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Maybe he read something in her face. Maybe he’d just realized how his words had sounded, because he leaned forward a bit, snagging her gaze with his.

“I’m happy about what you do, Mila. Glad there are still people like you in the world.” A muscle in his throat worked. “I’m just not one of them. Those cases, they...”

He shook his head, not finishing his sentence.

“They bother you?”

Was that it? He couldn’t bear to look at what humans could do to each other?

“Yes. They bother me.” And this time Mila swore she saw a glimmer of something in his face. Compassion. Or maybe anger. She really couldn’t tell. But it beat that blank mask he tended to wear.

Except for in those pictures. Then it had slipped when she wasn’t looking. The camera had been watching, though, and it had caught him in the act.

Only Mila had no idea what any of it meant.

“They bother me too, James, but someone has to help them.”

“I know.” He lifted a shoulder. “It just can’t be me. Not anymore.”

“Why?”

The muscle in his jaw went back to its rhythmic pulse. “I’m just not cut out for it. I do better with the celebrities and socialites, like my parents. We come from the same world. We understand each other.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it. It’s true.” He picked up his fork and cut into his thick slab of steak. “Don’t let your food get cold. Très Magnifique does a wonderful job.”

Mila had ordered beef tips with mushrooms over pasta. Spearing a bite-sized piece of meat, she tried to figure out what was going on with him. Only she was no good at reading this man. Not anymore. Maybe not even when they’d been together, since she’d been so sure he’d been as happy as she had.

Except he hadn’t been. Not toward the end. He’d been pulling away, and she’d found herself becoming something she hadn’t liked. A grasping, frightened girl, trying to do her best to hold a fading romance together all by herself.

Never again.

She would never throw her heart back into the ring like she had during her time with James. Tyler had known the score and had been willing to wait for her to trust him fully. When she’d realized she’d never be able to give him what he needed, she’d broken it off.

And she missed his friendship. Especially now. Especially when confronted with a man who still had the power to wound her with the tiniest of barbs.

Like his unwillingness to work on those who so desperately needed his skills?

Yes.

But there’d been something behind his words. His relationship with his parents had always been rocky at best. And at the very end, when he’d broken off their engagement, he’d said something about his father. The loathing in his voice would have shocked her under normal circumstances but the agony she’d felt in realizing their relationship was over had drowned any other thoughts for a very long time.

Had the man threatened to cut James from his will for marrying a shy do-gooder who shunned the celebrity scene?

Somehow she couldn’t picture James caring one way or the other. He’d made his own way in the world, his wealthy clientele willing to pay exorbitant prices to be ensconced in the luxury and prestige of his clinic and be catered to by some of the best physicians in the world. From cardiac surgery to face-lifts, from cradle to geriatrics, the medical center gave the finest care available.

She’d never understood what had happened between them, other than she hadn’t been enough to make him happy. And she’d been too angry to ask if his surface explanation—that they weren’t right for each other—was the truth. After discovering what her aunt had done, she’d decided she was never going to try to pry the truth out of anyone ever again. They could either tell her or not, but if they chose the latter, she was done with them.

Forcing herself to swallow, she pasted a smile on her face. “Thank you. You were right, the meal was delicious.” Not that she’d actually tasted much of it beyond the first few bites. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Would you like coffee?”

She hesitated. James had always liked to finish his meal with a nice strong java, no matter what the time. Caffeine had never seemed to affect him. Neither had anything else. But she suddenly wanted out of the intimate confines of the restaurant and to finish this back on her own turf, where she knew what to do to protect her mind from stray thoughts...and her heart from stray emotions. She decided to go with escape.

“I have a small apartment above the clinic. I can make us a pot of coffee if you want, and we can go over those pictures.”

He frowned. “You live in the clinic?”

“Not in the clinic, no. Like I said, I have a small studio apartment above it. It saves on transportation costs since I don’t have to drive to work.”

And it also made it easy to take those middle-of-the-night emergency calls, since all she had to do was throw on some scrubs and walk down a flight of stairs to get to her clinic.

“Were you there when that window was broken?”

No, she’d been in the process of breaking things off with Tyler that night. It had taken her almost three weeks to get the window repaired. Something she wasn’t going to tell James, because she had the strange sensation he wouldn’t be happy about that. Why he would even care, though, was beyond her.

“I was out that night. But it turned out to be nothing. No big drama. No one was hiding inside the clinic.”

His frown deepened. “You went in by yourself?”

No. Tyler had gone in and checked the place out, even though she could tell he’d been crushed by their breakup. She’d tried to take a taxi home, but he’d insisted on driving her.

He was a good man, a simple man with simple tastes, and Mila wished with all her heart that she could have fallen in love with him. But you couldn’t control who you loved. She’d found that out the hard way—had mooned after James, even as she’d flown off to the jungles of Brazil to get away from her pain.

And it had worked. She’d come back a changed person. At least she’d thought she had. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“No, I had someone with me.”

James swallowed, if that jerky movement of his throat could be called a swallow.

“I’m glad.” He called for the check and slipped a credit card into the padded folder. “I’ll take you up on that coffee, if the offer is still open. It’ll give us a chance to pick a couple of pictures and get them to the marketing department in time for the opening in a few weeks.”

As soon as the waiter returned with his receipt, James pocketed it and his card and stood. Mila followed, now wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to have their coffee here. She’d wanted to get back to her own territory, but was it really wise to invite the tiger into your sanctuary?

Melodramatic, Mila.

But as she slid into the leather seat of his luxury car, she wondered if she really was being ridiculous. The closer they got to the clinic, the more her nerve endings twitched in dismay. This was a mistake. She knew it was but it was also far too late to change her mind, not without him knowing she was afraid to be alone with him.

They turned onto the road where her clinic was located just as her cell phone sounded with a weird chirp, the one she’d preprogrammed to sound if the silent alarm on her clinic was tripped.

“Oh, no.”

Just as James glanced her way, a question in his eyes, she saw her worst fears were realized. The glass door to her clinic had been smashed wide open.

James saw it too, and screeched to a halt just outside the entry. Before either of them could say a word a figure in dark clothing dashed out through the opening and sprinted down the street.

CHAPTER THREE

“STAY HERE!”

James gritted out the command as he threw open the door to his vehicle and dashed after the intruder. He turned the same corner as the man, only to be confronted by a spiderweb of alleys and apartment fronts. There was no sign of anyone. No witnesses. No perpetrator.

If Mila hadn’t still been in the car, he would have ventured farther to make sure the jerk wasn’t hiding in one of the dumpsters or behind one of the parked cars, but what if he had an accomplice? What if, even now, Mila had decided to go inside her clinic on her own?

“Hell.” He should have just called the police and stayed with her, but the instinct to chase down whoever it was had been too strong. And now he was at least five minutes away from the clinic.

Pivoting toward the opening of the alley, he took off the way he’d come, his gaze seeking out his car as soon as he turned the corner. And found the passenger door open, the seat empty.

“Damn it, Mila!”

The muttered words were swallowed by the flow of traffic on the busy street. Why had no one stopped to help when they’d seen someone breaking in? Maybe because this wasn’t the safest area of town.

And Mila lived here...had just gone into that dark clinic all alone.

Reaching the door, he found it still locked, so he stepped through the opening, glass crunching beneath his shoes. His instinct was to call out to her, but if someone else was lurking in the shadows, he was afraid he’d tip him off. Instead, he stopped for a second and listened.

He heard someone talking. Was it just Mila on her phone, reporting the break-in to the police? Or was someone else in there?

Picking his footsteps a little more carefully to avoid snapping more glass, he made his way through the inky interior. She hadn’t turned the lights on. Why?

He reached the narrow hallway and drew up an internal map of the clinic from his visit a week ago. The voices were coming from the right, from the direction of the exam room he remembered seeing. Pausing outside the open door, he again heard Mila’s voice, the low sound coming across as calm and soothing...as if worried about spooking a frightened animal.

It was then that it dawned on him. She wasn’t speaking English. It was Spanish. She’d trekked through the Amazon basin, so she knew both Spanish and Portuguese.

He took a deep breath and spun around the corner, a streetlamp shining outside the window making it a little easier to see.

Mila, who was crouching in the gloom, grappling with someone or something, squeaked out a warning. He braced himself for attack.

Only the fear on her face was aimed squarely at him, not whatever was next to her.

“God, James, you almost gave us a heart attack.”

He’d almost given them...? The thing next to her was evidently a who...not a what.

“What the hell is going on?”

Reaching to the right, where he remembered the light switch being, he flipped it on. Two pairs of eyes blinked up at him. His attention swiveled to the small figure huddled close to Mila.

It was a child—a young boy around three years old—not an armed intruder, like he’d feared. Which meant the man who’d run away from the building was what? A father? Boyfriend? Some kind of sexual predator...? His brows drew together in anger. Who broke into a medical clinic and dropped off a kid?

In one hand, the boy clutched a gray blanket, the satin edge frayed and missing in spots. The child’s other hand was balled into a fist that he held against his mouth.

No. Not a fist. The child was sucking his thumb, fingers curled tightly into the palm of his hand. And those hollow, tearstained eyes...

The child stared at him for a second or two longer and then whimpered, cringing closer to Mila. James forced his frown away, realizing he probably made a scary figure standing over them, the emotions churning within him clearly visible.

“Está bien. No tengas miedo.” Mila’s voice was soft and comforting, even as she sent James another scathing glare.

She was telling the child not to be afraid?

What about him? She’d almost set him flat on his ass when he’d seen her kneeling there, envisioning all kinds of terrible things.

But this child was thin. Very thin and... His gaze stopped, chest squeezing tight enough to stop him from breathing for several seconds.

His feet. The boy’s feet. They were turned inward at an unnatural angle as if they were pairing up for a duel.

Clubbed. Both of them.

His inward curse rattled his ribs and shunted the pressure that had been gathering around his midsection to his throat. The deformity should have been corrected when the child was an infant.

He knelt next to the pair, his glance meeting Mila’s. “Is this one of your patients?”

“No.” She placed a hand on the boy’s head as if protecting him. From what? James’s fury?

He wasn’t angry. Not at the child, anyway. “I thought I told you to wait in the car.”

“I was going to, but I heard crying coming from inside the clinic.” She glanced toward the door just as the sound of a siren swept through the interior of the space. “And I knew the police would arrive at any second.”

Not soon enough to stop a bullet, though, if Mila had come upon something other than a frightened child. His anger came back in a rush. “You should have waited for them, then. For your own protection.”

Her face quieted, becoming an icy cold mask that stopped him in his tracks. “I don’t need you to protect me, and you’re not the one who makes my decisions. Not in the past. And certainly not now.”

She was right. She was a grown woman, and this was her clinic. Not his. “I was worried. I lost sight of the man I was chasing, and when I came back and saw the car empty...”

Mila’s mask cracked, then fell away. “I’m fine.” Her head shifted toward the boy. “He said his uncle left him here. I think he was hoping to get the boy some help.”

“Medical help, I assume.” He nodded toward the boy’s feet.

“Yes.”

“And then just ran off? What kind of a—?” He bit off the word, not sure how much English the boy understood. “What kind of person does something like that?”

“Fear can make people do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

“Like abandon someone they’re supposed to love?”

As he said the words he was gripped by a huge sense of irony. Fear had caused him to do that very thing. Abandon Mila on the cusp of their wedding, leaving her hurt and alone. No matter that he’d thought it a necessity at the time. And then when he’d discovered it hadn’t been necessary, when it had been too late to take it all back, the tabloids had exploded with the news of their broken engagement, comparing it to his parents’ ugly divorce years earlier. It had reminded him of all the reasons he should just leave things as they were. Mila deserved better than him and his dysfunctional family.

Freya had been there to pick up the pieces for her friend, and to rake him over the coals. He didn’t think his sister had ever quite forgiven him for what he’d done to her dear friend.

The sound of voices shouting from the entrance to the clinic cut off anything she might have been getting ready to say, and they were soon caught up in chaos as the police rushed in, followed by the emergency technicians once the all clear was given.

Worse was the fact that a lone firefighter showed up, right on the heels of everyone else. Concerned eyes took in the scene, and Mila stood to hug him, leaning in to whisper something in his ear.

The man shrugged with a crooked smile. “I know. I was worried. Sorry. The address that came over the com was for Bright Hope. I had to check it out.”

Tyler Richardson, Mila’s ex. He evidently wasn’t out of the picture as completely as Mila had said. And he was evidently allowed to worry about her safety, whereas he himself didn’t have that privilege.

Taking in the lean muscle and short cropped hair of the other man, James stiffened. Emotions he’d thought long dead surfaced as he watched her describe what had happened, including the police officers in her explanation.

Mila never once lost her cool during the events that followed, and she didn’t allow James—or even her ex—to speak for her, not that the man tried. He knew enough not to, which made James’s chest tighten further. Tyler knew the woman Mila was today.

He forced himself to stand a few feet back and watched her, a strange sense of admiration rolling through him. She was confident and matter-of-fact. So different from the shy but passionate woman who had taken his senses by storm six years ago.

She’d traveled the world. Alone. Had probably faced hundreds of situations far more dangerous than the one they’d found at the clinic.

Would she have gotten the chance to grow and change if they’d stayed together? Or would the overprotective nature his sister accused him of having press her into a box she was afraid to leave? Or worse?

He had no idea whether he was trying to assuage his guilt in leaving her, or if it was a genuine question for which there was no answer. But, whatever it was, Mila had been changed in some undefinable way.

The firefighter who still stood by her side seemed to respect her as well. In fact, the three of them—woman, child and man—looked like the kind of family you saw on greeting cards.

And James didn’t like it. At all.

He moved in closer to diffuse the picture. “I know Bright Hope hasn’t officially opened its branch at The Hills, but I’d like to transport him there to do a workup and make sure there are no medical issues other than his feet. We have state-of-the-art equipment.”

It was true. Not just that. His medical center was also equipped with suites to house patients who were having surgery so that their privacy could be guaranteed. A nod to battles he, his sister, and his parents had fought with the paparazzi. The center could also accommodate those patients who needed physical therapy after a procedure. And they always kept a few of the small apartments open for emergencies.

“That would be great. Thank you, James.”

Tyler’s head abruptly cranked around to look at him, narrowed eyes meeting his.

Was it his imagination or was there a veiled threat in the firefighter’s gaze? He met the look and matched it with one of his own. Neither looked away, until Mila cleared her throat and glanced from one to the other.

James took a step back. “I’ll call Adam Walker and see if he has any openings in his schedule. He’s one of the best orthopedic surgeons around.”

Mila’s eyes closed for a second. When they opened, they were a warm shade of hazel that he hadn’t seen in forever. “Thank you. I owe you.”

“Nope. You don’t.”

If there was a debt owed by anyone, it was him. And it was more than he could ever begin to repay. For helping him discover something that had set his life path in stone. Or maybe he had Freya, his dad and Cindy to thank for that. Cindy’s lie had saved two incompatible people a lot of grief and heartache. Mila might not have appreciated that back when he’d broken things off, but she probably did now.

It took almost an hour to sort through the red tape of having Leonardo—the name the boy had given them—declared a temporary ward of the state so that they could transport him to The Hollywood Hills Clinic. Mila had gone outside to say goodbye to Tyler and then had headed up to her apartment to pack a small overnight bag, insisting that she was going to stay with Leo at the medical center.

What if he got scared? Or had a nightmare? He shouldn’t be alone.

“Are you sure you want to stay?”

The department of children’s services wouldn’t be there until morning. Maybe it was just as well, because James was suddenly bone tired in a way he hadn’t been for a long time. Whether it was physical exhaustion or exhaustion that came from the emotional upheaval of the break-in and seeing Mila’s ex, he had no idea.

“I’m sure,” she said, walking with the EMT workers to the ambulance and then climbing in beside the boy. “Would you mind running by the store and picking up a few things for him, like clothes and a toothbrush?”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, sorry.” She peered out of the vehicle before opening her purse.

He stopped her with an upraised hand, realizing she’d misunderstood him. And he was glad that she’d chosen him to run her errands, rather than Tyler. If he refused, he had no doubt she would call the other man and ask him to get the items. Not going to happen. “I don’t need your money. I just have no idea what size he wears.”

Up went Mila’s brows. “Um. He’s around three years old. So a size three should do it. Get some underwear and socks too, okay?”

Kids’ clothes sizes ran by age? Who knew?

“I’ll meet you back at the clinic in an hour or so.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you soon.”

The doors to the ambulance slammed shut and the vehicle sped away from the building, lights flashing, leaving him standing there alone.

Just as well.

He needed time to untangle exactly what had happened here tonight. And why the fishing hook he’d been toying with a few hours ago at the restaurant had just been suddenly and expertly set by some distant fisherman, leaving him little or no chance of escape. Not without inflicting some major damage to some of his internal organs. Although, if things got too bad, he might have to just rip free of the line and hope for the best.

Adam Walker met her at the door.

Mila tried to calm her still shaking legs. She’d been shocked that Tyler had rushed over to Bright Hope to try to help. Especially with James there. She’d felt guilty enough for breaking things off with him. She certainly hadn’t expected him to show up right after she’d been wined and dined by her other ex.

Lord.

It was over. With both of them. She had nothing to feel guilty about.

And yet she did. That line of guilt ran from her to each man, and she wasn’t sure which side made her feel worse.

Neither. And her mind should be on Leo right now, who needed her help.

“Let’s get him to an exam room.” Adam stretched his palm toward the boy, who, seated in a wheelchair, hesitated for a split second and then placed his small hand in the other man’s. With kind eyes and tightly curled brown hair, the orthopedic surgeon had worked with children before. It was there in the easy grip of his fingers, in the way his right shoulder stooped low so Leo’s arm wouldn’t be stretched too high by the difference in their heights as Mila pushed the wheelchair.

Mila smiled, despite herself. Whereas James had seemed vastly uncomfortable in the boy’s presence, Adam was a natural. Judging from the gleaming gold band on the man’s left hand, he might even have children of his own at home.

They got Leo up on the exam table, and while a nurse worked on getting the boy’s vitals, Adam rolled the bottoms of the child’s threadbare jeans up a few inches to get a better look at his feet and ankles.

His jaw tightened as he examined the twisted appendages and slid his gloved hand along the outside edges of Leo’s feet. “They’re both fixed in the varus position.”

Mila knew that there were two main forms of club foot, equinus—when the toes were pointed toward the ground—and varus, when the bone malformation caused the outer portion of the foot to swivel downward, forcing the toes toward the center. “I haven’t seen him walk yet. I’m not sure if he can.”

“You may not have seen it, but he does.” Adam gestured her closer. “See this callusing over the tarsal and metatarsal? He walks on the edges of his feet.”

“Wow. It should have been corrected when he was a baby.”

Adam shrugged. “I’ve seen more of these cases in developing countries than here in the States, where corrective surgery is the norm. Maybe his folks couldn’t afford it. Or maybe they immigrated here from somewhere else.”

“He only speaks Spanish, from what I’ve seen. And he said his uncle left him at my clinic. The authorities are still trying to locate him.”

The surgeon rubbed a hand behind his neck. “I can fix his feet. But we’ll need permission from someone before I can do anything.”