The Doctor's Latin Lover Read online

  She swung round to him. “Why not try hypothermic therapy?”

  His look of astonishment made it clear the idea hadn’t crossed his mind. He inclined his head. “Do you have any experience with this method?”

  “Not directly, but in Richardson’s brain trauma division, it’s being hailed as the method that will change the way severe head injuries are treated in the crucial first post-injury hours. After a wide study of about four hundred cases, they came out with the conclusion that lowering the body temperature from 98 to 99 to 87 to 88 for twenty-four hours after patients suffer severe traumatic brain injury leads to less disability and better recovery.”

  What was that in his eyes now? Something she’d never seen there before. Wonder? No, it couldn’t be. Consideration, maybe. Of her information, or of how to tell her not to be ridiculous? Oh, why hadn’t she just kept her big mouth shut? Richardson Health Group practiced a kind of medicine Javier had never condoned, profit-based and sensational. He must think this was another fad, another propaganda-garnering procedure.

  Suddenly, he called out, “Emmanuel, lower the temperature to 40, and cut off the rest of Señor Torres’s clothes. Caridad, measure his temperature periodically along with the other vital signs. Tell me when he reaches 88.”

  He was doing what she’d suggested!

  Her breathing stuttered, then almost choked completely when he turned to her, his eyes intense. “Go put something warm on beneath your scrubs.”

  He thought she’d get cold? Between having him near and Torres’s desperate condition, she needed some emergency cooling measures herself.

  But just that he cared! “I’ll be OK.”

  “It’s going to get very cold, and you look flushed. If you get sick…”

  You’re going to be more of a liability than you already are. The words concluding his unfinished sentence flashed in her mind. Was she reading his thoughts? Probably. Tonight was her night for extrasensory perception. That had to be what worried him so much. And she’d thought he was worried about her!

  The thud to reality was nauseating. She’d already given him another demonstration of her “reactive” personality earlier tonight and had almost made him kill her while at it. Less than forty-eight hours in his company and she’d already threatened his project, undermined his image in front of his team, thrown herself at him, and almost landed him with a manslaughter charge.

  One thing she hadn’t done, though, and that was complain or ask for any special treatment. “If all of you can put up with it, I surely can. I’m probably more qualified to put up with the cold, having been born and bred in Chicago!”

  She moved away before he said any more, heard him alerting the rest of the team to the impending drop in temperature and the reason for it. “Cover Señora Torres well, and actively warm her—heated packs to the head, armpits, and groin, and switch to warmed IV fluids, up to 108.”

  They implemented his directions unquestioningly, none of them giving any indication that they were worried about getting cold themselves.

  There was a flare in his eyes when he turned them on her again. She couldn’t tell what it was, and wasn’t ready for more upheavals at the moment. Look away.

  She did, a stream of heat and moisture slithering down her back. Maybe she was sick. He moved after her, his scent overpowering even in the sterile surroundings. Yeah, she was sick. With wanting him.

  And it wasn’t just desire any more. She wanted him near for other reasons now. She’d never felt like that, working with anyone else. She counted on his presence and power to make everything seem possible, to provide comfort in the oppressive situation, on his knowledge and experience to complement hers, to support her decisions and give her assurance.

  The need to lean into him as they stood watching the CT cross-section images on the computer was overwhelming.

  Leave this alone, leave me alone.

  His vehement words clanged in her head, drowning the clamor. How could she have forgotten? He despised her, and despised himself more for once losing his mind over her. Once. But never again.

  She wrenched her focus back to the moment and on the images in front of her. Her mind raced to process the significance of the opacities in them, pinpointing the exact location of hemorrhage and diffuse tissue swelling. She heard his voice, dark, deep, discussing possibilities and implications, supplied her own views, agreeing with him.

  In five more minutes the CT machine whirred to a stop and Emmanuel reversed the gliding table out of the X-ray tube.

  “Save and print out, Emmanuel, for follow-up,” Javier said. “For the damn follow-up.”

  Savannah was sure only she had heard that last part, that it hadn’t been meant for anyone else’s ears. Not important now. Re-check Torres.

  She did, with Caridad, and in seconds turned to Javier to report Torres’s unchanged status in some aspects, his deterioration in others.

  Javier stood still for a moment, hands on hips, lips pursed. Then he shook his head. “It’s no good. We have to operate.”

  “Remind me again, just why are we operating?”

  Javier raised his eyes to Alonso, but had no answer for him. Alonso had a point, and he knew it. But it wasn’t the time or place to be supporting his pessimism. He had to get on with his job, see it through.

  To the certain and bitter end.

  He moved the suction probe to and fro over the subdural hematoma clot. “A bit more irrigation here, Savannah. Gently now.”

  But Savannah was already doing what needed to be done, gently irrigating in conjunction with his suction to develop a plane between the clot and the pia mater, the brain’s innermost covering, to lift the clot away from its surface. By now he knew he didn’t need to give her directions. If that first operation they’d done together had shown him she was a superior surgeon in her own right, this one showed him what a flawless, intuitive assistant she made.

  This was her first craniotomy. It didn’t look like that at all as she complemented and anticipated his moves during every step from scalp division and retraction, to bone perforation and cutting, to epidural hematoma evacuation, to dural tenting and opening. Now they’d reached the most delicate part, the subdural hematoma evacuation, removing the blood clot that had collected between the inner and outer coverings of the brain, then delving deeper into the brain to remove the clots that had formed there.

  “Craniotomy has to be the worst emergency surgery in existence.”

  That was Alonso again. And again Javier could only agree. He hated them with a passion, had specialized in minimally invasive surgery to avoid procedures that necessitated such total breaching of the body. But for the past three years as he’d prepared for this mission, he’d gone back to gain more experience in just about every other surgical subspecialty. He’d done vascular, cardiothoracic, orthopedic, and neurosurgery cases, opened chests and abdomens and backs, even amputated limbs, but somehow opening the skull, exposing the brain, took the cake.

  But operating on a car accident—even a hit-and-run victim was something and operating on someone who’d been beaten within a hair’s breadth of death was another. Fury and uselessness had pierced him like the drill in Torres’s skull. All that rage couldn’t be contributing to his healing abilities.

  Not that he believed they’d “heal” Torres. With the kind of injury he’d sustained, the life they’d save wouldn’t be worth saving. He wondered what Torres would say, if given the chance to go now and be spared the living hell he had in store.

  “What about Torres’s wife?”

  Savannah’s subdued question was the first thing she’d said since they’d started the procedure an hour ago. It startled him, discharged another chain reaction in his chest.

  Demonios. Every time he looked at her, heard her voice. Even now, when they were fighting for a man’s life. Shouldn’t he be distracted? Cold?

  Two impossibilities with her near, it seemed.

  His gaze swung to the other surgical station where Luis and Elvira
were struggling for the woman’s life. Killing Torres hadn’t been enough for the monsters. Abusing his wife, who’d no doubt tried to defend him, kicking her in her pregnant abdomen, had been their crowning pleasure. “Miguel, status?”

  Miguel raised his head, transmitted his own anger. “Those bastards almost split her liver in two, just as you thought. We had to go for a combined surgical and angiographic approach to diagnose and treat the liver lacerations and the injury to the retrohepatic inferior vena cava. We managed to stop the hepatic bleeding by peri-packing and the bleeding from the vena cava by an intravenous stent. We’ve auto-infused the blood back into her, and she’s stabilized. We’ll leave her open for now. We’ll close her up tomorrow or the day after once we’re sure she won’t develop abdominal compartment syndrome or bleed again.”

  Javier’s jaw hurt, his nerves tightened, stung. “And the baby?”

  Elvira shook her head. “It’s amazing, but the baby’s totally unharmed. No signs of fetal distress whatsoever. If the mother makes it, so will the baby.”

  As if that was good news.

  Work. Try to save that baby’s father. What had Savannah said? “Let’s be satisfied with doing the best job we can?”

  That was impossible, but no other option was available, not now, not ever.

  It took all his will to turn off his aggression, to turn all his energies back to his task. There was nothing more to be done about the brain tissue lacerations. Now they’d evacuated all the blood and clots it was time to close the dura mater, the brain’s tough outer covering in touch with the skull, and end the procedure.

  Savannah suddenly spoke again, her voice thick and husky. “I’m still wondering about Torres’s lack of facial injuries.”

  Yeah, he’d wondered, too. Until he’d been told why. If possible, it made him even angrier. He tried to control his voice as he answered. “His abusers weren’t interested in his face, just his head. He was being made an example of. His wife said they forced him to the ground, then each took turns kicking him in his ‘hard head’.”

  Her eyes hardened on an echo of his own rage. They’d never been more beautiful. “I take it he was doing something they’d warned him against? And their message was ‘Be hardheaded and we will soften your head for you’?”

  “Just about. He was petitioning against their armed control, lobbying for a return to their lands, the farms they’d been forced out of on the Pacific coast. But this was worse than just violent abuse and terrorism.”

  Savannah’s eyes widened, her voice rose. “For God’s sake, what can be worse?”

  “There’s always something worse, Savannah. This was a ‘hoods in the night’ routine. Armed people come into your home in the dead of night. In the blinding flashlights you see only their numbers and guns, and then a hooded person enters and points at you. Then you’re either taken away never to be heard from again or, like Torres, punished there and then.”

  Savannah was silent as they finished the bone flap fixation and drain placement. Her silence probably meant she couldn’t see how this could be worse.

  The moment they finished, she let out a breath she seemed to have been holding all along. “So the hoods are insiders? Possibly friends, even relatives?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in it for the informant?”

  “It depends. It could be money or supplies, a promise to give them back something of what they’d lost, but mostly it’s a promise to leave them and their families out of any ugliness going on around them.”

  Savannah’s eyes turned black. “And with this kind of suspicion hanging over everyone’s heads, they probably back down, killing any reform efforts before they can even start. But I think the worst part is the paranoia and hatred that fearing and suspecting everyone around you produces, turning the miserable community into an even worse hellhole to live in. My God, they’re really leaving them with nothing. That’s way beyond evil!”

  Javier was amazed. She’d grasped the depth of damage those practices caused. Her impassioned response stunned him even more than her earlier one to Alonso as they’d driven back from Cundinamarca.

  They fell silent again as they concluded Torres’s procedure, approximating the skin over the craniotomy and applying dressings. Alonso terminated his anesthesia and went to terminate Torres’s wife’s.

  As Caridad and Nikki took both their patients to the IC compartment, the rest of them shuffled to the soiled room.

  As they took off their surgical garments Javier looked down at Savannah. She was subdued again, pale, her lips blue, her eyes downcast, tearing at his insides even more than the whole ordeal they’d been through.

  All he wanted was to crush her to him as he’d done earlier, moan with the relief of having her unharmed in his arms.

  He’d been jumpy earlier tonight, aggressive, as he hadn’t been in years. Maybe he’d sensed Torres’s abuse and had felt the oncoming turmoil? But not as clearly as she had. She’d come running to him with her intuition. Dios, if the knife hadn’t swerved at the last moment…!

  A black wave of horror engulfed him. When it abated, all his reasons for not coming near her were wiped right along with it. He stopped her as she followed the others out, pulled her back into him. Her stiffening body remained inert until they were gone, then he dragged her back to the clean room. He closed the door, turned her around, drove both his hands in her hair and stared down into her eyes.

  Yes. They said yes. As they had always had. As they had been doing ever since she’d reappeared in his life, tearing through his rules and restraints. He wanted—too much, too fast, his mind already overtaking his numb body. He was so damn cold, yet he was burning up. That should be impossible, but it wasn’t. She was shivering, too. He should get her out of here, take her back to his tent, take her there.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t bear thinking of the delay.

  His thoughts were already taking her lips, drinking her down to her last moan. It would be like in his fantasies, like it used to be. No waiting that first time. He’d probe her, go berserk when he found she was crazy for everything he could do to her. Then he’d be there, filling her, fulfilling her every need, gorging himself with all she gave.

  “Javier…”

  Her siren call was all he needed. He swept her up, pressed her against the wall, kept her there with his mass and wrapped her around him. He devoured her gasps and she only gasped more, hungrier, getting desperate. He rubbed himself over her, absorbing her shudders, his own intensifying, a jumble of relief and cold and lust rocking him, rocking her.

  He was nearing explosion just feeling her and tasting her, his body hurtling towards completion as he felt hers was, too. He’d satisfy them both quickly now, then do their passion justice later, lavishing all the patience and thoroughness he needed to assuage his vast hunger.

  He unwrapped her convulsing thighs from around his waist, put her back on her feet as his fingers became talons, snatching at her clothes. His hand found her, found her breasts, cupped, took, tasted. Her soft cries of urgency were spears of pleasure-pain, joining the hooks she had already sunk into him.

  It had been so damned, cripplingly long. How could he have denied them that? Why deny them now? After tonight, he knew work would be all right. And he no longer cared what had brought her here. What did it matter why she was here, or for how long? Why should he even consider what would happen later? Later be damned. She was here, wanting him, crazy for him, now. For now. It should be enough. Why the hell wasn’t it?

  Don’t think. Just feel. Just take and give.

  Nothing in his life would be permanent anyway. He couldn’t do permanent. She didn’t. And even if he could and she did, it would have to be with anyone else but each other. “For now” had to be enough. Take all the “for now” you can get.

  He drew harder on her nipple. She quaked in his arms as her hands dug a trembling hold in his nape and frost shot through him from the point of contact.

  Dios, she was freezing! She migh
t be hypothermic. This could be serious. What an unthinking, selfish brute! Get her out of here.

  He staggered away, struggled to stifle his shrieking senses, shut out her quivering frustration. He escaped the frozen hands that were too shaky to keep him close. In a few frantic movements he’d covered her breasts, adjusted her pants and slipped two more clean scrubs over her.

  “Javier…”

  “You’re freezing. Let me get you out of here.” He steered her out of the clean room, huddling around her, offering her all the warmth his body could provide. She burrowed her face into his throat, her cold lips on his pulse point, dragging him back into the abyss. He’d get her back to his tent, warm her, pleasure her and take her, all night, then every night from now on…

  “Dr. Sandoval!” Caridad’s cry shot through them, snapping them apart. “Señor Torres has flatlined!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I WAS out of line.”

  Savannah drew her knees tighter below her chin and kept her eyes fixed ahead. The landscape of their surroundings, the intense natural beauty combined with the man-made ugliness faded, Javier’s image replacing it in her mind’s eye.

  She could imagine how he looked now as he delivered his grudging apology. Haughty and majestic, his body language unrepentant, all but saying, “You made me do it.”

  She could do without this. And what was he doing anyway, apologizing now? It had been a week since he’d almost devoured her back in the clean room. A week of silence, withdrawal and averted eyes, more proof he thought it had been another mistake to be regretted and never repeated.

  So he thought touching her ranked up there with selling his soul to the devil, and letting her touch him with exposing himself to a terminal disease. Fine. His call. She was damned if she’d sit here and listen to his reluctant peace offering.

  She snapped her head up, opened her mouth to say just that, and closed it again. Would her heart ever stop uprooting itself at the sight of him?

  She adjusted her chin back on her knees. Damn. Why did he have to be so damned beautiful? So damned—everything!