by Olivia Gates
“Ah, my team is here. The other part of your team now, Jóia.” He jumped up to his feet, a knight’s gallant gesture holding out his hand for hers. “Come meet them.”
She shook her head. “You go ahead. I’ll join you in a few minutes. I really need to fix myself a cup of tea. Want some?”
His fingers caressed her cheek. Then he bent and took her quivering lips in an exquisite kiss.
An endless moment later, he severed the connection, his lips reluctant. “Love some. Love all you’ve got to give.” Before she dragged him down for a deeper plunge into that soul-shattering ritual, he straightened, prowled to the door, purring over his shoulder, “Don’t be long.”
She waited until he disappeared then let herself melt back on the chair like a deflated balloon.
If she had the least shred of survival instinct left, she’d up and run. What was going on? Why was he really doing this? Could he really want her genuinely now?
He hadn’t wanted her in the past. He couldn’t have. What had there been to want then? So their love-making had been real enough, but she believed that with his sex drive any hungry woman would have done, even the pathetic being she’d been.
But her plastic surgeon had worked magic. She’d seen the evidence of that in men’s eyes and attentions. Maybe Roque with his fierce sexuality was reacting more powerfully to her reconstructed beauty? Yes, she could buy that.
But if so, what would his real desire do to her when his counterfeit one had almost wrecked her? And then he’d come here, thinking something so horrible of her—but no.
She couldn’t use this as one of the reasons to deny him. He’d already taken her word, admitted the new evidence of her actions so easily, had already apologized eloquently for suspecting her, admitted that she’d changed. Every word he’d said, every touch, every moment around him had felt so good, she’d forgotten anything could feel this way.
No—she shouldn’t even think of succumbing to the temptation. She’d already used up all her breaks walking away from a hit-and-run and ending up whole and looking undamaged, no matter what she’d suffered to get this way. Life had offered her a mixture of indulgence and cruelty, but it was now offering her plain sailing and every opportunity to make a difference. She should cling to her new peace of mind.
Oh, who was she kidding? What peace of mind?
She may have functioned as if she’d forgotten Roque, but she hadn’t.
She’d never defined the immense emotions she’d felt for him in the past, and only later had told herself those had been dependence, obsession, addiction, all spawned by her psychological upheaval at the time and all unhealthy and destructive.
She still didn’t want to name those feelings. But one thing was unquestionable. What she’d felt had gone deep.
She’d be a fool to resurrect it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“AH, HERE she comes. Everyone, I want you to meet my wife and expedition co-leader, Dr. Jewel Johansson Da Costa.”
The four people comprising Roque’s team snapped around at his enthusiastic introduction. Their blast of interest almost stopped the sauntering Jewel in her tracks.
Next second he could see her modeling experience kicking in, her steps picking up speed, gaining that poised prowl of a woman used to people’s admiration and way above caring about it one way or the other. She even turned carrying the mug of tea into a performance of grace.
Dawn was strengthening with the alarming speed it always did in the tropics, like someone pushing up the fader switch of a spotlight in a hurry. By the time she reached them he could see the three men now envied him, and the woman finally understood the reason behind his unattainability. But he still couldn’t see Jewel’s eyes well, couldn’t read her reaction. And he realized something for the first time.
It had only been in her eyes, in her tone and body language that he’d been reading her reactions so far. Her face had lost some of its ability to display expression. That was an expected price of esthetic surgery. But he bet it was only noticeable to him, who’d made a habit of poring over her every nuance.
It frustrated him that he couldn’t tell what her reaction was now to his proprietorial words, to his earlier ultimatum.
What was he thinking? Even when her face had had full expressiveness, he’d never really read her right. He’d only thought he had, until she’d proved him clueless.
Jewel stopped a couple of steps away, extended the mug to him with a smile that set his heart quivering and gave a general affable wave. Then she did something totally unexpected. She told him, and everyone else, exactly what she was thinking.
“Hi, everyone. I can see your surprise. Seems you didn’t know Roque was married. You and me both! Till yesterday I had no idea Roque was still my husband. Now he says I’m also his co-leader, when yesterday he told me he has the leader spot all to his undisputed self and I’m to be his ‘sidekick'. I did warn him about the dangers of me taking the term literally. Then just before you arrived he finished telling me it’s either see this expedition through or find myself another country to work in, then proceeded to try to shame me into staying.”
He guffawed at her brazen summary, at his team’s stunned reaction to it. He took an eager step towards her. She didn’t back away. “And did it work?”
She shrugged, looked at the others long-sufferingly. “Only because you might make a mess of things without me. I can’t risk you messing up the expedition I’ve prepared for a year.”
He laughed his immense relief and hugged her to his side.
The only woman on his team joined in the laughter, the first one to recover. “That’s married talk all right. Delighted to meet you, Dr. Da Costa. Loretta Diaz, Roque’s technical engineer.”
Jewel shook her hand, grimacing, “Uh, let’s keep Dr. Da Costa to Roque, OK? I’m either Jewel or JJ. Take your pick.”
Another team member came forward to shake her hand. “Adalberto Alvarez, Roque’s radiographer. Call me Berto or AA.”
“AA makes you sound like a battery.” Loretta snickered.
By the time introductions were over the sun was up and the pier was busy. Jewel led Roque’s team around the boats and he followed a few steps away, succumbing to Berto’s probing, his focus on Jewel. With every lively gesture, with every lilt of her animated tones, a skewer turned in his chest.
She’d never joked with him in the past. Outside the realm of physical intimacy where everything had been pure and sure, she’d felt so precarious he’d been so afraid to say anything that might have widened the gap he’d been struggling to obliterate. It had made him tense, unnatural, waiting for her to give him a sign she’d like a more spontaneous interaction between them. She hadn’t, so there hadn’t been any. Then she’d made sure there’d never be.
Now she was showing him how much fun she could be. Had this side of her never existed before? Or hadn’t her uses for him extended to having fun this way…?
Stop it. It didn’t matter any more. She had changed.
And though he did believe her, he couldn’t be more thankful for the paranoid suspicions that had made him overcome his reluctance to see her again, made him come here braving resurrecting all the pain of the past, where he’d found this new Jewel. And they’d now share an incredible experience together, on every level. He’d make sure of that. What was more, she seemed to have accepted his presence, had shed her past pensiveness and the angst of the last day, and he couldn’t wait to experience the full measure of her humor and spontaneity.
He got plenty of that as their teams were introduced. But it wasn’t directed solely at him, and by the time his team had installed his equipment in the two smaller boats comprising the convoy, he needed emergency one-on-one time with her.
She was having a laughing conversation with two of his men. On his approach they wandered off, giving him thumbs-ups and winks.
She turned to him, her open face radiant with an impish grin. “Is that what I should expect from now on? People dropping me in mid
-sentence at your approach?”
He smiled, savoring the novel experience of being exposed to her acerbic wit. “Damned straight, as your people would say. They know better than to keep you occupied when I want you.”
He waited for the indignation to come. It didn’t. She only inclined her head at him. His heart teetered to the same angle in his chest. “It’s not conductive to business to have everyone deserting me and leaving their posts whenever you get the urge.”
He had to touch her, connect with her. He did, his hand reaching to her velvet cheek. “You’re probably right. As that urge is perpetual.”
Her eyes dimmed. He almost snatched his hand away, made an encompassing gesture with it. He had to restore her smile! “What’s your opinion of my team? My facilities? Now you can really call the expedition multi-disciplinary, eh?”
His tension eased a bit when her eyes warmed. “Your people are great. I’ve never met anyone in this line of business who wasn’t. As for your facilities, you’re suffering from a condition called ‘I know my stuff inside and out I think everyone must too'.”
His laugh boomed at her teasing, his heart too, with relief. Now he’d experienced ease with her, he never wanted to go back to friction. “I didn’t know it was a condition.”
“It is, and very hard to treat, too. Not terminal but terminally aggravating to the people interacting with the sufferer.”
“Is treatment forcing the sufferer to explain his ‘stuff'?”
She gave a sage nod. “The only known treatment.”
Smiling broadly, he bowed and swept an arm out in invitation. “Lead the way to the treatment room.”
She chuckled and preceded him. He followed a step behind her, to watch her move.
He couldn’t wait to have her alone, made an imperative gesture that made his guards jump to the pier at once. He went ahead of her now, tugging her by the hand inside, hurrying her up. Sudden cries ripped through the air, through both of them.
They swung around, found Madeline running with a boy of no more than two in her arms, with Inácio and four locals, two women and two older children, running in her wake.
His aroused agitation turned off abruptly, his surgeon side coming to the fore as he rushed to meet the emergency, feeling Jewel keeping up with him step for step.
He took the little boy from Madeline as she panted, “We only understood that he fell! He has a huge scalp hematoma.”
Roque felt the bulge in the toddler’s head that had formed her impromptu diagnosis. He didn’t think it was that simple.
“Get Loretta and Berto,” he barked, and turned to rush inside the boat. Someone clung to him, stopped his dash. He turned his eyes way down, met the streaming eyes of a woman who was shaking and babbling, her fingers digging into his arm. Sympathy shot through him with her tremors, hot and deep. She had to be the boy’s mother.
She was. He struggled to understand her torrent as his clinical senses went into hyperdrive, taking in everything about the little boy, documenting, cross-referencing, concluding.
Then he felt Jewel’s soft hands on his arm. “Give me the boy, Roque. You get some history and I’ll do emergency measures.”
He relinquished the boy to her and she received him with great gentleness, her face full of compassion. Roque walked behind her in a trance, a part of him listening to the mother’s agitated account, all others buried under an avalanche of pain.
The child he and Jewel had lost would have been seven now. And there could have been others. Even one this boy’s age. He’d wanted to fill his world with replicas of her to love and cherish.
His first and only brush with happiness had been when she’d become pregnant with his baby; his first tumble into despair had been when she’d lost it. But he’d held himself together, soothed her, told her there’d be other babies. And she’d only said, “Never.”
He’d tried to remain calm, sworn he understood her trauma, would only ask they try again when she was ready, but he had to have children. One at least.
It had been then that she’d told him that her pregnancy had been a mistake when maintenance drugs had deactivated the Pill. Then she’d told him why she’d married him.
He now watched her placing the boy on the examination table as if he was precious to her. Why hadn’t his child been?
The mother’s agitation encroached on his, dragged his focus back to her. He soothed her as he asked her baby’s name, asked her more questions. He joined Jewel only when she’d finished assessing the child, when he had himself under control.
“His name is Ake,” he said as he performed a full neurological exam of the boy, avoiding looking at his face or making eye contact with her. He felt her give a sad nod, knew where her eyes touched him, where his face burned.
“It’s a growing skull fracture, isn’t it?” she whispered.
His eyes made an unwilling swing to hers. She’d diagnosed it, and that easily? As a rare complication of skull fractures, it should have been one of the last things she’d thought of. The progressive enlargement of the fracture line led to protrusion of the skull contents with the fast growth rate of the brain at that age. But as it was also known as a leptomeningeal cyst because it was usually associated with a cystic mass filled with cerebrospinal fluid—what Madeline had mistaken for a hematoma—it was very hard to diagnose. But Jewel hadn’t been fooled.
He didn’t want to feel impressed. Not right now.
He gave her his reluctant corroboration. “Yes. Little Ake here fell on his head three months ago. He screamed and fussed then it passed. A month ago this bulge began to form over his left parietal region, but as he made no complaints, they didn’t worry. But the rate of enlargement increased and he began to be lethargic and disoriented, and today he just didn’t wake up.”
“As horrible as this is,” she murmured, her voice a difficult rasp, “Ake is still lucky—that you’re here, and that his general condition and neurological status are stable enough so you can operate…” Urgency permeated her gaze. He almost looked away from the lacerating emotion. “You will, won’t you?”
The idea of operating on a child constricted his heart. He steered clear of pediatric cases if he could. He couldn’t now. His nod was slow, unwilling. “As soon as I obtain scans.”
She snapped a fraught look at the tiny inert Ake then turned hopeful eyes to Roque. “Can I assist?”
His heart convulsed this time. Before he could answer, rushing footsteps had both of them turning to the incomers. Loretta, Berto and Madeline. The first two rushed to the PET-CT scanner. Madeline joined him and Jewel.
“Inácio and the others are keeping the peace outside with the guards,” Madeline gasped. “A very distraught father and what looks like the whole tribe seem to be all accounted for now.”
Roque only nodded to her, thankful for her interruption, and turned to prepare Ake for the scan. Jewel followed his instructions, extracted the radioactive tracer glucose from his supplies, injected the boy as Madeline winced and moaned over the far worse diagnosis they’d reached.
Loretta and Berto operated the scanner, sent its sliding table gliding out, then Berto called out, “All set, Roque.”
Roque scooped up the child, gently put him in place. “Give me a skull series. Let’s look at the neck, too.”
“Is this a CT scanner? I’ve never seen one that small!” Madeline exclaimed.
It was Jewel who answered her. “That’s a PET-CT scanner, Maddy. I’m not surprised you’ve never seen one—they’re so expensive most hospitals don’t have it.”
Madeline frowned. “Um, PET is positron emission tomography?”
Jewel didn’t answer right away, her eyes clinging to Ake as his flimsy body slid inside the machine. Roque didn’t feel like talking at all. He wasn’t in an educational mood.
At length Jewel looked up at her nurse. “Yes. But this combined scanner gives comprehensive and in-depth scans of injuries and their pathological effects. The CT component shows anatomical defects and the PE
T one shows deranged tissue metabolism. In the PET scan inflamed tissues show up as brightly colored areas.”
Jewel’s eyes turned to Roque, asking if he had anything to add. A respectful bow of his head conceded she was doing a good job. His “impressed” factor was rising by the minute. She seemed to be well versed in the latest technology. Seemed his contribution was the only area where she was ignorant.
Madeline’s question interrupted his oppressive thoughts. “Joo said you made some huge innovations. Is this one of them?”
Suddenly an alien feeling took him over. The need to brag. Deus, he was having the primitive urge to chest-thump for his woman. There went all his illusions of being an advanced being.
Thankfully it was Loretta who answered for him, saving him from sounding like a self-satisfied fool. “He may not have invented it but he made it smaller, faster and more effective. This darling he modified goes through scans at hyper-speed—64 slices per second was a dream until he made it a reality.”
Silence followed Loretta’s answer as they prepared the surgical station and themselves. All through it he kept snatching looks at Jewel. It stunned him to find his heart ramming his ribcage, still waiting for her reaction to Loretta’s information. But it wasn’t Jewel who eventually reacted. It was Madeline who deluged him in admiration and interest.
In minutes Loretta displayed the scans on the computer screen. As he and Jewel converged to view them, Roque shook off his dejection, focused on his chore.
“This looks bad,” Jewel choked.
It did. It was.
He took a deep inhalation. “OK, to business. First, to maintain intracranial pressure during the procedure.”
“Mannitol now and keeping up oxygen pressure during the surgery?” Jewel sought his approval.
Her knowledge shouldn’t surprise him any more. She seemed to be a comprehensive field doctor. He nodded and began anesthesia.
