handed him a slide, nodding at his diagnosis.
“Maybe, or Zika—but I don’t think the Zika rash manifests like this. Have you seen any cases?” Santi pressed the clear slide against the boy’s skin, nodding as Saoirse said she’d heard about it but had never seen a case. “It blanches. That’s a good thing.”
“Doesn’t mean there isn’t septicemia,” she whispered, aware the boy’s mother was straining to hear everything they said.
“True.” He nodded. “Let’s get an IV into this little guy and hit the road.”
“Yup. I’d just like to test his fontanelle before we head off.”
Santi slipped in the IV, aware of how crucial fluids were for a sick child, all the while ratcheting up a few more respect points for Saoirse. Her experience as a NICU nurse clearly put her miles ahead of your average trainee paramedic. Most wouldn’t know their way around pediatric lingo with the comfort level she was displaying. Or exhibit unerring competency in the crucial tests as she was.
Someone, he thought as he watched her finish the examination of the baby’s head while he secured the IV line, has a bit of a history.
* * *
“What do you feel?” Santi asked after a moment’s silence.
“It’s not tense. No swelling. Hopefully, it’s not meningitis.” Saoirse pressed herself up from the bench, hoping her face bore nothing more than a picture of professional efficiency. “Right, Maria-Rose. Do you want to jump in and we’ll get your little man to Seaside Hospital for some tests, okay?”
As she slammed the doors shut, she saw Santi as the rest of the world might see him. Gorgeous, yes. But there was something deeper than that. A skilled paramedic, body taut with focus, driven to do the best he could for the small child laid out on the gurney.
He cared.
Santi was in this all the way, no showboating. And that was something she could relate to. What you saw was what you got. For the most part, anyway.
She pulled open the driver’s door and flicked on the sirens with a grin. Maybe her new partner wouldn’t be so bad after all.
* * *
“Here you are, Murph. One I-survived-a-week-with-Santi Café Cubano.”
Saoirse eyed the small cup warily. “This isn’t going to keep me up all night, is it?”
Santi’s lips shifted into a mischievous grin with a quick lift of his dark eyebrows. “Por qué? Does Mamacita Murphy have a hot date tonight?”
“Quit doing that!”
“What?”
“That whole...” she opened her hand and “washed” it around his face “...Latin Lothario thingy.”
“You don’t like my sexy, sexy talk?” He cranked it up another few notches.
Yes.
“Doesn’t work on me.”
Liar, liar pants on fire.
She avoided catching his eye just to be safe.
“But it has on someone else...” Santi poked her in the arm. “Who’s the lucky guy tonight, Murph?”
Why was he so interested in who she was dating anyhow? Wasn’t quizzing her all day on her emergency medicine knowledge enough Q & A?
She smirked in lieu of swooning, then pursed her lips together and blew a raspberry. “That’s me. A regular ol’ dating machine.”
She continued to give her tiny cup of coffee the evil eye. There had been so much change in her life over the last year. Becoming single. Realizing she was never going to have children. Hopping on a plane with a student visa instead of the fiancée visa, which had expired...about six months ago now. Urgh!
The switch from hot, milky tea to coffee had been hard enough. She’d have to call her mum and have her send some proper tea bags over.
A chill of realization hit her. Even if the tea arrived in a week, she would be gone in a couple of months. April Fools’ Day. The irony! Deported back to Ireland unless, by some divine intervention, she found a man bonkers enough to marry her.
“It’s not going to bite you.”
“What is it again?” She held the small cup up at eye level then gave it a dubious sniff.
“A Café Cubano. It’s the closest thing to heaven after a hard day and, orale—you were on it today, mija!” Santi did that whizzy snap thing with his fingers again and crowed. She nodded, feigning accepting a loud roar of applause from a stadium full of fans. As if.
“Teamwork, Valentino. It all boils down to teamwork.”
And she meant it. They’d only had a week together in the ambulance but already they had a partner shorthand going on that made working together a genuine pleasure. Even if she sometimes had to squint at him and turn his gorgeousness into a blur of caramel features. Santiago Valentino would be far too easy to fall for. And love? That little nugget of complications was well and truly off the table.
“Here.” He handed her an open bottle of water. “Take a swig of this to cleanse your palate and then drink the cafecito.”
“My, my,” Saoirse play-crooned, happy to yank her thoughts away from the thunderstorm brewing in her head. “Isn’t someone Mr. Exotico?”
“That’s rich, coming from the leprechaunette of Miami Beach.”
“Whatever.” Saorise leaned back against the slatted bench and narrowed her eyes. Santi’s good looks screamed exotic, but his accent, when he spoke English, was as American as they came. When he spoke Spanish with non-English-speaking patients and turned on the Latino thing? Mmm-hmm... Hard to shake off just how sexy he was. That beautifully sensual mouth, inky-black hair and a body that would’ve been more than worth watching if he was dancing la vida loca.
Good thing they were just colleagues.
She looked at him again then looked away.
Pah-ha-ha! Try telling that to the judge.
Tentatively, she stepped back into the muddy waters of family history, “Your parents were from...?”
“Heliconia. It’s a little island nation out...” He pointed away from the hospital toward the sea, his sentence tapering off as his hand fell back into his lap.
“And they brought you over with them when you were little?” Saoirse pressed gently.
“Before we were born,” he answered, the life all but draining from his eyes.
“You and your brothers?” She stated the obvious, already preparing her “Oops, I shouldn’t have said that” face, only to receive a quick no-eye-contact nod in return before he downed his coffee in one swift go. He hadn’t said a word about them the entire week and it looked like that would be the status
