This was ridiculous.
She was acting like an adolescent, wound up for her first date. The worst of it was that she’d never acted this way even when she had been an adolescent. Snatching up her purse and sliding her room key card inside, Isla stepped out of her room and strode down the hall to the elevators.
He was just a man, like any other, she reminded herself as she jabbed irritably at the buttons. And if her traitorous brain was having trouble remembering that simple fact, then a walk around the town for half an hour should be enough to clear her head and get things in order.
The elevator bounced slightly as it stopped at the ground floor, the doors opening with an efficient swish as the sounds of an Argentine tango, and plenty of chatter, filled her ears.
The distraction was so much better than the quiet of her room. She even felt empowered by the way her heels clicked on the marble floor.
This was just a thank you dinner, from the First Officer of the ship whose crewman she’d just helped. Nothing more.
Then she lifted her eyes, only for them to slam into Nikhil’s as he sat in the lobby, barely fifteen metres away, his powerful frame making the large wingback look almost fragile as he lounged. One ankle was balanced casually on the knee of his other leg, a large broadsheet in his hands, yet he looked even more arcane and forbidding than he had a few hours earlier. Her entire body seemed to turn to liquid. Boiling hot liquid that bubbled through her veins and smouldered in her chest, leaving her almost feverish.
And that was before he unfolded his legs with a casualness she didn’t know why she thought was deceptive, and stood up. Her breath caught in a hard ball in her chest.
His body—which had looked hewn enough in his officer’s uniform—somehow appeared even more dangerous clad in his own clothes. Even more lethal. She thought she might even have swayed slightly, feeling momentarily light-headed, as if she’d had several drinks too many, when the truth was that she hadn’t touched a drop.
It isn’t a real date, she said desperately to herself. It’s just dinner, and it’s just to avoid Marianna’s latest blind date set-up.
Isla wasn’t sure her brain was listening. The guy was positively intoxicating and now she’d started drinking him in she seemed wholly incapable of dragging her gaze away. Even as he approached, it was all Isla could do not to lift her hands, though to ward him off or pull him closer she was afraid she couldn’t be certain.
‘You’re early,’ she managed instead, barely recognising the husky quality of her voice.
‘As are you,’ Nikhil countered dryly. ‘It’s a welcome surprise.’
Any other time she might have had a quick retort on the tip of her tongue about inherent sexism, especially as she believed he was deliberately baiting her, but then he turned to stand beside her with his large hand pressed to the small of her back. The unexpected contact scorched her skin and stirred her very soul, and it was all she could do to remember how to walk, let alone speak.
‘You look stunning, Little Doc.’
‘I don’t think I care for that term,’ she lied, because something told her she ought not like it.
He waved his hand negligently. ‘Apologies. You look quite lovely, Isla.’
She thought she preferred the previous compliment; it somehow sounded more...off-guard. And she liked the idea of unbalancing this man who was clearly accustomed to being so in-control.
‘I... Thank you.’ Electricity jolted through her as Nikhil lifted his hand to the small of her back again and began to usher her smoothly to the doors. ‘But this isn’t a date.’
She wasn’t sure whether she’d intended it as a reminder to him, or to her. But, either way, she felt the first hint of disappointment when he dipped his head instantly.
‘Of course not.’
It was wholly, utterly insane, the way he affected her. Surely this couldn’t be normal? It certainly wasn’t normal for her.
With hindsight, it was now all the more evident to Isla that she really ought to have declined his invitation to dinner. So, what did it say about her that something inside was practically elated that it was too late to back out now?
* * *
Touching her had been a mistake, Nikhil realised the moment his fingers touched her skin and a fresh bolt of awareness crackled through his entire body.
Another mistake. On top of the fact that he’d asked her to dinner in the first place.
All because he’d been thrown off-kilter by a goddamned birthday card, and it provided the escape that he needed to avoid meeting the man who he had once looked up to as his hero brother.
Back when he’d been naïve, he thought angrily, before Daksh had betrayed him so comprehensively.
It was that which had made him so edgy today. So unlike his usual unruffled self that he’d ended up inviting this woman—this stranger—to join him at his annual pilgrimage to Te Tinca. All because of a bout of plain old sexual attraction.
Except that there was nothing plain, or old, about the attraction he felt for the unexpected doctor, was there? After all, from the moment he’d heard her shoes echoing on the marble floor and looked up to see her striding so confidently, sexily, towards him, in heels that make her calves look all the more shapely, and her backside that little bit perter, he’d felt something kick hard, low in his abdomen.