shivers down his spine. Feelings he’d spent his whole professional career trying to avert.
He pushed himself off the bed again.
‘Gabriel.’
Her face was right in front of his, her large brown eyes looking him straight on and her voice firm.
‘Ryan is fine. David Marsh is more than capable of looking after a shocked teenager. Maybe—just maybe—if we were resuscitating him, like we did with you, I might let you go and assist. But this isn’t an emergency situation. You’re not needed. You’re not even officially on duty. Right now you’re a patient, not a doctor. And a cranky one at that. You’d better hope that your head injury is making you cranky because if that’s your normal temperament you won’t last five minutes in here.
She was right. The rational part of his brain that was still functioning knew she was right. But his heart was ruling his head. He was cursing himself for not paying more attention to the port wall. He shouldn’t have dived straight in, he should have taken a few more seconds to get his bearings. Then maybe he could have protected Ryan and stopped him from slipping from his arms.
They could hear rapid chatter next door. She obviously didn’t realise his background in paediatrics. It was hardly surprising. Six years ago he’d been just about to pick his speciality and he’d dumped Jill before he’d made his final choice.
‘You should stay where you are. I’m going to attach you to a monitor for a few hours. You, sir, are going to do exactly as I say—whether you like it or not.’ She pulled the wires from the nearby monitor. ‘I’m not the pushover Jill was,’ she murmured.
Gabriel felt a weight settle on his chest again. For a second he’d seen a little glimpse of humour from her. For a second he’d thought maybe she didn’t hate him quite as much as it seemed. This was the last thing he needed—some smart-mouthed nurse with a load of preconceived ideas him. How close was she to Jill? Hopefully she didn’t have any of the same tendencies—that could be disastrous.
Every part of his body was beginning to ache and if he didn’t get something for this headache soon he was going to erupt.
It was almost as if she’d read his mind. ‘I’ll give you something for your headache in a few moments. I want to have a clear baseline set of neuro obs and I can’t give you anything too strong—I don’t want to dull your senses.’ There was a hint of humour in her voice, the implication that his senses were already dulled crystal clear.
It was just about as much as he could take.
‘Enough about me. What about you?’ he snapped. ‘What’s with the accent? Where are you from?’
The unexpected question caught her unawares and she jolted. She put the unattached wires down and her brow wrinkled. She bent to shine her penlight in his eyes again, satisfying herself that his pupils were equal and reactive.
‘I’m from Scotland.’ She straightened up.
‘You don’t look like you’re from Scotland,’ he mumbled as he dropped the towel he’d been using to dry himself, revealing the taut abdominal muscles, and pulled the scrub top over his head. ‘You look like a native. And what were you doing in London?’
‘I could be offended by that,’ she said quickly, placing one hand on her hip as she tried to drag her eyes away from his stomach. Was this his natural response? Was he normally so blunt? Or was this an altered response that she should be concerned about? She had no background knowledge on which to base a judgment. Should she just take for granted that he could be quite rude?
He’d paused, half-dressed, and was watching her. Watching the way her eyes were looking at his taut abdomen. She felt the colour flooding into her cheeks. There was no point averting her eyes, she’d been well and truly caught. She could be cheeky, too.
‘Put those away. You’ll give a girl a complex. And they’ll need to go, too.’ She pointed at his muddied underwear and handed him the scrub bottoms, averting her eyes for a few seconds to allow him some privacy. She slid her hand up inside his scrub top to attach the leads to his chest. His brown, muscled chest.
Time to change the subject. ‘My parents were from Trapetto, a fishing village in Sicily. But I was brought up in Scotland. I’m a Glasgow girl through and through.’ She waved her hand. ‘And don’t even try to speak to me in Italian. I’m not fluent at all—I know enough for emergencies and how to order dinner but that’s it.’
‘Didn’t you speak Italian at home?’
His voice brought her back to reality. ‘Rarely. There wasn’t much call for it in Glasgow.’
Her eyelids had lowered, as if this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to get into. Why was that?
Francesca picked up his dirty clothes. ‘I take it you’re okay if I dump these?’
He nodded and shifted on the bed, frowning at his attached leads. ‘So what are you doing here, Francesca?’
She froze, a little shocked by the bluntness of the question. This guy was going to take a bit of getting used to.
She frowned at him, knowing her brow was wrinkled and it wasn’t the most flattering of looks. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
There it was again, that little hint of something—but not quite obvious.
‘I would have thought that was obvious. I’m here working as an ANP. Maybe I should check that head knock of yours again.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘I’m curious what a young, well-qualified nurse like you is doing here.’ His hand swept outwards to the surrounding area.
She felt a little shiver steal down her spine. Nosy parker.
She kept her voice steady. ‘You mean here…’ she spread her arms out and spun round ‘… in this state-of-the-art medical complex, in the middle of the Mediterranean, with a different port every day and a chance to see the world?’
She planted her hands on her hips and looked at him as defiantly as she could. She was stating the obvious. The thing that any website would quote for prospective job-seekers. It was a cop-out and she knew it. But she didn’t like the way he’d asked the question. It was as if he’d already peered deep inside her and knew things she didn’t want anyone else to know.
‘I’m just curious. Your family is in Glasgow. And yet, you’re here…’ His voice tailed off. Almost as if he was contemplating the thought himself.
Something inside her snapped. Were all Italians as old-fashioned as him?
‘My family isn’t in Glasgow any more. Get a life, Gabriel. Isn’t a girl allowed to spread her wings and get a job elsewhere? Maybe I’m trying to connect with my roots in Sicily. Maybe I was just bored in Glasgow. Maybe I want to see the world. Or it could just be that I’m killing time until I get my visa to Australia. I thought cruise ships would be fun. Truth be told, so far I’ve found it all a bit boring.’ The words were out before she’d thought about it. Out before she had a chance to take them back.
She cringed. He was her boss. He was her brand-new boss, who had no idea about her skills, experience and competency level—probably the only things that could be her saving grace right now. How to win friends and influence people. Not.
She pushed the dirty clothes inside a plastic disposal bag, ‘I’ll get rid of these,’ she muttered as she turned to leave.
This was going to be nightmare. This ship was huge. Big enough for two thousand, six hundred passengers and five hundred staff. But this medical centre? Not so big. And the staff worked very closely together. Some days the medical centre felt positively crowded.
And the last thing she needed was to be stuck with some playboy doc. A pain shot through her chest. The last time she’d been distracted by a playboy doc it had had a devastating effect on her family life, causing irreparable damage. She could not allow that to happen again, no matter