devoted sex slave for life.”
Because Kate had a particularly vivid imagination, the image that arose featured hard muscles beneath bronzed skin, narrow hips and a particularly outstanding example of masculine anatomy. Her breathing sped up. But when her imagination directed her attention higher, to bold aggressive features and deep-set, haunted eyes, she deliberately wiped her mind clean.
“I don’t recall mentioning anything about sex slaves—”
“No, what you actually said was, and I quote, ‘Oh Sarah, just once in my life I’d like to feel wild and wicked and…utterly wanton instead of so damned proper and…matronly. Just once I’d like to have a man lick champagne from my navel and drive me into a frenzy with his mouth. Just once I’d like to—”
“Enough, please,” Katherine begged, her cheeks flaming. Narrowing her gaze, she glared at her friend with as much indignation as she could muster. “What did you do, bring a tape recorder along with that obscenely huge bottle of bubbly you forced down my throat?”
“No need,” Sarah replied breezily. “I have a photographic memory, remember? It’s genetic, like Mom’s dimples and Dad’s laugh.”
Kate arched a brow. “She who gloats brings serious karma down on her head,” she foretold in somber tones.
Sarah smiled smugly. “I’ll remind you of this conversation on your wedding day.”
Kate’s heart leaped—and yet again those haunted, sea-green eyes rose to taunt her. She had once loved Elliot Hunter with all of her heart and soul. She had given him her virginity with the sheer joy of being a part of him. Now she cringed inside every time she remembered the foolishly naive ninny she’d been at twenty.
“I don’t want to get married,” she said a little too shrilly—then forced herself to take a breath. “All I want is a little spice in the romance department before all my vital juices dry up.”
Sarah lifted her own perfectly shaped—and naturally golden—brows. “You want children, right?”
So desperately it was a soul-deep ache. “Yes, but—”
“And you’ve always said you believe in marriage before kids, right?”
“For me, yes, but—”
“So go for it, girl! Be proactive for a change. Be aggressive, be bold, be a little naughty.” Sarah clamped her hands on Kate’s bare shoulders and turned her toward the mirror again.
Biting her lip, Kate shifted her gaze to the skimpy cocktail dress, swaying just a little to make the hem tease her thighs—like the brush of a man’s mouth. Her breath caught, and she nibbled at the inside of her cheek.
Was it so wrong to want to feel feminine and desired and cherished just once in her life? Was it wrong to ache to hold a child to her breasts and feel an eager little mouth suckle? To have the child’s father curve strong arms around the two of them, love shining in his eyes?
“I’ll take it,” she said, making up her mind. As Sarah gave her a fierce hug, Kate had a feeling she’d just taken a giant step on the road toward some unknown destiny. She only hoped she wouldn’t live to regret it.
Somewhere on the road outside Puebla del Mar, southern Spain
“Bueno, mamacita, breathe through the contraction. You’re doing fine. Uh, fantastico, sí?”
Pausing while his fractured instructions were translated to the laboring mom, who looked more like a child herself, Elliot Hunter used his forearm to swipe away the sweat mixed with blood from the gash in his temple.
Though a surgeon by training and inclination, he’d done a rotation in obstetrics during his internship at Stanford Medical Center. All but a few of those births, however, had been normal deliveries in antiseptic conditions with the state-of-the-art equipment and superbly trained, highly skilled personnel of one of the best hospitals in the world backing him up.
In this case he had to make do with the few essentials in his medical bag—stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, an old-fashioned thermometer. Instead of scrubbing for the full five minutes, he’d drenched his hands in tequila from the bottle in his duffel, the only antiseptic he had. Instead of surgical scrubs he wore jeans, six-year-old boots and a Medics Without Limits T-shirt. An identical shirt, the last one he had that was clean, was folded nearby, ready to be used as a blanket for the newborn.
When the contraction finally eased, he settled back on his heels, resting his aching spine. The air was thick with heat and dust and the smell of sage. There wasn’t a hint of cloud cover, and the merciless midday sun beat down on the dusty road where, less than an hour earlier, the bus taking him to the seashore had blown a tire.
Before the driver could regain control, it had plowed into a rattletrap pickup truck driven by a frantic husband racing his pregnant wife to a woman’s clinic in Puebla.
When the tire had blown, Elliot had been jammed into the corner of the last seat in the bus’s rear, doing his best to block out the sights and sounds of happy, chattering families on holiday. The sickening screech of metal compressing metal had jolted him awake a split second before the heavy bus slid sideways into a deep drainage ditch beyond the rutted road’s dusty shoulder, where it had settled at a dangerous angle.
Terrified screams had rent the air as the passengers had been tossed around like corks in a savage sea. Elliot’s head had hit the window with a sickening thud, making his ears ring. The two chubby little girls from the seat across from his had tumbled against him, inflicting various blows from sharp little elbows and hard soled shoes as he cushioned them from serious injury.
It had been chaos then. Noise and confusion and near hysteria—all very familiar to a man who spent most of his days working in places sane doctors prudently avoided.
As a trauma surgeon working with MWL for the past three years, he had experienced firsthand the aftermath of war, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. He’d learned to block out the noise and confusion and terror in order to function.
After discovering that the stocky, middle-aged driver spoke decent English, he’d handed the man his cell phone to call for help while he conducted an informal triage, identifying those passengers whose injuries required more than a soothing word and a Band-Aid from the bus’s pathetically inadequate first aid kit.
He’d just finished applying a makeshift splint to a teenage girl’s broken arm when a furious barrage of high-pitched Spanish had caught the driver’s attention. Minutes later, Elliot had found himself struggling to deliver a baby in the bed of a wrecked pickup, with several matronly passengers assisting.
Beneath the hand he kept splayed over the laboring girl’s swollen belly, another contraction rippled, then strengthened, until her entire belly was rock hard. Her hand desperately clutching that of her terrified husband, the frantic young woman screamed. Elliot murmured reassurance, hoping she would understand the tone if not the words.
“Ayudame, por favor!” she begged between cries.
“Help me, please,” the driver translated, his eyes dark with worry.
God, Elliot wanted to, but the baby was a posterior presentation. A damn breech. He glanced toward the empty stretch of road ahead. The driver had made three more calls to the authorities in Puebla del Mar, who promised to hurry.
Standing
