Tempted By Her Hot-Shot Doc. Becky Wicks

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СКАЧАТЬ We need you over here, please.’ That voice again.

      His face was expressionless as he engulfed Madeline’s hand with his own, and for some reason another episode of Medical Extremes was flashing in her mind. Cambodia. The one where he’d eaten a fried tarantula. It had been a gift from the family of a man he’d helped to save.

      Ryan Tobias was fearless—that was what everyone said. Well. She was damned if she’d let him scare her.

      ‘I’m looking forward to working with you,’ she said calmly.

      ‘Ryan!’

      ‘I’m coming, damn it!’

      He dropped her hand, turned and strolled across the studio, and Samantha took Madeline’s elbow, leading her to a sofa and coffee table in the corner of the chaos. Both were covered in sheets of paper.

      ‘You did good. I’m so sorry to spring this on you.’ She poured them both a cup of coffee. ‘But this opportunity wouldn’t have waited. I suggested you the moment I heard what happened to the last ghost-writer...’

      ‘What happened?’ Madeline realised just how dry her throat was.

      ‘Fell down some stairs—cracked three ribs, broke one arm. Ironic isn’t the word. Would you like a biscuit?’

      She shook her head, glancing to her right. Ryan was walking towards a guy packing a camera into a very large black box on wheels, talking about some supplies he needed but hadn’t seen yet. His voice still sent chills...or was it thrills?...straight through her.

      Was she really going to the Amazon?

      ‘He seems...nice,’ she ventured, sipping her coffee.

      ‘He’s very nice, when everything goes to plan. So, Madeline, the long and short of it is that Ryan’s contract states that he needs to deliver a memoir and his publishers want it released for Christmas. Only as yet he’s been too busy to write it.’

      ‘OK...’

      Madeline gripped more tightly onto her cup and bit into her cheek. Ghost-writing wasn’t exactly something she was thrilled about doing. Her last book—written under her own name—hadn’t gone too well, though, due to her publisher having no marketing budget, mostly. Her sales had suffered horribly while she’d been out writing the next one in the middle of nowhere in Zimbabwe.

      Apparently bad things happened to books if you couldn’t spend twenty-four hours a day on Twitter, telling everyone about them.

      Bad things happened to relationships, too, if you stupidly left your boyfriend alone for two months...

      Madeline pushed thoughts of Adeline from her head.

      Samantha sipped her coffee, then put the cup down on the messy table.

      ‘Ryan is about to go and shoot the third season of Medical Extremes, as you know, and what with all his appointments he hasn’t got time for the memoir, too. We need someone to help him write the book at the same time as he’s filming—gather quotes, insights, interviews, you know? Am I right in thinking you’re still free to take a week or two, probably three, out of London at the moment?’

      Madeline nodded blankly. Ryan was so tall and so commanding without even trying. Everyone seemed to be in awe of him. And although she was a little loath to admit it, after the way he’d just acted towards her, it wasn’t hard to see why.

      As well as being the sexiest doctor since George Clooney, Ryan was a millionaire who gave selflessly to charities all over the world. He didn’t have a lot else to spend his riches on, apparently. His father was a heart surgeon, famed for working with those less fortunate in the US. Ryan had taken things one step further by setting up his own non-profit organisation and flying all over the world with his team, crossing borders to reach people who’d never get help otherwise.

      Samantha lowered her voice. ‘Ryan doesn’t write. Obviously his skills lie in other areas. But with you on board, plus his celebrity status, this book could be a bestseller. Easy. The publishers have a very impressive budget.’

      ‘And Twitter?’ Madeline said. ‘How many followers?’

      ‘Over four hundred thousand. He never tweets a damn thing, of course, but we have Amy from Middlesex University who’s his biggest fan. She won the competition to be his Twitter manager. He just got done with a news team covering the story... BBC, I think. How are you at being on camera? You’ve got great cheekbones—I bet it loves you. And you speak several languages, I recall? Always useful.’

      Madeline’s stomach lurched. This was turning out to be a lot more than she’d bargained for. But it wasn’t as if she had anything else on the cards.

      She mused over the offer as Samantha kept on talking. She vaguely registered her agent mentioning Rio, a remote tribe—‘none of those weird neck rings or anything’—parasites, anaemia... But after a minute she was only half listening, because she could feel Ryan looking at her again from across the room.

      She straightened her back again, so that he could see he wasn’t intimidating her in any way, and tried to look enthusiastic and excited. She had to play her cards right. This chance was too good to pass up and maybe Samantha was right. It could be a bestseller by Christmas.

      We can both get something out of this, she thought, sending the thought across the void and straight into Ryan’s cool, iceberg eyes.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘DID YOU KNOW that CAN’s first pilots were called the flag-bearers of the skies? That was in the early nineteen-forties.’

      ‘I don’t know much about CAN at the moment,’ Madeline said. ‘This was all a bit short notice, as you know. Maybe you could explain?’

      She was trying her hardest not to let turbulence affect the way she was talking to Ryan. This plane was far too shaky for her peace of mind, but of course this man flew everywhere for a living and didn’t even look as if he’d noticed they were bumping up and down in what felt like God’s hugest tantrum since the last giant tornado.

      ‘Correio Aéreo Nacional,’ he said, picking up a packet of peanuts and running a tanned thumb over the seal without opening it. ‘Their mission was to help integrate the most remote Amazon outposts with the rest of the country.’

      ‘How did they do that?’

      Madeline pulled out her notebook, wishing she’d put her laptop under her seat instead of up in the overhead locker. She could type much faster than she could write these days, but there was no way on earth she was climbing past Ryan. She’d rather not risk feeling his eyes on her again as she tripped, or did something else stupid as a result of her nerves.

      There was something in his stare, she mused. It stayed with her even with her eyes closed. She’d seen it a thousand times in camera close-ups, of course, and it was part of what drew people in their thousands to watch him in action. It had the power to make you feel like you were the only person on earth. It also had the power to make you feel like an idiot.

      Ryan smiled, apparently scrutinising her handwriting from his seat on the aisle. ‘CAN transported isolated СКАЧАТЬ