Saved By The Greek Doctor (Greek Gods #3) - Holly Rayner Page 0,40

here, and I don’t want to leave without understanding why you won’t just tell me whatever it is you have to say.”

Yeah, okay, it was an intense statement. But I wasn’t going to take it back. This man was making me feel something I’d never felt before, and I wasn’t willing to throw that away without knowing why we were leaving each other rather than acting on the passion we both so clearly felt.

I saw him hesitate, try to block me, and then eventually melt into acceptance. I saw the moment he talked himself into telling me. And a part of me relaxed. But I didn’t let go of his shirt.

“I told you I was a doctor,” he said quietly. “The truth is, I was a surgeon. I was one of the best. I started my training young, and rose to the top quickly—probably faster than I should have. I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t do, because there never had been anything I couldn’t do. I didn’t think there was anyone I couldn’t save. I was riding high, on top of the world. And then… someone died on my table, in the middle of surgery. Yes, it was a complicated surgery and it happens. But it had never happened to me. And it… it broke me. I quit everything. Surgery. Society. Life.”

He paused and swallowed heavily, and I watched him, not saying anything, questions flying through my head that I hesitated to put into words.

Because now that Nikos was talking, I didn’t think I could interrupt him. I didn’t want to remind him that I was here listening.

When his eyes came back up to meet mine, they were haunted. Tragic.

“I quit on myself,” he continued in a whisper. “And I’m just not sure it’s fair to bring anyone else into that sort of tragedy. I don’t know if I want to sentence you to someone as broken as I am.”

Chapter 19

Trish

I jerked up, cold sweat running down my sides, and took in a deep, heaving breath, trying to recover the threads of the dream that had brought me to the edge of panic and then tossed me up into consciousness again.

A quick, desperate look around the room, and I remembered.

It was pitch black outside and I was in the guest room of Nikos’ house. I’d had trouble falling asleep, partially because I’d had too much wine and partially because of what Nikos had told me—and what we’d done directly after that… and how awkward the rest of dinner had been, neither of us quite looking the other in the eye, neither of us coming close to the ease we’d started to feel around each other.

In short, the rest of dinner had been difficult, and though we’d gone through the motions of good conversation and laughter, it had all been fake.

Somehow, we’d broken the thing we’d been building with one another. And I still wasn’t quite sure what had done it: the kiss, or the story that came after. Though it could have been his pretty direct statement about not wanting to get me involved in whatever he had going on in his life.

I mean, that’s a bucket full of cold water on a budding romance, and there were no two ways about it.

In that moment, one thing had become clear. If I’d been hoping for an invitation to stay on the island even longer, it wasn’t coming. It might have been, before, and the way he’d been looking at me made me think that he’d been at least considering it. Maybe even wishing he could pull it off.

If I was a betting woman, I would have put good money on the idea that he’d been on the verge of asking me all day. The tour of Athens. The romantic restaurant. The ordering for me. The insistence that I try the moussaka—and then compare it to his.

Or rather… to the dish we’d made together.

But once we kissed each other and felt that red-hot passion between us, the possible invitation had melted away as if it had never even existed, and I had no idea why. I didn’t know if it was because Nikos was afraid of caring about someone or if he truly didn’t want to catch anyone else in the web of tragedy he’d built for himself. I didn’t even know if there was more to the story, and if that additional material would make the whole thing make sense.

And if there was more, I didn’t understand why