Officer, Surgeon...Gentleman!

“While the numbing agent is taking effect, my nurse, Tracy, is going to set up a surgical tray so I can open the area and drain the abscess. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll get this taken care of.”

Tossing her protective gloves into the appropriate waste receptacle, she left the small exam area and went into the room that served as the medical office.

Her gaze went to the computer on her desk and she winced.

Unless her sister was out in the field, she’d have an e-mail from Clara. She didn’t want to tell her sister that her runaway groom was on board, that for the next few months Amelia would be working alongside him, spending more time with him than she’d like.

Than she’d like?

She didn’t want to spend any time with Cole.

None. Never again.

If she’d never met the blasted man that would have been just fine.

Better than fine.

Her life would have been better. Less haunted by twinkling blue eyes and a sexily timbred voice that belonged to a man she’d once idolized. How could fate have been so cruel as to assign him to serve on the same ship?

“Need help?”

She spun, coming face-to-face with the source of her agitation. “Not from you.”

His brow arched.

“Sir,” she added, in deference to his higher rank.

Cole’s gaze narrowed. “That’s not what I was getting at.”

“No? Not tossing around your weight, sir?”

“No.” He said the word slowly, studying her.

Hello, she was not a bug under a magnifying glass and could he please just go jump overboard? Anything, just so long as she didn’t have to look at him, didn’t have to remember.

Her fingers clenched into tight fists. “Then what were you getting at, Dr Stanley?”

He crammed his hands into his pants pockets. “I suppose asking you to call me Cole would be useless?”

“You suppose correctly, sir.”

Her eyes had to be tiny slits of disdain because she was holding back none of her anger, none of her frustration. However, she desperately held back all of her hurt, all of the pain she’d felt at his sudden absence from her life two years ago when he’d been such an integral part of her very being for the majority of her university days. God, how she’d hurt, ached to her very core.

“Amelia.”

“I did not give you permission to call me Amelia.” She did not want to hear her name on his lips. Memories of another time, another place, of him whispering her name echoed through her mind, twisting her insides with feelings she’d denied for so long, feelings she didn’t want. Not then. Certainly not now.

“Actually, you did,” he reminded her, his gaze not leaving hers, pinning her beneath intense blue. “Just because time has passed, it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten.”

That she understood. Two years certa

inly hadn’t been enough time for her to forget a single thing about Cole. Sometimes she wondered if forever would be long enough or if she was doomed to spend eternity remembering every detail about the man looking so intently at her.

“We were friends once.” The color of his eyes darkened to a deep blue. “Good friends.”

Gritting her teeth, forcing her breathing to remain even, calm, she busied herself picking up a stack of papers from her desk and thumbing through them, reminding herself that she’d likely be thrown in the brig if she didn’t get her emotions under control. How could he say that after…after…?

“Well, I have forgotten,” she lied for pure self-preservation. “We were never friends. You’re just some joker who had a laugh at my sister’s and my expense and walked away from my family without a backward glance.”