Emergency Marriage

“Why did you stop bickering with me?” One sable eyebrow disappeared in mockery beneath her bandages. “Stymied?”

“I don’t ‘bicker’. And I didn’t know there was a contest going on.”

“No? Then why do I have the distinct feeling that you’ve won again?”

“Por Dios! Won what? What is there to win?”

“The last word, as usual. You’re a control freak, aren’t you, Salazar?”

He closed his eyes, begging for control. This couldn’t be happening to him. Every time she called him Salazar in those cool, low velvet tones, lust kicked hard in his loins. Just the memory of her crying out his name when she’d thought him injured—the fantasy of her crying it out, again and again, in another form of desperation…

Cool it, Salazar. No time to discover you’re having an early mid-life crisis rolled in with a second adolescence. This is probably the one woman on earth who should be off limits.

He ventured a look at her. Her uncanny eyes were gleaming their challenge. He groaned. “I guess right now, if I say it’s for your own good, you’d send my head rolling.”

“Don’t tempt me. I don’t have enough energy to knock your head off.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“Go to the head of the class.”

“Well, if you want to bawl me out, you’ll have to stand in line.”

That stopped her, deflating her unnatural animation. She slumped down in her seat and averted her face.

“See what I mean? The last word. You just have to have it. I didn’t think you’d stoop to spouting nonsense to score it, though.”

“It’s not nonsense. You can’t even begin to understand how angry I am at myself. I failed Diego and he died. La Clínica is still lacking in critical care, and it’s my responsibility. It’s also my responsibility you walked out today. I just see that beating myself up over mistakes and oversights is futile and counter-productive at this point. I’ll just have to live with it. At least I’m alive—and strong and healthy as an ox.”

“Don’t! Patronize me, ignore me, or even overrule me like you’ve been doing so far. But don’t—don’t you just sit there and tell me you’re feeling guilty. I don’t want to hear about it.”

So she was feeling guilty, too! But was it just a natural reaction to surviving an accident that had killed another, or was there more to it? Had she played a more active role in that accident, as he’d accused her? Shouldn’t she be feeling more than guilt, with her lover dead? Though Diego had said he’d broken up with her before the accident. Was that why she wasn’t grieving for him?

So many questions, all answers less than pretty. Not that he cared. He just wanted to slam on the brakes and haul her into his arms, comfort her.

Yeah, sure. Her only comfort right now would probably come from giving him a black eye!

He wrestled the urge down, adding it under an airtight lid to every other wild desire she provoked in him. “Try to sleep, Laura. There’s still a long way ahead.”

He watched her eyes dull with resignation, watched her turn her head on the headrest and fall silent.

He’d said there was a long way ahead.

Did she know how long yet?

* * *

Laura jerked awake to a jarring lurch. Aggravation rose inside her. Just as she’d managed to doze off, too, with the jostling motion of the van and Armando’s nerve-racking presence beside her!

But he was no longer beside her. He was beneath her. At least his lap was, his hot, hard thighs cushioning her head and shoulders, her upper torso hanging in the air in the space between their seats. Her lips and nose were buried in his abdomen’s steel-ridged muscles, in his virile-scented, naked flesh.

Breath congealed in her throat, the urge to jackknife up and away from the heart-stopping contact overwhelming. She twitched and the powerful hand securing her in place tightened around her buttock. A whimper escaped her swollen lips.

He shifted to accommodate her more and her right breast molded against his splayed thigh. As for where the back of her head was pressing…

She pushed at him and he immediately removed his arm.

“You’re awake.”

“How perceptive.” She forced herself to sit up in a natural, unhurried movement. “And you’re naked!”

“I’m not.”

Oh, no? Then she must have developed X-ray vision, if she could see the daunting expanse and definition of his exposed chest and abdomen. She’d known he was first and foremost a thoroughly physical being, tough, vigorous, carnal. Those were the first things anyone noticed about Armando Salazar. She hadn’t needed to see him naked to figure that out. But now he was…

“I’m half-naked,” he concluded lightly.

And I’m half out of my mind, if I’m reacting to you this way. Out loud she said, “I’m supposed to thank you for keeping your pants on?”

“You should.” His lazy nod and the easy bulge of his heavy muscles as he negotiated another steep turn set off a whistling in her ears, a tightness inside her head. What was wrong with her? This was her nemesis! Her blood boiled near him with anger and frustration, nothing else. Maybe she was concussed. That would explain all those ridiculous reactions

“They stayed on only for your modesty’s sake.”

A belated realization hit her. “Oh, the tear gas…”

It must have dissolved in the rain, soaked his clothes. The longer they remained on him, the worse the injury he’d sustain, up to second-degree burns. Armed with the professional incentive, she took a closer look at his body and saw how flushed his polished bronze skin was. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re erythematous! What ridiculous modesty. Take them off immediately.”

“Trust me, I can’t.”

Did that mean he wasn’t wearing—? “Oh!”

“Oh is right. La Clínica’s near, anyway.”

Recovering quickly, she asked, “Until then, shall I wash you down with a hypochlorite solution to neutralize the agent? Is it back there?”

“Hypochlorite is contra-indicated, Laura. It’s good for other sorts of chemical contamination, but with CS or tear gas it only exacerbates the reaction.”

“Oh!” She didn’t know that. A good thing she wasn’t ready with a bottle of the stuff. She bounced back with another suggestion. “What about another alkaline solution?”

“The one effective solution to relieve symptoms and hydrolyze the agent is a mix of sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate and benzalkonium chloride. Which I don’t have! Another colossal oversight, going into a riot zone without it.”

“You couldn’t have known what to expect.”

“I should have been prepared. I wasn’t. If I suffer burns, it will teach me a good lesson.”

“Aren’t you being too melodramatic, suffering in punishment for a simple omission?”

“Says the woman who marched into the middle of a riot and nearly got trampled to death!”

“OK. Touché. But have you at least washed yourself off?”

“I did, even though that also makes it worse, acting like the rain did, since it wasn’t a real hosing down. I only did it to decontaminate my skin just enough for when you slept on my lap.”

Sensations and flashbacks burned their way up to her skin in a flush worse than his chemical burn. “You should’ve kept me awake.”

“Why? You needed the rest.”

“Well, I don’t feel rested. I feel bent out of shape, permanently.”

“And if I’d kept you awake, I would have been heartless and a nuisance.”

“You could have left me sleeping in my seat with my seat belt on!”

“And have it pressing on the injuries it caused in the accident? My only other option was to throw you on the van’s floor next to our patient. This archaic van doesn’t have a secondary stretcher and—”

“OK, stop. You have it.”

“Have what?”

“The last word.”

Her answer was a long, sideways look that had her heart trying to hide in her gut. What was that in his eyes?

She didn’t want to know.

She turned blind eyes away, searching for something to distract her. The sight of La Clínica De La Communidad hovering on the horizon wasn’t a good choice.

Although her experience here had been a crushing disappointment on all fronts, the ‘what if’ factor was overpowering. She could have done a lot of good here. She could have found purpose and happiness. She’d found nothing but every sort of letdown.

Armando had bought this strategically situated, sprawling establishment from its owners after the collapse, giving them desperately needed cash for a dilapidated, money-pit mansion, many annexed buildings and the surrounding land. It had taken two years to renovate and equip it, to become a gravely needed and pioneering medical facility serving a hundred-mile radius, plus a far wider reach through its flying doctors service. Besides the usual medical services, La Clínica provided emergency surgical intervention to one quarter of the vast pampas region. And now through GAO’s resources it was also reaching out to the wilderness of Patagonia and developing intensive care, research, education and rehabilitation facilities.

It was the dream of every doctor come true. Practicing medicine on their own terms, really making a difference, operating within a very elastic, responsive medium. A medical establishment based on the community’s best interests and backed by its wholehearted support, not under governmental control, bound by decaying medical systems’ undiscriminating rules or insurance’s stifling restrictions.

Armando brought the car to a halt in the main building’s emergency driveway, then turned to her. “Right. Back to bed until I say it’s OK for you to leave it.”

By the time his efficient emergency team had unloaded their patient, he was carrying her to a wheelchair, disregarding her protests.

Once inside, he ran to discard his contaminated clothes and apply first aid to his inflamed skin, leaving her in her GAO team’s care, to suffer their deluge of questions. The doctor and two nurses who’d accompanied her from the US no longer knew what they were doing here and were constantly looking to her for answers and reassurance until she wanted to scream, Stop asking me. I’m no longer in charge of anything. Ask the magnificent Dr. Salazar!

She had to get away from here. Away from him. And if today had gone to plan she would have been packing now, not back at La Clínica and under his thumb.

She got up from the wheelchair, waving away assistance from her team. She’d walk back to her cell under her own steam.

On her way there, she couldn’t help wincing again at the state of the building. The miserable veneer, the decaying columns and arches, the cracked walls, the stained, lusterless marble floors, all bore witness to Armando’s refusal to restore anything that wasn’t vital to the building’s integrity and functionality. Hard to believe this place housed first-rate wards and state-of-the-art medical facilities. But it still needed so much more to realize its potential. So much more…

A nurse caught her eye, started to talk. Laura apologized for not stopping and kept her eyes glued to the main corridor’s floor from then on, feeling everybody’s curious glances prickling down her back. Suddenly, large sneakered feet planted themselves in her line of vision. No need to follow the endless denim-clad limbs up to know who it was.

“If you want to kill yourself, there are much quicker ways.”

Armando didn’t wait for a comeback, simply bent and carried her to the suite she’d been occupying since he’d let her out of Intensive Care. The moment he closed the door, she struggled out of his arms and onto her feet.

“I’m leaving, Salazar—now, not later.” Her voice was unsteady, out of control. “And not only La Clínica but Argentina. That’s why I was going to GAO’s liaison office today. To arrange for my departure and replacement. I’ll check into a hospital as soon as I arrive in the States—”

He cut off her agitated words. “You’re not leaving. Not now and not when you’re fully healed either!”

What? His next words made even less sense.

“You’re staying here in Argentina, where I can make sure you and the baby are OK.”

“What are you talking about? What baby?”

“Yours and Diego’s. You do realize you’re pregnant?”

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