EMILY WAS STILL trying to shuffle back into her shoes as she trailed after Joe. If it wasn’t for it being completely pitch-black outside without the streetlights she took for granted back home and the sense of direction that meant she shouldn’t be allowed out of the house unsupervised, she’d totally have made her own way back without him. Joe’s term as ‘leader’ had clearly ended given his reluctance to see her home. Not that she blamed him. She’d imposed long enough and as soon as she had five minutes alone with her brother she’d tear strips off him for palming her off on him all night.
Peter should have understood what a big deal it had been for her to come here and gone out of his way to look after her. She needed some TLC after everything she’d gone through, not being frog-marched home as if she’d broken curfew. This was supposed to build her confidence, not reaffirm that idea she spoiled everyone’s fun.
‘I’m sorry you’ve copped babysitting duties for the nuisance little sister again.’ She made sure she spoke loudly and clearly for him to hear. She didn’t know the full extent of his hearing loss. He wasn’t wearing a hearing aid but he was the type of guy who wouldn’t be seen with one even if he needed it.
‘No problem. We can’t have you stumbling about here alone in the dark. It’ll take a while for you to get your bearings but you’ll be able to walk this island with your eyes shut in no time.’
She didn’t correct him by admitting another of her weaknesses since he was probably pinning his hopes on it so he wouldn’t have to do this again. However, without her chatter, the sound of his heavy footsteps dominated the night, reminding her he was trying to ditch her as soon as possible.
‘So what was with all the questions back there? They’re not planning on marrying me off to the chief’s son, are they?’ It was a pseudo-concern in an attempt at small talk. Mostly.
The footsteps stopped and she could hear him grinding the dirt underfoot as he spun round.
‘You’ve watched way too many movies. These people are no different from you or me. They simply have a sense of tradition. They’ve accepted you as one of their own, there’s no ulterior motive.’
She was caught so off balance by his passion as he spoke of his new friends that she stumbled. She made a grab for him in the dark to steady herself and found a nice sturdy bicep beneath her fingers.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, eventually letting go once the shock of coming into contact with bare male body parts wore off. Or at least when she thought the prolonged touching was entering the awkward and desperate phase. He may be lean but he was one hundred per cent solid hunk.
She was nodding her head and apologising as he defended his friends, in an attempt at a mature response, which probably shouldn’t include going back for another squeeze.
‘You’re right. I...er...was thrown by the level of attention. I’m not used to it.’ If anything she tried to avoid those kinds of situations where she was the focal point of interest in case people studied her too closely and spotted her secret shame.
She caught the glint of his smile in the moonlight as he looked down at her. Compared to her last port of call, she should’ve been more at ease under the cover of darkness but her birthmark may as well have been blazing under his night vision she felt so exposed here with him.
‘You’re beautiful and smart. Of course they want to know your story.’ The tone of his voice was soft enough to snuggle into, never mind the unexpected compliment almost bringing her to a swoon.
Except he was back on the move again, not lingering for a romantic smooch under the stars. She definitely watched too many movies. Probably because reality was too damn anticlimactic. She sighed, forced to gather herself together and remember this was no holiday romance, as much as she wanted to get carried away as far from real life as possible.
He didn’t elaborate on what had prompted the ego boost and she had to hold her tongue to stop herself from pushing for more praise. How had he reached the conclusion she was either of those things? And did he have any interest in her beyond work and doing favours for her brother? Would it matter if he did?
The resulting silence between them stretched out to Miriama’s house, giving her time to get her head back out of the clouds. He hadn’t seen her true, vivid, scarlet colours. His assessment of her looks and personality was based on a lie. He knew nothing of the scarred woman beneath who’d been rejected time and time again.
By the time they reached her doorstep she’d firmly landed her backside back on earth with a thud. All he’d been trying to do was illustrate how ridiculous her assumptions had been. He probably hadn’t even meant what he’d said but it had been so long since a man had paid her a compliment she’d taken it and twisted it into something it wasn’t. She blamed the kava. Apart from the numbness and the tingles, she’d add delusions to the list of side effects. She’d have to remember to ship a crate of the stuff back to England with her.
* * *
To Joe, the short walk to Miriama’s seemed twice as long as usual. That was the trouble with island life. It was too easy to get caught up in the beauty of the surroundings. They should really think about investing in some streetlights here. The electric hum and fluorescent orange glare might have made this feel less like a walk home after a first date than the moonlight and the sound of the sea.
All he’d intended to do was put her mind at ease that the people here weren’t perhaps as...duplicitous as those she may have encountered recently. Instead, those careless few words had given away his less-than-platonic thoughts about having her here. Now he was watching her in the dim light of the doorway, pouting and tracing the outline of her lips with her fingertips.
‘What are you doing?’ He cocked his head to one side, fixated by her fascinating courtship display. If this was designed to pique his interest even further, it was working. His whole body was standing to attention as he followed the soft lines of her mouth, envying the manicured nail that got to touch them.
‘Just checking my lips are still there since I can’t feel them any more.’ She poked her pink tongue out, parting her lips to dampen them, leaving them moist and a temptation too great to ignore any longer.
He stepped forward to give her a soft peck on the lips. Enough to satisfy his curiosity but insufficient to quell the rising swell of desire inside.
If he didn’t break away soon this would change from a simple goodnight kiss into something steamier and liable to offend Miriama. Especially as Emily wasn’t protesting against this.
‘Yup. They’re still there. Goodnight, Emily.’ He turned his back on her and walked away so he couldn’t see the dazed look in her eyes and her still-parted lips, although the sight and taste of her would probably be seared in his brain forever.
He ditched all thoughts of going to bed and chose the path back down to the beach instead. There was no point trying to go to sleep when adrenaline was pulsing through his whole body. That had been a dumb move, an impulsive one, one born of pure instinct and lack of judgement. He’d wanted to kiss her so he had, without any thought to the consequences of his actions. That spur-of-the-moment thinking was fine when it came to picking a new place to visit where no one but him would come a cropper if he made the wrong decision. When it came to kissing emotionally fragile divorcees related to his best friend it had the potential to get messy.
He lifted a pebble from the beach and threw it, watching it skim the surface of the water before disappearing into the darkness along with his common sense. He pitched another and another, venting his anger at himself in the only way possible without punching something. In the end he stripped off his clothes and chucked himself into the sea to cool off. Late-night skinny-dipping had often been a way for him to unwind but tonight it was his attempt to cleanse himself of his transgression. He didn’t kiss women because he’d made an emotional connection with them, he kissed them because he wanted to. This was a woman he was going to be working with closely for the next two weeks and he was in serious trouble if he couldn’t go one evening without controlling himself around her.
He dipped his head below the surface but even as he scrubbed his face with his hands he knew the cold salty water couldn’t wipe away the taste and feel of her lips on his. The damage was already done. All he could do now was add it to the list of mistakes he carried with him and hope Emily didn’t expect anything more from him than medical input and local knowledge. He’d hate to disappoint her as well as himself.
* * *
Emily suspected the local brew had a lot to do with her falling asleep the minute her head touched the pillow and the weird dreams that followed. She spent the night imagining she was stranded on a desert island with a hunky sea captain who looked suspiciously like Sgt Joe Braden coming to her rescue. There was no need to overanalyse it. It was simply her mind trying to make sense of the day’s events, and better than spending all night worrying about what sort of creatures lurked in her small room, or thinking about that kiss.
Joe more than likely left dazed women in his wake with his throwaway kisses every day and would have no clue of the impact it had made on her. It was silly really to obsess over something so fleeting, but up until last night her husband had been the only man she’d ever kissed.
She remembered every tiny detail of the brief connection between her and Joe. The firm but tender pressure of his mouth on hers, the bitter taste of kava lingering on his lips and her body frozen while her veins burned with fire.
The past eighteen months had made her a jaded divorcee so she shouldn’t have had her head turned so easily. She really needed to work on building up those walls if she was being a fangirl over a peck on the lips from a glorified babysitter.
Today was the start of her placement alongside last night’s fantasy figure. There was no room for schoolgirl crushes when she was already on edge about working here. She’d risen with the sun, showered with the aid of a bucket of cold water, breakfasted on bread and jam with Miriama, and checked on Joni, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. As she walked towards the medical centre she tried to focus on the positives instead of the nerves bundling in her stomach.
The sky was the brightest blue she’d ever seen, her skin was warmed by the sun and she’d swapped her usual restrictive formal attire for a strappy pink sundress and flats. She was confident in her work and her capabilities, it was more the personal aspects causing her anxieties. Last night she’d mixed well with the community but that had been in an informal setting. It hadn’t escaped her attention that very few women had been present at the kava ceremony and they’d had to wait until the men had taken their fill before they’d been served. She hoped it was another nod to tradition rather than any prejudiced attitude towards women’s role in society.
Joni had shown her the route back to the medical centre on his way to school and it really was nothing more than a glorified hut on the edge of the village. Thankfully the boy had shown no signs of concussion this morning but in her line of work it was always better to be safe than sorry when it could mean the difference between life and death. It was a shame that same adage had caused the end of her marriage. Playing it safe in her personal life had driven Greg away and made her sorrier than ever for the risks she hadn’t taken.
Still, her love life, or lack of it, wasn’t the sole reason she’d come all this way. Joe Braden certainly wasn’t the risk she wanted to start with. She was here to help a community that didn’t have immediate access to medical facilities, nothing more.
Once she set foot inside the designated workspace she realised how difficult it was going to be to avoid further close contact with him.
‘Welcome to your new clinic, Dr Emily.’ A grinning Joe greeted her, his outstretched arms almost touching both sides of the hut.
The sun shone in behind him through the one window in the room, the rays outlining the tantalising V-shape of his torso through his loose white cotton shirt.
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ She hadn’t meant to vocalise her thoughts and for a shameful second she wished this was one time he hadn’t heard her. No such luck.
‘Hey, we gotta work with what we’ve got. I know you’re used to all the mod cons at your practice but you have to remember the context here. Me, you and this equipment donated by the church is more than these people usually have.’
The good news was he thought her only concern was her new working conditions. The bad news was...her new working conditions.
There were two basic camp beds, not unlike the one she’d been put up in at Miriama’s, a couple of medical storage lockers and chairs, some old IV stands and monitors and some sort of curtain on wheels she guessed was supposed to be a privacy screen. There were adequate facilities for routine health checks and not much else but enough to divide the workload and shared space.
‘I think this will work best if we treat this as two different clinics and double the output. You do your thing and I’ll do mine.’ Never the twain to meet and make body contact ever again.
She moved one medical trolley to one side of the room and claimed her half by wheeling the screen between the two beds.
‘If you say so...’ Joe didn’t sound convinced but at least he wasn’t getting precious about this being his territory. Chances were he was happy to block her out anyway after being forced to lead her around by the hand all day yesterday.
‘I do. This is going to work.’ This new set-up enabled her to take back some control of her life here and already made her feel less nauseous about the days ahead.
* * *
This was never going to work. Joe had been here long enough to understand the logistical nightmare of putting her idea into practice. There simply wasn’t enough room to create two viable working spaces, although he didn’t try to dissuade her from attempting it. She’d work it out for herself eventually without him coming across as a tyrant by refusing to cooperate with her plans. It was his fault she felt the need to put a barrier between them in the first place.
After his antics last night he was lucky Peter hadn’t rounded up a posse to turf him off the island for laying lips on his sister. He’d been beating himself up over it all night and this display of skittish behaviour wasn’t easing his conscience at all. By all accounts Emily was recovering from an acrimonious split and definitely wasn’t the sort of woman he should be kissing on a whim.
His one saving grace was their apparent mutual decision not to mention it. Perhaps his casual walk away had lessened the significance of the event. He might start kissing everyone goodbye and make it out to be more of a personal custom rather than the result of his attraction to her. Although there was something intimate about seeing her fuss around the bed where he’d been lying, thinking about her, last night.
He’d been honest when he’d said he preferred the quiet out here to Miriama’s busy household. There was also the added benefit of being able to see the door from his bed. Combat had made him hypervigilant about his surroundings. He wasn’t comfortable in a room where he couldn’t see all entry points. Army life taught a man that concealed entrances were all potential ambushes where the enemy could attack. That level of paranoia had been essential in his survival but it hadn’t left him even after his medical retirement to civilian life. It was simply part of his make-up now and another reason he took to the open road rather than remain cooped up in a two-up, two-down suburban prison.
‘So, do we have any particular schedule, or is this more of an A and E department we’re running?’ Emily encroached on his half of the room, arms folded across her chest.
‘I thought we’d break you in gently today and run more of a walk-in clinic. We can organise something more formal once you’re settled, if you prefer.’ He operated a casual open-door policy every day but he got the impression this GP would expect something more...structured.
Emily struck him as the type who preferred knowing exactly what she’d be doing from one day to the next without any disruption to her routine. The complete opposite of how he lived his life.
‘I’d like to set up a few basic health checks. We could start with taking blood pressure, maybe even a family planning clinic.’ She was drifting off into the realms of her own practice but it was a good idea.
Specific clinics might draw in more of the community for preventative check-ups as opposed to waiting until something serious occurred when it was too late to get help from the mainland.
‘I think the female population might be more open to you too. Perhaps you could think about running a women’s wellness clinic? It’s not every day they have someone to talk to them about sensitive subjects such as sexual health or female-specific cancers.’ It was as much about educating patients as treating them and he would happily defer to Emily in areas where she had more experience.
‘That’s a great idea. I’m sure I can put something together for later this week.’ Her eyes were shining with excitement rather than fear for the first time since they’d met. Well, if he didn’t include last night on her doorstep.
His gaze dropped to her mouth as he relived the memory and the adrenaline rush it had given him. Was giving him. Only her nervous cough snapped him out of his slide back into dangerous territory. He certainly didn’t want to freak her out after they’d just established their boundaries.
‘Good.’
‘Glad we got that sorted.’
It was better all around if they kept their lips to themselves, on different sides of that screen.
* * *
There’d been a steady influx of patients throughout the day, more minor ailments than emergency medicine to deal with. Not that she was complaining. Coughs and colds were manageable and it meant she didn’t have to call on her colleague for an extra pair of hands. She had, however, handed out a vast amount of paracetamol and antibiotics, not to mention sticking plasters. It was probably a combination of not having these drugs readily available and the novelty of a new, female doctor in residence. At least it showed she’d been accepted in her role and she’d kept busy. That was better than sitting fretting in the corner with nothing but tumbleweeds straying into her section of the clinic. Worse, she’d have had time to overanalyse that kiss some more. Every time he so much as looked in her direction her body went up in flames at the memory. While she was investigating the swollen glands of a pensioner she wasn’t thinking about Joe. Much.
‘Say “Ah” for me.’ She bent over the side of the bed to peer into her patient’s mouth and felt a nudge against her backside.
She turned around to read the Riot Act to whoever it was getting handsy with her when she saw the shadow on the other side of the curtain. Joe was innocently tending his patient too and proving that having little room to manoeuvre was going to be an issue if the butt-bumping became a regular occurrence. It mightn’t faze him but she was finding it pretty distracting.
‘Your tonsils are quite inflamed but it’s nothing a course of antibiotics won’t clear up.’
She heard Joe prescribe the same treatment she’d been dishing out all day. It wasn’t unusual for viruses to spread like wildfire in such a small community and she was glad of the extra supplies she’d brought with her. They were going to need them, along with the hand sanitiser and vitamin tablets she’d be using to prevent succumbing to it herself. The last thing she needed was Joe having to tend her too.
If the claustrophobic room wasn’t hot enough, the thought of her next-door neighbour mopping her fevered brow was enough to bring on the vapours.
Emily moved closer to the oscillating fan before the heat in her cheeks eroded her camouflage make-up and caught sight of a young woman running up the path with a baby in her arms.
‘Help! She’s not breathing!’
The baby, no more than nine or ten months, was conscious but not making a sound, even though her limbs were flailing in a panic. Not hearing a baby cry in this situation was heart-stopping for her too, indicating the child’s airway was completely blocked.
‘Give her to me. Quick.’
The child’s lips and fingernails were already turning blue but there was no visible sign of obstruction in her mouth.
Joe was at her side in the blink of an eye. ‘What happened?’
‘She... We were eating breakfast. She grabbed some bread off my plate. Is she going to be okay?’
Emily slid one arm under the baby’s back so her hand cradled the head. With her other arm placed on the baby’s front, she gently flipped the tiny patient so she was lying face down along her other forearm. She kept the head supported and lower than the bottom and rested her arm against her thigh for added support. With the heel of her hand she hit the baby firmly on the back between the shoulder blades, trying to dislodge whatever was stuck in there.
Delivering a blow to such a small body wasn’t easy to do without guilt but the pressure and vibration in the airway was often enough to clear it.
Unfortunately, after the recommended five back blows there was no progress. Time was of the essence as the lack of oxygen to the brain would soon become critical. She rushed over to lay the baby on the bed, paying no mind as Joe kicked the screen away so he had room to assist. He cradled the infant’s head, murmuring soothing words for child and mother as Emily started chest thrusts.
With two fingertips she pushed inwards and upwards against the breastbone, trying to shift the blockage. She waited for the chest to return to its normal position before she repeated the action. Her skin was clammy with perspiration as she fought to help the child to breathe. If this didn’t work they’d run out of options.
Joe reached out to touch her arm. ‘I’ve done a few tracheostomies in my time if it comes to it.’
He was willing to step up to the plate with her and she found that reassuring. She’d never performed one and hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The idea of making an incision for a tube into the windpipe of one so small was terrifying.
‘Thank you.’
With her surgical inexperience and the primitive facilities she was glad to have the backup but it was absolutely the last resort. His calm demeanour in the face of a crisis helped her to centre herself again and deliver another chest thrust.
She checked inside the mouth again. If this didn’t work she would repeat the cycle before letting Joe take over. After another chest thrust she felt movement beneath her fingers and heard a small cry.
‘You’ve got it!’ Joe’s shout confirmed her success and she stopped so he could retrieve the chunk of bread causing the trouble.
The colour slowly returned to the baby’s face and Emily had never been so relieved to hear a child cry.
‘Thank you. Thank you.’ The weeping mother alternated between hugging them and stroking her daughter’s face.
‘I just want to sound her chest.’ Emily unhooked her stethoscope from around her neck so she could listen to the baby’s heartbeat and make sure there was no resulting damage from the trauma. Her lungs were certainly in good order as she raged her disapproval.
Once she’d carried out her checks and made sure all was well, she gave the relieved mother the go-ahead to comfort her child.
‘I think I need to keep you all under observation for a while. Emily, if you don’t mind, I’m going to break into that stash of tea and biscuits I saw you put in your locker earlier. We all need it for shock.’ Joe’s worried frown had evened out into a relieved smile to match her own. She sat down on the bed and waited for the much-needed cup of tea, still feeling a tad shaky herself after the ordeal.
Having a partner here mightn’t be all bad. He’d let her take the lead today while still providing support, and tea, when she’d needed it. It made practical sense for them to work together. If only she’d stop overreacting to the slightest body contact. And staring at his backside as he bent down to retrieve her precious cure-all.