Summer With Love: The Spanish Consultant

He held the door open in the manner of someone totally accustomed to having his every instruction obeyed instantly, and the flustered nurse retrieved the chart and hurried across the room, casting a final hungry look at Jago’s profile before slipping outside.

Suddenly the room seemed too small.

Jago closed the door and stood with his back to it, his long, powerful legs spread apart, his expression unsmiling. Dominant, confident and unapologetically male, not by the slightest flicker of those sinfully dark lashes did he acknowledge that they’d ever been more than casual acquaintances.

‘Hello, princess.’ He spoke in a deep, masculine drawl that made Katy’s pulse race. ‘Running again?’

Katy’s soft lips parted and she struggled to sit up. She was in total shock. The subject of all her dreams and nightmares was suddenly confronting her. Jago, whom she’d thought about every waking minute for the last eleven years.

Jago, whom she’d never expected to see again.

Somehow he was standing in her hospital room, frighteningly imposing and super-handsome, displaying not the slightest discomfort at seeing her. Nothing in his body language suggested that he felt the smallest hint of guilt or remorse for the way he’d walked away from her without a word of explanation, leaving her so badly hurt that for a while she’d thought she’d never recover.

She could see that he was waiting for her to speak but she was totally unable to think coherently.

Over time she’d managed to convince herself that her starry-eyed view of him had been coloured by a hormonally driven teenage imagination. She’d decided that he couldn’t have been as gorgeous as she remembered.

She’d been wrong.

Jago Rodriguez was strikingly good-looking. He wore his glossy dark hair so short that in any other man it would have accentuated the faults in his facial features. But Jago didn’t have any faults. He possessed a bone structure that made artists drool and a physique that would have driven athletes to a state of mindless envy. He was impossibly, staggeringly handsome.

And to set him apart from the average man still further, he wore an exquisitely tailored suit that skimmed his wide shoulders and just shrieked of designer label.

In a strange moment of distraction Katy found herself wondering what happened if a patient was sick on it.

Growing hotter and hotter under his steady scrutiny, she lifted a hand to her aching head.

‘Wh-what are you—?’ She broke off, totally unable to believe his presence by her hospital bed. ‘I-I didn’t know you were a doctor,’ she croaked, and a dark eyebrow swept upwards.

‘Why should you?’

Why indeed?

After all, he’d chosen to walk out of her life without a backward glance or giving a forwarding address. To him the relationship had been over and he’d moved on. Unfortunately it hadn’t been so easy for her.

She dug her nails in her palms. ‘I assumed you were still in banking.’

‘I lost my taste for banking,’ he said smoothly, his dark eyes fixed on her pale face. ‘I changed career.’

So that was why her feeble, childish attempts to track him down had failed. She’d used all her contacts at the various banks but with no success. It had never occurred to her that he might have changed profession.

Katy blinked as she did the calculation in her head. If he was a consultant now then he must have started training immediately after he’d left her father’s company and he must have progressed fast. But, then, that didn’t surprise her. Jago had always been frighteningly clever.

‘Why medicine?’

And why this hospital, where she was going to see him every day?

She fought the rush of panic that threatened to swamp her and focused on his tie. Silk. Designer. Sufficiently muted not to induce a headache in a patient with a head injury.

‘I like the adrenaline rush. When you’re dealing with lives, the stakes are higher than in the money markets.’

He gave a careless shrug and she found her gaze drifting upwards to his powerful shoulders. If anything, he was even more spectacular than he’d been eleven years before. Jago Rodriguez was sex in the raw, so overwhelmingly masculine that just looking at him was enough to punch the breath from her body.

Appalled by her own thoughts and the traitorous stab of awareness that she felt low in her stomach, she looked away from him.

What was the matter with her? He’d been in the room for less than five minutes and already her insides were turning somersaults. Did she have absolutely no sense of self-preservation?

It depressed her that she could still react to him, knowing just how badly he’d hurt her. Weren’t doctors supposed to be warm and caring?

For a short, blissful interlude she’d thought that Jago possessed those qualities, but experience had shown that he was capable of being every bit as ruthless, ambitious and macho as her father.

Jago didn’t have a compassionate bone in his body and she certainly couldn’t imagine him as a doctor.

As far as she was concerned, he wasn’t doctor material. She started to shiver.

Why now? Why did she have to bump into Jago now, when she’d finally managed to rebuild an emotionally comfortable life for herself?

She was marrying Freddie and she was never again going to feel that breathless, stomach-churning excitement that she’d experienced with Jago.

Those slumberous eyes, as dark as obsidian, reflected not a hint of warmth or tenderness. Nothing that reflected the intense emotions which had characterised their relationship. The tension in the room sucked the breath from her body but he surveyed her with an almost indifferent coolness that made it blatantly clear he had no positive feelings for her whatsoever.

It was almost as if the very sight of her offended him, which was utterly ridiculous. After all, he’d been the one who’d walked away from her without the smallest explanation.

And maybe that shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. She’d been well aware of his reputation when she’d become involved with him. In fact, his reputation had been part of the fascination, at least to begin with, and he’d always warned her that he didn’t do commitment.

So why had she been so devastated when he’d ended it? And did she really expect him to be harbouring romantic memories about her? Just remembering all her innocent fantasies about him filled her with mortification.

She’d been so naïve.

She suddenly felt horribly vulnerable in her NHS nightie that was open all the way down the back.

If she had to face Jago she would have chosen to be wearing armour.

‘I heard your voice when the paramedics brought me in.’ Her voice was a croak. ‘Was it you who—?’

‘Who sorted you out? Yes, it was. I seem to make a habit of it, don’t I? And it’s always on the same date.’ He strolled forward and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Tell me, Katy. What were you running from this time?’

‘Nothing.’

Her memories.

‘You could have been killed. It took them an hour to cut you out of the car.’ His tone was matter-of-fact. ‘Do you think I’ve forgotten the significance of today, Katy? It’s the tenth of July. Your birthday. So the question is, what are those unspeakable parents of yours trying to force you to do this time?’

Their eyes clashed and she knew that he was remembering her eighteenth birthday eleven years previously. Another occasion when she’d been running and he’d rescued her …

‘I’m going to be a doctor.’

Katy faced her father, her heart beating so fast that she felt faint. There wasn’t going to be a row. There couldn’t be. They were surrounded by influential people. She’d chosen to confront him in the middle of their birthday party, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to do much.