.

      Chapter Two

      LATER that morning, Amelia grimaced at the oozing wound on Corporal Wright’s left inner thigh. “How long has the area looked like this?”

      He shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Yesterday the spot was a little red. Today it looks like I got shot and the place festered all to hell.”

      The abscess looked nothing like a real gunshot wound, but she didn’t bother explaining that to the eighteen-year-old. She hoped he never had reason to learn otherwise.

      She turned to the cabinet that contained the appropriate supplies, pulled out a bottle of one percent Xylocaine, and drew up a syringe full of the numbing agent. “Are you allergic to any medicines?”

      “I’m not allergic to anything.” He shook his head, eyeing the syringe with pale-faced dread but trying not to show his dislike of needles. “What are you planning to do, Doc?”

      “I’m going to open the area, drain the abscess, then pack the wound with special sterile packing gauze that will stay in the opened area for a few days.”

      The corporal swallowed, his gaze lingering on the syringe. “Will it hurt?”

      Amelia could laugh at the irony of his question. The men she dealt with had been through so much with their training, could endure great hardships, yet wave a needle and syringe in front of the biggest, baddest of the lot and he just might turn green in the face.

      “Just a stick and some burn when the numbing agent is injected. After the medication, you shouldn’t feel a thing,” she explained.

      She swabbed the area with an antiseptic solution then stuck the needle bevel up into the raised red area, numbing the overlying skin. Once she’d finished injecting the area, she dropped the used syringe into a sharps container then smiled at her still-pale patient.

      “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 certainly 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.”

      “Amelia,” he began, then sighed, glanced over his shoulders down the narrow corridor leading off the sick ward to the office. When his gaze met hers next, steely determination had settled in. “We need to talk.”

      She crossed her arms, glared. He wasn’t going to intimidate her if that’s what he was trying to do. “Was the surgical suite not to your satisfaction?”

      “I haven’t been satisfied in years, Amelia.”

      “Call me Dr Stockton.” She emphasized each word. “And I fail to see what your lack of satisfaction has to do with me.”

      “Don’t you?” he asked softly, laughing with more than a hint of irony.

      “Go away.” She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. How dared he bring that up, that crazy night, weeks after the non-wedding, when he’d come to see her and she’d eventually sent him packing? Besides, if he was trying to tell her he hadn’t been with anyone for two years, she’d never believe him. Not in a million years. Which meant he was trying to play her for a fool. Again. She touched the desk, running her fingers over the smooth surface, collecting her wits before glancing up. “I never wanted to see you again.”

      “You made that obvious.”

      “Yet here you stand,” she needlessly pointed out, riffling through papers as if she was bored with their conversation. Truth was, she needed to get away from him, needed to breathe. She couldn’t breathe with Cole standing so close, with him eyeing her with such intensity.

      “Unless orders come stating otherwise, I’m here for the full deployment. Dr Lewis has been assigned landside.”

      Six months. That was the usual duration of a surgeon on board a ship. Anything longer than that and their surgical skills might become rusty. Their usual days consisted of elective procedures such as vasectomies or ingrown toenail extractions, with the occasional gallbladder and appendix removal thrown in for good measure. Usually