To Save This Child

Kendal bolted upright beside Jason, peering into the dark jungle.

In the same instant they both saw the figure move. It was a young woman, crouching in the undergrowth like a frightened animal.

“It’s the same girl who was outside the hotel,” Kendal whispered at Jason’s shoulder. “The one who had the child with her.”

She emerged into the moonlight and beckoned them. Kendal started to get up, but Jason grabbed her arm.

“That little child!” she protested. “What if he needs us?”

The woman led them into the jungle over a dappled moonlit path to a small cave where trickles of water dropped over the opening. “Aquí,” she said softly, putting a finger to her lips. In here.

Inside, the sleeping form of a tiny boy was visible curled up on a brightly woven blanket. He was pretty, like his mother, except his mouth and jaw didn’t look right.

“Oh,” Kendal breathed, feeling her heart melt.

Dear Reader,

When I ventured into the Yucatán jungle to visit with a Mayan medicine man a couple of years ago, I had no idea what I would find.

But as I followed my guide deeper into the heart of the jungle, the isolation and the ancient peace of the place closed around me. In such a remote setting, I realized, twenty-first-century trappings could quickly fall away. In such a setting, time would slow, priorities would emerge, sensations and feelings would be amplified.

The medicine man was not what I expected. A humble little man who spoke to my guide in the quiet, clicking cadence of the Mayans, he kindly shared with me his efforts to help his people attain better health, using simple herbs and ancient remedies.

Not long after that, I met a doctor who had performed surgeries for the Doctors Without Borders organization in the same region. I am very grateful to Dr. Michael Bumagin for sharing his technical knowledge of reconstructive surgery and the details of his service in Chiapas. (This is a work of fiction, of course, so any creative embellishments are mine, not Michael’s.)

Those experiences came together to form this story, where two people, swept away by both passion and compassion, find something unexpected in the remote jungle. They find a child who opens their hearts. And as they struggle to save that child, they find something else unexpected—a deep and lasting love for each other.

I treasure my reader mail. Contact me at P.O. Box 720224, Norman, OK 73070, or www.darlenegraham.com.

My best to you,

Darlene Graham

To Save This Child

Darlene Graham

This story, my tenth Superromance novel,

is dedicated with deep appreciation to the gifted and

hardworking editors who have given me so much

encouragement and help over the past five years:

Paula Eykelhof, Zilla Soriano, Laura Shin and

Kathleen Scheibling

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Somewhere over the remote mountainous regions of Chiapas, Mexico

KENDAL COLLINS breathed a prayer of thanks that at last they were safe. At last. Safe.

Though the mountains rolling beneath the belly of their small plane looked rocky and steep, forbidding in their vast isolation, Jason Bridges appeared to be in control, his hands relaxed on the yoke of his Cessna Conquest as he executed flying maneuvers with his usual precision.

Shuddering, Kendal released what felt like the first full breath she’d drawn in days. Even during the dark time of their captivity, Jason had always sworn he would keep her safe, but only now that they were airborne would she let herself believe it. Finally, they were leaving Chiapas far behind.

“Hang in there, sweetheart.” Jason released the yoke long enough to squeeze her hand.

She gave him a brave smile, then twisted her torso, extending that smile to the two dear people strapped together into one of the rear-facing seats. Miguel Vajaras, age two, slept like the baby he was with his beautiful dark head lolling against the slender shoulder of Ruth Nichols, Jason’s scrub nurse. Ruth adjusted Miguel on her lap and put a shushing finger to her lips. Kendal nodded her understanding. Miguel had been so frightened, confused and crying right up until the plane had lifted into the air.

“Miguel.” Jason had distracted the child. “Look! Mountains!”

At the sound of Jason’s deep voice, Miguel had quieted abruptly, straining forward in the seat to look out the window. “Moun-nan,” he had echoed in baby talk. “Moun-nan. Eh-pane.” He had repeated the unfamiliar English words over and over, until the drone of the plane’s engine had finally put the exhausted toddler to sleep.

Kendal studied her adopted son’s innocent brown face, so angelic in repose, not quite able to believe this sweet child was, at last, going to be safe and was soon going to be her very own. This ordeal had been so hard on all of them, but now they were safe. Safe.

She longed to be back in Ruth’s seat so she could comfort her baby, but Jason wanted, needed, Kendal in the copilot’s seat. They weren’t out of Vajaras’s territory yet.

“Get in front in case I need a navigator,” Jason had said as he helped her into the plane.

And Ruth would take good care of Miguel. Ruth had always been good with the children, adept at calming their fears. Miguel was in good hands. Kendal tried to relax as she gave her sleeping little boy one last loving smile.

Ruth returned Kendal’s smile before she closed her eyes in exhaustion. Their flight from terror had worn the poor woman out.

Kendal glanced at her future husband. His muscular neck was craned as he concentrated on the terrain below.

“Look at that, sweetheart,” he said.

Kendal glanced out the small plane’s window as the Canon del Sumidero came into view. The scenery rolling below them was exotic, breathtaking, but Kendal was sick of Chiapas and its strange seductive beauty. Right now she wanted to feast her eyes on the plains of Oklahoma…and on Jason.

She studied his handsome profile for a second before her gaze was drawn down to his hands gripping the control yoke. She had noticed those hands the very first time they’d met in his office. The rest of his appearance could border on scruffy at times, but his hands were always immaculate, smooth and clean like any good surgeon’s.

She would probably admire Jason’s hands for the rest of her life. Even the way he wrote was strong. She loved to watch as he jotted orders or slashed his signature across a chart in neat, bold strokes.

But it was seeing him use those hands in surgery that had finally won Kendal’s undying admiration. Jason Bridges made real miracles happen every day. She had witnessed those miracles in the worst of conditions down here in Chiapas.

Her eyes trailed from the control yoke down to his legs, also tanned and oh-so-muscular, bulging against wrinkled khaki shorts. It seemed his whole body functioned like one long, taut muscle. A six-foot-tall granite statue—that’s what Jason was.

Her gaze flitted up to his cropped hair, dark as midnight, with strands of silver at the temples that created a delicious contrast to his clean profile, his chiseled lips, his square jaw. His skin, deeply tanned from the Mexican sun, glowed in the slanting sunshine that streamed through the plane’s compact windshield. She sighed again, utterly content to just admire him.

He glanced over and smiled when he caught her doing so.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“How much I love you.”

He smiled. “I love you, too. Is Miguel okay now?”

She nodded and raised her finger in the same silencing gesture Ruth had used. Jason glanced back at his sleeping passengers. Then he reached across the narrow space and wrapped a possessive palm around Kendal’s inner thigh. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. His pulse felt steady, strong.

“God, I’m glad we’re finally out of there,” he murmured.

“Me, too.” But Kendal found that she could still summon up the fear. The danger is over, she reminded herself as she suppressed tears, and gripped Jason’s wrist harder.

“Ah, now.” Jason flipped his hand up, capturing her fingers. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart.” He leaned toward her, glancing back and indicating that he wanted to speak near her ear. Their heads touched halfway over the center console. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I know.” Kendal closed her eyes, flooded with relief as she pressed her head into his broad shoulder.

“Just remember how much I love you,” he murmured. “And that I can’t wait to be alone with you,” his voice lowered further still, “so I can show you exactly how much.”

She opened her eyes, tilting her head up to flash him another brave smile. The sun bounced off the Cessna’s white engine cowling up onto Jason’s aviator shades. Behind the sunglasses, Kendal knew, her lover’s eyes were as blue as the Pacific Ocean that stretched beyond the endless horizon at their backs. And she knew what those eyes looked like when they were brimming with tenderness, burning with desire.

“I can’t wait,” she said as she leaned in closer to him and caught a heady whiff of his scent. But in that same instant her vision was snagged by a peripheral glimpse of the fuel gauges.

“Jason!” She jerked her head up, pointing.

“What?” His voice echoed the sudden alarm in hers.

“Shhh!” Ruth shushed them from behind.

But Kendal ignored her. “The fuel!” The dial for pounds of fuel remaining read unbelievably low and the dial for fuel outflow read unbelievably high.

Jason stared at the gauges and Kendal blinked hard, hoping her eyes, her brain, had made some kind of horrible mistake. But when Jason pulled on the red knob to stem the flow and frantically flipped the switch for the backup tank, she knew he was seeing the same thing she was seeing.

“What’s wrong?” Ruth, sensing trouble, clutched the still-sleeping child’s head to her breast while she twisted to see, stretching her seat harness.

Right then the warning lights flashed, and the low fuel alarm started to blare.

“We’re almost out of fuel,” Kendal spoke above the insistent warning chimes and the even louder drone of the engine, which to Kendal seemed to be already making an ominous straining noise.

“How can that be? We just left!”

“I will,” Jason ground out through clenched teeth, “kill Vajaras with my bare hands.”

“How could he do this!” Kendal cried, horrified to realize the man was so evil that he would arrange the death of his own grandchild.

“How could he do what?” Ruth demanded, clearly panicking.

“Vajaras must have arranged for one of his goons to puncture our fuel lines before takeoff,” Jason explained as he eased the plane to a lower altitude. “He knew we’d be over the continental divide by the time it leaked out.” He was executing a careful fuel-conserving turn in a narrow mountain valley. “Stay calm,” he said. But his own lips were stretched white with fear. “Our best bet is to circle back to the airport.”

Jason gripped the control yoke while the low fuel signal continued to chime like a death knell.

In the back seat Miguel whimpered, awakened by the loud alarm. Kendal looked back to see his thickly lashed little eyes growing wide with fear.

“It’s okay, honey,” she said in a Chiapas dialect, “Mamá está aquí.”

But the toddler started to cry, struggling against Ruth’s seat belt and stretching his thin arms toward Kendal. All Kendal could do was reach a hand back, awkwardly trying to reassure the child. She rubbed her palm gently on his little shoulder while Ruth murmured reassurances in his ear.

In only minutes, the mountains gave way to a broad valley, then the patchwork of fields and forest revealed clusters of thatched huts and finally the large metropolis of buildings that was Tuxtla Gutiérrez appeared in the distance. When the airport runway came into sight the three adults held a collective breath.

Maybe they could make it down.

Jason’s strong fingers gripped the landing gear control handle as they closed in over the crude airport, but suddenly he lurched forward in his seat.

He cursed and, without further warning, jerked back hard on the yoke. The nose of the plane peeled up in a gravity-defying climb that pitched the three passengers sideways. In the same instant Kendal heard the unmistakable pop-pop-pop pop-pop-pop of gunfire from below. A bullet ripped through the fuselage as she twisted her face to the window, looking down to see several men running out of a hangar, strafing the sky with submachine guns.

In seconds Jason had pushed the little plane up to an air speed that made Kendal’s hair stand on end.

“What are you doing?” she screamed as he continued to climb.

“Keeping us alive!” he screamed back.

“The fuel!” she argued, knowing his maneuver was gobbling up what little remained. But Jason only pulled the plane up higher, out of range of the gunfire.

The Cessna’s engines were tough, but they weren’t designed for dogfight maneuvers, and the plane stalled as the fuel was sucked away to mere fumes. They plummeted back to earth in a screeching nosedive.

While the alarms rang and the warning light panel on the Cessna lit up like a Christmas tree, Jason managed to pull the plane out of the dive.

Dizzily, Kendal looked back to see the machine-gunners running across the landing strip toward an aircraft that she hadn’t noticed before. In the next few minutes those men would take off, and their plane looked bigger, faster than Jason’s.

“We can’t outrun them,” Jason yelled. He leveled the plane just as the engines coughed once more, sputtered, and died. “Put on the life jackets,” he commanded. “And strap Miguel in his own seat. We’ll have to go for a controlled landing out on the river.”

The Rio Grijalva came into view. It was wide in places where it had been dammed, but it was carved deep into the Canon del Sumidero. From their altitude it looked like a broad navy blue ribbon curving at the bottom of three-thousand-foot-high cliffs. But it was the only place where the jungle canopy and the rugged mountains parted enough to put a plane down.

“Oh, God.” Kendal felt her face draining pale, paler, as with trembling hands she pulled the life vests from behind the rear seats and hurriedly helped Ruth strap the wailing Miguel into his, then quickly slipped on her own. Ruth secured Miguel into the other seat.

Jason grabbed the CB-like microphone off the instrument panel.

“Mayday! Mayday!” he shouted into the mike. “We are making a forced uncontrolled landing over the Rio Grijalva gorge. Cessna Conquest call numb—”

His words were cut short as the dying plane tilted and careened, and he had to wrestle the yoke with all his might. In a panic Kendal tried to wedge a life jacket behind him, but he shrugged her hands away. She studied his grim face, and then twisted to see the steep rocky walls of the canyon below, hurtling rapidly toward them. We are going to die, she thought.

How had it come to this?

She reached back to clutch her howling baby’s tiny leg. With her other hand she gripped Jason’s muscular shoulder, then pressed her forehead against his hard flesh. She hadn’t touched either of them enough, not nearly enough. They couldn’t die now. Her mind rolled back to the amazing way it had all begun, and she thought, Oh, God, please. It can’t end like this. Not after all we’ve been through. Do not abandon us now, God. Not now. Not when at long last we have discovered the meaning of true love.

CHAPTER ONE

Three months earlier in the tenth-floor Oklahoma City offices of Dr. Jason Bridges. 7:06 a.m.

“I SEE YOU’VE GONE and pulled yourself another all nighter.” Kathy Martinez stated the words calmly, as if all-nighters were a boring fact of life with her boss, which they were.

“Now, now, Mother Martinez. Stop scowling. I feel great.”

But Kathy Martinez only frowned harder. “Well, Doctor, you don’t look great.” She patted her own kinky dark coif as she studied the young physician who had enticed her with a generous salary three years ago. Jason Bridges was a cutie-pie, all right. Mmm hmm. But this young man could sure use some neatness lessons. Jason Bridges ran around this hospital looking more like a rebel in a Gap ad than a gifted surgeon. Mussed dark hair, an overnight growth of beard, faded jeans, loafers with no socks, a leather jacket opened wide over a wrinkled gray T-shirt that looked like he’d slept in it. “If you ask me, you don’t even look like a doctor.”

“I didn’t ask you.” He reached for the clipboard with the day’s schedule.

The faded T-shirt stretched too tightly over a chest sculpted by weight training. But Dr. Bridges didn’t spend all that time in the gym so he’d look good. Although he most certainly did look good.

Dr. Bridges built his body up so he could use it like a machine. Or rather, abuse it like a machine. Everything this young doctor did focused on one thing and one thing only—performing surgery. Performing countless surgeries, in fact. Dr. Bridges worked like a man possessed, as if his were the only hands that could undo the damage, the defects, the heartache that fate had dealt his patients.

And in certain respects, it could be argued that his were the only such hands. Because Dr. Bridges frequently, and successfully, attempted risky surgical techniques that other surgeons in his field were too intimidated, too terrified, to even try. Her boss, Kathy always said, was gifted. His hands, especially, were gifted. The most gifted of the gifted.

Others were not so admiring. Kathy had heard the stories. Nurses he’d had affairs with had labeled Dr. Bridges “The Wolf.” The image fit. His eyes, deep-set and icy blue, often squinted or flicked sideways with a sort of wariness, a watchfulness, that bordered on predatory. He seemed to be consumed by some sort of insatiable hunger, though he hid his drive behind a smoke screen of endless jokes. But when Kathy had seen him angry, which was not often and only in response to some idiot’s incompetence, Jason Bridges could be genuinely scary.

Kathy Martinez tugged the lapels of her starched snow-white lab coat over her broad bosom. With a renegade doctor like this one, somebody had to maintain standards. “No, sir. You don’t look like a doctor at all,” she sniffed. “In fact, I’d say you look like the devil himself.”

He looked up from the clipboard, and his bloodshot blue eyes flashed mischievously before they narrowed. He twisted his face into a mock diabolical expression, arched his dark brows and flared his nostrils. “You found me out, Mother Martinez.” He rubbed his stubbled jaw and leaned toward her. “I am…the devil himself. Mwah-ha-ha-ha.” He punctuated the fiendish laugh with a little pinch at her stout waist.

“Stop that.” Kathy slapped his hand. She pursed her chubby carmine lips, refusing to smile.

“You know what I mean.” Over her half glasses she skewered him with her black eyes. “You don’t get enough sleep and then you come in here looking like something the cat dragged in. It’s just plain shameful.”

“Ah, now.” Jason faked a pout. “Would you forgive me if I told you I had an emergency?”

“What was it this time?”

He sobered, shrugged. “Teenage girl who tried to exit her car via the windshield. Let’s just say her face looks considerably better now than it did at two o’clock this morning.”

Kathy gave a brisk nod of approval, then returned to her agenda. Middle-of-the-night surgeries notwithstanding, other doctors managed to shave. “You gonna get cleaned up before you make rounds?”

Dr. Bridges released a long, lionesque yawn. “Already made rounds, sweetie. And I’m sorry to report that the sticky buns on the ninth floor are done gone.”

Kathy planted her fists on her double-wide hips. “I didn’t say I wanted any dang sticky buns.” With a huff she stepped behind the desk and proceeded to rearrange the stack of charts that the staff had pulled the evening before. Only yesterday, she had embarked upon a strict diet. The latest in a long line of strict diets calculated to return her figure—in thirty days or less—to its prepudge state, before she’d added five pounds with each of her five pregnancies. Okay, ten pounds.

“Ah. You’ve found another foolproof diet?” Dr. Bridges’s grin was wicked. He was the devil, all right.

“Absolutely.” Kathy squared her shoulders.

“I’ve told you before, Mother Martinez. If you’d stop messing with your appetite, your body would eventually find its perfect shape.” He pulled a PalmPilot out of his hip pocket and started punching at it.

For a surgeon who spent his days repairing faces, Jason Bridges had some pretty laid-back notions about bodies. He always acted like Kathy wasn’t really all that fat. But she was F-A-T, fat. And she suspected it was her weight that had gotten her into a teensy bit of trouble. Well, they’d discuss her medical problems in a minute. Patients first.

“I wish it were that simple.” Kathy finished putting the charts in the proper order. The staff had to do everything possible to keep their gifted young surgeon on track. “What with the nurses and their sticky buns and the drug reps hauling in trays of food every week. Everybody’s always celebrating something around here. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, and sure enough, a basket of cookies has already arrived.” She flipped a dismissing hand at the end of the counter, where a gigantic red basket, lined with pink foil wrap, overflowed with gift pens, notepads, and heart-shaped cookies.

Dr. Bridges turned his head toward the gaudy basket. “Good Lord! Who sent that thing?”

“That drug rep from Merrill Jackson.” Kathy watched Dr. Bridges saunter over and pluck out the card protruding from the basket. He read it, sniffed at the paper, raised his eyebrows with interest, then slipped the note in the pocket of his leather jacket.

Kathy rolled her eyes. She would bet her last sticky bun that that young woman, just like every other eligible female around this hospital, was after a whole lot more than the doctor’s pharmaceutical business. Heart-shaped cookies. Phooey.

“Those drug reps are after you like ducks on a June bug. Another one was supposed to bring breakfast tomorrow, but she canceled.”

“Doubt I could have made it anyway. I’ve got that periorbital reconstruction at dark-thirty and then a bilateral resection of parotids.” Dr. Bridges returned his attention to his PalmPilot. “But you nurses can have a treat now and then without obsessing about your weight.”

“Easy for you to say. You aren’t a fat black woman.”

“And neither are you, Mother Martinez. What you are is the most efficient and kind nurse I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. And you are absolutely gorgeous.”

Kathy rolled her eyes at him. This is why he was such a lady-killer. “You can just stop that old sweet talk.”

“You know you look fine.”

She swatted the compliment away. “I wish I could say the same about you, Doctor. You need a shower.”

He finished with the PalmPilot, scratched his chin again and checked his watch. “It’ll have to be a quickie in the doc’s lounge. I’ve got to be in surgery by seven-thirty.”