nightmare, don’t you?” she said as she slid back into bed, finally putting her head down on the pillow. That spoken like the true corporate head she was. Bottom line, profit margin—the terms of her medical world on any given day, with the need of a good haircut not ever taken into account. They needed money in order to run all their medical facilities, to pay wages, to dispense medicine and perform surgeries, to make people better. A good haircut didn’t get any of that done, but she did admire the sentiment. Just couldn’t relate to it. Or incorporate it into her clinics and hospitals.
“A medical corporation’s nightmare maybe,” he contended, “but every patient’s friend. That’s the part I like. It’s the way medicine should be practiced, and it isn’t done much that way any more.”
Interesting man. Handsome like she’d never imagined in a man, and with ideals, too. She liked that. Liked it a lot.
She liked him, too. “But is it the part your clinic’s owner likes?”
“I’m not sure what she likes,” Grant admitted. “Especially lately. Look, why don’t I go see about those pills? You need to rest, and I need to go see a patient. I’ll catch up with you later, after you’ve had a nap.” He chuckled. “And if you’re a betting woman, maybe we could make a little wager on whether or not the prochlorperazine will make you groggy.”
“Normally, I might take you up on that, but I’m afraid you’ll win, and I’m not a very good loser.” Thirty minutes later, after taking her pill, Susan shut her eyes and conjured up the image of her surfer Adonis while she drifted off to sleep. But just on that edge between full awareness and dream his image changed, then she was rocked gently into her bliss with the image of Dr Grant Makela fluttering around her fading consciousness.
CHAPTER THREE
IT HAD been an awfully long day, and not a particularly good one at that, all things considered. Death had a way of flattening out the rest of the day, no matter how many good things came after it. The death of that Harris boy had been no exception even though, technically, he hadn’t been the physician to work on him. Still felt the same, though. Still filled him with that down-to-the-bone tiredness that took a long, slow toll.
Dragging himself through the door of his home, a tiny cottage sitting directly adjacent to the clinic, Grant kicked off his sandals and dropped down into his bed. “Call me in an hour,” he’d told the floor nurse as he’d left, even though he doubted he’d actually fall asleep. Not with images of that boy’s death so fresh. Not with images of Dr Susan Cantwell’s pain so vivid.
But not sleeping was okay, because he was doing it outside the clinic walls, which was what he needed from time to time…to get away. Even if only a few feet away. In his life, there weren’t very many separations. Work, personal life, personal life, work…it was all pretty much the same. All of it relative to the fact that he kept his needs simple. Give him a good wave to catch once or twice a day, a great board for riding those waves, a few weeks a year to spend working with Operation Smiling Faces—a volunteer group of medics who did facial reconstruction for children living in areas where those services weren’t available—let him have an occasional plane to fly, and his medical practice. That’s all it took to make him happy.
A year ago, he’d thought Alana was part of that mix, but he’d been wrong about that. Damn, had he been wrong! So wrong, in fact, that he’d sworn off the finer sex for the foreseeable future. She’d had a beautiful face, nice curves, big goals. But none of those goals were his. On top of that, she’d had more needs than any one person had a right to.
A year of that and he was glad to be alone again. Still feeling the sting in a bad way, though.
Fluffing the pillow behind his head, trying to forget about Alana, Grant pushed his ex out of his head with thoughts of Susan Cantwell. Kekoa. Brave, courageous. That would be her Hawaiian name because she was brave and courageous, even if she wasn’t feeling like it right now.
Susan… He’d enjoyed watching her on the beach these past few mornings. Certainly, he’d never expected that she was a doctor. A good one, judging by the way she’d worked so hard to save that boy when the inevitable had been obvious. That was dedication above and beyond the call of duty. And showed a refreshing passion.
Of course, he’d had his fair share of death to deal with here on the island, which had shaken him to the core each and every time. Some were catastrophic, some natural, but none ever nice. So he knew how she was feeling—knew that emptiness, that sense of loss, the feeling that you weren’t good enough.
Yet the way she’d gone at the CPR—with such a vengeance. Definitely kekoa. Too bad she wouldn’t be here long enough for him to help her understand that. But she was impatient. Someone who lived a complicated life. He could see, right off, that her mind was clicking away on a faster track than she showed on the outside. It was apparent in her eyes, in the way she’d looked at him, yet, at the same time, had looked far past him to something else that pulled in her deepest attention.
Once she felt steady enough, she’d be gone. Back to whatever kind of stressful life she lived. People like that came here all the time—came to relax, to get away from their tensions and look for something slower. They spent fifty weeks a year in a nerve-fraying lifestyle then figured that two laid-back Hawaiian weeks would cure everything. That was something he saw here every day, saw those people stretching out on the beach with their cell phone in one hand, popping antacids with the other, thinking that was unwinding. They got away from their life, yet they didn’t.
Yes, that was Susan, or his first impression of her, anyway. And he usually trusted his first impressions. After all, he’d watched her wrestle with that damned floppy hat for three days now, always fighting the urge to do something more than merely take the holiday she’d planned for herself. It had been obvious, even from afar, that she wasn’t the type to spend leisure time on the beach. She ached for more, lived and breathed a frenzied life. And now that he was up close…well, if he were a betting man, she’d be a sure thing. But his preference was the ones who fooled him, the ones who put that cell phone away and tossed their antacids into the trash. They were the long shots, but he’d take a long shot for the best results any day.
Unfortunately, he didn’t see Susan as a long shot. Too bad because she needed to loosen up more than anybody he’d seen in quite a while. She wouldn’t return to the beach, wouldn’t wrestle with that hideous hat any more. And unless he missed his guess, she was already thinking about going right back to whatever she’d been trying to get away from.
Already, he missed that part of his morning where she watched him from afar as he watched her. Well, that was a stupid thing to do, anyway, so maybe it was for the best that it was over. Getting attached to Susan on any level was a mistake. Getting attached to any woman was a mistake. Just look what the last woman in his life had cost him!
Stupid or not, though, Grant drifted off to sleep wondering what it would be like to work with Susan, to have her stay there at Kahawaii for a few days.
She felt rested this morning, which was hard to believe, having spent the night in the rather small hospital bed. She struggled to keep her eyes shut against the light streaming in through the window. She didn’t want to look yet. Didn’t want to wake up, or see the activities of all the early beach-goers off in the distance, swimming, relaxing, collecting shells…
Surfing.
There was no amount of rest sufficient for that, so she just wouldn’t look. Out of sight, out of mind. Amazingly, as Susan indulged herself in avoidance for the next few moments, keeping her eyes shut to the world, the face of the young man on the beach she feared would pop into her mind
