Emergency Marriage

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.