“Yes,” Bash agreed quietly. “I couldn’t believe it when I first found it. I must have sat in here for hours until the sun went down.”
“And you’ve kept it secret?” Sean had mixed feelings about it; on one hand, he could understand Bash wanting to keep this place to himself, but on the other, it seemed like he should have at least told Nick what treasure his island was hiding.
Bash looked at him with a wry smile. “I’ve considered telling others, but what difference would it make in the grand scheme of things? Nick isn’t about to allow a bunch of historians and archeologists to invade the island to study it, and removing the statue seems… I don’t know. Sacrilegious, I suppose. It’smeantto be here. I think it was carved right in that spot, from a large rock that fell down from above.”
Sean nodded. “I suppose in that case, there isn’t much point, is there?”
“That’s what I figured.” Bash turned to the statue again, lost in contemplation of its beauty. “I feel a connection with it. I can imagine the artist landing on this island — perhaps it was a shipwreck, or maybe he was an explorer, looking for an undiscovered place to make his own. He looks around the beach, then spots a dark crack in the cliff. Curious, he steps inside, bending down, going slowly because he doesn’t know what might be ahead. Then the narrow crack widens, and he finds a cave, with a silent pool at the base of a stone pillar rising to the sky, yet hidden from it. And in that pillar, he sees his magnum opus, his destiny, and, more than that, his lover, the man who captured his heart. A fellow sailor now lost forever at sea. Perhaps they even chuckled together, likening themselves to Orpheus and Calais, and in that act of hubris, they doomed themselves. But the artist decides that here, he can defy the gods that stole his lover from him and create a secret memorial to his lost love. He works at it tirelessly, spending countless hours crafting every detail. Then, when it is finished, he gazes at it in despair, for he realizes the love he memorialized was so vast and perfect, he can’t go on without it any longer. So he falls to his knees and takes up a dagger. With his beloved’s name on his lips, he plunges the dagger into his own heart, then falls forward, at the last moment turning his head so he can stare at the statue. For he gave the heroes faces in the likeness of he and his lover, and as death’s embrace pulls him into darkness, he smiles — for when he sees his love in the next world, he will share the joke of how forevermore they will live on as gods in stone.”
As though realizing he’d been rambling, Bash glanced at Sean with a rueful smile. Obviously embarrassed, Bash shrugged. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize!” Sean said, squeezing Bash’s hand. “That was beautiful. I knew you were a badass, but I never realized it was merely a cover for the soul of a poet.”
“Poet? Me?” Bash laughed, but he seemed pleased by the compliment.
“Yes, you.” Sean smiled, thinking he’d never seen Bash looking so carefree. “Thank you for sharing that with me.” He gestured with his free hand at the statue. “And sharing this. It’s something I’ll treasure always.”.
Bash pulled Sean close and lowered his head, claiming a slow, unhurried kiss.
“If you’d like, we can go back up to my cabin and share something else,” he murmured against Sean’s lips.
Eyes warm with affection, Sean stepped back, then tugged Bash toward the cave entrance. “Something else I’ve come to treasure,” he replied, his tone teasing.
Despite the lightness of his words, Sean meant them. Seeing this side of Bash made him realize that not only was Bash a man he could admire, but one with whom Sean was falling in love.
14
“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Sean asked, looking down at the small girl on the examination table, who was surveying the pink band-aid on her upper arm with a critical eye.
“It hurted a little,” she announced, looking up at Sean with a gap-toothed smile. “Enough for a lolly?”
Sean laughed and tweaked the dark pigtail that trailed over her shoulder. “Yes, sweetheart, you may have a lolly.”
He picked her up under her arms and lowered her to the ground, then turned for the glass canister of lollipops on the counter next to the neat containers of swabs, tongue depressors, and nitrile gloves. He picked it up and held it out to her, grinning as she selected a color with as much deliberation as someone selecting a new car. Finally, with a red lolly in hand, she skipped to her mother and took her hand.
“What do you say, Christina?” the woman reminded her daughter, and the little girl turned with another smile.
“Thank you, Dr. Sean!” she said, and Sean watched as they headed out of the infirmary.
“That’s all the children, Dr. Grimaldi.” Anna, the head nurse, informed him as he stepped out of the examination room. She was a comfortably round woman of middle age, her graying brown hair pulled back in a neat bun under her crisp white cap.
Sean glanced around the pleasant, well-equipped medical bay and sighed. Although he hadn’t fully made up his mind about taking Nick Galanos up on his offer to join Fortress — although he was leaning rather heavily in that direction — he’d offered his services at the medical facility which served all the members of Nick’s organization while they were on the island, including their dependents. He’d been surprised by how many people occupied the “private” island, and he’d been pleased that there were even fifty-three children, from infants up to the age of seventeen. With the normal necessary checkups and vaccinations, along with sniffles, bumps, bruises, and tummy aches, it meant Sean had a couple of small patients per day, and the regular medical staff had all been thrilled to have an actual pediatrician to handle the cases.
“Tomorrow ,there are three infant check-ups scheduled,” Anna told him, consulting her tablet computer. “And Mrs. Stevens thinks her three-year-old son, Daren, needs the tubes in his ears checked.”
“All right.” Sean nodded his acceptance, knowing Anna would send the schedule to the cell phone Nick had provided for his use. “I’ll be here in the morning in time for the first appointment.”
Anna gave him an approving smile. “We like having you around here, you know. You’re very good with the children, and nothing is more reassuring to a parent than having a good doctor for their little ones when they’re ill.”
“I’m glad,” Sean said, and he meant it. He missed the hectic pace of having his own practice in London, but there were certain compensations to being on the island. And one of those compensations would hopefully be waiting for him back in their room. “Until tomorrow, then.”
“Bye,” Anna said, and Sean left the med center, heading back toward Bash’s suite..
People greeted him politely as he passed them in the halls. The lowest level of the complex, as he thought of it, housed the medical facilities, including a complete surgery, and an armory and storage facility, and there were always people coming and going about their business. Bash had told him there was also a hardened shelter capable of withstanding everything from a tsunami to an offshore nuclear strike, and, although Sean hadn’t seen it yet, an underground cave with access to the ocean where Nick kept two submarines. It was almost too much for Sean to comprehend that a private individual could have his own — if admittedly small — private army and navy, but apparently Nick had managed it with no one catching on.
He made his way to the upper levels and down the hallway toward Bash’s suite. Although he still had the room he’d been given as “his,” he hadn’t been back to it since that first day, choosing instead to stay with Bash. Bash was usually occupied during the day, involved in training or meetings or whatever tasks Nick gave him. He’d even gone out on two missions, once being gone for almost four days, during which Sean had fretted about Bash’s wellbeing. That was when he’d first volunteered at the clinic, wanting something to fill his time to keep himself from worrying about whether Bash was in danger and whether he might end up getting hurt or killed.
As he rounded a corner, he almost ran headlong into Bash, and he stepped back with an automatic apology. Bash didn’t seem to mind; in fact, he smiled at Sean and reached out, turning Sean around and draping an arm across his shoulders. The easy physical affection was something Sean had adjusted to, although it had been odd at first. Bash liked to touch him and did so constantly, even if it was only a light touch of his hand as they talked. Sean had thought his family had been fairly demonstrative, especially given the notoriously stand-offish behavior of most of the British upper class, but in this, as in all things, Bash was a law unto himself.
