His Hidden American Beauty

Guilt bowed his shoulders.

Annalise read the numbers then showed them to Niko. He hid his wince then checked his watch.

“We’ll eat in fifteen minutes. It’s about time for insulin, rapid and long-acting. Let’s go with the same amount and I’ll make sure she eats better this meal to balance it out.”

“Sounds good. Check again a few hours before bedtime to see if she needs a snack. Ask your waiter to bring apples and orange juice to keep in your room’s refrigerator.”

“Will do.”

“Ice cream!” Sophie said. “I want ice cream. Yiayia said I could have—”

Niko cocked his eyebrow, stopping her whine in mid-sentence. “If you eat your meal, you can have a little for dessert.”

While Annalise opened up her refrigerator and took out a vial of insulin, Niko paged through the notebook. “Abdomen for breakfast and lunch, thigh for supper, right?”

Annalise double-checked her notes. “Yes. And today is left side, tomorrow is right side.”

Sophie’s face clouded up as tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She looked so small and delicate.

Niko felt so powerless. Injections and a strict regimen were Sophie’s fate for the rest of her life.

He picked her up to sit her on the examining table, giving her a big hug midway. “Sweetie, I would take this for you if I could, but I can’t.”

“If I don’t eat, I don’t have to have a shot, right?”

“Not an option, little one.”

He took the vials from Annalise and filled the syringe to the proper marking.

“Hold your finger out like a candle, sweetie.” He held up his own finger, showing her.

“I’m going to hold your leg still.” He put his hand on her thigh. “When I say, ‘Now,’ pretend you’re blowing out the candle. Be sure to blow hard.”

She gave him a confused look.

“Trust me.” He focused on the injection site. “Now.”

While Sophie blew, Niko took advantage of her distraction and injected the insulin.

“Good girl. All over.” He jotted down the particulars in Sophie’s notebook, taking a moment to appreciate the details his brothers and sisters-in-law were trying so carefully to document.

“You want to dig through the treasure chest, Sophie, and pick out a toy?”

“Okay.” Sophie shrugged, not looking very excited. After all these months of doctors’ visits she’d probably been rewarded with too many cheap toys in the past to make this one special.

Annalise helped Sophie down from the table then opened a huge plastic tub filled with monster trucks and snorkels and magic wands.

“I think there’s a superhero cape in there somewhere. A real one.”

Sophie began flinging plastic trucks and coloring books out of the box, digging for the cape. “Really?”

“Absolutely. I save the good stuff for the most courageous girls and boys.”

Niko gave Dr. Annalise Walcott a long look. She was a smart one, reinforcing Niko’s challenge to be brave with an enticing reward. Small things made big impressions with little patients. While he had the minimum of pediatrics training, he’d treated enough frightened children to pick up a thing or two. Apparently, Annalise had treated her own fair share of children, too.

“Found it!” Sophie triumphantly held up a bright pink cape along with the sparkling wand attached to it.

Niko quickly yanked off and crumpled up the tag that declared it a fairy costume instead of a superheroine disguise.

As she pointed the wand at him, he obligingly shrank back with as much mock terror on his face as he could muster. “SuperSophie. If I were a nasty villain, I would be quaking in my shoes right now.”

“Let me tie it on for you,” Annalise offered.

The pleased smile she gave Sophie made Niko think the good doctor really had picked out the cape herself. With her long legs she’d make the perfect bustiered and masked crusader.

Niko rubbed his hand over his eyes, clearing the vision. What was it about this demure doctor that had his imagination running wild? Had he been under so much pressure that he needed to resort to a fantasy life for relief? If so, what did that say for his stamina in the field?

Lack of resilience or desire to make a difference wasn’t what sidelined most of the special mission doctors. Coping with the mental stress, knowing they were only making a small dent in the needs of so many was what broke most of them.

Then again, maybe Annalise brought out the creative imagination in him. Nothing wrong with that, was there? This was a fantasy cruise after all.

“You’re really good with her, Dr. Christopoulos. I’m impressed.” When she smiled, her gaze was honest, her voice sincere. It felt better than good to be appreciated.

“It’s Niko.” His own voice was huskier than normal.

“Niko.” She licked her full lips.

Fascinating and, oh, so sexy with no contrivance or even an awareness of what her mouth could do to a man.

Niko reined himself in. It had been a while. Where he’d been wasn’t exactly an environment conducive to lovemaking.

How did he ask the good doctor if she would like to share a drink with him under the stars tonight? How could he make himself stand out in a crowd when he bet every man on board this ship would like to do the same?

I don’t do dinner, she’d said.

She’d been offputting on the gangway, but Niko could understand why. She probably had to field invitations and propositions all day, every day from total strangers.

What made him different from them? And why did it matter so much that he was? There were plenty of women aboard this ship looking for a diversion. But he had no interest in pursuing them. Only her.

What made her different?

He didn’t know, but he wanted to find out.

He searched for the right pick-up line but came up blank. What was the matter with him? He’d had no trouble knowing what to say to charm the opposite sex since he’d turned twelve.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” Annalise wiped away a non-existent blemish.

“How about sharing a bottle of wine tonight?” Nothing glib or witty or clever there. Just a straightforward request. “I thought, as colleagues, we could discuss medicine aboard ship. Strictly professional curiosity.”

She was shaking her head before she even started to turn him down. “I don’t really think …”

That’s when he heard them coming. No one could ever say a Christopoulos didn’t give you fair warning before arriving. From the sound of it, the whole family was in the medical suite’s anteroom.

Annalise looked alarmed.

“Not to worry. It’s not a mass emergency. Just an invasion of family.”

Family. Wasn’t that what he’d wanted when he’d planned this elaborate ruse, to spend time with family? Why was he even trying to strike up a shipboard romance with a woman who obviously had no interest in him?

He had to admit, paying attention to a beautiful woman sounded a lot more enticing than paying attention to his brothers as they droned on about the restaurant or to the sisters-in-law as they expounded on the joys and tribulations of parenthood.

As he and Sophie joined them he realized, as he had so many times in the past, that he was a square peg in a family of round holes. Now he understood that no amount of buying anonymous vacations was going to change that.

Seeing his sisters-in-law with children in tow, he also understood that no number of casual relationships would fill that hole of not having someone special to belong to, like his brothers did.

Choices. Live every man’s dream or live his own personal dream.

He would never again become involved with a woman who made him feel the pain of having to choose.

Annalise.

The good doctor was safe, right?

At a glance, Annalise recognized the people in her waiting room as family. They looked—and sounded—exactly alike.

Still, while the family resemblance was strong, Niko stood apart.

One of the lanky teenaged boys jostled another, who looked like an identical twin. “Of course we’d find Uncle Niko down here, playing doctor with the nurse.”

“I’d expect you to be out by the pool, Uncle Niko, checking out the bikini babes. When we walked by, there was this one …” He raised his hands like he was holding coconuts, or maybe watermelons.

Niko cut them both a harsh look. “Respect,” he growled.

At the same time as one of the women gave the twins a sharp look and said, “Boys, behave.”

Amidst the chaos of the two women and smaller children throwing themselves into Niko’s arms and the two men patting him on the back, Niko made introductions.

“Dr. Walcott, these are my brothers and their wives, with assorted nieces and nephews and my grandmother in the back. Family, meet Dr. Walcott. She will be helping us while we’re here.”

A tiny older woman, small in stature but big in presence, waded through three waist-high children and elbowed her way past the two tall boys to the front of the crowd. “I am Olympia Christopoulos. Everyone calls me Yiayia. We were all greatly relieved to learn the ship has its own doctor to help us with our little Sophie.”

Surprising Annalise, Yiayia wrapped her in a big hug. Annalise flailed her arms, unsure what to do, who to be. Should she pretend to be the type of person who was comfortable with this type of thing? Should she hug back? Finally, the hug was over and Annalise could be herself again.

Too late, she wished she’d wrapped her arms around the old woman, just to see what having a grandmother might feel like.

The woman who belonged to the twin boys turned to Niko and patted her huge Hawaiian print tote bag. “I have the meter. I see you have the notebook. It’s time for Sophie’s s-h-o-t.”

From the stricken look on Sophie’s face she clearly knew what word the woman had just spelled out.

Niko gave Sophie a reassuring pat. “Already taken care of, Phoebe.”

“You wrote it all down in the notebook, right? The time and the amount and her blood-sugar reading?” She turned to Annalise. “You know how men are. They don’t always think of these things.”

Who were these people? They acted as if they didn’t even acknowledge that Niko was a doctor in his own right. Or was that a good-natured tease? Maybe this was just a normal give and take of a normal family. Group dynamics wasn’t her strong suit.

“Don’t worry, sis. I learned how to chart in medical school.” Despite Niko’s self-deprecating smile, his tone held a hint of bite and his jaw held more than a hint of firmness.

His sister-in-law must have seen the same sparks in Niko’s eyes that Annalise saw because she tried to excuse herself by saying, “Of course you did, Niko. It’s just that you don’t usually have children as patients and you have that big staff to do things for you.”

Annalise envisioned a spa-like office suite with customized furniture arranged by a top designer, staff in matching trendy uniforms and coffee and tea with French names available to sip as the clientele discussed lifting brows, firming chins and reshaping cheekbones.

Her own utilitarian facilities would be stark in comparison. Still, her suite and her staff were top of the line, assembled to handle any emergency.

One of the men, older than Niko but definitely related, stepped forward. “Time to eat. Let’s see how cruise-ship food stacks up to Christopoulos food.”

A twin clapped Niko on the shoulder. “It’ll be nice to be served instead of being the server for a change, too. But, then, you never had to do the waiter thing, did you, Uncle Niko?”

The tiny ancient woman reached up and tweaked the boy’s ear. “If your grades were as good as Niko’s, you wouldn’t either.”

Phoebe turned to Annalise. “Niko tutored during high school instead of working in the restaurant.”

Annalise processed information, trying to fill in the holes while simultaneously wondering why this family would reveal so much to a total stranger.

“Good thing Niko’s so smart since he can’t cook worth a flip,” the other brother added. “Now, let’s go and eat.”

En masse, they turned and exited, carrying Sophie along with them but leaving Niko behind.

He raised an eyebrow. “Family. Gotta love ‘em, right?”

No. No, you didn’t. Annalise knew that first hand. But that was knowledge she had no intention of sharing. Sharing meant intimacy and intimacy was something Annalise didn’t do, especially with a man who made her breath skip when he stood this close.

She fell back on her professionalism. “Enjoy your dinner. Bring Sophie back any time you need to.”

“Thanks.”

Annalise stood by the glass door and watched him walk away.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like to look at men—she just liked to look from a distance. Now she allowed herself to admire the breadth of his shoulders and tautness of his butt even while her medical training had her noticing the slight hesitation of his left leg as he climbed the short flight of stairs leading to the main hallway. He’d said something about an injury when he boarded the elevator with her, hadn’t he?

Not her concern unless he sought out medical attention. She had to remind herself of that daily when she wanted to fix the world.

When her office was empty once again, it felt as if all the energy had been sucked out with the Christopoulos family.

No, not energy. They had taken joyous chaos with them when they’d left. The energy had gone with Niko, along with the impression of stability he projected of keeping that wild bunch under control.

Usually her haven, the atmosphere of the medical suite felt as cold as the stainless steel of the countertops and she felt restless, on the verge—but on the verge of what?

Underneath her feet the rumble of the huge engines reverberated as they churned through the waters of the Gulf of Mexico on their way towards the open water of the Atlantic.

She was being silly. The feel of freedom was all around her. Why, then, was she missing the anchoring sensation Niko had taken with him?

CHAPTER THREE

NIKO SAT AT the dining table surrounded by family, knowing he’d turned down his best chance of a family of his own.

His ex-fiancée hadn’t asked him for anything extraordinary—only to give up his work, to give up his soul.

She hadn’t understood. He hadn’t been able to make her understand what Doctors Without Borders meant to him. That he’d never felt more alive as he beat the odds, winning out over a harsh world unlike any his family had ever seen and snatching the downtrodden back from the edge of death. What were the odds he could make his family understand anyway?

Misunderstood. Different. The story of his life. Was there anyone on the planet who could understand?

In walked Annalise Walcott. She’d shed her lab coat, exposing the silk blouse over her trousers. Classy.

She was the total package, wasn’t she? Brains and beauty. Such a winning combination.

While he’d appreciated the shorts earlier on the gangway, now he appreciated the way her silky blouse moved across her …

“Uncle Niko, what are you staring at?” His nephew Marcus interrupted as the teen followed Niko’s line of sight.

“Just taking in the scenery.”

“You mean that brunette at that corner table? She looks like your type.”

Niko checked out the voluptuous dark-haired woman sitting alone. Big hair, big earrings, big bone structure, everything he usually liked in a woman. He even liked her interesting nose, more aquiline than fashionable, but it suited her. “She’s okay, I guess.”

Beside him, Yiayia was taking a keen interest in the conversation while trying to appear as if she wasn’t.

“You’re not talking about Dr. Walcott, are you?” Marcus asked.

“Absolutely.”

His nephew gave him a quizzical look. “She’s not Greek.”

“It’s not like I’m going to marry her.”

Marcus laughed. “Everyone knows you’re not the marrying kind, Uncle Niko. We all live through you vicariously, even Dad.” Marcus elbowed his father next to him to get his attention.

Niko’s brother Stephen gave him a somber frown. “You’ve got to settle down sometime, Niko. We all liked Melina. Maybe if you talked to her? Apologized for whatever you did. Or even if you didn’t do anything—”

“My broken engagement is none of your business, brother.”

Stephen narrowed his eyes, but backed down and looked away when Niko continued to glare, using refilling his wife’s wine glass as his excuse to turn away.

The eight years that separated them in age also separated them in values. Or maybe they were just too different. His brothers were so much like the father he could barely remember, while he was his own person.

If only he didn’t have to keep reminding them of that.

Marcus spoke barely loud enough to hear. “It’s true, isn’t it, Uncle Niko? The Christopoulos men are destined to be family men, aren’t they?”

“You’ve been listening to Yiayia too much.” Niko could see a lifetime of family tradition shackling his nephew, just as it tried to shackle him.

“Every man has to find his own purpose. Family is a very good purpose—just not for everyone.” Knowing what he was about to do was tantamount to anarchy, Niko leaned in and pinned his nephew with his stare. “Promise me, Marcus, that you’ll take some time to think about what you want—not what anyone else expects from you.”

Marcus swallowed hard. “Not everyone is as strong-willed as you are, Uncle Niko. I envy that about you. But someday …”

Niko thought of all the trips he took abroad with Doctors Without Borders, the trips his family thought he took for leisure. They thought he was gallivanting to tropical paradises, giving his wild side a long leash before settling down while his partners carried his load.

He encouraged them to think that. What would they think if they knew his partners admired and supported his perilous service work? And how would they feel about him if they knew family wasn’t on his radar?

Not providing grandchildren was the second-biggest sin in the Christopoulos family Bible, right under “Don’t live dangerously.”

It was a rule he wasn’t very good at following. Neither had his uncle or his grandfather. But, then, his parents had both been killed in a car wreck while on a trip to the store. Playing it safe didn’t mean a person would be safe. And following the family rules didn’t mean he would be happy like they were.

How did the good doctor juggle her family with her medical practice? Working on a cruise ship, she was separated from her loved ones more often than not, wasn’t she?

Because he was staring, and because she turned and caught him at it, he stood and walked toward her to invite her over.

She looked around, as if she were looking to see who he was approaching.

He brightened up his smile a few notches.

She gave him a nervous smile back, shook her head and started to turn away. And his ego took the well-aimed shot to heart. Of all the women in all the world, why did he have to find this one so fascinating?

Then fate worked in Niko’s favor. The captain, coming up behind her, helpfully pointed out that a guest was requesting her presence.

“Good evening.” As the ship rocked, the captain politely rested his hand on Annalise’s back, effectively keeping her still and steady. “Are you in need of our doctor?”

Niko had the strongest urge to push away the captain’s hand, replacing it with his own.

Need. Yes, he was in need of her. Just standing next to her made endorphins flood his brain. What was it about her? And what excuse could he use to keep her close to him?

“If you have a few seconds, Dr. Walcott, I could use the reinforcement when I explain once again to Sophie’s grandmother why Sophie can’t have late-night snacks.”

The captain dropped his hand and Annalise took a breath and an automatic step back from Niko, trying to find her comfort zone. But nothing about this man could be described as comfortable. As soon as the captain was out of earshot, she called him on his excuse. “I’ve seen you with your family, remember? When you speak, they all look at you as if every word was gold. You don’t need any help from me, Doctor.”

“But I do.” His tiger eyes glittered. “You might notice I’m the only unmarried brother left. My family would like to change that. You’ll keep me safe from their matchmaking, at least for tonight.”

Too aware that everyone at Niko’s table intently watched them, Annalise hesitated.

“Please?”

Annalise had never been able to turn down a plea for help—at least, that’s what she told herself as she said, “Okay. But don’t make a habit of this.”

As she wove in and out, past the other diners, she questioned herself but could come up with no reason why she hadn’t made her usual polite escape whenever a man took notice of her.

Was it the sincerity in his voice? What about him made her feel ready to respond to the interest in a man’s eyes?

All the Christopoulos men stood as Annalise approached their table. Their good manners made her feel self-conscious and very feminine.

With Sophie now cuddled in her Aunt Phoebe’s lap, it left an open seat between him and Yiayia.

As Niko pulled out the chair for her, he leaned in and whispered, “You’re blushing. Nice.”

“I’m not used to such …” She held her hand out to the standing men, speechless.

“A show of good manners,” Yiayia finished her sentence. “Take it as your due, dear. You deserve it.”

What would it be like to be a part of a large family where she was loved and respected on a daily basis?

A warm glow deep inside vied with the chill of nerves prickling along her skin.

Conflicted. Was she doomed to always be conflicted?

“Wine, Doctor?” A server held the bottle of merlot for her inspection.

Normally, Annalise would say no. While she enjoyed an occasional glass of wine with a good book, she never drank in uncomfortable social situations. But she found herself saying yes instead.

“And you, sir?” the waiter asked Niko.

He started to shake his head, but his brother Stephen was nodding instead.

“Give the man another drink. He’s a doctor, you know? Under stress all the time. Look at that strain around his eyes. You need to cut loose every now and then, Niko, or you’ll be looking as old as me before your time.” Stephen held his glass out. “And pour me another one, too, will you?”

Niko knew his brother’s remark was a dig at his supposed frivolous lifestyle, which Stephen was both jealous of and proud he’d played a part in providing. Niko should have never let the misunderstanding lie between them for so long.

But so much had been happening when he’d left for his first mission. The restaurant fire, the miscarriage that had threatened his sister-in-law’s life and Sophie’s diagnosis had rocked the foundations of his very strong family.

Leaving his family at their time of need had been the hardest decision he’d ever had to make.

He wasn’t good at raw emotion. Just being there for his loved ones had made him feel trapped and helpless—made him remember too much.

He’d had to take action. Do something. Fix something. There had been nothing he could do for his family to make them any better.

But he’d had the medical dossiers of a half-dozen children in his briefcase—children who could die without his medical care. He’d decided he would only be in the way if he stayed around.

He’d reasoned that there was no sense in adding to everyone’s worries if Doctors Without Borders wasn’t for him. Now that he’d made his decision, he wouldn’t put a damper on this trip, but he would tell them at the end that working for Doctors Without Borders would be permanent.

He had already made arrangements to begin the sale of his share of the partnership as soon as he returned home. But for now he would keep pretending, for their sakes.

“Everything okay?” Annalise’s hand fluttered over his arm, as if she wanted to touch him but felt he was off limits.