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He wasn’t supposed to be here yet.
Her hand clutched at her throat in a familiar comforting gesture, then she grabbed the edge of her desk and forced herself to her feet, stepping into the lab proper on shaky legs. ‘Ah, yes—sorry, Dr Zaphirides.’
Alex turned slightly towards the voice. ‘Isobella?’
Oh, God! His voice was even sexier in the flesh.She nodded, walking towards him, her outstretched hand trembling slightly. ‘I didn’t think you were due in till later?’ Isobella hoped her voice sounded normal, because to her own ears it sounded high, practically a squeak.
‘The airline managed to get me on an earlier flight,’ Alex replied, shaking the proffered hand as she drew near, quickly assessing her baggy white coat and huge glasses.So this was Isobella Nolan? ‘We meet at last, Isobella.’
Alex bowed his head slightly, and Isobella was curiously charmed by the old-fashioned gesture. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly parched, and forced a polite smile to her lips, ignoring the warmth of the big hand enveloping hers. She felt a silly flutter in her stomach.
‘Nice to meet you, Dr Zaphirides,’ she murmured.
At five-eleven Isobella didn’t usually have to look up too far, but Alex had a good few inches on her. She blinked as she took in his features, her gaze zooming in on the splendour of his face. The man looked as if he really had just descended from Mount Olympus. His face was a work of art. Nobel and statuesque, with two indentations bracketing the chiselled perfection of his mouth.
He could have sat for Rodin. He certainly could have modelled forGQ. The planes of his face were sublime, his bone structure magnificent. His square jaw was dusted with dark stubble and his head was crowned with dark, lush locks styled into just-got-out-of-bed tousled glory, completing his god-like stature.
Alex dropped his hand. ‘I think it’s about time you called me Alex.’
His husky request brushed along her nerve-endings as his gaze captured hers. She was forced to concede that his eyes were almost as compelling as his voice. They were blue—a surprise, given his bronze colouring. A blue like she’d never seen before.
No, that wasn’t true. Shehad seen it before. On a photo shoot on the volcanic isle of Santorini in Greece. The exact blue of the Aegean had been difficult to label back then, but she knew she was seeing it replicated in the cerulean depths of Alex Zaphirides’s gaze.
She nodded. ‘Of course, Dr…I mean, Alex.’
He laughed at her stumble, a sexy rasping chuckle that deepened the indentations either side of his mouth into flirty dimples and flashed a glimpse of his perfect white teeth. She looked away, momentarily dazzled, her gaze drawn to the bob of his Adam’s apple in the bronzed column of his throat.
His open-necked shirt afforded her an unrestricted view, and her eyes widened at the large, L-shaped surgical scar that bisected half of his neck and ran up towards his right ear. It was white and faded, but still a noticeable mark. No wonder his voice was so gravelly. He’d obviously done some serious damage at some stage. But how? Which rumour was true?
Below it, a smaller but much more livid scar marred the centre of his throat. It was only a centimetre or so long, but it was raised, almost keloid in nature. She knew what it was without even having to ask, for she had a matching one of her own. At some stage in his life he’d had a tracheostomy. Were the two scars related?
She raised her hand nervously to her own throat, grateful to feel the familiar comforting presence of material covering her own unsightly blemish. She marvelled at how at ease with them Alex had to be to show his scars off to the world. Sixteen years later, she still reviled the marks that had disfigured her. She couldn’t imagine a time when she’dever be at ease with them.
‘Where is everyone?’ Alex enquired.
‘They’re in the staffroom, having lunch,’ Isobella said, conscious of the thrum of blood through her head.
‘And you?’
She frowned. He was looking expectantly at her, but it seemed all her usual thought processes were scrambled by his sandpaper voice and the sexier-than-Zeus vibes he emitted. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You don’t eat lunch?’ He looked her up and down. Beneath her primly buttoned, baggy white coat he could just make out a lanky frame, and despite the distraction of her hideous too-big-for-her-face glasses her dainty bone structure was clearly evident. His mother would cluck her tongue in disapproval.
Isobella blushed under his scrutiny. He was looking at her as if she was a particularly uninteresting lab specimen. A first for her. Most men needed to fall prey to her sharp tongue and experience her specialised freezing-out routine before they looked at her with such complete uninterest.
