He kept his voice firm and no-nonsense while working not to be outright cruel. But she needed to understand there could be nothing more.
Nancy’s face froze, her grin turning brittle. “You’re right. I apologize for wanting to send you off on a nicer note.” Her icy smile included Lilah now. “Have a safe business trip.”
Tomato umbrella swooping up and sending a fresh shower of water outward, Nancy raced out into the parking lot toward her hatchback. Regret bit at him that he hadn’t handled things better with her the day before. He hadn’t meant to be a coldhearted bastard, but…damn. Maybe he should have thought of that before they’d dated.
Annoyed with himself and with Nancy, Carlos watched to make sure she got into her car and left. Once her car cleared the parking lot, he turned to Lilah again.
Frowning, she swept water from her wool coat and the hem of her cashmere dress. “Have many more groupies waiting to waylay us before we board?”
Instinctively, he reached for his phone. “I’m more concerned with how she found out we’re here and how much more she knows about our travel plans.”
A call to his family’s security team was in order. As much as he wanted to launch his quest to seduce Lilah, nothing could take precedence over her safety. Once they were secured on the plane, he would turn his attention to discovering how Nancy Wolcott unearthed his travel itinerary and just how much she knew.
Jet engines humming softly, Lilah unbuckled from her seat for a better view out the window at the night sky. Anything to distract her from what she really wanted to study. Carlos, reclined and sleeping an arm stretch away, kept stealing her attention.
Before they’d even left the ground, he’d been working his phone assigning some security team—apparently he kept one on retainer?—to figure out how Nancy had tracked them to the airport. A security team, for crying out loud. Once his “people” had been given their marching orders, Carlos had fallen asleep in a blink, a skill he’d picked up catching catnaps during long shifts at the hospital.
How could he look so familiar but seem so different out of their medical realm? She wasn’t a millionaire, but she was financially secure in her own right. She’d also grown up with her fair share of glitz due to her father’s connections to the Hollywood scene—although he’d been known to live beyond his means, which led to a feast-and-famine lifestyle for his family.
Still, even her own experience of brushing elbows with the rich and famous hadn’t come close to the scope of influence she was only just beginning to see Carlos wielded. While she couldn’t deny Carlos attracted her physically, she refused to be swayed by the wealth of his world of secretive itineraries, plush limousines and private jets. And a very determined female radiologist whose behavior bordered on stalking.
Lilah gripped the leather armrests tighter. Seeing Nancy Wolcott waiting and waving had provided a hefty reminder for how little she knew about Carlos. And how important it was to gauge her moves carefully.
She looked away from the starkly handsome man snoozing across from her and turned her attention to the sleeping world of tiny lights below. If only things were as straightforward as they’d once been with Carlos, just a few shorts months ago before that fateful Christmas fundraiser. Back during a time when she’d been able to rein in her wayward attraction to the brooding surgeon who haunted her dreams.
Carlos didn’t believe dreams came only in black-and-white. His always felt far more vivid than that as the real world mixed with the slumber sphere. Perhaps because he’d slept lightly for as long as he could remember.
As a child, he’d been taught to stay on guard against threats to him as heir to the throne. Then he’d been denied REM sleep by the claws of pain recovering from the shooting. And, finally, he’d needed to stay on alert for his patients.
Right now, his dream mixed with the recycled plane oxygen blending the scent of Lilah with some kind of pine air freshener…taking him back to that night at the hospital fundraiser nearly three months ago….
Lighted pine trees decorating the sprawling hospital conference room, Carlos stirred his sparkling water, refusing anything stronger until the fundraiser finished. And then, just call him Scrooge, because all bets were off.
Christmas meant celebrations and special family moments to most people. Carlos preferred a bottle of memory-numbing bourbon to get through the holidays.
But first, he had to fulfill work obligations.
He tugged at his tux tie absently. He hated the damn thing, but his presence was required at the formal event. Wealthy contributors liked to rub elbows with the doctors who used their money to save lives.
Apparently he was the celebrity of the hour since news of his Medina heritage had broken. He would give over his entire inheritance if it would get him out of this diamond-studded circus. Even his family’s fortune wouldn’t be enough for him to bid farewell to fundraiser dog and pony shows.
His back hurt like hell after a relentless day of surgery after surgery. Seeing Lilah offered the first distraction in an otherwise crappy day. Her auburn hair was swept up in a bundle of loose curls rather than her regular tight twist. During office hours she wore button-up power suits, linen and layers that left him imagining peeling each piece off. Now, however, there was much more of her creamy skin on display. Not in an overt way, but enough that his fingers curled in his pockets from restraint.
The gold silk gown wrapped around her curves, giving her a Grecian goddess appeal. Beaded details glinted from the chandelier’s light. The luminescent glow of her bared shoulders, however, outshone everything else.
She smiled at him, leaned toward the person she’d been speaking to—excusing herself?—and walked toward him. Silky fabric swirled around her legs with each graceful glide.
For four years he’d resisted the attraction. Persistent. Ever present. Increasingly painful appeal.
Tonight, with memories of that final, ill-fated Christmas in San Rinaldo pounding in his head like the unrelenting bullets that had killed his mother, his ears ringing, ringing, ringing, he didn’t have the willpower to resist….
Five
The airplane phone rang and rang and rang, jarring Lilah from her dazed stare out the window at the distant mountain peaks below. She started to walk across to answer the phone before the jangling disturbed Carlos’s catnap, but he bolted upright in the reclined lounger and snagged the receiver.
“Speak,” he barked into the phone in his normal gruff fashion.