outside. She could understand being busy, but lack of hygiene and sterility were things she wouldn’t stand for.
Once she stepped from the rickety dock onto the boat, her heart sank. More peeling paint and the deck’s wooden surface was gouged and pitted. ‘You see patients onboard?’
‘Yes, in the exam-room-slash-surgical-suite.’
Surgical suite. Wow. And maybe they still bored holes in skulls, too. She forced her tongue to the roof of her mouth and held it there, where it couldn’t flap around and say things she would later regret.
Their next stop was the galley. Stevie was relieved to find the food preparation area neat and tidy. ‘Where do you get your drinking water?’
‘The river. The filtration unit on the counter was donated by a relief agency. It’s a three-stage system that filters out particles and then zaps the water with UV rays to kill most bacteria. We can send it through an additional stage that injects a chlorine solution in areas where cholera is endemic.’ A lean finger hooked around the handle of an empty plastic bottle and lifted it. ‘Before the filter, we had to carry clean water aboard in these, which made scrubbing for surgery a complicated affair.’
‘I can imagine.’ She wandered over to the rectangular unit. The metal casing was spotlessly clean. She relaxed a bit. Maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as she’d feared. ‘I knew filters like this existed, but wow. It looks like something NASA would have.’
‘I hear the system used on the space station is similar.’
Matt lounged against a nearby doorframe, one shoulder propped against the wooden surface, observing her. Although lean, his body filled the opening, his dark silky hair brushing the top of the frame. She swallowed, feeling trapped all of a sudden and not sure why. He wasn’t threatening in a scary kind of way.
She rephrased that thought. He was scary, but only because he made her blood rush through her veins simply by looking at her. And that made the man doubly dangerous, since she could no longer trust herself to make wise choices when it came to the opposite sex. Meeting problems head on might work for some people, but for Stevie, avoidance was now the name of the game. And that included avoiding the six-foot-two-inch problem who stood right in front of her.
‘Com licença, Mateus.’ The voice came from behind him, and Matt moved into the room to let the crew members pass.
Mateus, the Portuguese equivalent of Matthew.
So they did go by first names, just like Matt had said. She liked that. Michael would have insisted on formality at all costs. He’d said that to get respect, you had to demand respect. She used to agree, but now she wondered. That kind of respect could be lost in the blink of an eye—or behind the closed doors of an examination room. Besides, she sensed an admiration from these men that wasn’t a result of social standing or titles, but something earned through time and trust.
Would she ever be included in their little circle? Probably not.
‘We’ve put the new doctor’s bags in your room.’
Dull color crept into Matt’s face, and Stevie sensed her scalp heating as well. They’d put her bags in his room? She hovered between saying ‘Thank you’ and squeaking out the protest that scrabbled up her throat, seeking the nearest exit. Before she could do either, Matt wrapped a hand around her upper arm. ‘I’ll show you where your things are.’
As soon as they were through the door, she planted her heels to stop their forward motion, ignoring the way the warmth from his fingers burrowed beneath her skin. Uh-oh. There went that blood-rushing-through-the-veins sensation again.
She tugged free of his hold, furious with herself for having any kind of reaction at all.
‘Why did they put my suitcases in your room? I don’t know what’s going on, but—’
‘Not here. Let’s get out of earshot, okay? They’ve already got enough to gossip about for the next two weeks. We all thought the new doctor was going to be … well, a man. Now you see why it’s so complicated.’
She didn’t. Not at all. ‘Just have them move my bags to another room.’
His brows went up. ‘You’d rather sleep with Nilson and Tiago in the crew’s quarters, then?’
‘What? No, of course not. There must be somewhere else.’
He walked down the narrow aisle, forcing her to follow him. She noted he had to hunch his shoulders to accommodate the low ceiling. ‘There’s not. The space is cramped as it is, there are no extra rooms.’
No wonder he’d flipped out when he’d realized ‘Stefan’ was a woman. Kind of hard to avoid someone when you had to share a bedroom with him. What was she going to do? Lordy, what if he only had one bed in that room?
She’d camp on deck if she had to.
And risk being devoured by mosquitoes?
Maybe.
They came to a doorway, and her heart raced as Matt pushed it open, motioning her through. She squeezed by him, careful not to touch, but all the precautions in the world couldn’t prepare her for the clean masculine scent that followed her into the room. It permeated the space, branding everything in it as his. If she stayed here, would it mark her as well?
She swallowed and forced herself to take shallow breaths as she examined the room. Even with her suitcases piled one on top of the other in the corner, there was barely enough room for two people to stand, much less move about.
She went slack with relief, however, when she spotted two beds, rather than one. Thick woven hammocks, actually, one above the other. A shared mosquito net hung suspended from a hook, tied to the side with a worn bungee cord at the moment. But at night it would be set free, encasing both hammocks in a tight intimate circle. As if they were in their own little world.
Her hard-won composure finally cracked, allowing panic to ooze between the gaps as she stared at the folded blanket and pillow resting on the bottom hammock. A worn paperback—Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears—lay on top of the bedding. How apropos that title was.
Matt had mentioned seeing how tough she really was. They were about to find out.
Her laugh, when it came, was one cackle short of hysterical. ‘Well, I guess this means you want me on top.’
CHAPTER THREE
Her on top? Matt pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to eradicate the image that sprang to mind.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll bunk with the crew,’ he said, his voice coming out as a croak.
She swung around, her green eyes shining with relief. ‘But if their room is as small as this one …’
‘We’ll make do. I’ll hang a third set of hooks above theirs for my hammock.’
She eyed the beds. ‘That will put you almost flush against the ceiling. You’ll have no room to move.’
Yeah, almost like being inside a fabric coffin. His fingers massaged his neck muscles, trying to get rid of the ache that just wouldn’t quit. ‘Whatever
