Kitabı oxu: «Billionaire, M.D. / Secrets of the Playboy's Bride»

She opened her eyes to another world.

A world filled with grainy grayness, like a TV channel with no transmission. But she didn’t care.

This world had an angel watching over her.

And not just any angel. An archangel. If archangels were the personification of beauty and power, were hewn out of living rock and bronze and unadulterated maleness.

His image floated in the jumble of light and shadow, making her wonder if this was a dream. Or a hallucination. Or worse.

Probably worse. In spite of the angel’s presence. Or because of it. Angels didn’t watch over anyone who wasn’t in some serious trouble, did they?

Would be a shame if he turned out to be the angel of death. Why make him so breathtaking if he was just a life-force extractor? He was way overqualified. Such overkill was uncalled for, if you asked her. Or maybe his extreme attractiveness was designed to make his targets willing to go where he led?

She’d be more than willing. If she could move.

She couldn’t. Gravity overwhelmed her, squashed her back onto something that suddenly felt like a bed of thorns. Every cell in her body started to squirm, every nerve firing impulses. But the cells had no connection to each other and the nerves were unable to muster one spark of voluntary movement. Distress bombarded her, noise rose in her ears, pounding, nauseating her….

His face came closer, stilled the vertigo, swept over the cacophony, stifling it.

Her turmoil subsided. She didn’t have to fight the pull of gravity, didn’t have to fear the paralysis.

He was here. And he’d take care of everything.

She had no idea how she knew that. But she knew it.

She knew him.

Not that she had any idea who he was.

But everything inside her told her that she was safe, that everything would be okay. Because he was here.

Now if only she could get any part of her to work.

She shouldn’t feel so inert upon waking up. But was she waking up? Or was she dreaming? That would explain the detachment between brain and body. That would explain him. He was too much to be real.

But she knew he was real. She just knew she wasn’t imaginative enough to have made him up.

She knew something else, too. This man was important. In general. And to her, he was more than important. Vital.

“Cybele?”

Was that his voice? That dark, fathomless caress? It so suited the sheer magnificence of his face….

“Can you hear me?”

Boy, could she. She more than heard him. His voice spread across her skin, her pores soaking it up as if they were starved for nourishment. It permeated her with its richness, its every inflection sparking an inert nerve, restarting a vital process, reviving her.

“Cybele, if you can hear me, if you’re awake this time, por favor, answer me.”

Por favor? Spanish? Figured. So that’s where the tinge of an accent came from—English intertwining with the sensuous music of the Latin tongue. She wanted to answer him. She wanted him to keep talking. Each syllable out of those works of art he had for lips, crooned in that intoxicating voice, was lulling her back to oblivion, this time a blissful one.

His face filled her field of vision. She could see every shard of gold among the emerald, moss and caramel that swirled into a luminous color she was certain she’d never seen except in his eyes.

She wanted to stab her fingers into the lushness of his raven mane, cup that leonine head, bring him even closer so she could pore over every strand’s hue and radiance. She wanted to trace each groove and slash and plane that painted his face in complexity, wanted to touch each radiation of character.

This was a face mapped with anxiety and responsibility and distinction. She wanted to absorb the first, ease the second and marvel at the third. She wanted those lips against her own, mastering, filling her with the tongue that wrapped around those words and created such magic with them.

She knew she shouldn’t be feeling anything like that now, that her body wasn’t up to her desires. Her body knew that, but didn’t acknowledge its incapacitation. It just needed him, close, all that maleness and bulk and power, all that tenderness and protection.

She craved this man. She’d always craved him.

“Cybele, por Dios, say something.”

It was the raggedness, tearing at the power of his voice, that stirred her out of her hypnosis, forced her vocal cords to tauten, propelled air out of her lungs through them to produce the sound he demanded so anxiously.

“I c-can hear you….”

That came out an almost soundless rasp. From the way he tilted his ear toward her mouth, it was clear he wasn’t sure whether she had produced sound or if he’d imagined it, whether it had been words or just a groan.

She tried again. “I’m a-awake …I think …I hope, a-and I h-hope you’re r-real….”

She couldn’t say anything more. Fire lanced in her throat, sealing it with a molten agony. She tried to cough up what felt like red-hot steel splinters before they burned through her larynx. Her sand-filled eyes gushed tears, ameliorating their burning dryness.

“Cybele!”

And he was all around her. He raised her, cradled her in the curve of a barricade of heat and support, seeping warmth into her frozen, quivering bones. She sank in his power, surrendered in relief as he cupped her head.

“Don’t try to talk anymore. You were intubated for long hours during your surgery and your larynx must be sore.”

Something cool touched her lips, then something warm and spicily fragrant lapped at their parched seam. Not his lips or his tongue. A glass and a liquid. She instinctively parted her lips and the contents rushed in a gentle flow, filling her mouth.

When she didn’t swallow, he angled her head more securely. “It’s a brew of anise and sage. It will soothe your throat.”

He’d anticipated her discomfort, had been ready with a remedy. But why was he explaining? She would swallow anything he gave her. If she could without feeling as if nails were being driven into her throat. But he wanted her to. She had to do what he wanted.

She squeezed her eyes against the pain, swallowed. The liquid slid through the rawness, its peppery tinge bringing more tears to her eyes. That lasted only seconds. The soreness subsided under the balmy taste and temperature.

She moaned with relief, feeling rejuvenated with every encouraging sweep of tenderness that his thumb brushed over her cheek as she finished the rest of the glass’s contents.

“Better now?”

The solicitude in his voice, in his eyes, thundered through her. She shuddered under the impact of her gratitude, her need to hide inside him, dissolve in his care. She tried to answer him, but this time it was emotion that clogged her throat.

But she had to express her thankfulness.

His face was so close, clenched with concern, more magnificent in proximity, a study of perfection in slashes of strength and carvings of character. But haggardness had sunk redness into his eyes, iron into his jaw, and the unkemptness of a few days’ growth of rough silk over that jaw and above those lips caused her heart to twist. The need to absorb his discomforts and worries as he had hers mushroomed inside her.

She turned her face, buried her lips into his hewn cheek. The bristle of his beard, the texture of his skin, the taste and scent of him tingled on her flesh, soaked into her senses. A gust of freshness and virility coursed through her, filled her lungs. His breath, rushing out on a ragged exhalation.

She opened her lips for more just as he jerked around to face her. It brought his lips brushing hers. And she knew.

This was the one thing she’d needed. This intimacy. With him.

Something she’d always had before and had missed? Something she’d had before and had lost? Something she’d never had and had long craved?

It didn’t matter. She had it now.

She glided her lips against his, the flood of sensuality and sweetness of her flesh sweeping against his sizzling through her.

Then her lips were cold and bereft, the enclosure of muscle and maleness around her gone.

She slumped against what she now realized was a bed.

Where had he gone? Had it all been a hallucination? A side effect of emerging from a coma?

Her eyes teared up again with the loss. She turned her swimming head, searching for him, terrified she’d find only emptiness.

Far from emptiness, she registered her surroundings for the first time, the most luxurious and spacious hospital suite she’d ever seen. But if he wasn’t there …

Her darting gaze and hurtling thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

He was there. Standing where he’d been when she’d first opened her eyes. But his image was distorted this time, turning him from an angel into a wrathful, inapproachable god who glowered down at her with disapproval.

She blinked once, then again, her heart shedding its sluggish rhythm for frantic pounding.

It was no use. His face remained cast in coldness. Instead of the angel she’d thought would do anything to protect her, this was the face of a man who’d stand aside and brood down at her as she drowned.

She stared up at him, something that felt as familiar as a second skin settling about her. Despondence.

It had been an illusion. Whatever she’d thought she’d seen on his face, whatever she’d felt flooding her in waves, had been her disorientation inventing what she wanted to see, to feel.

“It’s clear you can move your head. Can you move everything else? Are you in any pain? Blink if it’s too uncomfortable to talk. Once for yes, twice for no.”

Tears surged into her eyes again. She blinked erratically. A low rumble unfurled from his depths. Must be frustration with her inability to follow such a simple direction.

But she couldn’t help it. She now recognized his questions for what they were. Those asked of anyone whose consciousness had been compromised, as she was now certain hers had been. Ascertaining level of awareness, then sensory and motor functions, then pain level and site. But there was no personal worry behind the questions anymore, just clinical detachment.

She could barely breathe with missing his tenderness and anxiety for her well-being. Even if she’d imagined them.

“Cybele! Keep your eyes open, stay with me.”

The urgency in his voice snapped through her, made her struggle to obey him. “I c-can’t….”

He seemed to grow bigger, his hewn face etched with fierceness, frustration rippling off him. Then he exhaled. “Then just answer my questions, and I’ll leave you to rest.”

“I f-feel numb but.” She concentrated, sent signals to her toes. They wiggled. That meant everything in between them and her brain was in working order. “Seems …motor functions are …intact. Pain—not certain. I feel sore …like I’ve been flattened under a—a brick wall. B-but i-it’s not pain indicating damage.”

Just as the last word was out, all aches seemed to seep from every inch of her body to coalesce in one area. Her left arm.

In seconds she shot beyond the threshold of containable pain into brain-shredding agony.

It spilled from her lips on a butchered keen. “M-my arm.”

She could swear he didn’t move. But she found him beside her again, as if by magic, and cool relief splashed over the hot skewers of pain, putting them out.

She whimpered, realized what he’d done. She had an intravenous line in her right arm. He’d injected a drug—a narcotic analgesic from the instantaneous action—into the saline, flicked the drip to maximum.

“Are you still in pain?” She shook her head. He exhaled heavily. “That’s good enough for now. I’ll come back later….” He started to move away.

“No.” Her good hand shot out without conscious volition, fueled by the dread that he’d disappear and she’d never see him again. This felt instinctive, engrained, the desperation that she could lose him. Or was it the resignation that he was already lost to her?

Her hand tightened around his, as if stronger contact would let her read his mind, reanimate hers, remind her what he’d been to her.

He relinquished her gaze, his incandescent one sweeping downward to where her hand was gripping his. “Your reflexes, motor power and coordination seem to be back to normal. All very good signs you’re recovering better than my expectations.”

From the way he said that, she guessed his expectations had ranged from pessimistic to dismal. “That …should be …a relief.”

“Should be? You’re not glad you’re okay?”

“I am. I guess. Seems …I’m not …all there yet.” The one thing that made her feel anything definite was him. And he could have been a mile away with the distance he’d placed between them. “So …what happened…to me?”

The hand beneath hers lurched. “You don’t remember?” “It’s all a …a blank.”

His own gaze went blank for an endless moment. Then it gradually focused on her face, until she felt it was penetrating her, like an X-ray that would let him scan her, decipher her condition.

“You’re probably suffering from post-traumatic amnesia. It’s common to forget the traumatic episode.”

Spoken like a doctor. Everything he’d said and done so far had pointed to him being one.

Was that all he was to her? Her doctor? Was that how he knew her? He’d been her doctor before the “traumatic episode” and she’d had a crush on him? Or had he just read the vital statistics on her admission papers? Had she formed dependence on and fascination for him when she’d been drifting in and out of consciousness as he’d managed her condition? Had she kissed a man who was here only in his professional capacity? A man who could be in a relationship, maybe married with children?

The pain of her suppositions grew unbearable. And she just had to know. “Wh-who are you?”

The hand beneath hers went still. All of him seemed to become rock, as if her question had a Medusa effect.

When he finally spoke, his voice had dipped an octave lower, a bass, slowed-down rasp, “You don’t know me?”

“Sh-should I?” She squeezed her eyes shut as soon as the words were out. She’d just kissed him. And she was telling him that she had no idea who he was. “I know I should …b-but I can’t r-remember.”

Another protracted moment. Then he muttered, “You’ve forgotten me?”

She gaped up at him, shook her head, as if the movement would slot some comprehension into her mind. “Uh …I may have forgotten …how to speak, too. I had this …distinct belief language skills …are the last to go …e-even in total …memory loss. I thought …saying I can’t remember you …was the same as saying …I forgot who y-you are.”

His gaze lengthened until she thought he wouldn’t speak again. Ever. Then he let out a lung-deflating exhalation, raked his fingers through his gleaming wealth of hair. “I’m the one who’s finding it hard to articulate. Your language skills are in perfect condition. In fact, I’ve never heard you speak that much in one breath.”

“M-many fractured …breaths …you mean.”

He nodded, noting her difficulty, then shook his head, in wonder it seemed. “One word to one short sentence at a time was your norm.”

“So you. do know me. E-extensively, it seems.”

The wings of his thick eyebrows drew closer together. “I wouldn’t label my knowledge of you extensive.”

“I’d label it …en-encyclopedic.”

Another interminable silence. Then another darkest-bass murmur poured from him, thrumming every neuron in her hypersensitive nervous system. “It seems your memory deficit is the only thing that’s extensive here, Cybele.”

She knew she should be alarmed at this verdict. She wasn’t.

She sighed. “I love …the way …you say …my name.”

And if she’d thought he’d frozen before, it was nothing compared to the stillness that snared him now. It was as if time and space had hit a pause button and caught him in their stasis field.

Then, in such a controlled move, as if he were afraid she was made of soap bubbles and she’d burst if he as much as rattled the air around her, he sat down beside her on her pristine white bed.

His weight dipped the mattress, rolling her slightly toward him. The side of her thigh touched his through the thickness of his denim pants, through her own layers of covering. Something slid through the mass of aches that constituted her body, originating from somewhere deep within her, uncoiling through her gut to pool into her loins.

She was barely functioning, and he could wrench that kind of response from her every depleted cell? What would he do to her if she were in top condition? What had he done? Because she was certain this response to him wasn’t new.

“You really don’t remember who I am at all.”

“You really …are finding it hard …to get my words, aren’t you?” Her lips tugged. She was sure there was no humor in this situation, that when it all sank in she’d be horrified about her memory loss and what it might signify of neurological damage.

But for now, she just found it so endearing that this man, who she didn’t need memory to know was a powerhouse, was so shaken by the realization.

It also said he cared what happened to her, right? She could enjoy that belief now, even if it proved to be a delusion later.

She sighed again. “I thought it was clear …what I meant. At least it sounded …clear to me. But what would I know? When I called your …knowledge of me …encyclopedic, I should have added …compared to mine. I haven’t only …forgotten who you are, I have no idea …who I am.”

Two

Rodrigo adjusted the drip, looking anywhere but at Cybele.

Cybele. His forbidden fruit. His ultimate temptation.

The woman whose very existence had been like corrosive acid coursing through his arteries. The woman the memory of whom he would have given anything to wake up free of one day.

And it was she who’d woken up free of the memory of him.

It had been two days since she’d dropped this bomb on him.

He was still reverberating with the shock.

She’d told him she didn’t remember the existence that was the bane of his. She’d forgotten the very identity that had been behind the destruction of one life. And the poisoning of his own.

And he shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t have cared. Not beyond the care he offered his other patients. By all testimonies, he went above and beyond the demands of duty and the dictates of compassion for each one. He shouldn’t have neglected everyone and everything to remain by her side, to do everything for her when he could have delegated her care to the highly qualified professionals he’d painstakingly picked and trained, those he paid far more than money to keep doing the stellar job they did.

He hadn’t. During the three interminable days after her surgery until she woke up, whenever he’d told himself to tend to his other duties, he couldn’t. She’d been in danger, and it had been beyond him to leave her.

Her inert form, her closed eyes, had been what had ruled him. The drive to get her to move, to open her eyes and look at him with those endless inky skies that had been as inescapable as a black hole since they’d first had him in their focus, had been what motivated him.

Periodically she had opened them, but there had been no sight or comprehension in them, no trace of the woman who’d invaded and occupied his thoughts ever since he’d laid eyes on her.

Yet he’d prayed that, if she never came back, her body would keep on functioning, that she’d keep opening her eyes, even if it was just a mechanical movement with no sentience behind it.

Two days ago, she’d opened those eyes and the blankness had been replaced by the fog of confusion. His heart had nearly torn a hole in his ribs when coherence had dawned in her gaze. Then she’d looked at him and there had been more.

He should have known then that she was suffering from something he hadn’t factored in. Finding her distance and disdain replaced by warmth that had escalated to heat should have given him his first clue. Having her nuzzle him like a feline delighted at finding her owner, then that kiss that had rocked him to his foundations, should have clenched the diagnosis.

The Cybele Wilkinson he knew—his nemesis—would never have looked at or touched him that way if she were in her right mind. If she knew who he was.

It had still taken her saying that she wasn’t and didn’t to explain it all. And he’d thought that had explained it all.

But it was even worse. She didn’t remember herself.

There was still something far worse. The temptation not to fill in the spaces that had consumed her memories, left her mind a blank slate. A slate that could be inscribed with anything that didn’t mean they had to stay enemies.

But they had to. Now more than ever.

“I see you’re still not talking to me.”

Her voice, no longer raspy, but a smooth, rich, molten caress sweeping him from the inside out, forced him to turn his eyes to her against his will. “I’ve talked to you every time I came in.”

“Yeah, two sentences every two hours for the past two days.” She huffed something that bordered on amusement. “Feels like part of your medication regimen. Though the sparseness really contrasts with the intensiveness of your periodic checkups.”

He could have relegated those, which hadn’t needed to be so frequent, or so thorough, to nurses under his residents’ supervision. But he hadn’t let anyone come near her.

He turned his eyes away again, pretended to study her chart. “I’ve been giving you time to rest, for your throat to heal and for you to process the discovery of your amnesia.”

She fidgeted, dragging his gaze back to her. “My throat has been perfectly fine since yesterday. It’s a miracle what some soothing foods and drinks and talking to oneself can do. And I haven’t given my amnesia any thought. I know I should be alarmed, but I’m not. Maybe it’s a side effect of the trauma, and it will crash on me later as I get better. Or …I’m subconsciously relieved not to remember.”

His voice sounded alien as he pushed an answer past the brutal temptation, the guilt, the rage, at her, at himself, at the whole damned universe. “Why wouldn’t you want to remember?”

Her lips crooked. “If I knew, it wouldn’t be a subconscious wish, would it? Am I still making sense only in my own ears?”

He tore his gaze away from her lips, focused on her eyes, cleared thorns from his throat. “No. I am not having an easy time processing the fact that you have total memory loss.”

“And without memories, my imagination is having a field day thinking of outlandish explanations for why I’m not in a hurry to have my memories back. At least they seem outlandish. They might turn out to be the truth.”

“And what are those theories?”

“That I was a notorious criminal or a spy, someone with a dark and dangerous past and who’s in desperate need of a second chance, a clean slate. And now that it’s been given to me, I’d rather not remember the past—my own identity most of all.”

She struggled to sit up, groaning at the aches he knew her body had amassed. He tried to stop himself.

He failed. He lunged to help her, tried not to feel the supple heat of her flesh fill his hands as he pulled her up, adjusted her bed to a gentle slope. He struggled to ignore the gratitude filling her eyes, the softness of trust and willingness exhibited by every inch of her flesh. He roared inwardly at his senses as the feel and scent of her turned his insides to molten lava, his loins to rock. He gritted his teeth, made sure her intravenous line and the other leads monitoring her vital signs were secure.

Her hands joined his in checking her line and leads, an unconscious action born of engrained knowledge and ongoing application. He stepped away as if from a fiery pit.

She looked up at him, those royal blue eyes filling with a combo of confusion and hurt at his recoil. He took one more step back before he succumbed to the need to erase that crestfallen expression.

She lowered her eyes. “So—you’re a doctor. A surgeon?” He was, for once, grateful for her questions. “Neurosurgeon.”

She raised her eyes again. “And from the medical terms filling my mind and the knowledge of what the machines here are and what the values they’re displaying mean—I’m some kind of medical professional, too?”

“You were a senior trauma/reconstructive surgery resident.”

“Hmm, that blows my criminal or spy theories out of the water. But maybe I was in another form of trouble before I ended up here? A ruinous malpractice suit? Some catastrophic mistake that killed someone? Was I about to have my medical license revoked?”

“I never suspected you had this fertile an imagination.”

“Just trying to figure out why I’m almost relieved I don’t remember a thing. Was I perhaps running away to start again where no one knows me? Came here and …hey, where is here?”

He almost kept expecting her to say gotcha. But the notion of Cybele playing a trick on him was more inconceivable than her total memory loss. “This is my private medical center. It’s on the outskirts of Barcelona.”

“We’re in Spain?” Her eyes widened. His heart kicked. Even with her lids still swollen and her face bruised and pallid, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Okay, scratch that question. As far as my general knowledge can tell—and I feel it remains unaffected—there is no Barcelona anywhere else.”

“Not that I know of, no.”

“So—I sound American.”

“You are American.”

“And you’re Spanish?”

“Maybe to the world, which considers all of Spain one community and everyone who hails from there as Spanish. But I am Catalan. And though in Catalonia we have the same king, and a constitution that declares ‘the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation,’ we were the first to be recognized as a Nacionalidad and a Comunidad Autónoma or a distinct historical nationality and an autonomous community, along with the Basque Country and Galicia. There are now seventeen such communities that make up Spain, with our rights to self-government recognized by the constitution.”

“Fascinating. Sort of a federation, like the United States.”

“There are similarities, but it’s a different system. The regional governments are responsible for education, health, social services, culture, urban and rural development and, in some places, policing. But contrary to the States, Spain is described as a decentralized country, with central government spending estimated at less than twenty percent.” And he was damned if he knew why he was telling her all that, now of all times.

She chewed her lower lip that was once again the color of deep pink rose petals. His lips tingled with the memory of those lips, plucking at them, bathing them with intoxicating heat and moistness. “I knew some of that, but not as clearly as you’ve put it.”

He exhaled his aggravation at the disintegration of his sense and self-control. “Pardon the lesson. My fascination with the differences between the two systems comes from having both citizenships.”

“So you acquired the American citizenship?”

“Actually, I was born in the States, and acquired my Spanish citizenship after I earned my medical degree. Long story.”

“But you have an accent.”

He blinked his surprise at the implication of her words, something he’d never suspected. “I spent my first eight years in an exclusively Spanish-speaking community in the States and learned English only from then on. But I was under the impression I’d totally lost the accent.”

“Oh, no, you haven’t. And I hope you never lose it. It’s gorgeous.”

Everything inside him surged. This was something else he’d never considered. What she’d do to him if, instead of hostility, admiration and invitation spread on her face, invaded her body, if instead of bristling at the sight of him, she looked at him as if she’d like nothing more than to feast on him. As she was now.

What was going on here? How had memory loss changed her character and attitude so diametrically? Did that point to more neurological damage than he’d feared? Or was this what she was really like, what her reaction to him would have been if not for the events that had messed up their whole situation?

“So …what’s your name? What’s mine, too, apart from Cybele?”

“You’re Cybele Wilkinson. I’m Rodrigo.” “Just …Rodrigo?”

She used to call him Dr. Valderrama, and in situations requiring informality she’d avoided calling him anything at all. But now she pressed back into her pillows, let his name melt on her tongue as if it were the darkest, richest chocolate. He felt her contented purr cascade down his body, caress his aching hardness….

This was unbelievable. That she could do this to him now. Or at all. It was worse than unbelievable. It was unacceptable.

He shredded his response. “Rodrigo Edmundo Arrellano i Bazán Valderrama i de Urquiza.”

Her eyes widened a fraction more with each surname. Then a huff that bordered on a giggle escaped her. “I did ask.”

His lips twisted. “That’s an excerpt of my names, actually. I can rattle off over forty more surnames.”

She giggled for real this time. “That’s a family tree going back to the Spanish Inquisition.”

“The Catalan, and the Spanish in general, take family trees very seriously. Because both maternal and paternal ancestors are mentioned, each name makes such a list. The Catalan also put i or and between surnames.”

“And do I have more than the measly Wilkinson?”

“All I know is that your father’s name was Cedric.”

“Was? H-he’s dead?”

“Since you were six or seven, I believe.”

She seemed to have trouble swallowing again. He had to fist his hands against the need to rush to her side again.

His heart still hammered in protest against his restraint when she finally whispered, “Do I have a mother? A family?”

“Your mother remarried and you have four half siblings. Three brothers and one sister. They all live in New York City.”

“D-do they know what happened to me?”

“I did inform them. Yesterday.” He hadn’t even thought of doing so until his head nurse had stressed the necessity of alerting her next of kin. For the seventh time. He hadn’t even registered the six previous times she had mentioned it. He waited for her next logical question. If they were on their way here to claim responsibility for her.

His gut tightened. Even with all he had against her, not the least of which was the reaction she wrenched from him, he hated to have to answer that question. To do so, he’d have to tell her that her family’s response to her danger had been so offhand, he’d ended the phone call with her mother on a barked, “Don’t bother explaining your situation to me, Mrs. Doherty. I’m sure you’d be of more use at your husband’s business dinner than you would be at Cybele’s bedside.”

But her next question did not follow a logical progression. Just as this whole conversation, which she’d steered, hadn’t. “So …what happened to me?”

And this was a question he wanted to avoid as fiercely.

No way to do that now that she’d asked so directly. He exhaled. “You were in a plane crash.”

A gasp tore out of her. “I just knew I was in an accident, that I wasn’t attacked or anything, but I thought it was an MVA or something. But …a plane crash?” She seemed to struggle with air that had gone thick, lodging in her lungs. He rocked on his heels with the effort not to rush to her with an oxygen mask and soothing hands. “Were there many injured o-or worse?”

Dios. She really remembered nothing. And he was the one who had to tell her. Everything. “It was a small plane. Seated four. There were only …two onboard this time.”

“Me and the pilot? I might not remember anything, but I just know I can’t fly a plane, small or otherwise.”

This was getting worse and worse. He didn’t want to answer her. He didn’t want to relive the three days before she’d woken up, that had gouged their scars in his psyche and soul.

He could pretend he had a surgery, escape her interrogation.

He couldn’t. Escape. Stop himself from answering her. “He was flying the plane, yes.” “Is—is he okay, too?”

Rodrigo gritted his teeth against the blast of pain that detonated behind his sternum. “He’s dead.”

“Oh, God ….” Her tears brimmed again and he couldn’t help himself anymore. He closed the distance he’d put between them, stilled the tremors of her hand with both of his. “D-did he die on impact?”

He debated telling her that he had. He could see survivor’s guilt mushrooming in her eyes. What purpose did it serve to tell her the truth but make her more miserable?

But then he always told his patients the truth. Sooner or later that always proved the best course of action.

He inhaled. “He died on the table after a six-hour surgery.”

During those hours, he’d wrestled with death, gaining an inch to lose two to its macabre pull, knowing that it would win the tug-of-war. But what had wrecked his sanity had been knowing that while he fought this losing battle, Cybele had been lying in his ER tended to by others.

Guilt had eaten through him. Triage had dictated he take care of her first, the one likely to survive. But he couldn’t have let Mel go without a fight. It had been an impossible choice. Emotionally, professionally, morally. He’d gone mad thinking she’d die or suffer irreversible damage because he’d made the wrong one.

Then he’d lost the fight for Mel’s life among colleagues’ proclamations that it had been a miracle he’d even kept him alive for hours when everyone had given up on him at the accident scene.

He’d rushed to her, knowing that while he’d exercised the ultimate futility on Mel, her condition had worsened. Terror of losing her, too, had been the one thing giving him continued access to what everyone extolled as his vast medical knowledge and surgical expertise.

“Tell me, please. The details of his injuries.”

He didn’t want to tell her how terrible it had all been.

But he had to. He inhaled a stream of what felt like aerosolized acid, then told her.

Her tears flowed steadily over a face gone numb with horror throughout his chilling report.

She finally whispered, “How did the accident happen?”

He needed this conversation to be over. He gritted his teeth. “That is one thing only you can know for sure. And it’ll probably be the last memory to return. The crash site and plane were analyzed for possible whys and hows. The plane shows no signs of malfunction and there were no distress transmissions prior to the crash.”

“So the pilot just lost control of the plane?”

“It would appear so.”

She digested this for a moment. “What about my injuries?”

“You should only concern yourself now with recuperating.”

“But I need to know a history of my injuries, their progression and management, to chart my recuperation.”

He grudgingly conceded her logic. “On site, you were unconscious. You had a severely bleeding scalp wound and bruising all over your body. But your severest injury was comminuted fractures of your left ulna and radius.”

She winced as she looked down on her splinted arm. “What was my Glasgow Coma Scale scoring?”

“Eleven. Best eye response was three, with your eyes opening only in response to speech. Best verbal response was four, with your speech ranging from random words to confused responses. Best motor function was four with flexion withdrawal response to pain. By the time I operated on you, your GCS had plunged to five.”

“Ouch. I was heading for decorticate coma. Did I have intracranial hemorrhage?”

He gave a difficult nod. “It must have been a slow leak. Your initial CTs and MRIs revealed nothing but slight brain edema, accounting for your depressed consciousness. But during the other surgery, I was informed of your deteriorating neurological status, and new tests showed a steadily accumulating subdural hematoma.”

“You didn’t shave my hair evacuating it.”

“No need. I operated via a new minimally invasive technique I’ve developed.”

She gaped at him. “You’ve developed a new surgical technique? Excuse me while my mind, tattered as it is, barrels in awe.”

He grunted something dismissive. She eyed him with a wonder that seemed only to rise at his discomfort. Just as he almost growled stop it, she raised one beautifully dense and dark eyebrow at him. “I trust I wasn’t the guinea pig for said technique?”

Cybele gazed up at Rodrigo, a smile hovering on her lips.

His own lips tightened. “You’re fine, aren’t you?” “If you consider having to get my life story from you as fine.”

The spectacular wings of his eyebrows snapped together. That wasn’t annoyance or affront. That was mortification. Pain, even.

Words couldn’t spill fast enough from her battered brain to her lips. “God, that was such a lame joke. Just shows I’m in no condition to know how or when to make one. I owe you my life.”

“You owe me nothing. I was doing my job. And I didn’t even do it well. I’m responsible for your current condition. It’s my failure to manage you first that led to the deepening of the insult to your brai—”

“The pilot’s worst injuries were neurological.” She cut him short. It physically hurt to see the self-blame eating at him.

“Yes, but that had nothing to do with my decision—”

“And I bet you’re the best neurosurgeon on the continent.”

“I don’t know about that, but being the most qualified one on hand didn’t mea—”

“It did mean you had to take care of him yourself. And my initial condition misled you into believing my case wasn’t urgent. You did the right thing. You fought for this man as he deserved to be fought for. And then you fought for me. And you saved me. And then, I’m certain my condition is temporary.”

“We have no way of knowing that. Having total memory loss with the retention of all faculties of language and logic and knowledge and no problem in accumulating new memories is a very atypical form of amnesia. It might never resolve fully.”

“Would that be a bad thing, in your opinion? If the idea of regaining my memories is almost…distressing, maybe my life was so bad, I’m better off not remembering it?”

He seemed at a loss for words. Then he finally found some. “I am not in a position to know the answer to that. But I am in a position to know that memory loss is a neurological deficit, and it’s my calling to fix those. I can’t under any circumstances wish that this wouldn’t resolve. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to tend to my other patients. I’ll be back every three hours to check on you.”

With a curt nod, he turned and left her, exiting the huge, opulent suite in strides loaded with tense grace.

She wanted to run after him, beg him to come back.

What could possibly explain all this turmoil and her severe attraction to him? Had they been lovers, married even, and they’d separated, or maybe divorced… ?

She suddenly lurched as if from the blow of an ax as a memory lodged in her brain. No …a knowledge.

She was married.

And it was certainly not to Rodrigo.