Rick watched Alex walk away, wondering whether his new boss entirely approved of his approach. When he turned to the nurse, she was smiling.
“Don’t worry. We all used to call Alex ‘Dr. Protocol’. Then Maggie widened his perspective.”
“You have nicknames for all the doctors?” Rick wondered whether he’d been given one yet.
“Just the ones we like.”
He’d better not ask, then. “I’d like you to keep this room under observation for a few minutes, please.”
The nurse raised her eyebrows. “You mean you want me to take over from you and listen at the door?”
“Just in case Miss Miller falls.”
“I don’t think she will. She’s pretty steady on her feet now, she doesn’t really need the crutches.”
Persuading Fleur to get rid of the crutches was already on Rick’s mental list. One thing at a time, though. “All the same, I’d feel better if you’re keeping an eye...ear open. I’ll be back in half an hour to...um...”
“Annoy her a bit more?” The nurse was smiling. “Okay, Doctor. Whatever you say.”
FLEUR KNEW EXACTLY what he was up to. If Dr. Richard Fleming thought that he could make her care again, when everything she’d worked so hard for was lost, he had another think coming. She should be with her theater company, not here, cooling her heels and putting up with a doctor who thought he could have everything his own way.
The smile was a problem. Fleur’s plan, to do whatever she was told so she could get out of here as soon as possible and take the boat back to the mainland, hadn’t seemed in any danger, until he’d smiled. And when he’d layered frank disapproval on top of that, it had been too much for her.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she got with herself. And the angrier she got with herself, the more she hated him.
That wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She’d play him at his own game, and show him that she was more than a match for him.
Rick returned to find the nurse still stationed at Fleur’s door. She nodded in response to his silent question, and Rick knocked quietly. No answer.
If that was the way she wanted to play it... Rick gestured to the nurse and she opened the door a little way, looking into the room. Then she withdrew, motioning him in. Fleur was sitting on the chair next to her bed, a pair of wireless earbuds in her ears. Rick could hear the quiet shh-shh of music.
He wondered if it was the music that had restored the glow to her face. Fleur had changed into a pair of blue sweatpants teamed with a knitted top, the wide neck falling by design from one shoulder. Her hair was caught in a loose, shiny tumble by a colored scarf and her already luminous eyes looked bluer and implausibly bigger. She was stunning.
Something told Rick that Fleur was fighting back. And the thought that he’d crawl over broken glass for one of her smiles told him that she was already winning.
She took the earbuds from her ears, leaning across to tap her phone and switch off the music. “We’re going for a walk, then?”
“Yes.” The less he said at this point, the better. He’d get over the feeling that Fleur could do whatever she liked, whenever she liked, and then he could start applying a bit more pressure.
“Good.” She flashed him a smile and his knees started to shake. “One thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I get it. Alex and Cody are playing the nice doctors. You get to play nasty doctor.”
She was onto him. Rick had expected nothing less of her, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He could still say the things that had tactfully not been mentioned so far, and he could still challenge her.
“What makes you think I’m playing nasty. Maybe that’s just how I do things.”
She reached for the crutches and got to her feet, her speculative gaze never leaving his face. “Maybe it is. I’m a big fan of old black and white horror movies, so that accent of yours is throwing me a bit.”
Rick was willing his facial muscles not to respond to her smile, but it was a losing battle. “So I sound like an old Hammer Horror movie to you, do I?”
“A little. The spooky Count Dracula, with a cut-glass accent. Living in a dark old stately home.”
She was taking him apart, piece by piece. This was much more difficult than dodging whatever she cared to throw at him. If he wanted to reach her, he’d have to give more of himself than he felt entirely comfortable with, but he was going to reach her.
“Stately homes aren’t my thing. I’m more of an inner-city kid. Let’s walk. It’s about time for afternoon coffee so we can go down to the main lounge.”
“I prefer the glass breezeway...you can see the ocean. You know where that is?”
Rick knew where that was—it led from the main clinic building to the surgical wing. Benches and planting made it a place where patients could feel connected with the outside during the winter.
They left the department, dawdling more and more slowly along the corridor together, as each matched the other’s pace.
“When are you going to start stepping out? So I have to make an effort to keep up with you?” she asked.
Right. So she already knew all those tricks. “I’m not planning on it. Clearly you can’t keep up...”
“Clearly not.” This time her obstinacy took the form of agreeing with him.
“It’s not such a bad thing. We can get to know each other a bit better on the way.”
“We could, I suppose...”
That worked. Fleur suddenly started to speed up, walking away from him. Rick hung back, studying her gait. She was tense, obviously afraid of falling, and seemed over-reliant on the crutches. But even that couldn’t conceal the straight back and graceful movements of a dancer.
He caught up with her as she reached the breezeway, and she waited while he opened the door. It seemed that Fleur found closed doors an impenetrable barrier, and he’d have to address that with her very soon. She walked across to one of the benches, which faced the sea, and Rick collected two cups of coffee from the machine in the corner, adding milk and sugar to the tray and setting it down on the bench between them.
“Since you’re new here, you can take as much time as you like to appreciate the view.”
It was clearly an invitation not to bother her for a while. The view was spectacular, snow piled on the ground with a backdrop of the iron-gray, restless sea. But somehow he couldn’t take his eyes off Fleur.
He pushed one
