‘Also, the community have put forward five or six grandmothers, elders who they respect and listen to, so we’ll join Zi in a couple of hours to start taking them through health care, mainly focussing on clean water and sanitation procedures, and pregnancy and labour advice. Anything to help prepare the ground for when the charities start running their full programmes in the coming weeks and months.’
To a chorus of enthusiastic agreement, Elle watched her teams filter out to their cubicles, maximising the number of patients they could see as well as administering the polio and measles immunisations. It was proving to be an interesting mission out here, and each day she was more and more convinced that returning on a second back-to-back tour would be a rewarding, if challenging experience.
The rest of Elle’s morning passed in something of a blur. At least she and Jools—the staff sergeant and nurse assisting her with the vaccines—went way back. Jools had been one of Elle’s closest allies when Elle had just been a lieutenant and the woman had a razor-sharp wit and an innate skill at drawing the local women into the levity, even if they couldn’t understand the precise wording. A morning of laughter was just what she needed and, given the nature of the medical units and their work, rank and title were often shunned in favour of a first-name basis, meaning things were less formal and more easygoing.
So when the first lull came a couple of hours later, Elle couldn’t help but balk at the thought of Jools suggesting they take their usual leg-stretching walk to get out of the stifling room for a while.
‘Maybe it’s time we get a small group together and head out to encourage the villagers to attend clinic,’ Elle remarked as they set up a new batch of needles while the last set of patients left the room. ‘I know Zi is good, and we’ve been lucky so far this morning, but there are bound to be more families who haven’t come down yet.’
‘No need.’ Jools grinned. ‘Have you seen the waiting area?’
Stepping around the cubicle, Elle carefully peered through before spinning back to her colleague in shock.
‘It’s full out there. I don’t understand.’
What was more, many of the women were grouped attentively around Zi, who was educating them and entertaining the children in one easy performance. It was the lack of noise that had prompted Elle to think there weren’t many families out there, but the question still remained as to why, since Zi had been indoors all morning, so many of them had come across voluntarily.
It was never usually this easy. They often had to carefully persuade suspicious members of the male population to allow their wives and children to get immunised. It was easier if the charities had been teaching the respected grandmothers about the benefits so they could encourage their sons to do the same, but Elle knew her team was the first in the area for a decade.
‘They all just attended of their own volition?’
‘Colonel Fitzwilliam,’ the nurse said dreamily, as though his name in itself was explanation enough.
‘Colonel Fitzwilliam?’ echoed Elle.
The whimsical gaze only intensified. Elle gritted her teeth. She’d barely managed to stop herself from watching every time he passed, her eyes seeming to lift up at just the right moment to see his robust form striding across the frame of the tiny window with, even more surprisingly, a growing cluster of village men scurrying eagerly after him. Or to see him setting aside his own work to carry out some manual labour or other with the community, winning hearts and minds by actually joining in with something the village had been working on and needed.
And in those moments Elle had seen exactly how Fitz had acquired, and maintained, that impressive physique of his. Not in a gym but in the real world. Not with artificial machines but doing real manual labour. She’d remembered with embarrassing clarity just how he’d felt, driving inside her, claiming her, imprinting himself on her for ever.
Even at this distance, even though appearing no bigger than a matchstick, Fitz dominated entirely.
‘I’m not sure what he has to do with the heaving waiting area.’ She hadn’t intended to sound so prim.
‘Well, that’s because not everyone is as immune to charm as you, Major I-Only-Have-Eyes-for-My-Childhood-Sweetheart!’ Jools laughed. ‘And Major Fitzwilliam has charm in spades. Haven’t you seen how he’s been working out there with the local men? And on more than just the wells. Last time I went for a new batch of vaccines from the mobile unit I heard that the six-tonner he brought with him was loaded with supplies for building hen-houses. Did you know that?’
‘We have some basic kits to get them started!’ Elle exclaimed. ‘The charities gave them to us and they’ll do the rest when they come out. He knew that, he even mentioned it to me this morning.’
‘Yes, but the Colonel brought better timber and some tools. He’s been showing them how to build them to best suit the birds, and which ground is better for siting them. He’s been gaining their trust and apparently casually chatting to them about the health benefits of the clinic.’
‘So that heaving waiting area is his doing?’
‘Amazing, isn’t he?’ Jools sighed. ‘I’d love to have your job as liaison officer, having to work with him practically every day and on a one-on-one basis. Getting to travel that awful journey out here cooped up with him. No offence but it’s wasted on you.’
Elle resisted the urge to roll her eyes. How could she criticise Jools’s swooning when she herself wasn’t much different?
‘Wait, look, he’s about to send over some more. A couple of local men just approached him and pointed over here. You’ll see.’
Her legs almost carried her back to the window of their own volition as Elle spotted Fitz conferring with his newfound supporters, nodding in agreement as they gesticulated towards her location. Even the interpreter didn’t seem to need to do much translating. Moments later, the men crossed the ground and went into various homes or out of sight.
‘Give it a few minutes and a group of fresh families will come through our doors,’ Jools confirmed. ‘There, that’s the last of this batch of immunisations set up. Shall I have the next group readied for us?’
‘Sure,’ Elle replied, still staring thoughtfully through the window at the apparent hero of the hour. ‘The quicker we can get through them, the sooner we can move on to help the next village.’
Thanks to Fitz, it seemed they might be able to get to even more communities and help even more locals during this trip.
It was bad enough lusting after the guy, but did he have to make her admire him so much, too?
She needed to get through the next couple of days and then she’d be back at the hospital and could go back to avoiding him. So much for wanting the chill between them to thaw. It seemed that, instead of helping matters, his new openness to her had only confused matters and made her all the more attracted to him.
Clearly, in future, she needed to watch what she wished for.
* * *
‘There you are. I wondered where you were hiding out.’
Elle clutched her ration-pack hot chocolate in its steel cup—watery and tasteless, but at least wet and welcoming—as the dust storm raged outside. For two days the sky had been perfectly blue as they’d travelled from village to village, some makeshift, some well established. Thanks to Fitz and Zi, they had encountered less resistance than normal and had therefore been able to do more than normal, successfully immunising children, health-checking pregnant mothers and passing on even more valuable sensitisation information than previously planned. Elle had even convinced herself that they would get back to the hospital before the weather turned.
Murphy’s law, however, meant that the storm hit just as her team had been loading up the last of their kit. Still, she supposed it was better than if they’d been halfway between two locations and slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. At least this was one of the largest established communities and they had shelter, a safe place to wait it out.
At least, it had been safe before he’d walked through the door.
‘I’m not hiding out,’ she lied.
‘The rest of the two teams are in the main community hall across the square.’
‘And I’d have been with them if I hadn’t been packing up the last of my kit when the storm came out of nowhere.’
‘I think we both know you had time to get across, if you’d wanted to.’
Elle dipped her head and took another sip of the watery drink. He was right, there was little point in denying it.
‘You were avoiding me.’
There was a beat of silence.
‘Can you blame me?’
‘I thought we’d decided on starting afresh. No antagonism.’
‘I know.’ Elle rubbed her forehead. ‘I’m just...not sure how to be around you. I’ve never been in this situation before.’
‘Neither have I,’ he said wryly, turning his back to her and unpacking a small gas stove from his pack.
She watched as he lit it, the flickering flame instantly changing the atmosphere in the low-lit room, and she couldn’t help it, she was transported back to that bar the first night.
‘Here, try this instead.’
His voice cut into her thoughts as he replaced the cup in her hands with something that felt decidedly more...luxurious. As the decadent scent reached her nostrils she bit back her objection and sniffed appreciatively.
‘It’s not five-star-hotel hot chocolate,’ he murmured. ‘But it’s better than that ration-pack sludge you were drinking.’
He remembered. The drink she’d ordered when they’d got room service in the early hours. It was such a tiny point but the fact that he’d noted it, and echoed it now, was touching. She couldn’t stop it. For an instant she was transported back to that night. Being in this tiny dark, supply room of the stone building, so utterly basic yet the village’s beloved town hall, was hardly the same as the relative opulence of her hotel room. And yet they were alone again, and she couldn’t help feeling oddly safe. Just as she had with him that first night.
She could keep fighting it, but the attraction wasn’t going away.
Her head snapped up to meet his gaze, unprepared for the hard, heated look in his eyes. Dizziness threatened to overtake her and she told herself it was just hunger from the mayhem of the last few days.
She knew that wasn’t it.
‘I’m still not entirely sure what it is that we’re starting over,’ she confessed.
If she’d expected him to prevaricate she’d been wrong. He snagged her gaze, pinning her in place, his voice clear, confident.
‘Getting to know each other.’
‘To what end?’
‘Whatever we decide.’
‘Okay,’ she managed. ‘Starting with what?’
‘Tell me about Stevie. How you let him hurt you.’
‘Low blow,’ she muttered.
‘Not intentionally.’ Fitz shook his head. ‘You just don’t seem like the type to stand for any nonsense, and yet the things you’ve told me suggest otherwise.’
‘You mean...the sex.’ She flushed, thinking of their conversation that first night when Fitz had dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to her sex. And so much more.
‘I mean the sex, the cheating. I got the impression you weren’t surprised, so I’m guessing it wasn’t the first time.’
God, had he really read all that as easily as if she’d been an open book?
She didn’t intend to sound defensive, but that was how it came out.
‘I suppose you think I was stupid to stay with him?’
‘I don’t think anything, that’s why I’m asking.’
She bit her lip in discomfort, not understanding why it was so important to him.
‘Tell me, why do you want to play detective all of a sudden?’
‘It isn’t all of a sudden,’ he muttered. ‘I wanted to know from the start.’
The irritation in his tone caught her attention. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to know, she realised, as that he had to know. He couldn’t fathom her and he was intrigued. Which meant he cared. More than he was prepared to admit.
She inhaled deeply, formed her mouth into a perfect O and blew out. Then flashed a bitter, humourless smile. ‘The ten-thousand-pound question.’
‘You stayed with him for ten thousand pounds?’ Fitz’s face twisted into a mix of expressions she couldn’t identify but which she could easily guess.
‘You could put it like that if you like.’
‘I don’t like.’ His jaw locked in irritation and it surprised her that she was beginning to recognise his ‘tells’ so easily. ‘So explain it to me.’
She sighed.
‘What would be the point? Apart from satisfying your curiosity? Would it change anything between us? Not, I realise, that there is an us.’
‘Humour me, Elle.’
She thought for a long time, then dipped her head.
‘Short version only.’
‘Whatever you prefer. For now.’
She chose to ignore that.
‘Stevie and I were childhood sweethearts. I was fourteen, he was fifteen, though we’d known each other all our lives. We were both poor kids from the worst housing estate in the area, but while his dad baled on his mum and her seven kids, my parents were the exception. I can’t remember a day when they didn’t have a laugh with each other, a joke, a hug, a tease.’
‘They never argued?’
The look in his eyes was so fleeting, so inscrutable that Elle wasn’t sure if it had simply been her imagination.
‘Yeah, they argued. Of course they did. We had no money, and that always created tension. But they always made it up. Every single night. They told us kids we should never go to bed in anger. She was so beautiful, my mum, deep red hair and sparkling green eyes.’
‘Like you,’ Fitz said softly.
She snorted, trying to conceal how his words affected her.
‘No, not like me. I have her basic components, but I’m not stunning like she was.’
‘Just like your mother,’ he murmured again.
He held her gaze and it took everything she had to tear her eyes away.
‘And they danced, God, how they loved to dance. They could jive and swing and lindy hop like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘You told me you couldn’t dance that night in the bar.’
She flushed, recalling the feel of Fitz’s arms around her, his fingers grazing her skin, his thigh slotted between hers. She swallowed. Hard.
‘I can’t. It was one of their greatest sources of amusement. But they could and they used to enter competitions and I’d go and watch. Stevie too. The kids around where we lived had no prospects, there was no such thing as a school night, and their idea of recreation was going around the back of the station to drink cider and take drugs...’
‘Their idea of recreation? Not yours?’
‘No. I dreamed of becoming a doctor. Don’t ask me where it came from, even my parents never knew, but apparently it started from the age of about five and it was all I ever wanted to be when I grew up. And Stevie, he had his football and he dreamed of making it his way out of that hellhole too.’
‘So you and he bonded over being different.’
‘Sure, why not?’ Elle frowned at his scepticism. ‘We were the outliers. The oddballs who didn’t fit in. When my mother died, my father was so lonely that he remarried. I think he was trying recapture what he’d lost with Mum, but it wasn’t the same. She was cruel, but I suppose when I look back she was jealous of what my parents had had. But Stevie was there. Back then he was loyal, and kind, and generous. He kept telling me to fight for my dream even when she was nasty and told me I had ideas above my station. She told me I was wasting my time getting A Levels when I’d never be able to afford university anyway. She tried to make me get a job in the local factory—everyone got a job in the local factory—and bring a wage in instead of scrounging off her.’
‘But you got to uni. You joined the army and got a scholarship and did it by yourself.’
‘No.’ Elle shook her head. ‘I didn’t. She was right, I couldn’t afford university. I didn’t know the army gave bursaries for medical degrees and I knew I didn’t stand a hope in hell of making it through. But by then Stevie had made it to professional league football and he wouldn’t let me give up on my dream. He used his money and he paid for my degree, my accommodation, my books, my food, he paid for everything.’
‘As long as you turned a blind eye to his cheating?’
‘No. Not back then. I’m sure of it. The old Stevie wasn’t like that. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he did. He certainly never gave me a key to his place in all those years, and I never just turned up apart from that last time. His doorman recognised me and let me in.’
‘So he did cheat on you.’
‘Maybe. But, God, Fitz, you have to understand, we were two kids from nothing. And he was suddenly catapulted into this world where he was idolised. Seems like everybody loves a footballer when they’re winning. He had fans, groupies, people who adored him, and he was nineteen with no home life to speak of to keep him grounded. Is it any wonder he let the fame and adulation get to him?’
Fitz sneered.
‘You’re seriously making excuses for him?’
‘No,’ she cried. ‘I’m the last person who would do that. I’m just saying I can see how it happened. And I wonder if I couldn’t have been the one thing to keep him steady...if I’d only cared enough to try. But I didn’t. I didn’t care enough and I didn’t try. We never saw each other, between his training and his matches he didn’t have much spare time, and by then I’d got an army bursary and I didn’t want to make the time either. So he was pretty much on his own, surrounded by sycophants and girls throwing themselves at him. The cheating started after that and things deteriorated year on year.’
‘Yet you still didn’t leave?’
‘Like I said, I felt guilty.’ Elle shrugged. ‘Not guilty enough to make an effort, but guilty enough not to leave. I didn’t want the responsibility of ending things. I think I was waiting for him to do it. When it all boils down to it, I still felt as though I owed him, that without his help that first year I would never have become a doctor.’
‘You’d have found another way.’
‘Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘But we’ll never know. Stevie made sure I never had to risk that.’
‘If he was so great, why didn’t you love him?’
‘I never said he was so great. He was impossibly moody, and he had his father’s temper. And I did love him, in the beginning. But it was teenage love, tainted by where we grew up. We got together through circumstance, we were never a good fit. And Stevie was a brilliant footballer but...well, we could never have what you might call an in-depth conversation. If it wasn’t about football or movies then forget it.’
‘But when he cheated, you still felt guilty?’
‘Don’t underestimate guilt, Fitz. It can tie you up in knots. You can’t understand what it’s like.’
‘I can,’ he muttered unexpectedly. ‘More than you think.’
‘Your mother and sister?’ she guessed hesitantly. ‘Or Janine?’
The room was so thick with tension Elle thought the dust storm might as well have entered the building.
‘What have you heard about her?’
‘Not a lot,’ Elle confessed. ‘But you’re an eligible male around the site. You know what gossip is like. I heard she was a logistics officer and you were once engaged?’
It took a long time before he broke the silence.
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Try me,’ Elle asked.
He shook his head but she couldn’t let it drop. It was about more than just words.
‘Trust me. Please, Fitz. Like I just trusted you.’
This time he didn’t reply. The silence in the compact space grew, slowly but surely seeming to suck all the oxygen out of the room until Elle felt she was on the verge of suffocating. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, to break the spell, it wasn’t with a murmur but with a growl that seemed to explode in her head.
The sound of a door banging open in the main room outside, interrupting with an urgency that was impossible to ignore, had them both leaping to their feet.
A pregnant young woman, crying out and bloodied, was being carried in by an older man, flanked by at least four others, a long shard of metal debris impaled through the side of her abdomen.