The Vet's Escape to Paradise Read online

  ‘I mean, I just find it hard to believe there’s only one,’ she continued. ‘I’m a vet myself. Back in Ireland.’

  He nodded and said something quietly in Spanish to Nayely. The two clearly knew each other—the island was small after all. Ivy found herself wondering where he lived and what else he did on the island when he wasn’t caring for sick animals.

  Stop swooning, woman!

  Suddenly, he was motioning goodbye, and she was speaking without thinking.

  ‘Can I check up on this booby, tomorrow? I’ll come by the clinic. Maybe I can even volunteer? I have some time...’

  ‘Sure, Nayely will let you know where I am.’ He eyed her up and down again, holding the box against him. She knew instinctively that the bird would be safe in his care. A part of her wanted to be that bird.

  ‘I should go,’ he said, and she shook herself. What the hell was she doing, crushing out like a schoolgirl?

  Must be the heat.

  His mouth twitched with a secret smile, and something in her stomach did a backflip as his eyes raked over her torso again. ‘Nice to meet you, Ivy,’ he said, and she allowed herself the pleasure of watching his pert bottom from behind as he made his way back out into the twilight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IVY WAS STANDING in front of the paper-strewn desk, smelling of coconut sun lotion. She’d come to check on the baby booby, and now she was trying to offer her services. Again.

  Jero folded his arms across his navy shirt and put his face into neutral. He was tired after a late night with the school board discussing plans for Aayla’s next class outing and his brain was struggling to keep up. So many words, he thought in vague amusement, spilling from Ivy’s lips under the whirring air-conditioning unit.

  ‘I have my own veterinary clinic, near Galway. Well, I’m the co-founder of Animal Remedy Referrals. Look it up. My partner, Mike, and I have over forty years of combined experience working in academic institutions and private referral practices. I can show you references. In fact, one client just left a five-star review this morning. There were complications during surgery on her basset hound two weeks ago, but thankfully I—’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  She pursed her lips as he cut her short. She’d hardly taken a breath till now. Good thing the accent was so interesting. Kind of mesmerising actually. Did she always wear green? Today the T-shirt tucked into her denim shorts was ocean green...or maybe it was Irish-clover green? The one she’d wrapped the booby in had been turquoise and green. Even her bikini was green. He’d appreciated that a lot last night.

  She cocked her head and gave him a look that said, Well?

  ‘I don’t doubt your qualifications, Ivy, but we don’t have any paid positions right now.’

  ‘Payment?’ She looked affronted. ‘You think I’m here looking for a job? I just told you, Jero, I have my own clinic in Galway. Although I’ve recently contemplated selling, if you must know; there’s talk of an acquisition by a private-equity-backed group, Blue Stream Veterinary Alliance?’

  She paused as if he might have heard of it, which of course he hadn’t. ‘They’re very impressed with our...’ She trailed off, maybe sensing his amusement.

  ‘Anyway. I’m here on my honeymoon.’ Her eyes darted sideways. ‘Kind of.’

  He felt his eyebrows arc to his hairline. Now, this was interesting. Kind of?

  ‘I’m just offering my help while I’m here. It’s what I do. You have other volunteers, don’t you?’

  He perched on the edge of the table, folding his arms again and catching her trace his tattoo with her eyes. ‘Why would you want to volunteer here while you’re on your honeymoon? Wouldn’t that cut into your cocktail-sipping, scuba-diving agenda?’

  Ivy’s amber eyes drew a line up from his tattoo to his face. When they locked onto his he wondered how she’d stuck a hummingbird in place of his heart already. She’d done it yesterday too, in the hotel lobby, the second she’d looked up at him with that booby fledgling in her hands.

  He dragged a hand along his chin, trying not to linger in her stare, or let his eyes drop to her shapely legs in those shorts. Ivy Malone was something to look at with that sharp, diminutive chin and angular cheekbones, and breasts like two squeezable peaches in a green bikini.

  She was married, he reminded himself. On her honeymoon.

  ‘I’m pretty sure your husband wants you with him at any rate; hotels like the one you guys are in cost a fortune,’ he said. ‘If I were you, I’d be horizontal on a sunbed...’

  He stopped talking. That might have come out wrong; he’d been distracted.

  ‘My husband’s not here.’ Ivy swiped her fingertip across a photo of his team, taken six months ago on turtle release day, then swiped the dust off onto her jean shorts. He cringed inside. The reception area wasn’t exactly spotless today. Or any day.

  ‘I don’t have a husband.’ She paused. ‘Not even a fiancé any more.’

  ‘I’m confused.’ Jero rubbed his arms, blindsided. The Aqua Breeze Couples’ Resort was famous for honeymooners and...well...couples.

  ‘Don’t be. It’s really very clear. I have spare time, and you look like you could do with some help around here.’

  She motioned with her eyes to the mountain of paperwork on the desk, and the Manila files poking haphazardly from the cardboard boxes on the shelving unit by the wall. He prayed the posters wouldn’t start drooping under her scrutiny.

  The surgery and storage rooms were spotless, of course, someone cleaned those every day, meticulously, which was why no one had time to sort the reception area out—they were too busy. Always. It was one thing after the other and his team of volunteers were already all in a million places at once.

  But that wasn’t all he was thinking now. This woman needed a distraction from whatever had happened with her...fiancé?

  What went down there? A woman honeymooning alone at the island’s top five-star couples-only resort was not exactly an everyday occurrence. Was she a jilted bride, maybe?

  What if her would-be husband had dropped dead or something? He’d heard a story like that once from a chambermaid at The Spotted Finch Hotel in town. Some guy had a heart attack the night of the wedding and left his wife of less than eight hours a widow.

  A widow at Ivy’s age; what was she, mid-thirties? That would be even worse than what had happened to him and Aayla, which the whole island agreed, mostly behind his and his daughter’s back, was pretty terrible.

  ‘Just think about it?’ she pushed, digging into her denim pocket and producing a business card. He turned it over in his hand, feeling his lips twitch at the cliched pawprint logo above the web address. ‘Look me up. I think you’ll find I’m legitimate.’

  ‘I have no doubt,’ he heard himself say, studying the slightly crumpled card. Ivy Malone. It sounded like a song in his brain. He found himself scrubbing a hand through where his hair used to be. He’d shaved it a week ago. It was getting too damn hot again already.

  ‘I’ll be waiting to hear from you, then,’ she said. Ivy turned to leave, but swung back at the last second, picking up a book that was threatening to fall from the low-level table by the door—one of many Spanish-and English-language books he kept here for Aayla. She was fluent in both.

  ‘I used to love this book!’

  Opening it at the centre, Ivy traced a finger over the hungry caterpillar, and her face lit up like sunshine. ‘Ooh, it’s in Spanish, of course. I wonder if it’s the same as I remember it in English. I used to read this to my dog, Zeus.’

  ‘Really?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Zeus appreciated it when I read to him.’

  ‘It was one of my favourites, too,’ he said, noticing the dust-free streak her finger had left on the team photo—he really should dust it all off. In fact, he was going to do that the second she left. ‘I kept it for my daughter—she’
s six, and now she loves it, maybe more than I ever did.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you have a daughter. Nayely from the hotel did mention that.’

  He bristled. So, she’d heard the story too, then. Nayely had probably recounted it all when he’d left the lobby, whether Ivy had asked her about him or not. Single father, born in Quito, raised in Texas, moved to the Galapagos eight years ago, married a tourist he assumed, wrongly, wanted what he did—the happy family, the life they went on to build—who then went on to ditch him for another tourist. A corporate overlord from Washington DC, no less. All of which left him raising their ‘wild’, ‘feral’ island child here alone.

  He’d had various exaggerated accounts of it relayed to him over the years. No one could keep anything to themselves around here.

  Ivy flicked through the pages, bobbing her head of curls as if reliving her own childhood memories. ‘You can borrow it if you want,’ he heard himself say, just as he noticed she didn’t look happy in this moment of nostalgia any more.

  She frowned. ‘I’ll leave it with you. Just in case we don’t actually see each other again.’

  ‘Retracting your offer to volunteer for me, now that you’ve seen the state of this place?’

  ‘Is that what you want?’ She placed the book back on the table slowly and he kicked himself for highlighting the mess.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he added quickly. The state of things at the clinic had nothing to do with why she wouldn’t take the book, he could tell that much by the look on her face. Not that he had time to read into it. He could see a call-out coming in as they spoke.

  Ivy forced another smile in his direction. ‘Well, thanks for letting me check on the booby, Jero. Do let me know if you need me,’ she said on her way out.

  * * *

  Jero thought about Ivy most of the afternoon, and the morning after that as he made his way to the fish market. Maybe he should just let her work with him. He sure needed her.

  But maybe he shouldn’t.

  Why the hell did accepting help from anyone he hadn’t personally invited into his orbit still get old wounds stinging?

  His trust issues caused him to cut off his own nose to spite his face sometimes, but the way she’d told him how he clearly needed some help...that still stung.

  He should be able to juggle everything by now; it shouldn’t matter one iota that he was raising Aayla on his own and running the island’s only veterinary clinic, as well as a hundred other projects. He should be able to stay on top of his work and provide everything she needed. Millions of people got divorced and made it work. Everything should be under control and on his own terms by now: his life, his home, his work.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Yolanda, the National Park vet, was still off raising funds for a new project on the mainland. Zenon, who’d been on Guayaquil time since his arrival six months ago, had taken a second sick day in a row.

  Dudders—short for Daniel Dudley—his well-meaning import from Britain via a gap year at a monkey sanctuary in Thailand, had turned up an hour late again, albeit dragging a crate of overdue dog food he’d lugged all the way from the ferry port.

  Things were always late. So were people. He needed another pair of hands; someone he could count on. Hailey, the first full-time surgeon he’d managed to keep for longer than a year, was still in New Zealand, nursing her sick father. He really should advertise the position again, but she’d begged him not to. She wanted to return. She just didn’t know when she could.

  The sterilisation programme they’d started called him all over the place. No one with an unsterilised dog was refused, which meant he’d put out a mobile service to the other inhabited islands too—Isabela, San Cristobal, and Floreana.

  It was against Galapagos laws to transport any animals between islands. Cross-contamination was a big deal; they had to go to them. Cats and dogs carried diseases and parasites that affected the endemic wildlife. The result was sadly much animal neglect, homelessness and overpopulation. If they didn’t keep it under control, more local wildlife would suffer. It was all hands on deck, without all the other work on top...

  ‘Fancy seeing you here.’ A familiar Irish voice stopped him in his tracks. Ivy’s eyes fell to where Aayla was standing at his side five metres from the port, where the Puerto Ayora fish market was as loud and smelly as ever. Her small hand clutched his tighter as she slurped the last dregs from a carton of orange juice.

  ‘Oh...hi...you.’ Ivy looked and sounded kind of uncomfortable.

  Aayla swallowed loudly. ‘Hi,’ she echoed, eyeing her in interest from under her sunhat. ‘I like your camera.’

  ‘Er... Thanks.’ Ivy refocused on him, squared her slender shoulders. ‘So, you didn’t call.’

  Awkward.

  He pulled his sunglasses off his face and...damn, she was striking in the blazing sunlight. The breeze blew in across the crowds and the port and tussled with her red curls; the colour of flames in a wildfire, he thought, watching them lick her shoulder blades.

  She was still wearing the shorts, this time with a skimpy white cotton vest top tucked in behind the camera hanging around her neck. No green...except for the headband and dangly emerald earrings. Her shapely legs went on for ever before they hit the flip-flops on her feet. Her pale milky skin was a little red around the bikini straps, not that he should be looking.

  ‘I was going to get in touch. I’ve just been...’

  ‘Busy?’ she finished, just as a sea lion’s bellow from behind her made her jump and almost land in his arms.

  Aayla giggled. ‘That’s just Álvaro. He’s not scary!’

  Aayla was used to things like this. Flapping giant wings, swishing tails like swords and wildlife honking louder than a city-centre traffic jam were normal to most people round here. Obviously they weren’t to Ivy. A crowd of locals lining up for their fish sniggered at her ‘tourist’ reaction. Álvaro—a fish market resident who probably weighed as much as a small elephant—was laughing too; at least it seemed as if he was laughing. Ivy broke contact from where her hand had landed on his other arm.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, flustered, before catching his gaze and holding it.

  ‘Aayla, go see Marsha over there,’ he instructed, still glued to her eyes.

  Ivy was irrefutably attractive. But that look in her eyes...that was it. That was what had rattled the cage he sometimes forgot his heart was all locked up in.

  He hadn’t felt a pull like this to anyone in a long time. He’d probably, on some subconscious level, turned a blind eye to his needs in that department since Mitch, the Washington overlord, sailed up to the island and left seven months later having fully secured Jero’s wife for himself. He still couldn’t say Suranne’s name out loud without it burning like a bad tattoo. She was meant to call Aayla last Sunday. She still hadn’t bothered.

  ‘Daddy! Over here!’ Aayla was waving at him profusely from Marsha’s table, covered with crates of iced yellowfin tuna, groupers and red snapper. ‘Daddy, there are seven of them!’

  ‘Seven of what?’ Ivy looked primed for involvement in whatever Aayla was talking about now.

  Looks like this woman isn’t going anywhere.

  With a heavy sigh under his breath, he beckoned her with him as he stepped over Álvaro, and a pelican promptly tried to land on his shoulder. Waving it off gently, he led her to Marsha’s market stall, where Aayla was already on bended knees, lifting the plastic sheet up and peering into a box on the concrete floor.

  ‘Found them this morning,’ Marsha said, stepping around his daughter to hand a paper parcel of hot-pink scorpion fish over to a customer. ‘Figured you were the man to call. Didn’t have time to drop them off before I had to be here.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ he said. Marsha was like a mother to him, and most people on the island. Her stall at the fish market had been manned—or womanned, as she liked to say—for th
e last four generations and this sea lion had become somewhat of her surrogate son.

  ‘They’re probably only three, maybe four weeks old,’ Ivy said as they both dropped beside Aayla to inspect the puppies. Each one was a slightly different colour, their ears still pink and floppy, wriggling and writhing around on top of each other.

  ‘Any sign of the mother?’ he asked Marsha. Then he realised Ivy had said the exact same thing in harmony.

  ‘You’re funny.’ Aayla giggled. ‘I like your camera.’

  Ivy suppressed a smile. ‘You already said that.’

  Aayla looked up at her beseechingly. ‘Can I take some photos of them?’

  ‘Not now.’

  Ivy stepped away as he pulled the cardboard box of puppies out and Marsha swept a fish head off her table of fresh catch, narrowly missing Ivy’s head. Álvaro waddled up for his prize. Just then, a battle commenced between him and the pelican in a showdown of wings, squawks and honks, but Ivy wasn’t even looking now. Her amber eyes stayed fixed on the pups as he placed them on a nearby empty table. One by one she helped him check them over, while the tourists looked on in interest. No visible signs of injury. But Marsha hadn’t seen the mother either.

  ‘We’ll get them to the clinic. They’ll need de-worming asap,’ he told her. ‘Then I guess we add them to the adoption register.’

  Ivy raised an eyebrow. ‘We. Does that mean you want me on your team?’

  Now it was his turn to suppress a smile.

  Her qualifications were undeniably impressive. He himself had internal medicine and emergencies covered, but Ivy was a licensed orthopaedic surgeon with countless other creds in animal care. From what he’d seen online, aside from the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, she had more testimonials and glowing accolades and award-winning papers under her belt than anyone he’d ever met. It looked as if she hadn’t done anything but work since she graduated vet school...if anything she was overqualified, but she did seem enthusiastic.

  Or she wants to distract herself on her solo honeymoon. What the hell happened there?