Awakened By Her Brooding Brazilian

Once more, murmurs broke out around the room, but there was a decidedly appreciative cadence to them.

“While you all are familiar with the standard fibular free-flap reconstruction, introducing you to some of the newer techniques in presurgical planning, along with the 3-D planned plates and templates, will serve you well in the years to come. It’s an exciting and fast-evolving technique in our line of work.”

They’d gone on to discuss the operation in detail, but through it all Krysta was supremely aware of Francisco next to her, whether he was contributing to the conversation or not.

Now, as she finished her twenty-fourth lap, she had to admit to herself the patently obvious truth.

She was attracted to him.

That in itself was unusual enough to throw her off her stride. Not that it was the first time she’d found a man attractive, but unlike the other times, there was a stronger pull, a growing need for his company she didn’t understand.

Worse was this sense of wanting to do something about it, take it further to see where it might lead. That was very different from the times before, when she’d been content to look and do nothing about her feelings.

Not that she’d know how to go about getting from point A to point B with a man like Francisco Carvalho.

She’d succumbed to curiosity and looked him up on the internet. Francisco Carvalho had lived an exciting life as a model prior to becoming a surgeon. Back then, he was known as Cisco, and there were myriad pictures of him in ads and on catwalks around the world. He’d even been the face of a cologne produced by a designer whose name even Krysta recognized.

And then there were the shots of him at parties and galas, and in many of them he had a gorgeous blonde woman on his arm, described in some of the captions as Mariella Guzman, his fiancée. That wide-eyed beauty had seemed the perfect complement to Francisco’s dark, brooding handsomeness. Recalling Dr. Delgado’s comments on the night of the reception, she’d been tempted to see if there were any articles saying what happened, but decided against it. She’d seen enough to tell her everything she needed to know.

Francisco Carvalho may be her contemporary in the medical world, but in every other way, he was light-years beyond her.

All her life she’d been an outsider, far younger than any of her classmates or work contemporaries. When her mental contemporaries had been experimenting with love and sex, she’d been focused on her studies or career. And before she’d gotten to the point where perhaps she’d have been open to exploring her own sexuality, she’d been traumatized by an assault.

That wasn’t something she’d thought or talked about in years, pushing it away and minimizing it in her head. After all, she told herself, it wasn’t as though she’d been raped. There were other young girls who’d been hurt far more severely than she had.

It wasn’t until she’d started seeing Dr. Hellman that she’d begun to see the ramifications. At fourteen, Krysta had learned to repress her sexuality and minimize any outward signs of femininity. Then, safe in the bastion of her denial, she’d decided relationships, even casual ones, weren’t in the cards.

Yet, for all the talking and analyzing, she wasn’t ready to let go of her disguise, or venture out of the safety zone. Her work still was her be-all and end-all, and she couldn’t afford distractions.

Case in point, she thought as she got to the wall in the deep end and hung on, instead of doing a racing turn and continuing. Thinking about Francisco Carvalho had made her lose count of her laps, when usually she could keep track of them effortlessly, even while thinking about other things. If he could so easily shut down a function of her brain, one she considered automatic, what could he do to the rest of it, if she let him?

Yet, she knew he wouldn’t be as easy to dismiss from her mind as the other men she’d been attracted to. There was definitely something different about Francisco, something compelling. It wasn’t his looks, although she thought him handsome. Looks alone would never be enough to pique her interest.

Treading water, she considered exactly what it was about him that gave her goose bumps, and made her heart race, but couldn’t pinpoint any one thing.

That, in itself, was additionally frustrating. Krysta was used to being able to work though almost any puzzle and find a logical solution.

Perhaps you’re looking for the answer to the wrong question.

Her therapist’s voice sounded in her head, making her wrinkle her nose. It was one of Dr. Hellman’s more annoying sayings, especially when she never seemed willing to let on what the right question was. The only statement more annoying was, “You need to step out of your comfort zone.”

Well, she had, hadn’t she? Agreeing to come to Brazil and lecture. Dr. Hellman had seemed pleased when Krysta had told her about the trip. Of course, she’d also told her to take the opportunity to stretch herself even more. There were, according to the psychologist, so many things Krysta had missed out on growing up. Not because her parents had pushed her, but because Krysta had pushed herself.

Realizing she’d done it not just because she wanted to succeed, but because it was a great way to isolate herself socially and feel safe, had been revelatory.

Shoving back from the wall, she floated into the middle of the pool, looking up at the ceiling, drifting lazily in the water, rather than cleaving through the way she usually did.

She’d thought she was fine the way she was, but she’d had to reevaluate that supposition. After all, no one had forced her to make that first appointment with Dr. Hellman. It clearly had been something inside her telling her it was time to get things right in her head. Perhaps telling her a full, successful career wasn’t all there was in life. Warning that if she didn’t make some changes soon, she may be leaving it too late.

“You’re a forward-thinking innovator at work,” Dr. Hellman had said, her eyes glinting behind her glasses. “Someone who develops new techniques and isn’t afraid to move forward boldly into the future. Why not do that in the rest of your life? Isolating yourself, thinking only about work, isn’t healthy.”

Hearing those words at first made Krysta feel powerful, in control of whatever might happen. But later, alone at home, they’d come back to mind and scared her almost silly. Why they filled her with such trepidation, she hadn’t wanted to contemplate.

Perhaps it was because to go down that road would be to have to acknowledge exactly how much she had missed out on.

The friendships, like those she’d seen her brothers develop with others, and her parents had nurtured, even when distance divided them from those closest to them.

The family ties, which she’d neglected so badly in the pursuit of excellence, using work as an excuse to avoid the functions and get-togethers others took for granted.

Meaningful relationships, such as the one her parents shared with each other.

Just now, though, it was the putting aside of her sexuality that felt most important.

Apparently, her body thought giving it free rein was long overdue. Just being around Francisco Carvalho brought all her senses to life, arousing sensations she’d never experienced before.

What she was going to do about any of it, she had no idea. But even if she did get brave enough to try to act on these feelings, it would have to wait until after Enzo Dos Santos’s surgery.

She wouldn’t allow anything, neither Francisco Carvalho nor her own carnal urges, to interfere with her concentration.

Francisco stood under the shower, trying to get the streams of warm water to unravel his knotted muscles. It wasn’t that the day had been terribly stressful. Yes, he’d been called out early in the morning, and had another emergency come into the hospital just as he was getting ready to leave, but he was used to that.

What he wasn’t used to was Krysta Simpson.

There was an ineffable aura about her that fascinated him intensely. The more time he spent with her, the more captivated he became—with her confidence, precision, razor-sharp mind and the easy way she spoke to everyone, even while maintaining a certain mysterious distance.

Yet, although all those things would be more than enough, Francisco knew himself to be attracted to her physically as well.

More than once, when she was lecturing and in the presurgery meeting, he’d lost track of what she was saying. Not because he wasn’t interested, or enthralled by the subject matter, but because he’d caught himself staring at her lips as she spoke, or at the movement of her hands.

Those hands were both capable and surprisingly graceful, and he’d drifted off into a fantasy of what they would feel like on his skin.

Even now, as he was reiterating to himself just how bad that was, his body reacted to the memory, tightening and hardening against his will.

And it truly wasn’t at all a good idea to even entertain any fantasies about Dr. Krysta Simpson, for a number of reasons.

Trying to ignore his burgeoning erection, he silently listed them again.

Krysta Simpson had not, by look or word, expressed the slightest interest in him. She was friendly and professional and, in his estimation, they had a great rapport. But beyond that, he saw nothing to indicate she had any other feelings toward him, and he certainly wasn’t the type to push.

Besides, having a months-long affair with someone, who would then quickly disappear, did not appeal to him.

Or certainly shouldn’t.

Then there was the fact she was a visitor to his country, here to do a job. A colleague whose reputation was stellar, and far above his own. Krysta was a star, world renowned, while Francisco was simply a competent plastic and reconstructive surgeon, good at his job but nothing special. To even spend too much time with her was to court disaster, in the same way being engaged to Mari had caused him untold pain and embarrassment.

All too well could he imagine the whispers, not to mention those, like Delgado, who would say aloud for everyone to hear that he was, once again, trying to sleep his way to success. Using looks and charm to advance into a world where he didn’t belong.

He knew the gossip that swirled around him in the hospital, and it made him leery of doing anything to stir the pot. Getting too close to Krysta Simpson definitely would do that.

The thought chilled him, and thankfully his ardor waned. Turning off the water, he stepped out of the shower to grab a towel.

He’d been burned by others’ cruelty and lies before, and had no intention of doing anything to precipitate that again.

Instead, he needed to remind himself of how far he’d come, how hard he’d worked to get to where he was. Others could say modeling was easy, or believe the lies told about him—that he’d used his association with Mari to further himself—but he knew the truth. It had been a long, backbreaking and often lonely road he’d taken, and there’d been times he’d wanted to quit, to go home to his family and childhood friends. Only his dream of becoming a doctor had kept him there, working and studying in equal measure.

When he’d met Mari and fallen for her, he’d thought life could get no better. By then he was almost finished medical school, and hadn’t cared that she came from a wealthy family. Foolishly, he’d thought it didn’t matter. He knew he’d be able to support them, between what he’d had saved and what he would earn as a surgeon. What he hadn’t taken into consideration was the different rules by which the privileged lived, where they would steamroll over anyone to get what they wanted, or to get out of trouble.

But he’d learned it the hard way, and discovered it was best not to give yourself too freely, because it opened you up to having what you’d said, done or felt used against you. He’d paid dearly for allowing Mari into his heart, and it wasn’t an experience he wanted to go through again.

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