The Doctor's Society Sweetheart (6 page)

‘What’s the problem?’ he asked as he sat up and opened his eyes. He was in the process of reaching for his torch when he realised the intrusion wasn’t about a medical emergency. Although she stood in silhouette, he didn’t need to have a light on to know Emerson-Rose had entered the hut, her sweet fresh scent winding its way about him.

‘Er…there’s no problem.’ She walked carefully over to where her bedroll and her backpack were situated.

‘What…what are you doing?’ He sat up straighter, his mind working frantically, already knowing exactly what she was doing and why but rejecting it at the same time.

‘Getting ready to sleep.’

‘Right. Uh…Emerson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are your crew? Are they coming soon?’

‘Nope.’

‘Nope? What do you mean, “nope”?’

‘They’re heading out with Jalak and a few of the men on an all-nighter to get some night footage.’

‘But it’s not safe. There are soldiers with guns out there…at night. It’s just not safe.’ Neither was it safe for him in here, alone with Emmy. He wanted those men in here now.
Otherwise it would mean that he and Emmy would be alone
all night long
in the hut. Alone. Sue was monitoring the patient tonight and Dart had been relying on the fact that Emmy’s crew would be here.

‘That’s what I said but both Jalak and Meeree have told me my crew will be fine. They did, however, say it was no place for me and so I’ve basically been “sent to bed”, as it were.’ She tried to laugh, to lighten the strained atmosphere as she unrolled her sleeping mat. It contained a mat filled with down, a sheet and a pillow.

Dart shook his head. This wasn’t happening. ‘I can sleep somewhere else, if you prefer,’ he remarked, trying to be diplomatic as well as ignoring the deep, almost sensual nature of his tone. The thought of himself and Emmy alone in the hut all night long…‘I’ll go sleep in the medical tent. That way, if an emergency comes in, you don’t need to worry about your sleep being disturbed.’

Something in his words, his tone made her bristle. Didn’t the man want her help? Didn’t he think she was a serious doctor? That obtaining a medical degree had just been something she’d undertaken so she didn’t get bored? She shook her head and knelt on the mat, her fingers working quickly as she pulled the band from her hair and undid the plait.

‘First and foremost, Dartagnan, I’m registered with PMA to provide medical care during my stay. If there is a medical emergency tonight, I’m more than capable of assisting in whatever capacity you require.’ She reached into the side of her pack where she kept her torch, hoping she’d made her point and pleased she’d kept her voice firm yet in control. Hopefully now Dartagnan Freeman would get the message that she was here to help.

‘Now, if you don’t mind, I need to turn the torch on to look through my backpack.’ Without waiting for his reply,
she pressed the button and light illuminated the entire hut instantly. She glanced over at Dart…and stared.

He was sitting up on his mat, his firm, muscled torso bare to the waist. Her mouth went instantly dry at the sight, her heart rate increasing, her eyes wide as she looked him over.

She knelt there, torch in hand, her gaze warm on his body, but all Dart’s sluggish mind could register was how utterly amazing she looked, her long auburn locks framing her face and shoulders. The torch light provided a magnificent glow, a halo of light shining above her head, and his mouth went instantly dry at the sight, his heart rate increasing, his eyes dreamy as he looked at her.

‘Emmy.’ He breathed her name as though she were the most precious thing in the world. ‘You’re stunning!’

T
HE
world around them seemed to stop while the atmosphere in the room thickened with growing awareness. Emmy couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Had he said it? Had she imagined it? She couldn’t recall the last time a man had looked at her so openly, his eyes glazed with passion and desire.

She tried to swallow over the tingling in her throat, the tingling that seemed to be spreading throughout her entire body as their eyes continued to hold, as her awareness of him grew, as the need for one of them to break this silence increased. If not, things might really start to get out of control.

Never had she felt such an instant attraction to a man before yet here she was, kneeling, torch in hand, light glowing around the room, making it even more cosy, more personal, more intimate.

‘Did…?’ She stopped and cleared her throat. ‘Did you just say…?’ She couldn’t do it. The astonishment in her voice was evident that she couldn’t believe he’d really said what he had. He thought she was stunning? Really?

Dart closed his eyes, blocking the sight of her from burning itself into his mind but realised he was already too late. She was…breathtaking, kneeling there, looking at him in disbelief at what he’d just said. How could he have been so stupid?

‘Uh…I didn’t mean to say that out loud.’

Emmy paused for a beat, still trying to compute everything.
‘But you do
think
I’m…’ She couldn’t even bring herself to repeat such a wonderful compliment in case she woke herself up from this strange but very pleasing dream. While she’d lived most of her life as a public figure, both in Australia and to a lesser extent overseas, Emmy had
never
believed anything ever written about her. In fact, she shied away from reading any gossip or glossy magazines given that nine times out of ten reports and information were incorrect.

But it was different when a man came right out and said what he was thinking…especially when he referred to her as stunning.

Growing up, she’d hated her hair and had often coloured it more blonde than the red it had been back then. As she’d matured, the colour had settled to a deep auburn and she’d decided that it wasn’t too bad any more. As far as looks went, she knew she wasn’t displeasing to look at and while other men may have told her she was beautiful from time to time, it was still completely different from the way Dart had said it. It was as though the sight of her had taken away his breath and as far as she knew, she’d never really done that to a man before and definitely not one as enigmatic as her new colleague.

Dart lay back on his mat, not opening his eyes, not wanting to look at her any more in case he said other things that he shouldn’t. Such as how he’d already thought about what it might be like to taste her luscious lips, to press his lips to the sweet silky smoothness of her skin.

Clenching his teeth, he crossed his arms over his bare chest. He needed to appear nonchalant, indifferent, to let her think that he doled out compliments like that every day to every woman he met. Yes, surely that would be the best way to handle the blunder he’d made and in the process, perhaps if he worked hard at it, he could regain more solid ground.

‘You think I’m…’ she tried again, and this time he cleared his throat.

‘Stunning?’

‘Yes,’ she breathed.

‘Of course—but, then, I suppose you already knew that.’

Emmy frowned, the tingles that had flooded her body at his words, at his initial reaction to seeing her with her hair loose, vanishing in an instant. There was a tone to his offhand confirmation, a tone that gave her a completely different impression from the one she’d garnered before, and this impression wasn’t at all complimentary. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Oh, come off it, Emerson. You know you’re gorgeous. You probably have ten men on a string at any given moment, all of them gushing and telling you how beautiful and wonderful you are.’ Tarvon and Belhara had been paying her attention all day long, so why was it she seemed to care so much about the one little compliment he’d thrown her way?

Anger boiled within her and it took all her strength and training not to lash out and tell him the
real
truth. ‘You know nothing about me, Dart Freeman.’

‘I know you’re in the press a lot.’

‘
You
read the glossy mags?’ There was a hint of derision in her tone as she turned and started to sift through her luggage for the things she required. ‘Why do I find that so hard to believe?’

She was getting mad at him. That was good. Very good. He could deal with mad much better than her being all gorgeous and sexy and way too close. Mad was far better than her looking at him with those big blue eyes of hers, her hair floating around her head and shoulders, her petite, alluring figure drawing him in. Anger was far better than attraction and he continued to fan the flames of the fire.

‘Think what you like. You don’t know anything about me either.’

‘I know you’ve come to the jungle, to the middle of nowhere, to lose yourself. You’re hiding.’

There was a slight accusation in her tone, as though she dared him to deny it. Dart’s eyes snapped open and he sat up to glare at her. She was kneeling on her sleeping mat, rummaging through her bag, torch temporarily at her side. The glow created an eerie atmosphere, the shadows all skewed and strange. It was exactly how he felt at the moment. He hadn’t known Emerson-Rose for all that long and already she was managing to distort his world.

‘How could you possibly know that?’ Someone must have told her. One of the villagers, but…He stopped. Only Jalak and…Meeree knew the real reasons he was here. Of course. He’d seen Emerson talking to Meeree on several occasions. Everyone knew that Meeree saw people in a different light and had the most amazing and accurate insights. Surely, though, she hadn’t said anything about his past. She wouldn’t do that. Meeree wasn’t the vindictive, gossiping type.

‘You’re not so hard to read, Dart. I’ve been watching you, the way you interact with people, the PMA crew. The way you hold baby J’tagnan and look after his mother. The way you help where help is needed and how you contort those clever hands of yours into those shapes to make perfect shadow puppets.’

He could hear the wonderment in her tone and it washed over him with full effect. He wished she’d go back to being mad at him. On a ‘keep your distance’ level, it was easier for him to cope with.

‘You give and you give and you keep on giving,’ she continued. ‘What you don’t do is let anyone into the nice, neat little world you live in, the one that’s shrouded by walls and darkness.’ She’d found what she was looking for and flicked off the torch, plunging them into instant blackness.

It took but a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Dart didn’t like the way she was making him feel—vulnerable. He lay back on the mat again, his arms still crossed protectively over his chest. ‘I’d thank you kindly not to analyse me.’

‘And I’d like the same courtesy from you.’ Her words were slightly brisk, as though she was working hard at controlling that fire he’d been trying so hard to fan. ‘I’ve worked too long and too hard to try and be my own person and even now, out here in a jungle hut in the middle of nowhere, I’m
still
getting hammered into a little box.’ Her voice rose on the last part, the anger and frustration seeping through as she huffed around in the dark, changing her clothes and finally lying down.

Dart kept his eyes shut, trying not to listen to the sounds she made but failing miserably. He’d often slept in this hut over the years, with several other people, both men and women alike, and it had never bothered him before. Having Emmy close…the two of them together…alone…It most certainly bothered him.

He wasn’t a great believer in instant attraction and had only experienced it once before in his entire forty-one years. That had been the first time he’d seen Marta. She’d been a nurse who had started working in the general surgical ward, on rotation from her hospital in Germany. She’d been feisty, fresh and absolutely fantastic at everything she did. She hadn’t taken any of his dictatorial attitude, she’d broken through the walls he usually had in place to keep his distance from his work colleagues, and she’d captured his heart, all within a matter of weeks.

Now he was faced with another feisty, fresh female and the physical tug he felt towards Emmy was only increasing with every minute they spent together. It wasn’t her fault she’d been born looking like a romantic princess, one that a knight in shining armour would gallantly save from whatever beset her.

Of course, she could well be using that beauty to get whatever it was she wanted from him, but even in the few short hours of their acquaintance Dart had to admit that she’d shown personality traits that seemed to contradict what he’d heard and seen of her in the media. Right now she was refusing to take any of his usual brisk attitude and she was showing courage by adapting to the situation and circumstances around her.

Apparently, he was hammering her into a box, or at least that was what she thought. Her words revealed much about her but his mind was too sluggish from a day that seemed to have stretched well past its usual twenty-four hours to process the concept thoroughly.

Admiration for her cooled his annoyance and when she was finally lying still, he tested the waters by saying, ‘At least I hammered you into a
stunning
box.’

His words hung in the air for a brief moment before Emmy chuckled. ‘True. Sorry about the outburst. I tend to find it difficult sometimes to bite my tongue.’

‘We all do it,’ he murmured, his body relaxing a little, his hands falling to his sides.

‘My mother would be horrified with me.’ Emmy sighed then smothered a yawn. ‘Goodnight, Dartagnan. I hope you don’t snore.’

‘Likewise,’ he said, wondering if it was going to be possible to get any sleep at all with her in the same hut, sleeping only a matter of a metre away. Thankfully, the night was supposed to be a warm one, which meant there would be no risk whatsoever of the two of them needing body heat to survive the night.

The instant he’d thought it, his eyes snapped open and his brain bolted back to life as visions of Emmy’s body, snuggling closely to him, flashed into his mind, sparking his imagination. His arm beneath her head, her hair splayed out,
tantalising his senses with its soft silkiness, her hand resting on his bare chest, her smooth fingers teasing the smattering of dark chest hair.

What was he doing? Why was he torturing himself like this? The answer came fast and hard on the heels of the questions.

He was drawn to her.

For some inexplicable reason, Dart didn’t seem able to impose his natural ability to keep all working colleagues at arm’s length. He had no idea why he was finding it so hard to treat Emerson-Rose as just another colleague but he was.

It was different with the villagers. To all intents and purposes, they were patients. Even if they didn’t require his medical attention, they required other forms of healing, such as forgetting the troubles of their lives by watching shadow puppets. Laughter was a great tonic and one he’d used often to help his patients during his rotations in Tarparnii.

Emerson-Rose, however, wasn’t a patient. Neither was she technically a colleague. Perhaps that was why he was having so much difficulty putting her into a box. A box. He recalled what she’d said about people always putting restraints on her abilities, on shoving her in a box without giving her the chance to prove herself.

From the way she spoke, it didn’t sound as though she was all that happy with her life. Meeree had often told Dart that many workers from Australia came to Tarparnii because they were either running away from their pasts or trying to search out their inner self. By taking themselves out of their comfort zones, they would often come face to face with troubled insights and it was
how
they worked through these insights that would propel them forward.

From everything Emmy had said, it sounded as though she was searching for herself. Trying to prove herself. And it was
then he realised it must be difficult to live in the shadow of famous parents.

He had an overwhelming urge to help her, to let her know that out here she didn’t need to be anything other than herself, who she was deep down inside. What would happen if he shared a bit of himself with her? If he showed her that not everyone was perfect, himself included?

‘My parents weren’t wealthy.’ He said the words out loud, surprising himself as well as Emmy. ‘We had to struggle for a lot of things in life. My medical training was funded by scholarships. They were hard times but we all pulled through, making the best of every situation.’

Emmy let his words hang in the air for a moment, his soft, deep voice relaxing her slightly.

‘My parents are very wealthy,’ she countered, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘I had to struggle for their attention. My medical training is still a constant source of confusion to my parents. Financially, times have never been hard yet we hardly talk.’

She couldn’t believe it when tears pricked behind her eyes. She’d never spoken to anyone so openly, so simply before. Her parents had sent her and her brother to therapists, had received reports on why she and Tristan had behaved the way they had, but still, it hadn’t increased the time they’d spent with their offspring.

Emmy swallowed over the lump which had formed in her throat. ‘Do your parents love you?’

Dart turned to look at her, even though he couldn’t see her properly. ‘Yes.’ The word was easy to say because he knew it was true without a single doubt.

‘Then you’re far more wealthy than I’ll ever be.’

Something had just happened between them. By opening the door to offer her some help, to try and show her that being
true to herself was the best gift she could ever give herself, something deeper had seemed to connect them.

‘Poor little rich girl.’ He spoke with compassion. There was silence for a moment and he wondered whether he’d offended her. When she sniffed and sucked in a breath, Dart realised that she was crying quietly.

Without thinking, he quickly shifted, moving silently, closing the distance between them. In the next instant she was in his arms, her face buried in his chest, sobbing. With his free hand he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which she immediately accepted.