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The first shock produced no change in heart rhythm.
“Increase the charge,” he ordered.
A second then a third shock still produced no effect. And three shocks were the limit at a time.
“Back to CPR, then,” Cassandra said. “Time for venous access and intubation.”
“Yes.” He made way for the female paramedic to take over cardiac compressions. “Which do you want to handle?”
She didn’t relish the idea of coming near the boy’s mouth again. “I’ll take venous access.”
He held her eye for a second, jolting her yet again. He understood her reluctance—sympathized? With a nod, he turned to the other paramedic. “No. 2 Miller laryngoscope, straight blade, 4.5 endotracheal tube, uncuffed.”
Whoa! Not just a doctor. A specialist of some sort. An anesthetist maybe? Whatever, the man was just too impressive altogether...
Drool over him later. Get a line into that little boy.
He finished the intubation, slipped the ETT in place, tested its correct placement and decompressed the stomach to further aid ventilation. Everything done with staggering speed and precision. It didn’t make Cassandra feel any better about her struggle to locate a vein.
“No luck?”
She bristled at his question, brought the spurt of irritation under control and made one last attempt. No go.
“Let me do that.” He reached out to take the cannula out of her hands.
She turned on him. “You got a way to inflate his collapsed veins?” His eyebrows rose at her vehemence, his hands, too, in a conciliatory gesture. “You go ahead, then,” she muttered. “Administer epinephrine though the ETT. I’ll go for the intraosseous route.”
That hard, hot energy he emitted spiked, the explicit awareness in his eyes back in full force. Still, when he talked, he was the personification of professionalism. “0.2 mg/kg epinephrine, 1/1000 solution,” he ordered the paramedic.
Her heat rose. Her concern, too. “0.1 mg/kg is the maximum initial dose via ETT!”
“No.”
“Just no?”
“Yes.”
Overconfident, imperious. She hated that in men.
“I assume you do know what you’re doing?”
“I do.”
And she really believed he did. It was probably why overconfident imperiousness looked good on him.
She turned to the paramedic. “You have an intraosseous kit?”
“No, but we have spinal needles,” the paramedic said.
“Close enough. Get me an 18-gauge needle.” The efficient man handed it to her in two seconds flat. “Ready Ringer’s lactate solution, two bags, and giving sets while I do this.”
She located the point of insertion in the boy’s tibia, an inch above the medial malleolus in his foot, inserted the needle perpendicular to the bone with a screwing motion until it ‘gave’ when she entered the marrow cavity. A centimeter in, she stopped, removed the needle, leaving the catheter in. In seconds she had her line secure and fluids pumping into the inert boy.
“Good job. No extravasation?” her resuscitation partner asked, checking whether any fluids were leaking out of the bone. She shook her head and he said, “Better deliver the subsequent doses of epinephrine via this route, then.”
They did that and after a minute he sighed. “There’s a slight change in rhythm—no palpable pulse, though. We’ll have to shock him again.”
They went through the three-shock routine again. With the last shock, the cardiac monitor blipped the hoped-for change.
“He’s back.” The man’s expression didn’t reflect the relief in his voice. Her anxious eyes jerked to the cardiac monitor to make sure. “Sinus rhythm, 80 beats per minute. A bit slow, but we have him back.” He reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder. “Good work.”
Relief and pleasure at his praise, at his touch, melted her tense face into a wobbly smile. One he didn’t return, the intensity back instead. His eyes went to her lips, rested there until they began to swell, open—then he turned to the crowd and said something in Spanish. Something about la madre. Telling them to allow the mother back? Cassandra had forgotten all about her. He hadn’t. Nice...
Then everything crashed back on her after the vacuum in which she’d been suspended, with only the man and the boy for company. Even the paramedics had been faceless tools of assistance. Now everything seemed to zoom into existence once again. Bystanders. The wailing mother. Then a second set of medical personnel materialized on the scene.
The man jumped to his feet, exchanged rapid conversation with one of them, and suddenly she was shoved to the side. The frantic mother hurled herself at her toddler, people again restrained her, the newcomers descended on the scene and implemented the protocols of moving a critically injured victim with total efficiency.
Then just as suddenly, the whole crisis receded, leaving her behind.
He was leaving her behind!
He was walking away with a man who probably was the pediatric intensivist who was taking over the case, deep in conversation. Not looking back.
In seconds all she could see of him was the back of his regal head receding out of sight as the sea of people between them thickened then obscured her vision.
As anticlimaxes went, this one was a whopper.
But what had she expected? What was there to expect? They were both waiting to catch planes that would probably take them to opposite ends of the earth. The best they could have had was an hour of—of what? And, anyway, what could possibly top what they’d just shared: dragging a life back from the brink of death? Anything from then on would have been an anticlimax. Never had she shared such an intense experience with anyone. At work she collaborated with others, saving lives, daily, but it had never been this immediate, this synergistic.
Now he was gone and the whole incredible experience was over.
She straightened, delayed reaction hitting her. It was already as if nothing had happened, the scene reverting to what it had been previously: busy morning traffic in an international airport.
So, what to do now with enough leftover adrenaline to power her for a month? How to stop it from turning on her, making her legs dough and her nerves exposed wires?
Sit down before you collapse.
Though that wasn’t such a bad idea right now. It might bring him back, then he would...would...
For heaven’s sake! Would what? What was wrong with her? She’d never reacted this way to a man before. Not since...
Her thoughts screeched to a halt again. So did her racing heart.
He was coming back.
His eager stride was eating up the space between them, as if a tape had rewound, snipping out the footage of the last explosive half-hour, resuming time at the moment before they’d heard that scream.
Now it was exclusively personal again, the fierceness of that silver gaze was too much to take head on. Heat surged in her head, cascaded all over her body. Her face had to be radiating a red as deep as her hair by now. Her eyes escaped his, only to stray over the rest of him, and— Wow!
She’d definitely missed a lot during the crisis. Everywhere she looked, every detail of his striking features and awesome physique—and the thoughts they provoked—were even more blush-worthy.
This was getting surreal. After Steve and Daniel, not to mention Rick, she wanted a man and a man’s attention like she wanted incurable acne. Anyway, they were passing ships in the night—or planes in the morning—and when it came to looking and fantasizing, she was all for handsome men. And this man wasn’t...
No. It would almost be an insult, calling him that. He was...one of a kind. Unadulterated power and maleness in human form. And now she knew the package housed as formidable a brain, his appeal shot to an all-new high. Appeal? Ha! What a lame word to label the jarring response he was wringing from her.
But something was wrong here. Very wrong. Besides feeling like a derailed train, she felt as if she knew him, as if she should know him.
Then it struck her. Hard, then harder. With the force of a jackhammer right inside her head.
No wonder she’d felt she’d known him all her life.
She had.
He was Vidal! Despicable, mercenary, cold-blooded, self-serving Vidal Arroyo Martinez. The man whose very name had been anathema to her for the past fourteen years. The user, the deserter. And that was just for starters.
He was really here. This was really him. Of all coincidences, of all places. When just an hour ago she’d been cursing her luck that she had a boss with the same first name, memories of him had come back to disturb her more than they had in years. Had the intensity of her antipathy summoned him or something?
Whatever, he was here. And he was now no more than a foot away, coming to tower over her, almost touching her. Then touching her. His thigh against her hip, his hand going to her arm, smoothing it up and down. Familiar, forward. Then his mouth was against her ear, his whisper penetrating her brain, turning it to mush.
“Miss me?”
Her heart kicked, turned. Recognizing him wasn’t making any difference, was it? His virility was overwhelming her senses, overriding her mental aversion. She should make some comeback. Cutting and condescending.
He talked first, his eyes sweeping her face, her body, until she felt he’d touched her all over. “I missed you.”
The exaggeration hit all her indignant spots. “How could you miss me? Apart from handling the emergency together, we practically haven’t met yet!”
“Oh, we’ve met all right!”
So he remembered her?
“We don’t need formalities. Even without sharing the emergency, which can’t be topped as introductions go, we met the moment our eyes did.”
Oh, boy. So this was the legendary Vidal in action. The world had turned so much, the day had come when she was on the receiving end of his devastating seduction technique. It shouldn’t be having any effect. She knew all about him, was onto his every heartless trick.
What should be and what was had nothing in common.
Oh, why did he have to sound like that? Had he always sounded like that? Opened his mouth and poured out those deepest, darkest vocal caresses?
She didn’t remember. He’d barely ever talked to her, if at all. The silent type he’d been. Not any more, it seemed.
He was going on. “Sorry I had to leave you like that. Had to discuss the little boy’s continuing care with Miguel, my assistant, about his oral burn, arrange for his follow-up and future corrective surgery. He thought it was incredible for both of us to be here, just in time to help. I think it’s more than incredible.”
“You think so? I bet you there are dozens of doctors floating around the airport. If it hadn’t been us, it would have been another couple of people.”
“Maybe, but what about us—before the emergency?”
She was already busy groping for theories to explain her shocking reaction to him, for why he’d singled her out.
He wasn’t giving her time to think. “Come on, let’s go somewhere where we can...talk.” He tugged gently on her arm, his arm going around her shoulders until he had her in the curve of his body, steering her away from the crowds.
In a minute she found herself towed into a VIP lounge, two security men holding the door open for them. Inside there were just three other people, very distinguished-looking men in thousand-dollar suits.
So the man had clout. Didn’t hesitate to throw his weight around. It figured. From his more than shady beginnings, he’d always been an opportunist, bent on climbing up as high as he could reach in the world. Over anyone. Years ago, when she’d finally stopped following his progress, and had made sure no one told her any more about him, he’d already reached the top.
He turned from closing the door and bore down on her. “I came back running, though I knew...” Those long, strong fingers, his precise surgeon’s tools, went to her hair, tucking it behind her ear, the motion intimate. Penetrating. As if he’d touched her in all her secret places. Blood whooshed in her brain, amplified by the sudden change from the hubbub of the open airport to the lounge’s soundproofed serenity. “I knew you’d wait for me.”
She sat down on the plush couch before she fell, and looked up at him as he came to stand above her.
He’d changed. As a young man he’d been incredible. Now...now he was a fully matured force of nature.
No wonder she hadn’t recognized him.
Broader, leaner. Tougher. Harsher. And those eyes—no wonder she hadn’t recognized them. She’d never really seen them behind the obscuring glasses he’d never taken off. Those were now gone. As was the raven, unruly mane, the sallow tinge of years of study and sun deprivation and the yucky facial hair of the last six years of their...relationship. Now he was all silver-laced uncompromising crop, deep bronze and clean-shaven slashed lines.
He’d changed all right, for the best. Only on the surface, no doubt. She’d bet good money the inside changes were for the worse.
If that was possible.
Another thing had changed: the way he looked at her. At their last meeting, he’d looked at her as if she’d been a human-sized parasite. Now the look in his eyes said...plenty.
It also said he still didn’t recognize her.
The Vidal Arroyo Martinez she had known would have rather been skinned alive than be within a five-mile radius of her. Let alone hit on her.
Ooh, but this was just too delicious! Her anonymity was a great weapon at the moment. No way was she passing up the chance of using it. Let her see how far he’d go if she played this game his way. If she gave him as much rope as he needed to hang himself with.
Her heart was still thumping hard enough to shake her, but her old imp had resurfaced. A dizzying mixture of resentment and excitement drove her on. She fluttered her lashes at him, the exaggerated huskiness in her voice only half pretense. “And as I did, what do you intend to do with me?”
Surprise invaded those annihilating eyes. Though it was followed by a flare of raw hunger, she saw her response had thrown him. He hadn’t expected her to be as outrageous as he was.
Oh, yes. Revenge was going to be so sweet.
CHAPTER TWO
“DO YOU really want me to tell you? Or shall I surprise you?”
Vidal heard the aroused tone of his voice, felt his body hardening even more, had no control over it at all.
What was happening to him? What was he doing?
Instead of gulping down some coffee and heading for the plane he should have boarded an hour ago, he was waxing poetic, all but pouncing on the woman. A woman whose name he didn’t even know. A woman who might even be engaged or married.
His eyes darted to her hands—those supple, skilled fingers, made for taking lingeringly into his mouth...
Whoa. Focus, Vidal.
No rings. Good. Great.
