Tempted By Dr Patera

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you going to redo it?”

“No.”

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

“Your guests must love staying here.”

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

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

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

“I’m sure she would be happy to.”

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

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

“I’m not.”

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

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

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

“This space is pretty obvious...”

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

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

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

Dust. Look for dust. A cobweb. Anything!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you have more family on the island?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m an only child as well.”

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

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

The question was where.

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

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

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

And Mark hadn’t.

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

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

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

“I understand how that is.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No brooding. No past trauma.

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

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

And what better place to start than with herself?

CHAPTER THREE

“WHY DIDN’T YOU tell me you were arriving yesterday, Deak? Cailey and I would have picked you up. Did you fly in or take the ferry?”

Theo stood in the doorway to the exam room his patient had just exited, his frowning countenance not fooling anyone. His friend was glad to see him.

“I flew. It was a pretty bumpy landing. I guess they’ll resurface the runway eventually. My aunt said it got damaged pretty badly.”

“It was cracked in half. They did what they could to get it up and running again.” He grinned. “I’m glad you could finally join the party.”

Setting his laptop on the counter top, he walked over and gave Theo a quick brotherly slap on the back. “From what I’ve heard you’re doing quite a bit of partying. I didn’t want to disturb your love-nest.”

Theo was one of the few people he’d never felt judged by. As kids he, Chris and Eri had never ogled his scars, but they hadn’t tiptoed around them either. They’d accepted them, just like they’d accepted him—something his parents had never seemed able to do after the fire.

He’d never told them the whole truth. It wouldn’t have helped the situation and it would have just made life harder for Ville, whose home life had been a million times worse than his. At least Deakin’s parents hadn’t hit him. They’d just frozen him out emotionally instead.

“Love-nest? Really?” He paused. “Cailey’s pregnant. I wasn’t sure if you’d heard.”

Deakin’s brows went up and he slapped his friend’s back again. Hard enough to make Theo grunt this time. “No, you conveniently omitted that fact during our first phone conversation.”

“Well, since it happened sometime after that call...” He chuckled. “Oh, you’ve met Lea Risi, haven’t you?”

Deakin picked up his laptop, setting it on the table near the door. “She’s living almost under my roof, so it’s kind of hard to miss her. Another thing you cleverly omitted to mention.”

“We can move her somewhere else if having her there bothers you. Cecilia kind of insisted when the hotel was evacuated. I could always check with Cailey and move her into our house.”

“No. I’ll survive. It’s not like I’ll be here for a year or anything.”

“You never know.”

His chest tightened. “Oh, I know.”

Better change the subject before they got into it. He and Theo had already gone round and round enough times on this particular subject.

“So, what about this whole fundraising bachelor auction thing Cecelia has told me about? I don’t have to do anything for it, right?”

“Well, since I’m out of the running, being an expectant father and all...”

Deakin made a sound that was half-grunt, half-laugh. “You must have wanted out of that auction really bad.”

“Um...no. That’s not quite how things worked. I never expected to meet someone and... Well, anyway, now that you’re here you can take my place in the auction. The earthquake decimated our funds. And our CT scanner is on the fritz. It has to be repaired or replaced.”

“Not interested. I already did that freak show of a calendar. Besides, I wouldn’t bring in enough for a photocopier, much less a CT machine.”

The thought of standing on some stage having people bid—or not bid—on his “worth” gave him the heebie-jeebies. Or, worse, having some little old lady place a pity bid on him that had him scrubbing her kitchen sink or something.

“I’d also appreciate it if you’d ask Petra to take down that calendar hanging in the reception area. At least for the month of July.”

“Ha! That would be a negative, since that calendar has already brought in several thousand euros. If you want it down, you ask her.”

And risk getting on Petra’s wrong side? Although it might be worth it this time. Deakin’s picture on the calendar was for the month of July, which was just over a week away. He didn’t want anyone seeing that snapshot, especially not Lea.

He wasn’t sure why that thought bothered him more than having other people see it. Maybe because he’d grown up on this island and they all knew him—knew his history. She didn’t, and he didn’t want her asking anyone about the incident which had seared a roadmap of scars into the left side of his chest.

There were areas of it that had never regained sensation, the nerves permanently damaged. He would never again feel the scrape of a woman’s fingertips on those parts of his body. His throat tightened. Not that he routinely invited women into his bedroom, for the very same reason that he didn’t want that calendar out there for the world to see.

Lea would probably think he’d been on some kind of ego trip during that whole photo shoot. That was the furthest thing from the truth. He hadn’t wanted to do it, but their trust fund money from Mopaxeni Shipping had been running short for the year. So they had concocted the stupid scheme to get some local guys on a calendar, figuring some of the islanders might be keen to help fund the clinic.

One of the subjects had had a gall stone attack the day of the photo shoot, so Deakin had been an emergency substitute to save the day—such as it was. He hadn’t even looked at the actual shot when it had been sent over—had just checked the “accept” box and sent the envelope back to the photographer.

The thought of Lea seeing how far down his scars went made him queasy. He’d caught her studying his neck when she thought he wasn’t looking. Several times, in fact. He’d even almost balked about getting his hair cut this morning, because the longer it was, the more it covered. But that would have been admitting that Lea’s curious glances disturbed him on some level. So he’d gone to his aunt and asked her to do the deed. She had, and four inches of shaggy growth had ended up on her kitchen floor.

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