Doctor's Guide To Dating In The Jungle. Tina Beckett

a half-hour.’ They hit another pothole, and she scrabbled for a handhold to avoid careening off the seat and onto the floorboards.

      ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I keep forgetting you’re not used to roads like this.’

      ‘It’s okay. At least it’s not one big construction zone, like in New York.’

      ‘Which is why the roads there don’t swallow small children.’

      She blinked. Wow, did the man actually have a sense of humor? Her mouth opened to respond when his cellphone went off.

      He braked, fumbling to pull the phone from the holder on his belt. Stevie glanced back to make sure there were no cars heading their way, but the road was deserted, which made it odd that he’d stopped at all. Maybe he was a little more cautious than she’d thought.

      ‘‘Ello?’ He listened for a few seconds looking straight ahead. ‘Yep, she’s here. Listen, I told you what I wanted. Surely there were other appli—’

      He sighed. ‘Just keep looking, will you?’

      Her brows went up. So much for his ‘changing faces isn’t good for the cause’ spiel. It didn’t stop him from trying to swap her face for someone else’s post haste. Which meant she’d be out of a job, unless she went crawling back to Michael.

      Fat chance of that happening.

      ‘I don’t know. She had quite a pile of suitcases, but she didn’t say anything about … Hold on.’ Matt pulled the phone away from his ear, glancing her way. ‘Mosquito nets?’

      She nodded. ‘A hundred and fifty of them, just like Tracy asked for. I also brought a case of repellent wipes for use on board the boat.’ She frowned. ‘Don’t tell me you actually thought I had clothes in all those suitcases?’

      Matt suddenly found himself unable to meet her eyes. Okay, so he’d misjudged her on one count. ‘Yeah, she brought them,’ he said into the phone.

      ‘Good,’ said Tracy. A few seconds of silence crawled by. ‘Listen, give her a chance, will you? You and I both know you need another doctor on that boat. So don’t say anything stupid.’ A laugh rose in his throat, which he quickly suppressed. Too late. He’d already said several stupid things. And for the past few minutes he’d suddenly realized how lonely his job was. The simple touch of Stefani’s fingers and the concern in her voice when she’d noticed the scratch on his hand had hit him in a dark corner of his mind.

      He sent her a quick glance to find her staring out the side window in an obvious attempt not to eavesdrop. A long strand of hair had come loose from her bun and now trailed down her cheek, the tip curling just above her shoulder.

      A strange sense of longing swept over him. What had Tracy been thinking, sending a woman? Didn’t she realize how flammable this situation could become? He tried to snuff out the image of Stefani’s long nimble fingers sliding across his skin, her surgeon’s brain dissecting and memorizing his every reaction. Or her long dark lashes fluttering shut as he …

      He shook his head, realizing Tracy was waiting for his response. ‘Right. “Don’t say anything stupid.” I’ll do my best.’

      She laughed. ‘Don’t make me come down there.’

      As much as he wanted Tracy to witness her folly firsthand, he knew he couldn’t afford to hang around the port and do nothing. Waiting for Stefani’s arrival had already put him two days behind schedule, and he had people counting on him. As soon as they got to the boat, they needed to be on their way.

      ‘Your concern is duly noted, but I’m a big boy, in case you haven’t noticed.’

      ‘Oh, I have. And I’m counting on you to act like one.’

      Paint—long peeling ribbons of white—clung to portions of the boat. Other sections were laid bare, like bones stripped of their flesh. Stevie could have been looking in a mirror at her own reflection.

      She was pretty sure this wasn’t what Matt had in mind when he’d mentioned battlefield triage, but the vessel certainly looked like it had been through a warzone.

      And come out on the losing end.

      This couldn’t be the medical boat. She tugged the doorhandle on the Land Rover and stepped out of the car, while Matt went around and hauled her luggage from the back of the vehicle.

      The wall-to-wall grins on the faces of two men who’d disembarked from the ship and now hurried toward them said her premonition was correct. This vessel was indeed going to be her home for the next two weeks. Who was she kidding? Try two years. She shut her eyes and sent up a quick prayer. She’d put her name on a contract, effectively signing away her life. She’d see the far side of thirty before she left Brazil.

      Matt smiled at the new arrivals and clapped each of them on the back before introducing them to her. ‘Nilson and Tiago, this is Stefani Wilson, the newest member of our team.’

      Everything was said in Portuguese, so she should have understood it easily, but Stevie found herself having to concentrate to make out the words through their thick accents. But they were friendly and welcoming, more than she could say for Matt. The two crew members gathered up her luggage as if it weighed no more than a couple of sacks of groceries and took off toward the ship.

      She bit her lip, her hopes of being mistaken fading. Even if the men weren’t already scampering up the gangplank, the raggedy lettering on the back of the boat spelled her fate out in no uncertain terms: Projeto Vida. This was the medical ship, for better or worse.

      ‘Home, sweet home.’ Low graveled tones slid across her senses like calloused hands moving over soft skin.

      Palpable. Dangerous.

      Shivering, she glanced up to find his attention fastened on the boat and not on her. Anything that could wring that kind of reaction out of the man couldn’t be all bad. Right?

      Maybe she should try to see the ship from his perspective. ‘So this is it, then?’

      He nodded, the warm affection in his eyes cooling as he studied her face. ‘Ready to run away yet?’

      ‘I don’t run.’

      ‘No?’

      The way he said it made her wonder if he knew more about her situation than he was letting on. But so what if he did? She had nothing to hide.

      Except for the tattered remnants of her heart. And the disciplinary note in her file.

      Her lips tightened. She wasn’t hiding those either. She’d told Tracy that her ‘friend’ had had a run-in with his hospital, but that he’d done nothing wrong. Why, then, had she hidden her identity at first? Though, after receiving her résumé, Tracy had to have realized Stevie had been talking about herself on the phone that day.

      ‘No, I’m not going to run.’ Not this time. Not even if the boat had the name ‘Typhoid Mary’ inscribed on its side.

      She slapped at a mosquito on her arm and immediately wondered if it was a carrier of some deadly ailment. Running didn’t seem like such a bad option all of a sudden.

      ‘You’ll need to wear repellent. They seem to attack newcomers more than residents. Must have sweeter blood or something.’

      ‘I bet they don’t attack you at all,’ she said, then realized how childish the words sounded.

      A muscle worked in his jaw and one hand went to the back of his neck and rubbed as if trying to ease a knot from the firm muscles. ‘Ready to get to work?’

      ‘That’s why I’m here.’ The sharp tone made her cringe. ‘Ugh, sorry. Chalk up my bad manners to jet lag, okay?’

      ‘No problem.’ He lowered his hand and rotated his neck half a turn. Stevie heard several soft pops as the vertebrae along it cracked. He gave a low groan of relief.

      ‘Do you have back problems?’