“All right. Why I want to get married:

“I’m pushing forty. My mother would love me to get married. I expect I will buckle under social demands and get married sooner or later, so why not now? The usual mid-life crisis, really.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

He sighed. What would it take to satisfy her? The truth? He doubted it. But what would she do if he told her that he hadn’t slept one solid night since he’d laid eyes on her? That he hadn’t known such violent sexual attraction was possible, that it made him wonder if it was a symptom of a breakdown of some sort? That all he could think of when he had a moment to himself was how it would feel to have his body buried in hers, his senses full of her taste and his head full of her cries of pleasure?

She’d probably run screaming.

Dear Reader

For me, writing has always been a delight that nothing else surpasses, an escape into a world where anything can and does happen. A world that I create and control. How magnificent and satisfying is that? My characters are real people to me, people I laugh and cry with, live and love with. I also love pitting them against impossible odds, both in the world around them and inside their hearts and souls. They really have to earn those happily-ever-afters I end up giving them.

As well as writing, I love singing, painting, reading in every genre, and keeping fit. And besides sharing my life with my characters I'm blessed to share it with my wonderful, supportive family and friends.

There is nothing better.

Olivia Gates

Recent titles by the same author:

DOCTORS ON THE FRONTLINE

Emergency Marriage

Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one is for you, Mom.

For believing in me, for being there for me,

and for everything that you are.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ONE

“LAURA—you fool!”

Laura Burnside almost dropped the arms of the woman she was dragging along the ground.

Freezing, eyes darting around the chaos, heart shaking her apart, she sought the source of the furious shout.

Someone’s shoulder slammed into hers, jolting her back.

Concentrate, Burnside, all her senses screamed. It doesn’t matter who’s calling you or calling you what. It can’t be him anyway. Get out of here. Drag that woman away…

Another outburst of shots. Another man fell a few feet away from her. No way to help him, not now. One victim at a time. Bending again, tightening her grip on the woman’s wrists, she dug her heels in and pulled. Much heavier than her, getting heavier with every inch. Pain stabbed her side again.

Fool. That was what the voice had called her. His voice. It couldn’t be him, of course. What would he be doing here, in Buenos Aires, hundreds of miles away from his home and work? His rage must be reaching out to her all the way from Santa Fe. No one disobeyed Armando Salazar.

It could also be her mind calling her a fool, using his voice. And it would be right. She’d gotten herself into this, thought she could do it. It was amazing what looked plausible—not to mention how a mind could stray—in a desperate situation…

Violent purple with sickening yellow blotches exploded behind her eyes. Someone’s forehead had rammed her left cheekbone. She staggered, letting go of the woman’s wrists, colors fading to gray. She held herself still as her consciousness wavered, drained, willing light and colors to come back. If she succumbed, let herself be KO’d, it’d be over for that woman. For her.

Another body, then another collided into her, fists and feet plowing into her gut and shins. She was the only one going against the tide, and they were sweeping her backwards with them in their blind escape path.

In the uproar, her own angry shouts reached her ears as if from a distance. The woman. She had to get back to her. She didn’t know how, but she made it.

Just as she bent to her again, a thundering “Laura!” drowned even the cacophony of human shrieks and gunfire.

It was him.

Her head swung instinctively, violently, looking for him in the stampede. The next second a missile whizzed by her head. A fist-sized rock thrown with all the strength and fury of someone deranged by oppression and desperation. If not for his shout, it would have smashed her skull.

Then he was there, materializing above her, face grim, wings spread, filling her vision.

This is how Dracula—no, Batman—must look. A little voice inside her made the ridiculous, untimely observation. Swooping down on his quarry, staggering, scary even to those he saved.

In the next heartbeat he snatched her up and under the protection of his massive body. It was almost a surprise to realize his spread wings were not a cape but a jacket, held up to block rocks that were falling short of their targets, pelting them instead.

“Don’t— No…” She resisted him, desperate to return to her casualty. He only swept her higher. Her feet kicked air.

Her fingers dug into his arm, his chest, anywhere, trying to gain his attention, to regain her freedom. “Put me down, Salazar! That woman—she’d been trodden on—and those two men…”

She was talking to his jaw as he plastered her to his side, running with her to… Where was he going?

The idiot man had taken them right into the thick of the riot!

Her breathing stopped as the masses battered them. She’d rushed to the woman when they’d started receding, forced back by the police forces, when she’d thought she’d had a chance of pulling her away. It had been scary enough, dangerous enough then. She had the bruises to prove it. But now—being right in the middle of it all…

Dread smeared her vision gray and red. Huge and strong though he was, no way was he a match for this mindless crowd. He was starting to stumble, her weight no doubt hampering him, compromising his balance.

“Put me down, Salazar!” This was no longer indignation. This was survival. If he didn’t, he’d soon be brought to his knees. Then they’d both be trampled to death.

“Shut up, Laura!” He swung her around to face him, forcing her thighs around his waist, one large hand clutching her buttocks, the other a steel harness behind her back, carrying her like she’d once carried her baby brother and sister. “Hold on—tight!”

She did, clamping her legs around him, clinging for dear life. Not that she needed to. He crushed her if he were trying to hide her inside him. Her flesh felt battered into his, her breath took in his heat and sweat and anger.

Her senses sharpened, receded. Fear and anger and awareness dragged her under. She made herself surface, frantic to see what was happening around her, where he was taking her. One eye’s field of vision was all she managed to free. The hundred and four jarring steps she’d counted had delivered them from danger and to one of La Clínica’s beat-up ambulance vans.

One violent yank brought one of its double doors crashing back on its hinges. Expecting to be thrown inside with the same vehemence, she braced herself. The next second she couldn’t hold back her surprise at his extreme gentleness as he deposited her on the paramedic bench. Her eyes darted to his face. Nothing could have been harsher.

So what else was new? Ignore him.

Impossible to do that, as usual. Especially now, with his bulk blocking her view. Then he moved, followed her inside, and she could finally see the woman they’d left behind. She and the other victims were still motionless in the middle of the street. The mob had veered into a side street, some persistent elements still going back to pelt the police forces, provoking more warning shots.

She’d made a lousy call before, going out there before the riot had receded enough. Now there were only the police in the background. If they made a run back for the victims, shouted that they were doctors, they could reach them, carry them back. She measured the distance, gulped down a steadying breath then moved. Armando moved first, shoving her down again. No gentleness this time.

“Por Dios, get down and stay down! I didn’t risk getting my head smashed in to get you off the street just so you’d dash out again and succeed in getting yourself killed.”

She would have ignored him now if she wasn’t losing the wrestling match with him. Better luck wrestling with steel handcuffs! Impotence and fury crackled on her lips. “What kind of doctor are you to just leave victims behind, Salazar?”

“I’m not leaving anyone behind, but you’re staying put!” He hauled a hard collar and a rebreather mask with an oxygen reservoir from the shelves lining the ambulance walls, sprang from the van, slammed the door behind him and locked it with the remote control.

For a few moments rage threatened to burst her skull. How dared he? What made it OK for him to run back out there and not her? And he couldn’t possibly carry them all! What was he trying to prove? That he really was a superhero? What was his special power, Latin chauvinism? Just because he’d managed to swindle her out of her position as aid operation leader…

Blasts erupted again amidst a new uproar, startling her out of her fury. This time nature joined in, then drowned the human frenzy as a sudden, violent downpour started pounding the van. From the rear window she saw another horde, this time bigger, tens of thousands turning the corner of the main street and heading for the police forces. And in between there was Armando, carrying the woman and leaning over one victim, then the other.

Seconds stood between him and being squashed in the middle of the mob. And he was wasting them!

Buy him time. The thought screamed in her mind.

She flopped back on the stretcher, prayed that he’d armed the van’s alarm system by locking it and rammed both feet into the rear window.

She didn’t even hear her own shouted ‘Yes’.

The siren blared, jarring enough to cause the antagonistic sides’ momentary hesitation. A hesitation Armando used to rouse one of the fallen men by pressure on his forehead, to shove him out of harm’s way and, with the woman held high in his arms, to squeeze between the two waves of hostility before they collided.

Laura returned her attention to the door. How the hell did that doorhandle work? She’d definitely unlocked it but the handle just wouldn’t budge. Frustration roared in her ears, seethed from her lips. “Dammit—damn you, Salazar!”

She had to get out, meet him halfway, help him. Yes—the oxygen tank!

The window withstood the first swing, fragmenting but holding up. A cry of rage and a second swing made a big enough hole for her arm. In a second she’d worked the handle from outside, got out and was already running to him—only to watch him lurch over the woman in his arms.

His name was torn from her. “Armando!”

He’d been shot. He’d die.

God, please, no, not again!

Her feet pounded the hot, wet tarmac, every step shattering a pool of rain and transmitting a bolt of agony to her right side, a reminder of how close she’d come to dying herself. She didn’t care. She had to reach him, save him…

He fell to his knees, chest heaving, still clutching the woman. Laura’s heart stuttered and stopped for the moments it took him to struggle back to his feet, hauling the woman in a more secure grip, staggering onwards. Her heart was hammering again, almost bursting with a brutal mix of confusion, dread and hope. There was no blood on him—but if he’d been shot in the back, she wouldn’t see it. Were they shooting real bullets now?

Had he or hadn’t he been shot?

A hundred feet away, his hoarse warning hit her, explaining everything. “Tear gas…” Then he succumbed to a fit of uncontrollable coughing.

So that was it. In his exertion he must have gulped deep of the irritant chemical. Like breathing in fire…

The next second, her instincts kicked in. She couldn’t risk exposure too. She ran back to the van, as far away as possible from the incapacitating fumes that she could now see rising, even among the sheets of rain pounding down on the combatants. But in their desperation to escape, the mob was getting even more dangerous, spreading towards Armando in nightmarish tentacles.

But he was ahead, fast and strong and heading to…

Oh, God, where was he going?

He was no longer heading in her direction. He’d end up in the middle of the riot again, the way he was blindly… But of course! He was blind. His eyes must be burning, profusely tearing, lids squeezed shut with blepharospasm—beyond his ability to open them again.

Her mind raced. Rushing out to lead him back was out of the question. One way, then—she had to be his eyes. If he could hear her frantic shouts over this nightmare…

“Armando—turn right! Right!” He stopped. He’d heard her, thank God. “Make a ninety-degree turn. A bit more. Yes, yes—that’s it. Keep going in a straight line now. Faster. There’s a sidewalk in about twenty paces. I’ll shout to you to stop before you reach it.” She had to stop then, to catch her breath, grind her teeth. Every shouted word was lancing a hot arrow into her chest and abdomen.

“Stop!” He did, still heaving with racking coughs. She forced more directions out. “Just one more step and you’ll hit the edge of the sidewalk—yes, you’re there. It’s high, more than a foot. Yes, yes—now four of your paces and you’ll come off it. No—watch it!” He stumbled off the sidewalk and fright forced the air out of her. He straightened, his body language hesitant and anxious as she gasped for oxygen, fighting against the mounting pain. She failed in both but still shouted, “It’s all clear to where I’m standing. Just follow my voice.”

In twenty seconds he’d stumbled to her and she took some of the woman’s weight off him, directing him until they had her on the stretcher. She harnessed her in, then turned to him.

His face was drenched in tears, his nostrils flaring convulsively, his eyes spasmed shut as tears gushed down his cheeks and off his hard jaw. Every inhalation shrieked in, and came out in frightening barks of abrasive coughing. She pushed him through the doorway leading to the driver’s compartment and shoved him down in the passenger seat.

Rushing back to the patient compartment, she snatched a look at the mayhem outside. The man Armando had roused had stumbled out of danger. The other casualty, whom he’d managed to drag aside, hadn’t. She had to rush to him.

She kneeled by their casualty, prying off the rebreather mask Armando had placed on her face. It would protect her against the tear gas.

Armando’s labored words carried to her, and a jolt of horror paralyzed her in mid-motion. “He’s…dead. Rubber bullet…through the…eye.”

She knew so-called ‘safe’ rubber bullets could cause considerable damage, according to the distance they were fired from and the area of the body they hit. She hadn’t known they could kill.

Now she knew.

Urgency bubbled over inside her. Help those you can.

She reached for Armando, shook him. “Keys, Salazar.”

He only pointed to his right back pocket, almost coughing his lungs out again. Moving his convulsing, massive body was almost impossible. She was pummeling him in frustration by the time she had him supine over both driver and passenger seats. Now to fish the keys out. Her fingers felt like wet spaghetti and his jeans—were they painted on or what?

Get those keys. No time to think where you’re shoving your hands.

At last she succeeded. Too late. The mob’s sentinels had reached them. One pulled the driver’s door open, jumped in, shouting in Spanish at her. A blind need to protect surged inside her, blanking out the pain. She leapt over Armando, rammed the man back, snatched the door from him, slammed it shut and central-locked the van.

Time slowed. Her mind raced. Everything was suddenly in pinpoint focus, one thing filling her awareness.

Get Armando and the woman out of here.

In a vacuum of calm, she shoved Armando back in his seat, jumped into the driver’s seat, fired the engine and put the van in motion, showing the mob who were now battering it with their fists and ramming it with their bodies that she wasn’t about to let them stop her or enter it, yet still managing to give them enough time to move out of her way.

It was street after street of that. Suspended in reaction, she drove on and on until her path cleared. Then she floored the pedal. Armando’s choking curses rose as his unrestrained body bounced off hers then slammed against the door with every violent pitch. Strange—her mind didn’t register that she was driving roughly. Then his harsh wheeze filtered to her above the screaming engine noise. “Stop. Far enough…”

How he knew that with his eyes closed, she didn’t know. She had no idea where they were. All around were the rolling plains of the magnificent pampas, only a few cars on the horizon of the near-deserted road.

She slowed down, pulled up off the road, eyes flying to the clock.

Unbelievable.

Only thirty-five minutes. From the moment her cab had refused to go any further when the riot alert had broken out, leaving her to reach her destination on foot, and she had gotten mixed up in all that.

She turned to Armando. His coughing was abating, but his lips were blue with oxygen deprivation and his eyes were still spasmed, tears still pouring.

“Water…in…the back…”

She understood. To counteract the effects of tear-gas after removal from exposure, eyes, nose and mouth had to be copiously irrigated with water or saline. In seconds she returned with four bottles. He made an urgent gesture demanding she hand them over.

“Shouldn’t you be breathing easier by now? Maybe a bronchodilator…”

He twisted a bottle open, choked, “See to…our casualty…”

He was right. Simple triage made their casualty the priority. She left him rinsing his eyes and went to the unconscious woman.

Laura snatched a look at the woman as she turned on the suction/aspiration and wall-mounted oxygen outlets, snapped on gloves and chanted under her breath, “A, B, C, D, E.”

As a surgeon, she usually didn’t get to handle the ABCDs of emergency resuscitation, but they’d been so deeply ingrained in her during her early training, they were second nature. Mentally ticking off the procedures, she simultaneously and seamlessly implemented them.

Thrust jaw above hard collar to overcome upper airway obstruction. Suction excess secretions in trachea. Gather equipment for intubation. Ventilate with one hundred per cent oxygen. Assemble laryngoscope, lubricate cuffed endotracheal tube, cut tape, ready clamp, syringe, flexible introducer and forceps. No need for induction anesthesia since the patient was already unconscious. No gag reflex. No need for local either.

In seconds she had the woman intubated, the tube connected to the bag-valve combination and was ventilating with oxygen. She looked at the chest. No improvement in air entry. She reassessed her measures, made sure the ET tube was in place in the trachea. It was. Airway secure but breathing not any better; shallow, strident 55 prm.

Exposing her patient’s chest, she saw the tell-tale paradoxical movement of her ribs, a segment moving in while the rest moved out with breathing. Flail chest—ribs broken in a row and moving independently of the rest of the chest wall.

Stethoscope already drawn, she gave the chest a listen. Normal breath sounds on the right side, none on the left. On percussion, stony dullness at the base of the lung. Hemothorax. But the trachea was deviated. Probably hemopneumothorax—both blood and air gathering around the left lung, collapsing it and interfering with the right lung and heart function. Fatal if the building air and blood weren’t evacuated—fast.

She picked an angiocath to perform a needle thoracostomy, slipping it between the ribs and into the pleural space. She heard the distinctive rush of air in relief, then placed a one-way valve on the end of the angiocath to prevent air re-entry. Immediately, there was an improvement in air entry, if not in breath rate.

Check circulation. Pulse 180—ectopics all over the place. Blood pressure 80 over 50—hemothorax must be massive. Going into shock.

She exposed the woman’s arms, snapped tourniquets on both and inserted two wide-bore 14-gauge IV cannulae. The woman moaned in protest around her tube.

“Sorry I had to prick both arms!” She released the tourniquets, hung two Ringer lactate solution bags from the IV holder, connected their tubing to the lines in the arms, set the drip to maximum, then swooped for tube thoracostomy instruments to drain off the blood. First, local anesthesia.

“This sting you’ll thank me for,” she said soothingly as she injected the local anesthetic and disinfected the area until it took effect.

“I doubt she…understands a word of English—if she can hear you at all…”

Laura started. Armando—she’d forgotten he was here.

“She’ll understand my tone, that I’m taking care of her!” She snapped her eyes back to the instrument compartment and extracted a 38-French large-bore chest tube, explaining why she needed it. She looked him over as he came to crouch beside her. “So you’re better now?”

“Better than you. Move—I’m doing this.”

She protested but he’d already snapped on gloves and was taking the scalpel and tube out of her hands. He wasn’t breathing much easier, but she was sweating. Not the stuffy sweat expected with the heatwave that was ending March, Argentina’s last summer month, but the cold, sick sweat of depletion. Bright pain had settled in her right side. Gray mist had crept up over the rest of her a couple of times back there. He was probably in better condition than her. She made way for him.

Flopping into the attendant’s seat, she watched him recline the cot so that their restrained patient lay in a 50-degree reverse Trendlenburg position with her legs down. Both that and the incision between the ribs in the mid-axillary sixth intercostal space made for best drainage of blood. In deft, sure moves, he punctured the intercostal muscles and pleura with a curved hemostat clamp, advanced and secured the track with his finger and inserted the tube into the pleural cavity. Blood gushed out, just as she’d predicted. He secured the tube with a suture and tape and connected it to an underwater-seal bottle, attaching it to the suctioning device.

She busied herself with a secondary assessment of the woman’s vital signs. Breathing down to 24 and blood pressure up to 110 over 70. Measures working. She told him. He nodded. “Let’s look her over,” he said.

Apart from a multitude of bruises, a quick exam for dysfunction and a full exposure didn’t reveal further significant injuries. Eyeing the bottle for the collected blood, Armando frowned. It was over 900 ccs.

“A lot,” she said.

He gave a slight shrug. “But it has almost stopped coming. She’ll be OK. Load me 10 mg diazepam while I decompress her stomach.”

“But her GCS is 5—6 at best!” Centrally depressant drugs were contra-indicated when consciousness was compromised and scoring on the Glasgow coma scale measuring responsiveness and alertness was below 8. “How can you consider sedating her?”

“I believe she lost consciousness with respiratory distress and shock, not from a head injury. If you hadn’t noticed, she’s lightened up.”

“What if she has? Why not just let her wake up, extubate her and put her on positive pressure ventilation with a face mask?”

“She’s a cervical spine injury suspect. If we need to operate further, and it turns out she does have a cervical injury, this ET is our one safe chance of having one in. I want it left in.”

Laura mulled this over, watching his every move as he slipped in the nasogastric tube and emptied the woman’s stomach. Incisive, ultra-efficient.

And right.

Damn him.

In seconds, she’d slipped the diazepam into the woman’s drip, hooked her to the cardiac monitor and raised her head. She found him watching her in turn, something like surprise in his bloodshot eyes.

He shook his head, made a strange, wheezy sound—an incredulous laugh? “Good work!”

He was surprised, double damn him! How dared he be surprised?

But really, why should she be surprised? She should be used to his opinion of her medical competence, of her worth in general, by now.

Still biting her tongue, she watched as he checked their patient one last time, then rummaged for a syringe, loaded it with an ampule diluted with saline and injected himself subcutaneously.

“Ventolin,” he rasped, then muttered something else under his strident breath.

So he did need a bronchodilator and… What had he said?

It sounded too much like Laura Loca to her. Crazy Laura.

“What did you say?”

“So you heard me, huh?” His shrug was careless as he crossed to the driver’s compartment, throwing a calm “Good” over his shoulder.

In seconds he was revving the engine loudly and putting the van in gear, forcing her to scramble to the passenger seat.

“I’m crazy? I’m not the one driving a car fifteen minutes after being zapped with tear gas.”

“One of us has to and apart from my eyes stinging like hell and my skin and lungs feeling about to combust, I’m in a far better condition than you—Laura Loca!”

“You’re saying it again!”

“Don’t mention it. What the hell do you expect? What did you think you were doing, running out like that? Was reporting me such a desperate priority that you didn’t mind risking your life to do it?”

“Reporting…? Listen here, Salazar—”

“No, you listen here, Laura Loca. You didn’t have to sneak behind my back. You wanted a report delivered to GAO’s central liaison office, I would have delivered it for you myself, even if you’d painted me black in it, even if you’d lost me GAO’s backing. And no matter what else you think of me, I’m your surgeon and I, and only I, say when you can leave your hospital bed. When I do, it won’t be so you can go on another death-defying escapade. This one almost got me killed. Your last one did manage to kill Diego!”

CHAPTER TWO

“NOBODY asked you to come after me!”

And nobody had asked Diego either. She’d told him she’d had nothing more to say to him. But he’d intercepted her. Just giving her a lift, he’d insisted. He’d tricked her, again, had been so confident he’d talk her out of leaving, seduce her into forgetting what she’d come to realize. He’d been incensed when he’d failed. Then he’d crashed the car.

“And my death-defying escapades?” She hissed her outrage at the blatant lie. “Diego was driving, if you remember! Without a seat belt. And he almost killed me, too.”

“My point exactly. Yet you walked out today as if all you’d suffered a week ago was a sprained ankle, and not a lacerated liver and abdominal aorta with a hemothorax and intraperitoneal hemorrhage to make our patient’s here look like a minor leak. I won’t even mention your facial wounds, or the ten units of blood we pumped into you, or the six-hour operation to gain hemorrhage control—”

“It was only a limited laparotomy.”

“Only? Oh, yes, you were damned lucky. But don’t be so smug. That I didn’t have to open you up from your neck down was a piece of luck that, along with surviving today, used up all your luck—for this lifetime at least. You walked out of hospital today against every rule in the book.”

“You removed my drains three days ago. It was perfectly all right for me—”

He interrupted her again. “Every moment you’re on your feet you’re compromising your healing, inviting complications.”

“Early ambulation is good for healing,” she objected.

“Ambulation as in getting out of bed, walking around the room then getting back into bed.”

“I’m a surgeon myself, no matter how you might like to forget that, and if I feel anything alarming—”

“If you don’t listen to reason, you might still die! You do know how many complications can set in, don’t you?”

This morning, she’d been confident she’d been well enough to discharge herself, against his orders. But that had been then. She hadn’t expected to be sucked into a nightmare. The sting of every ram and blow she’d suffered was a grim reminder of yet another catastrophic miscalculation. Complications were now a definite possibility. She’d concede that. Just not to him.

When she kept her face averted, he grated on, “How about another slow leak of blood into your pleural cavity, turning into a clot this time? Or a bath of pus that only a thoracotomy will empty? Do you want your chest opened from side to side? Your sternum sawed open? You want to have a scarred lung or a chronic, debilitating respiratory infection? I won’t even mention the complications from renewed abdominal bleeding… Por Dios! I can’t believe we’re having this conversation! You did go to medical school before you became a ‘surgeon’, didn’t you?”

He growled under his breath and pressed harder on the gas pedal. “Quit playing the heroine, Laura. No one’s snapping photos now. Or will there be another press release soon?”

“A press…!” That was it! The antagonism she’d felt towards him ever since she’d laid eyes on him erupted. “You may have gotten used to doing and saying anything you please, to flaying and bossing people around—certainly Diego, and me too when you wormed your way into GAO’s good favor—but now I’m—”

“Now I’m up to here with daredevils, Laura!” His usually dismissive, cool black eyes flashed something unknown, harsh and hot. Their inflammation added a sinister effect as his bronzed, powerful fingers chopped a sharp movement. His daunting body and singular looks created an impression that was overwhelming. With his wet, tousled hair and livid darkness, he was downright intimidating. Not that intimidation featured in the chaotic feelings he provoked in her. “And if I’d had that kind of power over Diego, he’d probably be alive today,” he continued.

“Oh, so it wasn’t me who got him killed, then? Or do you only mean you’d have banned him from knowing me, the reason for his death?”

Something flitted in his eyes. Her eyes narrowed, trying to catch and nail down the elusive expression. He snatched it out of her reach with an exhalation and a turn of his head. “That was out of line.”

What? The infallible Armando Salazar admitting to a transgression? And to her? That had to be another first. Adding to every other world-shattering first she’d had in Argentina. Her first lover. Her first command. Her first break-up. Her first car crash, emergency operation and riot. And now the first thing that sounded like an apology from the man who’d been the common factor in it all.

“I was—still am—furious with you, but that’s no excuse. It was an accident, and no matter where your relationship was at the time—which is no business of mine…” He stopped, tossed her a turbulent look. “Infierno, Laura. You’re not dragging me into a pointless dissection of the past. You’re going back to La Clínica and this time you’re not walking out before you’re fully healed, even if I have to chain you to your bed.”

Anger spiked. “Well, let me tell you something, you—”

“I lost Diego, Laura.” His forceful baritone was so unexpectedly, so unbearably soft, it had her retaliation sticking in her throat. “He slipped through my fingers and I couldn’t save him. But I saved you, and I’m damned if I’ll lose you now!”

Something hard tumbled in her chest. What was that in his steel eyes? Pain? The juggernaut who played as hard and fast as he worked, who swept everyone and everything aside and did as he pleased, actually had…feelings?

For the three months she’d been in Argentina she’d been busy avoiding him, then resenting him. In the past few days, she’d been battling death then emotional turmoil, desperately seeking closure. It never occurred to her to look through his eyes, feel his turmoil. Diego had been his cousin, more of a younger brother. And he’d died in his hands.

And he had saved her. Not that she couldn’t undo all his efforts. The pain in her side was sobering—frightening even. It was pointless, childish, arguing with him when he was right. And he did make her feel childish, stupid.

The need to defend herself to him rose again, and this time it wouldn’t be denied. “I never intended jeopardizing myself, but I couldn’t ignore the victims.”

His laugh was furious. “That’s probably the one thing I’m not angry with you about. It was stupid, unbelievably so—but it was very brave. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Don’t rise to that. He expects it.

What the hell. She’d satisfy him, the callous creep. “Oh? You mean I wasn’t after another photo and headline?” He grimaced, shrugging away his earlier maligning words. “What the hell do you know what I have or don’t have in me? What gives you the right to pass judgement on people—just who do you think you are?”

“I’m your surgeon, that’s all I am right now. And I may not know you, but can you deny you’ve had way too many photos in magazines and newspapers since you arrived?”

“It wasn’t me as me all over those pages. It was me as so-called head of Global Aid Organization’s Argentina Project. And it wasn’t even a GAO initiative. It was your local newspapers that developed that unhealthy interest in me and my team, and I’m damned if I know why!”

Armando knew why all right. Couldn’t believe she didn’t. She was too tempting to the paparazzi. The dazzling American surgeon, turning her back on her family’s riches, throwing away a lucrative private practice in the US to come to Argentina, devoting herself to humanitarian work. Add that to the trendy hook of her online romance with Diego and the stunning sight they’d made together…

He hadn’t had the stamina to look at newspapers lately. He would bet, with the accident and Diego’s death, interest in her must have spiked to fever pitch. And if they found out she’d risked her life to save riot victims…

“And I wasn’t in Buenos Aires to report you.”

Her forceful statement jerked his attention back to her. His gaze slid off the road and over her. Took her all in. Glossy, rain-straight hair, the perplexing blend of black, blue and indigo, pulled into that down-to-her-waist, unflattering braid. The unique bone structure and drained tan of a face that spoke of her brush with death. Bluish-yellow bruises, spreading like leaking ink stains from beneath her dressings. Lips, usually dimpled, flushed bows, now a taut, colorless line. And eyes. Those eyes! Sooty-lashed chameleon emeralds, now murky jades set in fragile purple. A body that had gone from luscious to almost skinny.

And she still sent his hormones raging.

He swore.

“Boy, I knew you were…many things. I’m adding plain crude to my list!”

“Your Spanish is taking off if you understood that.”

“Swear words are a must-know-first in any foreign language. A universal defense against locals who enjoy insulting you to your face, counting on your ignorance!”

“That was a strictly inner debate, not intended for your ears. Sorry I blurted it out loud.”

Her eyes lightened, becoming emerald again with suspicion. “It’s too late to pretend, Salazar!”

“I agree. It is too late. You’ve called me Armando at last, so you can’t go back to calling me Salazar.”

“I used to call you Dr. Salazar, and I called you Armando…” She stopped, shook her head, looked away.

“Only because you thought I’d been shot,” he completed for her. “I always did wonder at your insistence on calling me Doctor, even when we were meeting socially, daily, when I’m on a first-name basis with everyone. You are, too. Why do you find it so hard to say my name?”

Was the man for real? He didn’t realize she’d rather not call him anything, not be near him at all? That he made her feel defensive, vulnerable, useless?

That first time Diego had dragged her to Armando’s house, to show her off to “the Salazar patriarch”, Armando had taken one look at her, one hard, drawn-out, enervating look, then, thankfully, had dismissed her. He’d looked at Diego as if he’d lost his mind, getting mixed up with her. He hadn’t said anything, though. A month later, he’d made it equally clear he thought GAO crazy to give her the aid operation reins. This time he’d done something about it.

One day she’d been head of GAO’s mission in Argentina, the next, for all intents and purposes, his subordinate. He’d swooped in and snatched it from beneath her feet, then shoved her out of the picture.

He wasn’t only local and a medical jack of all trades, a surgeon/emergency doctor/search-and-rescue operative all rolled into one; he was also director of La Clínica—Argentina’s most revolutionary medical facility. He’d established it after Argentina’s financial collapse had torn apart all systems, the medical system being the paradigm of disintegration.

She’d met Diego when he’d been in the US recruiting medical personnel for his cousin’s project. And before she’d met him, she’d thought it the most exciting, enterprising medical endeavor ever. If it hadn’t been for her previous commitment to GAO, she would have loved to have joined herself.

But then she had met him.

It had all gone nightmarishly wrong. Coming to Argentina was supposed to have been the start of her new life—the love she’d never had, the work she’d always dreamed of and people who really needed her. So many expectations, so much advance work and plans.

But no amount of logistics or fantasies could have prepared her. Not for the reality of the situation at ground zero, or for the meteoric deterioration of her relationship with Diego. She’d needed time. To sort out her mess with Diego. To start becoming effective in her job.

But Armando had denied her that time. He’d talked GAO’s administrative body into making La Clínica GAO’s base of operations in Argentina. And in La Clínica he made his own rules and dispensed them with an iron hand.

He stopped at nothing to achieve his goals. Distorting truths, manipulation, outright lying. He hadn’t needed her team’s expertise as he’d said, he’d only needed GAO’s resources. In the month they’d been in La Clínica, he’d totally excluded them and was dispensing GAO’s resources whichever way he pleased, throwing its agendas and protocols out the window. No wonder he felt he deserved to be reported.

What infuriated her more was her own reaction. She’d taken his abuse lying down. It didn’t make her feel any better, wailing that her personal mess had drained most of her stamina. An excuse worse than the offense. Weak, foolish, stupid!

But it was over now. Diego was dead, and her love for him long before that, and she wasn’t needed in any other way here.

Time to put her expertise in cutting her losses to use.

“Well?”

So he was still waiting for an answer! “I’ll call you whatever I like, not what you like.” Her words were cool, tight. “And I will continue to recuperate. Just not at La Clínica.”

“Oh, no?” He slowed down and shoved his face closer to hers. Space shrank and air disappeared. “Where else will you have your operating surgeon, the only one really qualified to follow you up? To handle any complications that may yet develop? To remove the stitches all over your face? Or do you intend to do it yourself back in your villa before your posh welcome-home party?”

An involuntary hand went to her facial dressings. “I can remove my own stitches.”

“Even the ones you can’t see without the help of a mirror?”

His persistence finally wore her nerves down. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to dwell on my injuries, on the accident, on…on… I want—I need closure.”

“Who doesn’t? But you think you’ll ever have it if you have scars to remind you every time you look in the mirror? Maybe every time you take a breath?”

“I’m sure you did a great job putting me back together, that there’ll be no complications…”

“Is that your informed medical opinion, Dr. Burnside?” His generously shaped lips twisted, and suddenly she felt something new towards him. The need to physically strike out at him. To wipe off that abrasive superiority written all over him.

Stupid urge. You can’t afford more of those. Just shut him up.

She breathed in. “Listen, if anything happens, I’ll seek immediate help. But right now I’m not going to La Clínica. Not as a patient. Haven’t you demoted me enough already? I’ll just get on with my life. I don’t need your permission to do that.”

His fleeting, severe look hit home. Then he spoke the three words, slow and distinct, “Yes, you do!” A few strands of his hair caught the sun that had bleached them copper as he took a turn into a road she recognized, the road leading to Santa Fe and La Clínica. “Going back for your full postoperative period is non-negotiable, Laura.”

“I—”

“Drop it.”

Staring ahead at the boundless horizon she was still unused to, she fell silent, stymied.

Armando heard her frustration loud and clear. He kept his still-scalding eyes on the demanding road, slowed down some more. She’d been battered too much already.

“So how bad am I beneath these dressings?”

Her subdued question surprised him into biting off, “Bad enough!”

He caught a more-than-crude expletive back at the last moment.

Why had he said that?

Oh, what the…? It was just as well. She had to face the reality of her injuries, didn’t she? And anyway, at the moment her injuries did look bad. And they could remain so if she compromised her recuperation. Laura Loca Burnside, philanthropist extraordinaire, glittering, brilliant society darling, who had no idea just how dangerous and desperate it really was here.

The moment he’d learned she’d left, he’d predicted she’d head for GAO’s headquarters, smack dab in the middle of the city center the riots were ravaging. He’d never driven so recklessly. All the way, Diego’s accident, his death, haunted him, taunted him. He could have ended up the same today, chasing after her.

But in either case, she hadn’t asked either of them to…

“Anything more specific to add to that delightful and sensitive report of my impending metamorphosis into a monster?”

His attention snapped back to her. Was that sarcasm? She had a sense of humor? He’d thought she took herself too seriously. She’d never cracked a smile, not in his presence. And he’d been present almost all the time she’d been in Argentina. Her glares were something, though. It was almost a surprise he hadn’t turned to stone. Parts of him had…

He was really losing it! If her resentment affected him this way, he didn’t want to know what a smile, a touch would do…

Stop it, moron!

He inhaled. “You’ll see for yourself when I remove your stitches.”

“I must be really mangled if you elected to do a primary repair of my facial wounds during a life-saving operation, risking extending the already dangerously long anesthesia time.”

He had been aware of that danger. But he’d weighed everything—her condition while on the table against the risk of the wounds healing by secondary intention, raising the probability of scarring. He’d felt it safe to go ahead.

So why was the unfamiliar urge to justify his decisions to another, to her, riding him—again? Her eyes on him had always made him feel this way. Ever since he’d laid eyes on her—the last thing he’d expected Diego’s new woman or GAO’s mission head to be.

He tried to stifle the urge as usual. He failed this time. “For best esthetic results, you know it’s optimum to close wounds within eight hours of injury.” Wasn’t it enough to feel defensive? Did he have to sound it, too?

She tilted her head, her braid sliding with an audible thud to her right shoulder. He tightened, ached. He’d never had it this bad. Then she gave him a strange look—a skeptical one?—and his heart, his hands, itched.

“If the patient isn’t stable enough, if it’s in any way risky, primary repair could be delayed by as much as seventy-two hours without significant change in esthetic outcome.”

“Significant being the operative word here. Scars might seem insignificant to you now, but later they will be. Trust me.”

“I trust my clinical experience. I used significant as a figure of speech. In my experience, delayed repair—with proper wound occlusive care—yields the same esthetic result.”

“You mean I should’ve waited until you revived from anesthesia, then put you under again while you were recovering from major trauma surgery and even more vulnerable? Not to mention that I couldn’t predict how your post-operative period would go. What if you’d deteriorated? For long enough to lose the golden time window for primary repair?”

“You know you could have done it under local.”

“I’m sure you would have appreciated the extra joy of local anesthetic jabs in your condition!”

“I wouldn’t have minded a few nerve blocks, and I would have preferred to be awake while you worked on my face.”

“Why? Did you want to hold my hand through it?”

“And why not? Maxillofacial surgery was part of my six-year surgical residency. I might have given you a few tips on how to handle facial soft tissue injuries.”

His foot eased off the gas pedal and the car almost slowed to a standstill.

He’d suspected there was more to her than the sullen, haughty façade she projected. So was this at last the real her? All that fire and diamond-sharp toughness?

Whatever confrontations she’d tried to kick up with him before, she’d done so in arctic reserve and infuriating politeness. It had all been about who was supposed to be in charge. There’d never been implied criticism of his professional or surgical prowess before. Implied? Hell, there was no implication involved now. She was telling him he’d made a lousy call, combining her procedures, that his surgical judgement stank.

But was she lashing out at him for thwarting her plans, for dragging her back? Or was it the stress of trauma? Or had her orders and his connection to Diego kept her from expressing her opinions, opinions she now felt free to voice?

All of the above, most probably. Not that he cared what she said to him or thought of him. She was letting go of the tight reins of social propriety and professional diplomacy and letting the real her shine through.

And it delighted him.

Delighted him? Now? The tear gas must have left him more oxygen-deprived than he’d realized!

“Why did you stop bickering with me?” One sable eyebrow disappeared in mockery beneath her bandages. “Stymied?”

“I don’t ‘bicker’. And I didn’t know there was a contest going on.”

“No? Then why do I have the distinct feeling that you’ve won again?”

“Por Dios! Won what? What is there to win?”

“The last word, as usual. You’re a control freak, aren’t you, Salazar?”

He closed his eyes, begging for control. This couldn’t be happening to him. Every time she called him Salazar in those cool, low velvet tones, lust kicked hard in his loins. Just the memory of her crying out his name when she’d thought him injured—the fantasy of her crying it out, again and again, in another form of desperation…

Cool it, Salazar. No time to discover you’re having an early mid-life crisis rolled in with a second adolescence. This is probably the one woman on earth who should be off limits.

He ventured a look at her. Her uncanny eyes were gleaming their challenge. He groaned. “I guess right now, if I say it’s for your own good, you’d send my head rolling.”

“Don’t tempt me. I don’t have enough energy to knock your head off.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“Go to the head of the class.”

“Well, if you want to bawl me out, you’ll have to stand in line.”

That stopped her, deflating her unnatural animation. She slumped down in her seat and averted her face.

“See what I mean? The last word. You just have to have it. I didn’t think you’d stoop to spouting nonsense to score it, though.”

“It’s not nonsense. You can’t even begin to understand how angry I am at myself. I failed Diego and he died. La Clínica is still lacking in critical care, and it’s my responsibility. It’s also my responsibility you walked out today. I just see that beating myself up over mistakes and oversights is futile and counter-productive at this point. I’ll just have to live with it. At least I’m alive—and strong and healthy as an ox.”

“Don’t! Patronize me, ignore me, or even overrule me like you’ve been doing so far. But don’t—don’t you just sit there and tell me you’re feeling guilty. I don’t want to hear about it.”

So she was feeling guilty, too! But was it just a natural reaction to surviving an accident that had killed another, or was there more to it? Had she played a more active role in that accident, as he’d accused her? Shouldn’t she be feeling more than guilt, with her lover dead? Though Diego had said he’d broken up with her before the accident. Was that why she wasn’t grieving for him?

So many questions, all answers less than pretty. Not that he cared. He just wanted to slam on the brakes and haul her into his arms, comfort her.

Yeah, sure. Her only comfort right now would probably come from giving him a black eye!

He wrestled the urge down, adding it under an airtight lid to every other wild desire she provoked in him. “Try to sleep, Laura. There’s still a long way ahead.”

He watched her eyes dull with resignation, watched her turn her head on the headrest and fall silent.

He’d said there was a long way ahead.

Did she know how long yet?

* * *

Laura jerked awake to a jarring lurch. Aggravation rose inside her. Just as she’d managed to doze off, too, with the jostling motion of the van and Armando’s nerve-racking presence beside her!

But he was no longer beside her. He was beneath her. At least his lap was, his hot, hard thighs cushioning her head and shoulders, her upper torso hanging in the air in the space between their seats. Her lips and nose were buried in his abdomen’s steel-ridged muscles, in his virile-scented, naked flesh.

Breath congealed in her throat, the urge to jackknife up and away from the heart-stopping contact overwhelming. She twitched and the powerful hand securing her in place tightened around her buttock. A whimper escaped her swollen lips.

He shifted to accommodate her more and her right breast molded against his splayed thigh. As for where the back of her head was pressing…

She pushed at him and he immediately removed his arm.

“You’re awake.”

“How perceptive.” She forced herself to sit up in a natural, unhurried movement. “And you’re naked!”

“I’m not.”

Oh, no? Then she must have developed X-ray vision, if she could see the daunting expanse and definition of his exposed chest and abdomen. She’d known he was first and foremost a thoroughly physical being, tough, vigorous, carnal. Those were the first things anyone noticed about Armando Salazar. She hadn’t needed to see him naked to figure that out. But now he was…

“I’m half-naked,” he concluded lightly.

And I’m half out of my mind, if I’m reacting to you this way. Out loud she said, “I’m supposed to thank you for keeping your pants on?”

“You should.” His lazy nod and the easy bulge of his heavy muscles as he negotiated another steep turn set off a whistling in her ears, a tightness inside her head. What was wrong with her? This was her nemesis! Her blood boiled near him with anger and frustration, nothing else. Maybe she was concussed. That would explain all those ridiculous reactions

“They stayed on only for your modesty’s sake.”

A belated realization hit her. “Oh, the tear gas…”

It must have dissolved in the rain, soaked his clothes. The longer they remained on him, the worse the injury he’d sustain, up to second-degree burns. Armed with the professional incentive, she took a closer look at his body and saw how flushed his polished bronze skin was. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re erythematous! What ridiculous modesty. Take them off immediately.”

“Trust me, I can’t.”

Did that mean he wasn’t wearing—? “Oh!”

“Oh is right. La Clínica’s near, anyway.”

Recovering quickly, she asked, “Until then, shall I wash you down with a hypochlorite solution to neutralize the agent? Is it back there?”

“Hypochlorite is contra-indicated, Laura. It’s good for other sorts of chemical contamination, but with CS or tear gas it only exacerbates the reaction.”

“Oh!” She didn’t know that. A good thing she wasn’t ready with a bottle of the stuff. She bounced back with another suggestion. “What about another alkaline solution?”

“The one effective solution to relieve symptoms and hydrolyze the agent is a mix of sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate and benzalkonium chloride. Which I don’t have! Another colossal oversight, going into a riot zone without it.”

“You couldn’t have known what to expect.”

“I should have been prepared. I wasn’t. If I suffer burns, it will teach me a good lesson.”

“Aren’t you being too melodramatic, suffering in punishment for a simple omission?”

“Says the woman who marched into the middle of a riot and nearly got trampled to death!”

“OK. Touché. But have you at least washed yourself off?”

“I did, even though that also makes it worse, acting like the rain did, since it wasn’t a real hosing down. I only did it to decontaminate my skin just enough for when you slept on my lap.”

Sensations and flashbacks burned their way up to her skin in a flush worse than his chemical burn. “You should’ve kept me awake.”

“Why? You needed the rest.”

“Well, I don’t feel rested. I feel bent out of shape, permanently.”

“And if I’d kept you awake, I would have been heartless and a nuisance.”

“You could have left me sleeping in my seat with my seat belt on!”

“And have it pressing on the injuries it caused in the accident? My only other option was to throw you on the van’s floor next to our patient. This archaic van doesn’t have a secondary stretcher and—”

“OK, stop. You have it.”

“Have what?”

“The last word.”

Her answer was a long, sideways look that had her heart trying to hide in her gut. What was that in his eyes?

She didn’t want to know.

She turned blind eyes away, searching for something to distract her. The sight of La Clínica De La Communidad hovering on the horizon wasn’t a good choice.

Although her experience here had been a crushing disappointment on all fronts, the ‘what if’ factor was overpowering. She could have done a lot of good here. She could have found purpose and happiness. She’d found nothing but every sort of letdown.

Armando had bought this strategically situated, sprawling establishment from its owners after the collapse, giving them desperately needed cash for a dilapidated, money-pit mansion, many annexed buildings and the surrounding land. It had taken two years to renovate and equip it, to become a gravely needed and pioneering medical facility serving a hundred-mile radius, plus a far wider reach through its flying doctors service. Besides the usual medical services, La Clínica provided emergency surgical intervention to one quarter of the vast pampas region. And now through GAO’s resources it was also reaching out to the wilderness of Patagonia and developing intensive care, research, education and rehabilitation facilities.

It was the dream of every doctor come true. Practicing medicine on their own terms, really making a difference, operating within a very elastic, responsive medium. A medical establishment based on the community’s best interests and backed by its wholehearted support, not under governmental control, bound by decaying medical systems’ undiscriminating rules or insurance’s stifling restrictions.

Armando brought the car to a halt in the main building’s emergency driveway, then turned to her. “Right. Back to bed until I say it’s OK for you to leave it.”

By the time his efficient emergency team had unloaded their patient, he was carrying her to a wheelchair, disregarding her protests.

Once inside, he ran to discard his contaminated clothes and apply first aid to his inflamed skin, leaving her in her GAO team’s care, to suffer their deluge of questions. The doctor and two nurses who’d accompanied her from the US no longer knew what they were doing here and were constantly looking to her for answers and reassurance until she wanted to scream, Stop asking me. I’m no longer in charge of anything. Ask the magnificent Dr. Salazar!

She had to get away from here. Away from him. And if today had gone to plan she would have been packing now, not back at La Clínica and under his thumb.

She got up from the wheelchair, waving away assistance from her team. She’d walk back to her cell under her own steam.

On her way there, she couldn’t help wincing again at the state of the building. The miserable veneer, the decaying columns and arches, the cracked walls, the stained, lusterless marble floors, all bore witness to Armando’s refusal to restore anything that wasn’t vital to the building’s integrity and functionality. Hard to believe this place housed first-rate wards and state-of-the-art medical facilities. But it still needed so much more to realize its potential. So much more…

A nurse caught her eye, started to talk. Laura apologized for not stopping and kept her eyes glued to the main corridor’s floor from then on, feeling everybody’s curious glances prickling down her back. Suddenly, large sneakered feet planted themselves in her line of vision. No need to follow the endless denim-clad limbs up to know who it was.

“If you want to kill yourself, there are much quicker ways.”

Armando didn’t wait for a comeback, simply bent and carried her to the suite she’d been occupying since he’d let her out of Intensive Care. The moment he closed the door, she struggled out of his arms and onto her feet.

“I’m leaving, Salazar—now, not later.” Her voice was unsteady, out of control. “And not only La Clínica but Argentina. That’s why I was going to GAO’s liaison office today. To arrange for my departure and replacement. I’ll check into a hospital as soon as I arrive in the States—”

He cut off her agitated words. “You’re not leaving. Not now and not when you’re fully healed either!”

What? His next words made even less sense.

“You’re staying here in Argentina, where I can make sure you and the baby are OK.”

“What are you talking about? What baby?”

“Yours and Diego’s. You do realize you’re pregnant?”

CHAPTER THREE

“I’M what?”

A long, assessing glance answered Laura’s shocked question. Then Armando shrugged. “So, you didn’t realize. Anyway, you heard me, Laura. And you heard me correctly.”

Hypoglycemia—she hadn’t eaten since yesterday—that had to be it. Or auditory hallucinations. To be expected with all the sedatives and painkillers pumped into her system over the past week. Or maybe just a plain and simple breakdown.

She couldn’t have heard him correctly!

“Don’t look at me as if I’ve sprouted another head, Laura.” A gentle grasp caught her hands in one of his, steered her to the bed. He lifted her up on it, then kneeled to take off her shoes. “I’ll leave the rest of your clothes to Matilda. Now, por favor, Laura, let me check you. We’ll talk about this later.”

Matilda, the staff nurse he’d rung for, came bustling into the room. Cooing in Spanish, she expertly helped Laura off with her clothes and put her back into a hospital-issue gown. Armando had his back turned, busy reviewing her charts, writing down notes and directions for her continued care and medication schedule.

Once she was tucked up in bed, he came back to her. Her numbness deepened as he gently took her vitals, examined her, making sure her surgical wounds were intact. He deftly placed a cannula in her arm, unscrewed its cap and, dragging the mobile pole closer, placed the end of a saline bag’s giving set on it. He set the drip, broke two ampules, injected one in the cannula’s other outlet and one into the saline. Then he pressed the controls of a patient controlled analgesia pump in her hand and attached an oximeter, to monitor her heartbeat and oxygen levels, to her other finger.

It was all happening to someone else.

That someone else was watching Armando about to close the door behind him after he’d dropped a bomb that had devastated her reality.

He’d said she was pregnant.

Pregnant!

“Armando!”

Armando froze, the temptation to swear a blue streak, to run, overwhelming.

This wasn’t how he’d thought this would happen. Not that he’d given it much thought. He’d still been struggling to come to terms with it himself, and he’d hoped to have this confrontation only once he had. He’d had vague plans that they’d talk, about the baby and what next. He hadn’t expected she’d push him into acting without thinking, hadn’t expected she’d want to leave.

Not very bright since, come to think of it, it made sense she’d want to.

So. No use flaying himself over another bad call. Her bad calls were what mattered now. Judging by what she’d done today, her decision-making was obviously impaired. Only one priority existed. She was staying. He wasn’t letting her go in her condition. And not with Diego’s baby.

You just can’t imagine seeing the last of her, Salazar, a candid voice in his head said. Admit it.

Oh, whatever! He just had to stop her in her tracks. And he surely had.

Not for long, though.

He dragged his feet back into the room, closed the door and leaned on it. “Laura, por favor, leave it till later.”

Her laugh broke out, hysteria tingeing it. “When later? When I’m in labor?”

He stared at her, clutching the blanket, eyes wild, lips trembling. He didn’t know what else to say.

“How could you possibly know I’m pregnant? When I sure as hell don’t? When it’s impossible?”

“It’s not impossible. When you started deteriorating and I knew we had to operate, I had all sort of tests done. That’s how I know.”

“I didn’t know pregnancy tests were routine before emergency ops!”

Shouldn’t she be dulled by the sedative already—by everything else, for that matter? He shook his head and exhaled. “Normally, they aren’t. But I asked for everything. Lab thought everything included a pregnancy test. It was a good thing, too. This way I picked category A medications and anesthetics that aren’t harmful to fetal development.”

“I still tell you it’s impossible. I haven’t—we haven’t…” Her words trailed off, her angry agitation giving way to a look of supreme concentration. Followed by frightening pallor.

Laura felt her consciousness ebbing, then a wave of sickness rose, threatening to engulf her.

She’d fallen into Diego’s arms at first, coming with all the building eagerness of their year-long online romance, of believing she’d finally found her soulmate. The one. Her rose-tinted glasses had been firmly in place and Diego’s incredible good looks and concentrated charm had completed her dazzle. It hadn’t taken long for reality to come into focus once more.

But they’d used protection and—and that did have a failure rate! As for the period she’d had recently, it was possible to have one at the beginning of a pregnancy…

Suddenly it was crucial to know. “How far along am I?”

“I’d say about eight weeks.”

And since Diego had been dead one week, it had probably happened that last time. That time she’d known for sure she didn’t want him any more. The time she’d told him it was over. Just over a month after they’d started their relationship. How ironic.

And how disastrous. An unwanted pregnancy, by an unwanted man. A dead man to boot!

But—but the tests could be wrong, maybe a mix-up. These things happened. God—please, make it a mistake…

The world receded. Armando blurred out of focus. Just before she lost sight of him, she thought, He’s injected me with a sedative. A safe one for pregnant women, no doubt. How thoughtful…

* * *

Time stopped for Armando the moment Laura closed her eyes. He stared down at her sleeping her artificial sleep. An alien, disruptive sensation itched in his chest.

Three months since he’d first laid eyes on her. No way could he have predicted then that it would end like this. Diego dead, her pregnant, and him… What about him?

He was getting what he wanted at last—GAO’s resources and connections. But GAO had been in Argentina for a long time, and they hadn’t done much—until she’d come. She’d moved things, made things happen. Diego had said it had all been for him, to please him. That it was all her own personal clout and her family’s.

He hadn’t cared how he’d got help as long as he got it. That was, until he’d seen her.

Breathtaking had been the first thought that had filled his mind. I want her the second. The third I can’t have her.

Diego had known. He’d looked his triumph into his eyes and bragged, “Isn’t she something? And she’s all mine.”

So he’d resorted to being dismissive and remote. Then Diego had made it impossible to stay remote, so he’d stayed dismissive…

But he’d needed GAO, and this had meant more Laura, everywhere in his life. Then Diego had given him…details. More than he could stomach knowing. He’d told him how things had gone downhill, fast, how he’d no longer wanted her, how she’d clung. That hadn’t sat right. He’d suspected Diego had been trying to save face. Laura didn’t seem the type to cling to anyone.

Maybe he should have done something besides providing an unwilling ear. If he had, maybe it wouldn’t have ended up this way.

Yeah, sure. With his track record, they would have both fallen flat on their backs laughing if he’d preached relationship success.

Oh, he’d wanted their relationship to succeed, had he?

A token knock at the door cut through his mesmerized contemplation of Laura, bringing in Lucianna Perez, his godmother and head emergency nurse.

“Sorry, Armando, but there’s been a huge fire in a high-rise housing complex in Rosario and medical services there are swamped and crying out for help. Most victims threw themselves out of windows and there are dozens of them. All multiple injuries besides the burns. Two firemen were injured, too. Since you’re back, I thought you’d want to head the team going to the scene.”

He nodded, snapping back to professional mode. But first… “Luci, get Matilda back in here. When her shift’s over, her replacement takes her place. I want constant monitoring and minimum movement. Anything happens, no matter how minor and no matter where I am, report it immediately.”

With a final look at Laura he ran out, putting on the fluorescent medical team yellow jacket Lucianna had handed him. “What’s ready?”

Lucianna’s answer was prompt—and regretful. “El Bicho is the only one left on the ground right now.”

And was there any wonder why? His pilots avoided the archaic bucket of bolts so aptly called The Bug like the plague. Saddling him with it on his emergency flights was their way of protesting its existence on their meager fleet. As if he could afford to trash the monstrosity and had chosen not to! “And who’s left behind?”

“Only Dr. Burnside’s people.”

Armando gritted his teeth. So the day had come when he was forced to take them on, rely on them. They’d been complaining of lack of occupation. Now they’d get it with a capital O.

With Laura spearheading them, they’d come believing that all that was needed to spread relief and stability was some cutting-edge medical equipment and a forced transfer to American medical protocols. They’d made no allowances for the incompatibility of an imported doctrine, or the ever-expanding shock waves that had fractured the very underpinning of society.

Laura’s experience here so far had been with smiling politicians and eager media people. Today had been her first real dip into Argentinian reality—though he had to admit, she’d surprised him. Flabbergasted him more like. It took incredible guts and skill to do what she’d done back there. It took fearlessness. More, selflessness. Had he been that wrong about her?

Niggling shame uncoiled inside him. He fought it down. So he’d been wrong. He was man enough to admit it. But it didn’t say she was qualified to run things here. If anything, it said she wasn’t. She might be a far better doctor than he’d thought, a far better human being, but the fact still remained—that she was uninformed, out of her element. She needed him in charge until she learned, until she realized…she needed him…

His thoughts fogged with unbidden heat, then scattered at the sight of Laura’s team running to meet him at the helipad.

The two blond men and the redheaded woman were watching him warily, but with a touch of defiance, too. He’d stepped hard on their toes, made them redundant. Now they’d be getting their baptism by literal fire. They’d all see if they could handle emergencies outside the luxurious protocols of American EMS services.

At the helicopter’s door he turned to Lucianna who’d bustled after him, carrying fresh supplies. “Get Romero and Pablo to follow me to the location as soon as they hit ground from their emergencies, along with anyone who can be spared. Prepare ORs One through Four. We’re low on blood, but get Bank to give us all the O-neg they can. Send collectors over to our regular donors and beg for some more. Pay Luca and Estefan whatever they ask. It’s out of my personal pocket so don’t document it.”

He lowered his voice so Laura’s team wouldn’t hear him. “I’d also feel better if you come with me this time. Just until we see how things pan out. This way I’ll give you some more blood on the way, too.”

When she hesitated, he exhaled. “El Bicho is safe, Luci. Noisy and bumpy and under-equipped but safe, OK?”

She nodded at once, trying to cover up her instinctive reaction. “But you can’t give me more blood!” she objected. “You just gave 850 mil a week ago, and that was a risk…”

“I eat like a horse. I’ve made it all up.”

“You know you couldn’t have. And anyway I can’t take blood from you while you’re flying that—the helicopter!”

“Next to flying ‘that—the helicopter’ while fighting off a crazed nut on crack, it’ll be a breeze. And it’ll only take ten minutes.”

Lucianna tutted, her genial middle-aged face disapproving. But she knew it was useless arguing with him. She rushed back to get the necessary blood drawing and preserving equipment.

Once they lifted off, he presented her with his arm, obediently sipping the two bottles of fruit juice Laura’s teammate, Nurse Susan Brent, held to his lips to compensate for the blood volume he was donating. He tried to concentrate on the coming crisis. And failed. His mind was with Laura.

What would he do with her?

What would she do?

* * *

She didn’t want to open her eyes.

She had to. If only to escape the claustrophobic nightmares she was trapped in. But she’d open her eyes to a reality that was even worse for being inescapable. Yet taking refuge in oblivion, no matter how suffocating, wasn’t an option any more. Her mind was already wide awake, her dilemma already in sharp focus and no way out in sight.

May as well get on with facing it all.

Laura sighed and opened her eyes. They immediately fell on Armando’s silhouette, his exhausted pose in the armchair beside her bed unmistakable.

“That was some sigh.”

His rasp shivered through her. Her internalized focus shifted with—concern? For him?

Rising to a sitting position in one brisk movement, she grimaced at her reaction, shaking off the softening. So he sustained an inhuman pace. It was one of the reasons she resented the hell out of him, wasn’t it?

“And that was some imitation of life,” she said. “What are you doing up? Trying to prove you’re Superman again? Matilda said you’ve been on your feet between ER and OR for 72 hours. Since that was before I fell asleep—again—hours ago, you’re into your fourth sleepless day!”

“You sure wake up sharp and ready with your math.” He huffed a hoarse chuckle, rubbed both hands over his face and slumped further in the armchair. “I caught an hour here and there during that time.” A silent heartbeat. “You’ve been crying.”

“Matilda is a darling mother hen but an unprofessional busybody. She had no call reporting that to you.”

“La Clínica isn’t like your US metropolitan medical centers, Laura. We’re close to each other here…”

“Too close, if you ask me!”

His eyes were barely visible in the faint indirect light, but she felt his gaze tightening. He went on, “And she was under strict instructions to report your very breath count.”

“So she had to report its increase when I cried. And here you had me thinking she cared.”

He sat forward in his chair, raked both hands again over his face and through his hair, expression still tight, unreadable. “She cares. We all do.”

“Yes—yes, of course. I was trying for some comic relief…” Her words choked. She felt stupid. Worse, she felt tears rushing to her eyes again. How pathetic she must seem to everyone here. To him.

Suddenly it seemed all-important to know. “Does—does everyone…?” She couldn’t say it, still couldn’t believe it. She was pregnant!

Armando understood, ended her distress. “Only me and Berto at the lab. He won’t tell anyone. That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about…” Armando let his words trail off, too, letting his head fall into his hands.

He really looked finished. And whether she felt sympathy for him or not, she was an extra burden he didn’t need. She hadn’t asked to be and it was his doing that she was, but, well, she wouldn’t be any more. She had his word he’d take out her stitches and release her tomorrow. Then she’d return to that cursed villa Diego had saddled her with for a six-month period, start thinking how she’d put her messed-up life back together, making allowances for—for…

She was going to have a baby!

When she had no home, no money, no man for herself or a father for her baby!

Armando raised his head and even in the semi-darkness what she saw in his eyes was something totally unexpected—sympathy? Empathy? Whatever it was, it hurt, coming from him.

He heaved a deep sigh. “Did you think about…?” The eloquent gesture of his hands painted her plight.

An incredulous laugh almost choked her. “What do you think? But maybe you’re right to ask. Thinking implies a rational mental process, not the panicking and obsessing I’ve been indulging in, considering my options…”

“Options?” His eyes emptied of empathy, if indeed it had been that. “What options? Adoption? Abortion?”

Those possibilities had entered her mind—only to exit the other side as no options. But how dared he presume to have an opinion on this anyway? A judgmental one, too!

“And what if I am?” She swung her legs angrily off the bed. “What is it to you?”

He sprang to his feet, an impatient step bringing him looming over her, exuding power, tension crackling about him. He flicked an extra light on. Now his intensity was visible in every line of his features. His hand shot out. She tensed, only to be surprised by his extra-gentle, supportive grasp. He stunned her more when he talked, his awesome baritone devoid of rancor, almost soft again. “It is a lot to me. This is Diego’s child.”

How had that not occurred to her? Her baby shared Armando’s blood. She should have realized what that would mean to a proud Argentinian who revered family ties above all else. Defiant indignation seeped out of her, and her rigid body slumped. “Those possibilities crossed my mind, OK? But, strange as it sounds, I actually want this baby.”

It was his turn to be surprised. Heavy-lidded eyes widened. “You do?”

“Don’t look so astonished! I didn’t want this baby. Of course I didn’t. But now it’s real, growing inside me, I want it. If it sounds crazy…”

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