Читать книгу Hot Latin Docs Collection - Tina Beckett, Amalie Berlin - Страница 17

CHAPTER SEVEN

“HIGH FIVE!” SANTI held up his hand as she beamed at his obvious pride over his bride-to-be’s panache at the wheel. She’d seriously messed it up today. The good-way kind of messing things up. Not her usual actual messing things up.

“C’mon!” He prodded when she didn’t meet his hand. “High five!”

“Nah.” She pulled off her helmet, shaking her pixie cut back into place. “We need a secret handshake. High fives are old-school.”

“I like your style, Murph.” He nodded appreciatively before raising a finger of objection. “I get to pick it, though. Seeing as you shanghaied our wedding date.”

“That was a week ago. Aren’t you over it yet?” Saoirse teased, then gave a resigned shrug. “Amanda’s a force of nature. I was powerless to resist. And I’m afraid the date is within the timeline we need to follow if the goal is to keep me in the country.” She tugged her fingers through her hair and tossed her helmet into the seat of her old beater. Signing up for race car driving was one of the best things she’d done since moving here. Amazing the amount of stress you could release by careening around a chicane without touching the brake pedal.

“Don’t worry, mija. The timeline is fine. The goal is still the same.” Santi came around to her side of the car and without so much as a how-do-you-do tugged down the zip on her race jumpsuit in one fluid move.

He may as well have slipped his hands inside the suit and caressed her bare skin for the impact it had. Her skin soared directly into hypersensitivity mode, little tingly shots of electricity bringing parts of her back to life she’d thought were long dormant. Her heart was skipping beats like it was going out of style. As she looked up into those gold-flecked eyes of his, she realized he was probably watching her pupils dilate, betraying her body’s response to his proximity. From a distance he was difficult enough to block out. Here? Not more than a few inches apart? Oh, for the love of a cashmere sweater... His stubble looked...soft.

So much for all that hard-won concentration.

“You’re not going to try to dye the champagne green or anything, are you?” Santi’s eyes twinkled as he looked down at her.

“Obviously! It’s an Irish tradition.” She took a couple of steps back from him, feeling a serious need to regain a semblance of control.

Champagne? How seriously was he taking this thing? “If you’re planning on inviting family, we can always have it on Cinco de Mayo or something. It’d be pushing things a bit from the paperwork end of things for me, but if we applied for a fiancée visa or I got an extension on—”

“No, no. St. Patrick’s Day is fine.”

Today would be fine.

“And it’ll be just you and me,” he added. No family. Not yet anyway.

“Against the world?” she added, her brow crinkling in a mirror image of his own, he suspected.

Family.

How could such a small word be so...loaded?

Santi took a couple of steps back himself. He wasn’t the only one feeling the perfection of proximity. Or the danger.

He’d realized it an hour ago, watching her driving around the track, face lit up like it was Christmas morning as she’d deftly swerved and veered her way around the course, him in the passenger seat wondering who had made this woman so courageous and real. He was not a passenger-seat kind of guy—and yet? Here he was, happy to go along for the ride.

They clicked. On so many levels they clicked and day by day it was growing harder to pretend he was just a nice guy doing a nice girl a favor. Never mind the fact that sleeping in the spare room was just an exercise in torture. Even more so now that he was finally accepting that everything he was feeling for Saoirse was adding up to one thing: love. And there was nothing brotherly about it.

Fast? Hell, yeah. But with a woman like this? Suffice it to say, if he’d been born in his father’s day, he would’ve asked her to marry him by the end of the first dance.

Not that he had a clue what Saoirse was feeling. She didn’t do anything slow and steady—or halfway, from what he could gather. Not after what she had been through. It was now-or-never time. For everything.

Was it the same for falling in love?

His initial offer might’ve been all nonchalant and devil-may-care but now? Now he’d marry her to keep her in the country and give himself a fighting chance to see if she felt the same way he did.

He looked away and up to the sky, where some cloud cover was threatening to mask the morning sun.

Who knew? Maybe this was what genuine arranged marriages were like. Someone saw they were a good potential match, made it, and then it was up to the couple to make good on the potential. Or maybe he was just thinking too damn much about everything because Saoirse made him horny and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Love wasn’t only patient and kind. Love was a pain in the butt.

“At the risk of doing the nagging-wife thing a bit early...” Saoirse went on tiptoe to catch his attention, then looked away when she knew she had it, “Are you actually ever going to call your brothers?”

He had a little set-to with his hackles before answering as neutrally as he could. Like he’d said...pain in the butt.

“Don’t worry. I’ll call.” Or drop by. And leg it off to the Keys for a long-overdue ride to try and get my head straight.

“Because it’s weird going into the ER and panicking I’m going to see them.”

“Don’t worry about it. They’re not ER kind of guys and generally not Seaside guys. They’re at Buena Vista more often than not.” From what he’d heard, anyway. His brothers had cut some serious pathways into each of their surgical specialties. He felt proud. From-a-distance pride.

“That was a freakish one-off, but don’t worry. I’ll tell them about you. Us.” Her eye roll was too big to miss.

All right! It was a fib. He meant to. And yet each day that passed made the next one harder. Especially when he knew all he needed to do was pick up the phone and get on with it. Make peace to find peace.

He turned to see Saoirse give a little wiggle as she shrugged her shoulders out of her race suit, revealing a skimpy tank top skidding along the sides of her breasts. No need for imagination.

“¡Caracoles!”

“What was that?” Saoirse threw him a wary look.

“Nada.”

The opposite of nothing was more like it.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets as she continued peeling off the jumpsuit, revealing her petite body bit by bit, curve by swoop... Por Dios!

“Murph.” He scanned the parking lot for a concession stand. “I’m going to get some water before we go to brunch. Want anything?”

“Hang on a minute, my beeper’s going off.” She threw him her backpack. “The work one. Can you check it?”

He tugged the pager off the black strap and looked.

He felt his own pager sending vibrations along the length of his belt. No guesses what the message was. He looked anyway and grimaced. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Saddle up, Murph. There’s been a big one.”

* * *

“Are you sure we packed everything?” Saoirse threw Santi an anxious look.

“It’s the Keys, Murph, not the moon.”

He gave her leg a reassuring pat. From the sounds of the traffic reports coming in like bullet fire on their radio, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Two dueling Jet-Skiers had been swerving in and out of coastal fog patches. One of the Jet Skis had exploded underneath the driver just as they’d approached a causeway. The blast had sent him flying onto the windshield of a car that had veered into oncoming weekend traffic. Thirty...maybe forty vehicles involved. Including an oil truck. Two fatalities had already been called in.

Saoirse had actually looked grateful when Santi had insisted on driving after her time out on the track. It took a lot of concentration to come out on top. Energy she hadn’t banked on saving for what could easily be a twenty-four-hour shift.

“I threw in a few extra of everything. There’s always a supplies truck to follow up, as well. They’ll call in county, the fire departments, everyone.” He tried to dismiss the grim expression taking hold of his features. No point in giving her the jitters before they even got there. “The triage areas might already be set up by the time we get out there.” He flicked the sirens off and on again to give a particularly pointed signal to the oblivious car in front of them.

“I suppose this sort of thing is your area of expertise,” Saoirse said after a few minutes of silent weaving in and out of traffic. Sirens were sounding from all sectors of the city and cars were pulling to the side of the road well in advance, as if a statewide alert had been sounded. Doubtless the news was all over the radio.

“Accidents are just that.” He pressed his lips together, hands gripping the wheel so tightly the veins strained against his skin. He’d done several tours in the military and each one had chipped away at his ability to stay neutral.

War was ugly. Ugly because it was intentional. Accidents? No one meant for them to happen. Throwing a grenade or setting off a shoulder-launched missile? There was nothing mistaken about that. And the lives lost? Just as pointless as the teenaged boys proving themselves to get into a gang by killing his parents.

A cruel waste. It was the spur that had finally pushed him to come home. Not that he’d made any headway in extending an olive branch to his brothers. War, it seemed, came more easily to him than asking forgiveness.

“You all right?”

“Fine, querida.” He shot her a quick glance and gave her leg a quick pat. She was unwittingly becoming better and better at noticing when his thoughts drifted in the direction of his brothers. “Just getting in the right mind-set. And remember, we’re a team. I’ve got your back.”

She nodded silently, eyes glued to the road ahead of them.

“You’ve not been involved in an MCI before?”

“A Mass Casualty Incident? No.”

“There are a lot of acronyms on days like this. You remember the START model, right? Things are a bit different in the military—but there’s a lot of overlap. Okay—START.” Santi kept his voice steady. He was used to being cool in dangerous situations. The more intense the fighting, the calmer he’d become. Maybe that was why the happier he felt with Saoirse, the more agitated he was feeling.

“START,” Saoirse repeated, as if reading from a textbook. “Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment.” She held up four fingers, bending them down as she went through each group. “The expectant. In other words, those who are likely to die. The injured who can be helped by immediate transportation. The injured whose transport can wait and people with minor injuries.”

“See! You’ve got it. Priorities for evacuation and transport?”

“Deceased remain where they fall. Black tags—those expected to die within ten minutes or less are given palliative care to reduce suffering, but are likely to die of their injuries.” Her voice became more clinical as she continued. He understood. It was vital to separate emotions from actions at times like these. She sucked in a breath and continued. “Immediate evacuation for the red tags—medevac if possible. Do you think they’ll come? The helicopters?” She turned in her seat to face him.

“Absolutely. They’re probably en route already. Keep going,” he said, encouraged to hear her voice becoming calmer the more she reminded herself how much she did know.

“Ah, delayed or yellow tags can have delayed evacuation—that is, they can’t go until everyone who has critical injuries has been transported.”

“And the green tags?”

“Last in line, but need constant checking in case their condition changes and they require retriaging.” She sat back with a triumphant smile, which immediately dropped from her face as the accident scene came into view.

Santi’s low whistle reflected what she felt. Impressive was the wrong word to describe what they saw. Overwhelming was coming close.

The fog that had enshrouded the causeway was clearing to reveal something more akin to a horror scene. Passengers and drivers were staggering out of vehicles. A fuel truck was jackknifed across three lanes of traffic, flames reaching higher with each passing moment. A couple of fire trucks and a rescue team were already on-site, doing their best to clear people as far away from the fuel truck as possible, columns of black smoke scalding the sky above them. The scream and roar of their equipment releasing trapped passengers from their vehicles was all but drowning out the cries for help.

Santi pulled their ambulance onto the edge of the causeway at the direction of a stressed-looking sheriff.

“Where do you want us?”

“Check with the Fire Rescue Squad. They were here first and know their way around an MCI better than anyone.”

Santi and Saoirse each shouldered medical run bags, putting as many supplies as they could on their wheeled gurney, and ran into the depths of the scene.

“Over here! We need someone on the red tags until the medevac arrives!” A paramedic from the fire crew directed them to a huge red sheet where four people were laid out and another was on approach. “Can you start here? Compound tib-fib, arterial bleed. I’m afraid you’ll have to do the rest.” And he ran off into the choking fug of smoke and flames.

Santi dropped to his knees next to the unconscious patient, signaling to Saoirse to do the same on the other side. She pulled out her flashlight and checked the man’s pupils for dilation. Her wrist flicked first to one eye, then the next.

“Responsive.”

“Good,” Santi muttered, his gloved fingers seeking and immediately stemming the arterial bleed in the man’s leg.

The compound fracture was so crudely exposed to the elements Saoirse nearly retched at the sight.

“Check airways, circulation.” Santi’s voice was steady. Reassuring. Exactly what she needed.

This was precisely what her paramedic training had prepared her for. The car racing. Moving to Miami in the first place without knowing a soul. A complete reinvention in order to handle every painful curveball life threw at her.

She looked into Santi’s eyes and felt fortified by the understanding they held, as if his strength was flowing directly into her. They would get through this. Together.

“We can do this one of two ways.” He reached across to his run bag and grabbed a clamp for the arterial bleed. “Can you get a drip going on this guy with some morphine in the bag?” Her hands flew into automatic pilot, working quickly, efficiently as she focused on what he was saying. “We can work through the patients together, like the A-team we are, or you can peel off on your own and call me if you need a hand.”

Saoirse looked up for a millisecond to gather her thoughts. Her eyes didn’t even have a chance to reach the heavens before the decision was made for her. “Sir! Stay where you are!” Seconds became nanoseconds as she swiftly checked she’d secured the saline drip for Santi’s patient. “You good here?” She received a curt nod and was up and guiding a man with a massive head wound to the large tarp for severe traumas, all the while taking in just how bad the situation unfolding around them was.

Time took on an otherworldly quality.

Head wounds were downgraded; blood flow always made them look worse than they were. A perforated lung was stabilized as best she could before a helicopter crew whisked the teenaged girl away. On Santi’s count, they stabilized then shifted a screaming middle-aged woman who’d seen her daughter being loaded onto the helicopter, the screams increasing as the extent of her pelvic injuries became clearer.

Saoirse saw herself as if from above, a whirling blur of activity matching medical supplies to patients. Neck braces. Splints. Sterile bandages. Change after change of gloves. Her stethoscope pressing to chest after chest. The sudden realization her own knees were bleeding after kneeling in glass while giving lifesaving compressions to a little boy. Heartbeat. None. Clear!

She watched as her fingers unwrapped hydrocolloidal dressing for a twenty-something woman who’d just been pulled out of a burning vehicle, inserting a saline drip, doing her best to stop the woman from going into shock as she cooled then dressed her burns, all the time murmuring soothing confirmations that she would get to a hospital. She would survive this.

A shift in the wind abruptly changed the tenor of the entire operation.

Flames, licking at the sky above them, abruptly veered toward the triage section, bringing the thick black smoke along with it and all but threatening to devour everything in its path. Sight, sound and especially smell were overwhelmed with the terrifying change of events.

She froze completely—the heat of the fire seemed to be sucking the very oxygen out of the air around her. Out of her peripheral vision Saoirse saw firefighters unleash streams of foam into the inferno, to little effect. Instinct took over. The need to survive and to help her patient took precedence.

She threw herself over her patient in an arc, only just managing to slip a space blanket between them, ironically staving off the hypothermia the burned woman might be prone to.

As she heard and felt the elements around them being fought with the incredible bravery of the fire crews, Saoirse was rocked by a revelation, then another and another. Each hit of understanding striking her in all-encompassing body blows.

With the kind of clarity one has after a weather front thunders down abruptly then shifts and clears, she saw her life for what it was. A massive move forward.

Her need to change her life had come not from heartbreak, as she’d thought, but from a deeper place. Something that had craved change. Her very essence had fought to become the woman she was now. And for the first time in her life she liked what she thought she had come to embody.

A brave, slightly lippy, kind soul. She dared to open her eyes, urgently needing to see Santi. He had helped her reach this place, to gain the newfound confidence she couldn’t have ever imagined having just nine short months ago.

Still hunched over her patient, she squinted against the soot and smoke of the accident scene. The winds had shifted again and the firefighters were mastering the blaze now. But her eyes still sought and at long last gained purchase on the only visual salve she needed... Santiago Valentino.

* * *

Santi’s eyes met Saoirse’s and the interchange of relief and untethered emotion was all but palpable. He ached to pull her into his arms, wipe the soot from her face, take her away from all of this and assure her she would always be safe as long as he lived. But there was more work to do.

He’d just begun securing a patient to a backboard when the flames threatened and he needed to act as swiftly as possible. This was one of those moments when he was grateful for his time in the military. Of course, external factors mattered, but it was amazing what a man could block out when someone’s survival was utterly dependent on you. Warfare, at its worst, made this mass casualty pale in comparison. But each life was every bit as precious.

He jacked up his treatment on the man lying in front of him. He’d seen this type of injury too many times. Traumatic brain injury. Pupils—nonresponsive. He did as quick a gauge on the Glasgow Coma Scale as he could but there were too many factors yet to be explored to be precise.

“What do you need?” Saoirse appeared by his side.

“The whole nine yards,” Santi replied grimly. “Looks like this poor guy was ejected through his windshield. Significant brain trauma. Pupils are nonresponsive.” He held his fingers in front of the man’s mouth. “Breathing is compromised.”

“Shall I intubate?”

“Sooner rather than later. We don’t want him having to fight hypoxia as well.”

Saoirse deftly inserted the intubation kit and together they got a flow of oxygen running. Recovery would be long and hard for this man, if not impossible. But Santi was going to give him every shot he could to fight the odds.

Together they scored the man’s physiological parameters and gauged his systolic blood pressure.

“He’s going to need a good neurosurgeon,” Saoirse said.

Santi nodded. He hoped, for this man’s sake, he could afford the elite clinic where his brother Dante worked as a neurosurgeon. This guy would need the best and Dante did nothing by halves. “Go on.” He pointed Saoirse in the direction of another patient being transferred to the critical section. There weren’t enough hands on deck for buddying up.

“I need a helicopter now!”

It was impossible to know if his words had reached the right ears. So he repeated it, again and again, until he was hoarse and a flying doctor’s flight suit appeared in his eye line.

Time to move to the next patient.

More paramedics arrived. Doctors stuck in the traffic jam raced to offer assistance, tugging on neoprene gloves as they ran. Injury after injury presented itself. Each time Santiago began to wonder if his body could handle lifting another backboarded patient onto a gurney, a chopper basket, or just lending an arm of support as he steered a patient through the crowd to a loved one...his eyes sought Saoirse’s. The clear blue of her gaze was exactly the life-affirming medicine he needed. Her energy never seemed to abate. Her focus was intense, her manner calm, exacting. Precisely the type of woman anyone would want to have come to their rescue if they were lucky enough to be visited by an angel.

He shook his head and gave it a rough scrub with the tips of his fingers. His feelings for Saoirse were launching out of his heart at rocket speed. He’d never understood the lure of settling down until now. Not that he imagined a life with her would be akin to hanging up his hat in the adventure department. Far from it. Life with Saoirse would be—

“Santiago?”

He saw the man approach, knew he’d said his name, but couldn’t make the connection. Not at first.

And then it hit him. Harder than he could have imagined.

Detective Guillermo Alvarez. The first person on the scene after his parents had been shot and ultimately killed. The one man who had promised to find the pendejos who’d turned a robbery into a double homicide, nearly taking his kid brother in the process.

This man’s appearance was just about the one thing that could shake his focus.

Well...his brothers could’ve walked out of the crowd. That would’ve done the trick, too, but...

“Santiago. I thought that was you. Long time no see. Acere, que bola?”

“Estoy pinchando.” He stuck out his hand, which was met for a sound shake, all the time refusing to concede that seeing the fifty-something detective was rattling him to his very core.

“You signed up, didn’t you?” The detective looked up to the sky as if a plane were going to fly by with the answer.

“Marines.” Santi saved him the time.

“Sí, correcto.” The detective nodded along. “Your brother—I think it was Alejandro who told me.”

Santi kept his gaze level. How could he tell this man he hadn’t seen his own brother since he’d been back, weighed down by over a decade of guilt and unfulfilled responsibility?

“Man, is he ever doing well. A pediatric transplant surgeon! Who would’ve thought it, eh? After all he’d been through? Working in a hospital would’ve been the last thing I would’ve wanted after going through what he had...” The detective’s voice petered out, but Santi could have easily filled in the rest. The chain of events following the shootings were as alive in his mind as if they’d happened yesterday.

Santi scrubbed a hand over his face, hoping it came across as a gesture of pride rather than regret. What had happened to his brother—the shooting, the organ-transplant surgery, the ensuing surgeries—those hadn’t been his fault. Leaving Alejandro to navigate his teens on his own had.

“He always was amazing.” That much was true. Nothing would change that about his brother. All of them were a league above the rest. Him anyway.

“Santiago!”

Saoirse’s voice cut through the rage of memories. “We need to load up and roll with this one!”

A smile teased at the corners of his lips. Would he ever get tired of hearing Saoirse’s Irish lilt play with American slang?

Probably not, but this is a two-year deal, bro. Man up.

Santiago gave the detective a clap on the arm and grabbed the request for help like the lifeline it was. This was the last place he wanted to revisit the sins of his past.

“Good to see you.” It was a lie that would fly.

“You, too, Santi.” The detective turned back to the crash site then stopped. “You know we got them, right? Still locked away, as far as I know.”

He didn’t need to ask who.

“Good.” He nodded curtly, unable to open that particular door.

“Valentino! Get yer bony Heliconian ass in gear!”

“Yup!” He kicked up his long-legged stride into a jog. “On my way.”

* * *

“You okay?” Santi threw Saoirse a cold soda.

“Yeah, why?” She cracked open the can and took a long drink then wiped off her bubbly orange mustache with the satisfied bravura of a six-year-old.

“It’s normal to be tired and emotional after ten hours at an accident scene. Especially one like that.” He leaned against the sink, taking up his usual pose across the breakfast island from her. Putting a literal barrier between them helped check his body’s constant impulse to touch her. A little.

“Ha! As if. It felt...” Saoirse fished around for the perfect word. “I obviously would’ve preferred no one got hurt, but the way we worked today? It felt empowering.” She emphasized the final word with real feeling, before giving him a sly smile. “Besides, us Irish never get tired and emotional. We’re all about the stiff upper lip.”

Saoirse tried to crush her soda can the way Santi always did...palm on top...and yelped when her effort failed spectacularly.

“C’mon. Hand it over.” Santi gave a fake sigh of exasperation, all the while making a give-it-here gesture with his hand. When she failed to give it up, he smashed the can, basketballed it into the recycling then took her hand in his, feeling at once at peace and complete.

“Ouch! Don’t poke it so hard.” She yanked it out of his hand.

“So much for your stiff upper lip.” He snickered, grabbing an ice pack from the freezer and curled her fingers gently around it. “I thought that was for the British, anyway, and y’all were the whimsical, emotive types.”

She gave him a heavy-lidded look, as if weary of his overtly North American understanding of things.

“I’m not above stealing another country’s trait if it suits me,” she intoned with a sage nod, stealing a slurp of his own, unfinished soda. “And since when do you say ‘y’all’?”

“Since forever. I save it for special occasions.”

“This is special?”

“Absolutely.”

When their eyes connected, Santi knew instantly he hadn’t been hallucinating the electric charges passing between the two of them ever since they’d kissed.

“You’re not talking about words anymore, are you?” Saoirse’s voice was barely a whisper.

A counter’s width was suddenly too great a distance from her. Before he could think better of it—think of anything at all—Santi rounded the breakfast bar and had her in his arms, his mouth seeking answers to the questions that had been all but eating him alive since he’d moved in with her.

The heat and passion with which she met his fierce kisses were all the answer he needed. He scooped her up from her go-to perch on the kitchen stool and carried her into her bedroom—a room he had been strictly forbidden to enter. He wasn’t hearing a hint of a protest now...just a mumbled half thought about minding her hand.

“Don’t you worry, querida. I will never hurt you.”

Saoirse stiffened in his arms, pushing him back to arm’s length. “How can you say that? How can you make a promise like that?”

His gaze traveled from her pure blue eyes to her cheeks, flushed with the day’s sun and the moment’s emotion...her mouth. Her heaven-sent mouth that never needed an ounce of lipstick or gloss to make it shine the deep red it was now.

Because I love you.

Those were the words he ached to say. The risk he felt he couldn’t take.

“I made a promise.”

“To keep me legal, not to offer a life of wedded bliss.” Saoirse’s eyes were glued to his as if searching his very soul for any sign he would disappoint her. It was then he knew, without question, how much he loved her.

This moment—giving herself freely to another man—was a hurdle she’d not yet crossed after her idiot of an ex had betrayed her.

He swore softly under his breath. Santi couldn’t even imagine—didn’t want to imagine—the sort of man who would do that to a woman. More particularly the wiggly woman he was just barely managing to hold in his arms.

“Are you having some sort of internal battle?” She pressed her hands against his chest and fully extricated herself from his arms. “I can’t do this, Santi. Not if you don’t—”

She stopped in midflow, her lips still parted as if she were on the brink of making the same confession he wanted to. Opening her heart to the possibility of love.

Just as quickly she regrouped, grabbed his shirt and tugged him to her as if her very life depended on it.

When their lips met and bodies collided, Santi was virtually consumed by desire. He wanted each moment to be special for her. Cherished. Meaningful.

He forced himself to take things slowly...lovingly.

He might not be able to say the words that mattered most just yet. Por Dios! He felt them to his very marrow. Through the dappled light of the afternoon sun, their bodies moved in a synchronicity he only would have believed possible with a soul mate. Was this what true love was? Knowing, anticipating, finding just the right spot to stroke and caress her to elicit pleasure-filled moans? When they were physically as one, he could no longer hold back, whispering again and again as their bodies reached an unparalleled release in unison, “Te adoro. Te adoro.”

* * *

“There’s absolutely nothing in here we can eat and I’m starving,” Saorise wailed.

Having...relations...with Santi had ramped up her rumbling stomach to earthquake level.

Santi gave her booty a little bump, his thigh still deliciously bare of clothing, before draping his arm along the length of the refrigerator door.

For the love of St. Patrick and all his blessed leprechauns. Santiago Valentino floated her boat. If she’d had an entire armada he would float that, too. Having sex with him sounded just crude compared to what they’d just shared. If her heart wasn’t the beat-up bruised thing it was, she could almost, without laughing, call what had just happened between the two of them making love. A turn of phrase she’d thought, until now, best confined to soap operas.

“How about a ketchup and mayonnaise sandwich?” Santi smiled up at her, the glow of the refrigerator highlighting the outline of his lips. Lips now... Oh, there it was, the tooth along the lip thing that never failed to... Yup, there went her tummy, doing a giddy, swirly flip.

The uncharacteristic explosion of undiluted happiness was, officially now, a medical term in her book. The giddy, swirly flip. Who knew a man could come with a new vocabulary attached to him! She swallowed down her I’m-so-happy giggles and forced herself to focus.

“Mayonnaise and ketchup, you say? Well, normally I would agree that ’twould be a grand combination but we don’t have any bread.”

“Don’t you ever go shopping?”

“I’m not one to cast aspersions, but I do recall a certain someone moving in a week ago and all but eating me out of house and home.”

“Liar. There wasn’t any food here to eat when I moved in! I’ll tell you what I’m hungry for.” Santi popped the refrigerator door shut with his foot and tugged Saoirse’s fresh-from-the-shower body up against his. She drew swirls along the expanse of his chest with her index finger as she feigned considering whether or not to christen the kitchen while they were at it. They’d only done it twice. Once in the bedroom, a second time in the shower...third time even luckier?

“Have you ever had a Helibana?”

“What? Those sandwiches on the specials board down at Mad Ron’s?” She shook her head, just an itsy-bitsy disappointed that he hadn’t been hungry to ravish her. As if on cue, he dropped his lips to hers and drew from her a deeply fortifying kiss, their bodies connecting with erotic intent.

Okay...that would do. For now.

“Helibanas,” Santi said with a sigh when they finally managed to break away from one another. “My brothers and I used to eat them by the dozen.”

“I’ve seen two of your brothers.” Saoirse laughed softly at Santi’s faraway gaze. Food, it seemed, was his gateway to memory lane. “If your little brother is anything like the other two, I believe it. Do Valentinos only come in tall or extra tall?”

He didn’t answer and she watched as his eyes flicked up to the clock. Eight o’clock on Sunday night. She could practically see his mind zipping through a reel of decision making, his lips opening to begin a sentence, reconsider, then open again to start another. It had been a long day and as much as she’d like to jump back into bed, the man needed to be fed and watered.

“Santi, shall I put you out of your misery and drive down to Mad Ron’s and get you one of your cherished sandwiches?”

His grin widened. “Let’s both go. One definitely won’t be enough.”

He gave her cheek a noisy kiss and virtually bounded back to the bedroom, where their clothes had been dispensed with in ridiculously hasty fashion. Funny, she thought as she rounded the breakfast bar to follow him. This was the first time she’d wandered around her home—here or in Ireland—absolutely starkers and felt...beautiful. Her gaze shifted along to the bedroom door where she could hear jeans being tugged on and a song being half sung, half hummed. Was humming in Spanish even a thing?

She looked down at her body, the body she’d grown to despise over the last year, and gave it a grin. She felt good. She felt happy. About all of this. Nothing she wanted to put a name to. Not when it made her feel so click-her-heels-together gleeful. Maybe she’d hit the perfect combo. Great job, great city, gorgeous...whatever he was. Fake-fiancé with benefits?

This time around? No labels. Everything had been all but prescribed in her old life—and now? Santiago was single-handedly doing more than any vitamin or visit to the spa with a girlfriend could. For her heart, for her soul, for the giddy, swirly loop-the-loops her stomach had never done before...

What was it Santi always said?

Córcholis!

Goodness gracious, indeed. The man was all the medicine she needed. So...she scribbled a mental prescription to herself: No analyzing, no getting too, too close... What they had was perfect. Like it or not, it was go-with-the-flow-o’clock. Or—she grinned when Santi strode out of the bedroom, throwing her a sundress as he did—in tonight’s case, it was Mad Ron’s o’clock.