Emergency Marriage

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…