She can’t resist the doc from her past!

But do they have a future?

In this Hot Greek Docs story, obstetrician Erianthe Nikolaides is returning home to Mythelios and dreading seeing her sinfully hot ex, Dr. Ares Xenakis! She’s still haunted by the devastating circumstances of their breakup. To truly heal she must share her pain with Ares, but when a scorching kiss reignites their desire, dare Eri risk her heart a second time?

AMALIE BERLIN lives with her family and her critters in Southern Ohio, and writes quirky and independent characters for Mills & Boon Medical Romance. She likes to buck expectations with unusual settings and situations, and believes humour can be used powerfully to illuminate the truth—especially when juxtaposed against intense emotions. Love is stronger and more satisfying when your partner can make you laugh through the times when you don’t have the luxury of tears.

Also by Amalie Berlin

The Prince’s Cinderella Bride

The Rescue Doc’s Christmas Miracle

Hot Greek Docs collection

One Night with Dr Nikolaides by Annie O’Neil

Tempted by Dr Patera by Tina Beckett

Back in Dr Xenakis’ Arms

And look for the next book

A Date with Dr Moustakas by Amy Ruttan Available now

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Back in Dr. Xenakis’ Arms

Amalie Berlin

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07519-0

BACK IN DR. XENAKIS’ ARMS

© 2018 Amalie Berlin

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Robin Gianna, who dropped everything and drove for over an hour to spend a day at Panera with me when Ares and Erianthe were refusing to take shape. Without her, this book would’ve been ‘Less Than’. Love you, lady.

To Annie O’Neil, Tina Beckett and Amy Ruttan. You three can make any project fun, and I’m always a better writer for having worked with you. <3

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Ten years ago...

ARES’S TIRES SPUN gravel as he tore from the access road into the parking lot at Mythelios’s only airport, but they couldn’t compete with the churning of his stomach.

At the edge of the tarmac, he slammed into Park and launched himself from the car.

Please don’t let me be too late.

His heart, still beating hard enough to bruise, hadn’t slowed for a single second since his best friend, Theo, had called him twenty minutes earlier in a blind panic—Theo’s parents were sending his little sister away. Today. Right now. Or maybe a few minutes ago if time wasn’t on his side.

He’d thought he would have more time to spend with her before they took that step—the step he now couldn’t even imagine why he’d agreed to. Her father had said nothing about Erianthe leaving the next morning...

He burst through the chain-link gate along the back of the hangar where all the partners of Mopaxeni Shipping kept their private planes. Gravel became tarmac as he pounded through the baking waves rising from black pavement. Even as fast as he could move, he might as well have been running through quicksand; every yard of effort seemed to return an inch of sluggish distance.

The same threat had been lobbed at Erianthe by her parents when they’d reacted just to the myriad ways she had rebelled. The new millennium might be well underway, but they were still firmly rooted in the past—strict, traditional, image-obsessed Greek Orthodox billionaires, who’d decided that the best place to hide the shameful pregnancy of their teenage daughter was in a convent.

Theo had never believed they’d actually send her away, but Ares had known for nearly eighteen hours. He’d just thought there would be more time before she left. She wasn’t even showing yet.

It was something else Theo didn’t know about—like the yearlong secret relationship they’d carried out to protect the dynamic of their group, their real family—the neglected children of Mopaxeni. A fail-safe in case things went haywire between them.

Theo didn’t know it was Ares’s fault his little sister was basically being exiled to another country, hidden away, with the adoption of her child forced on her by their “loving” parents. He thought his parents were sending Eri away to boarding school, so she would avoid distractions and concentrate on her studies.

He rounded the hangar and saw the plane already pulled out, door open, stairs still attached. The long black sedan her father often drove sat between him and the plane, but the darkened windows on the car blocked him from seeing whether they were still inside or already onboard.

How had Dimitri Nikolaides talked him into agreeing to give her up? To give up his child?

It had seemed like the responsible decision when Ares had gone to her father, but now all he could feel was panic.

He pushed harder, his lungs burning, unable to keep up with the demands he was putting on them in the already sweltering morning sunshine.

“You’re both too young to be parents.”

“You’ll hurt her worse if you’re married by the time you get bored with her.”

“She’s only sixteen.”

Now, seeing it all so rapidly come to pass, it couldn’t be clearer that he’d been wrong. So wrong...so many mistakes. He was losing her—he was losing them both. And then he’d lose the rest of them too.

The door stood open—there was still time. He’d tell her father he wouldn’t give up his rights to his own child. And if that didn’t work, he’d knock Dimitri out and they’d run. They’d run away, just like she’d begged him to. There had to be somewhere they could go.

Rounding the sedan, he’d reached out for the stair rails when a blur of movement in his peripheral vision caused him to slow down. Something impacted on him before he could turn to look back, and sent him sprawling onto the sizzling pavement. Weight and heat.

The air blasted from his burning lungs. Large hands—more than one set—grabbed his upper arms and hauled him up before he could get enough air sucked in to say anything, to do anything. To shout for her.

Guards. Dimitri had brought guards.

Digging in his heels, Ares tried to twist free, but air was still an issue. They began dragging him roughly back around the car, away from her. She must be on the plane.

So close. He was so close.

The adrenaline that had kept him going could hold up for only so long. Eventually all he had left to keep fighting, to let the girl he loved know he was there, was his voice.

“Erianthe!” he shouted, over and over, his eyes locked on the darkened portal into the private jet.

They didn’t stop dragging him toward the rear of the car. They pulled, and he staggered backward still, toward the hangar.

He shouted again. He screamed for her. His vision wobbled from the forced locomotion, but it always returned to the only place of hope he could fixate on.

His heart stopped, then surged into the stratosphere as he finally saw her, there in the doorway. She’d heard him.

Shrugging out of her father’s hands, she launched herself down the stairs and ran straight for him. The shining curtain of her dark hair flew out behind her, and as she got closer he could see how pale she was but for the redness around her midnight eyes.

Closer.

The men stopped dragging him.

Closer.

They let go.

With newfound strength he lunged forward, running to meet her, arms outstretched. If he could just hold her...

With all these people, even the hope he’d clung to couldn’t convince him now that there was any chance they could get away today.

If he could apologize, he’d have that to hold in his heart until he could find a way to get to her.

As he neared, ready to grab her, her face contorted. The tears he’d guessed would be there became rivers down her cheeks and she skidded to a stop, drawing her right arm back in a full swing.

A sharp blast of pain radiated from his left cheek and his head snapped to the side, sending him back a step to maintain his balance.

She’d hit him?

It took a few seconds for the situation to make sense through the expanding hollow filling his chest.

“Eri...” He said her name, the words he’d practiced in the car evaporating in the heat of her stare.

“I trusted you!” She half sobbed, half screamed, smacking away his hand as he instinctively reached for her. “I thought you were different, but you’re just like him.”

“No...” The word came out because it was the only one he could wrestle through his closing throat. He wasn’t like Dimitri Nikolaides, but he’d been tricked by him, his fears twisted, his weakness exposed. Made to doubt. “We can go—”

Her short, broken laugh stopped his words dead and ripped at his insides.

“I hate you.” The words, almost a whisper, hit him in the chest like a cannon blast.

She hated him.

Dimitri reached his daughter and began hauling her back toward the plane and onto the flight to a country Ares couldn’t name because they hadn’t told him. Somewhere far enough away that no one here would know about the baby—that was all he knew.

No hands grabbed him this time, but his feet still stayed glued to the ground.

“I will never forgive you for this!”

He wanted to say he loved her, but how could he say that now? Why would she believe him?

“I’m sorry.” He said the words, the only words he could find, and repeated them again and again.

I will come for you.

The words swam up—the words he meant to utter but couldn’t say to her. Not now, when the eyes that had always looked upon him with sweetness boiled over with such rage he could barely breathe.

The men who had been dragging him away now joined their boss in wrestling a struggling Erianthe back up the stairs.

The last words she screamed at him would still ring in his ears long after the plane departed. Because she was right.

This was all his fault.

CHAPTER ONE

THE LAST TIME Dr. Erianthe Nikolaides had set foot on the island of her birth she’d been barely sixteen, pregnant and betrayed by the boy she’d loved. Ten years on it had taken the earth actually moving and the request of her adoptive brother to pull her back.

Weeks before, Mythelios had been struck by a strong earthquake and Theo had sent up the beacon to call them home to staff the only medical facility on the island, which they were all tied to. But Theo had urged her to stay and finish her medical degree before she answered the call, so her arrival had been regrettably postponed.

The heat of the July sun baked her dark hair like coals on the back of her neck, sucking the strength from her so that every step toward the lovely three-story stucco building housing the Mythelios Free Clinic became a marathon. That was why her knees wobbled and she barely had her suitcases under control. Nothing else. Not the weight of her past and her secrets. Not the rock in her middle that came from knowing Theo Nikolaides wasn’t the only man she’d be seeing today.

Ares Xenakis had received the same call to come home that she had. Theo had summoned home the whole merry band of the pampered children of Mopaxeni Shipping, forgotten until they messed up—the men who funded and regularly staffed the clinic and Erianthe, who had nothing to offer but her skills. She’d cut all contact with her parents years ago, and that had included her trust fund.

Her training had been officially completed only last week, and she was late arriving to the disaster. She was that final piece of the family they’d forged when they’d still been counting their ages in single digits. The family that would be broken forever if the others ever found out how her seventeenth year had ended.

She clanged her way through the main entrance, her resolve to take her position at her brother’s side stronger than her ability to control the four-wheeled storage system erratically rolling behind her. One wheel caught at the door frame and her suitcase snagged just as the door swung closed on it. Perfection. It would be really great if one part of this journey could go smoothly.

She put some weight into a tug and the case snapped free, making her stagger backward into the clinic, an expletive bouncing off the teeth she’d clenched shut. By the time she turned around, every eye in the packed reception area had fixed on her with the kind of wariness that said they expected calamity to accompany such cacophony.

If the heat had left any extra air in her lungs, she would’ve laughed. The only harm she’d ever caused on Mythelios had been to herself, by trusting the wrong boy and not running away the first time her father had uttered the word convent.

The urge to laugh evaporated like water in the summer sun, but Erianthe tried to cover it with a smile, hoping to make a better impression on her future patients than that.

She’d had a week to prepare to see Ares again, to prepare for the first run-in with her treacherous parents, but she no longer had that wellspring of rage that had fueled her daydreams of vengeance in the first couple years. Now she had no idea what she should say to any of them, or even how she should feel. Ten years was a long time.

Focus on today.

The door swung shut, clamping off the blast furnace her years in England had made her weak to, and taking away the light her sun-blinded eyes needed to see.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed slowly out.

No, today was too big. She had to focus on this minute, this second. Not one of her three betrayers was presently there. She didn’t have to know how to deal with them right at this second.

It wasn’t so much that she saw someone in front of her—her eyes were still closed and obstructed by her hand—but she felt a presence in her personal bubble and opened her eyes.

“Dr. Nikolaides.”

The woman standing before her smiled, not waiting for any answer, just relieving her of her cases with one hand and using the other to steer the visibly travel-bedraggled doctor somewhere that wouldn’t affect the clinic’s image.

“Your brother is with a patient, so just have a seat in here and I’ll send him shortly.”

She clicked on a light, allowing Erianthe to see the small office she’d been ushered to—and the woman herself. Friendly, but firm, with a touch of something motherly about her—not that Erianthe had much experience with what that was like—and just enough silver hair threaded through her ebony curls to give her gravitas. To make her somehow emanate comfort as she carried on speaking in a calm tone.

Maybe it was just that Erianthe was no longer a spectacle, disrupting the waiting room, but she felt a little better. Less as if the sky was trying to press her into the rocky dirt.

The woman added something about coffee and departed, leaving Erianthe to fold into the closest chair—which happened to be one that spun.

Petra. She’d said her name was Petra.

Goodness, she had to get it together. What kind of doctor took half a minute to process something simple like a person’s name? A name she’d expected to hear, no less. The wonder woman Theo often raved about. Petra. Who had gone to fetch the magical elixir that would sharpen her buzzing senses and keep her from appearing like a bigger catastrophe than the quake had been.

The cool, supple leather of the chair reached through her light linen trousers, giving another tactile wink of comfort, soothing against the heat she’d absorbed, enough for her to notice that her head ached in a way that said it had probably been throbbing for a while.

The office door stood open and she swiveled the chair to watch through the aperture, silently counting breaths until the roar of memories she’d been trying to ignore since Theo’s call faded back a little.

The will that had carried her through those first months after her banishment forced it into something closer to a buzz. No, not a buzz—though it was just as discordant. Like her head was a radio receiver.

She stood as if at the edge of the signal for two overlapping stations—oldies and current hits. Annoying. Distorting. Confusing. Impossible to ignore. Because she knew the old song better, and it broke through the new one just enough that she wasn’t quite sure which song she was actually listening to. She could walk around in the present—she’d learned the lyrics—but the old song she knew by heart.

During the first two years after she’d been gone, the balance had been different. Her days had been filled with the oldies station, but now and then something new had broken through. Eventually she’d forced herself to learn the new words, to sing the song of today, and the balance had gradually shifted. She’d studied harder, because a mind full of calculus and physics had less room to wallow in the terrible injustice and loss of what had happened to her.

A corridor of bright light opened across the floor of the reception area, broken by a lumbering, misshapen shadow as the door swung closed, followed by the sounds of exertion. A call for help came from a rusty voice, and those she could see sitting in Reception turned worried eyes to her through the office door.

No one was out there to help. And they did see her as a doctor, no matter her clumsy, inept, socially awkward arrival.

Strength she’d been faking the whole day appeared, and Erianthe launched herself from the chair and out of the office. A man crouched on the floor beside a pregnant woman who leaned heavily on her left hip as she pressed at the right side of her swollen belly with her other hand. Six months? Seven? Less if it was multiples.

She’d made her occupation treating and helping pregnant women in distress, but when childbirth came unnaturally there was another feeling—something that twisted her insides and made her second-guess her career choice. Just for a second.

Erianthe knelt beside her, introducing herself and asking the man, “Did she fall onto the floor?”

“No. I put her down. You’re the baby doctor?” the man asked, reaching for her arm as if touching her made her more real to him, more of a comfort, and that conveyed all the trust and hope he was putting into her by giving this woman into her care.

The baby doctor. Theo must have told them she was coming.

“Yes. I’m an obstetrician. Tell me what happened.”

Just then Petra came out of somewhere with a mug of something steamy and a plate in her hand—but, seeing Erianthe kneeling beside a patient, she put them down on her reception desk and ran to get a wheelchair.

God bless her, the woman really was the dynamo Theo had promised. How had she forgotten about Petra?

The three of them got the patient transferred to the chair and Petra took control, steering them all toward the office Erianthe had just vacated and leaving them there to get files and supplies.

“You’re having pain?” Erianthe asked the woman, who nodded and pressed on her right side.

“Tell me about the pain. How did it start? Can you describe how it hurts?”

Though it was difficult for the woman to talk, within a couple short sentences Erianthe was able to determine that she was likely not dealing with a normal—if premature—birth situation.

“You were shifted to your left hip on the floor, so does it hurt more when you lie on your right?”

She took the woman’s wrist to track her pulse rate, while listening to the patient describe symptoms she had already expected: increased nausea, but only after the onset of pain, which had coincided with the sudden onset of bowel issues...

Petra returned with a familiar face in tow.

“Cailey!”

Erianthe hadn’t seen her onetime good friend since leaving the island, back when they’d become close because her mother had worked in the Nikolaides household. Cailey was someone Erianthe had always missed but had lost because she hadn’t been able to think of a way to talk to anyone and maintain her secrets back then.

Still couldn’t—not really. The first thing she wanted to do upon seeing her was confess, clear the air, but that kind of confession would only throw more debris around. They’d all choke on it.

It was hardly the time for even a proper greeting, let alone a confession, so Erianthe grabbed Cailey by the shoulders for a quick hug—she’d offer to help with the wedding when they had a few minutes to catch up. Then she got on with it, because that was what the moment demanded.

“I need temperature and blood pressure. She’s presenting with symptoms of appendicitis. Do we have a proper examination room? What about imaging equipment? I’d like to do some tests. There’s a lab, right?”

“Appendicitis?” the man asked, the wobble in his words conveying the worry of a husband and father, not just a friend. Which she should have expected if she’d given it a moment of thought. Mythelios was still quite traditional, even beyond the standards of the rest of Greek culture. And he was a good husband, if the deep furrow of his brows and the amount of lip sweat meant anything.

“That means there is an inflammation in her appendix. We’re going to check it out very well. Then we’ll know more about what we need to do to treat her. How long has the pain been going on?”

Over the next few minutes Cailey confirmed the low-grade fever that spoke of infection, and the husband spoke of having worn his wife down and made her come to the clinic after a night of increasingly unbearable pain.

“Who is our surgeon?” Erianthe would be happy when she got up to speed well enough to keep from alarming her patients by questioning the treatment options available here.

“Dr. Xenakis has the most experience,” Cailey answered.

As hard as Erianthe had worked to know as little as possible about Ares, she did at least know his specialty was emergency medicine, not surgery.

She leaned in to speak quietly to Cailey. “No general surgeon on the staff right now?”

“Ares has a great deal of experience. He got it in the field, with that unit he’s with. The one that travels to isolated areas to help people.”

Something she hadn’t been aware of. Ares was with an outreach charity? That didn’t strike her as fitting his always larger-than-life personality.

“Is he here?”

As if she didn’t know...

“He is. Let’s get Jacinda into a room,” Petra interjected, once again taking charge. “I’ll send him in. Dr. Nikolaides, do you want to change your clothes? We have extra scrubs in the corner cabinet there. Just close the door after us and change. We’ll be in the rear examination room.”

Not exactly the way she’d pictured her first day back. She had planned to say hello and tell her brother that because she felt weird about interrupting his new love nest with Cailey she was going to stay elsewhere, all the while carefully avoiding seeing Ares with the ninja-like sneaking skills she possessed only in her delusional imagination.

Now she was going into surgery with him. Another perfect point to her first day.

“You’re going to get her into CT?” she asked, snapping back into motion before Cailey could escape.

Cailey paused, the expression on her face reticent, regretful. “We don’t have a working CT scanner at the moment. Ours is on the fritz after the earthquake. I figured you’d want a CBC to check for infection?”

She waited for Erianthe to answer, but Petra kept going with Jacinda.

The CT scan wasn’t absolutely necessary—doctors had been correctly diagnosing appendicitis decades before imaging became available—but it was like a safety net. And today they would be working without a net.

“Yes to the blood panel,” she answered, weighing her options.

Flying in and out of the island was still difficult, and time was of the essence with appendicitis. She’d consult with Ares, then make the call.

Ares.

She didn’t need the warning flares her body was sending up to remind her how emotionally loaded his name was. She couldn’t even think it without those feelings of outrage and heartbreak rushing into her mouth, metallic and bitter.

Dr. Xenakis was safer. Easier on her fraying nerves.

Having something to do would help her, as it had always helped her. And helping her first patient on Mythelios would be even better. Filling up the hole that had opened in her chest with honorable duty.

The cabinet’s supply of extra scrubs needed restocking, and she made a mental note to see if an order had been made. They’d probably been hit hard in the days after the quake, when patient clothing had been ruined either in accidents or during emergency treatment and scrubs had been given out to wear instead.

She found a set of bottoms she could wear, due to the horrors of a drawstring waist, paired it with a tentlike top, then hit her suitcase for better shoes, a hairband and a stethoscope. Scrubs weren’t meant to flatter a person, and she hadn’t come home to win some kind of fashion award.

Later she’d let herself feel guilty for being glad someone needed her help. Having any kind of focus would let her meet Ares on a professional front, put all that personal stuff away—or at least make it clear to her brain what was important to the Erianthe of today: work. Personal emotional wounds, no matter how grievous, couldn’t bleed out or cause sepsis.

She’d worked cordially and professionally with both lukewarm ex-boyfriends and jerks she’d rather kick in the face than speak to, and she had never lost her cool with them. Even when there had been good reason to lose her cool. This would be no different. He was no different from any other colleague.

Closing the office door, she headed the way she’d been directed, grabbing her coffee and snack in transit, and practically inhaling half before she arrived at the patient’s room.

She reached for the knob of the exam room door, but before her hand closed on it Theo appeared at her side and immediately grabbed her in a quick hug that required she hold her arms out in a wide V to avoid dousing him in coffee.

Ever affectionate, even after the years of absence and neglect she’d forced on them both by staying so far away that his only choice in seeing her had been to come to her, this small display of affection when she was already worked up caused her throat to constrict. There was nothing she’d have liked better than to take shelter in the arms of someone she knew would always have her back. If she ever let herself ask.

It galled her how close to the surface those old feelings had risen since she’d gotten off the boat.

Turning her head, she kissed his cheek—something she could do—then stepped abruptly back. “Careful—you’ll end up with coffee down your back.”

“Glad you’re here,” he said, in that laughing way of his. “We’ll catch up after, shall we? Are you up to seeing her? Do you need anything from me?”

He was worried about her—and probably the patient too. Theo always worried about her, and one thing she hoped to accomplish by coming home was relieving that worry without burdening him with the secrets she’d hidden from everyone. Seeing this first patient to the best possible outcome would be a good start.

She smiled, but then it wasn’t hard to smile at her almost inhumanly good-natured brother. “I didn’t walk here, or cross loads of time zones. I’m completely fine. I’m waiting for the blood work to get back to call it officially, but I’d be very shocked if there are no signs of infection. If she needs surgery, then I’m assisting.”

He considered her for the swiftest second, then nodded. “Whatever you say. You’re the only obstetrician on the island since last spring, so you’re automatically picking up a full load of patients. We stay pretty busy, and we’re always looking for more people, but you’re going to need to hire a midwife and nurses. We’ll talk about that later.”

More bits of information to file away for later. Good. All good things. Fill her head with work—best thing for her.

Work had always saved her—or had done since the convent. The shock to her system from being sent away from everything and everyone she knew had helped kill the rebellious bent of her teenage years, but it had been the desire to provide for her child that had turned her life and her attitude around. And afterward study had been the only thing she’d had to cling to. She’d developed steady hands, a steady voice and eventually steady thoughts.

But seeing Ares again would hurt, and even walking into a room he might already be in felt like reaching into an oven without gloves on—stupid, dangerous, damaging...

She knocked and entered. Her eyes sought every corner of the room, and when they failed to find Ares anywhere, they found their focus instead.

Cailey had peeled the paper backing off a bandage and applied it to the crook of Jacinda’s arm; the blood was already drawn.

The husband hovered, tears in his eyes.

Her patient, now in a hospital gown, lay curled on her left side. When she moved, and another pang hit her, her face crumpled in a way that drew attention to how young she was—just on the other side of twenty. But she didn’t cry out. She was not giving an inch to her pain, with the will of someone who’d already survived more than this could amount to in her life.

Five minutes later Erianthe had double-checked for signs of early labor, gotten up to speed on her patient’s medical history, and was gingerly palpating her right side in the waist region when Ares burst in.

She’d almost started to relax, but that ended the second he arrived. He said nothing, and she didn’t look over at him, but she felt him there—like the tingle of power in the air after a lightning strike.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see his height, knew him to be taller than he’d been before, but couldn’t bring herself to look at him directly yet.

“I’m Dr. Xenakis.”

A pang vibrated in her belly, like a gong calling every cell in her body to attention.

That voice wasn’t the voice that had whispered in her ear, murmured the sweet, artless words of a lust-drunk teenager, it was deeper and more resonant. Different. But the way he spoke...

She’d never have mistaken his voice for another. There was a sort of roundness to his speech, an almost magical way of making simple words luxurious, like things you wanted to touch, to wrap yourself up in.

It took her aback, and if she was going to function at all, she had to stay in the present, not go back to when she’d believed him to be the very essence of warmth, love and safety. Better to stay here, where she knew his promises had been knit with strands of bitter lies and had shattered under the weight of a few firm words.

No protection. No safety. No love.

It was different, because she knew better now.

The others—Theo, Chris, Deakin and all the professional organizations who had licensed him—trusted Ares with patients, and so would she. Because she had no choice. And it wasn’t as if she had to count on him tomorrow. Just today. She wouldn’t fall into that well of longing if she looked at him.

That little reminder made it possible, even a little easy, to finally look at him.

“Dr. Nikolaides said we had a—” His words came to a sudden, jarring halt when he focused on her.

Different, her mind reminded her simplistically. Hairy was the next descriptor. He’d always been polished, with his dark hair cut every three weeks to keep the curls from taking over. Now his hair was long. Long enough to wear in a ponytail at the back of his head. But it was the beard that really brought the difference into focus. She’d never seen a doctor, let alone a surgeon, with such thick facial hair.

The air around him still said Ares, and his eyes—those vibrant green eyes that made her hate the first leaves of spring—were the same. But nothing else matched the Wildman in Scrubs she saw now.

Still, her hands shook. Her breath shook. Her heart and belly and all parts in the middle... For a second she even thought it might be a late aftershock hitting the island, but no one else looked alarmed or off-kilter. Just her. And him—staring at her with cavernous silence.

“Appendicitis.” Erianthe forced the word out, then took Jacinda’s hand, turning her attention back to her patient.

He’s just another doctor. Just another colleague. Pretend he’s Dr. Stevenson, the brilliant jerk from your last hospital.

What would she say to Stevenson?

She’d be bold. Certain. She was certain.

“It’ll take another ten minutes for the leukocyte count to come back, but it’s a formality. We should start prepping the surgical suite.”

Another glance confirmed he’d gotten stuck in...what? The past? A desire to run? Dealing with the juxtaposition of seeing her again over a heavily pregnant belly when the last time he’d seen her she’d been carrying his own child?

“Dr. Nikolaides?” Jacinda’s voice contained enough alarm to reclaim all Eri’s focus. “Your hand is shaking.”

Damn. She smiled at Jacinda, even if it was a dodge in order to keep from talking about the fact that her focus was split. It shouldn’t be split. And it wouldn’t be. This event would pass—she’d force it down and contain it.

“It’s just a need for coffee.”

“Not because you’re worried for the baby?”

That she could be truthful about. “You’re far enough along that anesthesia is safe for both of you, and we’re going to take the very best care of you and your baby. I don’t want you to worry.”

She let go of Jacinda’s hand and got her coffee again, tipped it to take a big drink with a hand she willed steady by mentally playing through the steps of the coming procedure. Force of will and work always saved her.

Ares finally started moving and stepped around the table to the right of Erianthe. She eased higher up, to keep plenty of space between them, but despite that she still felt him enter her personal bubble, as distinctly as the whiff of ozone in the first minutes of a hard summer rain.

“Where is the pain?” he asked Jacinda, and then followed that up with all the other questions he needed to ask in order to make his own assessment.

Not a criticism, she reminded herself. Any good doctor would do the same. And Dr. Stevenson would’ve handled it far more condescendingly.

She stayed largely silent and focused on Jacinda. If she wanted to stay with her patient during the surgery, she and Dr. Xenakis needed to get over this. Be completely professional and in the present. Be strangers.

The way he looked, she could almost believe it. Ten years was a long time—they practically were strangers. Or at least she was a stranger to him. Even the strongest woman couldn’t go through all that and come out unchanged.

“It’s hurting too far up,” he said, somewhat quietly. “It’s not appendicitis.”

No accusation—just a statement. But it was an incorrect diagnosis on his part.

“In the third trimester,” she said, surprising herself by how level her voice stayed, “the appendix gets shoved out of the pelvic cradle by the growing baby.”

Both patient and husband turned their gaze to Ares, and his silence forced her to look once more at him.

She ignored the pang that turned to a swirling in her insides when she looked into his beautiful eyes.

Now he’d got past that brick wall his words had run into upon seeing her, the set of his mouth in that Wildman beard proved he felt the strain of their reunion as well.

“I assure you that I’ve seen this condition several times, Dr. Xenakis.”

He didn’t simply watch her now, and his frowning stare could mean lots of things—but none of them were good. Most likely his frown meant he was questioning her diagnosis.

Shoving his hand roughly to the back of his neck, he rubbed like it was on fire. “Would you come with me to brief our anesthesiologist, Dr. Nikolaides?”

No.

Her body shrieked the word along every nerve ending, and she knew she’d gone pale by the funny looks she was receiving. So much for trying to remain calm and appear as though there was no liquid panic rushing through her veins.

She nodded—an act of will—and once that domino fell, others followed.

Everything was fine. She should be happy they had an anesthesiologist. Relief was the only acceptable emotion right now. Forget the rest.

“I’d like Cailey to stay with them,” she managed to say, and waited for Ares to fetch her soon-to-be sister-in-law, giving her a moment to reassure her patient again and project the confidence she would surely start to feel any second now.

Cailey brought the lab results with her, and Erianthe peeked at three numbers before giving a couple of quick instructions, then following Ares.

Just another room. Just another doctor. Everything was normal. This walk didn’t lead to a gas chamber. Just to a conference with another colleague.

Having never come to the clinic before, there was nothing for her to do but follow Ares to the anesthesiologist’s office.

At the end of a short corridor, he opened a door and held it for her.

Polite. Common courtesy. Normal.

She stepped in.

Tension in her shoulders spread to her chest as she scanned the unlit room. No desk. No people. Two bunk beds.

Not an office.

This must be the on-call room for the doctors. Her thought train derailed there. Rounding on him, she reached for the doorknob, her body registering her unease before she thought of a rational response.

“Erianthe?”

“There’s no anesthesiologist,” she blurted out.

He stood in her way, and that was enough to make her draw back from the door and her only escape route.

“I’ve never done an appendectomy on a pregnant woman. You want me to go with your diagnosis—I get it. She’s in a lot of pain, and her appendix could rupture before we get her to Athens. But—”

“Where is the anesthesiologist?” she interrupted, cutting her hand through the air to make him focus, because knowing he wasn’t about to attack her didn’t make being alone with him feel any less dangerous.

“Not here. They called him in already. He’s on his way. Before he gets here, tell me exactly how many of these surgeries you’ve been involved in. I’ve performed emergency appendectomies, but none where the appendix wasn’t in the lower right quadrant. We don’t have a CT scan to work from, so we don’t have a lot of options, but if your diagnosis is incorrect, this is unnecessary surgery. It puts her and the baby at risk. And the weight of that call is on me.”

There it was—the elephant in the room, its neon hide impossible to ignore. Words flew out of her. “Do you really think that I, of all people, would put a baby in needless danger?”

The color drained from his cheeks, confirming that her words had struck right where she’d intended. He stepped back from her, opening up a space that had suddenly become tight and toxic.

“No.” It took him several seconds to make that one-word answer, and in this small room she couldn’t help but look at him, watch him, try to read him—not that she’d done so well in reading him when she’d been young and foolish enough to trust him.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SATISFACTION OF seeing Ares blanch came and went in a single sluggish heartbeat. Fighting about the past wouldn’t do anything to help this situation, and Jacinda and her baby deserved one hundred percent of their focus and attention. Now wasn’t the time to talk about their own child.

Erianthe tried again. “I’ve assisted before in this type of surgery twice. I’ve observed another couple times. I’m not a surgeon, but I perform C-sections and I’ve done surgery rotations. If we had any other option, then I’d say send her off the island, but you saw the level of her white cell count. It’s possible the damned thing has already ruptured. It has to come out as soon as possible. We cannot wait.”

He held out his hand for the results and she handed them over. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to look at him, but there was nowhere else to look in order to divine what he was thinking.

Resignation was clearly written in the grim set of his lips, the furrow of his brow. “Tell me where the appendix tends to get shoved. Is the surgery usually performed with an ultrasound to guide?”

She shook her head, then waved a hand. “Imaging is used, but not usually ultrasound. I think we could do that, though, if you wanted to get a look at it.”

He nodded. “Have you ever assisted in this surgery without the patient being pregnant? Can you tell me what differences occur between the two surgeries?”

He was going to do it. Thank goodness. “I can tell you what I know, but it’s been years since I saw a run-of-the-mill appendectomy.”

“When?”

“My first year in residency.”

“How are you with an ultrasound?”

That she could give him confidence with. “Excellent.”

“That’s your other job—assisting and maneuvering the wand so we can get and keep a visual on the appendix until I understand what I need to do.”

“I can do that.”

“I’m trusting you,” he said—which shouldn’t have made cold shoot through her, but did.

She couldn’t bring herself to say anything, to pretend the sentiment was reciprocated. It wasn’t—except probably medically. Whatever might have been said or done between them, she didn’t trust him personally. She was just taking the only available exit from a burning building right now, and that was what made her stomach pitch and roll like a dinghy on the front edge of a tsunami.

“The anesthesiologist—do we know if he’s put under a pregnant woman before? It’s not as deep a sleep. And there are frequent issues with reflux, so we need a good proton pump inhibitor.”

He opened the door and stepped out, one curt hand motion beckoning her to follow after him.

Inside thirty minutes they had Jacinda in the surgical suite, were both scrubbed in and had her under. Erianthe kept the anesthesiologist busier than normal, demanding that the heart rate for both mother and baby be announced at any change of more than three beats per minute.

In her head, when she’d pictured how this surgery would go, she’d been standing on the opposite side of the table from Ares, with the patient—and space—between them. But with the introduction of the ultrasound she not only had to stand beside him, she had to be close enough that the fabrics of their surgical gowns brushed and rustled against each other.

Something else to ignore.

She focused on the ultrasound wand in hand and maneuvered the cart holding the unit with her foot, so that Ares could best see the screen.

“Here—that’s the cross section of the appendix.”

“Enlarged...” he murmured, confirming the diagnosis in that second.

Why hadn’t she thought about ultrasound to image the appendix before? Because she wasn’t a surgeon. Because she was used to modern, fully equipped hospital situations. Because she didn’t even know what equipment was located at this facility—which had to change immediately.

Moving on, she slid the wand to another position and pressed, showing the path usually taken in such a procedure. He had her move the wand a few more times, until he was satisfied with the visual and knew that he’d have room to move.

As soon as he’d made his incision the ultrasound was abandoned, and her job shifted to handing over the instruments as he asked, holding back tissue with forceps, controlling the flow of blood.

“How’s the baby’s heartbeat?” she asked the anesthesiologist yet again, probably ensuring that he’d never want to be on the same surgical team with her ever again, prompting him for readouts even if he’d only just given them.

The pattern they fell into was surprisingly easy. Ares’s hands, always elegant in their masculine way, moved with a certainty and grace his current appearance contradicted.

She’d gotten by on having faith in her coping mechanisms for so long, but she found that faith shaken before they scrubbed in. Chatter and keeping her mind occupied held the line between being shaken up and on the floor, but she couldn’t dismiss her doubts about how long she could keep it up.

However, unlike what she’d expected, he was professional. And extremely skilled.

And different.

But then so was she.

“I see it,” he said, and leaned over a bit, letting her visualize the swollen, enflamed organ.

“Goodness, it’s big. But it looks clean.”

“Doesn’t look like it’s ruptured either. I’ll extract—you examine it.”

She passed over instruments, one at a time, allowing him to clamp the organ off from the ascending colon, then repeat the maneuver from the colon side so he could make a clean extraction.

Once he had placed the faulty organ into the surgical tray, she maneuvered it around to look for any openings.

“Intact,” she announced after pressing and examining for longer than she would probably have done under normal circumstances. She needed an extra layer of assurance that her powers of observation and attention were still functioning at a high level, even with the chaos going on in her head.

Finally satisfied, she returned to his side to help flush the area with saline before closing up.

“We’ll have to check our antibiotic inventory. If there’s one you prefer but we don’t have in stock, we can have it by the evening. I’m starting her on whatever’s the best we have in the meanwhile. Eri... Dr. Nikolaides...”

Even with the face mask he wore, she saw his silent correction in the squint of his eyes. But she didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know what any of this meant to him. He’d frozen, briefly, upon seeing her. And again when she’d reminded him what the health of her patients meant to her, but she still didn’t know what it meant to him.

He could just be reacting to the worry that she was going to lose it in front of everyone and he’d have to answer difficult questions. Or he might not care at all about her, or the events that had rewired her brain to expect betrayal from those she loved.

But she told herself she didn’t care about how affected or unaffected he was. She cared about Theo, Chris and Deakin. She had to figure out how to be around Ares without losing her senses, or all those years of keeping secrets from the rest would come undone, and that would mean she’d gone through all that alone for no reason.

Theo, the quintessential protective older brother? She didn’t even have to wonder how he’d react. And, no matter what Chris and Deakin might think, knowing what had happened between Ares and her would divide the four close friends, probably forever.

Even if the clinic didn’t rely on them all getting along and maintaining their long, loving, sibling-like relationship, she didn’t want to be the cause of their pain. Every single one of them had gone through enough pain in their lives without her adding to it now, when it could change nothing about the past.

And she’d lost enough. She didn’t deserve to lose Chris or Deakin, even if they were more forgiving than her super-protective brother would be.

“Dr. Nikolaides?” He said her name as if he’d said it before, and she finally realized what he’d said about the antibiotics. She hadn’t answered him.

“I’ll look as soon as we’re done,” she said, clicking back to the present. What was the next step? “Does anyone in the lab stay around the clock? I’d like labs drawn tonight and in the morning, to track her blood count. And I want the bacteria in the appendix cultured to check for resistance.”

“We can arrange it. If not, I’ll stay and do it. I’ve done them before.”

“Do you do every job with your charity outfit?” He’d clearly learned pretty adept surgical skills there.

“We all do whatever we have to, to keep things going. They’re even worse off for personnel than we are here.”

He tied off the last suture and she clipped it, then took over swabbing the incision site and applying a good dressing. That was the next step. The anesthesia was out, and she grabbed a stethoscope to listen to the baby’s heart and then the mother’s.

“And I’m good at what I set my mind to,” he added.

Hearts were steady—both of them. Jacinda’s rate was a little higher than she’d like, but that happened with infection.

“Do we have a recovery room? I’m guessing not...?” Erianthe asked, pulling the earbuds out.

He’d removed his mask and gloves but stood watching her in that same way he had in the patient’s room, looking too long, too intently. It made the back of her neck prickle, and she felt that tension return. What did it even mean? She had no way to know what he was thinking and never had—even when she’d thought she couldn’t know anyone better than she knew him.

“She’s coming up,” the anesthesiologist interrupted.

Erianthe removed her mask to stand over her patient’s head. “Jacinda? Open your eyes for me.”

When she complied, Erianthe delivered the good news and Ares backed her up.

“We’re going to take you back to a room and look after you there.”

His voice changed when he spoke to Jacinda, becoming imbued with a gentleness that made her own throat thicken. It reminded her of the way he’d held and comforted her after the pregnancy test that had changed everything. When she’d been terrified of the way Dimitri and Hera would react to it, wondering if they could run away to be safe.

“Where are you going?” he asked her now, the voice change denoting the shift from comforting his patient to addressing Erianthe.

“Nowhere...” she croaked, then cleared her throat.

“You’re backing up.”

He did seem farther away.

A shake of her head and she gestured to the door. “I’ll go with her to monitor vitals.”

“Was the baby’s heart rate still good?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, still wanting to talk about the patient as it kept her from thinking about the way he was looking at her. “Can we bring the ultrasound to her room?”

Ares pulled his surgical cap off and tossed it into the bin, tired all the way to his bones suddenly. Too tired for gentleness, or for this weird circling around one another that they were doing.

“You take her up and I’ll bring it in a moment,” he said.

She had always bristled when told what to do, but who knew if she still had something to prove? It was a long time ago, and they’d both had to grow up in that time.

All he knew was that he needed air at this precise second, so he might as well go home. If he stayed, as was his usual custom, he’d only be stuck in a room with her and nothing to do. Judging by her actions and words so far, there was no way she’d leave a pregnant mother and child in possible jeopardy.

Besides, his own island was very close to Mythelios proper, and his boat was fast. He’d rather stagger out of bed in the middle of the night and rush here without pants on than stay in a room with Erianthe for hours, when every time she looked at him her expression seemed stuck somewhere between someone just vomited on me and why is that spider carrying a machete?

“Who is going to show me where that is and help get her settled?”

The fact that even now, when they weren’t focused on their patient, she still didn’t want to look at him said enough about her state of mind on the matter. She probably still hated him—and Ares couldn’t blame her. There was no undoing what had happened. He’d keep paying for that mistake, just as she would. But he didn’t want that heartache to spread.

He’d known it would be hard to see her again. What he hadn’t expected was the tightness in his chest that just kept on increasing. Every look at her had him cataloging the changes over the last decade. The small line between her brows said she frowned a lot. There were no faint matching brackets at the corners of her mouth to evidence smiles and laughter.

He couldn’t change that. He still didn’t know what he was supposed to have done back then—what might have made it work out for all three of them. If he hadn’t come up with the answer in ten years, he wasn’t going to now. All he knew was that she’d borne the brunt of that mistake alone—without him, without anyone.

His suffering paled in comparison to hers.

He didn’t expect her to forgive him and wouldn’t ask her to. Couldn’t even picture what kind of heart could even offer him that kind of absolution.

“I’ll get Petra to organize everyone,” he said, then pulled off his gown to fish a pen and notepad out of his pocket.

A quick scribble of his number and he laid the sheet of paper on one of the machines, waiting for her to stop counting beats for the baby’s heart and remove the buds she’d replaced in her ears before he carried on speaking.

“If you need me to run the labs, or if she shows signs that there’s a leak or that we missed something, call me first. Don’t go through someone else—call me. I can be here in ten minutes.”

She lifted one hand but didn’t immediately reach for the paper. The way her fingers curled, then stretched too hard, was like watching someone warm up before arduous exercise. Like picking up this single sheet of paper was heavy lifting and she didn’t want to sprain her thumb.

In that second he regretted his decision to leave. The way she looked at him right now, would she call him for any reason?

“What time did you get up this morning? It was a travel day for you...” Ares said, ignoring the irritated sigh he got in answer.

She could sleep there. He didn’t care. But it would be stupid, and she would probably remain at the bedside of their patient all night long rather than count on the night nurse to wake her if something did go wrong.

He wouldn’t let any of his colleagues do that in her situation, he told himself; this wasn’t specifically about her.

“Erianthe.”

“Huh?”

The sound came out like a space filler—a tone loosed purely to give her time to think of what the right thing to say would be. A liar’s sound, a way to avoid conflict, a monotone prayer that the speaker would give up on the question.

“You traveled today. You must be tired. I’ll stay. You go home with Theo.”

“I’m not...” She started to say something but then looked past him toward the door. “I’m not going to stay with Theo. I need to tell him that.”

He knew enough to know that her staying with Theo was the plan. Even if Theo hadn’t already told him that, he knew neither of the Nikolaideses would want to stay with their parents. Hell, none of them would want to stay with their parents. He’d bunked down at Deakin’s upon first arriving on Mythelios, until he’d found out his own father currently lived in another country.

“Why aren’t you staying with Theo?”

“He and Cailey should have some privacy. Chris arrived a couple of days ago, so I’ll see if I can stay with him.”

“They can keep it down, I’m sure,” he muttered, his friend’s cozy domestic bliss suddenly irritating him. “Whatever. Chris’s, then. But Theo’s is closer, should I need to call you in.”

“I’m going to Chris’s.”

His teeth clenched hard enough to make his head ache. Obviously she had no idea that she was seconds away from being pushed out of the room.

“Fine—go to Chris’s. I’ll stay.”

He could only stay if she went. If anyone overheard them bickering, or—God forbid—saw the way she looked at him... Well, it was good that their patient was unconscious again.

“I’m being kind to you, Erianthe. We don’t need to both stay, and I’m staying.”

“I’m the obstetrician.”

“I’m the surgeon.”

“So?”

“If labor starts, I will call you. Do you want to stay here and spend more time with me, pretending every second in my presence isn’t like navigating a swarm of bees? I’m already tired of it. I don’t want you here.”

What he wanted was to forget about their past—and that couldn’t happen if he had to look at her and see pain on her face. He’d been in some truly terrible places during his service, so he knew what pain looked like in all forms. Physical pain he could deal with, but this sort of quiet, chronic emotional suffering ate at him. And on her it was worse. It made him want to drag her to the airport and shove her onto a plane himself...make her go where everything wasn’t so loaded. Somewhere he wasn’t.

She didn’t move.

He gave her a few seconds and then his control snapped, and he prowled forward to stand over her chair. Their patient was oblivious still, from the lingering effects of general anesthesia, and would not witness him about to yank Erianthe out of the seat and march her to the door.

“Swarm of bees?” she said finally, shaking her head, her cheeks growing pink as her gaze swiveled up to him. A second of eye contact was all it took. “That beard must have made you poetic, Ares.”

Then, jumping to her feet, she rounded on him and jabbed a finger into his chest, her cheeks blazing now.

“I’d have to be in a coma to miss how badly you want me gone—which is fine, as I’m not all that eager to spend time with you either. I’m leaving the clinic, but I’m done running from my home.”

As soon as the words flew out his hand twitched, and it was only at the last second that he shut down the urge to grab her before she got away. As much as he wanted her gone, he also wanted to sort things out with her. It was a ridiculous and undoubtedly destructive instinct.

He could do nothing about the heat rolling over his face. “I never asked you to do that.” He’d never asked her for anything—not even explanations. And he had no idea if he should...if she’d want him to. Directly acknowledging the past would probably make this tension between them that much worse.

She fumbled the paper with his number from her pocket, flipped it and scribbled a number on the other side, then handed it back to him. “No, you were just part of what made it uninhabitable for me.”

He snatched the paper, half tearing it with the rough handling. “You were the one who never wanted to see me again. It was your decision to stay gone—just as it was mine to stay gone too. Until now.”

“That’s right. I make my own decisions now.”

“Make them at Chris’s house,” he muttered, and stepped purposefully back from her. “And don’t come back here before tomorrow unless I call you.”

“Have you been listening at all? I told you I make my own decisions, Dr. Xenakis. You have reached your lifetime limit of making one for me. I’m leaving now because I’m tired, and looking at you makes me want to scream. How about you take some time to look for a drop of civility before tomorrow? The others aren’t stupid. The only reason they haven’t figured anything out is because they haven’t seen us together yet.”

With that, she turned on her heel and walked out.

That was the first thing she’d said that he couldn’t argue with. They really had to get it together. But not tonight.

He sat down and listened for the door to swing closed behind her. A week hadn’t been long enough to prepare to see her again. Maybe he should’ve tried to call her before she arrived, to see if they could find some neutral ground.

The shock of it was that he’d spent a decade picturing the same girl he’d known. She’d stopped aging in his mind—which was right in line with how old he felt when he thought of her. Still eighteen...still stupid. Still desperate for a solution that would work out.

Happiness hadn’t even been on his radar as something that could be possible long-term—he’d learned from his parents’ string of broken nuptials how infrequently marriage led to happiness. But safety? That might have been possible. Temporary happiness. Until he’d botched everything up with her and made her leave, with their child, before he could screw them up with his own ineptness when it came to family. That was right where Dimitri Nikolaides had struck too—in his weakest spot.

It hadn’t worked out between them a decade ago, and now that girl was gone forever. She’d been the queen of mascara and makeup, which had made her look older and harder. Using eyeliner he’d seen her melt with a cigarette lighter before applying it, just so she could get the absolute blackest smudge possible. The reddest lipstick. The shortest skirts. Whatever would annoy her parents the most.

Brazen. Fearless. Strong.

Now she was fresh-faced, and somehow she looked younger to his eyes. Anytime her gaze fell on him her dark eyes were a string of long, empty nights and full of something even darker. Disappointment. Anger. Hatred...

Something bruised and broken dimmed the sparkle in those midnight eyes. How other people wouldn’t see it, he couldn’t imagine. Anyone with vision and human emotion would see right through her.

He checked Jacinda’s vitals, then the baby’s, and sat down.

If the three weeks he’d planned on staying was too long—and it was, even though the first week had already flown by—the three months he’d actually agreed to when Theo had called him was dramatically beyond the limits of what he was willing to subject himself or her to.

The second he’d seen Erianthe again—when no one had thought to warn him she’d arrived and was treating a patient—he’d seen her face and had only been able to imagine how he’d looked. God help them both if he’d looked half as distraught as she had.

When Theo had called him home, the need to be there for the friends he considered his family had made him agree to the three months requested of him.

Then his survival instincts had kicked in when he’d spoken with his boss. When he’d been asked when they could call him for his next assignment, he’d said three weeks. He’d even heard the word leave his mouth, known it was wrong and hadn’t corrected it. The word choice had been an accident, but letting it stand had been a conscious decision.

Three weeks, and now he had to keep it together only until the final two were finished, then find a way to bow out quietly when his office called him for reassignment.

A lot could go wrong in two weeks.

The door opened behind him.

Dammit, Erianthe.

He surged to his feet and spun around, readying himself for another argument, but instead saw Deakin standing there, his brows halfway up his forehead.

“Do you greet everyone that way, or did I do something?”

“I thought you were Erianthe,” Ares muttered, sitting back down. “I made her leave to get some sleep. She wasn’t best pleased with me.”

Back when they’d been together, hiding their relationship, pretending to pick at one another had actually been fun. Now lying to the men he considered his brothers stood out as the lesser of two evils. Hiding the ugly truth from people he loved was better than being the one who delivered the information that would burn everything down.

No sooner had the fire reference occurred to him than his conscience pinged as he recalled Deakin’s extensive burns; he must be getting callous to forget that about his friend.

“No one ever riled Erianthe like you could. Just like old times.”

Deakin rounded his chair to head for the patient monitors, doing what they all did with every patient—checking in. Ares took no offense and, considering his preoccupation, was even glad for Deakin’s diligence.

“She’s never been one to take orders easily. But she must’ve been tired, because she got a ride with Theo a few minutes ago. Either that or she just really wanted to get away from you. How did you make her leave?”

“I told her I didn’t want her here,” Ares answered. He could be truthful about that at least. It fit their pattern.

“Harsh.” Deakin’s one-word pronouncement came with a frown.

“I wanted to sleep for a year at the end of my residency, but she arrived in a crisis and was immediately drawn into emergency surgery.”

Ares listed what he knew, leaning back, trying to will the tension from his frame.

“She needed to go and rest, and making her mad was the fastest way to assure she went.”

“So it was for her own good?”

And his.

“Is there something you want to say, man?” he asked Deakin directly.

“Just trying to figure you out.”

“She’ll thank me tomorrow.”

They both knew that was a lie, and Deakin’s arched brow called him on it, but Ares ignored it.

“You’re grouchy as hell.” Deakin printed a short record of the EKG, dated it and went to slip it into the chart. “You sure you don’t want someone else staying with the patient?”

Not sure. The only thing he was sure of was that he needed to get off the island—even if it meant going to the tiny adjacent island where his family’s estate was. But that baby—let alone the mother—deserved his diligence. And it would be one less thing to quarrel about with Erianthe tomorrow if he stayed.

“I’m sure.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, sloughing off some of his weariness but none of the lingering agitation. “This is a walk in the park after the Sudan.”

“Unconvincing...” Deakin said.

He needed to work on his poker face as badly as Erianthe did. “Tough. I don’t need you to be convi—”

Jacinda stirred, shutting down the grumbling between them. Ares stood over her, took her hand and said her name. She woke and he repeated what Erianthe had told her—anesthesia had amnesiac qualities.

“The surgery went very well. You’re doing great. Both of you did really well.”

“The baby’s okay?” she asked, her words still a little slurred, but her confusion might be the first thing not to annoy him today.

“The baby is fine. I’m staying with you to keep an eye on you, but all I expect to see is you sleeping peacefully. Okay?”

She nodded, squeezed his hand and then was already drifting back off.

“Don’t stay up all night,” Deakin said more quietly at his side, reminding him of their previous conversation, “Get her past recovery from the anesthesia, then get some rest yourself. We’ve got a breakfast meeting at Stavros’s Taverna. That’s what I actually came here to tell you.”

“Breakfast meeting? Why?”

“Because for some reason we want to see you there with the rest of us. Full group.”

“With girlfriends?”

“No. Just us.”

Staying up all night with a pregnant postsurgical patient would be a perfectly acceptable reason to skip that land mine. He’d met with all the guys since his return, but doing it again with Erianthe there... Bad idea—at least before they’d had a chance to work out how to be normal around one another. In fact, it was the worst idea he’d heard all day.

He couldn’t even imagine them pretending to snipe at one another and squabble, in order to keep anyone from suspecting they had genuine painful issues and memories to be raw about.

“I’ll try to make it, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Barring emergencies, you’ll be there.” Deakin gave his head a small, affectionate shove from behind as he passed on the way for the door. “You should also think about shaving, if you don’t want all of us thinking you’re suffering from exhaustion. Logic says that anyone with even a small amount of extra energy would have tamed that thing as soon as they could. And it will have to be gone by the time the auction comes around or we’ll be paying someone to take you.”

“Just because you and Theo got out of being auctioned off to bored socialites, it doesn’t mean Chris and I have to carry your weight.”

There was a lot Ares would do for the clinic and Mythelios after the quake, but there had to be a line drawn somewhere. Perhaps he could buy himself...

Deakin’s soft laughter creaked through the closing door, and he added something rude about posing for the next calendar.

That bullet he had dodged, by being so far removed from civilization they hadn’t been able to find a photographer to come meet him. And he’d made a bit more of a donation to the clinic to make up for it. But the charity bachelor auction was still a few weeks away.

He’d be gone by then, if anything in the universe could go in his favor where Erianthe was concerned.

CHAPTER THREE

ERIANTHE DROPPED HEAVILY onto the side of a guest bed at Chris’s gorgeous cliffside villa. How long had it taken her to become adept at hiding her feelings? And had it ever been this hard?

If the inevitable confrontation with Ares hadn’t sucked every drop of energy from her, her time with Chris and Chris’s baby afterward had consumed the last of it.

Theo had taken the news that she didn’t want to stay with him pretty well and, after some initial resistance, had driven her to Chris’s home. He’d refused to be convinced to go home until he’d seen that she was settled in, so they’d all sat down to share coffee as he’d snuggled with little Evangelos, Chris’s seven-month-old son.

Soon Theo would be a baba himself, and if the way he reacted to his honorary “nephew” was any indication, he’d be a natural at it. Far better than their father had ever been. He would have been a wonderful uncle to her own child too...

And at that thought she’d begun to feel the weight of every atom in her body. Her movements had become jerky, sluggish, and even her smile had trembled when she’d tried to force it. The trembling was the worst part of this strange exhaustion.

It was probably a blessing that today had been a travel day—she had something to blame for her exhaustion. Everyone had certainly put her oddness down to that today, and maybe they’d let that excuse carry for a couple of days if she was lucky.

It was easy to control the expression on her face, but her body was out of control. That feeling of helplessness was how she’d lived for the duration of her pregnancy, and she’d never wanted to return to it.

First seeing Ares again, then being watched by Theo and Chris, and all the while trying very hard not to think about Chris’s beautiful baby son—who somehow managed to look like his stupidly handsome father even whilst hiding Chris’s strong jawline under chubby cherub cheeks...

None of that was within her control. Nothing felt within her control right now—no matter what she’d all but shouted at Ares about making her own decisions.

She stared out the window at the play of light and shadow of the late-afternoon sunshine through the trees in the yard in an effort to control the trembling she felt inside. At least she’d gotten beyond the point where it showed in her face and hands, but it was still there in her belly, in her chest, deeper than anyone could see. Right where she’d always tried to keep everything hidden.

Pretending that Chris was only babysitting felt immature and cold. Plus, it didn’t help. If he’d babysat for anyone, it would have been one of theirs.

Theo’s future baby. Deakin’s future baby.

She had no one to tell about her daughter, how she should have been a mother ten years ago. That she should be in the process of being driven mad by a willful tween who refused to listen, plastered her walls with posters of pop singers and thought her mother was an idiot.

Theo’s extremely helpful big-brother thing meant she had nothing to do now but sit and stare. And think. And that was the thing that would drive her mad in the end. It broke all her rules about self-preservation. Thinking about the past and what she should have had: a daughter to love and protect and nurture. A decade of memories of bubble baths in the sink and frilly toddler bikinis, living in a world of pink.

Erianthe had rebelled against all those girlie things when she was growing up, but for her daughter... She’d have done her whole house up in shades of pink for her daughter.

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