Summer With Love: The Spanish Consultant
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‘After you left.’ What was the point in denying what he clearly knew? She walked over the far end of her bedroom, wondering how a room that she normally regarded as a sanctuary could suddenly seem so claustrophobic.
He frowned. ‘You didn’t find out until after I left?’
She swallowed. ‘I suspected …’
‘But you didn’t say anything?’
‘I panicked.’
‘I can imagine.’ He ran a hand over his jaw, visibly tense. ‘Katy, you told me you were protected.’
His voice was surprisingly gentle and her heart missed several beats. If she was vulnerable to his macho, dominating male side, she was even more vulnerable to his gentle side. She wished he’d kept it hidden.
She felt the colour touch her cheeks. ‘There really isn’t any reason to talk about this.’
‘Your sister clearly blames me for making you pregnant,’ he pointed out, and she sat down on the edge of the bed because standing suddenly seemed too much like hard work.
‘That’s not true. I told Libby it was my fault.’
He inhaled sharply. ‘I was older than you and more experienced. It was my responsibility but you definitely told me you were protected.’ He stepped forward and hunkered down next to her, his dark gaze fixed on her pale face, his eyes tormented. ‘Have you any idea what it does to me to know that I left you pregnant? You lied to me, querida. Why?’
‘Because I was eighteen and stupid,’ she muttered, her cheeks hot with embarrassment. ‘And desperate.’
He frowned with an unusual lack of comprehension. ‘Desperate?’
‘To go to bed with you.’
She looked away from him, instantly regretting her honesty, but strong fingers caught her chin and forced her to look at him.
Connecting with those stunning dark eyes, she suddenly understood with appalling clarity how she could have made such a serious error of judgement at eighteen. Jago was so staggeringly sexy that exercising common sense would have been as unlikely as a snowstorm in summer.
He said something under his breath in Spanish and then switched to English. ‘I can’t believe I let that happen,’ he muttered, and her eyes slid away from his.
‘I’ve never blamed you.’
‘You should have told me you were pregnant.’
‘I had no idea where you were,’ she pointed out, struggling to control the traitorous reaction of her body. He was so close to her. She curled her fingers into her palms in case she gave in to the temptation to slide them into his silky black hair. ‘And, anyway, you’d rejected me.’
He gave an agonised groan. ‘Don’t remind me. If I’d known …’ His face was unusually pale, the skin stretched taut over his cheekbones. ‘And then you lost the baby. How did you fall? Tell me what happened.’
Shaken by a question that she hadn’t been anticipating, she stared at him. ‘How did you know I fell?’
‘I’m afraid I took advantage of your sister,’ he muttered, and she stood up and moved over to her bedroom window.
He was being too nice to her. The only way she could keep him at a distance was if she reminded herself that he was an uncaring, unfeeling monster who hadn’t trusted her, and it was very hard to do that convincingly when he was working overtime on demonstrating his sensitive side.
She desperately wanted him to leave.
Unfortunately Freddie wasn’t due for another half-hour so there was no hope of a reprieve from that direction.
‘Katy?’ Eyes narrowed, Jago rose to his feet in a fluid movement and she stopped to pick up a towelling robe, which lay discarded on the floor, and draped it over the back of a chair.
Anything to avoid that penetrating gaze. He saw too much.
‘I tripped—it was just one of those things.’
There was a long silence. ‘You tripped?’
She licked her lips, hearing the surprise and disbelief in his tone. ‘That’s right. And now can we change the subject?’ She looked at him and managed something resembling a smile. ‘As you’re always saying, it’s history now and I certainly don’t blame you for the baby.’
His powerful body radiated tension. ‘But you blame me for everything else.’
‘You should have trusted me, Jago,’ she said simply. ‘I was completely in love with you and a man as experienced as you should have seen that I couldn’t see straight enough to focus on another man.’
A muscle moved in his cheek and she watched him dealing with the unfamiliar experience of being in the wrong.
For a man with his pride she knew it would be hard and she certainly wasn’t expecting an apology. Jago had probably never apologised for anything in his life.
‘You have to admit I had reason—’
‘You ignored what you knew about me and judged me on the evidence of someone who had every reason to destroy our relationship,’ she said quietly, holding onto the fact that he’d behaved with such totally predictable male arrogance. Only by remembering that would she be able to keep him at a distance. ‘I still can’t quite believe you did that. And now you have to go, Jago. Freddie will be here any minute.’
‘Call him and cancel.’
He moved towards her with deliberate intent and she found herself backing against the wall of the bedroom.
‘He’s booked a table.’
‘Cancel.’ His eyes dropped to her mouth and she felt her heart rate increase with startling rapidity. ‘You’re not going to marry him, Katy.’
The atmosphere in the room was suddenly charged with tension and she felt frighteningly out of control.
‘I am, I’m—’
‘Call him and end it. We both know you’re not in love with him. So why are you marrying him?’ Because she didn’t want love.
Jago stepped closer still and she felt sensation knife through her pelvis. She was breathlessly aware of him, of the blue-black stubble on his jaw, of the slumberous dark eyes probing hers with relentless intent, of his wide shoulders blocking her escape.
‘You’re dating a Brazilian model,’ she reminded him desperately, and he gave a groan of denial.
‘Not any more.’
Trapped by his ferocious masculinity, she felt the tension in the room rise to an almost unbearable degree.
‘End it,’ he instructed softly, his eyes dropping to her parted lips and clouding hungrily, ‘or stop looking at me like that.’
She couldn’t get the air into her lungs. ‘I’m not looking at you—’
‘Yes, you are.’
Without warning he took her mouth in a kiss so explicit in its intent that her senses went into freefall. With a rough exclamation he hauled her against his powerful body, the sensual onslaught of his kiss creating an excitement so wild that she couldn’t help but respond. Fevered by his touch, she kissed him back, locking her arms around his strong neck, feeling the heat of his body pressing through the thin fabric of her dress.
His breathing fractured, he lifted a hand and tugged roughly at her hair, discarding the clips impatiently until it tumbled in a silken mass over his arm and down her back.
With a groan of satisfaction he sank both hands into the soft waves that he’d released, anchoring her head against the relentless onslaught of his skilled mouth.
‘I love your hair.’ He muttered the words against her mouth, moving his lips over hers, exploring suggestively with his tongue until she went up in flames.
How could she have forgotten what it felt like to kiss Jago?
Instead of pulling away, she pressed herself closer to him, quivering with response as he kissed her senseless.
Her body softened under the hard possession of his mouth, her insides melting as his tongue probed and teased in an erotic reminder of more intimate moments.
‘Jago, please …’ She was out of her mind with excitement, her whole body consumed by a wild hunger that was totally outside her control.
She needed him so badly.
It had been so long.
The hot demands of his mouth intensified and she started to shiver, held in the grip of an electrifying force so powerful that that she thought she might explode.
She felt frantic.
Desperate.
When Jago finally dragged his mouth away from hers, she staggered slightly, grateful that his fingers were gripping her arms so tightly. If they hadn’t been, she would undoubtedly have fallen.
Aghast and embarrassed by the uninhibited way she’d responded to him, she freed herself from his grip and backed away, deriving some small satisfaction from the fact that Jago looked as stunned as she felt.
Maybe he wasn’t quite as cool and in control as he liked to pretend.
He sucked in his breath and took a step backwards, reaching out to steady himself as he almost tripped over the chair.
His dark eyes burned into hers. ‘You definitely need to call Freddie.’
With that parting shot he turned and strode out of the room, leaving her staring after him in trembling disbelief, feeling intensely vulnerable.
What had she done?
She’d kissed Jago.
And that hadn’t been any old kiss. That kiss had been as close to sex as it was possible to get without removing clothing.
She groaned in mortification. Knowing Jago, he wasn’t going to let her forget it. He was self-confident and arrogant enough to have taken that response as a green light. From now on he’d be pursuing her with all the subtlety of a herd bull.
Shocked and confused, she sat on the edge of the bed until the sound of the doorbell disturbed her.
It would be Freddie. What was she going to do?
She stared at the closed door with something close to desperation.
She was engaged to Freddie but she’d kissed Jago. And kissing Jago had exposed her to a level of excitement that she’d denied herself for eleven years. Intense, toe-curling excitement that could so easily become addictive.
Lifting a hand, she touched her lips, still able to feel a slight tingling where he’d plundered her mouth with his.
No one but no one kissed like Jago. Jago had cornered the market in sexual excitement.
Hearing Freddie’s voice in the hallway, she closed her eyes, knowing that she needed to make a decision.
Fingers shaking, she stood up just as Freddie tapped on the door and walked in. He stopped in surprise, visibly taken aback by her appearance.
‘Goodness, Katherine, what have you done to your hair?’ His frown was faintly disapproving. ‘The Fletcher-Gibbs are quite formal usually and this evening is very much a business dinner. There’ll be clients there. You might want to wear it up.’
Katy blinked, suddenly realising that she’d forgotten to redo her hair after Jago had strode like the conquering male out of her bedroom, having kissed her to the point of total surrender.
She lifted a hand and realised that her long blonde hair, normally fiercely restrained, was flowing loose over her shoulders.
‘I—I—’ She broke off, suddenly needing to ask him a question. ‘Freddie, do you like it like this? If we weren’t dining with the Fletcher-Gibbs, would you prefer that I left it down?’
He looked at her with the expression of a man who knew he was on dangerous ground. ‘You look lovely,’ he said tactfully, ‘but generally speaking I prefer it up. It projects the right sort of image, don’t you agree?’
And that was what Freddie cared about, of course. Image.
Katy looked at him thoughtfully. Jago didn’t prefer it up. Her hair had always driven him wild. But, then, as Libby had pointed out, Freddie wasn’t the sort of man to be driven wild by anything except stocks and shares.
And that had been one of the reasons she’d agreed to marry him.
But what was she going to do now?
Could she ever be satisfied with the blandness of Freddie after experiencing the heat and colour of a man like Jago?
CHAPTER SEVEN
JAGO strode through the A and E department the next morning, satisfied that he’d successfully salvaged what could have been a difficult situation.
All right, so he’d made a mistake about Katy, but her response to his kiss had more than convinced him that she’d forgiven him for not trusting her. After the kiss they’d shared the night before he was supremely confident that she would have ended her engagement to Freddie.
Which meant that they could resume their relationship.
And he had every intention of doing exactly that.
He loved her.
He’d always loved her.
Convinced that he had the situation well in hand, it came as an enormous shock to see her clutching a huge hand-tied bouquet of flowers as she walked along the corridor towards him.
Instinct told him that they had to be from Freddie and he tensed in stunned disbelief. What sort of guy sent flowers after he’d been dumped only a few months before the wedding?
Unless she hadn’t dumped him.
Maybe his plan wasn’t going quite as smoothly as he’d anticipated.
‘You didn’t do it?’ He glowered at her, disconcerted by the feeling that tore through him. The feeling that he only ever seemed to experience when he was around Katy. ‘I can’t believe you still intend to marry that man. How can you marry him after the way you kissed me last night?’
‘You kissed me, Jago,’ she pointed out calmly. ‘And please don’t criticise Freddie. He’s romantic and kind.’
Romantic?
She thought Freddie was romantic?
He stiffened, offended by the implication that he was somehow lacking in that direction. ‘You don’t think I’m romantic?’
‘You?’ She looked startled at the question, as if the thought genuinely hadn’t occurred to her before. ‘You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, Jago.’
Rocked from his unshakable conviction that he was the only man she’d ever wanted, Jago was completely wrong-footed. ‘This isn’t the place to have the type of conversation we need. I’m taking you to dinner tonight. I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty. We can talk then.’
‘And you think you’re romantic?’ She shook her head, her expression sympathetic and slightly amused. ‘Sorry. I’m already going out.’
With Freddie no doubt.
His lean hands curled into fists. ‘You still want me, Katy, and I want you.’
Having laid most of his cards on the table, Jago watched her warily, trying to gauge her reaction. Normally he prided himself in his ability to understand and outsmart the most devious member of her sex, but Katy didn’t play any of the games that women normally played. Whatever reaction he was expecting to that declaration, it wasn’t the one he received.
Instead of falling into his arms and treating his announcement with the misty-eyed delight that he’d expected, she merely looked at him, visibly unenthusiastic at the prospect of resuming their relationship.
Uncomfortably aware that nothing was going according to plan, Jago suddenly found himself in the novel position of not knowing how to handle a woman. After that kiss he’d assumed that they’d be resuming their relationship as soon as she’d ended her engagement to Freddie. But there was something disturbingly discouraging about the expression in her blue gaze.
‘Up until twenty-four hours ago you believed me capable of sleeping with another man, even though I’d told you that I was in love with you.’ Her tone was cool and controlled. ‘You told me yesterday that your barest minimum requirement in a relationship is fidelity. Well, mine is trust, Jago. I absolutely cannot be with a man who doesn’t trust me.’
Jago sucked in a breath. ‘I already explained what happened.’
‘And that’s supposed to make it OK?’ Her voice shook slightly and he realised that she wasn’t quite as cool as she was making out. ‘You didn’t trust me, Jago. I doubt that you’ve ever trusted anyone. You move on before you can get close to a woman.’
Thoroughly discomfited by her blunt appraisal, he took refuge in attack. ‘You still want me, Katy. Do you think I didn’t feel it when we kissed last night?’
‘A relationship has to be based on more than kissing. I’m not interested, Jago.’ Her grip on the flowers tightened. ‘We might have to work together, but I don’t want anything else.’
And with that parting shot she walked off, leaving him to come to terms with the fact that for the first time in his thirty-five years, a woman had chosen to walk away from him.
He wanted her back.
Katy stuffed the flowers in water so that they didn’t die before the end of her shift and slipped the card into her pocket with shaking fingers.
She wondered what Jago would have said had he known that they weren’t from Freddie at all but from Alex, whom she’d spoken to on the phone the night before. And it was Alex she was having dinner with. Alex and Libby.
In fact, his hasty assumption that she hadn’t broken up with Freddie was yet another indication of Jago’s jaundiced view of her sex. He was assuming that, despite the kiss they’d shared, she was still going ahead and marrying another man.
She wondered what had happened in his life that made him so cynical about women.
It showed that he still knew very little about her. She would never do a thing like that.
She would never kiss one man and then marry another.
And that was the reason she’d ended her engagement to Freddie the evening before.
She felt slightly guilty about not telling Jago but she hadn’t actually lied, she reassured herself. She just hadn’t told the whole truth.
And why should she?
Jago didn’t love her. All he wanted was a physical affair and she knew that pursuing a relationship with Jago would be a quick route to another broken heart. They just didn’t want the same things in life. So surely she was right to protect herself?
She walked out of the staffroom, reflecting that breaking up with Freddie had been surprisingly painless. Even though initially he’d seemed a little startled by her announcement that she couldn’t marry him, he’d accepted it with a readiness that suggested that he’d been having second thoughts about the wedding himself. She just wished that telling her parents would prove as easy.
She needed to pick the right time to do it but it had to be soon, otherwise they’d hear from other sources.
The morning was incredibly busy but she successfully avoided Jago until lunchtime when the doors to the ambulance bay crashed open and the paramedics rushed in with a small girl on the stretcher.
‘This is Molly Churchman. She’s two years old and she fell out of the bedroom window,’ the paramedic told them, his expression tense and anxious. ‘Bedroom on the first floor—the mother is hysterical.’
Jago reached for the oxygen mask and positioned it carefully over the child’s mouth and nose. He watched carefully, nodding with satisfaction as he saw the mask fog.
‘Her airway is patent and she’s breathing by herself,’ he growled. ‘I want two lines in and I need an estimation of her weight.’
Katy wondered whether it was the sick child or their earlier confrontation that was responsible for the grim expression on his handsome face and the tension in his broad shoulders.
It was probably the child, she decided. Their relationship couldn’t possibly be that important to him.
Charlotte looked up. ‘I asked the mother about her weight but she was too upset to give me a lucid answer.’
‘In that case, use the Oakley Paediatric Resuscitation chart on the wall,’ Jago instructed, and one of the other nurses hurried to do that while he carried on assessing the child. ‘Cervical spine injury is rare in a child of this age but we’ll keep the spine immobilised until we’ve ruled it out.’
There was a flurry of action and Annie came back from examining the chart on the wall. ‘Estimated weight is about 12 kilograms.’
‘Right. Charlotte, make a note of that. Annie, go back to the mother,’ Jago ordered, ‘find out if the child cried immediately—I need to know whether she was unconscious for any time. And get me details of allergies, medications, past medical history and when she last ate or drank. And try and get a more precise account of the accident. What surface she landed on, how she was lying—that sort of thing.’
Annie hurried off to do as he’d instructed and Jago spoke quietly to the little girl, reassuring her in a gentle voice as he worked.
Charlotte was visibly upset as she undressed the child so that they could make a more accurate assessment of her injuries.
‘She’s so tiny. That poor mother.’
‘Lose the emotion,’ Jago said harshly. ‘We’ve got a job to do. Finish undressing her and get some overhead heaters and warming blankets—a fall in body temperature causes a rise in oxygen consumption.’
Charlotte swallowed and looked at him, startled by the sharp reprimand.
Katy felt a flash of empathy for her colleague but she knew that Jago was right.
It wouldn’t help the child if they let emotions get in the way of their work. The child needed them to be professional.
But there was no doubt that Jago was unusually tense.
They removed all her clothes and then covered her in warm blankets and adjusted the heaters so that she wouldn’t become cold.
With the minimum of fuss, Katy found a vein and slipped in the cannula.
‘Her blood pressure is slightly down,’ one of the nurses said, ‘but not dramatically.’
‘Check her capillary refill time,’ Jago ordered, and Katy finished taping the first IV in place and glanced up at him.
‘Is that significant?’
He gave a brief nod. ‘A child can suffer considerable blood loss without a significant change to the vital signs,’ he told her, his eyes fixed on her fingers as she searched for another vein. ‘When we diagnose shock in children we rely on other signs, like capillary refill time, the appearance of the skin, the temperature of the extremities.’
‘Based on those criteria, this child is in shock,’ Katy murmured, pausing as she located what felt like a vein.
Without hesitating, she inserted the cannula smoothly and watched as the blood flowed backwards.
‘Both lines are in,’ she said quickly, relieved that she’d managed what had proved to be a difficult task. Finding veins in a child that small was difficult at the best of times and sometimes they had to give an infusion directly into the bone.
The child had barely protested, which was another indication of how ill she was.
‘That was a tricky job.’ Jago’s voice was gruff. ‘Well done.’
For a brief moment their eyes met and he gave a slight smile. The tension in the room seemed to ease slightly but there was a hint of challenge in that smile that made Katy breathless.
The subject of their relationship was obviously far from closed.
She picked up a selection of blood bottles. ‘I’ll take bloods for group and cross-matching, blood-glucose estimation and request a full blood count and biochemistry. Anything else?’
Jago shook his head. ‘No, but we need to get her some pain control.’
‘Her skin is very cold and clammy and her capillary refill time is prolonged,’ Charlotte said quietly, and Katy bit her lip as she took the bloods and administered the pain relief that Jago had ordered.
‘She’s very lethargic,’ Jago murmured, his eyes never leaving the child as he worked. ‘She’s showing all the features of class III shock. I want to give her 20 milligrams of crystalloid per kilogram. Do the calculation, Katy.’
Katy did as he ordered and warmed the fluid before injecting it into the child’s vein.
Jago carried on examining the limp, unresponsive body of the toddler. ‘She’s bleeding from somewhere and we need to find out where. Check her pulse and blood pressure again,’ he ordered, glancing at Charlotte as he spoke. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Bleep the surgeons and get me some blood up here fast. If her vital signs don’t improve in the next few minutes I’m going to transfuse her. Can we get a nasogastric tube down, please? And I want X-rays of her chest and pelvis.’