‘Now you’re all here, let me introduce you,’ the captain was saying, but the only name Maggie heard was that of the ship’s doctor—and he was called Bradshaw, not Palmer, which blew her newly formed theory that he might be Gerald’s son! Perhaps it was just coincidence that such an eligible man had suddenly appeared at her side?
Her mind fell over laughing at the very idea. Where Lucinda was involved, coincidences simply didn’t happen—they were ruthlessly arranged. And anyway, there was still the question of the strategic positioning of her cabin.
Stifling the urge to laugh, Maggie looked up and encountered a boyish grin under a straight, slightly aquiline nose. She wondered if he was in on the conspiracy. He bowed slightly towards her.
‘Miss Wells,’ he murmured. ‘Welcome to the Island Pearl. What do you think of the old bucket so far?’
Maggie smiled. So what if it was all set up? She might as well have some fun. ‘She’s lovely—I think I’m really going to enjoy it.’
‘We shall see that you do,’ Captain Rodrigues interrupted. ‘I’m sure Dr Bradshaw would be delighted to keep you company—Miss Wells’s grandmother was to have accompanied her, Ben, but at the last minute she became unwell.’
‘How unfortunate,’ the doctor said smoothly. ‘I’ll have to see if I can’t step into her shoes, at least for part of the time.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Maggie told him with a laugh. ‘She’s forever trying to marry me off!’
One eyebrow quirked above his extraordinary grey-blue eyes. ‘Really? I wouldn’t have thought that would be very difficult.’ His eyes travelled lazily over the contours of Maggie’s figure, lovingly revealed by the sensuous drape of the midnight-blue silk jersey.
She shifted uncomfortably, forced a bright smile and met his eyes challengingly. ‘I’m extremely picky,’ she told him frankly.
A slow smile lit his eyes. ‘You can afford to be. After all, you’ve got plenty of time—how old are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two, maybe?’
‘I’m twenty-eight—not that it’s any of your business,’ she retorted, irritated that she should feel flattered by his implication of immaturity. Perhaps Lucinda’s constant exhortation not to do or think anything ageing was rubbing off on her?
‘You must move in exclusively female circles,’ he said, and his lids lowered as he reappraised her.
She decided to turn the tables on him, and, leaning back in her chair, she turned half towards him and studied him openly.
‘How old are you, Dr Bradshaw?’
‘Ben. I’m thirty-one.’
‘Single?’
‘So far.’
‘Any—er—commitments?’
His lips twitched. ‘Not at the moment.’
She let her eyes trail slowly over his body. ‘You must move in exclusively male circles,’ she murmured.
He gave a short, appreciative laugh.
‘Touché.’ He raised his glass to her in a silent toast, and sipped the smooth red wine before setting the glass down and turning his attention back to her. ‘So, Miss Wells——’
‘Maggie.’
‘Maggie. What do you do to occupy your time when you aren’t gallivanting around the world with or without your matchmaking grandparent?’
She chuckled. ‘I work with children,’ she told him, half truthfully.
‘A teacher?’
‘No—I work in a hospital, actually.’
‘A nurse?’
‘No—I——’
‘Occupational therapist? Physio?’
She thought of the endless hours on duty, sometimes as many as a hundred and twenty hours a week. ‘Dogsbody, really,’ she replied with a tinge of bitter irony.
‘I’m sure they love you,’ he said, and she was surprised at the sincerity in his voice. ‘You have an openness, a frank honesty; kids like that.’
She thought of some of the painful procedures it was often her duty to perform, and shook her head. ‘I don’t know if they love me, but I do my best for them. It isn’t always enough.’
She glanced up and surprised a look of pain that twisted his features briefly.
‘No,’ he replied quietly. ‘It isn’t always enough, and sometimes it’s too much.’
She was saved from an inane reply by the arrival of the first course, a delicious hors-d’oeuvre.
She made her selection and nibbled the smoked salmon trout thoughtfully. So, her lightweight, playboy doctor had hidden depths, did he? Even more important, then, that she should keep a distance from him, because, while she could easily talk herself out of falling for an emotional lightweight, she had the uneasy feeling that for all his flirting Ben Bradshaw was anything but, and if they found too much common ground—well, it could be a disaster. She speared a king prawn with more force than was strictly necessary.
Maggie was no fool. She knew she was ripe for picking, but, having escaped the somewhat fumbled clutches of her generation of medical students, she was in no hurry now to hurl herself at the first half-decent man who came along—especially not one who was apparently in hiding from some demon in his past.
A hundred years ago, she mused, he might have joined the Foreign Legion. Now he was condemned to dishing out Kwells to pampered old ladies and bandaging the occasional twisted ankle resulting from an over-enthusiastic game of deck quoits!
And yet, despite her determination to keep her distance, as the food came and went and conversation ebbed and flowed around her, she found her glance straying to his face, and her thoughts straying to his words. She wondered what might have happened when his best had obviously been too much, and thought again of little Samuel Grainger whose fight had been so brief, and for whom her best had fallen a long way short of the mark.
‘Penny for them?’
She glanced quickly up, and saw that, above his smile, his eyes were concerned, as if her face had revealed too much. She shook her head. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. So tell me, Ben, what do I have to look forward to in the next few days?’
He laughed and eased back in his chair. ‘Almost anything. What would you like to do tonight—a quiet drink in the bar, flirting with Lady Luck in the casino, a film, or something romantic—dancing on deck in the moonlight, with the wind in your hair and the bright gleam of the phosphorescence leaving a sparkling trail in our wake?’
His voice had softened and deepened, and she was caught in the magnetic snare of his eyes, unable to look away.
‘That sounds almost too good to be true,’ she found
