Love Islands: Red-Hot Sunsets. Jane Porter
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immediately. It’s a little after five in the morning.’
‘But why?’
‘Don’t ask questions, Katy. Just do it.’ He forged into the room and began opening drawers, yanking out a pair of jeans, quickly followed by the first tee-shirt that came to hand. Even at that hour in the morning, it would be balmy outside. ‘Maria is sick.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Very sick. It has all the makings of acute appendicitis. Any delay and peritonitis will kick in, so you need to dress and you need to dress fast. I can’t leave you on this yacht alone.’
Katy dashed into the bathroom and began stripping off the oversized tee-shirt she slept in, replacing it with the jeans and tee-shirt she had grabbed from his outstretched hand.
‘Do you think I might get up to no good if you’re not around to keep an eye on me?’ she asked breathlessly, only half-joking because that deeply intimate step she had taken with him had clearly not been a deeply intimate step for him. He was a man who could detach, as he had made perfectly clear.
‘Not now, Katy.’
‘How will we get her to the hospital?’ She flushed, ashamed that her thoughts had not been one hundred percent on the woman of whom she had grown fond during the short time she had been on the yacht.
‘Not by helicopter,’ Lucas told her, his every movement invested with speed as he took her arm and began leading her hurriedly out of the bedroom. ‘Too long to get my pilot here and nowhere to land near the hospital.’
They were walking quickly to a part of the yacht Katy hadn’t known existed, somewhere in the bowels of the massive cruiser.
‘Fortunately, I am equipped to deal with any emergency. And to answer your earlier question...’ He briefly glanced down at her, rosy, tousled and so utterly adorable that she literally took his breath away. ‘I’m not taking you with me because I think you might get up to no good in my absence. I’m taking you with me because if something happened to you and I wasn’t around I would never forgive myself.’
Something flared inside her and she felt a lump in her throat, then she quickly told herself not to be an idiot, because that wasn’t a declaration of caring; it was a simple statement of fact. If she was left alone on the yacht and she needed help of any sort, she would be unable to swim to shore and unable to contact him. How would he, or anyone in his position, be able to live with that?
Things were happening at the speed of light now. In a move she thought was as impressive as a master magician’s sleight of hand, the side of the yacht opened up to reveal a speedboat, an expensive toy within an expensive toy. Maria, clearly in a great deal of pain but smiling bravely, was waiting for them and was soon ensconced, to be taken to the island.
Dawn was breaking as they hit the island, a rosy, blushing dawn that revealed lush trees and flowers and narrow, winding roads disappearing up sloping hills.
A car was waiting for them, a four-wheel drive with an elderly man behind the wheel. They reached the town in under half an hour and then Maria was met in Accident and Emergency and whizzed through in a wheelchair, everything moving as though orchestrated.
Katy had barely had time to draw breath. Only when the older woman had been wheeled into the operating theatre, and they were sitting in the small hospital café with a cup of coffee in front of them, did she begin to pay attention to her surroundings...and then it registered.
‘Your name is all over this hospital...’
Lucas shifted uncomfortably and glanced around him. ‘So it would seem.’
‘But why?’
‘My money went towards building most of it.’ He shrugged, as though that was the most natural response in the world. ‘My father’s family owned a villa here and he spent his holidays on the island with my mother and me when I was very young. It’s about the only thing my father didn’t end up giving away to one of the ex-wives who fleeced him in their divorce proceedings. I expect he had strong sentimental attachments to it. There was a prolonged period when the villa got very little use but, as soon as I was able, I began the process of renovation. I have the money, so when the head of the hospital came to me for help it was only natural for me to offer it.’
It felt odd to be offering her this slither of personal information and for a few seconds he was uncomfortable with what felt like a loss of his prized self-control.
What was it about this woman that made him behave out of character? Not in ways that should be disconcerting, because she neither said nor did anything that raised red flags, but still...
He was intensely private, not given to sharing. However, this was the first time he had been on the island with any woman. He rarely came here but, when he did, he came on his own, relishing the feeling of being swept back to happier times. Was Katy’s necessary presence here the reason why he was opening up? And why was he making a big deal of it anyway? he thought with prosaic irony. She couldn’t help but have noticed his name on some of the wards, just as she couldn’t have failed to notice how eager the staff were to please.
‘The old hospital, which was frankly far from perfect, was largely destroyed some time ago in a storm. I made sure that it was rebuilt to the highest specification. The infrastructure here is not complex but it is essential it all works. The locals depend on exporting produce, and naturally on some tourism. The tourists, in particular, are the wealthy sort who expect things to run like clockwork. Including the hospital, should one of them decide to take ill.’ He grinned. ‘There’s nothing more obnoxious than a rich tourist who finds himself inconvenienced.’
‘And I’m guessing you don’t include yourself in that category?’ Katy teased. Their eyes met; butterflies fluttered in her tummy and her heart lurched. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about what had happened because she had disappeared off to her own quarters, and here they were now, caught up in unexpected circumstances.
She had no idea whether this was something that would be more than a one-night stand. She hoped it was. She had connected with him and she would feel lost if the connection were abruptly to be cut. It panicked her to think like that but she had to be honest with herself and admit that Lucas was not the man she had originally thought he was. He still remained the last person on earth she could ever contemplate having an emotional relationship with, but he had shown her the power of a sexual relationship and, like a starving person suddenly led to a banquet, she didn’t want the experience to end. Just yet.
But nothing had been said and she wasn’t going to engineer round to the conversation.
‘Do you think I’m obnoxious?’ Lucas questioned softly and she blushed and squirmed, so very aware of those dark eyes fastened to her face.
‘My opinion of you has changed,’ Katy admitted, thinking back to the ice-cold man who had forced her hand for the sake of a deal. She thought that her opinion also kept changing. She didn’t want to dwell on that, so instead she changed the subject. ‘What about Maria? When will we find out what the outcome is?’
‘There’s every chance it will be a positive one.’ Lucas glanced at his watch. ‘I personally know the surgeon and there’s no one better. I’ve contacted her family, who will be in the waiting area, and as soon as the operation is over I’ve asked to be called. I don’t anticipate any problems at all. However...’
‘However?’
‘It does mean that there will be a small change of plan.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘We will no longer be based on the yacht. For a start, without Maria around, there will be no one to attend to the cooking and all the other little things she takes care of, and it’s too late to find a replacement who can stay on board. So we’ll have to relocate to my villa. I can get someone to come in on a daily basis and, furthermore, I will be on hand in case there are any complications following surgery.’
He paused. ‘Maria worked for my father before he...began steadily going off the rails. My mother was very fond of her, so I’ve made sure