The Doctor's Marriage for a Month

by Annie O'Neil

  Strangely, Isla did. It was exactly what she’d always done for her parents. Stood by them, all the while trusting, believing, loving. An invisible trinity holding her together through the darkest of days.

  “Do you want out?”

  Serena shook her head again. “No. But I want change. I know Diego is doing his best, but...”

  “Everything all right in here?”

  Isla’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of Diego’s voice. Her tummy did an entire tango when she turned around and saw him filling up the doorway, all dark-haired and pitch-black eyes...protective. Protective of her.

  Serena rose and nodded solemnly at Diego. “Señor Vasquez.”

  He nodded, his expression inscrutable. “Serena. What brings you here? You know we planned on dropping by later.”

  “Sí.” She put on a neutral smile. “I was just extending my felicitations to your new wife.”

  Diego’s eyes pinged to Isla. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  She held up her hands as if to say, I’m fine. I will explain everything later.

  “How very kind of you.” His voice was curt. Officious. “If that’s all, then, we were just about to pack up and head out to Corona Beach. To see your son. The one with the gunshot wounds.”

  * * *

  Diego knew he was pouring salt into a wound that would never heal. Knew Serena wasn’t the one who should be on the receiving end of his verbal potshots. And, more than that, he didn’t want Isla knowing there was this side to him. The side still seething with anger at the injustice of his brother’s death.

  Sure. He did his thing. He brought healthcare to the island as if he were a warrior and treating even the most vile of characters were his greatest pleasure. But seeing Serena here, on some sort of obvious power play with the woman he’d vowed to care for—that was stepping on territory he wasn’t willing to give up.

  He stepped to the side and showed her the door. “Do give Axl my very best.”

  Serena went to the doorway and then turned to him, nearly said something, reconsidered when he pushed himself up to his full height, and walked away.

  After she’d gone he took two long-legged strides to where Isla was standing, her expression one of pure shell-shock.

  He stroked her hair. Cupped her cheek. When he dropped his hands to her shoulders she shrugged herself away from him, visibly annoyed.

  “Why were you so rude to her?”

  “Que? Cariña, I was protecting you, not being rude.”

  She snorted. “Where I come from that sort of behavior is considered rude.”

  He had been rude. And a boor. And for the first time ever he liked having someone in his life who would hold his own actions up to him for examination. For too long he’d felt like a solitary crusader. A man hell-bent on bringing peace to the island through means he wasn’t sure would ever wholly do the trick.

  Isla crossed her arms and glared at him. He had to bite back a smile. Minute by minute she was slipping under his skin, and he didn’t feel like putting up any sort of roadblocks to stop her.

  “Do you know why she was here?”

  “I would say to lord it over you, but I’m guessing by your reaction to my caveman routine I might be wrong.”

  “Correct. You’re wrong. As my grandmother would say, you went a bit crabbit on the poor woman.”

  No guesses as to what crabbit meant.

  He took a step closer toward her. “You know, you have a lovely way of rolling your Rs. Not everyone who tries Spanish can do that.”

  He took another step in and lightly rested his hands on her hips. She arched an imperious eyebrow at him, but didn’t shake him off. He shouldn’t be doing this. Neither of them should. And yet here they were. Neither of them moving.

  Isla adopted an imperious tone. “I wasn’t speaking Spanish. I was speaking Scots.”

  “And you and Serena were holding an international peace summit, I suppose?”

  “As a matter of fact we were. Well... We might have been if someone hadn’t showed her the door. I believe she was here offering herself as an olive branch, and if you hadn’t come in like some sort of big old swashbuckling hero I might’ve found out exactly what it was she wanted.”

  Isla shifted under his touch and, if he wasn’t mistaken, arched in toward him. Was she enjoying their feisty banter as much as he was?

  Isla didn’t blink. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “When it comes to you, my dear, I could believe just about anything.” He wove a hand through her thick hair and tilted her face up toward his. “But right now I’d like to talk about something else. In fact...” his voice lowered to a growl “...I’d like not to talk at all.”

  He closed the few inches between them, feeling the pulse of longing hit him fast and hard. Sofia had gone out. He kicked the door shut.

  The minute his mouth touched hers, heat exploded in his body like a petrol bomb. Hot. Fast. Furious. It was as intense as their first kiss, but better. This time it was entirely by choice.

  How did he know? He felt the difference. She’d responded to him before, but there had been so much adrenaline running through her system he hadn’t been a hundred percent certain if she’d been expending her stores as a means of survival or acting on the same animal instinct that had made him kiss her in the first place.

  This time he knew she was slaking the exact same hunger he’d been feeling from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

  She was tasting him. Touching him. Her hands were round his neck. In his hair. Rucking his shirt up and out of his trousers. Feeling his hot skin against her slender fingers. When she slid her hand between them and felt the strength of his desire they groaned together. He scooped her up and wrapped her legs round his waist faster than you could say—

  “Oh! Lo siento mucho!”

  They both turned to see Sofia, standing, frozen, in the open doorway.

  Diego slowly eased his wife down his front, well aware that if he turned around he would be betraying more than elevated blood pressure.

  “I—Should I—? Perhaps...should I go?” Sofia looked as if she wanted to run for the hills and never come back, but couldn’t because her feet were cemented to the ground.

  To his surprise, Isla slipped in front of Diego, pulling her scrubs back into a semblance of order, and smiled as if being caught in the throes of a passionate liaison happened to her all the time.

  “Not at all. Apologies, Sofia. You’ll have to forgive us...” She brandished her ring. “Newlyweds.”

  When Sofia made some sort of excuse about having left something a very exact “ten minutes away and ten minutes back”, and slammed the door shut behind her, Isla whirled round and pointed her finger at Diego.

  “No,” she said, her chest still heaving, lips bruised, two bright dots of pink lighting up her cheeks. “No more of that. I’m not your property!”

  He wanted to protest. Say he knew she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her, but demons of his own stepped to the fore.

  Isla muddied his focus. His drive.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ISLA WAVED HER patient off, took the stethoscope from round her neck, popped it into her ears and pressed the diaphragm to her heart.

  Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

  Yup! Still beating. Would wonders never cease?

  Clawing her way through these last few days pretending she was completely immune to Diego was an entirely brand-new form of torture. Particularly when patients asked about their plans. Did they have plans for the sanctuary? Remodeling? Were they taking a honeymoon? Starting a family?

  It was the plans for a family part she found particularly difficult to grapple with. She really wanted children. When Kyle had left her, her very first thought had been, Tick-tock, tick-tock. It had been then that she’d known the rumored biological clock was very real. And p
ainful to live with, considering Diego was so at ease with telling everyone, “The more the merrier!”

  She’d never realized emotional torture could be physically painful before.

  Life after that kiss...those kisses...all the fictions... Sigh. It would be an uphill battle to keep her strict, blinkered eyes on the actual prize—leaving El Valderon. Not to mention the fact that with each passing day the tension between the pair of them increased.

  Pre-clinic kiss? Surprisingly light. Fun, even.

  Post-clinic kiss? More...guarded. Intense. Driven.

  It was almost impossible to figure out which one was the real Diego. Again and again she had to remind herself to fight her instinct to peel away the layers of this man who had unwittingly awoken something powerful and strong within her.

  Today, in particular, as they worked at a remote mountaintop village school, Isla felt as though she were operating on a knife’s edge—a totally different sensation from operating at gunpoint. This felt...insane, really. As if she’d been invaded by some sort of lust monster. A beautiful one. An Aphrodite. An insatiable she-devil. A femme fatale.

  On a practical level, she knew she should be feeling fragile—terrified, even, given the fact her month in El Valderon was not even halfway done... But under Diego’s gaze she felt empowered. Her entire body felt different.

  Sure. She’d kissed other men before. She’d been intimate before. Felt the butterfly wing tickling of pleasure. But she’d never felt someone’s unmasked desire invade her body like a nuclear-charged life force before.

  “Isla?” Diego knocked on the doorframe of the tiny exam room where she was finishing up some paperwork.

  He wasn’t even touching her, and still...fireworks.

  “Any chance I can borrow your lap?”

  “I beg your pardon?” A rush of images jostled each other for pole position.

  “For a child,” he quickly explained, his expression neutral. “Sofia’s nipped out. Would you be able to hold on to a four-year-old with some rather nasty splinters in her knee?”

  “You need me to hold her?”

  He tipped his head to the side, brow furrowed. “She’s scared. Hurt. Her mother’s not here, the teacher is busy, and I thought she could do with some comfort.”

  “But you’re so good at that.”

  He shook his head. “Not with children.”

  “But I thought—”

  “What?” An intensity she hadn’t seen before radiated from him. “What did you think?”

  “‘The more the merrier?’”

  Something bleak and painful darkened his eyes. “We tell people what they want to hear in public, mija. When it’s just you and me I thought we’d opted for honesty.”

  Her heart sank. He didn’t want children? Sure. On an intellectual level she understood why he couldn’t have them right now, with her, but he was great with them. She’d seen him playing a game of hide and seek earlier and he’d been hilarious. Had had piles of children clambering all over him.

  She rounded on herself. This isn’t about the two of you and your fictional future.

  “Isla? We need to get to my patient. Tick-tock.”

  Tick-tock.

  “Of course.”

  She understood. It didn’t sit well, but it wasn’t as if having a real-life family was their destiny. She saw something in him relax. As if he’d been bearing the burden of his lies about wanting children on his own and now that she knew it was a burden halved.

  “Right!” She stood up with as bright a smile as she could muster. “Let’s go meet this little monkey.”

  A few minutes later Isla’s every nerve-ending was at war with her common sense. Sitting there, in that tiny room, holding the most adorable little girl and watching Diego pull splinter after splinter after splinter from her knee...

  It was like watching a man rescue kittens from a cliff-edge.

  Utterly impossible not to go all gooey inside.

  She let her cheek rest atop the little girl’s head. It was so soft. For just a fraction of a second she allowed herself to wonder what it would be like if she was holding her own daughter, and Diego was the caring, loving father painstakingly extracting the remains of a log-jumping game gone wrong.

  She lifted her gaze and met Diego’s. He was looking directly at her.

  Heat seared straight through to every part of her body it shouldn’t. Every part of her body she had lectured each night about due diligence. An actual physical ache squeezed at her heart so tightly she could hardly breathe.

  Was she falling in love with him? Her husband? Her captor?

  He’s not your captor. He saved you. And in two weeks he’s going to let you go.

  The flare of light in Diego’s eyes was so intense she felt as if he was actually following her thoughts.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it any longer, he dropped his gaze.

  “Ahora, mi muy linda niña. That’s you, all patched up.” He lifted the little girl off Isla’s lap and gave her head a little rub. “Let’s let Isla go back to work now.”

  An electric tension simmered between them as Isla rose and left the room. It wasn’t anger. Not loss. Or fear. It was sexual. Hot, fierce, sexual desire.

  Two broken fingers, one mystery rash, three diabetes check-ups, four general health checks and about nineteen blood pressure checks on herself later, Isla and Diego called it a day.

  When they got back to the house Carmela had already gone home.

  The nanosecond the large wooden door to the courtyard shut behind her Diego became a man possessed. An explorer with one quest. One mission. To find the Holy Grail. And when Isla looked into his espresso-dark eyes, lit from within by the flame of desire, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he’d found what he sought.

  Without a word, he closed the space between them, reached out, took hold of the small waist tie that held her dress together and pulled it.

  The woman she’d been a fortnight ago would have been horrified. The woman she was today felt beautiful enough to stand before him and let him appraise her.

  She even shifted her leg, so that the wrap-around dress fell to the side, giving him more than a sliver of insight as to what lay beneath the fabric.

  She didn’t have to be told he liked what he saw.

  His pupils dilated. His tongue swept across his lips.

  Almost against her will, she did the same with her own dry lips, wondering if he could see the pulse-point at the base of her throat pounding. She dropped her eyes, half tempted to step forward and see how quickly she could make short shrift of the buttons on Diego’s dark linen shirt, which accented the warm burnt sugar color of his skin.

  Instead she let her gaze drop further. A warmth infused her entire body, coiling hot and tight between her legs as she saw the length of his erection appear instantly.

  She’d never known the power of arousing a man just by standing in front of him. Seized with a boldness she’d not known she possessed, Isla slipped her dress off first one shoulder and then the other, catching the sleeves on her wrists, still keeping the whirl of fabric in place around her waist and legs.

  He made a move toward her, his eyes glued to her breasts. Her nipples ached with need. For his touch. For his caresses. For the hot, wet licks she knew he’d give her with his tongue when she finally allowed him to come close and take her breast between his lips.

  She shook her finger back and forth when he made a move to step forward. “Not yet.”

  “Cariña, you are torturing me.”

  “Isn’t a new bride allowed to be shy?”

  Where on earth had she found this new coquettishness...? She looked up to meet Diego’s hungry gaze. Well... No guesses there, really.

  She checked herself. It wasn’t shyness. This was no ordinary margarita-fueled holiday romance. She wanted answers f
irst.

  “Is this real?”

  A ragged breath left his chest and he held out his hands as if presenting his whole true self to her. “Si amorcita.” He held out his wrists. “As real as what is flowing through these veins.” He put his hands on his heart. “As real as what I felt the moment I first saw you.”

  “As real as this?” She held up her hand, showing him the ring he’d put on her finger.

  Pain flashed across his eyes but he didn’t blink. She knew it wasn’t fair. Asking a man who’d married her in an insane situation to paint a picture. There wasn’t a cell in her body that wanted to refuse him. That could refuse him. But she wanted to hear him tell her that what they were about to share was based on a fiction. That it would end. That anything and everything that passed between them was solely based on the here and now. Two hearts. Two minds. Two souls. One undeniably carnal attraction.

  Diego stilled, then spoke, “The first woman who wore that ring—my grandmother—was the strongest, most noble woman I ever knew. She stood for truth, honesty and conviction. I vowed to her I would never put her ring on the finger of a woman who stood for anything less than she did. But as for what lies ahead for us...? I can make you no promises.”

  Isla respected his honesty. It wasn’t as if she could, hand on heart, tell him she was in love with him. Did she care for him? Absolutely. Did she respect him. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Did her body crave his touch?

  More than anything.

  She stared at the diamond ring on her finger.

  She thought of her own grandmother, who had been her ballast during her childhood. With her parents constantly flying off to protect one endangered species or another Isla might easily have felt neglected. Uncared-for. But her grandmother had made sure Isla knew just how very much she was loved. From the look in his eyes, the ache in his voice, it was easy to see Diego’s grandmother had been the same for him.

  She didn’t need to talk anymore. Quiz him. Push him into false declarations of feelings he couldn’t possibly have. Not now. Not with so many questions left unanswered.