Billionaire, M.D.

Seven

“You don’t have post-traumatic amnesia.”

Cybele’s eyes rounded at Rodrigo’s proclamation.

Her incredulity at his statement was only rivaled by the one she still couldn’t get over; that he’d transferred a miniature hospital to his estate so he could test and chart her progress daily.

Apart from wards and ORs, he had about everything else on site. A whole imaging facility with X-ray, MRI, CT machines and even a PET scan machine, which seemed like overkill just to follow up her arm’s and head’s healing progress. A comprehensive lab for every known test to check up on her overall condition and that of her pregnancy. Then there were the dozen neurological tests he subjected her to daily, plus the physiotherapy sessions for her fingers.

They’d just ended such a session and were heading out to the barbecue house at the seafront terrace garden to have lunch, after which he’d said they’d explore more of the estate.

He was walking beside her, his brows drawn together, his eyes plastered to the latest batch of results from another dozen tests. So what did he mean, she didn’t have…?

Terrible suspicion mushroomed, clouding the perfection of the day.

Could he think she’d capitalized on a transient memory loss and had been stringing him along for the past four weeks? Or worse, that she’d never had memory loss, that she was cunning enough, with a convoluted enough agenda, to have faked it from the start?

And she blurted it out, “You think I’m pretending?”

“What?” He raised his eyes sluggishly, stared ahead into nothingness as if the meaning of her words was oozing through his mind, searching for comprehension. Then it hit him. Hard. His head jerked toward her, his frown spectacular. “No.”

She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t, buried his head back into the tests.

So she prodded. “So what do you mean I don’t have PTA? I woke up post-trauma with amnesia. Granted, it’s not a classic case, but what else could it be?”

Instead of answering, he held the door of the terrace pergola open for her. She stepped out into the late March midday, barely stopped herself from moaning as the sweet saltiness of the sea breeze splashed her face, weaved insistent fingers through her hair.

He looked down at her as they walked, as if he hadn’t heard her question. She shivered, not from the delicious coolness of the wind, but from the caress of his gaze, which followed the wind’s every movement over her face and through her hair.

At least, that was how it felt to her. It was probably all in her mind, and he was lost in thought and not seeing her at all.

He suddenly turned his eyes again to the tests, validating her interpretation. “Let’s review your condition, shall we? You started out having total retrograde amnesia, with all the memories formed before the accident lost. Then you started retrieving ‘islands of memory,’ when you recalled those ‘skeletal’ events. But you didn’t suffer from any degree of anterograde amnesia, since you had no problems creating new memories after the injury. Taking all that into account, and that it has been over four weeks and the ‘islands’ have not coalesced into a uniform landmass…”

“As uniform as could be, you mean,” she interrupted. “Even so-called healthy people don’t remember everything in their lives-most things not in reliable detail and some things not at all.”

“Granted. But PTA that lasts that long indicates severe brain injury, and it’s clear from your clinical condition and all of your tests that you are not suffering from any cognitive, sensory, motor or coordination deficits. An isolated PTA of this magnitude is unheard of. That is why I’m leaning toward diagnosing you with a hybrid case of amnesia. The trauma might have triggered it, but the major part of your memory deficit is psychogenic, not organic.”

She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “So we’re back to what I said minutes after I regained consciousness. I wanted to forget.”

“Yes. You diagnosed yourself fresh out of a coma.”

“It wasn’t really a diagnosis. I was trying to figure out why I had no other symptoms. When I didn’t find an explanation, I thought either my medical knowledge had taken a hit, or that neurology was never my strong point in my parallel existence. I thought you would know that cases like mine exist. But they don’t. Turns out I don’t really have amnesia, I’m just hysterical.”

His gaze whipped to hers, fierce, indignant. “Psychogenic amnesia is no less real than organic. It’s a self-preservation mechanism. I also wouldn’t label the psychogenic ingredient of your memory loss as hysterical, but rather functional or dissociative. In fact, I don’t support the hysterical nomenclature and what it’s come to be associated with-willful and weak-willed frenzy.”

Hot sweetness unfurled inside her. He was defending her to herself. Pleasure surged to her lips, making them tingle. “So you think I have a repressed-memory type functional amnesia.”

He nodded, ultraserious. “Yes. Here, take a look at this. This is your last MRI.” She looked. “It’s called functional imaging. After structural imaging revealed no physical changes in your brain, I looked at the function. You see this?” She did. “This abnormal brain activity in the limbic system led to your inability to recall stressful and traumatic events. The memories are stored in your long-term memory, but access to them has been impaired through a mixture of trauma and psychological defense mechanisms. The abnormal activity explains your partial memory recovery. But now that I’m certain there’s nothing to worry about organically, I’m relaxed about when total recovery occurs.”

“If it ever does.” If he was right, and she couldn’t think how he wasn’t, she might be better off if it never did.

Psychogenic amnesia sufferers included soldiers and childhood abuse, rape, domestic violence, natural disaster and terrorist attack victims. Sufferers of severe enough psychological stress, internal conflict or intolerable life situations. And if her mind had latched on to the injury as a trigger to purge her memories of Mel and her life with him, she’d probably suffered all three.

But that still didn’t explain her pregnancy or the honeymoon they were heading to when they’d had the accident.

Rodrigo stemmed the tide of confusion that always overcame her when she came up against those points.

“Anyway,” he said. “While explanations have been proposed to explain psychogenic amnesia, none of them have been verified as the mechanism that fits all types. I prefer to set aside the Freudian, personal semantic belief systems and betrayal trauma theories to explain the condition. I lean toward the theory that explains the biochemical imbalance that triggers it.”

“That’s why you’re a neurosurgeon and not a neurologist or psychiatrist. Where others are content to deal with insults to the psyche, you dig down to the building blocks of the nervous system, cell by cell, neurotransmitter by neurotransmitter.”

“I admit, I like to track any sign or symptom, physical or psychological, back to its causative mechanism, to find the ‘exactly how’ after others explain the ‘why.’”

“And that’s why you’re a researcher and inventor.”

He focused on her eyes for a second before he turned his own back to the tests, his skin’s golden-bronze color deepening.

He was embarrassed!

She’d noticed on many occasions that, although he was certain of his abilities, he wasn’t full of himself and didn’t expect or abide adulation, despite having every reason to feel superior and to demand and expect being treated as such.

But this-to actually blush at her admiration! Oh, Lord, but he was delicious, scrumptious. Edible. And adorable.

And he ignored her praise pointedly. “So-I favor the theory that postulates that normal autobiographical memory processing is blocked by altered release of stress hormones in the brain during chronic stress conditions. With the regions of expanded limbic system in the right hemisphere more vulnerable to stress and trauma, affecting the body’s opioids, hormones and neurotransmitters, increased levels of glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptor density affect the anterior temporal, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampal and amygdalar regions.”

She couldn’t help it. Her lips spread so wide they hurt. “I bet you’re having a ball talking to a doctor/patient. Imagine all the translation into layman’s terms you’d have to do if you wanted to say that to someone who didn’t get the lingo.”

He blinked, surprise tingeing his incredible eyes. Then that incendiary smile of his flowed over his face, crooked his divine-work-of-art lips. “It has been a very freeing experience, spoiling even, not to keep looking for ways to explain what I’m doing or what’s happening and fearing I won’t be clear enough or that you’ll misinterpret it no matter what I say and develop false expectations, positive or negative.” He shook his head in self-deprecation, switching back to solemn in a blink. “But that was far too involved, anyway. My point is, you might have appeared or thought you were coping with your situation before the accident, but according to your current condition, you weren’t.”

She pursed her lips in an effort to stop herself from grinning uncontrollably and giving in to the urge to lunge at him, tickle him out of his seriousness. “So you’re saying I was headed for psychogenic amnesia, anyway?”

“No, I’m saying the unimaginable stress of experiencing a plane crash, plus the temporary brain insult you suffered, disrupted the balance that would have kept your memory intact in the face of whatever psychological pressure you were suffering.”

She raised an eyebrow, mock-indignant. “You’re trying very hard to find neurologically feasible explanations backed by complex theories and medical expressions to dress up the fact that you’ve diagnosed me as a basket case, aren’t you?”

“No! I certainly haven’t. You’re in no way…” He stopped abruptly when she couldn’t hold back anymore, let the smile split her face. Incredulity spread over his face. “You’re playing me!”

She burst out laughing. “Yep. For quite some time now. But you were so involved in your explanations, so careful not to give me any reason to feel silly or undeserving of concern or follow-up since my condition is ‘only in my mind,’ you didn’t notice.”

One formidable eyebrow rose, a calculating gleam entering his eyes, an unbearably sexy curl twisting his lips. “Hmm, seems I have underestimated the stage of your progress.”

“Been telling you so for-”

“Quite some time now. Yes, I get it. But now that I’m certain your brain is in fine working order, nuts-and-bolts-wise, being the guy who cares about nothing but the hardware, I think I can safely stop treating you like you’re made of fresh paint.”

A laugh cracked out of her at his metaphor. He kept surprising her. She’d be thinking he was this ultra-cerebral, all-work genius of a man, then out of the blue, he’d let this side of him show. The most witty and wickedly fun person she’d ever known. And she did know that for a fact. She remembered all of her life before Mel now.

She pretended to wipe imaginary sweat off her brow. “Phew, I thought I’d never get you to stop.”

“Don’t be so happy. Until minutes ago, I would have let you trampoline-jump all over me. Now I think you don’t warrant the walking-on-eggshells preferential treatment anymore. You deserve some punishment for making fun of my efforts to appear all-knowing.”

“Making fun of them, or debunking them?”

“Payback is getting steeper by the word.”

She made a cartoonish face. “What can you do to a poor patient who has expanded limbic system issues and increased levels of glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptor density messing with her anterior temporal, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampal and amygdalar regions?”

“That’s it. I’m exacting retribution.”

“What will you do? Make me go to my room?”

“I’ll make you eat what I cook. And that’s for starters. I’ll devise something heinous while phase one is underway.”

“You mean more heinous than your cooking?”

He rumbled something from his gut, devilry igniting in his eyes. She giggled and rushed ahead, felt like she was flying there, borne on the giddy pleasure of his pursuing chuckles.

When she reached the steps, his voice boomed behind her, concern gripping its rich power. “Slow down.”

She did, waited for him to catch up with her in those strides that ate up ten of her running steps in five.

She grinned up into his no-longer-carefree, admonishing eyes. “I thought I wasn’t getting the fresh-paint treatment any longer.”

“You’ve hereby moved to getting the uninsured, last-known-piece-of-Ming-dynasty-China treatment.”

He slipped a steadying hand around her waist as they scaled the steps. She felt she’d be secure if the whole country fell into the sea. Or he’d clasp her to his body and take off into the sky.

She leashed her desire to press into him. “Aha! I should have known you’d default on your declaration of my independence.”

He grinned down at her as they reached the barbecue house. “Tales of your independence have been wildly exaggerated.”

She made a face, ducked under the shade of the canvas canopy.

He gave her a smug look as he seated her, then went to the kitchen area and began preparing her “punishment.”

She watched his every graceful move as putting out cooking utensils and food items and chopping and slicing were turned into a precision performance like his surgeries. When he ducked inside to get more articles, she exhaled at the interruption of her viewing pleasure, swept her gaze to the sparkling azure-emerald waters of the magnificent, channellike part of the sea, the mile-long breathtaking sandy beach ensconced in a rocky hug.

The living, breathing tranquility imbued her. Most of the time she couldn’t remember how she’d come to be here, or that she’d ever been anywhere else, that a world existed outside.

This place wasn’t just a place. It was an…experience. A sense of completion, of arrival. A realm in time and space she’d never seen approximated, let alone replicated. An amalgam of nature’s pristine grandeur and man’s quest for the utmost in beauty and comfort. But all this would have been nothing without him.

It was being with him that made it embody heaven.

During the past weeks they’d made real fires, collected ripe fruits and vegetables, eaten their meals in the apartment-sized kitchen or in the cool barbecue house and held their after-dinner gatherings and entertainment in its lounge or in the huge pergola terrace.

She’d watched him play tennis on the floodlit court with the tireless Gustavo, swim endless laps in the half-Olympic-sized pool, drooled over his every move, longed to tear off her cast and shed her aches and throw herself into that pool after him…

“Ready for your punishment?”

She twinkled up at him. “Is it too heinous?”

He looked down at the salad bowls in his hands. “Atrocious.”

“Gimme.” She took her bowl, set it in front of her. And gaped. Then she crooked a challenging smile up at him. “It’s colorful, I’ll give you that. And…odorous.” She tried not to wince as she picked up her fork. “And I didn’t know these food items could go together.”

He sat down across from her. “I didn’t hear any objections as I tossed them into each other’s company.”

She chuckled. “I don’t even know what said food items are.”

His glance said her delaying tactics weren’t working. “Eat.”

She took a mouthful, trying not to inhale the stench, trying not to have what produced it hit her taste buds, to slide directly into her throat. Then it did hit, everywhere. And…wow.

She raised incredulous eyes to him. “You better get this patented. It’s a-maaazing!”

He raised both eyebrows in disbelief. “You’re just trying to prove nothing can gross you out, that I didn’t and wouldn’t succeed in punishing you, ’cause you can take anything.”

“What am I, twelve?” She wolfed down another huge forkful.

He crooked his head to one side, considering. “So you like it.”

“I love it,” she exclaimed, mumbling around the food she’d stuffed into her mouth. “I can do without the smell, but it actually lessens as you eat, or your senses forgive it for being coupled with the delicious taste. At first I thought it was rotten fish.”

“It is rotten fish.”

She almost choked. “Now you’re pulling my leg.”

“Nope.” The wattage of the wickedness in his eyes reached electrocuting levels. “But if you like it, does the label matter?”

She thought about that for a second, then said “Nah” and stuffed another forkful into her mouth.

He laughed as he began to eat his own serving. “It’s actually only semi-rotten. It’s called feseekh-sun dried then salted gray mullet. It’s considered an acquired taste-which you must be the quickest to ever acquire-and a delicacy around here. It came to Catalonia with the Berbers, and they brought it all the way from Egypt. But I bet I’m the first one to mix it with a dozen unnamed leafy greens and the wild berries Gustavo grows and collects and gives to me to consume, assuring me they’re the secret to my never needing any of our esteemed colleagues’ services.”

“So you can give me rotten and unidentified food to consume, but you balk at my walking faster than a turtle.”

“The rotten ingredient has proved through centuries of folk experience to have potent antibacterial and digestive-regulating properties. It and the rest of the unidentified food have been repeatedly tested on yours truly, and I’m living proof to their efficacy. I haven’t been sick a day in the last twenty years.”

Her eyes rounded in alarm. “Okay, jinx much?”

He threw his head back on a guffaw. “You’re superstitious? You think I’ll get deathly sick now that I’ve dared tempt fate?”

“Who knows? Maybe fate doesn’t like braggarts.”

“Actually, I think fate doesn’t like gamblers.” Something dark flitted across his face. Before she analyzed it, he lowered his gaze, hid it. “Since I’m anything but, I’m a good candidate for staying on its good side. For as long as possible. That brings us back to your hare tactics. Maybe you don’t have loose components inside your brain to be shaken and stirred, but running like one, if you stumble, you have only one hand to ward off a fall, and you might injure it, too, or end up reinjuring your arm. And though your first trimester has been the smoothest I’ve ever heard about, probably as a compensation for what you’re already dealing with, you are pregnant.” She did forget sometimes that she was. Not that she wanted to forget. When she did remember, it was with a burst of joy, imagining that she had a life growing inside her, that she’d have a baby to love and cherish, who’d be her flesh and blood, the family she’d never had. If there had been one thing to thank Mel for, it was that he’d somehow talked her into conceiving that baby. But because she had no symptoms whatsoever, sometimes it did slip her mind.

“Okay, no hare tactics.” Her smile widened as she repeated his term for her jog. “But since I have no loose components, you must tell Consuelo to stop chasing me around as if I’ll scatter them.”

He turned his head to both sides, looked behind him. Then he turned back to her, palm over chest with an expression of mock horror. “You’re talking to me?”

Her lips twitched. “You’re the one who sicced her on me.”

“A man can start a nuclear reaction, but he surely has no way of stopping it once it becomes self-perpetuating.”

“You gotta call her off. She’ll brush my teeth for me next!”

“You really expect me to come between her and her hurt chick? I may be lord of all I survey back at the center, but here I’m just another in the line that marches to Consuelo’s tune.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” She chuckled, loving how he could be so alpha and capable and overriding and yet be totally comfortable letting another, and a woman, have the upper hand where she was best suited to take it. She cocked her head at him. “Families are very matriarchal here, aren’t they?”

He tossed her a piece of breath-freshening gum then piled their bowls in one hand and raised the other, ring and middle fingers folded by his thumb, fore and little fingers pointing up. “Women rule.”

She spluttered at the sight of him, so virile and formidable and poised, making that goofy expression and pop culture gesture.

He headed into the barbecue house and she melted back in her chair, replete and blissful. She’d never laughed like that before him. Before being here with him in his paradise of a home.

He’d only left her side to fly to work-literally, via helicopter-and had cut down on his working hours, to be there for her. She’d insisted he shouldn’t, that she was perfectly all right on her own or with Consuelo, Gustavo and their children.

But she’d stopped objecting, certain he wasn’t neglecting his work, had everything under control. And she couldn’t get enough of being with him. Against all resolutions, she reveled in his pampering, wished with all she had in her that she could repay him in kind. But he had everything. Needed nothing. Nothing but to heal emotionally.

So she contented herself with being there for him, hoping to see him heal. And he was healing. His moroseness had dissipated and his distance had vanished, had become a closeness like she’d never known, as they discovered each other, shared so many things she’d never thought she’d share with another.

She kept waiting for him to do something to annoy her, to disappoint her, as all human beings inevitably did. But the impossible man just wouldn’t. Then he went further into the realm of impossibility, kept doing things that shocked her by how much they appealed to her, delighted her.

He was everything his foster parents had said they’d picked him for and far more. Everything she admired in a human being and a man, and the most effective power for good she’d ever had the fortune to meet. And that was what he was to the world.

To her, he was all that resonated with her preferences and peculiarities. They agreed on most everything, and what they disagreed on, they discussed, came out conceding a respect for the other’s viewpoint and thrilled to have gained a new awareness.

And when she added up everything he’d done for her, had been to her-her savior, protector and support-he was, yes, just incredible.

Which was why every now and then the question popped into her head-where had this man been before the accident?

From the tatters she remembered, besides his reported promiscuity, he’d treated Mel with fed-up annoyance and everyone else with abrasive impatience. His treatment of her had been the worst. He’d barely spoken to her, had watched her with something almost vicious in his eyes, as if he’d thought her beneath his friend-his brother.

And every time there was one answer. The conclusion she’d made the first day she’d come here. Her memories had to be faulty. This, he, must be the truth. The magnificent truth.

“Ready to go back to your keeper?”

Everything became more beautiful with his return. She surrendered to his effortless strength, let him draw her to feet that barely touched the ground because he existed, was near.

She ended up ensconced in his protective embrace. His face clenched with the intensity she now adored, his freshness and potency filling her lungs. And it was as necessary as her next breath that she show him what he was to her.

She moved against his solid heat and power, raised her face to him, the invocation that filled her with life and hope and the will to heal, to be, trembling on her lips. “Rodrigo…”