Tempted By Dr Off-Limits. Charlotte Hawkes

       Chapter Two

      ONE MOMENT ELLE was sitting on the barstool next to him, the next she was thrusting people out of her way as she made a beeline for some hubbub behind him. Call it intuition after fifteen years as an army officer, call it something about Elle’s understated purposefulness, but Fitz was compelled to follow even as he strained to see past the throng.

      It was only when he saw the young man on the floor, with Elle gently forcing a sobbing girl to release her grip on him, that Fitz realised what was happening. Icy fingers slid the length of his spine, the length of his body, rooting him to the spot. He fought to shut his mind to the memories that threatened to overtake him, but not fast enough. They slammed into him with brutal force, knocking his breath out like a bullet striking body armour.

      The last time he’d seen someone having a seizure like this had been over twenty years ago. His baby sister had had seizures from about the age of one. Not often, but still. How had he forgotten about that?

      Memories crowded his head. Images he’d buried along with her body. Her tiny, five-year-old’s coffin next to the adult-size one of their mother. He struggled to shove the unwanted images away and try instead to focus on helping the woman he’d just met who was managing the situation with the same cool efficiency with which she’d dispatched Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber earlier.

      ‘Let him go,’ Elle was telling the girl, kindly but firmly.

      ‘No. No. I can’t.’ She shook her head manically and tried to shrug Elle off. ‘He’s my brother, he’s going to hurt himself.’

      ‘How long has your brother suffered from epilepsy?’

      ‘What? No.’ The girl shook her head violently. ‘He’s seventeen, he doesn’t have epilepsy. He’s never had epilepsy. What’s wrong with him?’

      ‘Your brother’s never had a seizure before?’ Elle asked calmly.

      The same calmness with which Fitz remembered his mother teaching his eleven-year-old self what to do if his sister ever had a seizure if he was alone with her. Not that he’d ever needed to in the end.

      ‘Of course he’s never had one,’ the girl was wailing. ‘I told you, there’s nothing wrong with him.’

      ‘What about anyone else in your family?’

      ‘What? No. I’m his sister, I’d know if he had epilepsy.’ The girl was practically apoplectic. ‘I have to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Oh, God, what’s wrong with him?’

      ‘It’s okay.’ Taking the girl’s head in her hands, Elle forced the kid to look at her. ‘I’m a doctor, do you understand me? It’s going to be okay but you have to trust me. Let go of your brother. If you try to hold him in place you could end up causing more damage.’

      Her soothing tone not only seemed to help the girl but him too, and he began to be able to move past his memories just as she glanced up at the room, her stern, clear voice carrying over the now music-free club.

      ‘Everyone else, can you just back up, please, and give him some room?’ She turned back to the girl. ‘Okay, now this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to move that table away for me so your brother doesn’t hurt himself by banging it.’

      All of a sudden Fitz’s legs sprang back into life and, propelling himself forward, he distracted the girl.

      ‘Come on, I’ll help you. We need to move everything else out of the way. You move those bottles and glasses onto the table down there and I’ll move the table itself, understand? Great, okay, now we should move those chairs and the stool.’

      His mind and body acting in slick, smooth unison, the way he’d honed them to ever since he’d joined the army, Fitz eased himself even further away from the unwelcome, debilitating memories. Instead, he concentrated on Elle and trying to pre-empt her needs, passing her a jumper, which she took with a silent nod, balled up and slid under the boy’s head to cushion it. Then he placed himself between the peering crowd and the boy.

      ‘That’s all, folks,’ he said authoritatively. ‘If you don’t need to be here, I suggest you move away and get back to your own affairs. There’s nothing to see here.’

      He nodded with satisfaction as the crowd immediately began to dissipate, but he was hardly surprised when there were a few reluctant to leave, one of whom was even reaching for his mobile phone.

      ‘Now,’ Fitz growled, taking a step closer so that he was invading the guy’s personal space without making actual physical contact.

      It felt as though ever since he’d seen Elle his night had been one incident after another when usually a night out for him, in the rare downtime he had as a colonel, was fairly uneventful.

      What was it about this woman, the emerald-eyed redhead, that seemed to turn his world upside down? She was so damned captivating. But as much as he was loath to admit it, he suspected it wasn’t simply about her striking looks, even if they were what had drawn him from almost the first minute his group had walked into the club.

      So she was a doctor?

      He didn’t like to examine quite how relieved that made him feel. Something about her attitude and confidence had seemed so familiar, he’d suspected she might be military. It wouldn’t be surprising. They were close to a mobilisation army barracks, which was how his group of fellow officers knew about the club. It was one they always frequented before they went on a tour of duty. The place was more bar than pub, and, though it had a dance-floor, it was not a nightclub, so as officers they could be comfortable having a night out without risking running into the junior ranks, who typically opted for the pubs and bars in the centre of town, which would be heaving with soldiers over the next few nights.

      But the idea of Elle potentially being military had been more of a let-down than it perhaps should have been. That would have been the one obstacle to make him walk away. Not that there was any military reason that would prevent them from getting together, of course—as a doctor she would be a commissioned officer just as he was—but, still, it was a line he had always refused to cross for his own personal reasons. Ever since Janine. But Fitz suspected Elle might have made him consider breaking his unnecessarily strict personal rules.

      He wasn’t yet prepared to examine why he had been so pleased that the fact that she was a doctor, and not military, meant he didn’t have to find out.

      ‘Fitz?’ Elle’s voice broke into his reverie. ‘Can you call for an ambulance? Tell them a seventeen-year-old male is suffering from a seizure with no known history of epilepsy.’

      Without waiting for his response, as though trusting him implicitly, she lowered her head to check on the boy then turned back to the girl with a gentle smile.

      ‘What’s your name?’

      ‘Lisa.’ The girl sniffed.

      ‘Okay, Lisa, can you contact your parents?’

      ‘Our parents? Oh, God, I can’t call them, they’ll kill us. They’ll kill me. Adam’s only seventeen.’

      ‘Has your brother consumed alcohol?’ Fitz heard Elle ask as he slid his mobile from his back pocket. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t care how old you are, I just need you to tell me the truth so that I can look after him the best way I can.’

      ‘Yes,’ Lisa sobbed.

      ‘Okay, that’s fine. Do you know how much?’

      ‘A lot. We both had a lot. Oh, this is all my fault, isn’t it?’

      Fitz stepped away as the emergency services operator came on the line, and gave their location and the details. After a brief check of the boy he