The Doctor's Marriage for a Month

by Annie O'Neil

  “No.”

  He clearly wasn’t getting any more than that. Fair enough. This was supposed to be about her current predicament, not her past.

  “I thought you should come with me when I go to work at the hospital tomorrow. Seeing as news will travel fast that you’re my new bride.”

  “Wait... At the hospital? And how on earth will anyone know we’re—?” She stopped herself as her ring caught the light of the stained-glass table lamp and threw a rainbow on her face. “The airport.” She answered her own question. “We were together at the sanctuary and the airport. I still don’t understand why Axl Cruz didn’t oversee that himself... My father’s departure.”

  “It’s a power thing. He wants people to know your father was doing his bidding. Word would have spread about Cruzito and Axl would have seen taking no action as a sign of weakness.”

  “But my father wasn’t the one to shoot him,” Isla protested.

  “No, but one of the security guards he was paying did.”

  She gold-fished for a minute, then asked, “So why do we need to go to the hospital?”

  “One—because I work there. Two—I run a mobile clinic which I think you would find interesting.”

  “I can’t believe the hospital employs you when they must know you also work for those...those criminals.”

  He felt the familiar wash of darkness cloud his heart. “I treat patients. Besides...” He heard his voice turn as crisply efficient as hers had earlier. “I don’t work for Axl Cruz. Nor do I draw a salary from the hospital. As you can see, I have ample wealth. I want for nothing. I work for me. That’s it.”

  She absorbed his tone, the stony features, the rigid set of his shoulders, and nodded. “Of course. I see.”

  He could tell that she didn’t. That she knew there was something more. And that she was frightened enough by his dark mood-swing not to press.

  Just tell her about your brother!

  He took a long draught of his drink, then refilled both their glasses. He wasn’t used to this. Having someone to talk with. Someone he could genuinely confide in. Carmela knew everything about him, making talking to her a moot point. Besides, she and her family were dependent on him. It automatically created a barrier between them.

  Unlike that perfectly natural marriage at gunpoint you shared with Isla...

  She’d not shown fear. She’d shown resourcefulness. And right now she was sitting here, waiting for him to give her a damn good explanation as to what had happened last night and why the hell he had plans to parade her around El Valderon.

  So he told her the truth.

  “Seven years ago my brother died. The hospital refused to send an ambulance when they heard he was the victim of a gunshot wound.”

  She sat forward in her chair and the space she’d obviously tried to keep between them dissolved. “You mean he was part of Noche Blanca?”

  “No. It’s more complicated than that.” He drained his glass again. “When he was a teenager Nico had meningococcal septicemia.”

  “He was lucky he didn’t die.”

  “He did die,” Diego bit out. “That’s the point.”

  Isla’s brows cinched together as she waited for him to flesh out the story.

  He drew a ragged breath, then continued. “Nico was the family favorite. He was a few years younger than me. The puppy I never had.”

  “Interesting analogy.”

  “Are you an only child?”

  She nodded.

  A wistful smile hit him, and left just as suddenly. “Suffice it to say, little brothers are like happy-go-lucky puppies with big dreams. Nico bewitched us all with his plans for the future. He was going to be an architect. Draw tourists to El Valderon with his whimsical creations. He was hoping he would open art museums and restaurants, showcasing local food and crafts. He was friends with everyone. Especially young men his own age who were...vulnerable. Easily persuaded.”

  “Easily persuaded by Axl Cruz?”

  “One and the same. Long story short: Axl used to live on another island. He was big in the petty crime department there until a bigger man from a bigger island moved in. It’s the way it seems to work. Turf-building. So Axl moved here, sensing a weak link as we moved toward democracy. A lot of the jobs that were manual had been mechanized or consolidated when the last government took over. Axl collected the unemployed, made them hangers-on. Then Nico fell ill and my world changed.”

  “That’s when you decided to become a doctor?”

  “Sí. Exacto. I had originally planned to follow in my father’s footsteps. Run the family business. Provide for future generations of the Vasquez family and, of course, the people of El Valderon. I knew things were changing. My father didn’t. But when Nico was ill I felt so powerless...”

  His eyes caught and cinched with Isla’s, but just as quickly he tore them away. He didn’t want to feel vulnerable. Not now. Not ever.

  In a monotone he continued. It was a painful story to tell and very few people tore it out of him. And by very few he meant only Isla.

  “The meningitis damaged his brain. He was permanently a fourteen-year-old boy from that point on. He got mixed up with Noche Blanca, but not for the reasons most people thought. He was vulnerable. Wanted to be friends with anyone. Thought he could convince everyone to be friends with him. One day he got caught in the crossfire between Axl’s oldest son and a shopkeeper. The boys were idiots. Untrained and wielding weapons they had no business having. There was too much chaos, and the hospital didn’t want to risk the lives of their staff.”

  “So that’s why you began to help Noche Blanca once you’d finished med school?”

  How did she do it? See straight into his soul? As obvious as it was to him, not one single person had ever connected the dots. Not. One.

  People had thought quite the opposite. That he’d become a lawyer. Go into politics. Anything that could help him wreak revenge. But he didn’t want revenge. He wanted change.

  “Got it in one.”

  “And has working with Noche Blanca helped?”

  He shook his head. Some days he thought yes. Other days he didn’t have a clue.

  Isla’s lips eased into a conspiratorial smile. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

  He returned the smile. “Something like that.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Unexpectedly, she laughed.

  “What?”

  “Your situation reminds me of trying to get one of my patients to quit smoking. Dougray Campbell. We have a deal. Each year he’ll take his daily count down by one.”

  “Slow and steady wins the race?”

  She nodded. She was trying to tell him she understood. That she knew the changes he passionately sought wouldn’t happen overnight.

  He raised his glass. She lifted hers to meet his and together they drank. Their first toast as a married couple. To understanding how complicated the world was.

  “So...” Isla put her glass down and looked him straight in the eye. “Seeing as you’re keeping me even closer, what does that make me? A frenemy?”

  “My wife.”

  Her flush of response pummeled any perspective he might have had on the scenario to smithereens.

  “Right.” Isla gave her lap a decisive pat. “If we’re to go to the hospital for you to show me off, I’d like to make it very clear I’m not planning on lying around eating bonbons.”

  “Oh, no.” If there was one thing he was certain about, the only way she’d be leaving this house would be under his watchful eye. And he couldn’t do that at work. “You can consider yourself on holiday for the next month. Your honeymoon.”

  “Not without you taking precisely the same honeymoon, I’m not.”

  She could see from his gritted teeth that he wasn’t going to be honeymooning anytime soon.

 
“I’m not just a show pony. I want to work.”

  “I see.” He adopted a casual air, pulling his ankle atop his knee before leaning back into his chair. “And what is it, exactly, that you plan on doing?”

  She ticked points off on her fingers. “I’d like to make sure the sanctuary stays safe. The best way to do that would be for me to be there. All day. Every day.”

  “No.” She wouldn’t be safe there. Not on her own.

  She ignored him. “Turtles aren’t really my thing, though, and, as such, I’d like to turn my father’s bungalow into a health clinic.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Yes. Absolutely yes.” She glared at him and made a zip your lip gesture. “I think this clinic should be about preventative medicine rather than emergency medicine. It should sending a message that I’m here to prevent bad things from happening—not cause them.”

  She would be sending a message, all right. One straight to the heart of a community that ached for peace.

  “Don’t you think you’d be better off doing this at the hospital?” He wanted her to say yes. Needed her to say yes. Not that he should care. He refused to let himself care about her.

  Then why did you step in and marry the woman?

  “No,” she said.

  He lifted his hands to the heavens. Surprise, surprise.

  “As I said, I’d like to keep an eye on the sanctuary and it’s the best way for me to do that.”

  “People will be frightened to go there right now. Perhaps if you start at the mobile clinic I run for the hospital and move over to the sanctuary once you’ve made your point it would be better...”

  He left out the part about how much he wanted her close to him, where he could keep an eye on her. Protect her. He knew Axl would back off the land for a few days, but after that... He simply had no guarantees.

  Her smile and casual shrug told him she’d take his advice under consideration. But ultimately He knew she was through being told what to do.

  “I want to make a splash.”

  “Oh, you’ll definitely do that.” He downed the rest of his drink in one. “El Valderon won’t know what’s hit it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ISLA WOKE WITH a surprising amount of zing in her step.

  Taking charge of one’s own destiny and wearing yet another new dress that fit like a dream had a way of adding a bit of kick to a girl’s attitude.

  That, and—although she was a bit shocked to admit it—so was wearing sexy underwear she never ever would have chosen if left to her own devices.

  Gone were the plain-Jane matching bra and panties sets she normally bought at the supermarket. The lingerie she wore today was in another league from her regular cotton panties and bra of dubious assistance. It was lingerie, not underwear. Sexy silk and lace lingerie, in bold jewel colors.

  Was this how Diego imagined her? As a woman whose skin knew only silk and the finest of lace? A part of her was horrified to think he knew exactly what she was wearing under the dress. But another part... Another part felt emboldened that he saw her as a woman, rather than the boring old plod who always did the dishes and made sure her other half’s dinner was hot, no matter what time of night he wandered in.

  She shot a glare at her invisible ex-fiancé and flicked her hair. See? Not everyone thinks I’m boring.

  She looked at herself in the long mirror and slid her hands along her sides, over her curves, more aware than she’d ever been of how feminine she felt dressed this way. How strong.

  By choosing these clothes Diego was telling her he saw strength in her. Beauty.

  No wonder she had extra zing.

  And she knew where the bulk of that energy was going to go.

  In showing Axl Cruz precisely what happened when you pushed around a woman from Loch Craggen.

  She gave herself a silly grin in the mirror. As if she’d be doing it all on her own! Having Diego Vasquez as her ally—her husband—would make all the difference. Particularly as he’d made it more than clear that his entire aim was to bring peace to the island.

  When she went down the outdoor staircase that curved into the internal courtyard her heart-rate sped up a notch when she saw Diego was already having coffee at a tile mosaic table.

  He looked up. Heat flared in his eyes when they lit on her.

  She swished her way down the stairs as if she were a movie star. Something about him made her want to show off a little. Make him proud to call her his wife—even if it was just a fiction.

  Or was it just plain old chemistry? They hadn’t stayed up half the night comparing medical school stories just because they cracked each other up. Well, they did that too. But she knew she’d stayed up talking to him because there was a huge part of her that was wondering if he wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted to kiss him.

  A chaste kiss had brought the evening to a close when she’d no longer been able to hide her yawns.

  The sparks that had followed and sent her running for her room had given “chaste” a whole new definition.

  “That’s a nice dress.”

  She gave him a twirl at the bottom of the stairs suddenly acutely aware that moves like this—girly, swirly whirls, making her vividly aware of the feel of the fabric on her skin—were incredibly out of character.

  “You’re fifty shades of boring!”

  Not in Diego’s eyes.

  Meeting him had been like unzipping an ill-fitting suit and discovering there was a whole different woman inside her. A woman she could admire.

  Her spirits sank as quickly as they’d risen. If only her father felt the same.

  “You’re up early.”

  She glanced at the large grandfather clock behind Diego. It wasn’t that early. “Have you already been out?”

  He rose from his seat and gestured at the chair across from him, waiting until she sat before continuing. “Paz Cruz. He needed his dressings changed. His medication.”

  Out of instinct Isla asked for his stats and then, as Diego rattled them off, realized she wished she’d been there too. She didn’t like the idea that she and her father might have been discussed. Or that Diego might have undergone some sort of interrogation about his shotgun wedding.

  Officially, of course, the marriage could be annulled. There had been no sex. Would be no sex.

  She hid behind an eggshell-blue coffee mug and looked at the man who had saved her life by becoming her husband. He was honorable. Proud. With a core of courage and strength. Her father had been right. Of all the men in all the world to be in this particular one-in-a-gazillion scenario with Diego was the man she would have picked.

  But she wasn’t picking. And she wasn’t developing feelings for him. She was going to be sensible and count down the days, then go home and never think about this again.

  “When are we going to work?”

  He gave her a dry smile and nodded at the cafetière, still half full of coffee. “We islanders like to properly fuel up before we tend to our sick.” He indicated a hand-woven basket brimming with tiny pastries. “Want one?”

  She laughed. “This is exactly the type of food I try and tell my patients to avoid.”

  He shrugged and placed it in front of her. “Indulge. You’re on your honeymoon.”

  She pursed her lips but felt tendrils of heat creep into her cheeks in defiance of her cavalier yeah, right attitude. A reminder of the saucy thoughts that had kept her awake for far too long in her much too empty bed...

  When she had finally nodded off she’d dreamt of him. Definitely something new to tick off on the old sexy bucket list.

  Not that she’d ever had one.

  Maybe she had been one or two of shades of boring...

  She bit into a pastry, moaning with pleasure at the buttery hit of sugar, fruit and pastry.

  “That’s more like it,” Dieg
o murmured, his deliciously throaty accent sending her nervous system into overdrive. “Eat up, mi amor. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  Eyes glued to hers, Diego scraped a crumb of pastry off his lower lip with his tongue. How the man infused the most pedestrian of moves with sex was beyond her.

  Her eyes pinged open as a thought occurred to her. If, by some insane turn of events, he were to kiss her right now she’d be powerless to resist. More than that. She wouldn’t want to.

  * * *

  It was just as well Isla had said she wanted to check out a few things in the hospital foyer. The atmosphere between Diego and Maria was...prickly at best.

  “And just who is that woman, exactly?”

  “She’s my wife,” he repeated, doing his level-best to keep his tone neutral.

  How the hell he’d become so defensive about his fake wife in front of his real employer was beyond him, but he knew one thing for sure. He didn’t want anyone referring to Isla as “that woman”. She had more integrity in her little finger than most people showed in a lifetime, so he’d be damned if he was going to let Maria shoot the idea down before she heard him out.

  “Doug MacLeay’s daughter. It was all very fast. Unexpected. But I am sure you will join me in welcoming her both to El Valderon and here at the hospital. She’s hoping to make quite a difference in the mobile clinic.”

  The clinic he and Maria fought about endlessly. She saw it as wasted money. He saw it as an invaluable resource.

  “I suppose she’ll want to be paid?” Maria threw down her proverbial pair of aces.

  “No. She’s happy to volunteer.” He trumped her with a royal flush.

  A cruel man would have enjoyed the shot of fury in Maria’s eyes as she absorbed the news. Diego took no pleasure in it. He simply wanted to go to work and keep Isla safe in the process.

  He was about to embark on what he was certain would be an unwelcome monologue, flaunting Isla’s merits, when—as if she knew he might go off-piste—Isla walked across from the entryway, where she’d been looking at some of the health notices.

  Diego introduced them.