by Annie O'Neil
“You must be exhausted.”
She looked down at their hands as if they were foreign objects, then tipped her head back against the headrest, letting the wind ripple through that amazing hair of hers. Lit, as it was, by the late-morning sun, it was flame-colored.
“You’re right. It would be fair to say I could probably do with a wee bit of a lie-down.”
“Not long now.”
She pulled off her sunglasses and crinkled her brow in that endearing way of hers.
He looked away.
This is for show only. When she’s safe you’ll let her go. Just as you let everything in your life go.
“I thought your place was down past the sanctuary.” She pointed in the opposite direction. “We only drove a few minutes to get to your surgery.”
“That’s my...” He sought his English vocabulary for the most neutral description. “That’s a facility Axl kindly accepted on behalf of the community.”
Diego had donated the land and bungalow after his brother had taken a bullet for Axl’s eldest son. Axl owed him favors, all right. Favors that would never be paid in full.
“Axl Cruz? The leader of Noche Blanca?”
“That’s right.”
“He doesn’t strike me as a community-minded sort of man. Unless...” The lightbulb went on. “The clinic is only open to members of Noche Blanca.”
No getting anything past her.
He thought of the scores of knife wounds he’d stitched up there. The bullets he’d extracted. The children of men who had grown up alongside his own father who had lain on that very same table Axl’s son had been on this morning. There wasn’t a chance in hell he’d live in that place. Not with the ghosts it housed.
“Suffice it to say it is a convenience they are willing to pay for.”
“A convenience that ensures anyone in Noche Blanca who is injured while they are committing a crime receives treatment?”
“Sí. The island hospital isn’t staffed well enough to treat everyone who needs it. And more often than not the people involved in those sorts of activities are nervous about going to the hospital, where they would risk arrest.”
“Can anyone else use it? The farmers who live nearby? It must be convenient for them as the hospital is on the far side of the island.”
“No. It is for Noche Blanca only.”
“What if the victims aren’t gang members? Would an ambulance come for them? One from the hospital?”
“Not if they have anything to do with members of Noche Blanca. Family, friends...any kind of connection.”
Saying that out loud never failed to bring a twist of bile into his throat. He waited for it to pass. “How do you mean? A patient’s a patient where I come from.”
“Music to my ears, cariña.”
He meant it, too. It was his credo. A patient was a patient.
He cleared his throat and spoke as if by rote. “Here on El Valderon resources are extremely limited. The island has never had a very settled democracy since it was liberated from its colonial past, and suffice it to say not losing their ambulance staff to Noche Blanca is a priority.”
“Is that a nice way of saying the baddies beat the goodies?”
“No. Not so simple.”
He ran his fingers along the edges of his steering wheel to stop himself reaching out to her again. Touching her was hardly a way to remind himself that the marriage was a fake. Facts. Just stick to the facts and the month would soon be over. Then he could get back to his one-man crusade to slowly restore balance on the island.
“Axl is one of many men who took advantage of the poor in a handful of newly independent countries here in the Caribbean. Many people—laborers, mostly—who thought they might finally get some financial traction are still poor. Axl and his kind took advantage of them, telling them they deserved to be a part of being rich. That they shouldn’t let the few who became very wealthy without sweating for it stay that way.”
He swallowed back the bit of family history he wasn’t particularly proud of. Isla would find out soon enough that he was one of the privileged few.
“How did the wealthy get that way?”
“Sugar is a big crop here. Tourism would make more money—much more—if the island’s reputation for crime could be beaten. Not literally, of course,” he added with a wicked grin.
He’d forced himself to keep his sense of humor over the years. Even if it did lurch into darker realms from time to time.
“So why steal the turtle eggs if they know that eco-tourism would help?”
“Have you ever cried yourself to sleep because you were hungry?”
She shook her head.
“A lot of people here have.”
“And the government doesn’t help?”
“It does what it can. But with so few people able to pay taxes it takes its toll. On the police force, the municipal services, the hospital.”
He’d do more—work round the clock if he could—but he was drawn again and again to his work “behind the scenes.” Trying, day by day, to pay penance for not being there for his brother.
“Why don’t you work at the hospital full-time? Wouldn’t that help with the staffing problems?”
“I already do.”
He left it at that. No need to pour out his family history in one fell swoop.
She kept her eyes on the coastal road they were traveling and quietly asked, “What about your family? How did this journey toward democracy work for the Vasquez family?”
“You’re one of us now, mija. Don’t forget you’ll be painted with the same brush.”
She bristled. “Then I guess you’d better answer the question. Where does your family stand in El Valderon?
“Depends upon who you ask.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Ay, papi! That sounds mysterious.”
As dark as he’d felt the moment before, light filled him, like the sun coming out from behind a dark cloud. He laughed a full belly laugh, sweeping some hair away from Isla’s face only to discover her cheeks flushed an adorable hot pink.
“Where did you learn that?”
“What?” She looked utterly mortified.
“That saying. Ay, papi! Where did you learn that?”
She pressed her hands between her knees and scrunched up her lips as she tried to remember. Damn. That was adorable, too.
“Television?” She sounded embarrassed to admit it. Then grew indignant. “It’s what you say when you’re admonishing someone, isn’t it? Like, Come on, you obfuscator! Tell me the truth!”
He tried, unsuccessfully, to disguise his second hit of hysterics as a cough. “No. That’s not what it means. It’s a turn of phrase you should save for...”
He scrubbed his hand through his hair. Did he really want to go there?
“Save it for what?”
She looked genuinely interested.
Dios. He scrubbed his jaw, his mouth, trying to wipe off the smile.
“It’s something you might say if we were in our early twenties.” And naked. In bed.
“Thirty-one doesn’t exactly make me geriatric.” She gave him a blue-eyed Don’t pigeonhole me, matey glare and shrug, clearly waiting for a better explanation.
How did he explain that if she were ever to say it—which he doubted—she’d be more likely to scream it. Howl it or growl it. Moan it out of sheer rapture when both their bodies were bathed in sweat, his hands on the lower swoop of her waist as his hips rose to meet hers and their lovemaking was just about to hit a crescendo.
He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. This was all getting a bit too vivid. And why the hell was he being so coy? He stood up against armed pandilleros on a regular basis, for heaven’s sake. And demanded things. Demanded safety. Protection.
He snorted as he remembered pushing the e
nvelope just that little bit further this morning. A business class ticket for Dr. MacLeay on his journey home. He’d done that for Isla. Demanded it when he had seen the horror in her eyes as she’d tended to the cuts and scrapes her father had received during his “chat” with Axl Cruz. Suffice it to say the man wasn’t much of a wordsmith.
Diego looked to the sky, praying for a way to explain to his in-name-only wife that she had, to all intents and purposes, called him her “big boy.”
You want to protect her.
He’d known what he was doing when he had casually talked her through the surgery she’d helped him perform.
Protecting her.
He’d known what he was doing when he’d told her to marry him.
Again. Protecting her.
He’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d kissed her at the end of that do-or-die wedding ceremony.
Giving in to an urge that had been building in him from the moment he’d clapped eyes on her.
So why the hell was he protecting her now? When they both knew their marriage was nothing more than a front to save her father?
He didn’t want the answer. If he acknowledged the simple fact that his body was waking up from some sort of primordial freeze, he risked opening up his heart to this woman. And that was most definitely not on the agenda.
Two separate lives. One pretend marriage. And then they could both go their own ways and leave this insane incident where it belonged. In the past.
“C’mon. What does it mean?” Isla had half turned to him in her seat and prompted, “Ay, papi!”
He dove straight into the deep end. “It’s something people sometimes say to each other when they are being...intimate. Intensely intimate.”
Isla’s fingers flew to her lips. Lips he had enjoyed tasting more than he cared to admit.
His eyes involuntarily ran the length of her. He would put money on the fact that she didn’t have much confidence in herself. The wrinkled skirt and stained T-shirt she’d been wearing when he met her didn’t speak of a woman who maximized her appearance over what was inside her head.
Then again...seeing her slender figure in his scrubs... Muy caliente!
To him she was utterly beautiful. Her left-of-center looks lit him up right where they shouldn’t. From his head to his toes and everywhere in between. He was going to have to squash each and every one of those feelings until Isla was exactly where her father was. Safe and sound on a plane on her way to a country where Noche Blanca would never go. They didn’t “do” cold. Doug MacLeay had that on his side. And neither did they risk run-ins with Interpol, whose pockets couldn’t be lined.
Diego’s eyes flicked to Isla just in time to see fatigue overwhelm her in a series of little head-snaps.
“Right. Time for me to take you home and get you in bed.”
She stared at him in horror.
Nice job, Romeo.
CHAPTER FIVE
DIEGO PULLED OFF the scenic coastal road after another ten minutes or so of driving. A thoughtful silence cushioning the air between them.
Or, more to the point, a horrified one.
How had Isla managed to so wildly misinterpret that phrase she’d heard again and again on television? It was more proof, if she’d needed any, of how right she had been to leave Loch Craggen to regroup.
Not that ending up married to a too-handsome stranger with her father winging his way back to Scotland had been anywhere close to the road to recovery she’d envisioned for her battered heart.
Isla forced herself to pay attention to where they were going. Get her physical bearings seeing as her emotional ones were going to remain elusive.
The road they were now on wasn’t paved, but it was lined with an avenue of alternating palms and flowering trees that suggested whatever was at the end of the drive had been crafted with care. With longevity in mind.
They turned a corner and she gasped as a beautiful traditional hacienda appeared, nestled amidst a sea of flowering buddleia. The building itself was a combination of smoky topaz-colored adobe, handmade bricks and some sort of wooden beams that had weathered to a rich burnt umber. The strong earth tones were accented by sunshine and a dazzling array of flower blossoms.
There was a large central archway which was framed by an unearthly-looking bougainvillea. The purest, most deep purple she had ever seen. It reminded her of the type of rich jewel colors a prince might wear. Or a king. It was both beautiful and powerful.
She wrapped her arms round herself and shivered. Just what had she got herself into?
Diego parked just outside the archway with a practiced flourish and flashed her a swoon-worthy smile. She silently offered her gratitude that she was sitting down.
“Are we visiting someone?”
He shook his head, a soft smile playing on his lips. “No, amorcita.”
He stepped out of the car, walked round to her side and held a hand out to her as he opened her door. The way a suitor would. The way her fiancé never had.
“This is your home.”
You could have knocked her over with a feather.
“What? Here?”
He turned round to face the hacienda alongside her, his hand still encasing hers. “Do you not like it?”
She liked everything about it. It was the kind of place she would have hoped to find if she’d done an internet search for an idyllic Caribbean home.
Talk about a man who played his cards close to his chest...
Suspicion swept away her pleasure. “This isn’t something you got through your work with Noche Blanca, is it?”
He huffed out a laugh. “No! No money exchanges hands. Ever. But I can’t say it’s through anything deeply reputable. My family deal in the sugar and coffee trades.”
He glared at the house, then turned away. She guessed that meant the subject was closed for discussion. Was he one of “the few who got rich” on the backs of other people’s labor?
Something told her that was true. Something else told her it didn’t sit well with him.
Diego went to the back of the Jeep and shouldered her bag, which sagged in the middle—bereft, as it was, of clothes.
“You travel light.”
She bristled. “I wasn’t strictly preparing for a month of captivity.” She threw him a haughty look. “If I’d known I would’ve packed my ball gowns and tiara.”
Diego arched an eyebrow. “I’m sure we can rustle up something slightly more appropriate for the wife of one of the island’s most prominent doctors than ball gowns or scrubs.”
She gave him an apologetic smile when she realized she’d been glaring at him. It wasn’t his fault she had packed with her heart rather than her brain. Somewhere way in the back of her wardrobe hung a nice summer dress or two. She screwed her lips up tight. Not that she was dressing up for him or anything.
“Well...” Diego gave her tote a pat. “Your ability to take a trip so spontaneously doubles my respect for your...resilience under adversity.”
He gave her a small courtly bow, then ushered her toward the covered archway, its edges lined with a few dozen terracotta planters overflowing with ferns and broad-leafed palms.
As she walked under the arch and toward what looked to be a sunlit central courtyard her stomach tightened. Could this experience be something that might actually be good for her? A chance to reinvent the woman Kyle had found so boring? So dull? The exact same woman she knew had it in her to be strong, resilient, courageous. Weren’t those traits to admire?
She let her steps fall just a bit behind Diego’s as he led her toward a broad wooden stairwell that spiraled up to a walkway that ran around the sunlit courtyard in the center of the house.
“It’s absolutely huge. I thought you said you didn’t have any family?”
“I didn’t mention it one way or another.” He stopped, his long leg
s looking even longer as he leant against the thick wooden banister and gazed around him. “It’s complicated. Would you like to rest first? Or shall we meet for a coffee on the veranda after you’ve had a chance to freshen up?”
She looked down at her hands as if they would give her the answer she was looking for. She didn’t think she was sleepy anymore. Not with the adrenaline zipping through her body as countless new questions whirled round her mind.
She felt Diego’s gaze upon her before she lifted her eyes to meet it. He was heavy-lidded. Not tired. Or judgmental. His long inky lashes barely contained the heat in his gaze.
A flame burst alight in her very core as his eyes slowly began to scan the length of her. She didn’t know whether it was fury at being treated like an ill-gotten gain or... Was it pride? Pride that a man would look at her with such barely disguised admiration? Though he was a good meter or two away, his gaze felt...tactile. Intimate.
She looked down, shocked to realize just how scruffy she looked. Her scrubs were not only stained with the dark red earth that made up the bulk of the unpaved roads, they were stained with Cruzito’s blood. She’d completely forgotten that the clothes she’d been wearing would probably be better off being incinerated rather than washed.
Kyle would have insisted she change hours earlier—
She stopped the thought in its tracks. He’s not Kyle. Diego Vasquez is in a league of his own.
She openly met his gaze, hoping he could see the depths of gratitude she felt that he had saved her father. Saved her. And somehow, in the process of doing it all, hadn’t made her feel beholden. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was making her feel as if they were in this together.
She almost laughed.
Imagine! Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes being in cahoots with an off-the-radar doctor for El Valderon’s criminal element.
Diego clearly sensed her ricocheting thoughts. He quirked an eyebrow as he waited, the corners of that sensual mouth of his twitching toward a full blown smile.
“Perhaps you’d prefer to take a shower?”
He was teasing her now. She could hear it in his voice. Playful. Suggestive. All her fault for saying that stupid phrase. Ay, papi! She’d have to banish it from her lexicon.
