His Heir, Her Honour / Meddling With A Millionaire: His Heir, Her Honour

Four

Lilah had been running full-out since the minute she’d rolled out of bed this morning. The day had been jam-packed with continuous phone calls to the hospital in attempts to clear her schedule for a week while she packed, dressed and prepped her condo for her reckless getaway with Carlos.

Now, ensconced in his limousine on the way to the airport, the enormity of what she’d done washed over her until her fingers dug deeply into the supple leather seat.

Late-day rain pattered on the limo’s clear sunroof, streaks muting the already cloudy sky. Much like her nerves, it made her apprehension all the worse. She could barely believe she’d agreed to this crazy plan of his, an impulsive idea so unlike the normally methodical man. Perhaps that’s why she’d agreed. He must be every bit as thrown by life as she was right now to even suggest such a plan.

Although he looked anything but rattled as he checked updates from the hospital on his phone. While he may have transferred his cases to another physician, he obviously hadn’t off-loaded the concerns from his mind. Intense concentration furrowed his brow, his dark, chocolate-brown eyes taking on a distant look as he stared out the window, his mind obviously still on his young patients.

Even in casual jeans and a black cable sweater, he was one hundred percent in charge. His dedication softened her heart, which kept her from tapping on the privacy window and asking the chauffer to take her home.

Today, Carlos was particularly involved in checking up on his very young patient from yesterday’s surgery. The deep, low rumble of Carlos’s bass filled the roomy limo with his exotic Spanish accent. Even with the blast of the vehicle’s heater, the chill of the damp day seeped into her and made her ache to cuddle into the heat of the warm-blooded—undoubtedly hot—man beside her.

Her cashmere blend dress suddenly itchy against her oversensitive skin, she scratched the back of her neck, tucking her hand under the concealed zipper.

Carlos clipped his phone to his jeans and turned his attention toward her. “I assume everything is fine for you to travel. I didn’t even think to ask last night and I should have. My apologies.”

His concern touched her. “I spoke with my doctor this morning to be sure. And yes, travel is fine or I wouldn’t be here. I packed my vitamins and am taking care of myself.”

“Would you like something to drink? Some spring water?” He gestured to the gleaming silver minifridge. “A light snack?”

“No, thank you.” Her hands were trembling so much she would likely spill it anyway. “Maybe later.”

“Any morning sickness?” he asked in his oh-so-familiar physician tone.

“Some,” she responded slowly, curious as to his grilling. “The nausea’s not pleasant, to say the least, but tolerable.”

Suspicion niggled as she wondered if his questions had more to do with relegating her to a safe, distant role of patient rather than genuine concern for her, for their baby.

Hurt grated against her already ragged nerves. “Why the sudden interest in this pregnancy? Are you searching for clues that I’m not as far along as I say? Is that what this trip is really all about? You must realize a person can travel ‘til nearly the eighth month.”

He stretched his arm along the back of her seat, inches away from encircling her shoulders. The scent of him mingled with leather and new car smell. “Let’s not begin a fight. This time together is about finding common ground.”

While he was right on that point, resentment still simmered. “How can you simply shut down unpleasantness in a snap? I’m not accustomed to compartmentalizing my life that way.”

“How then do you function during a crisis at the hospital?” he retorted without missing a beat.

“That’s different.” Wasn’t it? “That’s a unique moment in time. Life isn’t one continual crisis.”

He grunted noncommittally. “If you say so.”

Was her pregnancy being relegated to crisis level? So, then, what was this time with her through his eyes? Damage control? “Surely you must have some way to relax, making time to lower those thick walls you put around yourself.”

A one-sided grin creased his cheek but never reached his eyes. “Letting down your guard is highly overrated, not to mention dangerous.”

Dangerous? A pall settled over their conversation. “Because you’re royalty?”

Which meant her child was a royal as well. She resisted the urge to lean back into the safety, the protection, of the hard-muscled beam of his arm.

He teased a lock of her loose hair. “Ah, you remember my Medina roots after all.”

“That’s a strange thing to say.”

His head tipped to the side, his smoky eyes raking her with an appreciative gaze. “I appreciated the way you didn’t treat me differently after the news story broke about my family’s hidden identity.”

The compliment soothed her raw nerves and also made her wonder. “Is that why things changed between us, why you made a move on me at the party?”

Hesitating, he scrubbed a hand over the five o’clock shadow already peppering his strong, square jaw. “In part. You were the one person who didn’t want to talk about San Rinaldo.”

Because she’d seen how people suddenly treated him differently. She’d noticed how uncomfortable the kowtowing made him. And, quite frankly, she’d found his work at the hospital to be infinitely more admirable than any royal fortune or regal bloodlines.

That he preferred anonymity to media attention impressed her all the more. “Thank you, Carlos.”

“For what?”

“For telling me that.” For helping reassure her going with him now was the right thing to do. She needed these insights as to what made Carlos tick. She needed this trip.

She needed him.

Her eyes fell to his mouth, a strong masculine slash that could turn so tender on her bared body. Memories flooded her mind of the first time he’d kissed her at the hospital fundraiser, standing out on the balcony with a romantic flurry of snow casting a crystal sheen on everything around her. The second Carlos’s mouth had covered hers, she’d been warmed to her toes.

Like the heat rekindling in her veins now.

It would be so easy to lean into him, to recapture that magical connection. What a mixed blessing these feelings were. What she felt with him surpassed anything she’d experienced before, but that meant all other men paled in comparison. She ached from wanting something so wrong for her. They still had so much left unsettled. He still didn’t trust her.

But an answering blaze flared in his eyes.

The patter of the rain closed out everything but the sound of their breathing, the brush of his thigh along hers as he shifted. Carlos dipped his head silently, close but not near enough to make contact. Clearly he was letting her know he wanted to kiss her every bit as much as she wanted him, but was leaving the next move up to her. Her thudding heartbeat echoed in her ears as the moment ticked out.

Did she dare say to hell with it all? Make the most of this time together before the baby complicated matters further? Indulge herself in the unsurpassed pleasures she’d found with Carlos?

The spacious limousine became full of possibilities. She could straddle his lap and take control with ease, thanks to the dress she wore. Or she could lean back and invite him to stretch his muscular length over her. The tingling need skipping through her veins gathered between her legs until she pressed her knees together against the sweet ache.

The limo slowed, turning off the highway and signaling the nearing end of their drive. A flush burned up her face as she realized how close she’d come to throwing herself at Carlos. She inched toward her door, tugging the hem of her sapphire cashmere dress securely over her knees until it touched the tops of her black leather boots.

Carlos angled away and back to his side, supple leather seat crackling softly under the give and shift of bodies. Just as it would have sounded had she acted on her desire to have him here and now. Every sound, each nuance, felt so intimate in light of the time they would be spending together.

The luxury vehicle rocked gently as the car slid to a stop. They’d arrived at the airport, and while they would leave the confines of the car soon, they were simply exchanging the solitude of the limo for the seclusion of a private jet.

Before she could stem her fluttering nerves, the driver opened the passenger door, holding an umbrella over her head to protect her from the light drizzle. She swung her feet out, her eyes sweeping the small, private airport, a simple one-story red brick building with four hangars and a lone runway. A Learjet swooshed upward into the murky sky.

A pair of businessmen with matching black umbrellas rushed toward the covered walkway. A family of four huddled underneath the shelter as an SUV rumbled toward them. Lilah couldn’t tear her eyes from the frazzled family tableau. While the father snagged his son from stomping galoshes through a puddle, the mother scooped up a toddler in a yellow duck raincoat that swallowed the child so fully it was impossible to determine gender.

Her hand gravitated to her stomach and she swallowed back a betraying sigh. But it was difficult to stem the flood of hopeful images, especially when Carlos had already made a first step toward opening up.

Warily hopeful, she shifted her attention to the tiny terminal where they would officially launch their journey. A woman stood by the door with a tomato-red umbrella. Actually an umbrella with a tomato stem on top, with a familiar female waiting and waving underneath the bright shelter.

Lilah stumbled on the curb.

It couldn’t be….

But a closer look confirmed her suspicion. None other than Nancy Wolcott, Carlos’s supposedly “ex” girlfriend, waited at the airport entrance.

Holy hell.

Wincing, Carlos scrubbed his bristly jaw. What was Nancy Wolcott doing here at the private airport?

And clearly waving at them.

Her presence didn’t make sense. He had made himself clear, in a polite fashion. They were both adults. She’d seemed to understand. Yes, she’d seemed disappointed and expressed regret, but not overly so.

He took the offered umbrella from the chauffer and slid under alongside Lilah. Her gasp let him know she’d seen the woman too and was none too happy. The timing couldn’t have been worse. All the progress he’d made on the ride over was blasted to bits now. His body was still strung taut with desire and images of how easy it would have been to lean Lilah back on the leather seats….

He cut the thought short and focused on the mess at hand. Planting a hand on the small of Lilah’s back, he steered her with him, toward the airport entrance. Toward the waiting train wreck.

“Yoo-hoo,” Nancy called, her waving intensifying, raindrops sliding from the umbrella faster in her animation. “Over here!”

He shot a quick assessing glance at Lilah and found her lips thin and tight with irritation, her boots clicking in a snappy fast pace he recognized as angry. He’d heard the same stomping rhythm before as she left a particularly frustrating board meeting. Now was not the time to ponder the reason he knew her well enough to read the mood of her footsteps.

Stopping beside Nancy, Carlos reined in his own frustration over the woman’s surprise arrival.

Nancy’s smile widened. “What perfect timing. I’m so glad I caught you before you left, Carlos.”

Lilah stayed silent, but Carlos had different plans. There were important details to learn before he sent Nancy on her way. “How did you know to come here? And what time?”

“It’s not a state secret, is it? I just wanted to tell you goodbye.” She stared at Lilah curiously, closing her umbrella slowly and shaking it dry. “I didn’t realize the two of you would be traveling together. You didn’t tell me that yesterday, Carlos.”

Blown away by the way she’d shown up here when he’d made it clear yesterday they both needed to go their separate ways, he wondered how he could have misread Nancy. Not that he’d really known her well when he asked her out.

What had made him gravitate to Nancy so soon after his time with Lilah? On the surface, the women were total opposites in many ways. Which made him wonder if perhaps he’d chosen Nancy for just that reason.

Had that one night he’d shared with Lilah sent him running scared? That possibility rocked his world in a way it would take some serious time to process.

Carlos stepped aside for the pair of businessmen passing. “Nancy, quite frankly, I prefer to keep details of my travels low-key and private.”

“Of course.” The woman nodded quickly, clutching her shiny red umbrella closer. “I only want to speak to you alone for a few minutes, you know, about what we discussed at the hospital before you left.” She glanced at Lilah pointedly.

Before Carlos could insist she stay, Lilah hitched her purse higher on her shoulder and said, “I need to make some work calls. If you’ll excuse me.”

“No. Don’t go.” He clasped Lilah’s arm while keeping the other, unpredictable woman clearly in his sights. Who knew what she might do next? “Nancy, I’m sorry, but let’s not make this awkward for anyone. There’s nothing more to say. I believe I covered everything yesterday.”

He kept his voice firm and no-nonsense while working not to be outright cruel. But she needed to understand there could be nothing more.

Nancy’s face froze, her grin turning brittle. “You’re right. I apologize for wanting to send you off on a nicer note.” Her icy smile included Lilah now. “Have a safe business trip.”

Tomato umbrella swooping up and sending a fresh shower of water outward, Nancy raced out into the parking lot toward her hatchback. Regret bit at him that he hadn’t handled things better with her the day before. He hadn’t meant to be a coldhearted bastard, but … damn. Maybe he should have thought of that before they’d dated.

Annoyed with himself and with Nancy, Carlos watched to make sure she got into her car and left. Once her car cleared the parking lot, he turned to Lilah again.

Frowning, she swept water from her wool coat and the hem of her cashmere dress. “Have many more groupies waiting to waylay us before we board?”

Instinctively, he reached for his phone. “I’m more concerned with how she found out we’re here and how much more she knows about our travel plans.”

A call to his family’s security team was in order. As much as he wanted to launch his quest to seduce Lilah, nothing could take precedence over her safety. Once they were secured on the plane, he would turn his attention to discovering how Nancy Wolcott unearthed his travel itinerary and just how much she knew.

Jet engines humming softly, Lilah unbuckled from her seat for a better view out the window at the night sky. Anything to distract her from what she really wanted to study. Carlos, reclined and sleeping an arm stretch away, kept stealing her attention.

Before they’d even left the ground, he’d been working his phone assigning some security team—apparently he kept one on retainer?—to figure out how Nancy had tracked them to the airport. A security team, for crying out loud. Once his “people” had been given their marching orders, Carlos had fallen asleep in a blink, a skill he’d picked up catching catnaps during long shifts at the hospital.

How could he look so familiar but seem so different out of their medical realm? She wasn’t a millionaire, but she was financially secure in her own right. She’d also grown up with her fair share of glitz due to her father’s connections to the Hollywood scene—although he’d been known to live beyond his means, which led to a feast-and-famine lifestyle for his family.

Still, even her own experience of brushing elbows with the rich and famous hadn’t come close to the scope of influence she was only just beginning to see Carlos wielded. While she couldn’t deny Carlos attracted her physically, she refused to be swayed by the wealth of his world of secretive itineraries, plush limousines and private jets. And a very determined female radiologist whose behavior bordered on stalking.

Lilah gripped the leather armrests tighter. Seeing Nancy Wolcott waiting and waving had provided a hefty reminder for how little she knew about Carlos. And how important it was to gauge her moves carefully.

She looked away from the starkly handsome man snoozing across from her and turned her attention to the sleeping world of tiny lights below. If only things were as straightforward as they’d once been with Carlos, just a few shorts months ago before that fateful Christmas fundraiser. Back during a time when she’d been able to rein in her wayward attraction to the brooding surgeon who haunted her dreams.

Carlos didn’t believe dreams came only in black-and-white. His always felt far more vivid than that as the real world mixed with the slumber sphere. Perhaps because he’d slept lightly for as long as he could remember.

As a child, he’d been taught to stay on guard against threats to him as heir to the throne. Then he’d been denied REM sleep by the claws of pain recovering from the shooting. And, finally, he’d needed to stay on alert for his patients.

Right now, his dream mixed with the recycled plane oxygen blending the scent of Lilah with some kind of pine air freshener … taking him back to that night at the hospital fundraiser nearly three months ago….

Lighted pine trees decorating the sprawling hospital conference room, Carlos stirred his sparkling water, refusing anything stronger until the fundraiser finished. And then, just call him Scrooge, because all bets were off.

Christmas meant celebrations and special family moments to most people. Carlos preferred a bottle of memory-numbing bourbon to get through the holidays.

But first, he had to fulfill work obligations.

He tugged at his tux tie absently. He hated the damn thing, but his presence was required at the formal event. Wealthy contributors liked to rub elbows with the doctors who used their money to save lives.

Apparently he was the celebrity of the hour since news of his Medina heritage had broken. He would give over his entire inheritance if it would get him out of this diamond-studded circus. Even his family’s fortune wouldn’t be enough for him to bid farewell to fundraiser dog and pony shows.

His back hurt like hell after a relentless day of surgery after surgery. Seeing Lilah offered the first distraction in an otherwise crappy day. Her auburn hair was swept up in a bundle of loose curls rather than her regular tight twist. During office hours she wore button-up power suits, linen and layers that left him imagining peeling each piece off. Now, however, there was much more of her creamy skin on display. Not in an overt way, but enough that his fingers curled in his pockets from restraint.

The gold silk gown wrapped around her curves, giving her a Grecian goddess appeal. Beaded details glinted from the chandelier’s light. The luminescent glow of her bared shoulders, however, outshone everything else.

She smiled at him, leaned toward the person she’d been speaking to—excusing herself?—and walked toward him. Silky fabric swirled around her legs with each graceful glide.

For four years he’d resisted the attraction. Persistent. Ever present. Increasingly painful appeal.

Tonight, with memories of that final, ill-fated Christmas in San Rinaldo pounding in his head like the unrelenting bullets that had killed his mother, his ears ringing, ringing, ringing, he didn’t have the willpower to resist….

Five

The airplane phone rang and rang and rang, jarring Lilah from her dazed stare out the window at the distant mountain peaks below. She started to walk across to answer the phone before the jangling disturbed Carlos’s catnap, but he bolted upright in the reclined lounger and snagged the receiver.

“Speak,” he barked into the phone in his normal gruff fashion.

Some parts of his blunt personality were still all too familiar.

He scrubbed a hand over his eyes, his groggy look clearing in a flash as he transformed back to the alert surgeon, the intense man she knew from work. He returned his seat to the upright position. After a few clipped responses of “good,” “excellent” and “keep me posted” rumbling from him, he disconnected the call.

Unbuckling, he stood with an almost disguised wince and started toward her. “Apparently Nancy figured out my plans to fly out from a note Wanda had jotted on her desk. If that’s the case, then Nancy knows nothing more about our travel plans than the airport location.”