His Bride in Paradise

‘Of course.’

She gave him a reassuring hug and then turned back to the ambulance. Connor was standing by the open doors, supervising Alex’s transfer.

‘It looks as though Ross isn’t taking it too well,’ he murmured.

‘No, he isn’t. He feels responsible.’ She glanced at him. He looked concerned as he watched his brother brace himself and walk towards a uniformed officer. ‘Do you want to stay with him while he talks to the police and so on?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I think I can probably be of more use at the hospital. I’m sure Ross will cope once he’s over the initial shock.’

‘Maybe. Let’s hope so.’ She frowned, rubbing absently at her temple, where a pulse had begun to throb.

He studied her, his grey eyes narrowing. ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone very pale all of a sudden.’

‘I’ll be fine. It’s just a bit of a headache starting.’ She had to admit to herself, though, that now her role as an immediate response medic was complete, she wasn’t feeling good at all. She’d taken this job feeling pretty certain that nothing like this would ever happen. When it had, despite all the odds, she’d found herself acting purely on instinct, following the basic tenets of medical care in the way that she’d been taught, in a way that had become second nature to her.

Now, to her dismay, the adrenaline that had kept her going through those initial moments was draining away and in the aftermath she was shaking inside. She was experiencing those same feelings of dread, of exhaustion and nervous tension that had started to overwhelm her when she had been working in emergency back home. A feeling of nausea washed over her.

She climbed into the ambulance and seated herself beside Alex, closing her eyes for a brief moment as though that would shut out the memories. He reminded her so much of that patient she’d treated back in the UK. They were about the same age, the same build, with dark hair and pain-filled eyes that haunted her, and both had fallen …

The paramedic closed the doors, bringing her back to the present with a jolt, and within a few seconds they were on their way, siren blaring, to the hospital.

Connor met them at the ambulance bay. ‘Welcome to Coral Cay Hospital,’ he murmured, reaching out to help Alyssa step down from the vehicle. His grip was firm and the hand at her elbow was reassuringly supportive. ‘Our trauma team is all ready and waiting for the patient. They’ll take good care of him, you’ll see.’

Oddly, she was glad he had decided to come here with her. ‘Yes, I’m sure they will.’ By all accounts, the hospital had a good reputation and Alex would be in safe hands.

The registrar was already walking by the side of the trolley as the paramedics wheeled Alex into the emergency unit, and Alyssa went with them, ready to talk to the doctor about his condition.

‘We’ll do a thorough neurological examination,’ the registrar told her. ‘And then we’ll get a CT scan done so that we can find out exactly what’s going on.’ He glanced at Connor. ‘Do you know how we can get in touch with any of his relatives?’

Connor nodded. ‘You don’t need to worry about that, Jack. My brother’s already spoken to Alex’s wife. He rang to tell me on the car phone when I was on my way over here. She’s going to make arrangements for someone to look after the children while she comes to be with him.’

‘That’s good.’ They’d reached the trauma bay by now, and Jack started on his examination of the patient. Alyssa and Connor took turns to tell him what had happened and describe the treatment they had given Alex.

‘You did everything you could,’ the registrar said, ‘but there’s nothing more you can do here. Why don’t you two go and get a cup of coffee, and I’ll let you know as soon as the scans are finished? I know how concerned you must be, but I promise I’ll keep you in the loop.’

‘Okay. Thanks. We’ll get out of your way.’ Alyssa glanced at Alex, who was connected to monitors that bleeped and flashed and underlined the fact that he was in a distressing condition.

‘I can hardly believe this is happening,’ she said under her breath as she walked away with Connor.

He nodded. ‘It’s hard to take in.’ He sent her an oblique glance. ‘Are you okay? You don’t look quite right.’

‘I’m fine,’ she lied.

‘Hmm. I suppose all this must come as a shock when you imagined the job would involve nothing more than having to deal with a few minor ailments or lacerations.’ He led the way along the corridor and showed her to his office, pushing open the door and ushering her inside, his hand resting lightly on the small of her back. It was strangely comforting, that warmth of human contact.

‘Please … take a seat.’ He waved her to a chair by the desk, and then flicked a switch on the coffee machine that stood on a table in a corner of the room.

She looked around. The office had been furnished with infinite care, from the seagrass-coloured carpet that added a quiet dignity over all, to the elegantly upholstered leather armchairs that would provide comfort and ease to anxious relatives, keen to know the details of any treatment their loved ones would need. There was a leather couch, too, set against one wall, adding a feeling of opulence to the whole.

To one side of the room there was a mahogany bookcase, filled with leather bound medical books, and in front of the large window was a highly polished desk made of the same rich, dark mahogany. This was topped with a burgundy leather desk mat and beautiful accessories, which included a brass pen-holder and an intricately designed brass paperweight.

‘You’re still look very white-faced,’ he remarked as he set out two cups and saucers and began to pour coffee. ‘It’s not just that you’re worried about Alex, is it? I can’t help thinking there’s something more.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Shall I get you some painkillers for the headache?’

She shook her head. ‘Like I said, I’ll be fine.’

He slid a cup towards her. ‘Would you like cream and sugar with that?’

‘Please.’ She nodded, and he slid a tray containing a cream jug and sugar bowl onto the desk beside her. The bowl was filled with amber-coloured chips of rock sugar that gleamed softly in the sunlight and gave off a pleasing aroma of dark molasses.

Connor sat down, leaning back in his black leather chair, eyeing her over the rim of his cup. ‘Something’s definitely not right,’ he said. ‘What is it? You did all you possibly could for Alex, so it can’t be that. Does it have something to do with the reason you’re not working back in the UK?’

Her eyes widened and her heart missed a beat. ‘Why would you think that?’

He shrugged. ‘A few stray connections linking up in my mind. It’s odd that you would leave the place where you did your training and where you worked for several years and give it all up to come halfway across the world. I can’t help thinking something must have gone wrong. It’s not as though you could afford to travel the world and simply take time out.’

She raised a brow. ‘How do you know all that? Have you been talking to Ross?’

He smiled. ‘Of course. He talks about you every opportunity he gets.’

‘Oh, dear.’ She brooded on that for a moment or two. She’d never given Ross the slightest encouragement to think of her as anything more than a friend, but somewhere along the way he must have started pinning his hopes on something more developing between them. Judging by what Connor was saying, she would have to put a stop to it, and sooner rather than later.

He was watching her as she thought things through. ‘He thinks the world of you and would do anything for you, but we both know that you don’t really feel the same way about him, don’t we?’

She stiffened. ‘I like Ross. I think he’s a wonderful person.’ She didn’t appreciate the faintly challenging note in Connor’s tone. It annoyed her that he should imply she had come here with an ulterior motive.

‘Yes, he is …’ Connor agreed, ‘but that still doesn’t explain why you abandoned everything to come out here with him.’

She sipped her coffee, giving herself time to gain a little more composure. ‘You think I was sick of working for a living and gave up on it to follow him, don’t you?’

‘Isn’t that a possibility?’ He studied her thoughtfully. ‘The idea of coming to a sun-soaked island where you could relax and forget your cares must have had huge appeal.’

She smiled briefly. ‘Of course it did. But you’re forgetting … in my case I’m actually here to work. Ross gave me the opportunity to try something new and I jumped at it. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Do you?’ Her chin lifted and a hint of defiance shimmered in her green eyes.

‘When you put it that way, no … of course not.’ His glance wandered over her face, lingering on the perfect curve of her mouth, the fullness of her lips made moist by the coffee and accentuated by the inviting, cherry-red lipstick she was wearing. After a moment or two he pulled himself up and shook his head as though to clear it. ‘I dare say a lot of people would envy you being able to simply take off and leave everything behind.’

‘I guess so.’ She might have said more, but his pager went off just then, and he frowned as he checked the text message. ‘Jack Somers has finished the preliminary tests. We can go and talk to him now.’

‘That’s good.’ Her stomach muscles tightened in nervous expectation.

They went to find the registrar in his office. ‘I have the CT scans here,’ he said, bringing up the films on his computer screen. ‘You’ll see there are a couple of fractured vertebrae and there’s a lot of inflammation around that area.’

Connor winced. ‘It’ll mean an operation, then?’

Jack nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’ He glanced at Alyssa. ‘We’ll get him prepped for surgery as soon as possible, maybe within the hour. The surgeon will stabilise the spine with metal rods and screws and do what he can to ease the pressure on the spinal cord. Unfortunately, it’ll be some time before we know what the outcome will be regarding him regaining any movement in his legs. There’s so much swelling that it’s hard to see exactly what damage has been done.’

‘I appreciate that. Thanks for letting us know.’ Alyssa was saddened, looking at those films. How would Alex take the news, having been an active, athletic man? He was in his prime, with a young family to support, and it grieved her to think of how this would affect them.

Connor added his thanks and they left the office, going over to the trauma room where Alex was being tended by two specialist nurses. Alyssa spoke to them and watched for a while as they set up drips and programmed the medication pump. He was still unresponsive, but he was being well looked after, she felt sure.

There was nothing more they could do there and she went with Connor to the car park a few minutes later.

‘Time’s slipping by faster than I imagined,’ he said, looking briefly at the gold watch on his wrist. ‘Maybe we should go and get some lunch and come back later to see how he’s doing once the operation is over.’ He glanced at her. ‘We could go to Benvenuto, if you like. It would be a shame to let Ross’s lunch reservations go to waste, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know. I …’ His offer caught her unawares. Until that moment she hadn’t even realised she was hungry, but now he mentioned it there was a definite hollow feeling in her stomach. Even so, it made her feel uncomfortable to think of deserting Ross and going out to lunch with Connor instead. ‘Is there no chance he could join us? Perhaps I should give him a call …’

‘I already did that.’ They had reached his car, a low-slung, highly polished sports model, and now he pulled open the passenger door and waited for her to slide onto the leather upholstered seat. ‘I spoke to him while you were talking to the nurses. He agreed it would be a shame to let the booking go to waste.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She frowned. ‘I suppose he’s still busy dealing with the accident reports? Did he say how it was going?’

‘He’s still talking to the insurers and working on his report. Then at some point he’ll have to meet with the director and work out how they can reschedule the filming. Everything’s been put on hold for the next couple of days. Everybody’s too upset to go on right now. He’s spoken to Alex’s wife, and arranged for a car to take her to the hospital.’

‘I’m glad he did that.’

Connor slid into the driver’s seat and set the car in motion, while Alyssa sat back, thankful for the air-conditioning on such a hot day. Connor had a light touch on the controls and it seemed as though the car was a dream to handle, smooth and responsive, covering the miles with ease. If it hadn’t been for her worries, the journey to the marina would have been soothing and a delight to savour.

Instead, she tried to take her mind off things by looking out of the window at the landscape of hills clad with pine forest, which soon receded into the distance and changed to a vista of lush orange groves and thriving banana plantations.

‘We’re almost there,’ Connor said a little later, pointing out the blue waters of the marina in the distance. ‘I expect the place will be quite busy at this time of the day, but Ross reserved a table on the terrace, so we’ll be in the best spot and able to look out over the yacht basin.’

‘That sounds great.’ She made a face. ‘I’m actually starving. I hadn’t realised it was so long since breakfast.’

‘Hmm. I’m not surprised.’ He looked her over and smiled. ‘I doubt you can really give what you have to eat the term “breakfast”. Fruit juice and a small bowl of cereal is more like a quick snack, I’d say.’

She looked at him in astonishment as he drove into the restaurant car park. ‘What do you mean? How do you know what I eat?’

He slipped the car into a parking space and cut the engine. ‘I’ve seen you from the upper deck—you often go out onto the terrace to eat first thing in the morning, don’t you? You’re a lot like me in that. I like to be out in the fresh air so that I can take stock of my surroundings and, like you, I drink freshly squeezed orange juice. It makes me feel good first thing in the morning. Though how you can expect to last for long on what you eat is beyond me.’

He came around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for her. She frowned. ‘I usually take a break mid-morning and catch up with a bun or a croissant,’ she said in a rueful tone. ‘Of course, with everything going on the way it did today, that didn’t happen.’

‘You should enjoy the food here all the more, then.’ He locked the car and laid a hand on the small of her back, leading her into the restaurant.

Alyssa was glad of the coolness of the interior. His casual, gentle touch felt very much like a caress to her heightened senses, and the heat it generated seemed to suffuse her whole body.

A waiter showed them to their table out on the terrace, and once again the heat of the sun beat down on Alyssa’s bare arms. Her cheeks felt flushed and Connor must have noticed because he said softly, ‘At least we’ll be in the shade of that palm tree. There’s a faint breeze sifting through the branches—couldn’t be better.’

‘It’s lovely here.’ She sat down and absorbed the beauty of her surroundings for a while until gradually she felt herself begin to relax. On one side there was the marina, with an assortment of yachts bobbing gently on the water, and on the other there was the sweep of the beach, with a magnificent stretch of soft, white sand and a backdrop of low scrub and palm trees.

In the distance, the coastline changed yet again, becoming rocky, with jagged inlets, peninsulas and lagoons. There, the trees were different, smaller, and she could just about make out their twisting trunks and branches laden with sprays of yellow flowers. ‘Are those the logwood trees I’ve been hearing about?’ she asked, and he nodded.

‘That’s right.’

‘I heard the wood yields a rich, deep reddish-purple dye,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen some lovely silk garments that were coloured with it.’

‘Yes, it’s used quite widely hereabouts. The flowers give great honey, too, so I guess it’s a useful tree all round.’

The waiter handed them menus, and they were silent for a moment, studying them. Connor ordered a bottle of wine.

‘I can’t make up my mind what to choose,’ Alyssa said after a while. ‘Everything looks mouth-wateringly good to me.’

‘I thought I might start with conch chowder and follow it with shrimp Alfredo and marinara-flavoured pasta,’ he murmured. ‘They do those dishes particularly well here.’

‘Hmm … I think I’ll go along with that, too.’ She smiled and laid down her menu.

The waiter took their orders, and Connor poured her a glass of wine and asked about her family back home.

‘Do you have any relatives in the UK? I know you have your cousin Carys in Florida.’

‘My parents are living in London at the moment,’ she told him. ‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters.’

He frowned. ‘I imagine they must miss you, the more so since you’re an only child.’

‘Possibly.’ She thought about that for a moment or two. ‘But they’re really quite busy … My mother runs a boutique and my father is a businessman, a director of an electronics company. I don’t think they’ll really have time to worry about what I’m getting up to. And of course I’ve lived away from home for a number of years, since I qualified as a doctor.’

‘Hmm … that sounds like quite a … sterile … relationship.’ He studied her for a while, pausing the conversation as the waiter brought a tureen of chowder to the table and began to ladle it into bowls.

Alyssa tasted her creamy soup and mulled over Connor’s remark. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘It was always that way, for as long as I can remember. In my teenage years I was what people called a latchkey kid, coming home to an empty house because my parents worked late. I didn’t mind back then. In fact, I never thought much about it. I learned to fend for myself, and there were always friends that I could be with, so I wasn’t lonely.’

He’d hit on something, though, the way he’d described her relationship with her family. Her eyes were troubled as she thought it over. Sometimes she’d missed that intimacy of family closeness that her friends had seemed to take for granted, especially when her career had started falling apart and her love life had taken a dive. She hadn’t felt able to share her innermost secrets, even with her best friends, but it would have been good to be able to turn to family in her hour of need.

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