Hearing her saying it hadn’t mattered, then behaving accordingly, had torn him up! He’d wanted it over, but he wanted it to have mattered! He wanted the memory, the belief. To cherish. To sustain him.
One more thing he’d have to live without.
Dante made another detaining gesture to his fidgeting driver. “No need to get nasty, Fernandez. I may not be dying, but you’re not catching me at my best either. Sorry if I was short but I just spent a very trying hour with Kauffman. If you’ve ever dealt with him, you know what I’m talking about. So, again, what’s the emergency?”
Emilio’s grudging consent to the enforced truce was evident. “It’s not exactly an emergency…”
Gulnar stepped in front of Emilio, took over the situation. “I believe it is. Did you hear about last night’s bombing?”
Dante shook his head, his chest closing. Gulnar’s lips tightened. “Terrorists hit a housing complex in Fajana, the nearest town to Srajna. During initial triage we had one hundred and ninety-five cases, fifty-four of them urgent. I assisted in ten, including Dimitri Ivanov’s. Dimitri is a GAO recruit, too, and he was injured when he went in to save a trapped family and the building collapsed completely. He had massive intra-abdominal bleeding and contamination from a ruptured spleen and large bowel and a split liver.”
Dante’s chest constricted more, at the atrocity, but equally with crushing relief. So this was what had kept her away! Focus. It’s not about you now. “You performed damage control surgery?”
“Yes. All bleeding vessels have been ligated and solid organ sources of hemorrhage packed and the bowels stapled shut. After transfusions and irrigating the peritoneum he’s been left open to guard against abdominal compartment syndrome.”
He nodded, finally accessing his professional control. “Good. Definitive organ repairs should be in no less than 48 hours, after he’s stabilized.”
Gulnar frowned. “That’s what his surgeon is saying. But Dimitri’s face has also sustained massive injuries. Dr. Moya said he wasn’t touching them, that an ocular blow-out fracture isn’t an emergency, and anyway, that with Dimitri’s precarious general condition, facial deformities and future functional problems were the least of our worries now.”
“And you don’t agree?”
Conviction and urgency warred on her exquisite face. “No! But since I’m just a nurse, my opinion carried no weight. So I need you—someone whose opinion they’ll all accept. Only you can determine if my fears are justified before it’s too late, and if they are, to do something about them.”
A shiver of pride ran down Dante’s spine. The faith lighting her eyes, firing her words and tone. She honored him with her belief. He had that of her at least.
Eagerness followed pride. Being of use when no one else could be, the challenge of restoring a damaged fellow human, the intricacies and surprises and problems entailed in surgery and getting through them, solving them, reaching the best possible outcome—it was all he lived for.
And it wasn’t enough any more.
To prove how deficient it was, Gulnar stroked his arm, her tenderness stroking his raw heart. “Was I out of line? If you’re not up to this…”
He wanted to haul her to him, to drown in her life and caring. He crushed the urge in clenching fists. “I’m fine. Let’s do this.”
One second, everything existed. Emilio, his chauffeur, the busy street of the Azernian capital, the glaring sun, the pungent, dizzying scents in the air. The next, only she did. Gulnar. Passion and life and beauty incarnate. She reached for him, her supple arms going around him in a gentle hug that trembled with the effort not to give in to its inherent fierceness. Still afraid of hurting him?
Didn’t she know she hurt him by just existing? Oh, hell, why was she hugging him? Why was she changing the rules again?
His confusion met Emilio’s bleakness over her head and realization jolted through him. Emilio was used to this, to Gulnar making intimate overtures—and more?—to other men as he watched.
But why did he put up with it? If they were lovers? How could he?
Only one thing made sense. Emilio knew it was either accept it or lose her completely. And he’d chosen the lesser evil.
If so, Emilio had to be insane. Suicidal. Loving a woman and watching her throw herself at other men—that was the ultimate evil, utter devastation.
But if Emilio was that obsessed, that sick, what about Gulnar? Was that how she got her kicks? Was that what turned her on? That would make her even sicker.
No. No, she wasn’t. Couldn’t be like that. There had to be something he was missing, misinterpreting. Something crucial. Yes, this was it. He was too jumbled to know what to think, was jumping to the ugliest conclusions.
Gulnar kept her arm around his waist as she turned to Emilio. “Thanks for the ride, Emilio. I’ll go back to the hospital with Dante. We’ll meet you there.”
Emilio gave Dante one long, tempestuous look then turned away without a word!
Gulnar turned up a bright face to him. Too bright. “Shall we?”
A malignant suspicion hit him, almost doubled him over. Carefully, he extricated himself from her caressing arm, took a step away, willing the ache clamping his body to ease, to let him breathe, talk. “What is this, Gulnar? Are you using me to punish your lover?”
She didn’t look indignant, didn’t voice any objections, just took his hand in hers, towed him to the black-windowed limousine. She slid in first, tugged him behind her and rapped out rapid Azernian to the driver. The man who looked more like a special forces agent than a chauffeur gave her an eager nod before she slid the sound- and sight-proof communicating glass shut. The next second, the car jolted forward and screeched away, tossing Gulnar backwards on the seat.
She sat there, looking at him, her eyes full and fathomless, rocking and pitching beside him with every violent turn the car made. He’d long sagged back on the seat, nerveless, his heart pounding. Then she just nestled into him.
Everything disappeared. Only the heat of her melting back into his flesh, a missing part of him that had been cleaved out and now restored. Only her head on his heart stopping it from erupting from his chest, her trembling arm around him keeping him from going to pieces. Only her softness and resilience and comfort and torment.
And he’d been surprised that Emilio would do anything just to remain near her? What would he himself do? Anything at all seemed a small price for anything with her…
Thoughts boiled over and evaporated.
He surrendered to her when she reached up, rained soft, tender kisses all over his face, doused him in contentment and heartache, in pleasure and sorrow. He wanted to weep with it all, crush her to him and reproach her for depriving him of her closeness and caring all those days. And now there’d be no more. He wouldn’t even have the memories.
But she was giving him something now. He closed his arms around her, hoarding all he could of her for the empty existence ahead, his blood roaring thick and raw in his ears. He felt her breathless words reverberating in his chest, rather than heard them.
“You should know, Dante. Even if I were the kind of woman who’d play one man against another, I’d never use you—never you, Dante. What’s more, Emilio isn’t…”
She fell silent on a trembling breath, burrowed deeper into him. His heart tightened, his senses overloaded, his mind staggered. Feeling her, knowing it would be for the last time—too much! He squeezed her tighter, groaned his anguish and confusion. “Emilio isn’t what?”
“Emilio isn’t, has never been and will never be my lover.” She rolled her head on his shoulder, raised her face up to him, close, real, overflowing with sharp and urgent emotions, her beauty and vitality piercing him to his core. “Will you be?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“WHAT did you say?” Gulnar looked up at Dante as they entered Srajna General Hospital’s intensive care unit. His night-dark eyes stared down at her, filled with storms—of what? Wariness? Reluctance? Temptation?
He said something again, and again it didn’t register. She only heard the drone of his dark, rich voice over the hot, thick throb of mortification in her ears.
He’d been stunned by her offer. He’d stiffened then had sat there unmoving, his arms no longer taking her, containing her, just limp around her, his eyes closed and his breathing erratic, until they reached the hospital. She’d been so distressed by his reaction, and more by causing it, she hadn’t even worked up enough co-ordination to move away. Sitting there, pressed to him, her every breath laden with his scent and agitation, her ears filled with the cacophony of their hearts’ thundering, that had been her first glimpse of true torment.
But none of it mattered now. Dimitri. Concentrate on him!
It was Dante who tore his eyes away first, cleared his throat as he headed for their patient in ICU. “I just asked if 3-D X-rays are available for me to review.”
Gulnar knew there weren’t. “I’ve seen only regular X-rays. I don’t think there is a 3-D facility in this hospital.”
He wasn’t impressed with the news. “Just get me every investigation and X-ray.”
Gulnar turned to the senior ICU nurse, translated.