The Doctor's Marriage for a Month

by Annie O'Neil

  First and foremost: she’d do anything to save her father’s life. Including volunteering to help Diego with the young teen’s surgery—a skillset she had proactively stepped away from when she’d moved to Loch Craggen.

  Which was how she now found herself in a well-kitted-out surgical suite tucked at the back of an inauspicious bungalow. All right. She’d been asked to help with the surgery. And it hadn’t strictly been a “request’ as such—more like a I’d strongly advise participating if you want to your father to survive this sorry mess. But...all things considered...she hadn’t done emergency medicine in ages and she was pretty pleased with how it was all coming back.

  Like riding a bike, her father would have said. With scalpels and suture kits and heart-rate monitors, but yes.

  On the flipside, with Diego always within a meter’s reach she didn’t know whether she felt protected or as if she were being lured into another charming man’s web of lies. Like a Caribbean Stockholm syndrome. The worst possible antidote to her broken engagement. Her shattered confidence. The terror careering through her frayed nerves.

  She glanced at Diego. Most of his face was hidden behind a mask, apart from his espresso-brown eyes outlined with kohl-black lashes. Were those eyes to be trusted? Were they really the key to a man’s soul?

  There’d been a magnetic flash of connection when they’d met, and it hadn’t been the kind that repelled. It had been a primal response that had felt completely out of her control. At this exact moment her body’s heightened sensitivity to anything and everything Diego seemed the scariest part of this whole palaver.

  And that started with wearing scrubs that were patently Diego-sized. Rolled up at the ankles. Super-roomy over the shoulders.

  It wasn’t simply wearing the man’s clothes that had her body super-alert to the brush and swoosh of the cotton against her belly, her breasts. It was that they were meant for him. A man she didn’t know was friend or foe. And she had literally put herself in everything but his shoes.

  It was an entirely unwelcome intimacy and her body was squirming with discomfort. No one wanted to walk in the shoes of their father’s murderer.

  It definitely wasn’t his fresh-off-the-runway looks that were disarming her. Not by a long shot. It was his ease with her. With them. With this whole situation.

  Not creepy. Or scary. More...caring. Reassuring. It had to be a clever ruse to disarm her. Just as her ex had lavished her with praise for being solid, steady, reliable, and then at the first sniff of something more interesting left her in the lurch.

  Trust, suffice it to say, was an issue with her.

  And all of this was going on whilst she knew if the surgery didn’t go well she was looking at becoming a headline for all the wrong reasons.

  Ecowarrior and Heartbroken Boring Daughter Found Dead in Mystery Shooting!

  She shuddered as the true reality of the situation soaked through to her very core. Unless she helped save this man’s life she and her father could lose theirs.

  A tremor set light in her hands.

  “Everything all right?” Diego’s eyes snapped to hers, his instruments frozen in mid-air above Cruzito’s entry wound.

  “Sí. Muchas gracias.”

  Why was she speaking in her paltry Spanish? And why was she lying?

  She forced herself to hold her hands steady, even though she was the opposite of all right. She was lurching from utter terror because—hello!—this was pretty terrifying and then slipping fleetingly into that beautiful, calm, quiet place that was medicine, where she knew she was in control.

  She gave Diego another quick sidelong look and saw he was diligently back at work, completely unaware of her internal boxing match. If she could pull her right leg off and know she could trust him to ensure her father would be safe she would.

  “I think it’s best to leave the bullet in,” Diego said without looking up.

  “Why?”

  She could have kicked herself for questioning him. This was his operating theatre. His set of rules. His scary gang of men, with an ominous overlord lurking out there somewhere, hopefully not torturing her father.

  A thought struck. What if Diego was actually Axl Cruz? And this was his son?

  Her mouth went completely dry.

  Through the roar of blood in her head she could just hear Diego explaining his reasons why in that tobacco voice of his. Though she doubted he’d ever smoked so much as a cigarillo in his life. His personal aroma was more cocoa bean and coffee, with a splash of wood smoke just to ratchet up the alpha aura about him.

  “Have you taken one out before?”

  She shook her head and forced herself to answer in a steady, even voice. “Gunshot wounds are pretty rare in Loch Craggen. Handguns are illegal and hunting accidents are mercifully rare.”

  Diego made a throaty humph noise. She didn’t need a translator to know what it meant. It meant, Lucky you.

  A sliver of hope that he might actually be on the right side of the law flared inside her. Perhaps he was some sort of medical Robin Hood, stealing medical supplies to care for men who... Men who were holding her father captive.

  Medicine. Just focus on the medicine.

  “Any chance of lead poisoning?”

  “No.” He shook his head and asked her to hand him the hot blade used for cauterizing blood vessels. “Blood poisoning has largely been relegated to the past. These days leaving a bullet in is only a problem if the bullets are soaked in biological weapons. A double-edged sword.”

  He tipped his head to the side, then returned his focus to the web of open blood vessels.

  “Thankfully, things are not that advanced here. There’s more risk for Cruzito if we take it out. Further blood loss.”

  His eyes flicked to the solitary bag of O positive hanging on a stand.

  “He was lucky nothing crucial was nicked apart from the lung. If it had been you know as well as I do that we wouldn’t be standing here operating on him. This is all we have for now, so if something goes wrong it’s better to let scar tissue grow round the bullet. Apart from problems going through airport security, the scar tissue around the bullet will protect the body from most complications. If not.” His shoulders lifted in a casual shrug. “They know where I live.”

  A shiver of unease shuddered down her spine on his behalf. Although was he double-bluffing?

  Before she could stop herself she asked, “Are you...one of them?”

  His eyes pinged to hers and little crinkles fanned out from the edges as she saw the huff of a laugh inflate his face mask.

  Was that a no? She didn’t want it to be a yes. Something deep in her gut told her it wasn’t a yes. But it looked a whole lot more complicated than a simple no.

  He didn’t answer, instead continued to steadily cauterize blood vessels and clean out the wound.

  She took the moment to steal another not so secret stare.

  His jet-black lashes punctuated just how dark his irises were. She hadn’t noticed they were flecked with gold before. Like dark spiced rum shot through with sunlight. Equal parts powerful and forgiving.

  She saw his face mask move a bit. In, then out.

  In the course of the boat ride she’d noticed Diego had a habit of shifting his tongue along his lower lip when he was concentrating. Then he’d pinch that same full lip between his teeth and slowly release it as his brows tucked together and those long fingers of his shifted through his hair.

  All of which, she was horrified to discover, unleashed a heatwave of desire deep down in her most essential self. The easiest way to douse that fire was to remind herself that her life and her father’s were very likely in his hands.

  One tense and, mercifully successful hour of surgery later, Isla had finally willed her fingers into submission. No more shaking.

  She took the clamps Diego handed her and put them on a sterilized tray.
“You must be tired,” she said. “Why don’t you let me close...? What did you say his name was?”

  “His nickname’s Cruzito. Little Cruz,” he translated. “His Christian name is Paz.”

  “That’s an unusual name. Does it mean anything?”

  Diego’s eyes flicked to hers and cinched tight. “It means Peace.”

  Isla couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “Seriously?”

  Diego’s shoulder lifted. “His papà’s name means Father of Peace.”

  “Axl Cruz? His first name means Father of Peace? He’s got a funny way of showing it.”

  Diego tipped his head to the side, his dark eyes clouding for a minute before he looked at her and said, “Why don’t you go on ahead and close up?”

  Okay. She guessed she wasn’t going to get any more answers on that front. The situation was far more complicated than bad guys wanting money and power.

  Diego stood back from the table, pulled down his surgical mask and began clearing the area on his side of the surgical table without so much as a backward glance. The gesture felt...huge.

  He didn’t strike her as someone who freely handed over the reins at the surgical table. Nor did she think he would whimsically dole out trust and respect. He was a man who expected people to earn it.

  And she liked earning it.

  She dropped her gaze down to the black stubble on his throat, and just below it to where a thin leather strap hung round his neck. Whatever dangled at the end of it was weighting the leather below the V-neckline of his scrubs.

  Her fingers twitched with the sudden urge to touch it. A whirl of self-loathing swept through her. She’d never had this sort of primal response to a man before. And he was her captor, no less.

  As if she needed to feel even more vulnerable.

  “Where is my father?”

  “In time, cariña.” His eyes met hers again, with that same unwavering strength.

  Cariña? Seriously? The word, which she knew to be a term of endearment, felt discordant given the circumstances. He was in charge of the situation, as far as she could see. The only man apart from Axl Cruz the pandilleros would listen to. He was taller than most of them. Lean, but not skinny. Fit. He moved with leonine assurance. And a confidence that meant he knew his body could handle whatever he threw at it. A confidence that spoke of the power many surgeons held in their hands. The power to give and take life.

  She tore her eyes from his and slowly, exactingly, began to close up the incisions with a combination of sutures and staples until Cruzito was ready to go into the small recovery room Diego had pointed out earlier. Two men were called in and they wheeled the lad away.

  As they began cleaning the surgical tools a new man entered the room, with a couple of gunmen in his wake. He wasn’t physically intimidating, in terms of height or musculature, but he radiated an aura of power. One that came from using fear as his main weapon. This had to be Axl Cruz.

  He looked at the space where his son had been operated on, then rattled off a few staccato words to Diego.

  “What is he saying?”

  She would have gnawed her own arm off if it had made her fluent in Spanish. Particularly as she seemed to be the subject of the conversation.

  The two men would say something, look at her as if they were sizing up a racehorse, then launch into a volley of speech again.

  The gunmen looked utterly unmoved. As if this were an everyday sort of thing.

  The only thing keeping her upright was the deep-seated need to be assured that her father was alive and well. That was it. Whatever it took to make that happen, she would do it.

  When the rapid-fire conversation escalated, then reached a crescendo, Diego slammed his fist down on a nearby table, causing all the instruments on it to jump. His entire demeanor spoke of a man who had given an ultimatum.

  Isla swallowed.

  Was he negotiating for her? For her freedom? There was no British Embassy or High Commission in El Valderon. She didn’t even know an emergency number she could call for help. And even if she had she somehow knew that any such intervention would only throw more fuel onto a fire that was already raging out of control.

  How strange that she felt as if Diego had her back on this. It wasn’t something she was used to feeling. As if she were part of a team.

  Her eyes pinged to Axl.

  He gave a whaddya want me to do about it? shrug. He’d obviously given his ultimatum too. And it wasn’t one that leant in her favor.

  Axl turned and walked away, taking all the oxygen in the room with him.

  Diego’s hand moved to the leather strip around his neck as he asked the remaining gunman a question. It sounded like a taunt. Diego kept his eyes boring into the man, until he too shrugged and left the room.

  Isla watched, transfixed, as Diego curled his right index finger round the leather thong and, with one swift tug, freed the leather strap from his neck.

  “Take off your gloves.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head, not understanding, but did it anyway. Heat surged from her fingers up her arm and swirled round her collarbone as he took her left hand in his. She felt something cool slipped on to her finger.

  What she saw drew all the breath from her lungs.

  A ring. A beautiful triumvirate of gold, silver and platinum bands linked together. At the apex, nestled amongst the bands, was one of the largest diamonds she had ever seen.

  “What on—?” Confusion drowned out her ability to think straight. She looked up and met his solid gaze. “What is this for?”

  “Marry me.”

  * * *

  Diego was as shocked to hear himself ask Isla to marry him as she looked to receive a proposal.

  When she remained drop-jawed, he said it again. “Marry me, Isla.”

  His voice sounded alien to him. Thick with emotion. Urgent. Not conveying the usual cool demeanor he’d worn as armor since his heart had all but been torn from his chest.

  Desperate times. Desperate measures.

  Isla shook her head, as if it would alter the words she’d just heard. “I’m sorry. Does that mean the same thing here as it means in Scotland? Because where I come from it means become husband and wife.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve proved my fluency in English.” He felt his features harden. A muscle twitch in his jaw. The opposite of what one would expect from a lovestruck groom. A narky comment and a thunder face.

  Muchas gracias, Noche Blanca. Once again you’ve managed to bring out my better side.

  “I don’t understand.”

  How could she? She lived in a kinder world. One where survival wasn’t an issue. One where a marriage proposal didn’t sit at the polar extreme of Romance 101.

  “Marry me. To save your father. To save yourself.”

  Axl had been crystal-clear. The only way he would back off from the sanctuary was if Doug MacLeay was out of the picture. Permanently.

  Diego could only think of one way to save Doug and Isla’s lives. An old vow on top of a new one.

  After his brother’s death, Axl had promised safety for every member of his family. And there was only one way to make Doug and Isla part of his family. So he told Axl he was in love with Isla. A whirlwind romance neither of them could fight.

  Axl’s response had been immediate. “You say you love this woman? Fine. Be my guest. Marry her. Tonight.”

  Otherwise...?

  This was where the infamous Axl Cruz shrug had come in. Otherwise they would both go. And not back to Scotland.

  It was that simple.

  So here he was standing in front of a woman he didn’t know, praying she would agree to marry him.

  A door banged in the distance, followed by a loud volley of men’s voices.

  “This is ridiculous. Surely now that Cruzito is all right they’ll let us
go?”

  Diego shook his head. “No. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve both seen too much. Caused too much trouble.”

  “Trouble? Are you kidding—?”

  He held a finger to her lips, wondering if she felt the same heat he felt pouring through his hand. If it was searing straight through to her tongue, her throat. What was it about this woman that was making him behave like this?

  He dropped his hand and crushed his physiological response.

  “They will kill your father. No question. You...?” He held his palms up. “You helped save his son’s life. That might count for something.”

  For a millisecond he saw fear ripple across her features. An instant later it was gone. He recognized the same mask he so often donned. The one he wore when he told patients they had cancer. Told parents that their child had an incurable illness. The one he’d worn ever since his own brother had died saving the son of the criminal who all but held their island hostage.

  She nodded that she understood.

  “Put on a pair of fresh gloves,” Diego instructed.

  Insane or not, it was a plan that might work. Why or how he’d chosen this woman, this moment, to pull in a favor he would never have again was a question he couldn’t ask himself right now. Axl could sniff weakness and lies as easily as you could smell the salt in the air.

  “We have to convince him this is what we want. That we met when you first arrived and that we’re already engaged.”

  “But I only arrived a few days ago!”

  “Never heard of love at first sight?”

  She flushed and looked away.

  Did she...? Had she felt it too? That crackle of connection?

  Don’t be an idiot. It wasn’t love. It was lust.

  He believed in lust. Passion, even. But love? He didn’t believe in love anymore. Couldn’t. Not when he knew how the world really worked.

  “When the men come back in again take the gloves off. They won’t know they’re a different pair. Make sure the diamond hits the light. They need to see the ring.”