Tempted by Dr. Off-Limits Read online

  ‘Give it a few minutes and a group of fresh families will come through our doors,’ Jools confirmed. ‘There, that’s the last of this batch of immunisations set up. Shall I have the next group readied for us?’

  ‘Sure,’ Elle replied, still staring thoughtfully through the window at the apparent hero of the hour. ‘The quicker we can get through them, the sooner we can move on to help the next village.’

  Thanks to Fitz, it seemed they might be able to get to even more communities and help even more locals during this trip.

  It was bad enough lusting after the guy, but did he have to make her admire him so much, too?

  She needed to get through the next couple of days and then she’d be back at the hospital and could go back to avoiding him. So much for wanting the chill between them to thaw. It seemed that, instead of helping matters, his new openness to her had only confused matters and made her all the more attracted to him.

  Clearly, in future, she needed to watch what she wished for.

  * * *

  ‘There you are. I wondered where you were hiding out.’

  Elle clutched her ration-pack hot chocolate in its steel cup—watery and tasteless, but at least wet and welcoming—as the dust storm raged outside. For two days the sky had been perfectly blue as they’d travelled from village to village, some makeshift, some well established. Thanks to Fitz and Zi, they had encountered less resistance than normal and had therefore been able to do more than normal, successfully immunising children, health-checking pregnant mothers and passing on even more valuable sensitisation information than previously planned. Elle had even convinced herself that they would get back to the hospital before the weather turned.

  Murphy’s law, however, meant that the storm hit just as her team had been loading up the last of their kit. Still, she supposed it was better than if they’d been halfway between two locations and slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. At least this was one of the largest established communities and they had shelter, a safe place to wait it out.

  At least, it had been safe before he’d walked through the door.

  ‘I’m not hiding out,’ she lied.

  ‘The rest of the two teams are in the main community hall across the square.’

  ‘And I’d have been with them if I hadn’t been packing up the last of my kit when the storm came out of nowhere.’

  ‘I think we both know you had time to get across, if you’d wanted to.’

  Elle dipped her head and took another sip of the watery drink. He was right, there was little point in denying it.

  ‘You were avoiding me.’

  There was a beat of silence.

  ‘Can you blame me?’

  ‘I thought we’d decided on starting afresh. No antagonism.’

  ‘I know.’ Elle rubbed her forehead. ‘I’m just...not sure how to be around you. I’ve never been in this situation before.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ he said wryly, turning his back to her and unpacking a small gas stove from his pack.

  She watched as he lit it, the flickering flame instantly changing the atmosphere in the low-lit room, and she couldn’t help it, she was transported back to that bar the first night.

  ‘Here, try this instead.’

  His voice cut into her thoughts as he replaced the cup in her hands with something that felt decidedly more...luxurious. As the decadent scent reached her nostrils she bit back her objection and sniffed appreciatively.

  ‘It’s not five-star-hotel hot chocolate,’ he murmured. ‘But it’s better than that ration-pack sludge you were drinking.’

  He remembered. The drink she’d ordered when they’d got room service in the early hours. It was such a tiny point but the fact that he’d noted it, and echoed it now, was touching. She couldn’t stop it. For an instant she was transported back to that night. Being in this tiny dark, supply room of the stone building, so utterly basic yet the village’s beloved town hall, was hardly the same as the relative opulence of her hotel room. And yet they were alone again, and she couldn’t help feeling oddly safe. Just as she had with him that first night.

  She could keep fighting it, but the attraction wasn’t going away.

  Her head snapped up to meet his gaze, unprepared for the hard, heated look in his eyes. Dizziness threatened to overtake her and she told herself it was just hunger from the mayhem of the last few days.

  She knew that wasn’t it.

  ‘I’m still not entirely sure what it is that we’re starting over,’ she confessed.

  If she’d expected him to prevaricate she’d been wrong. He snagged her gaze, pinning her in place, his voice clear, confident.

  ‘Getting to know each other.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘Whatever we decide.’

  ‘Okay,’ she managed. ‘Starting with what?’

  ‘Tell me about Stevie. How you let him hurt you.’

  ‘Low blow,’ she muttered.

  ‘Not intentionally.’ Fitz shook his head. ‘You just don’t seem like the type to stand for any nonsense, and yet the things you’ve told me suggest otherwise.’

  ‘You mean...the sex.’ She flushed, thinking of their conversation that first night when Fitz had dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to her sex. And so much more.

  ‘I mean the sex, the cheating. I got the impression you weren’t surprised, so I’m guessing it wasn’t the first time.’

  God, had he really read all that as easily as if she’d been an open book?

  She didn’t intend to sound defensive, but that was how it came out.

  ‘I suppose you think I was stupid to stay with him?’

  ‘I don’t think anything, that’s why I’m asking.’

  She bit her lip in discomfort, not understanding why it was so important to him.

  ‘Tell me, why do you want to play detective all of a sudden?’

  ‘It isn’t all of a sudden,’ he muttered. ‘I wanted to know from the start.’

  The irritation in his tone caught her attention. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to know, she realised, as that he had to know. He couldn’t fathom her and he was intrigued. Which meant he cared. More than he was prepared to admit.

  She inhaled deeply, formed her mouth into a perfect O and blew out. Then flashed a bitter, humourless smile. ‘The ten-thousand-pound question.’

  ‘You stayed with him for ten thousand pounds?’ Fitz’s face twisted into a mix of expressions she couldn’t identify but which she could easily guess.

  ‘You could put it like that if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like.’ His jaw locked in irritation and it surprised her that she was beginning to recognise his ‘tells’ so easily. ‘So explain it to me.’

  She sighed.

  ‘What would be the point? Apart from satisfying your curiosity? Would it change anything between us? Not, I realise, that there is an us.’

  ‘Humour me, Elle.’

  She thought for a long time, then dipped her head.

  ‘Short version only.’

  ‘Whatever you prefer. For now.’

  She chose to ignore that.

  ‘Stevie and I were childhood sweethearts. I was fourteen, he was fifteen, though we’d known each other all our lives. We were both poor kids from the worst housing estate in the area, but while his dad baled on his mum and her seven kids, my parents were the exception. I can’t remember a day when they didn’t have a laugh with each other, a joke, a hug, a tease.’

  ‘They never argued?’

  The look in his eyes was so fleeting, so inscrutable that Elle wasn’t sure if it had simply been her imagination.

  ‘Yeah, they argued. Of course they did. We had no money, and that always created tension. But they always made it up. Every single night. They told us kids we should never go to bed in anger. She was so beautifu
l, my mum, deep red hair and sparkling green eyes.’

  ‘Like you,’ Fitz said softly.

  She snorted, trying to conceal how his words affected her.

  ‘No, not like me. I have her basic components, but I’m not stunning like she was.’

  ‘Just like your mother,’ he murmured again.

  He held her gaze and it took everything she had to tear her eyes away.

  ‘And they danced, God, how they loved to dance. They could jive and swing and lindy hop like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘You told me you couldn’t dance that night in the bar.’

  She flushed, recalling the feel of Fitz’s arms around her, his fingers grazing her skin, his thigh slotted between hers. She swallowed. Hard.

  ‘I can’t. It was one of their greatest sources of amusement. But they could and they used to enter competitions and I’d go and watch. Stevie too. The kids around where we lived had no prospects, there was no such thing as a school night, and their idea of recreation was going around the back of the station to drink cider and take drugs...’

  ‘Their idea of recreation? Not yours?’

  ‘No. I dreamed of becoming a doctor. Don’t ask me where it came from, even my parents never knew, but apparently it started from the age of about five and it was all I ever wanted to be when I grew up. And Stevie, he had his football and he dreamed of making it his way out of that hellhole too.’

  ‘So you and he bonded over being different.’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ Elle frowned at his scepticism. ‘We were the outliers. The oddballs who didn’t fit in. When my mother died, my father was so lonely that he remarried. I think he was trying recapture what he’d lost with Mum, but it wasn’t the same. She was cruel, but I suppose when I look back she was jealous of what my parents had had. But Stevie was there. Back then he was loyal, and kind, and generous. He kept telling me to fight for my dream even when she was nasty and told me I had ideas above my station. She told me I was wasting my time getting A Levels when I’d never be able to afford university anyway. She tried to make me get a job in the local factory—everyone got a job in the local factory—and bring a wage in instead of scrounging off her.’

  ‘But you got to uni. You joined the army and got a scholarship and did it by yourself.’

  ‘No.’ Elle shook her head. ‘I didn’t. She was right, I couldn’t afford university. I didn’t know the army gave bursaries for medical degrees and I knew I didn’t stand a hope in hell of making it through. But by then Stevie had made it to professional league football and he wouldn’t let me give up on my dream. He used his money and he paid for my degree, my accommodation, my books, my food, he paid for everything.’

  ‘As long as you turned a blind eye to his cheating?’

  ‘No. Not back then. I’m sure of it. The old Stevie wasn’t like that. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he did. He certainly never gave me a key to his place in all those years, and I never just turned up apart from that last time. His doorman recognised me and let me in.’

  ‘So he did cheat on you.’

  ‘Maybe. But, God, Fitz, you have to understand, we were two kids from nothing. And he was suddenly catapulted into this world where he was idolised. Seems like everybody loves a footballer when they’re winning. He had fans, groupies, people who adored him, and he was nineteen with no home life to speak of to keep him grounded. Is it any wonder he let the fame and adulation get to him?’

  Fitz sneered.

  ‘You’re seriously making excuses for him?’

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘I’m the last person who would do that. I’m just saying I can see how it happened. And I wonder if I couldn’t have been the one thing to keep him steady...if I’d only cared enough to try. But I didn’t. I didn’t care enough and I didn’t try. We never saw each other, between his training and his matches he didn’t have much spare time, and by then I’d got an army bursary and I didn’t want to make the time either. So he was pretty much on his own, surrounded by sycophants and girls throwing themselves at him. The cheating started after that and things deteriorated year on year.’

  ‘Yet you still didn’t leave?’

  ‘Like I said, I felt guilty.’ Elle shrugged. ‘Not guilty enough to make an effort, but guilty enough not to leave. I didn’t want the responsibility of ending things. I think I was waiting for him to do it. When it all boils down to it, I still felt as though I owed him, that without his help that first year I would never have become a doctor.’

  ‘You’d have found another way.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘But we’ll never know. Stevie made sure I never had to risk that.’

  ‘If he was so great, why didn’t you love him?’

  ‘I never said he was so great. He was impossibly moody, and he had his father’s temper. And I did love him, in the beginning. But it was teenage love, tainted by where we grew up. We got together through circumstance, we were never a good fit. And Stevie was a brilliant footballer but...well, we could never have what you might call an in-depth conversation. If it wasn’t about football or movies then forget it.’

  ‘But when he cheated, you still felt guilty?’

  ‘Don’t underestimate guilt, Fitz. It can tie you up in knots. You can’t understand what it’s like.’

  ‘I can,’ he muttered unexpectedly. ‘More than you think.’

  ‘Your mother and sister?’ she guessed hesitantly. ‘Or Janine?’

  The room was so thick with tension Elle thought the dust storm might as well have entered the building.

  ‘What have you heard about her?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Elle confessed. ‘But you’re an eligible male around the site. You know what gossip is like. I heard she was a logistics officer and you were once engaged?’

  It took a long time before he broke the silence.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Try me,’ Elle asked.

  He shook his head but she couldn’t let it drop. It was about more than just words.

  ‘Trust me. Please, Fitz. Like I just trusted you.’

  This time he didn’t reply. The silence in the compact space grew, slowly but surely seeming to suck all the oxygen out of the room until Elle felt she was on the verge of suffocating. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, to break the spell, it wasn’t with a murmur but with a growl that seemed to explode in her head.

  The sound of a door banging open in the main room outside, interrupting with an urgency that was impossible to ignore, had them both leaping to their feet.

  A pregnant young woman, crying out and bloodied, was being carried in by an older man, flanked by at least four others, a long shard of metal debris impaled through the side of her abdomen.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘GET THE INTERPRETER,’ Elle instructed quickly as she hurried forward, trying to encourage them to bring the girl through to a gurney.

  ‘No need.’

  Grimly Fitz matched her, communicating efficiently with the group as Elle struggled to make out snippets and words in the cacophony of voices. Back and forth the conversation went as Fitz quickly established order, instructing them to bring the woman through to where Elle could examine her and eliciting information.

  His face tightened.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Elle pressed urgently.

  ‘She’s seven months pregnant, and they were travelling on the main road out there when the storm hit. They pulled over to wait it out but another car coming in the opposite direction drove off the road and into them, rolling their car down an embankment into the wadi at the side.’

  Elle drew her lips into a thin line, remembering the route from the way in. It was a fair way down, the car could have rolled a couple of times and she doubted the woman had been wearing a seatbelt.

  ‘She’s in pain and afraid for the baby.’

  His voice broke on the
last part and Elle stared at him in shock. His expression was too haunted, too bleak to be solely a reaction to this woman’s condition. But there was no time for her to dwell on it. Her priority was the woman and her baby.

  ‘Can you send one of the men to the main building, ask for Jools, and tell her to bring my medical bag?’

  ‘I’ll go. I can’t send anyone out there,’ Fitz managed, his voice filled with pain like nothing she’d ever heard from him before.

  Something in her heart broke for him, even if she didn’t know why.

  ‘No. I need you here to translate.’ Elle stopped him firmly.

  He moved to the door, not appearing to hear her.

  ‘Colonel.’ She raised her voice firmly. ‘Colonel Fitzwilliam. Fitz.’

  He finally turned at her last bellow.

  ‘You cannot go, do you understand?’ Elle said quietly but firmly. ‘You need to listen to me, this is a medical situation.’

  For a moment she wasn’t sure her words were registering, and then he snapped out of it—whatever it was—as quickly as it had started.

  ‘Major,’ he acknowledged, turning to the men and issuing the instruction.

  There was little need for discussion as two of them promptly volunteered and headed out together. Elle was relieved; there was a degree of safety in numbers. Quickly Elle moved on, turning back to the woman and tapping her own chest as she gave her name, smiling when the woman responded in kind.

  ‘Roshan, good, that’s good.’ So at least the woman was cognisant enough to process Elle’s words.

  Her language skills might not be anywhere as fluent as Fitz’s, but the army had given her plenty of phrases to assist in everyday and medical situations.

  ‘Colonel,’ Elle stated, more to establish order than anything else, ‘can you ask the men for their accounts of what happened while I ask Roshan here? Get as much information as possible.’