was the last thing she needed—dredging up her painful past in the middle of the ocean, with no escape.
‘Sara Cohen! Come on—don’t walk away from me, lass.’
Fraser’s voice was a powerful lasso, stopping her in her tracks. She closed her eyes as her hand found the smooth cool steel of the door handle. So surreal.
‘After all this time,’ he said, putting a big hand to her shoulder and causing goosebumps to flare on her hot skin. ‘Weren’t you even going to say hello?’
‘WHAT ARE YOU doing here?’
‘You didn’t know I’d be on board?’ He ran his eyes over her green dress, noting the way it nipped in at her slender waist. She’d barely put on a pound. In fact, maybe she’d even lost weight. Her bronzed cheekbones were sharper than he remembered. Perhaps her hair was shorter...
She bit her lip. He still remembered the feel of his tongue running along that lip.
‘I can’t do this,’ she said. ‘Please, Fraser, not here.’
She turned from him quickly again, pulled the door open and headed down the top floor corridor of the ship.
He followed her and caught her arm gently. ‘Sara, come on.’ He forced his voice to remain calm. ‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’
A look of discomfort verging on pain flashed across her features before she pulled away from him. ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ she said, standing against the wall in the corridor. ‘But I’m here with my daughter and I’m here to work. This is just...’ She folded her arms. Then she closed her eyes, appearing unnerved by his proximity. ‘This is just not what I was expecting.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He stepped closer anyway, on the anchor-patterned carpet, till his feet were almost touching hers. ‘I thought you knew I’d be here,’ he said honestly. ‘I assumed you’d have seen the list of medical staff and would have called me, or not taken the job if you had a real problem with it.’
He could smell her perfume—different from the one he remembered. It was like an extra layer to her he’d never known, and it served to widen the gap that had clearly grown between them over the years.
‘How would I have called you?’ she challenged him. ‘I don’t have your number any more.’
‘I never changed it. You also know where I work. Remember? It’s the house you walked out of with no credible explanation?’
Flecks of amber flickered around her pupils, launching him straight back to those nights when he’d spent for ever just lying in bed next to her, observing the colours in her eyes.
‘Well, maybe I would have tried calling you if I’d known what was coming,’ she said. ‘But for now I suppose I should just try and transfer ships. If you’ll excuse me?’
She continued towards the elevator at the end of the corridor. He followed her. He hadn’t expected that. ‘Cohen, we need to talk about this like adults.’
‘Why?’
Her arms were still folded as she waited for the elevator. She scanned his tall frame as she dug her own nails into her flesh, exhaling a harried sigh.
‘Fraser, seriously, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be running the Breckenridge Practice in Edinburgh?’
‘Things change.’ He lowered his voice. This wasn’t the place to explain about that.
A voice called out behind him. ‘Watch out, mister!’
‘Sorry, man!’ Fraser had almost caused a deck hand to crash into them. The young lad was carrying a heavy crate of what looked like fruit towards them.
Pulling Sara against the wall with him, to make room, Fraser covered her hand with his against the smooth wooden wall and squeezed it tight.
‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he found himself saying. ‘I like your hair like that.’
He swore he felt her shiver. For a second he saw a glimmer of the old her, the way she’d been before she’d taken it upon herself to end things just six months after they’d started something really good. The last time they’d exchanged any words at all she’d been just twenty-five, and he twenty-six.
‘Let’s go somewhere and clear the air,’ he said, seizing his chance as the elevator doors opened. ‘Sara, you never really let me have my say back then. I understand you were grieving for your mother, but a lot was going on and—’
‘A lot is going on now,’ she said.
Her walls were back up, clearly.
‘Listen, I’m getting my stuff, then I’m going to see if Esme and I can be put on another cruise. This is beyond unprofessional Fraser. What makes you think you can trap me on a ship and tell me you’ve missed me, and expect me to just—’
‘Trap you on a ship?’ He smiled in spite of it all. The door shut behind them. The deckhand pressed the button reading ‘Deck Four’ with his elbow, still holding the crate. ‘I would never trap you anywhere, Sara. I let you go six years ago, didn’t I?’
She chewed on her cheek, looking at the floor. ‘We let each other go, Fraser. The past is the past and it’s where it should stay. I have Esme to think about now.’
‘I never even knew you had a daughter.’
‘She was a surprise for me, too.’
He frowned internally at this new information. ‘I’m so sorry—about the dialysis, I mean.’
‘We don’t need your pity.’
‘That’s not what I...’ He shut his mouth, seeing she was clearly uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as the deck hand, now staring at his crate. What a tragedy for the family, though—as if Sara losing her mother hadn’t been tragic enough.
Sara had been inconsolable after her mother had died. It had been extremely sudden. Cancer, stage three, terminal. After it had happened he’d flown to London to be with her. He’d skipped classes and his duties to stay beside her, then he’d invited her back to Scotland.
His father had been less than impressed.
He’d been under so much pressure back then, to help his parents secure the future of the practice. Remodelling had been needed, and new equipment, more staff. They’d needed money—his money, from the family trust fund.
He’d been juggling extra studies with extra work for his father, in order to qualify faster, when Sara had ended their relationship out of nowhere, citing the need to focus on her own family back in London. When she’d left him it had hit him like an avalanche.
The elevator doors were flung open. The deck hand shuffled off with his crate, without a word.
‘Stop
