first day of work with rosy-cheeked panache. There were tulips blooming all over the place in London! How long was it going to take the Isle of Dunregan to catch up?
“Dr. O’Shea?”
A cheery fifty-something woman rode up alongside her, kitted out in a thick waterproof jacket, boots, woolen mittens, hat...everything Kali should’ve been wearing but wasn’t. Her green eyes crackled with mischief...or was that just the weather?
“Yes.” Kali smiled, then grimaced as the wind took a hold of her facial features. She must look like some sort of rubber-lipped cartoon character by now!
“Ailsa Dunregan.” She hopped off her bike and walked alongside Kali, and laughed when Kali’s eyes widened. “Yes. I know, it’s mad, isn’t it? Same name as the island. Suffice it to say, my family—or at least my husband’s family—has been here a long time. My family’s only been here a few hundred years.”
Hundred?
“How’d you know it was me?”
Ailsa threw back her head and laughed. The sound was instantly yanked away by the wind. “Only someone not from Dunregan would—”
Kali struggled to make out what she was saying, her own thoughts fighting with the wind and making nothing comprehensible.
“Sorry?” Kali tried to push her bike a bit closer and keep up the brisk pace the woman was setting.
“I’m the practice nurse!” Ailsa shouted against the elements. “I get all the gossip, same as the publican, and not too many people come to the island this time of year.”
Kali nodded, only just managing to keep her bike upright with the approach of another gust.
“It has its merits!” Kali shouted back when she’d regained her footing.
“You think?” Ailsa hooted another laugh into the stratosphere. “If you’re after a barren, desolate landscape...” she groaned as her own cycle was nearly whipped out of her hands “...you’ve come to the right place!”
As if by mutual agreement they both put their heads down, inching their cycles along the verge. Kali smiled into the cozy confines of her woolen scarf—her one practical nod to the subzero temperature. Compared to the other obstacles she’d faced, this one was easy-peasy. Just a healthy handful of meters between her and her new life.
No more hiding. No more looking over her shoulder. Okay, so she still had a different name, thanks to the heaven-sent Forced Marriage Protection Unit, and there were a boatload of other issues to deal with one day—but right here, right now, with the wind blowing more than the cobwebs away, she felt she really was Kali O’Shea. Correction! Dr. Kali O’Shea. Safe and sound on the uppermost Scottish Isle of Dunregan.
As if it had actual fingers, the frigid tempest abruptly yanked her bicycle out of her hands, sending her into a swan dive onto the rough pavement and the bicycle skidding into the ditch. The deep ditch. The one she’d have to clamber into and probably shred her tights.
She looked down at her knees as she pressed herself up from the pavement. Nope! That job was done already. Nice one, Kali. So much for renaming herself after the goddess of empowerment. The goddess of grace might’ve been a better choice.
“Oh, no! Are you all right, darlin’?” Ailsa was by her side in a minute.
Kali fought the prick of tears, pressing her hands to her scraped knees to regroup. C’mon, Kali. You’re a grown woman now.
If only...
No. Focus on the positives. She didn’t do “if onlys” anymore.
“What’s going on here?”
A pair of sturdy leather boots appeared in Kali’s eyeline. They must go with the rich Scottish brogue she was hearing.
“You pulling patients in off the streets now, Ailsa?”
Kali’s eyes zipped up the long legs, skidded across the thick wax jacket and landed soundly on... Ooh... She’d never let herself think she had a type, but this walking, talking advert for a Scandi-Scottish fisherman type with...ooh, again!...the most beautiful cornflower-blue eyes...
She swallowed.
He might be it. There was something about him that said...safe.
Thirtyish? With a straw-blond thatch of hair and a strong jawline covered in facial hair a few days past designer stubble to match. She’d never thought she was one to go for a beardy guy, but with this weather suddenly it made sense. She wondered how it would feel against her cheek. Reassuringly scratchy or unexpectedly soft?
She blinked away the thought and refocused.
He was no city mouse. That was for sure. It wouldn’t be much of a step to picture him on a classic motorbike, lone wolfing it along the isolated coastline. And he was tall. Well... Everyone was tall compared to her, but he had a nice, strong, mountain-climber thing going on. You didn’t see too many men like that in London. Perhaps they were all hiding out here, in Scotland’s subarctic islands, waiting to rescue city slickers taken out by the elements.
“All right, darlin’?” He put a hand on her shoulder, his eyes making a quick visual assessment, gave a satisfied nod and headed for the steep embankment. “Here, I’ll just grab your bicycle for you.”
Chivalrous to boot!
Strange how she didn’t even know him and yet her shoulder seemed to almost miss his touch when he turned toward the ditch.
Kali’s hormones all but took over her brain, quickly redressing her Knight in Shining Gore-tex in Viking clothes. Then a kilt. And then a slick London suit, just to round off the selection. Yes. They all fit. Every bit as much as his hardy all-weather gear was complementing him now. Maybe he’d just come from an outdoor-clothing catalog shoot.
“Brodie?” Ailsa called to him as he affected a surfing-style skid down the embankment toward the ditch. “She’s no patient! This is Kali O’Shea. The new GP.”
“Ah.”
Brodie came to a standstill, hands shifting up to his hips. His bright blue eyes ricocheted up to Kali, to Ailsa and then back to Kali before he took a decisive step back up the bank.
Kali’s eyes widened.
Was he taking back his generous offer?
Abruptly he knelt, grabbed the bike by a single handle and tugged it out of the ditch.
“Here you are, then.”
In two long-legged strides he was back atop the embankment, handing over the bike as if it were made out of pond scum...which, now, it kind of was. In two more he was slamming the door to his seen-better-days four-by-four, which he’d parked unceremoniously in the middle of the road.
Brake lights on. Brake lights off.
And with a crunch of gravel and tarmac...away he went.
“Oh, now...” Ailsa sent Kali a mortified look. “That was no way...” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen
