Tempted By Dr Off-Limits

‘You’re on soft drinks?’

‘I don’t drink.’ He shrugged casually.

‘Ah.’

Recovering alcoholic? That explained a lot. Like why a guy who looked like he did was still single. And that unexpected bitterness to his earlier comment about not knowing how the drunken guy was going to react.

‘Maybe the odd glass of wine if I’m dining out, but I’m generally happy to be the designated driver on a night out like this,’ he added, as if he’d read her mind. ‘Easier than trying to get a taxi sometimes.’

Yet she didn’t miss the flash of...something that skittered across his face before he shot it down.

So he wasn’t the drunk, but maybe someone close to him?

She gave herself a mental shake at her uncharacteristic curiosity.

What did it matter? It wasn’t any of her business.

Admittedly, she’d dealt with enough soldiers telling her only half-truths about their injuries in order to get back to their unit quicker. If you knew the give-aways it could be easy to spot when someone was holding back, even if you had no idea what they were withholding. But this wasn’t the army now. She wasn’t at work. This was about play. So if this stranger wanted to keep something private then who was she to pry?

She smiled openly.

‘So, you aren’t going back to them? Your friends?’

‘Do you want me to?’

She should tell him it didn’t matter to her either way. Hadn’t she been ready to leave anyway for the comforts of her hotel spa bath and downy bed? Instead, she held out her hand by way of silent invitation.

‘I’m Elle.’

‘Just Elle?’ He smiled, stretching out his arm.

His fingers brushed hers moments before a strong palm enveloped her hand. Something arced between them, making the air seem to crackle. It was all Elle could do not to snatch her hand back.

Or to lean into him and give in to the rash impulse to press her mouth to those inviting lips.

‘Well, then, Just Elle, I’m just Fitz.’

‘Touché.’

She couldn’t help a soft chuckle from slipping out and the instant flare of awareness from the stranger—from Fitz—instilled her with another unexpected boost of confidence.

The guy who was coveted by a good proportion of the females in the place actually fancied her? From something as simple as her laugh?

‘So, Elle, what brings you here tonight? Alone? Only—and forgive me if this sounds impertinent—aside from your impressive moves back there with your unwanted admirers, you’ve looked a little...uncomfortable all evening.’

She offered a rueful smile.

‘Was it that obvious?’

‘You mean aside from the ramrod-straight back? Or the untouched drink? Or the fact that most people are happy to flirt yet you were oblivious to the five or six other, non-inebriated men who tried to make a play for you all evening?’

‘Are you saying I don’t fit in?’ She couldn’t help teasing him, firmly quashing the slither of unease that he might have a point.

‘I’m saying you looked a little like you weren’t used to it.’

She sighed. She could try to be nonchalant, but it wasn’t likely to work. Maybe she should just be honest? She had opened her mouth to speak when a commotion on the other side of the room caught her attention. But as the people jostled she caught sight of a body on the floor, convulsing as a screaming girl tried to hold it down.

Elle didn’t think, she didn’t wait, she just glanced at her watch to note the time and she acted.

Chapter Two

ONE MOMENT ELLE was sitting on the barstool next to him, the next she was thrusting people out of her way as she made a beeline for some hubbub behind him. Call it intuition after fifteen years as an army officer, call it something about Elle’s understated purposefulness, but Fitz was compelled to follow even as he strained to see past the throng.

It was only when he saw the young man on the floor, with Elle gently forcing a sobbing girl to release her grip on him, that Fitz realised what was happening. Icy fingers slid the length of his spine, the length of his body, rooting him to the spot. He fought to shut his mind to the memories that threatened to overtake him, but not fast enough. They slammed into him with brutal force, knocking his breath out like a bullet striking body armour.

The last time he’d seen someone having a seizure like this had been over twenty years ago. His baby sister had had seizures from about the age of one. Not often, but still. How had he forgotten about that?

Memories crowded his head. Images he’d buried along with her body. Her tiny, five-year-old’s coffin next to the adult-size one of their mother. He struggled to shove the unwanted images away and try instead to focus on helping the woman he’d just met who was managing the situation with the same cool efficiency with which she’d dispatched Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber earlier.

‘Let him go,’ Elle was telling the girl, kindly but firmly.

‘No. No. I can’t.’ She shook her head manically and tried to shrug Elle off. ‘He’s my brother, he’s going to hurt himself.’

‘How long has your brother suffered from epilepsy?’

‘What? No.’ The girl shook her head violently. ‘He’s seventeen, he doesn’t have epilepsy. He’s never had epilepsy. What’s wrong with him?’

‘Your brother’s never had a seizure before?’ Elle asked calmly.

The same calmness with which Fitz remembered his mother teaching his eleven-year-old self what to do if his sister ever had a seizure if he was alone with her. Not that he’d ever needed to in the end.

‘Of course he’s never had one,’ the girl was wailing. ‘I told you, there’s nothing wrong with him.’

‘What about anyone else in your family?’

‘What? No. I’m his sister, I’d know if he had epilepsy.’ The girl was practically apoplectic. ‘I have to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Oh, God, what’s wrong with him?’

‘It’s okay.’ Taking the girl’s head in her hands, Elle forced the kid to look at her. ‘I’m a doctor, do you understand me? It’s going to be okay but you have to trust me. Let go of your brother. If you try to hold him in place you could end up causing more damage.’

Her soothing tone not only seemed to help the girl but him too, and he began to be able to move past his memories just as she glanced up at the room, her stern, clear voice carrying over the now music-free club.

‘Everyone else, can you just back up, please, and give him some room?’ She turned back to the girl. ‘Okay, now this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to move that table away for me so your brother doesn’t hurt himself by banging it.’

All of a sudden Fitz’s legs sprang back into life and, propelling himself forward, he distracted the girl.

‘Come on, I’ll help you. We need to move everything else out of the way. You move those bottles and glasses onto the table down there and I’ll move the table itself, understand? Great, okay, now we should move those chairs and the stool.’

His mind and body acting in slick, smooth unison, the way he’d honed them to ever since he’d joined the army, Fitz eased himself even further away from the unwelcome, debilitating memories. Instead, he concentrated on Elle and trying to pre-empt her needs, passing her a jumper, which she took with a silent nod, balled up and slid under the boy’s head to cushion it. Then he placed himself between the peering crowd and the boy.

‘That’s all, folks,’ he said authoritatively. ‘If you don’t need to be here, I suggest you move away and get back to your own affairs. There’s nothing to see here.’

He nodded with satisfaction as the crowd immediately began to dissipate, but he was hardly surprised when there were a few reluctant to leave, one of whom was even reaching for his mobile phone.

‘Now,’ Fitz growled, taking a step closer so that he was invading the guy’s personal space without making actual physical contact.

It felt as though ever since he’d seen Elle his night had been one incident after another when usually a night out for him, in the rare downtime he had as a colonel, was fairly uneventful.

What was it about this woman, the emerald-eyed redhead, that seemed to turn his world upside down? She was so damned captivating. But as much as he was loath to admit it, he suspected it wasn’t simply about her striking looks, even if they were what had drawn him from almost the first minute his group had walked into the club.

So she was a doctor?

He didn’t like to examine quite how relieved that made him feel. Something about her attitude and confidence had seemed so familiar, he’d suspected she might be military. It wouldn’t be surprising. They were close to a mobilisation army barracks, which was how his group of fellow officers knew about the club. It was one they always frequented before they went on a tour of duty. The place was more bar than pub, and, though it had a dance-floor, it was not a nightclub, so as officers they could be comfortable having a night out without risking running into the junior ranks, who typically opted for the pubs and bars in the centre of town, which would be heaving with soldiers over the next few nights.

But the idea of Elle potentially being military had been more of a let-down than it perhaps should have been. That would have been the one obstacle to make him walk away. Not that there was any military reason that would prevent them from getting together, of course—as a doctor she would be a commissioned officer just as he was—but, still, it was a line he had always refused to cross for his own personal reasons. Ever since Janine. But Fitz suspected Elle might have made him consider breaking his unnecessarily strict personal rules.

He wasn’t yet prepared to examine why he had been so pleased that the fact that she was a doctor, and not military, meant he didn’t have to find out.

‘Fitz?’ Elle’s voice broke into his reverie. ‘Can you call for an ambulance? Tell them a seventeen-year-old male is suffering from a seizure with no known history of epilepsy.’

Without waiting for his response, as though trusting him implicitly, she lowered her head to check on the boy then turned back to the girl with a gentle smile.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Lisa.’ The girl sniffed.

‘Okay, Lisa, can you contact your parents?’

‘Our parents? Oh, God, I can’t call them, they’ll kill us. They’ll kill me. Adam’s only seventeen.’

‘Has your brother consumed alcohol?’ Fitz heard Elle ask as he slid his mobile from his back pocket. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t care how old you are, I just need you to tell me the truth so that I can look after him the best way I can.’

‘Yes,’ Lisa sobbed.

‘Okay, that’s fine. Do you know how much?’

‘A lot. We both had a lot. Oh, this is all my fault, isn’t it?’

Fitz stepped away as the emergency services operator came on the line, and gave their location and the details. After a brief check of the boy he made his way over to the bar and asked for a blanket and then made sure the crowd had dissipated. By the time he turned back to Elle, Lisa was just about calming down as her brother was slowly coming around.

‘My parents are going to kill me.’

‘Shh, you’re okay, Adam,’ Elle soothed, checking her watch again. ‘You just had a little seizure, but you’re safe and your sister’s here.’

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ Fitz muttered quietly. ‘This is for his bladder. I’m going out to check the car, I’ve probably got spare clothes in my gym bag in the boot.’

Gratefully, Elle took the blanket and laid it over the boy’s lap, asking him how he felt and trying to note his clarity of answers through Lisa’s panicked interference. It was clearly going to be a lot easier for Elle to make her assessment without Adam’s sister wailing and babbling.

‘Come with me, Lisa,’ Fitz commanded softly, in the tone he used when he needed people to do things he knew they absolutely didn’t want to do. ‘We’ll work it out, but your parents need to know. However mad you think they’re going to be, imagine how upset and angry they would feel if you didn’t contact them.’

Almost against her will, Lisa backed away from her brother, her eyes still locked on his dazed form.

‘I... I guess they’d be even more angry?’

‘I think you’re probably right. Now, my...friend is going to stay with Adam until the ambulance arrives, but you and I need to call your parents together and let them know what’s going on.’

‘And tell them Adam’s going to need to go to hospital for an EEG,’ Elle muttered in a low voice. ‘Tell them to meet Lisa and Adam there.’

‘Understood.’ He turned back to the sister. ‘Right, shall we step outside where it’s a little quieter?’

The sister flip-flopped again.

‘No, no... I can’t.’

Time to take her properly in hand.

‘Lisa, they’re going to find out some time,’ Fitz informed her sternly. ‘Better sooner, don’t you think? If you’d prefer, I can call them for you, but someone needs to do it. Now.’

The girl hesitated, then nodded, silently handed over her mobile, and followed him outside.

* * *

‘Thanks for moving everyone away so quickly,’ Elle said forty minutes later as they watched the ambulance pull away from the kerb. ‘The last thing that kid needed was to come round to find a bar full of nosy people gawking at him.’

‘No problem. You were quite impressive back there. Again.’ He smiled. ‘Shall we go back inside?’

She shook her head.

‘No, I really do need to go. But thanks for the drink.’

Her guarded gaze caught him by surprise. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. The sounds of the music thumped sensually into the street from the live band who had taken the stage early to lift the mood of the still stunned crowd, but neither of them made a move.

‘Ah, okay. I did find one thing odd, though,’ Fitz said, stalling for time. ‘His sister really had no idea he was epileptic?’

‘He might not be.’ Elle cocked her head, apparently happy to be delayed. ‘It isn’t uncommon to have a single seizure and then for it never to happen again for the rest of his life. Especially because he’s seventeen and alcohol can be a trigger. The EEG should help to determine whether or not there is unusual electrical activity in Adam’s brain and he’ll go from there.’

‘And what do you think?’ Fitz asked, admiring the way her eyes lit up when she talked about medicine. Clearly being a doctor was more than just a job to her, it was something she loved.

‘I don’t know without the results, but from everything he said afterwards, I’m thinking he’s had a few absence seizures in the past, which he never really thought much about. Then the combination of alcohol, exams in school, finding it hard to sleep at night was a trigger for more. But that’s just a guess.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Anyway, from your reactions I’m guessing that isn’t the first time you’ve seen a seizure either?’

‘My little sister suffered from epilepsy. From the first year of her life.’

The words were out before Fitz had time to think and he halted abruptly. He never talked about his sister. Never.

The last time he’d even talked about his family—other than to trot out the one, practised sentence that his mother and sister had died a long time ago—had been to Janine. And even then he hadn’t told her the full story, just enough to satisfy her questions after her colonel father had already told her about the car crash.

He’d certainly never told her about those three years when it had just been his mother, his sister and himself in that tiny, cramped flat. The happiest three years of their lives together until his old man had walked back in that night.

‘Suffered? Past tense?’ Elle asked. ‘Did she grow out of it? I think it’s somewhere around ninety percent of children with childhood absence epilepsy can grow out of it by about the age of twelve, although I understand they can sometimes have other types of seizure.’

‘No. She died.’

Elle held his gaze steadily, her expression changing.

‘I’m so sorry. What happened?’

Old, familiar guilt had resurrected itself, and was pressing on his chest like a flatbed truck was crushing him. Images assailed Fitz. Him getting home, the car gone, the phone lying smashed on the floor, the shattered furniture, leaving the house turned upside down. And everywhere the stench of booze. The stench of him. The man who was Fitz’s father in name only.

‘Car crash. She was six, nearly seven. My mother died too.’

He braced himself for the look, pity coupled with discomfort as they quickly changed the topic. Instead, he simply saw quiet empathy, a calmness and genuine interest. It seemed to slice through all the layers of protective armour he’d spent years pulling into place.

‘Fitz, how awful for you. So it was just you and your father?’

‘He was driving.’ Fitz tried to swallow the words. Elle was a stranger and this was no one’s business except his. ‘Drunk. I was the only one left.’

Instead, they kept pouring out, as if they’d been waiting for this moment—for this woman—for half his lifetime.

‘Is that why you wanted to protect me from the drunken bloke who was hassling me at the bar, and his mate?’ she asked softly. ‘So, how old were you?’

‘Sorry?’ he stalled.

This was the longest he’d allowed himself to think about it in a long, long time. And he didn’t want to. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

‘How old were you when your family died?’ she repeated steadily.

‘You ask a lot of questions for a damsel in distress.’

‘I wasn’t in distress. I had my thumb-lock, remember?’ Another smile that twisted in his gut. ‘But that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the solid back-up.’

‘Well, then, that makes me feel better.’ He managed a wry smile.

He should have known better than to distract her. Her gaze never wavered and he was compelled to address her unanswered question.

‘Seventeen. But it was the night of my eighteenth.’

He should have had happy memories of the time but all he had was one of his mother and his sister lying in that hospital mortuary. To this day he didn’t know which of the mass of bruises over his mother’s face had been caused by the crash itself and which had been the result of his drunkard father’s cruel fists. Fitz struggled to breathe, let alone regulate his voice, which sounded a million miles away when he spoke.

‘Listen, this isn’t something I like to talk about.’

A beat passed before Elle answered, but not before reaching out to run a hand over his cheek as if she actually cared. And the oddest thing was, he felt like she did.

‘Maybe you should talk.’

‘I don’t need to talk,’ he bit out.

She gave an apologetic shrug, but it didn’t stop her from continuing.

‘I’m sorry. I know it’s probably none of my business but I’m a doctor. I can see the signs when someone has repressed things for a long time. Especially soldiers who think they’re too tough to need to talk and repress all kinds of bad incidents.’

‘What makes you think I’m a soldier?’ he asked sharply.

‘Those spare gym trousers you gave to the boy in there after his seizure had made him lose bladder control? I couldn’t help noticing they were military issue. And there’s just something about the way you handle yourself. I’m guessing Infantry?’

The way she smiled, polite but with none of the openness or interest of earlier, made him sure that discovering he was military had put her off. Ironically, his experience with women was that it was usually the other way around.

‘Not Infantry but, yes, I’m army. A colonel,’ he confirmed, technically not a full colonel, a lieutenant colonel, but he doubted that would make a difference to her.

Neither would the fact that until a couple of months ago he’d been a major in a different Royal Engineers regiment. Now he was at the start of his two-year posting as commanding officer of his very own regiment.

Yet right now all he could think was that something about the army meant that Elle was about to walk away from him, and a part of him desperately wanted her to stay. He wondered if she had a brother, a father who had served and been hurt. Or worse.

‘You don’t like it that I’m in the army, do you?’

‘No, no. It isn’t that. It’s...complicated.’

‘Too complicated to finish that drink with me?’

She sucked in a deep breath, as though trying to make her mind up about something. It was unsettling how much he wanted to spend more time with her. A drink, an hour, maybe the rest of the evening, whatever she was prepared to offer. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d ever wanted to spend time with any woman like this. But at least now her determination to leave had faded and she was looking decidedly undecided.

‘After the last hour, I’m guessing both of us would benefit from a bit of fun now,’ he pressed. ‘A bit of a laugh? A drink? Maybe a dance?’

‘I don’t dance.’ She frowned uncertainly but didn’t refuse him.

She was torn. He still didn’t know exactly what had put her off before but she was clearly as attracted to him as he was to her.

It didn’t make sense. He’d had short-term relationships and a handful of one-night stands over the years, all with attractive women of varying intelligence, but there was something different about Elle that seemed to pull at his gut and not just at the other, more...obvious part of his anatomy. Something glowed, like a whisper of wind over dying embers, inside Fitz; somewhere that had been a gnawing void for longer than he could remember.

He snorted silently inside his head. It was physical attraction, pure and simple. It was just the unusual circumstances of their meeting that had given rise to such a fanciful notion. The unexpected memory of his baby sister and the life he’d long since forgotten.

He hadn’t really wanted to come out tonight, the eighteenth anniversary of his mother and sister’s deaths. Its echoes of celebration seemed cruelly hollow. From today, his life had been devoid of their love and laugher and warmth for longer than they had been a part of it. Hardly a night for letting loose.

But he didn’t have a choice. It was a long-standing tradition with the men with whom he’d gone through Royal Military Training Academy—officer cadets over a decade earlier—to come on a final night out before a tour of duty. To have reneged on it would have raised questions Fitz didn’t want to answer.

And so he’d come, and from the minute he’d walked in and headed to the bar to buy the first round, his gaze had snagged on the arresting woman with the stunning red hair. A glorious, waist-length curtain of vibrant golds and reds and coppers that had evoked long-buried memories of the vivid autumn day over a decade earlier when he’d returned, exhilarated and hooked after his first ever tour of duty. It had tugged at something primal, deep inside him, yet...something he still couldn’t quite identify had also held him back from approaching her immediately.

Then those drunken idiots had given him the excuse he’d pretended he hadn’t been looking for, only to find that she could take care of herself with aplomb, and he’d been even more intrigued.

Fitz reminded himself that tonight was about fun, having a good time. In a matter of days he’d be thousands of miles away in a geographically hostile—though for once non-combat—environment and neck-deep in responsibility for his engineers’ role in a crucial, multi-discipline, hearts-and-minds mission. Tonight was his last chance to blow off some steam.

‘I don’t believe you can’t dance.’ He grinned. ‘But if that’s true, how about I teach you?’

‘You dance?’

Her brows knitted together and his stomach pulled tight. Man, she was cute. He shoved his hands into his trousers to counter the sudden impulse to take her face in his hands and kiss the frown lines away.

‘Not like some of those guys in there who can set the floor on fire.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘But I can move my feet and keep a decent beat. So what do you say?’

Chapter Three