much as Alida struggled against him, pleaded with him to free her and let her run from the building, Theo’s instinct was to stay put and work through it. These were his patients. His clinic. He’d promised them solace and care from the moment they entered the bougainvillea-laced doors and he’d meant it with every pore in his body.
The need to launch into action, preparing for the storm bound to follow in the earthquake’s wake, crackled through his body like electricity. It was likely only seconds had passed—a minute or two at most—but each moment had shaken the island to its core.
He heard a woman cry out in pain.
“Get in a doorway!” he shouted, his broad hands cupping the child and Alida’s heads.
Not being able to control what was happening made Theo want to roar with frustration.
“Is it over?” Alida’s voice was barely audible amidst the rising chaos of human voices.
Theo shook his head, tightening his grip so that she didn’t leave until he was positive it was safe.
How soon were aftershocks? Immediate? The next day?
This was the cruelty of nature. You simply didn’t know.
The same way you didn’t know if the parents who gave birth to you would act like Alida—protectively—or like his—abandoning him at the first opportunity.
He shook his head clear of the thought. They didn’t deserve one second of his attention. The people here did. The people he’d vowed to care for.
He shouted out a few instructions. Their clinic was a small one, but there must be at least fifty people there. Doctors, nurses, patients, a few older patients who needed more care in the overnight wards.
Another crash of waves and the howl of the earth fighting against the manmade buildings upon her surface filled his senses.
Please let the clinic be spared.
He tightened his grip on the mother and child, wondering for just an instant what it would be like to hold his own wife and child. What lengths would he go to for them?
Another tremor gripped the ground beneath them.
All thoughts other than survival left him.
Theós. Let us be spared.
FOLD, FOLD AND TUCK.
Just the way her mother had taught her.
Perfect.
Cailey gave a satisfied grin at her swaddling handiwork, popped a kiss onto her finger, then onto the baby’s nose, all the while imagining her mum giving her a congratulatory smothering hug before pulling out a huge plate of souvlaki for them to share. Or bougatsa. Or whatever it was she had magicked up in her tiny, tiny kitchen. Miracles, usually.
She ran her finger along the infant’s face. “Look at you, little mou. So perfect. You’ve got your entire life to look forward to. No Greek bad boys breaking your heart. That’s my lesson to you. No Greeks.”
“Are you trying to brainwash the babies again, Cailey?”
Cailey looked across, surprised she hadn’t even noticed that her colleague Emily had entered the nursery. The more time she spent with the babies, the more she was getting lost in cloud cuckoo land!
“Yes.” She grinned mischievously, then turned to the baby to advise her soberly, “No Greeks. And no doctors.”
“Hey!” Emily playfully elbowed her in the ribs. “I’ve just started dating a doctor, and I won’t mind admitting it’s a very welcome step up in the world.”
Wrong answer!
“And what, exactly, is wrong with being a nurse?”
“Not a thing, little Miss Paranoid.”
Emily’s arched eyebrows and narrowed eyes made her squirm.
“Looks like someone’s had her heart broken by a doctor. A Greek doctor, to be precise.”
“Pffft.”
Emily laughed. “All the proof I needed.”
She moved to one of the cots and picked up an infant who was fussing.
“C’mon. Out with it. Who was the big, bad Greek doctor who broke our lovely Cailey’s heart?”
“No one.”
Someone.
“Liar.” Emily laughed again.
She shrugged as casually as she could. Maybe she was a liar, but leaving her small town, small island, and archaically minded country behind for the bright lights of London had been for one purpose and one purpose only—to forget a very green-eyed, chestnut-haired Adonis who would, for the purposes of this particular conversation, remain anonymous.
Cailey lifted the freshly swaddled infant, all cozy in her striped pink blanket, and nuzzled up close to her. Mmm. New baby smell.
Life as a maternity nurse was amazing, but rather than mute her urges to hold a child of her own it had only set the sirens on full blast.
Twenty-seven wasn’t that old in the greater scheme of things. And Theo wasn’t the only man in the universe. Definitely not her man. So...
“Cailey?”
The charge nurse...what was her name again? Molly? Kate...? Heidi? There had been so many new names and faces to learn since she’d started at this premier maternity hospital she’d become a bit dizzy with trying to remember them all... She ran through the names in her mind again...
High on the hill was the highest nurse... Heidi!
She squinted at her boss’s name tag.
Heidi.
Ha! Excellent. The memory games she’d been playing were paying off. She knew she’d battle her dyslexia one way or another. She’d done enough to get this far in her medical career, though it would never take the sting out of the fact that she’d most likely never become the doctor she’d always dreamt of being.
“Sorry to interrupt, love, but I think you might want to see this.”
Cailey gave the infant—Beatrice Chrysanthemum, according to her name card—a final nuzzle before settling her back into the tiny bassinet and following Heidi along to the staffroom, where a television was playing on a stand in the corner of the room.
It was a news channel. The ticker tape at the bottom of the screen was rolling with numbers...casualties? Cailey’s eyes flicked back up to the main news story. There were familiar-looking buildings—but not as she was used to seeing them.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Emily walk in, reach for the remote and turn up the volume. At first the English words and the images of a Greece she didn’t quite recognize wouldn’t register. They were a series of disconnected phrases and pictures that weren’t falling into place.
“Isn’t that the island you’re from?” Emma prompted. “Mythelios?”
Cailey nodded in slow motion as everything began falling into place.
An earthquake. Fatalities. Ongoing rescue efforts.
Her heart stopped still. The pictures of devastation had switched to a live interview being conducted outside the clinic in the fading daylight.
Of course it was him. Who else could command the world’s attention?
There, front and center, more breathtakingly gorgeous than she’d allowed herself to remember, was Dr. Theo Nikolaides,