Charmed By You ((Destiny Bay Romances-The Islanders 5)) by Helen Conrad

and again in Flagstaff. Didn’t you hear a word I said?”
    Heather frowned. He was so awfully enigmatic today. Just what was it he had said in those days? She thought hard, trying to remember.
    The tension between them had made it difficult to regain the easy communication they’d enjoyed that first year. By the time he’d begun talking about going to Ragonai, they were at each other’s throats over the slight est disagreement. She remembered how he’d brought it up.
    “I’ve got to get out of here, Heather,” he’d said, pacing before her in their glass-and-chrome-furnished living room. “I feel like I’m suffocating. Dede Sablan has told me about the Pacific island her people come from. They’re in desperate need of medical assistance.”
    Heather shook her head. She couldn’t remember the rest. She’d only heard that he was suffocating, that for some reason he wasn’t happy with her or with the life they led. It made him feel as though he were drowning.
    “Mitch,” she’d said plaintively once, as she remembered it. “It isn’t like we’re living in New York City or something. This is the Southwest. Arizona. We’re practically just a few years from pioneer days. How can this be too civilized for you?”
    He shook his head. “Civilization isn’t the point,” he’d said. “Filling a need. Finding a place in the world where I can change lives.” He’d shrugged. “I came from the islands, Heather. I feel the pull to go back. I have to try it.”
    Trevor had explained what it all meant. “Let’s face it, Heather,” he’d told her sympathetically. “The guy can’t cut it. You’ve seen how he acts, hanging around the free clinics down on Santa Fe instead of making his way among his associates at the hospital. Mitch can’t make the grade with real competition. He wants to go out to some island where he can be a kingpin on his own.”
    At the time, she’d rebelled against the explanation, certain that Mitch was good at his work, sure that his true worth would pull him through. But her father had agreed with Trevor.
    “It’s all very well to spout altruistic ideals,” he’d grumbled to her one night. “All this talk about helping people is fine. But when it comes right down to it, you’ll usually find it’s no more than an excuse for failure in the real world.”
    Eventually Heather had come to wonder if they were right. Was Mitch too unconventional, too careless, to compete with the other medical professionals at the hospital? Was he falling behind, losing out, and did he want to run to a safe haven where incompetence would be tolerated?
    No, she couldn’t fully believe it. She still loved and trusted him. Besides, if medicine wasn’t his field, she was ready and willing to stand behind him while he found what he was really meant for.
    But what if he didn’t want her standing behind him? He seemed to push away every attempt she made to help. She would have stuck by him no matter what, if only he hadn’t shut her out. But he had. He’d been disdainful of everything she tried to do. When her father had set up a dinner engagement with the head of the hospital surgical unit, a prize social encounter that might have paved the way for a nice position on the hospital staff, Mitch had refused to go.
    “I won’t fawn over the man, begging for a job,” he’d told her angrily. “That might be how the people you run around with make their way in this world, but I won’t stoop to it.”
    Her father had grunted. “Can’t take the heat, can he? I never would have guessed he’d be so afraid of proving himself.” He’d shrugged. “Well, I suppose Mitch knows better than we do what he’s capable of. If he doesn’t think he has a chance, who are we to tell him differently?”
    She’d defended him again and again. But deep inside she’d begun to doubt.
    When he’d left, there had been no question of her going with him. She’d made it plain that she wanted to stay in Flagstaff. But