Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride. Amy Andrews
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opened her mouth to protest again, but he cut her off. ‘Isobella.’
She felt goosebumps feather her skin as he elongated the vowel at the end of her name as he had done so often on the phone, his husky voice and slight accent a deadly combination.
‘We are a team. It’s a rare event to have us all together. We have made great progress towards our goals. I think a little team-building and a pat on the back for everyone is warranted once in a while. It’s my thank-you to you all for keeping my Brisbane lab running smoothly. It would spoil everyone’s evening not to have you there. You would do me a great service if you agreed to join us.’
Isobella doubted very much whether she would be missed. Oh, she knew she was respected for her work, but she doubted that anyone felt close enough to her to miss her socially. She had, after all, deliberately cultivated distance.
‘Please, Isobella.’
His rumbled request weakened her resistance. Surely she could manage a few hours out of her comfort zone in the real world? One night out couldn’t hurt, could it? She never went out. And the big boss had made a direct request. How churlish would it look to refuse his hospitality?
She became aware of how close they were standing. She took a step back and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Certainly, Alex,’ she acquiesced, with as much formality as she could muster. ‘If you insist. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to retrieve some documents from the printer.’
Alex inclined his head and watched her walk away, her back straight, her stride wooden, her reluctant acceptance rankling.
He should be pleased. So why did her I’d-rather-poke-myself-in-the-eye-with-a-sharp-stick demeanour bother him so much?
CHAPTER TWO
ISOBELLA got into the shower with an impending sense of doom. Damn Alexander Zaphirides and his ‘Please Isobellaaaaa’. Even now it washed over her as easily as the water sluicing over her skin, tightening her nipples, causing a heat down low that not even the cool shower could extinguish.
No, no, no. That was not why she had agreed to go out tonight. It had nothing to do with his husky request. Or the way he looked. Or his wild honey smell. It was strictly a business affair. Accepting his gesture of thanks as everyone else was. And he had insisted.
Thank God he was only here for the week, if this was how much havoc he’d created in just one day. On Friday he and Reg were going to the symposium in Cairns, and then he would be flying back to Melbourne.
She only had to get through the next few days.
Or she could take some sick leave—God knew she had a mountain of it. Plead a mysterious illness. The presentation was essentially complete, so her absence wouldn’t cause too much disruption.
She switched off the tap hard and dried herself briskly. Who was she kidding? Her? Off work for a few days? She never took time off. She hadn’t had a single sick day in her time with Zaphirides Medical Enterprises. Not even last winter, when she’d caught a really bad flu and had felt like death warmed up. Hell, she hadn’t pulled a sickie—ever. Taking a few days off would cause an immense stir.
She was just going to have to get through the week as best she could. Her infatuation with him was ridiculous. There was absolutely no point getting herself into a dither over a man that she was never going to have. She’d resigned herself to her asexual existence many years ago, and no one had ever tempted her out of her self-imposed celibacy. She wasn’t about to let a man who looked as if he could have his pick of beauties ruin her hard-won reputation.
Isobella wrapped the towel around her, anchoring it under her arms, and wandered into her room. She felt edgy and stared at the clothes in her wardrobe, wondering what the hell she was going to wear. Damn it, she never thought about what she had to wear any more. She had a cupboard full of high-necked garments, and she usually just put her hand in and picked one.
But then she hadn’t gone out socially in years with anyone outside her family. And she never had to give too much thought to what she wore to work. Loose and comfortable were essential, and it was always covered by her white coat anyway. Fashion just didn’t come into it.
The fact that she always dressed to hide and camouflage her figure and that tonight she was thinking purely of fashion made her restless and annoyed. She was suddenly thinking of all the beautiful outfits she’d worn in the past. In another life. Coveting them and that time as she hadn’t in years. Why? So she could attract Alexander Zaphirides?
A man whose abrupt, dispassionate dismissal of her this afternoon had left her in no doubt of his utter disinterest? His gaze had swept over her body as if she was of no more interest to him than a bug squashed on the pavement. It was crazy to entertain any other thoughts.
And she knew better than that. Paolo dumping her had been lesson number one. Anthony had been lesson number two. Even now the memory of Anthony’s response, how he had recoiled from her, still had the power to crush her into the ground. She’d been foolish to dare even to think that a man could see beyond the physical.
She shut the cupboard in disgust, trying to beat back the memories, trying to not give the swell of despair that had overwhelmed her so often sixteen years ago any purchase. It was no use getting caught up in the bitterness and anguish of the past.
Except maybe as a reminder. Maybe a good hard look at herself would remind her that this infatuation with Alex was out of the question.
She stalked into her sister’s room, heading straight for Carla’s full-length mirror. Isobella only had a small high mirror in her en suite bathroom, preferring not to be reminded on a daily basis of her mutilated body.
She peeled the towel off her body, standing naked before the glass. She clenched her hands by her sides, still shocked by her appearance after all these years. How could she blame Anthony for his reaction when her first instinct was to run screaming away from herself too?
She forced herself to look, though. It was brutal—emotional shock therapy at its worst—but it was also just what she needed. She wasn’t Izzy Tucker the high-flying international model any more. She’d made the decision at nineteen to turn her back on that world jaded by hypocrisy and the relentless pursuit of beauty. And she’d been at peace with her choice and excited about starting a new phase of her life.
But she hadn’t been prepared for the final cruel blow that had taken her controversial decision to turn her back on a successful high-profile modelling career and punished her for it. Her life as she had known it had ended during a photo shoot on an idyllic North Queensland beach sixteen years ago. In fact it had nearly ended full-stop.
The evidence still taunted her today, as she gazed in the mirror. Her nudity didn’t register. All she could see were the marks where a box jellyfish, a Chironex Fleckeri, had wrapped its tentacles around her waist, disfiguring her, branding her with its ugly signature. And almost killing her in the process.
The purple whip-like scars that criss-crossed her abdomen were as mean-looking as ever. They’d faded a little over the years, but essentially each tentacle had left its savage mark, causing a permanent welt and marring the once sought-after bikini body that had graced many a magazine cover.
Isobella trembled with the effort it took not to look away in disgust. It had been a cruel twist of fate to have her career end on such a note, instead of on the high she’d imagined. At nineteen, being selected as a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model had been a major coup, and the perfect ending to a stellar career. And then it had all gone to hell.
Isobella secured the towel around her, unable to look any longer. She collapsed back on her sister’s bed, staring at the ceiling, allowing herself to wallow in self-pity for a moment or two. It had been a long time since she’d let herself be pulled back into the awful quagmire of grief. A tear squeezed out from behind her lids and she let it trek down across her temple.
Damn Alexander Zaphirides. She hated this. It was his presence that had unsettled her so much. Here she was feeling sorry for herself when