Rafael's One Night Bombshell

“Open. More.”

He definitely wasn’t talking about her mouth. She spread her legs wide, his chest pushing against her back, hands returning to her breasts.

With a quick thrust of his hips, he entered her, stretching her wider than she thought possible. He stayed like that, their labored breathing the only sound in the room for several long seconds. Then his thumbs were brushing across her nipples, and it was as if he was caressing her somewhere else. A sharp point of arousal began building rapidly, threatening to overtake her.

“Rafe... I don’t think I can... Please.”

“Say my name. Again.”

“Rafe.”

Then he was moving with powerful strokes, sending her hips into the edge of the dresser, the sharp pain only adding to the pleasure.

It was too much. The wave found her. Slammed into her and sent her spinning through the surf, taking her breath away and making her see stars.

She was vaguely aware of Rafe above her, shouting something in Spanish, but she was too lost to try to make sense of it as he thrust into her again and again.

Then it was over. His cheek against hers, nostrils flaring as he dragged in air.

Her own body eased its grip on her senses, and she blinked. The mirror showed that his eyes were closed. She swallowed.

Who would he be when those dark pupils met hers again?

She shifted, trying to brace herself for an abrupt withdrawal. A speedy exit into the night.

“Don’t move.” The eyes opened.

“But...”

His body slid from hers, but it was anything but abrupt. He turned her to face him. “Do you have to leave yet?”

The words sounded as if they’d been forced from him against his will. His sudden frown echoed that thought.

She should. She should go, tossing him a quick thank you on her way out the door. But she didn’t want to. To leave was to face the ugly reality that awaited her outside that door. “No. I don’t have to leave.”

One side of his mouth curved, his frown fading as he swung her into his arms. “Then let’s see if we can try that again. In the comfort of a bed this time.”

He leaned down and nipped her lower lip. “As great and sexy as that was, it was much faster than I’d hoped it would be. So for the next round...”

He tipped her shoulders down so he could catch at the edge of the bedspread and pull it down. “Let’s see just how slow we can go.” With that he set her down on the bed, went over to the dresser and retrieved his wallet. When he pulled out three more condoms, her eyes widened, and she had to moisten her lips.

Surely not.

As if reading her thoughts, he grinned again. “Oh, yes. We can. And we will.”

* * *

Bonnie—if that was even her name—was sprawled naked on her stomach, her hair in a deliciously tangled mess all around her face. A peculiar twinge went through Rafe’s gut as he stared down at her.

Shafts of sunlight were already ducking beneath the hem of the curtains and pooling on the carpet at the bottom of the bed. He was normally long gone by now, his one night binge doing what it always did: blotting out a specific memory.

Almost against his will, he took a step closer, noting her head was precariously perched near the edge of the mattress. The reason for that made a certain part of his body react yet again.

He should wake her up, make sure she got home safely, but something stopped him from touching her. He was due at work in a half hour, but it wasn’t that.

He’d approached last night the same way as he did every year on this date, and yet something about this woman’s appearance in the bar had been different. The way she’d jerked the ring off her finger as if she couldn’t stand it being there one second longer. She’d looked lost, the sense of desperation in her eyes dragging up a sense of protectiveness he hadn’t felt in a long time. Hadn’t wanted to feel in a long time.

Rafe had thought for a moment she was running away from someone. He’d actually glanced behind her to make sure some abusive ex wasn’t following her. When he’d satisfied himself that she was alone, he decided to bide his time and leave her to someone else.

Except she’d sat down beside him, the clear blue of her eyes colliding with his glance and sending all rational thought running for the door. Maybe the alcohol had actually done the job he’d meant it to do and addled his thinking. The rest was history.

So what did he do now that he was no longer under the influence?

She was a big girl. Surely she could hail a cab and get home on her own?

The notepad on the end table caught his attention, along with a black elastic circle.

When she’d reached for the band to put her hair up before settling down to sleep last night, he’d stopped her, the thick mass of strands calling for him to sift through them one more time...to wrap them around himself and...

Hell, she’d driven him wild last night. He closed his eyes to banish the memory.

Time to go. Now. Before he woke her up and made himself later for work than he was already going to be.

Besides, goodbyes were one thing he’d never learned to do well.

Going to the table, he gripped the pen, his fingers accidentally brushing across the hair band in the process. Without thinking, he picked it up and pocketed it, picturing her leaving the hotel with her locks in sexy disarray from what they’d done in this room.

He would probably be damned to eternity for everything that had happened last night.

No. The damning had taken place many years ago, when shaking eighteen-year-old hands had placed his signature at the bottom of an irrevocable document.

He grabbed the hotel stationery. This time there would be no signature. The pen hovered over the pristine white paper for several seconds as he thought. Then he scrawled two words. No Goodbye. No Thanks for a fun evening. Just: Taxi fare. Then opening his wallet one last time, he drew out a crisp fifty-dollar bill. Because unless he wanted to go snooping through her purse or, worse, wake her up to ask if she had any money, it was the only thing he could think of to do.

Laying the bill under the note, he set a cheesy palm tree alarm clock on top of it.

Then he quietly exited the room. This was one event that would go down in annals of What Not to Do with a Beautiful Woman.

Because every moan and touch and thrust was permanently seared in his skull. A cautionary tale at best. So the only thing left to do was tiptoe back to his normal mundane life and never think of Bonnie—or whatever her name was—ever again.

CHAPTER ONE

One month later...

EVEN AS CASSIE wrapped the measuring tape around Renato Silva’s head, she knew. The newborn would fall below the circumference norms.

Microcephaly wasn’t something she encountered every day. Or even every year. And yet this child made three in the last eight weeks. A shiver went up her spine. With all of the reports coming out of Brazil and elsewhere, she worried that these cases could somehow be related.

Two centimeters below normal. Not terribly off, but still concerning.

One of the nurses glanced at her, brows up. Cassie knew what she was asking. She gave a subtle nod in response, her stomach churning inside her. And it was up to her to give the new mom the news. The obstetrician had already moved on to the next laboring patient.

She cradled the baby in her arms, and switched to Portuguese. “Você fala inglês?”

“Yes. Some. I am learning.” The young woman’s hungry eyes took in the swaddled infant. Her child. A tiny soul carrying a wealth of hopes and dreams.

Two centimeters surely wouldn’t destroy all of those dreams. She’d seen babies with terrible deficits go further than anyone had ever thought possible.

The baby gave a hoarse cry. It was a touch more strident than that of most newborns. Another worrying sign.

“Renato is breathing just fine and his color is good. We’ll want to run a few tests—”

“Something is wrong.” With those soft, knowing words, the whole atmosphere in the room changed.

Cassie couldn’t keep it from her, not and live with herself. “His head is a little bit smaller than we’d like to see, but we won’t know anything for sure until we check him out completely.”

Her patient fell back onto the pillows. “It was the sickness. I left...came here in December to get away from it. Ele me seguiu.”

It followed me.

The words sent a chill through her. “What sickness? You were sick while you were pregnant?”

“Yes. Just after I learned I carried him. I fear it was Zika.”

News and panic about the mosquito-borne virus had been a huge topic among doctors and journalists for the last year. Yes, she knew of it. This was the third incidence of microcephaly at the hospital. Like it or not, it was time to call the CDC again. She knew they were swamped—it was the excuse they’d given her three weeks ago when the second microcephaly case had appeared. They’d told her they’d get to her as soon as possible. But this time they had to listen to her. Her patients’ lives depended on it.

“You know for certain you had Zika?”

“I was sick. The mosquitoes, they were very bad.”

It was just turning summertime in the U.S. but since the seasons were the opposite on the southern side of the globe, December was the hottest part of the year in Brazil.

Her stomach took another turn, whether from the tragedy unfolding in front of her or from something else, she had no idea. She swallowed hard, trying to rid herself of the queasy feeling. It stayed with her no matter how much she tried to banish it.

“I’ll come back and talk to you as soon as we check Renato over.” She squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “I promise.”

Cassie nodded at the nurse to take the baby to the nursery, where they would carefully go over the newborn inch by inch.

But first...

She walked through the door and pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her lab coat. First, she was going to call the CDC in Washington one more time and give whoever answered a piece of her mind.

* * *

The canopy of the paraglider caught the wind and swept Rafael Valentino’s legs out from under him as it lifted him skyward. Still attached to the towline behind the boat, the wind whistled past his face, plastering his hair to his head. A familiar sense of weightlessness took over, allowing his problems to drop to the warm sands of the beach below, where they would stay until he touched down. A few more seconds, and he could relax into his harness. But not yet.

Rafe had flown more in the past month than he had in years. Not since those early terrible days after his father’s death, when the adrenaline rush had been one of the few things that had allowed him to blot out the reality of what had happened.

At a signal from the speedboat driver, he pulled the cord that would release the towline and set him free to glide for as long as the winds would sustain his flight. He sat, his harness cradling his butt and his thighs as he worked on changing his angle, catching the winds much as a sailboat did. Only there was something about being in the air, suspended far above the earth. It was heaven. There was nothing else like it.

Except for maybe those last frantic seconds of being suspended in a different kind of heaven. Like the one a month ago?

His jaw tightened. Thoughts like that were why he was out here today. He had to work in a few hours, but he’d needed something to erase those memories. Bonnie had been different in some indefinable way.

And the last thing he wanted to do was try to define anything about that night.

A sudden gust of air caused the nylon that covered the baffle cells to flutter, and he bobbed a time or two before his flight settled back out. The change in the wind conditions did the trick. Everything was wiped from his brain except for controlling his craft.

It was a perfect day for flying, and there were dots of color all up and down the beach as others had the same idea. Powerboats far below carved out white wakes in the ocean as some of the commercial parasail ventures towed thrill seekers up and down the coastline. He would have to descend with care when the time came, but he already had his landing site mapped out.

For now, he would just immerse himself in the moment and not let anything else clutter his skull. He adjusted the speed bar at his feet and shifted his weight to change direction.

Nothing could bother him here.

A sudden buzzing at his hip stopped that thought in its tracks. Damn.

Really? His phone? He should have turned it off. Glancing down and trying to read the caller ID while it was upside down, he swore softly when he was able to make it out.

Perfect. It was work. His boss wouldn’t call him on his day off unless it was urgent.

Fun time was over almost before it began. Scouring the beach for a place to land that was relatively free of sun worshippers, he shifted his weight once again and began his descent.

* * *

An hour later, Rafe was striding down the hallway of Seaside Hospital. He’d been hopping from facility to facility in the last several weeks, trying to keep up with the number of worried doctors and patients who were raising the alarm. It was the same in a lot of other cities—especially those in the South. The warmer the temperatures, the more likely a rogue virus was to dig in and spread. His home country of Heliconia was under a red alert, pregnant travelers being warned to stay away, just as they were in Brazil and most parts of Central and South America.

Zika had been around for decades, but for some reason it was now spreading quickly, crossing continents and the placental barrier alike, and wreaking havoc wherever it went. And the growing stack of evidence said that the virus could infiltrate host cells and cause insidious health problems for whoever was infected, long after the illness itself was gone.

Zika was the new Lyme disease.

Worse, new studies were showing it could be sexually transmitted from a man to his partner.

The hope was that a vaccine would be developed quickly, but until then, all Rafe could do was put out fires. Like the one he’d tried to drown a month ago at Mad Ron’s. He’d ended up having to put out a completely different fire that night.

His hand went to his pocket, fingers fiddling with the circle of elastic he’d been carrying around ever since then. He had no idea why he’d picked it up off the dresser, or why he hadn’t thrown it away in the weeks that followed.

A trophy?

No. He’d never brought anything home from his other encounters. But Bonnie had been different somehow. There’d been a frenzied desperation to her lovemaking that had matched his own.

Killing old demons?

It didn’t matter. He removed his hand from his pocket and forced his mind back to his obligations. He was here to meet the head neonatologist at the hospital, along with the head maternity nurse and the hospital administrator. He called up a file on his phone to retrieve their names. He only recognized one of them.

Bonnie Maxwell.

That’s why he’d shoved the tie in his pocket, although it was doubtful it was the same woman. And he’d never learned what her last name was.

And if she was the same Bonnie from the bar? Was he going to hand over the elastic and say, “Here you go. Sorry it went missing.”

He snorted, turning a corner and following the signs on the wall. Not hardly. He was not going to admit to picking it up from the dresser, although the thread of guilt for abandoning her the morning after their encounter was still there as strong as ever. A peculiar longing had fermented in his stomach and sent a sour broth splashing up his throat as he’d stared down at her. He’d taken things too far by not getting drunk enough before taking her back to the hotel. He’d started drinking coffee far too soon.

Cynthia Porter, Administrator. This was the place. He knocked, feet braced wide in preparation for what he might find inside.

“Come in.”

Rafe pushed through the door to find three women seated in the office.

The sight of sun-kissed locks tied into a familiar scrunchy mass made his stomach contract all over again, although she was facing away from him.

It was the same woman. It had to be.

Damn. Mistake number two: not making sure his date for the night was in a profession other than medicine.

The woman behind the desk stood. “Dr. Valentino?”

“Yes, and you must be Ms. Porter.”

He watched the blonde, who still hadn’t turned her head. There was no indication that his last name was familiar. Maybe because they’d never exchanged surnames. Or maybe she was much cooler than she’d seemed four weeks ago. Was the ring still off?

The third woman had already looked over at him with a smile, the tossing of red curls giving her a mischievous air.

“Thank you for coming, although it was Dr. Larrobee who discovered the connection between some of our newborns. Let me introduce you.”

Both women stood. And when Bonnie finally turned around to face him she gasped, every bit of color leaching from her face.

The administrator either ignored the sound or hadn’t heard it, because she continued with the introductions. “This is Bonnie Maxwell and Dr. Cassandra Larrobee. Cassie is the one who notified your office about the cases.”

His gaze remained glued to the blonde’s, his hand diving back into his pocket and finding the hair tie. “Bonnie and I have already made each other’s acquaintance.”

Blue eyes went wide, and she gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

What the hell?

“I’m sorry? Have we met?” The words didn’t come from her but from the redhead, and his attention shifted to her.

Ah, so that was it.

One side of Rafe’s mouth twitched. He should have known. He had known actually, although he couldn’t prove it until now. His glance tracked back, and he couldn’t resist a murmured, “Liar, liar...”

Pants on fire.

Only her pants hadn’t been the only thing on fire that night. Her touch had scorched like wildfire across his senses.

Crimson washed into her face, gray stormy flecks appearing in those expressive eyes. “I think he got the names mixed up, but Ra...er, Dr. Valentino and I have met on one occasion.”

The redhead gave her a quick nudge with her shoulder. “Cassie, wow. You didn’t tell me!”

The administrator frowned. “You’ve already met to discuss the cases?”

Cassandra... Cassie—now that name fit her.

“No, I...we...” Her voice trailed away.

“We have a mutual acquaintance here in town.” He might not be able to count good old Jack D. since Cassie had obviously never shaken hands with a glass of whiskey in her life. But Mad Ron had definitely recognized her. And since he and Ron went way back, it wasn’t a lie. At least, not the whopper of a lie that “Bonnie” had been.

Cassie’s shoulders slumped, probably in relief. “Yes, we do.”

The woman who had to be Bonnie muttered something that sounded like, “Girlfriend, you and I need to have a long discussion.”

So that’s why she’d used the name. These two were friends. His smile widened. “Now that the introductions are out of the way, why don’t we sit down and discuss the cases, and you can share your concerns. In return, I’ll tell you what I know.”

Well, maybe not everything he knew, like that cute little dimple she had on her left shoulder blade. Or the way her soft murmurs had caused a chain reaction in him that wouldn’t be denied.

“I’ve got the files ready in the meeting room down the hall,” said Ms. Porter. “Shall we? There’s coffee in there as well.”

He would need bucketfuls of caffeine to knock him back to reality. Because right now he felt like he was floating in some otherworldly place where not a thing made sense. And it had nothing to do with the paraglider he’d just come off.

There was nothing he could do but to keep moving and get this meeting over with. Before he did something stupid. Like touch her to make sure she was really here.

Over coffee and some rather bad hospital sandwiches they went over the three cases and the ways in which each was similar and different. Two of the patients were from Brazil, including the last one. And one was from Honduras. They definitely met the parameters of exposure. All three of the babies had been born with microcephaly, one whose head was a third smaller than it should have been with some accompanying reflex problems. Another newborn was just under the norms. The third baby had clubbing of the hands and a cleft palate in addition to the microcephaly. There were pictures to accompany the reports.

Rafe’s gut twinged a warning as he studied the images of the damage this virus could cause. One fateful encounter and someone’s world changed forever. This time he wasn’t thinking about Cassie, or even about Zika, but about his own childhood. One life gone, another life saved. It seemed like an even exchange when you laid it all out on paper. Only it wasn’t. And yet that’s exactly what had happened, due to a senseless act.

Hadn’t he just celebrated that anniversary?

Celebrated wasn’t the word he was looking for, but when one went out drinking and picking up women to help blot the pain of loss, it was the only term he could think of.

Only he’d never had to face any of those women again.

Until now.

And he could honestly say the experience was not one he cared to repeat. The hair tie in his pocket seemed to mock all his efforts. So much for forgetting.

“Any nearby hospitals reporting anything?”

Cassie glanced at Bonnie and Ms. Porter. “I have a colleague who works at Buena Vista who had a baby born with a cleft palate a week ago. No microcephaly in that case, though.”

Alejandro spent most of his time over there, maybe he should give him a call. Although since his brother had found true love a few weeks ago and had adopted a special needs baby, he might be a little preoccupied with other things. No, Alejandro was nothing if not good at his job. But his specialty was pediatric transplants, not neonatal care, so it was a totally different field from what they were looking at here.

He tried not to think about the exact reasons his brother went into that field, because it brought up his own yearly vigil all over again.

It was his job to check every angle, though. “One of my brothers practices at Buena Vista, I’ll give him a call. What’s the name of your colleague?”

“Rebecca Stanton.”

Her eyes had lost the defensive gleam they’d held moments earlier. The ring wasn’t on her finger, so she and whoever she’d broken up with hadn’t gotten back together.

No involvement. Remember?

The hospital administrator gave him a few phone numbers and names of people he could contact over at Buena Vista. “Is there anything else?” she asked.

“Not that I can think of at the moment. Are any of the patients still at the hospital?”

Cassie nodded. “Renato Silva. He developed some breathing issues, which we need to stabilize before releasing him.”

“I’d like to examine him, if I could.”

Ms. Porter went to the door. “I’ll leave Dr. Larrobee to help you with that, then. Let me know if you have any further questions.”

He shook hands with her and the infamous Bonnie, and waited until they left the room before saying anything else. “Bonnie, huh?”

“I know. I’m sorry for giving you a fake name. I just never dreamed...”

“You never dreamed you’d see me again.”

“Actually, I didn’t, or I wouldn’t have...”

She wouldn’t have what? Sat next to him at the bar? Spent the night with him?

“Isn’t there a certain book that warns your sins shall find you out?”

A smile teased the corners of her mouth as color washed back into her face. “I think falsifying names were the least of our sins in that case.”

Yes, they were. Thoughts that caused certain synapses in his brain to begin firing.