generously shaped lips twisted, and suddenly she felt something new towards him. The need to physically strike out at him. To wipe off that abrasive superiority written all over him.
Stupid urge. You can’t afford more of those. Just shut him up.
She breathed in. “Listen, if anything happens, I’ll seek immediate help. But right now I’m not going to La Clínica. Not as a patient. Haven’t you demoted me enough already? I’ll just get on with my life. I don’t need your permission to do that.”
His fleeting, severe look hit home. Then he spoke the three words, slow and distinct, “Yes, you do!” A few strands of his hair caught the sun that had bleached them copper as he took a turn into a road she recognized, the road leading to Santa Fe and La Clínica. “Going back for your full postoperative period is non-negotiable, Laura.”
“I—”
“Drop it.”
Staring ahead at the boundless horizon she was still unused to, she fell silent, stymied.
Armando heard her frustration loud and clear. He kept his still-scalding eyes on the demanding road, slowed down some more. She’d been battered too much already.
“So how bad am I beneath these dressings?”
Her subdued question surprised him into biting off, “Bad enough!”
He caught a more-than-crude expletive back at the last moment.
Why had he said that?
Oh, what the…? It was just as well. She had to face the reality of her injuries, didn’t she? And anyway, at the moment her injuries did look bad. And they could remain so if she compromised her recuperation. Laura Loca Burnside, philanthropist extraordinaire, glittering, brilliant society darling, who had no idea just how dangerous and desperate it really was here.
The moment he’d learned she’d left, he’d predicted she’d head for GAO’s headquarters, smack dab in the middle of the city center the riots were ravaging. He’d never driven so recklessly. All the way, Diego’s accident, his death, haunted him, taunted him. He could have ended up the same today, chasing after her.
But in either case, she hadn’t asked either of them to…
“Anything more specific to add to that delightful and sensitive report of my impending metamorphosis into a monster?”
His attention snapped back to her. Was that sarcasm? She had a sense of humor? He’d thought she took herself too seriously. She’d never cracked a smile, not in his presence. And he’d been present almost all the time she’d been in Argentina. Her glares were something, though. It was almost a surprise he hadn’t turned to stone. Parts of him had…
He was really losing it! If her resentment affected him this way, he didn’t want to know what a smile, a touch would do…
Stop it, moron!
He inhaled. “You’ll see for yourself when I remove your stitches.”
“I must be really mangled if you elected to do a primary repair of my facial wounds during a life-saving operation, risking extending the already dangerously long anesthesia time.”
He had been aware of that danger. But he’d weighed everything—her condition while on the table against the risk of the wounds healing by secondary intention, raising the probability of scarring. He’d felt it safe to go ahead.
So why was the unfamiliar urge to justify his decisions to another, to her, riding him—again? Her eyes on him had always made him feel this way. Ever since he’d laid eyes on her—the last thing he’d expected Diego’s new woman or GAO’s mission head to be.
He tried to stifle the urge as usual. He failed this time. “For best esthetic results, you know it’s optimum to close wounds within eight hours of injury.” Wasn’t it enough to feel defensive? Did he have to sound it, too?
She tilted her head, her braid sliding with an audible thud to her right shoulder. He tightened, ached. He’d never had it this bad. Then she gave him a strange look—a skeptical one?—and his heart, his hands, itched.
“If the patient isn’t stable enough, if it’s in any way risky, primary repair could be delayed by as much as seventy-two hours without significant change in esthetic outcome.”
“Significant being the operative word here. Scars might seem insignificant to you now, but later they will be. Trust me.”
“I trust my clinical experience. I used significant as a figure of speech. In my experience, delayed repair—with proper wound occlusive care—yields the same esthetic result.”
“You mean I should’ve waited until you revived from anesthesia, then put you under again while you were recovering from major trauma surgery and even more vulnerable? Not to mention that I couldn’t predict how your post-operative period would go. What if you’d deteriorated? For long enough to lose the golden time window for primary repair?”
“You know you could have done it under local.”
“I’m sure you would have appreciated the extra joy of local anesthetic jabs in your condition!”
“I wouldn’t have minded a few nerve blocks, and I would have preferred to be awake while you worked on my face.”
“Why? Did you want to hold my hand through it?”
“And why not? Maxillofacial surgery was part of my six-year surgical residency. I might have given you a few tips on how to handle facial soft tissue injuries.”
His foot eased off the gas pedal and the car almost slowed to a standstill.
He’d suspected there was more to her than the sullen, haughty façade she projected. So was this at last the real her? All that fire and diamond-sharp toughness?
Whatever confrontations she’d tried to kick up with him before, she’d done so in arctic reserve and infuriating politeness. It had all been about who was supposed to be in charge. There’d never been implied criticism of his professional or surgical prowess before. Implied? Hell, there was no implication involved now. She was telling him he’d made a lousy call, combining her procedures, that his surgical judgement stank.
But was she lashing out at him for thwarting her plans, for dragging her back? Or was it the stress of trauma? Or had her orders and his connection to Diego kept her from expressing her opinions, opinions she now felt free to voice?
All of the above, most probably. Not that he cared what she said to him or thought of him. She was letting go of the tight reins of social propriety and professional diplomacy and letting the real her shine through.
And it delighted him.
Delighted him? Now? The tear gas must have left him more oxygen-deprived than he’d realized!
“Why did you stop bickering with me?” One sable eyebrow disappeared in mockery beneath her bandages. “Stymied?”
“I don’t ‘bicker’. And I didn’t know there was a contest
