by Olivia Gates
Why?
Javier wanted to roar the word. Rave and rant it.
Why? Why now? When he’d started to forget.
She couldn’t be here, doing this, for him. But what other explanation was there? Was that what he was doing? Prodding her into an admission that she was here, pursuing him? Was that what he wanted?
No! He didn’t want her anywhere near him. He wanted life to restart before the moment he’d heard her cries, before he’d saved her and doomed himself.
Oh, did he now?
Demonios! Was there no delivery from addiction?
Stupid. Susceptible. Male. That was what she’d always made him, boiling him down to his elements, wrenching out and keeping his focus, his lust—his idiocy.
“I…” Her answer was cut off when her driver came forward, bringing her luggage and papers for her to sign. She brushed against Javier as she advanced towards the man.
He ached—everywhere, every way.
No. He hadn’t started to forget. He wouldn’t ever, it seemed. But he’d been at a point when he’d ceased to dwell on his cravings and despondency. He’d shoved all that made him male into sealed containment and had gone ahead full force at being a doctor. This had been where he’d been safe from the hunger. No longer, if she was here.
He’d never expected this. This direct invasion of his sanctuary.
How dared she?
His ferocious thoughts roiled with Bogotá’s warmer than usual wind, running hot invisible fingers through her hair. It was no longer the waist-length platinum cascade he’d once sheathed himself in, lost his mind in, but just a burnished halo that made her look the angel that she wasn’t. Why had she cut it? He’d once begged her never to.
Why should that upset him? He’d made his decision and had stuck to it, had walked away. And he’d always known his wishes had never mattered to her. Her being here was more proof of that!
She turned back to him, and the ache became gnawing. But it was only then he noticed. It wasn’t only her hair that had changed. Those azure-skies eyes had, too. He couldn’t pinpoint how, though. With the rest of her it was easy to pin down the differences. Rich cream had replaced the overall Mediterranean tan. The voluptuous body he’d plundered that first night, and for five delirious months afterwards, possessed a new…resilience? Or was it only because her languorous air was gone? Whatever, she had changed, but not what she still did to him. Dios! She shouldn’t still do this to him.
“He just needed my signature, confirming that I’ve been delivered into your care. I told him to stick around in case you threw me out on my ear.” That was said without that addictive, seductive smile that had always been in her gaze, on her lips. Even during that last confrontation, when it had grated and humiliated, it had still enslaved him. He should be relieved it was gone now, should pray it was gone for ever. He didn’t. El idiota! “So, you were asking why I’m here. The answer is obvious. To work.”
“Excuse me as I stagger under the weight of that revelation. Quit playing games, Savannah. Richardsons don’t work in places like this. What happened to your exalted position within the Richardson Health Group? To your crammed social agenda?” To Mark? The question boomed in his head but didn’t leave his lips. “And just what strings did you pull to get GAO to make you replace Rupert as my second in command?”
“Co-leader, not second in command!”
“Even worse. If you think I’m just going to just say ‘Oh, OK’, think again!”
Her breathing changed cadence, irresistibly bringing his eyes to her breasts. Those breasts—the first part of her he’d kissed, when she’d dragged him into an unknown dimension of carnal excess and sensual overload. Even under her utilitarian beige outfit he could detail them. Or was he seeing them through the X-ray of memory?
His body lurched against the shackles of clothes, common sense and control. It had never had doubts. It had always wanted hers, had been punishing him for three years for denying it.
Her hands wiped down her hips then went up to smooth white-gold strands from her eyes. “I don’t need to think again, Javier. I know firsthand how immovable you are once you’ve made up your mind. But this time, it’s not up to you. You need a co-coordinator, someone with a surgical repertoire to complement yours. Rupert has become unavailable due to a family emergency, and GAO thinks I’m the best replacement and the one qualified to jointly lead this mission with you. They sent me here, they want me here, and here is where I’m staying!”
Shrill honks, laboring motors and clamoring humanity filled the air, the usually ignored soundtrack of the seedier part of Bogotá around the public hospital where he’d been working for the last year. Now it pounded inside his skull, along with the resounding echo of her challenge.
She was staying. She couldn’t stay.
She had to leave him alone, leave him his work, leave him something unspoiled by her shadow. This was what he’d worked for since Bibiana, every day of the last six years. Then every day and night for the three years since he’d left her. She couldn’t come now and be part of it. She couldn’t want to be part of it…
Suddenly it made sense. Yes. That had to be it. “Your corporation has been behind—how much of the MSU’s funding? Since GAO has suddenly been able to answer all my financial requests, I’d say a lot. And you’re here to safeguard your corporation’s investment, aren’t you? You’ve been sent to road-test the MSU, the prototype, no doubt to give the go-ahead for a future commercial fleet, haven’t you?”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed and lowered. What was it that had marred that amazing crystalline blue before they’d dropped? Indignation? Hurt?
No way was it hurt. She had to care to be hurt. And she didn’t care. She never had. Not about him, not about anything.
But why should there be indignation either, if it was the truth? So maybe it wasn’t…
No! It had to be the truth.
Savannah kept her eyes averted, bracing herself against the slap of Javier’s disparagement. Ha, what a fool!
She’d been fishing all along, looking for signs of personal involvement in his antagonism. Well, he’d sure put her straight.
His resentment had nothing personal about it. He just had a low opinion of her, as low as his expectations for his life’s work were high. He hated the idea of combining the two. Had he always felt like that? Had he always seen all her shortcomings when she’d thought she’d blinded him to them? But in accusing her of coming to commercialize his noble plans, soiling his pure purpose, he’d invented a fault she’d never had.
Of all the holier-than-thou nerve!
“Listen, Javier, I’m sure you and your prejudices and self-satisfaction are very happy together, but I’ll just have to disappoint you. I’m here in the same capacity as you are. The success of the MSU’s mission is my only objective, and not as a part of a marketing plan. You can believe what you like and keep your precious Latin chauvinism intact, or you can check my credentials with GAO—”
“Are you saying you’re with GAO? Not a representative of your corporation and holding GAO by the purse strings?”
“And I always thought you had an impressive IQ. Guess I was wrong!”
“If I’m wrong, can you tell me what you think you’re doing here, joining a mission that will take us on the road in some of the most conflict-ridden regions in the country, a country that’s an open stage for guerrilla wars, escalating urban violence, and widespread poverty? Into danger and filth and desperation, with the bare necessities alone, for two months? You wouldn’t last two days!”
He was probably right.
No. She wasn’t starting out by doubting herself, undermining her resolve. If he could do it, so could she.
Really?
Oh, she didn’t know. But that was why she was here. To find out. Find everything out. Once and for all.
She looked up into eyes made alien by harsh mockery and repressed anger, wondered again how much she deserved all the harsh, disparaging thoughts flitting thr
ough them. Then she raised one eyebrow and issued a challenge that was all bravado. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“No, we won’t, Savannah.” Suddenly he wasn’t hostile or angry any more, just grim with conviction. “This isn’t some reality TV show where help is always within reach and danger is manufactured, and you can pull out of the game when you’ve had enough. The stakes are real here, and once we’re on the road we’ll be on our own and we’ll have to keep going until it’s over. You’ll just be a burden and a liability. Look at you.” His gesture and grimace demonstrated his brutal, irrevocable judgment far more clearly than words. “Whatever your reasons for being here, they’re invalid and all your expectations are ridiculous. For everyone’s and everything’s sake, go home.”
Savannah felt her heart dry and her lungs empty.
Everyone believed she’d wither like some delicate plant if removed from her pot of affluence and privilege. She had strong doubts herself, yet that had only spurred her, motivated her.
But Javier dismissing her as deadweight to be abandoned for everyone’s welfare, a black hole to be escaped at all costs—was that what she truly was? Was that what she’d been to him? That didn’t spur her on, didn’t motivate her. That just hurt. Crippled.
Oh, God, don’t let him see how much.
God heard her. The tropical sky, clear just minutes ago, darkened then wept, obscuring her tears.
Two hours later, Savannah was lying flat on her back, staring through throbbing eyes around the clean, spartan room Javier had given her. Just to shower and change out of her drenched clothes, he’d stressed. Then she was going.
His room. His bed. His presence permeated everything there, clung—clawed.
So the hold he’d had on her senses hadn’t lessened. It had all been real, none of it exaggerated through time and absence. The breath in her lungs was laden with his scent. She forced it out on a moan of arousal and crushing shame.
What was she doing here? Had she really come here of her own choice? Worked for this, fought for this? Had she finally lost it?
It was a good thing Javier was being sane enough for both of them. He was shipping her home, and she was grateful.
A familiar melody filtered to her ears. It had been droning on and off in the background, calling, insistent…Oh, damn, her cell phone!
She didn’t want to answer it. It would be her father. Or Mark. Or Lucas. Her watchdogs. She had nothing to say to any of them.
After the ninth interminable ring, she succumbed. Maybe they were worried…
No, they weren’t. They would have minute-by-minute updates of her movements on each of their desks by now. They were just being their usual looking-over-her-shoulder nuisance selves.
She answered. It was her father. That figured. The man believed at an unreasoning level that she was thirteen and not thirty. There was no point contesting a lost cause, though. Not when she’d already supplied him with a dozen proofs for his case against her.
She told him everything. He’d find out on his own sooner rather than later anyway. Jacob Richardson had mystical ways of being in the know. She didn’t even attempt to hide her distress. She was sick of pretending to be her old blasé self, tired of keeping up the invulnerable façade she’d been sporting since Javier had left her. She wasn’t OK and she no longer cared if it distressed her father to know it. He couldn’t think any less of her anyway.
“I haven’t changed my mind!” She was damned if she’d admit to him, of all people, that she was sort of relieved Javier had beaten her back, relieved at being forced to relinquish a coveted but much-feared ambition—the relief of closure. “But Javier flat out refuses to work with me.” Sad sarcasm twisted her lips at her father’s answering indignation. Even when Javier was fulfilling her father’s desires by aborting her mission, the older man begrudged it that he was the one to achieve it. Javier had always pushed his buttons—and those of every other man she knew, for that matter. “Javier Sandoval thinks himself exactly what he is: the project’s director, and I—Aah!”
Her alarmed cry at Javier bursting into the room was followed by her father’s frantic shouts. For heaven’s sake—end this. “No, Daddy, nothing’s wrong. Someone just rushed in and startled me.” A moment while her father probed and prodded again. “No, I don’t want to go, Daddy. Daddy. I’ll call later. Bye.”
She cut the connection, let the cell phone fall from her nerveless fingers as her eyes clashed with Javier’s across the small space.
He’d see it all. Her defeat, the fresh anguish her father’s scolding had managed to squeeze out of her, the way she was curled around his pillow, as she’d once curled around him…
So what? Let him see. Let him have his victory.
He came closer. Was that how he looked when he was triumphant? As he looked down at the huddled, spent body of his adversary, his conquest? Fierce, beautiful—unreadable.
She’d never really understood him. Or known him. Their five incendiary months together had been consumed in an insatiable conflagration. Had it been any wonder only ashes had remained? That he’d left her as easily as a stranger?
A shake of his head dismissed her yet again, snapped the moment. He moved rapidly to the other side of the room, opened a locked closet and produced a box. Surgical instruments! Was there need for them? An emergency?
The possibility of someone in need, of being of use, dispersed all her self-pity and lethargy. “What is it?”
Her question earned her a quick glance and nothing else. She could see the box. A stent graft kit. In seconds she was running beside him down the corridor. “A ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm?”
His surprised glance raised her temperature. If he dared ask how she knew…!
“The stent graft kit.” He named her clue, answering his own unvoiced astonishment. “Yes. It’s Garcia, one of our janitors.”
“Have you done CT, MRIs?”
“No time. He’s collapsed already.”
“Did he have aneurysm history, or is this de novo?”
“If you’re asking indirectly how I know what I’m talking about, it’s because Garcia was kind enough to have the classical clinical triad of ruptured AAA—hypotension, pulsatile abdominal mass and back pain. He even vomited and fainted just to underline the diagnosis. He’s also seventy years old and an ex-heavy smoker. So it all adds up. Anyway, all investigative methods aren’t reliable in detecting a ruptured AAA.”
She knew that. And if the clinical picture was that solid, it would be criminal to delay intervention to obtain time-consuming diagnostic proof. “Is OR ready?”
“As we speak. And why do you ask?”
“I want to assist!”
“I have my surgical nurse already in OR, scrubbed and ready.”
“I don’t believe this. I don’t believe you! You have your choice of a surgeon and a surgical nurse for your first assistant, and you choose the nurse?”
“She’s highly trained—”
“As opposed to me, of course!”
He gave an impatient grunt. “She knows my protocols, my methods, anticipates my moves…”
“Great. An experienced instrument and circulating nurse is absolutely necessary for the efficiency of the operation.”
“And as effective as an MD in an aneurysm surgery. A second surgeon is not required for the first assistant position here—”
“So get it through your thick head,” she completed for him. “You’re neither needed nor wanted, so just go away.” Her feet stumbled, changed direction and started running back. Just get me out of here.
Heavy footsteps immediately thundered after her, caught up with her at the door to his room. He yanked her around, almost shook her once, a gesture eloquent with exasperation. Then he dragged her back, had her running and stumbling after him all the way to the scrubbing and gowning area. He released her there, his eyes averted, his agitation resonating with hers as they got ready. They strode into OR, Javier holding the swing door open for her with his back to it.
As she passed him, he extended his elbow in her path, stopping her.
His noble, tough face was tense. So was his voice. “We never worked together.”
No. Neither had they eaten together, or shopped or laughed or chatted or quarreled, or even slept together. They’d just made love. Then they’d just parted. He’d just gone.
“I know. It’ll be all right.”
Javier found himself nodding and following her inside, making lightning introductions, assigning chores to his OR staff, maneuvering her to his first assistant’s position.
What had gotten into him? This was an emergency. Every second counted. So what was he doing, substituting versatile, ultra-efficient Anita for Savannah, an unknown quantity at best? The title of surgeon didn’t automatically endow her with the full range of abilities expected of a competent one. Not when she’d come by it with her medical mogul father’s help.
It was too late now. It had been too late since he’d heard her voice break back in that corridor. Before that even, when he’d found her huddled and tear-stained in his bed. Or when not even the tropical shower had hidden her unprecedented tears. Adding vulnerability to her arsenal of feminine weapons had accessed every soft, gullible, terminally male weakness he had—and he couldn’t afford to give in to them.
No matter now. If anything went wrong, he’d just have to handle it as the primary surgeon, reshuffle positions as the situation warranted.
“Pressure 80 over 60.” Savannah said, addressing Anita. “He needs more fluid resuscitation. Continue saline delivery until systolic BP is a hundred.”
Anita’s black eyes narrowed on her, then turned to Javier. He was aware of Savannah’s eyes following the communication. She inclined her head whimsically. “It’s called ‘hypotensive hemostasis’. We give the patient enough fluids to correct his circulatory collapse, while not raising his pressure enough to cause an increase in bleeding from the rupture, or to dilute his blood and clotting factors.”