‘I’m Lisa,’ announced an Australian nurse.
‘Gerd.’ A German man stepped forward, clearly the senior nurse.
‘Shall we all have some tea, and introduce ourselves properly?’ Reginald boomed.
‘Good idea.’ Gerd grinned, and headed out of the room and into the beautiful, exotic-flower-strewn reception.
It felt as though she’d passed his first subtle test and he was genuinely pleased to have her on board. Though Nikhil’s reaction to the news would inevitably be an entirely different matter. It was impossible to ignore the thought any longer, though she commended herself for doing so well up until that point. She hadn’t thought of him when she’d been treating Jaleel. She certainly hadn’t thought of him when Head Office had called a few hours ago and asked her—though she didn’t think she had genuinely had much choice in the matter—to transfer to the Cassiopeia.
Liar, whispered a voice inside her head. He was the first thing you thought when you got that call.
Isla’s heart jolted abruptly. He was bound to be furious. He’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t sleep with colleagues, and that he was only interested in her because she was going to be on board a different ship.
And now, here she was, the new stand-in doctor on the Queen Cassiopeia.
Well, he wasn’t the only one who had been thrown by the sudden turn of events, she told herself defiantly. She hadn’t planned this. Sleeping with the boss certainly hadn’t been on her cruise ship to-do list. And if he thought that she was going to be angling for a repeat performance, then she would be more than happy to set him straight.
After Bradley, there was no way she wanted anything complicated with anyone. Even someone who looked like Nikhil, who kissed like Nikhil and never mind the rest of his incredible arsenal of skills.
Abruptly, her traitorous body gave a delicious shiver at the memory.
Could it only be this morning that he’d left her bed? It felt like a lifetime ago. She’d gone down to breakfast alone, somewhere between floating on air after their night together and fighting the strangest sense of...what she could only describe as loss, when her mobile had rung and she’d looked down to see the Port-Star company name—and she’d just known.
Isla pretended that the little celebratory dance that had started in her belly was because she was effectively being upgraded from a two-week tour of the South Americas on the Jewel of Hestia to a two-month round-the-world tour on the stunning Queen Cassiopeia.
The truth, she feared, was far more shameful.
Her body wasn’t spinning crazily at the fact that the cruise liner was the best ship in the fleet—possibly the world; it was spiralling madly at the fact that it was Nikhil’s ship. And some naïve part of herself appeared to be holding onto the fantasy notion that, on some secret level, Nikhil might be a tiny bit pleased to see her too.
‘Have you seen around our little terrain down here?’ Reginald asked, hauling her back to the present.
‘Yes, I showed Isla the consultation rooms, the crew ward and the private rooms for the passengers before the emergency,’ Jordanna announced quickly, clearly not wanting to be seen to be slacking.
‘It’s more luxurious than any medical centre I’ve ever worked in before.’ Isla laughed.
‘Isn’t
it?’ The senior doctor’s proud smile said it all. ‘Not to mention the fact that we get to see the world. I might not have the private practice that some of my former med school compatriots might have, but how many of them can intersperse their surgeries with visits to the Pyramids in Egypt, the Sydney Opera House or the Norwegian fjords?’
‘So we do get to visit these places?’ Isla asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Often.’
‘It’s an amazing lifestyle,’ chorused the three nurses simultaneously.
‘They said so on the course, and in the training documents,’ Isla admitted. ‘But I didn’t know if it really worked well in practice.’
‘It works,’ Reginald assured her. ‘Normally, at the start of every cruise, our team gets together and calls dibs on the places they really want to visit. Because you’re coming in partway through, you’ve missed out on that, so you’ll have to make do with the sights that Dr Morris—the doctor you’ve replaced—chose, but I’m sure you’ll be happy.’
‘I can’t recall all of his selections,’ Gerd added, ‘but I think some of them included a banana plantation in Ecuador, a high-speed boating afternoon in Mexico and an exclusive restaurant in Los Angeles. Although I think one of those might have been as a shore doctor on duty.’
‘Lucky you.’ Lisa laughed. ‘Ecuador is coming up soon.’
‘I have a museum in Peru and the Panama Canal,’ Reginald added. ‘So, you see, we keep one doctor on duty onboard, and the other can go ashore.’
‘And we usually keep one nurse on board, whilst the other two can go ashore.’ Lisa grinned. ‘It isn’t a bad way to see the world.’