Christmas at the Castello(24)

Diana was on her feet. "Call an air ambulance," she instructed Dana.  She flicked her gaze to Maciah. "Can you show Daddy and I where James  is?"

He nodded and slipped off his father's lap. They raced outside and over  to the edge of the cliff in front of the house, which was bounded by a  tall fence. Maciah slipped through an opening she hadn't seen. Diana  followed, Arthur and Coburn behind her. Her heart lurched as Maciah  pointed to a jagged ledge about five feet down from the edge, the sheer  face of rock beneath it terrifyingly steep. James was lying on the  ledge, barely visible in the darkness, his ragged sobs piercing the  night air.

"We need light," she said tersely. Someone ran up to the villa and came  back with a flashlight. She shone it down on the ledge, her pulse  accelerating at the awkward angle the boy's leg lay at, but more so  because of the amount of blood spurting from it. He had ruptured an  artery.

"Is the ledge steady?" she asked Maciah.

He nodded. Coburn cursed. "You don't know if it will take your weight."

"We're about to find out."

He caught her hand in his. "I'm going down first. If it's stable you can come down."

"Coburn-"

"Nonnegotiable."

She held her breath as her husband levered himself over the edge of the  cliff and down onto the ledge with the stealth of a man who had climbed  some of the world's biggest peaks. Arthur looked as if he was in shock,  his face white as Coburn stood up gingerly, testing the steadiness of  the rock.         

     



 

"It'll take both of us."

She sat on the edge of the cliff, turned and eased herself down, Coburn  spotting her with a hand to her back. She knelt beside the gray-faced  little boy, forcing herself to ignore how high they were over the rocky  shore. Using her fingertips, she found the source of the bleed and  pressed down hard to stem the flow. It was the femoral artery. A major  one. Not good.

"Take off your shirt," she ordered Coburn. "I need to bind the wound."

When he didn't respond immediately, she flicked her gaze up to him. He  was staring at all the blood. "Coburn," she bit out under her breath, "I  need binding material now."

Her husband emerged from his trance, tearing his shirt down the front.  He shrugged it off and started ripping it in strips. She grabbed the  first one and bound it around the little boy's thigh to stop the bleed.  An agonized cry escaped James. "More," she ordered Coburn. "Give me as  many as you've got."

She glanced at the little boy's chalk-white face, worried he was going  to go into shock. "James," she said softly, "did you know I'm a doctor?  That I put people back together again?"

His lips trembled but he didn't acknowledge her. "So you've hurt your  leg," she told him gently. "It isn't anything we can't fix. We just need  to get you to a hospital so we can do that. You'll get to ride in a  helicopter. Won't that be fun?"

His weak nod was a good sign. She reached for the strips Coburn handed  her. "I'm going to tie your two legs together to stop them from hurting  so much. Can you be brave for me?"

He nodded on a little sob. She set her jaw, knowing it was going to be  painful for him, and went to work. It was her job to be immune to the  little boy's tears, but his terrified wails as she stabilized his broken  leg against the other tore at her heart. They were hundreds of yards  above a rocky shore. His leg had been spouting a waterfall of blood. She  got it.

She secured James's legs. Coburn climbed up on the cliff so Arthur  could come down and talk to James with her until they heard the whir of  the helicopter blades. She climbed up on the cliff then, so the  ambulance crew could get the little boy on a stretcher and pass him up  onto solid ground.

It wasn't until everyone was securely on firm ground and James was  being loaded into the ambulance that her knees buckled. Coburn caught  her, sliding an arm around her waist.

"I'm terrified of heights."

"I know."

The raw emotion in his gaze brought tears dangerously close to the surface.

"You are insanely brave, Diana Grant."

She didn't feel brave. She felt very close to the edge, too much emotion attacking her from every direction.

The ambulance crew secured James. Arthur stepped into the back to go  with them. Coburn bundled her into the car and drove down the mountain.  Diana looked out the window and thought about what could have happened.  That little boy could have taken a wrong step and...

"It didn't happen." Coburn flicked her a sideways glance. "You can't live your life in what-ifs."

"Is that what you think I do?" she asked quietly.

"Until you decided to drop yourself into war-torn Africa, yes. That was a departure."

It had been. She sat in the car when they pulled into the driveway of  the cottage, in a complete state of inertia. Coburn opened the door and  reached down to scoop her out of the seat. She didn't argue, merely  rested her head on his chest as he let them into the cottage, carried  her upstairs and deposited her on the floor of his suite's bathroom  while he turned on the steam shower. She looked down at her dress. It  was so stained with blood it might as well have been red, not blue.

She reached around to unzip her dress, but her hands were shaking too  hard to accomplish the task. Coburn moved behind her and brushed her  hands out of the way. The whisper-soft touch of his lips against the  sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder sent a shiver down her  spine. "You were a goddamned superhero tonight."         

     



 

She shook her head. "It's my job."

The rasp of her zipper raked across her heightened senses. "It's not  your job to walk out on ledges when you're terrified of heights to save a  little boy. You didn't even blink."

Another shudder vibrated through her. "I was so terrified something would happen and we would plunge into the water."

"But it didn't stop you." He pushed her dress off her shoulders, his  hands coming up to cup her breasts while his mouth returned to that spot  that drove her crazy. "I have never been so proud of anything or anyone  than I was of you tonight."

Her heart squeezed. "I have skills, Coburn. I need to be using them."

"I know that." He pressed his fingers into her shoulders and turned her  around. "I have continually underplayed your job. I've never fully  understood until tonight when I saw you with James how amazing what you  do is."

Something that felt a lot like hope sprang to life inside her. Maybe  this could work between them. Maybe they could change. Maybe she just  needed to stop thinking, stop analyzing as she always did and follow her  heart. Give them a chance.

Coburn unhooked her bra and tossed it to the floor. His heated gaze  roamed over her swollen flesh, the greedy edge to it making her insides  quiver.

"I swear to God that scene at the dinner table nearly set me off," he  muttered, sliding his thumbs over the partially puckered peaks of her  breasts to bring them to aching erectness. "You should have let me  finish it."

Fire raced through her veins. "That was not happening."

"Now it is," he murmured in her ear. "Get in the shower, Diana."

She stepped into the shower, her jellylike legs barely holding her in  the wake of his softly issued promise. The hot, heavenly spray poured  down over her as Coburn stripped off his bloody clothes. She turned into  the jets, letting the hot steam take her, washing away the nightmare of  the past two hours.

Coburn stepped in behind her, the huge steam shower more than large  enough for both of them. In fact she thought it might have been designed  with half a dozen people in mind. But her husband wasn't keeping his  distance. He washed himself quickly, then picked up the lemon-scented  soap and started working on her. His hands built a lather down her back,  over the curve of her buttocks, which he lavished with an inordinate  amount of attention, and then the length of her legs.

He stayed kneeling at her feet as he nudged her to turn around. Then he  ran the bar of soap over her calf, up her thigh and repeated the  pattern on her other leg. When he cupped her between the legs,  ostensibly to spread the lather there, his big palm squeezing her  sensitized flesh, she moaned and leaned back against the wall. He stood  and tossed the soap on the ledge, his muscular, powerful body pressing  her harder into the tiles. His fingers wound themselves in her wet hair,  his mouth claiming hers as he brought his hand between her thighs  again, this time to claim her with the slick invasion of his fingers.  She moved her hips against his hand, reveling in the pleasure he gave  her with every smooth slide of his powerful fingers. The pressure built,  and soon she was begging, pleading for release in incoherent little  sentences. His mouth stilled on hers, his breathing rough against the  hiss of the spray.