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Emergency Marriage
Olivia Gates
A marriage made in crisis!Dr. Laura Burnside is pregnant, single and alone. Her dream job as head of Global Aid Organization in Argentina has been snatched out of her hands by the arrogant Dr. Armando Salazar. She has nowhere to go.And then Armando makes a proposal that turns her world upside down. Marry him. Give her child a father. Continue her vital emergency work in this beautiful country, And give in to the passion that has raged between her and the devastating Argentinian since their first meeting…
“All right. Why I want to get married:
“I’m pushing forty. My mother would love me to get married. I expect I will buckle under social demands and get married sooner or later, so why not now? The usual mid-life crisis, really.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
He sighed. What would it take to satisfy her? The truth? He doubted it. But what would she do if he told her that he hadn’t slept one solid night since he’d laid eyes on her? That he hadn’t known such violent sexual attraction was possible, that it made him wonder if it was a symptom of a breakdown of some sort? That all he could think of when he had a moment to himself was how it would feel to have his body buried in hers, his senses full of her taste and his head full of her cries of pleasure?
She’d probably run screaming.
Dear Reader
For me, writing has always been a delight that nothing else surpasses, an escape into a world where anything can and does happen. A world that I create and control. How magnificent and satisfying is that? My characters are real people to me, people I laugh and cry with, live and love with. I also love pitting them against impossible odds, both in the world around them and inside their hearts and souls. They really have to earn those happily-ever-afters I end up giving them.
As well as writing, I love singing, painting, reading in every genre, and keeping fit. And besides sharing my life with my characters I'm blessed to share it with my wonderful, supportive family and friends.
There is nothing better.
Olivia Gates
Recent titles by the same author:
DOCTORS ON THE FRONTLINE
Emergency Marriage
Olivia Gates
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one is for you, Mom.
For believing in me, for being there for me,
and for everything that you are.
CONTENTS
Chapter One (#u811f905a-eedd-585b-84b0-899a947810f1)
Chapter Two (#u8d875901-937d-5710-9c45-65c578de43ba)
Chapter Three (#ub3ef2b83-7dbc-50c1-abff-70228bb4d751)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
“LAURA—you fool!”
Laura Burnside almost dropped the arms of the woman she was dragging along the ground.
Freezing, eyes darting around the chaos, heart shaking her apart, she sought the source of the furious shout.
Someone’s shoulder slammed into hers, jolting her back.
Concentrate, Burnside, all her senses screamed. It doesn’t matter who’s calling you or calling you what. It can’t be him anyway. Get out of here. Drag that woman away…
Another outburst of shots. Another man fell a few feet away from her. No way to help him, not now. One victim at a time. Bending again, tightening her grip on the woman’s wrists, she dug her heels in and pulled. Much heavier than her, getting heavier with every inch. Pain stabbed her side again.
Fool. That was what the voice had called her. His voice. It couldn’t be him, of course. What would he be doing here, in Buenos Aires, hundreds of miles away from his home and work? His rage must be reaching out to her all the way from Santa Fe. No one disobeyed Armando Salazar.
It could also be her mind calling her a fool, using his voice. And it would be right. She’d gotten herself into this, thought she could do it. It was amazing what looked plausible—not to mention how a mind could stray—in a desperate situation…
Violent purple with sickening yellow blotches exploded behind her eyes. Someone’s forehead had rammed her left cheekbone. She staggered, letting go of the woman’s wrists, colors fading to gray. She held herself still as her consciousness wavered, drained, willing light and colors to come back. If she succumbed, let herself be KO’d, it’d be over for that woman. For her.
Another body, then another collided into her, fists and feet plowing into her gut and shins. She was the only one going against the tide, and they were sweeping her backwards with them in their blind escape path.
In the uproar, her own angry shouts reached her ears as if from a distance. The woman. She had to get back to her. She didn’t know how, but she made it.
Just as she bent to her again, a thundering “Laura!” drowned even the cacophony of human shrieks and gunfire.
It was him.
Her head swung instinctively, violently, looking for him in the stampede. The next second a missile whizzed by her head. A fist-sized rock thrown with all the strength and fury of someone deranged by oppression and desperation. If not for his shout, it would have smashed her skull.
Then he was there, materializing above her, face grim, wings spread, filling her vision.
This is how Dracula—no, Batman—must look. A little voice inside her made the ridiculous, untimely observation. Swooping down on his quarry, staggering, scary even to those he saved.
In the next heartbeat he snatched her up and under the protection of his massive body. It was almost a surprise to realize his spread wings were not a cape but a jacket, held up to block rocks that were falling short of their targets, pelting them instead.
“Don’t— No…” She resisted him, desperate to return to her casualty. He only swept her higher. Her feet kicked air.
Her fingers dug into his arm, his chest, anywhere, trying to gain his attention, to regain her freedom. “Put me down, Salazar! That woman—she’d been trodden on—and those two men…”
She was talking to his jaw as he plastered her to his side, running with her to… Where was he going?
The idiot man had taken them right into the thick of the riot!
Her breathing stopped as the masses battered them. She’d rushed to the woman when they’d started receding, forced back by the police forces, when she’d thought she’d had a chance of pulling her away. It had been scary enough, dangerous enough then. She had the bruises to prove it. But now—being right in the middle of it all…
Dread smeared her vision gray and red. Huge and strong though he was, no way was he a match for this mindless crowd. He was starting to stumble, her weight no doubt hampering him, compromising his balance.
“Put me down, Salazar!” This was no longer indignation. This was survival. If he didn’t, he’d soon be brought to his knees. Then they’d both be trampled to death.
“Shut up, Laura!” He swung her around to face him, forcing her thighs around his waist, one large hand clutching her buttocks, the other a steel harness behind her back, carrying her like she’d once carried her baby brother and sister. “Hold on—tight!”
She did, clamping her legs around him, clinging for dear life. Not that she needed to. He crushed her if he were trying to hide her inside him. Her flesh felt battered into his, her breath took in his heat and sweat and anger.
Her senses sharpened, receded. Fear and anger and awareness dragged her under. She made herself surface, frantic to see what was happening around her, where he was taking her. One eye’s field of vision was all she managed to free. The hundred and four jarring steps she’d counted had delivered them from danger and to one of La Clínica’s beat-up ambulance vans.
One violent yank brought one of its double doors crashing back on its hinges. Expecting to be thrown inside with the same vehemence, she braced herself. The next second she couldn’t hold back her surprise at his extreme gentleness as he deposited her on the paramedic bench. Her eyes darted to his face. Nothing could have been harsher.
So what else was new? Ignore him.
Impossible to do that, as usual. Especially now, with his bulk blocking her view. Then he moved, followed her inside, and she could finally see the woman they’d left behind. She and the other victims were still motionless in the middle of the street. The mob had veered into a side street, some persistent elements still going back to pelt the police forces, provoking more warning shots.
She’d made a lousy call before, going out there before the riot had receded enough. Now there were only the police in the background. If they made a run back for the victims, shouted that they were doctors, they could reach them, carry them back. She measured the distance, gulped down a steadying breath then moved. Armando moved first, shoving her down again. No gentleness this time.
“Por Dios, get down and stay down! I didn’t risk getting my head smashed in to get you off the street just so you’d dash out again and succeed in getting yourself killed.”
She would have ignored him now if she wasn’t losing the wrestling match with him. Better luck wrestling with steel handcuffs! Impotence and fury crackled on her lips. “What kind of doctor are you to just leave victims behind, Salazar?”
“I’m not leaving anyone behind, but you’re staying put!” He hauled a hard collar and a rebreather mask with an oxygen reservoir from the shelves lining the ambulance walls, sprang from the van, slammed the door behind him and locked it with the remote control.
For a few moments rage threatened to burst her skull. How dared he? What made it OK for him to run back out there and not her? And he couldn’t possibly carry them all! What was he trying to prove? That he really was a superhero? What was his special power, Latin chauvinism? Just because he’d managed to swindle her out of her position as aid operation leader…
Blasts erupted again amidst a new uproar, startling her out of her fury. This time nature joined in, then drowned the human frenzy as a sudden, violent downpour started pounding the van. From the rear window she saw another horde, this time bigger, tens of thousands turning the corner of the main street and heading for the police forces. And in between there was Armando, carrying the woman and leaning over one victim, then the other.
Seconds stood between him and being squashed in the middle of the mob. And he was wasting them!
Buy him time. The thought screamed in her mind.
She flopped back on the stretcher, prayed that he’d armed the van’s alarm system by locking it and rammed both feet into the rear window.
She didn’t even hear her own shouted ‘Yes’.
The siren blared, jarring enough to cause the antagonistic sides’ momentary hesitation. A hesitation Armando used to rouse one of the fallen men by pressure on his forehead, to shove him out of harm’s way and, with the woman held high in his arms, to squeeze between the two waves of hostility before they collided.
Laura returned her attention to the door. How the hell did that doorhandle work? She’d definitely unlocked it but the handle just wouldn’t budge. Frustration roared in her ears, seethed from her lips. “Dammit—damn you, Salazar!”
She had to get out, meet him halfway, help him. Yes—the oxygen tank!
The window withstood the first swing, fragmenting but holding up. A cry of rage and a second swing made a big enough hole for her arm. In a second she’d worked the handle from outside, got out and was already running to him—only to watch him lurch over the woman in his arms.
His name was torn from her. “Armando!”
He’d been shot. He’d die.
God, please, no, not again!
Her feet pounded the hot, wet tarmac, every step shattering a pool of rain and transmitting a bolt of agony to her right side, a reminder of how close she’d come to dying herself. She didn’t care. She had to reach him, save him…
He fell to his knees, chest heaving, still clutching the woman. Laura’s heart stuttered and stopped for the moments it took him to struggle back to his feet, hauling the woman in a more secure grip, staggering onwards. Her heart was hammering again, almost bursting with a brutal mix of confusion, dread and hope. There was no blood on him—but if he’d been shot in the back, she wouldn’t see it. Were they shooting real bullets now?
Had he or hadn’t he been shot?
A hundred feet away, his hoarse warning hit her, explaining everything. “Tear gas…” Then he succumbed to a fit of uncontrollable coughing.
So that was it. In his exertion he must have gulped deep of the irritant chemical. Like breathing in fire…
The next second, her instincts kicked in. She couldn’t risk exposure too. She ran back to the van, as far away as possible from the incapacitating fumes that she could now see rising, even among the sheets of rain pounding down on the combatants. But in their desperation to escape, the mob was getting even more dangerous, spreading towards Armando in nightmarish tentacles.
But he was ahead, fast and strong and heading to…
Oh, God, where was he going?
He was no longer heading in her direction. He’d end up in the middle of the riot again, the way he was blindly… But of course! He was blind. His eyes must be burning, profusely tearing, lids squeezed shut with blepharospasm—beyond his ability to open them again.
Her mind raced. Rushing out to lead him back was out of the question. One way, then—she had to be his eyes. If he could hear her frantic shouts over this nightmare…
“Armando—turn right! Right!” He stopped. He’d heard her, thank God. “Make a ninety-degree turn. A bit more. Yes, yes—that’s it. Keep going in a straight line now. Faster. There’s a sidewalk in about twenty paces. I’ll shout to you to stop before you reach it.” She had to stop then, to catch her breath, grind her teeth. Every shouted word was lancing a hot arrow into her chest and abdomen.
“Stop!” He did, still heaving with racking coughs. She forced more directions out. “Just one more step and you’ll hit the edge of the sidewalk—yes, you’re there. It’s high, more than a foot. Yes, yes—now four of your paces and you’ll come off it. No—watch it!” He stumbled off the sidewalk and fright forced the air out of her. He straightened, his body language hesitant and anxious as she gasped for oxygen, fighting against the mounting pain. She failed in both but still shouted, “It’s all clear to where I’m standing. Just follow my voice.”
In twenty seconds he’d stumbled to her and she took some of the woman’s weight off him, directing him until they had her on the stretcher. She harnessed her in, then turned to him.
His face was drenched in tears, his nostrils flaring convulsively, his eyes spasmed shut as tears gushed down his cheeks and off his hard jaw. Every inhalation shrieked in, and came out in frightening barks of abrasive coughing. She pushed him through the doorway leading to the driver’s compartment and shoved him down in the passenger seat.
Rushing back to the patient compartment, she snatched a look at the mayhem outside. The man Armando had roused had stumbled out of danger. The other casualty, whom he’d managed to drag aside, hadn’t. She had to rush to him.
She kneeled by their casualty, prying off the rebreather mask Armando had placed on her face. It would protect her against the tear gas.
Armando’s labored words carried to her, and a jolt of horror paralyzed her in mid-motion. “He’s…dead. Rubber bullet…through the…eye.”
She knew so-called ‘safe’ rubber bullets could cause considerable damage, according to the distance they were fired from and the area of the body they hit. She hadn’t known they could kill.
Now she knew.
Urgency bubbled over inside her. Help those you can.
