His back twinged with a reminder of just how long he’d spent cleaning up bone fragments along the child’s spine, of working to relieve pressure, doing all he could to ensure she had as much use of her arms as possible even though she would almost certainly never walk again. Entering his office, he braced a hand on the door frame, then the sofa, using walls and furniture to steady himself at the end of a long day. His uneven gait contrasted with the efficient click of Lilah’s killer red heels.
Skimming her fingers along a row of leather-bound medical journals, she stopped in front of a framed oil painting by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, a gift from his middle brother, Duarte. The canvas came from Bastida’s Sad Inheritance preparatory pieces, a painting of crippled children bathing in healing waters.
No matter how much distance Carlos put between himself and his homeland, influences from his heritage called to him. He couldn’t escape the reality of being the oldest son of deposed King Enrique Medina from San Rinaldo, a small island country off the coast of Spain. He couldn’t ignore or forget how his father had fled with his family, relocating to live anonymously off the coast of Florida for decades.
Only recently had the press picked up the Medina trail. Carlos and his two brothers, all now adults, lived in different locations across the United States. Until four months ago, they’d even managed to fly under the radar with assumed names.
For most of his adult life he’d been known as Carlos Santiago. Yet in the stroke of a media pen’s exposé, it became impossible for people to think of him as anything other than Carlos Medina, heir to a defunct monarchy.
Lilah was the one person who hadn’t treated him differently after the news had broken about his Medina heritage. She hadn’t been impressed or even angry over his years of deception. She understood his reasons for keeping his identity hidden.
The only question she’d asked after the story broke? As the hospital’s administrator, she’d requested verification that all his medical credentials were valid and in order, given his assumed name.
She was a logical woman to the end.
So what the hell made a sensible person like Lilah decide to waltz into the men’s locker room and confront him in the shower? A confrontation that still had him imagining scenarios where he pulled her under the spray with him to peel off every stitch of her clothing until she was as naked and hungry as him.
He closed the door to his office, sealing them inside the sparse space. He kept his world streamlined, only bare essential leather furniture, the painting from his brother and his books.
Leaning back against the wall to take pressure off his aching spine, he faced Lilah for the first time since she’d stared him down through a thin veil of mist. Her back was still straight but her face was pale. Very pale.
Worry whispered over him as his doctor senses blared an alert. She was obviously under great stress. Only extreme measures would have driven her to act so rashly. Normally, she calmly presented her case and made her move, with a legal eagle precision that served to make her a top-notch lawyer with a fast-track start to a brilliant career. He should have realized that. He mentally kicked himself for assuming her confrontation had something to do with their encounter two and a half months ago.
Carlos studied her green eyes, noting the dark circles beneath. “Is it bad news about funding for the new rehab wing?”
“This isn’t about work….” She hesitated, chewing the red lipstick from her kissably full mouth.
Concern scratched deeper. He pushed away from the door toward her, drawn by threads of their old friendship and the scent of her perfume. If he whispered in her ear again as he had earlier, he would smell a hint of her body wash along her neck. Not a heavy perfume by any means given the hospital’s fairly strict rules about scented lotions, soaps and colognes. Just enough pure Lilah to send his heart pumping faster.
Her eyes tracked him and each uneven step, his limp aggravated by the hours he’d spent operating today. Long ago, he’d gotten over any self-consciousness. Life held much more important issues and concerns than whether people noticed the impairment or pitied him. He knew he was damn lucky to be walking at all.
He closed the space between them. “Then what’s so important that you felt the need to cause a scene big enough to feed hospital cafeteria gossip for at least a month?”
“It’s about what happened after the Christmas fundraiser.”
He stopped short. With a few simple words, she filled the room with memories of the night they’d stumbled back here, into his office, then finished the night at his house because it was closer than her condo. The memories were too vivid, so close on the heels of her bold move striding into the shower. Good thing she’d passed him the towel so fast because he’d been damn close to presenting her with an unmistakable visual on how much she still moved him. Turning his back to her under the pretense of gathering his soap had offered him a few seconds to scavenge control of his careening libido.
He’d been reckless enough to cave into the temptation to sleep with her once before. Every day since then, he’d been tormented by reliving that night and knowing just how easy it would be to succumb to temptation again. Still feeling the near-tangible caress of her eyes on him from earlier, he tried to remember all the reasons he should keep his hands off her.
Somehow his finger landed on the lone curl teasing around the shell-like curve of her ear. The softness of her skin, the silky texture of her hair wrapping around his touch as if drawing him closer, each nuance of Lilah tapped aside the paper-thin remains of his restraint.
Awareness glinted in her jewel tone eyes a second before he cupped the back of her neck and stepped toward her, until God help him, every curve of her body pressed to him in a perfect fit. The give of her br**sts, the cradle of her hips, the familiar feel of her broadsided his senses with memories of their night together.
“Carlos,” she whispered, her palms flat against his chest, pressing, “you’re so damn arrogant.”
But she swayed into him anyway. His brain shut down a second before he sealed his mouth to hers.
Need knifed through him with surgical precision, sharp and inescapable. She tensed slightly before gripping the front of his scrubs, her fists tight, insistent and more than a little angry as she hauled him closer. The taste of her, the sweep of her tongue meeting his stroke for stroke reminded him of how quickly they could combust. Keeping his distance the past weeks had been necessary and futile all at once.