Billionaire, M.D.

Nine

Rodrigo stood looking down at the approaching car procession.

His family was here.

He hadn’t even thought of them since the accident. He hadn’t for a while before that, either. He’d had nothing on his mind but Cybele and Mel and his turmoil over them both for over a year.

He’d remembered them only when he needed their presence to keep him away from Cybele. And he’d gotten what he deserved for neglecting them for so long. They’d all had other plans.

He’d ended up begging them to come. He’d evaded explaining the reason behind his desperation. They’d probably figure it out the moment they saw him with her.

In the end, he’d gotten them to come. And made them promise to stay. Long. He’d always wished they’d stay as long as possible.

This time he wondered if he’d survive it.

And here began his torment.

His grandparents stepped out of the limo he’d sent them, followed by three of his aunts. Out of the vans poured the aunts’ adult children and their families plus a few cousins and their offspring.

Cybele stepped out of the French doors. He gritted his teeth against the violence of his response. He’d been wrestling with it for the past three days since that confrontation. He’d still almost ended up storming her bedroom every night. Her efforts to offer him sexually neutral friendliness were inflaming him far worse than if she’d been coming on to him hot and heavy.

Now she walked toward him with those energetic steps of hers, rod-straight, no wiggle anywhere, dressed in dark blue jeans and a crisp azure blouse that covered her from throat to elbows.

The way his hormones thundered, she could have been undulating toward him in stilettos, a push-up bra and a thong.

Dios. The…containment he now lived in had better be obscuring his condition.

He needed help. He needed the invasion of his family to keep him away from her door, from carrying her off to his bed.

Before she could say anything, since anything she said blinded him with an urge to plunder those mind-destroying lips, he said, “Come, let me introduce you to my tribe.”

Tribe is right, Cybele thought.

She fell in step with Rodrigo as she counted thirty-eight men, women and children. More still poured from the vans. Four generations of Valderramas.

It was amazing what one marriage could end up producing.

Rodrigo had told her that his mother had been Esteban and Imelda’s first child, had been only nineteen when she had him, that his grandparents had been in their early twenties when they got married. With him at thirty-eight, his grandparents must be in their late seventies or early eighties. They looked like a very good sixty. Must be the clean living Rodrigo had told her about.

She focused on his grandfather. It was uncanny, his resemblance to Rodrigo. This was what Rodrigo would look like in forty-something years’ time. And it was amazingly good.

Her heart clenched on the foolish but burning wish to be around Rodrigo through all that time, to know him at that age.

She now watched as he met his family three-quarters of the way, smile and arms wide. Another wish seared her-to be the one he received with such pleasure, the one he missed that much. She envied each of those who had the right to rush to fill his arms, to be blessed by the knowledge of his vast and unconditional love. Her heart broke against the hopelessness of it all as his family took turns being clasped to his heart.

Then he turned to her, covered in kids from age two to mid-teens, his smile blazing as he beckoned to her to come be included in the boisterous affection of his family reunion.

She rushed to answer his invitation and found herself being received by his family with the same enthusiasm.

For the next eight hours, she talked and laughed nonstop, ate and drank more than she had in the last three days put together, put a name and a detailed history to each of the unpretentious, vital beings who swept her along the wave of their rowdy interaction and infectious joie de vivre.

All along she felt Rodrigo watching her even as he paid attention to every member of his family, clearly on the best possible terms with them all. She managed not to miss one of his actions either, even as she kept up her side of the conversations. Her pleasure mounted at seeing him at such ease, surrounded by all these people who loved him as he deserved to be loved. She kept smiling at him, showing him how happy she was for him, yet trying her best not to let her longing show.

She was deep in conversation with Consuelo and two of Rodrigo’s aunts, Felicidad and Benita, when he stood up, exited her field of vision. She barely stopped herself from swinging around to follow his movement. Then she felt him. At her back. His approach was like a wave of electromagnetism, sending every hair on her body standing on end, crackling along her nerves. She hoped she didn’t look the way she felt, a woman in the grip of emotional and physical tumult.

His hands descended on her shoulders. Somehow she didn’t lurch. “Who’s letting her patient call the shots, now?”

She looked up, caught his eyebrow wiggle at Consuelo. The urge to drag him down and devour that teasing smile right off his luscious lips drilled a hole in her midsection.

The three vociferous women launched into a repartee match with him. He volleyed each of their taunts with a witticism that was more funny and inventive than the last, until they were all howling with laughter. She laughed, too, if not as heartily. She was busy having mini-heart attacks as one of his hands kept smoothing her hair and sweeping it off her shoulders absently.

By the time he bent and said, “Bed,” she almost begged, Yes, please.

He pulled her to her feet as everyone bid her a cheerful good-night. She insisted he didn’t need to escort her to her room, that he remain with his family. She didn’t think she had the strength tonight not to make a fool of herself. Again.

On La Diada De Sant Jordi, St. George’s Day, Rodrigo’s family had been there for four weeks. After the first four weeks with him, they were the second-best days of her life.

For the first time, she realized what a family was like, what being an accepted member of such a largely harmonious one could mean.

And they had more than accepted her. They’d reached out and assimilated her into their passionate-for-life, close-knit collective. The older members treated her with the same indulgence as Rodrigo, the younger ones with excitement and curiosity, loving to have someone new and interesting enter their lives. She almost couldn’t remember her life before she’d met these people, before they’d made her one of their own. She didn’t want to remember any time when Rodrigo hadn’t filled her heart.

And he, being the magnificent human being that he was, had felt the melancholy that blunted her joy, had once again asked if her problems with her own family couldn’t be healed, if he could intervene, as a neutral mediator, to bring about a reconciliation.

After she’d controlled her impulse to drown him in tears and kisses, she’d told him there hadn’t exactly been a rift, no single, overwhelming episode or grievance that could be resolved. It was a lifetime of estrangement.

But the good news was-and that might be a side effect of her injuries-she was at last past the hurt of growing up the unwanted child. She’d finally come to terms with it, could finally see her mother’s side of things. Though Cybele had been only six when her father had died, she’d been the difficult child of a disappointment of a husband, a constant reminder of her mother’s worst years and biggest mistake. A daddy’s girl who’d cried for him for years and told her mother she’d wished she’d been the one who’d died.

She could also see her stepfather’s side, a man who’d found himself saddled with a dead man’s hostile child as a price for having the woman he wanted, but who couldn’t extend his support to tolerance or interest. They were only human, she’d finally admitted to herself, not just the grown-ups who’d neglected her. And that made it possible for her to put the past behind her.

As more good news, her mother had contacted her again, and though what she’d offered Cybele was nowhere near the unreserved allegiance Rodrigo’s family shared, she wanted to be on better terms.

The relationship would never be what she wished for, but she’d decided to do her share, meet her mother halfway, take what was on offer, what was possible with her family.

Rodrigo hadn’t let the subject go until he’d pressed and persisted and made sure she was really at peace with that.

She now stood looking down the beach where the children were flying kites and building sand castles. She pressed the sight between the pages of her mind, for when she was back to her monotone and animation-free life.

No. She’d never go back to that. Even when she exited Rodrigo’s orbit, her baby would fill her life with-

“Do you have your book?”

She swung around to Imelda, her smile ready and wholehearted. She’d come to love the woman in that short time.

She admired Imelda’s bottle-green outfit, which matched the eyes she’d passed on to Rodrigo, and was again struck by her beauty. She could barely imagine how Imelda might have looked in her prime.

Her eyes fell on the heavy volume in Imelda’s hand. “What book?”

“La Diada De Sant Jordi is rosas i libros day.”

“Oh, yes, Rodrigo told me.”

“Men give women a red rose, and women give men a book.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“So now you know. Come on, muchacha, go pick a book. The men will be coming back any time now.”

“Pick a book from where?”

“From Rodrigo’s library, of course.”

“I can’t just take a book from his library.”

“He’ll be more than happy for you to. And then, it’s what you choose that will have significance when you give it to him.”

Okay. Why would Imelda suggest she give Rodrigo a book? Had she realized how Cybele felt about him and was trying to matchmake? Rodrigo hadn’t been the one to betray any special emotions. He’d been no more affectionate to her than he’d been to his cousins.

Better gloss over this. “So a woman picks any man she knows, and gives him a book?”

“She can. But usually she picks the most important man in her life.”

Imelda knew what Rodrigo was to her. There was certainty in her shrewd eyes, along with a don’t-bother-denying-it footnote.

Cybele couldn’t corroborate her belief. It would be imposing on Rodrigo. He probably knew how she felt, but it was one thing to know, another to have it declared. And then, he wouldn’t give her a rose. Even if he did, it would be because all the women had their husbands with them for the fiesta, or because she was alone, or any other reason. She wasn’t the most important woman in his life.

But after she walked back into the house with Imelda and they parted ways, she found herself rushing to the library.

She came out with the book of her choice, feeling agonizingly exposed each time one of the women passed her and commented on her having a book like them.

Then the men came back from the next town, bearing copious amounts of prepared and mouthwatering food. And each man had a red rose for his woman. Rodrigo didn’t have one.

Her heart thudded with a force that almost made her sick.

She had no right to be crushed by disappointment. And no right to embarrass him. She’d give the book to Esteban.

Then she moved, and her feet took her to Rodrigo. Even if she had no claim on him, and there’d never be anything between them, he was the most important man in her life, and everyone knew it.

As she approached him, he watched her with that stillness and intensity that always made her almost howl with tension.

She stopped one step away, held out the book.

“Happy La Diada De Sant Jordi, Rodrigo.”

He took the book, his eyes fixing on it, obscuring his reaction from her. She’d chosen a book about all the people who’d advanced modern medicine in the last century. He raised his eyes to her, clearly uncertain of the significance of her choice.

“Just a reminder,” she whispered, “that in a collation of this century’s medical giants, you’ll be among them.”

His eyes flared with such fierceness, it almost knocked her off her feet. Then he reached for her hand, pulled her to him. One hand clasped her back, the other traveled over her hair to cup her head. Then he enfolded her into him briefly, pressed a searing kiss on her forehead. “Gracias mucho, querida. It’s enough for me to have your good opinion.”

Next second, he let her go, turned to deliver a few festive words, starting the celebrations.

She didn’t know how she functioned after that embrace. That kiss. Those words. That querida.

She evidently did function, even if she didn’t remember anything she said or did during the next hours. Then Rodrigo was pulling her to her feet.

“Come. We’re starting the Sardana, our national dance.”

She flowed behind him, almost hovered as she smiled up at him, her heart jiggling at seeing him at his most carefree.

The band consisted of eleven players. They’d already taken their place at an improvised stage in the terrace garden that had been cleared for the dancers, evidently all of Rodrigo’s family.

“I had the nearest town’s cobla, our Catalan music ensemble, come over to play for us. The Sardana is never the same without live music. It’s always made of four Catalan shawm players…” He pointed toward four men holding double-reed woodwinds. “Two trumpets, two horns, one trombone and a double bass.”

“And what’s with that guy with the flutelike instrument and the small drum attached to his left arm?”

“He plays the flabiol, that three-holed flute, with his left hand and plays that tamborí with the right. He keeps the rhythm.”

“Why not just have twelve players, instead of saddling one with this convoluted setup?”

He grinned. “It’s a tradition some say goes back two thousand years. But wait till you see him play. He’ll make it look like the easiest thing in the world.”

She grimaced down at her casted arm. “One thing’s for sure, I’m not a candidate for a flabiol/tamborí player right now.”

He put a finger below her chin, raised her face to him. “You soon will be.” Before she gave in and dragged his head down to her to take that kiss she was disintegrating for, he turned his head away. “Now watch closely. They’re going to dance the first tirada, and we’ll join in the second one. The steps are very simple.”

Letting out a steaming exhalation, she forced her attention to the circle of dancers that was forming.

“It’s usually one man, one woman and so on, but we have more women than men here, so excuse the nontraditional configuration.”

She mimicked his earlier hand gesture, drawled, “Women rule.”

He threw his head back on a peal of laughter at her reminder, kept chuckling as he watched his womenfolk herding and organizing their men and children. “They do indeed.”

The dance began, heated, then Rodrigo tugged her to join the rotllanes obertes, the open circles. They danced the steps he’d rehearsed with her on the sidelines, laughed together until their sides hurt. Everything was like a dream. A dream where she felt more alert and alive than she ever had. A dream where she was one with Rodrigo, a part of him, and in tune with the music, his family and the whole world.

Then, like every dream, the festivities drew to an end.

After calling good-night to everyone, Rodrigo walked her as usual to her quarters, left her a few steps from her door.

Two steps into the room, she froze. Her mouth fell open. Her breath left her lungs under pressure, wouldn’t be retrieved.

All around. On every surface. Everywhere.

Red roses.

Bunches and bunches and bunches of perfect, bloodred roses.

Oh. God. Oh…God…

She darted back outside, called out to him. But he’d gone.

She stood there vibrating with the need to rush after him, find him wherever he was and smother him in kisses.

But…since he hadn’t waited around for her reaction, maybe he hadn’t anticipated it would be this fierce. Maybe he’d only meant to give her a nice surprise. Maybe he’d had every other woman’s room filled with flowers, too. Which she wouldn’t put past him. She’d never known anyone with his capacity for giving.

She staggered back into her room. The explosion of beauty and color and fragrance yanked her into its embrace again.

The need expanded, compressing her heart, her lungs.

It was no use. She had to do it. She had to go to him.

She grabbed a jacket, streaked outside.

His scent, his vibe led her to the roof.

He was standing at the waist-high stone balustrade overlooking a turbulent, after-midnight sea, a lone knight silvered by the moon, carved from the night.

She stopped a dozen steps away. He didn’t turn, stood like a statue of a Titan, the only animate things his satin mane rioting around his leonine head and his clothes rustling around his steel-fleshed frame. There was no way he could have heard the staccato of her feet or the labor of her breathing over the wind’s buffeting whistles. But she knew he felt her there. He was waiting for her to initiate this.

“Rodrigo.” Her gasp trembled against the wind’s dissipation. He turned then. Cool rays deposited glimmers in the emerald of his eyes, luster on the golden bronze of his ruggedness. She stepped closer, mesmerized by his magnificence. A step away, she reached for his hand. She wanted to take it to her lips. That hand that had saved her life, that changed the lives of countless others daily, giving them back their limbs and mobility and freeing them from pain and disability. She settled for squeezing it between both of her trembling ones. “Besides everything you’ve done for me, your roses are the best gift I’ve ever been given.”

His stare roiled with his discomfort at receiving gratitude. Then he simply said, “Your book beats my roses any day.”

A smile ached on her lips. “You have issues with hearing thanks, don’t you?”

“Thanks are overrated.”

“Nothing sincere can be rated highly enough.”

“I do what I want to do, what pleases me. And I certainly never do anything expecting…anything in return.”

Was he telling her that his gift wasn’t hinting at any special involvement? Warning her about getting ideas?

It wouldn’t change anything. She loved him with everything in her, would give him everything that she was if he’d only take it. But if he didn’t want it, she would give him her unending appreciation. “And I thank you because I want to, because it pleases me. And I certainly don’t expect you to do anything in return but accept. I accepted your thanks for the book, didn’t I?”

His lips spread in one of those slow, scorching smiles of his, as if against his will. “I don’t remember if I gave you a choice to accept it or not. I sort of overrode you.”

“Hmm, you’ve got a point.” Then, without warning, she tugged his hand. Surprise made him stumble the step that separated them, so that he ended up pressed against her from breast to calf. Her hand released his, went to his head, sifting through the silk of his mane, bringing it down to hers. How she wished she had the use of her other arm, so she could mimic his earlier embrace. She had to settle for pressing her longing against his forehead with lips that shook on his name.

They slid down his nose…and a cell phone rang.

He sundered their communion in a jerk, stared down at her, his eyes echoing the sea’s tumult. It was shuddering, disoriented moments before her brain rebooted after the shock of interruption, of separation from him. That was her cell phone’s tone.

It was in her jacket. Rodrigo had given it her, and only he had called her on it so far. Who could be calling her?

“Are you expecting a call?” His rasp scraped her nerves.

“I didn’t even know anyone had this number.”

“It’s probably a wrong number.”

“Yeah, probably. Just a sec.” She fumbled the phone out, hit Answer. A woman’s tear-choked voice filled her head.

“Agnes? What’s wrong?” Instant anxiety gripped Rodrigo, spilled into urgency that had his hand at the phone, demanding to bear bad news himself. She blurted out the question that she hoped would defuse his agitation, “Are you and Steven okay?”

“Yes, yes…it’s not that.”

Cybele covered the mouthpiece, rapped her urgent assurance to Rodrigo. “They’re both fine. This is something else.”

His alarm drained, but tension didn’t. He eased a fraction away, let her take the call, watching for any sign that necessitated his intervention, his taking over the situation.

Agnes went on. “I hate to ask you this, Cybele, but if you’ve remembered your life with Mel, you might know how this happened.”

Foreboding closed in on her. “How what happened?”

“M-many people have contacted us claiming that Mel owes them extensive amounts of money. And the hospital where you used to work together says the funding he offered in return for being the head of the new general surgery department was withdrawn and the projects that were under way have incurred overdrafts in the millions. Everyone is suing us-and you-as his next of kin and inheritors.”