finished up the surgery, each of them moving forward and then back to allow the other person to have a turn securing everything in place and then finally closing the incision. Marcos examined the site with a critical eye. “I think that about does it. Let’s bring her out of anesthesia while I clean her up.”
Marcos gently swabbed the blood from the side of the child’s head as the anesthesiologist began lightening the sedation and removed the tape from her eyelids. Within minutes, Teresa’s eyelids fluttered.
Leaning over her, Maggie smiled and said, “Can you hear me, pumpkin?”
Teresa nodded her head, her gaze still unfocused.
“That’s wonderful.” It suddenly didn’t matter that she was standing in the middle of a team of Brazilian doctors and nurses speaking English. All that mattered was that this child understood her. “See, I promised you I’d be right here with you every step of the way, and here I am. I’ve never left your side.”
She glanced up to see Marcos staring at her with an enigmatic look. “Pumpkin?”
“It’s an endearment.” She couldn’t help raising her brows in challenge. “Kind of like Markinho.”
The whole room went silent for a second or two, and she realized she’d made some kind of serious gaffe.
In a low voice he gritted, “I’d rather you didn’t call me that.”
Oh! She hadn’t meant to insult him, had just been trying to explain why she’d addressed their patient using the name of a vegetable. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Thank you.” With that, he stripped off his gloves and headed out the door without a word to anyone.
What was with him?
She could no more imagine Marcos being embarrassed by her playful comment than she could imagine herself being. Then again, she didn’t know the man at all.
And probably never would.
* * *
No one called him that.
No one except his father and his brother. And Graciela, who’d begun using it after hearing Lucas do so. Once his brother had left with his adoptive family, her use of the diminutive form of his name had made him feel cared for—and a little less lonely.
But hearing Maggie say it had made his gut do a slow burn. He knew she wasn’t trying to be unprofessional, and hadn’t actually been calling him Markinho. But that soft accented voice murmuring his childhood name had made those same sensations go through him that he’d had as a child. Only Maggie wasn’t interested in making him feel cared for.
And he certainly wasn’t lonely. Not with all the noise and activity of the hospital going on around him.
He’d overreacted. Had stormed out of that operating room like a child.
Like Markinho might have done, once upon a time?
No, he wasn’t a child. He was temperamental. He’d heard the nurses use that term to excuse his lack of social interaction.
Because as much as Marcos liked to be surrounded by noise, it was more as an observer than a participant. Except with Maggie, evidently. He found he had to fill the silence that was her with talking...or, worse, groaning.
Like in his car?
The tinted windows had been dark enough to block out everything that happened inside, cocooning them in a private world where anything could happen. And it had. His eyes had been locked on Maggie’s face while her eyelids had fluttered closed the second he’d moved her panties aside and found her wet and ready. Her tight heat had massaged his flesh again and again, his words of encouragement every bit as suggestive as the hand sign she’d used with his patient.
And when she’d come...
Hell, she’d exploded within minutes, the sensation taking his body by storm and forcing an audible reaction from him that had left him shaken.
They’d been lucky none of the security guards had been around.
Maggie, on the other hand, had been totally silent. Because of the fear of discovery?
The urge to find out—to have her under him in more private circumstances—swept through his system like wildfire.
He rolled his eyes as he forced himself back to the present and stepped into the staff washroom. He scrubbed his hands and splashed his face, staring at himself in the mirror—and trying not to see Markinho reflected back at him.
Why had she gotten under his skin? Even during the surgery he’d been aware of her every move. Her every word. And when she’d used his name his senses had churned to life.
He had a feeling it wasn’t her use of his nickname that bothered him so much. It was what she’d said to the little girl in the operating room.
Marcos had a personal rule that pretty much governed everything he did. He never made promises he couldn’t keep. Rarely made them at all, in fact. Not after what had happened with his father. Hearing Maggie toss that word around with such ease—and to a child—without thinking of the repercussions had struck him as irresponsible.
He was being ridiculous. It was only surgery...a period of an hour and a half.
And if his patient had regained consciousness and found Maggie hadn’t kept her word?
He switched off the water and turned away from the mirror. Time to go talk to his patient’s family, although he had no doubt Maggie had already accompanied the girl to the recovery room and made sure she was settled in. If he knew her—which he didn’t, not at all—she’d also spoken with the mother and assured her everything was going to be okay.
Another promise that was impossible to keep.
What was wrong with him today? He didn’t normally brood on the past.
Maybe something about his new colleague brought it out in him—or perhaps it was those flashes of something that appeared behind her blue eyes periodically.
Sadness?
He’d thought it was fear the first time he’d kissed her. The look had taken him aback, made him wonder if he was acting like a brute.
Probably.
It was why he didn’t get involved with staff or any of the nurses. He didn’t want tales of his exploits making the rounds.
In fact, he would have stopped with a kiss that day in the car if Maggie hadn’t accepted his challenge to kiss him back and awoken something raw and primitive inside him. After that, neither of them had seemed able to halt what had happened.
Marcos huffed out a breath and left the restroom, irritated once again. He had to stop thinking about her. It was becoming almost an obsession. And he didn’t obsess about anything...or anyone.
Arriving at the waiting room and finding it empty, he stopped at the nurses’ desk. “My patient. Where is she?”
“Wh-which
