by Annie O'Neil
Diego reached out a hand, sensing her change in mood, and pulled her to him on the deep sofa. She nestled in under his arm and pulled the other one around her, feeling his warmth as he cinched his fingers together and held her tight. She pushed away the mental reminders that none of this was real, because what she was feeling now was ridiculously real.
She loved him. She knew that now. Heart and soul. Loved everything they did together...
It was the type of relationship she was sure her parents had shared. One in which they’d stood up for what they’d believed in. Passionately followed their dreams. Their callings. It was an extraordinary privilege, she realized, to have grown up knowing two people who drew strength from one another to do what they thought was right.
She wanted to tell Diego that was the gift he had given to her when he’d slipped that ring on her finger. The gift of belief. Belief that she was strong. Capable of making change. Not just for herself, but for others.
“We’ll talk to Maria.”
He kissed the top of her head, and when he continued she could hear that same determined resolution in his voice she’d heard when he’d told her to marry him.
“It’s time we shook things up around here.”
She squeezed his hands tight, but didn’t dare look at him. This was no holiday romance. Being married to Diego Vasquez was the most life-changing thing she would ever be a part of. And, even though it would only last a few more days, she renewed her vow to do everything in her power to help change the community he lived in for the better.
* * *
Maria was in full lioness mode. Diego took a step back, having learnt from experience that the best way to defuse her ire was to let her roar.
“The only reason I am agreeing to let you and the mobile clinic do it is because we don’t have the staff to do a donation day. We need blood. Stores are low. But mark my words, Diego—” Maria pointed her painted talons at him, then Isla “—if people get even the slightest sniff that this blood might go to Noche Blanca...” Her dark eyes bored straight into Isla’s as she continued. “They will never come.”
Diego knew better than to step in and “protect” his wife. She could hold her own and wanted to.
Isla nodded, letting Maria know she’d heard her. “Your generosity will not be forgotten.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “And this is a good thing. For the hospital. For El Valderon.”
Maria sniffed, gave her a top-to-toe scan without moving anything other than her eyes. She pointed at the donors’ chairs Isla had asked if they could borrow. “I want those back in pristine condition.”
“Absolutely.”
She gave them a curt nod, then swept out of the room.
When they were sure she was gone, Isla turned to him and did a melodramatic swipe of her brow. “Whew! She is a tough cookie.”
“You’re not wrong there. She’s made of steel.”
“And ice.”
Diego tipped his head back and forth. It was more complicated than that. “She’s...she’s not just defending the hospital.” He saw the dawning light of understanding hit Isla’s blue eyes.
“She’s defending her decision not to send the ambulance out for your brother?”
A grim smile served as his answer.
Isla scanned the morass of equipment. “Do you think this is madness? Moving all this gear on to the mobile clinic only for no one to come?”
Diego held out a hand to her. “We’ll give it a few days so we can get the word out. The mere fact that Maria is so cross about it means she will be telling everyone. I’ll tell Carmela, and all the people who work at the plantation. We’re bound to have a few takers. At the very least we’ll get the message out that the we need blood.”
“El Valderon needs it. The people need it!”
She looked like she needed it. Was she pouring all her energies into work to keep her mind off the one-way ticket back to Scotland he’d booked the night before? He certainly was. Booking it had been his way of reminding himself this was all temporary.
“You’re preaching to the converted, Isla. We have to take things as they come sometimes.” He hoisted himself up onto the donor table and reached his hands out to her.
She didn’t take them. She crossed her arms over her chest and said, “You’re being defeatist.”
Her words were like a searing hot poker plunged straight into a barely healed wound.
“Is that what you think? That I have given up? Is that why I arrived in the middle of the night to help Paz? Help you? Your father?”
Tears sprang to her eyes but Isla stood her ground, tilting her chin in that feisty way of hers. The way that indicated she was about to say something she knew would push the invisible envelope even more.
“How about I give Axl Cruz’s wife a call? Serena? She seemed open to change. Given the blood you provided saved their son, you’d think they’d be keen to donate.”
Diego shook his head and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “They won’t come. Shouldn’t come. Dodgy tattoos... Some of them might be users... Even if they could help, they never would.”
“You show up. You show up whenever they need you, even though they took your brother.” She held up her finger, where his grandmother’s ring sparkled. “You helped a complete stranger. Why shouldn’t they?”
“That’s different,” he deflected, trying to gather his thoughts.
“How? How is that different?” Isla pressed her hands to her heart. “Isn’t it an innate instinct to help people?”
He shook his head, no. “I do what I do to make myself feel better. But the sad truth is it will never be enough. No matter how many blood drives we hold, or splinters we remove, or blood pressures we check, my brother will never come back.”
Isla started to say something, then pressed her lips tight.
Diego felt an old idea resurface. The job offer he had made to Axl in the wake of his brother’s death. The job Axl had refused. Perhaps enough time had passed to try again.
“We’ll tell him about the blood drive. Axl.”
“You will or I will?” Isla asked, her hands planted on her hips as she glared at him. When he didn’t answer, she asked in a gentler tone. “What are we actually talking about here? Are we talking about bringing the people on your island together or ensuring they stay apart?”
And that was when it hit him. He’d been doing his absolute best to keep Noche Blanca away from everyone else. No one had gone to prison for what had happened to his brother. No one had had to do community service. Nothing. The only thing he had over them was the fact that they owed him. And by continuing to offer them medical care he was encouraging them to carry on with their “lifestyle choices.”
He hopped off the donor table he’d been sitting on. “Leave it with me. I need to do this.”
She shot him a dubious look.
He raised his hands. “I know. It’s not like you don’t have your own battles to fight with Axl. But mine...” He thumped his fist against his gut. “They live here. I’m asking you to trust me.”
She quirked an eyebrow at him.
“I know.” He put one of his hands on her shoulder, then tipped her chin up so that she could see straight into his heart. “I promise you I want the same thing you do.”
“Well, then.” She gave him an efficient little nod. “I guess you’d better get on with it.”
* * *
After she had made sure absolutely everything was as organized as it could be, Isla pushed open the door. She was just about to unfurl the homemade signs she’d made when she looked out beyond the clinic’s awning.
Her jaw dropped.
There was already a queue. Some thirty or forty people were standing outside the clinic, all waiting to donate blood. And the first ten were all people she recognized from Noche Blanca. Not the gang members themselves, but their mothers. S
isters. Cousins. Aunts. Uncles.
Her heart filled to bursting. Diego must have told Axl after all.
He’d been so quiet these last couple of days. So much so she hadn’t even asked him whether or not he’d spoken to anyone, let alone Axl, about the blood drive. She had been so intent on distracting herself from her feelings for Diego, she was now worried she’d pushed too much.
The ring on her finger caught the morning sun. She’d have to return it soon. The sting of tears tore at her throat. She swallowed. Hard.
All good things must come to an end.
“Right everyone!” she called out in her fractured Spanish. “Let’s do this for El Valderon!”
The crowd cheered and applauded. It was an extraordinary feeling. Being part of a place. Part of a movement for change.
When she turned around and saw Diego behind her, instinct took over. She went up on tiptoe and kissed him. “Thank you, Diego.”
He whispered something in Spanish she didn’t quite catch, but when he squeezed her hand and beckoned the people in the queue to enter, she knew the ties that already bound them had been strengthened.
CHAPTER TEN
“RIGHT YOU ARE, my dear. I think that’s you all bandaged up!” Isla smiled at ten-year-old Natalia, the young daughter of Gloria, who had worked for her father at the sanctuary.
The little girl had gone for a rather eventful swim with some of the baby sea turtles. She’d followed them all the way out to the reef and now had quite a deep cut on the top of her foot.
“Next time you go swimming do your best to avoid the coral reef, all right?”
Her eyes drifted to the beach. It was the first time she’d been to the sanctuary since the shooting. The blood drive had gone so well Diego had finally relented and let her unlock the gates to the beachside cove. They’d set up the clinic under a small copse of palms and had already seen a handful of people, including little Natalia.
“Do we need to do anything with Natalia’s dressing? Change the bandages or anything?”
Gloria accepted the antibiotics Isla handed her. She had been in charge of the day-to-day running of the sanctuary since her father had left.
Isla shook her head. “Not for the next couple of days, Gloria. Unless she gets it wet. I know my dad—Doug—” She grimaced, then laughed. “It’s weird talking about my father without him being here.”
She waved away the unexpected rush of emotion that came with mentioning her father. He’s safe now.
“Anyway. He would have helped you change the bandages. But we can do it here now. The antibiotics are precautionary more than anything. I wouldn’t start her on them unless she begins to complain it’s still hurting. It was a pretty bad cut, so it isn’t always easy to rinse everything out, but we don’t like to throw medicine at things that stand a chance of healing naturally.”
“What kind of symptoms should I look for? If I need to give her the medicine?” Gloria pulled her daughter close to her side and popped a kiss atop her head.
The gesture was so simple. So natural. Casual, even. Yet it twisted Isla’s heart so tight it nearly took her breath away. She didn’t have memories of such gestures from her mother. Not that she hadn’t been loving. She simply hadn’t been there that often. To the point that when they had been together Isla had always felt a bit nervous about pushing herself on her mother. Appearing needy.
She often wondered if her mother and father had really thought the whole “let’s have a baby” thing through. As much as it pained her to acknowledge it, both her parents’ true love had been their work. Being at opposite ends of the earth had never seemed to bother them.
It was pointless drawing parallels, but every day she buzzed with the anticipation of seeing Diego on the days he worked at the hospital. In just a few short weeks he had shown her just how amazing a relationship could be...and their marriage wasn’t even real!
The sex is real. The connection is real. The love you have for him is real.
“Isla? Are you all right?”
“Yes. Of course. Sorry. I went off to la-la land there for a minute, didn’t I?”
She gave her cheeks a little pat and smiled apologetically at the pair of them. How embarrassing.
“What we’re really looking to avoid is septicemia. So she should stay hydrated. Drink lots of water. Keep the wound clean. If it becomes inflamed, swollen or tender—those are signs there might be an infection. Spreading redness streaking out from the wound... If you want me to take a look at it again we’re back...” She scanned the calendar she and Diego had drawn up a week earlier. “We’re back on Tuesday. Two days from now.”
Just a few short days before her flight.
Gloria looked over her shoulder, then leant close to her. “We want you to know the fact that you are here—that you and Mr. Vasquez have opened the gates and brought the clinic here—has given us the strength to carry on with our work. Change doesn’t come easy. But we haven’t given up on seeing your father’s plans through.”
Isla reached out and ruffled Natalia’s hair. Protecting Natalia’s future was precisely why her father had fought so hard to put those plans into place.
“How about when I come on Tuesday you and I set aside some time to talk?”
Gloria smiled and nodded. “That would be wonderful.”
Isla made a couple of notes on Natalia’s patient file, then went into the central reception area in the mobile clinic—which was, in truth, about five steps away from the table where she’d just been treating the little girl. In reality, the clinic it was little more than a glorified ambulance, but it did the trick. For them, anyway.
The night before she and Diego had made up a wish-list of things they’d like to change or add if they were ever able to get funding for a “proper” clinic. An extra exam room...an additional pair of hands, maybe. It hadn’t hit her until now that what they had been doing was planning for the future.
A future she wasn’t going to be a part of.
She stared at the door of the room where Diego was treating one of the guards who had been at the clinic that night.
Funny, she thought, how quickly she’d accepted this life, this lifestyle, as her own. Her eyes moved to the calendar on the wall. It had been exactly a month now. Her ticket was booked. Her carry-on bag lay on top of a chest, waiting to be packed. Shouldn’t they be meeting with Axl? Discussing some sort of truce? Leaving with things so undecided seemed wrong.
Her stomach churned. And churned even faster when she heard Diego laugh with his patient through the thin walls.
She didn’t want to go.
It was a life-altering revelation.
She didn’t want to leave. Not El Valderon. Not the people they’d been helping. And most of all she didn’t want to leave Diego.
As if on cue, he stepped through the door, shook hands with his patient, saw him out, then crossed to her and kissed her cheek.
“Everything all right, mi amor?”
The term of affection did the same thing it did every time Diego used it when he checked in with Isla. She smiled as she tried to neutralize the fireworks going off in her belly, the skip of her heart.
She smiled up at him. “All good.”
He pulled his laptop onto the counter and started to make some notes, then looked up when he noticed she was still looking at him. “What do you say we have dinner in town tonight? Somewhere special?”
She hadn’t been feeling a hundred percent that morning, but he looked so keen. “Any particular reason?”
He feigned mock horror. “It’s our one-month anniversary, amorcita. We can’t let the good people of El Valderon think I am not still treating you like a princessa.”
She smiled, but the comment hurt more than it salved her already jangly nerves. He was still playing a role. The lovestruck doctor in a whirlwind romance.
A fake whirlwin
d romance that had saved her life.
She had to admit she had put down half of the nerves and the churning in her stomach she’d felt lately to her increasing anxiety about when her path might cross with Axl Cruz’s again. Would the invisible stranglehold he had on her life drop away? With Diego she felt safe. But when she was home again in Craggen...would the fear return in force?
Another thought struck so powerfully she felt numb.
What if this “date” tonight—this public show of affection—was actually Diego’s way of telling the island it was over?
She looked at Diego, at his strong profile, his kind eyes... Would he really do that? Shame her in the same way Kyle had?
No. Not the Diego she knew. He wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t. Unless this whole time she had been the unwitting pawn in a much bigger game. A game to outwit Axl Cruz.
She was just about to ask Diego if they could go to see Axl—find him, hash out what had actually happened—when there was a knock at the clinic door.
Sofia.
Isla smiled across at the young woman who had become a real asset for the mobile clinic. Not to mention a bit more wary about entering the clinic unannounced since that day when Isla had been so steamed up by Diego’s kisses she hadn’t even bothered with feeling embarrassed.
“Are you ready for your next patient?”
“Absolutely.” Diego rubbed his hands together. “Who do we have next?”
Sofia winced at him. “Paz Cruz.”
“Ah.” Diego drew his brows together, as if the news had caught him by surprise. When he noticed Isla staring at him, he gave her a quick smile. “Good. Nice to see he’s up and about.”
“Not at my father’s sanctuary, it isn’t.”
Everyone stared at her.
Diego stepped between her and the doorframe, giving a quick signal to Sofia to stall Paz.
“You’ve seen him recently, haven’t you?” Isla stood and crossed her arms. She could see by the shift of his eyes he knew she didn’t mean Paz. She meant Axl.
