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I figure I can splash in the shallows while he actually swims.
“Nah,” he says shyly, looking in the other direction now, tensing up a little and I can’t help but feel I’ve said the wrong thing.
“I don’t swim,” he says finally, creasing a smile and helping me up, ordering me back to the house so he can fix me breakfast and fresh coffee.
“I can do stuff,” I protest, but he only shakes his head. “I know you can, but this weekend, you’re all mine and I’m going to spoil you rotten,” he says, laughing again. Making me forget everything I just said about swimming.
If the post virgin de-flowering dinner on the beach was awesome, Mark’s morning after breakfast is something else.
He plants me at the counter in the kitchen and sets to work with the efficiency of a professional chef.
Fresh ground coffee, bacon, eggs, and sausage. Toasted brioche rolls from the seemingly endless supply of food in the place, and finally steaks with fried tomatoes and peppers.
He makes it look so easy and after a while, I’m glad he kindly ignores my offers to help.
I’ve never been great in the kitchen, and I can see how his surgical skills reflect in everything else he does.
Maybe with one exception.
There’s nothing clinical or methodical about his lovemaking.
I still have the pleasantly sore body to prove that.
Or maybe it was that two mile walk afterward.
Nope, that delicious ache inside me is all his work, and he catches me smiling to myself as I start to daydream about the best cure for my soreness.
“What’re you thinking about?” he asks curiously, spooning some eggs next to a steak on a plate I know is for me.
“Nothing,” I lie, my eyes flashing with emotion as I silently transmit the only thing I could ever think about from now on.
Him.
Mark.
I’m his and he is mine.
The thought gives me a shiver and what I know must be a goofy smile, but it’s just as comforting a thought as the sight of the most delicious breakfast ever.
He excuses himself long enough to fetch his phone and mine from the bedroom.
“Bad habit,” he admits, shrugging and checking his messages even before eating.
I guess a doctor who works as much as Mark does would check his phone more than the average person. Leaving it unchecked all night is a first for him, I discover.
“Argh,” he says bitterly, making my stomach drop. The food in front of me suddenly looking like a mountain I could never eat.
“What is it?” I ask, knowing it must be something to do with my dad.
“It’s nothing bad,” he says calmly. “You’re dad’s doing really well. Woke up all on his own and his conditions stabilized better than anyone could have hoped.”
I sigh with relief but have to point out Mark’s disappointment.
“You don’t seem too happy about it,” I remark defensively.
“Only because it means we’ll have to go back before I would have liked,” he admits. He moves around to my side of the bench and moves to hug me.
“Sorry, I just wanted this to last,” he says softly.
But I have to disagree.
“We don’t have to go back,” I almost shriek. The panic of the real-world setting in all over again. I want nothing more than to stay with Mark on an island, forever if I could.
“Maybe check your own messages, Evelyn,” Mark sighs, his shoulders sinking as he pushes his own food away once he takes his seat opposite me in the kitchen.
Checking my phone, I have a ton of missed calls, and most important is the message from the hospital.
My dad’s awake and is asking for me.
I groan loudly, rolling my eyes and feel them narrow as I feel angry at my dad for the first time in ages.
“It’s so like him to try and ruin all this,” I hear myself saying, thinking about every time he’s put me down or said I shouldn’t do this or that.
Mark surprises me by taking my dad’s side.
“He’s just had major surgery, Evelyn. Waking up in a strange place, being told what’s happened. It’s natural he wants his family. He needs his daughter,” he says confidently.
Sounding more like a doctor than the man who bedded me last night.
“And I want you,” I almost shout. “I want this.” My hands go out wide, open before closing over my chest.
Gripping my heart as if I could physically show him just how much all this means to me.
“You already have me,” Mark reminds me, looking just as annoyed as I feel though.
I know he’s torn about it too.
He has a professional side and now he has a personal side from the same patient, both tugging at him as much as his entire history with my dad on top of it all.
I try to distract myself from it all, to see what other messages are on my phone, but it’s no use.
