To Play With Fire

“Printemps? What the hell is that?”

“Wow, Marcos. Such language.” She sighed and stuffed the tickets back in her bag. “It’s a department store down on 25 de Março. I know you’ve seen it.”

A bargain-hunter’s paradise, the huge shopping district in the center of São Paulo was a chaotic beehive of activity on the best of days...and the last place Marcos ever ventured, if he could help it. The area could also be dangerous. “You went down there by yourself?”

Sophia rolled her eyes. “I’m not a kid any more, remember? We’ve talked about this.”

“We did. And you agreed to take someone with you when you shopped.”

“I did. I took the American girl you have working for you. She’d never been.” Her brows came together in rebuke. “After six months, can you believe it? You should have at least offered to show it to her.”

Yeah, right. He could just see that happening. Maybe he’d ask her tomorrow, in fact. Marcos pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on.

Maggie was the last person he wanted Sophia hanging around with. His friend might take it on herself to do something crazy.

“Anyway,” she continued, “Maggie said she’d go to the ballet with me, but that leaves two tickets. She said she was sure you’d want to go as well.”

Something crazy. Like that.

His hand dropped back to the table, eyes narrowing. Somehow he doubted it had been Maggie’s suggestion that he go. “Sorry. Can’t make it.”

“You don’t even know what the dates are yet.”

It didn’t matter. No way was he going to the ballet with Sophia and her new BFF.

He tried to pry the truth out of her. “Did Dr. Pfeiffer actually mention me by name?”

“She did.” Sophia drew an X across her chest with her index finger. “Juro.”

I swear. Fitting, since he’d like to do a little swearing himself.

“What did she say, exactly?”

“Well, I said I might ask you to go along with us, and Maggie said, ‘Do that.’”

He gave a short laugh, relief washing through him. “It’s called sarcasm, Soph. Americans use it a lot.”

Okay, well, that cleared up that little mystery.

Undaunted by his lack of enthusiasm, she leaned forward. “Did you know Americans also use this...” she made a circle of her thumb and forefinger, shielding the sign with her other hand to keep it hidden from fellow diners “...to mean that something is good? Maggie said she accidentally used it with a patient a while ago.”

“Yes. I know.” Marcos pushed her hand down with a frown and held onto it. “That doesn’t mean you should go around flashing it.”

He remembered exactly when Maggie had used that sign. Seventy-nine-year-old Guilherme Lima had come in to ask about his test results, and before Marcos had realized what her intentions were, out had come the finger circle accompanied by an emphatic shake or two of her hand. He’d thought the poor man—whose test results really had been A-okay—had been going to die of a stroke right there in his office. Marcos had thought he might just follow his patient over the edge. But for an entirely different reason. Maggie’s innocent demeanor, accompanied by that obscene gesture, had set off a firestorm in his belly that had lasted the rest of the day.

When he’d offered to drive her home with the idea of setting her straight in private so she wouldn’t be embarrassed, things hadn’t gone exactly as planned. He’d explained why she shouldn’t use that sign, and her eyes had gone wide as she’d licked her lips. Another deadly combination he hadn’t been able to resist—and hadn’t bothered trying. Then she’d dropped that water bottle and leaned forward...

Something he was better off not thinking about right now.

As if he’d summoned her, a flash of red to the side caught his attention, and he swiveled his head to look. Maggie was in line with a tray, but her eyes were on him, following the line of his arm to where his hand still held Sophia’s. A frown marred her brow, and something about it made Marcos let go of Sophia in a rush.

A second later, he thought better of it. Had his friend even explained their relationship to her? That he’d been Sophia’s sidekick at the orphanage?

Why did it matter? In fact, it might not be a bad thing if Maggie thought there was a little something going on between them.

Which would make him look like a first-class jerk, after those passion-filled moments they’d shared.

As if realizing she was still staring, Maggie yanked her glance back to the tray in her hand and continued through the line, perusing the items behind the glass window at the counter as if they fascinated her.

Unfortunately, Sophia had also spotted her and waved her over.

Meu Deus. Why had he ever thought coffee was a good idea?

With a sense of impending doom, he watched as Maggie made her selection, hunched her shoulders and headed their way, looking very much like she was facing a slow and painful death.

Well, join the club, querida. You’re not the only one.

* * *

Maggie had wanted a simple fruit cup, hoping to make up for the fact that she’d skipped breakfast that morning. What she hadn’t wanted, however, was to witness her boss holding hands with her new friend, Sophia, who was everything Maggie wasn’t: curvy, with flawless tanned skin and silky black hair that shimmered with every movement. The girl also seemed to have cornered the market on flirty smiles, except she did it with a total lack of guile about how that sultry flash of teeth affected the opposite sex. And judging from Marcos’s reaction, he’d definitely been affected.

It might even explain why Sophia had been so quick to mention inviting him to the ballet.

Did she have any idea what he and Maggie had done in the parking garage? No, of course she didn’t. She had the feeling Marcos wasn’t the kind of man to kiss and tell.

But he might be the kind of person who played the field. And there was something between these two. She could tell by the way they leaned into each other as they talked, by their easy smiles and casual manner.

Past lovers?

Present?

That thought made having to sit with them that much worse. Because, if the two of them were involved, the last thing her boss would want was for Sophia to discover what they’d been up to a month ago. From the uneasy look on his face, he was thinking much the same thing.

Before she could veer away to another table, however, Sophia leaped up and took her tray, setting it next to hers and then kissing her cheek. Maggie still hadn’t gotten used to that aspect of their culture: the kissing—whether it was the casual Brazilian kissing that went on between friends and relatives or, worse, the crazy intense style she’d experienced with the Brazilian seated across from her. Yep, that style of kissing was still kind of foreign to her, since the encounters she’d had in her past life had almost never involved mouth-to-mouth contact.

She sucked down a quick breath as an unwanted memory pushed its way in. She shook it off, her fingertips curving and pressing deeply into the sides of her thighs.

He’s dead. The past is dead. Get over it.

Slumping into her seat and wishing she could be anywhere else, she forced a smile. “I didn’t realize you’d be here.” She gave the offhand remark in such a way that neither party would know who she referred to.

“I come here every morning.” The faint amusement that tinged his words made her bristle. She wasn’t stalking him, for heaven’s sake.

“Really? I only come when my boss asks me to show up at a ridiculously early hour,” she retorted.

He glanced at his watch, one side of his mouth quirking. “Six o’clock is hardly early.”

“Hmm.” The vague noise was meant to be noncommittal, but it caused Marcos to lean back, arms crossing over his chest.

Sophia, seemingly unaware of the tension in the air, spoke up. “I was just telling Marcos about the ballet. And that you were going, too.”

Oh, no! She’d hoped any drama involving those tickets would happen out of her earshot.

“When is it again?” Marcos asked, his eyes trained on her face, which was growing hotter by the second.

Sophia glanced at her. “Two weeks from Wednesday.”

Lifting his phone off the tabletop, he used a finger to scroll across the screens, probably looking at his calendar. “We have a medical conference starting this Monday.”

Something she was trying her best to forget. They were supposed to sit together, since part of the conference dealt with advances in neurosurgery. Marcos said he’d probably need to translate portions of it for her.

The last thing she wanted him doing was whispering in her ear. She’d had that experience once already and didn’t need any reminders of what a heady thing it was.

“That’s perfect,” Sophia said. “Those things never go past five in the afternoon, and the ballet doesn’t start until eight.”

Maggie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to that. She’d already promised Sophia that she’d go. But that had been before she’d found out she’d be a third wheel. She wanted to back out more than anything, but didn’t want to offend her friend in the process.

“Will it be at the Municipal Theater?” Marcos asked.

“Of course.”

Now was her chance to try to wriggle out of it. “Maybe I should just let you guys go and enjoy it on your own.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you must go.” Sophia laid her hand on Marcos’s arm. “He wants you to come as well, don’t you, Marcos?”

“Definitely. I want you to come.”

The smooth words were said without the slightest twitch of an eyebrow, but she felt her face flaming back to life. He’d used that phrasing on purpose...knew it would bring up memories of her—with him—as he’d told her he wanted her to do exactly that.

And she had.

She wished she could think of something equally witty and sophisticated to lob back at him, but she couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t be obvious to everyone. Which made her feel like a royal dork.

Besides, how could she refuse to go after her friend had been so excited about winning the tickets in the first place? Nope. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. So she gritted out a smile instead. “Well, I guess that’s settled, then.”

Sophia gave an audible sigh, then leaned back with a grin. “Exactly.”

CHAPTER THREE

“DO THEY HAVE to shave all my hair off?”

Teresa Allen’s big blue eyes looked up at her with a pleading expression. The seven-year-old had come in to have her ventriculoperitoneal shunt checked. She’d been having headaches for the last couple of days, and Marcos wanted her in his office right away to make sure the device was draining off the excess cerebrospinal fluid the way it should.

It wasn’t. And now Maggie’s task was to keep their young American patient and her mother calm while Marcos prepared for the emergency surgery. Once Teresa was anesthetized, however, she’d be able to scrub up and join the surgical team.

Maggie smiled. “No, they won’t shave all your hair, only this little spot right here.” She drew a U-shaped figure with her fingertip behind the little girl’s right ear. “You can comb the rest of your hair so that it covers it once you’re out of surgery. But it’ll all grow back before you know it.”

Her mom, seated beside her daughter, smiled. “Thank you for speaking to us in English. I really need to learn Portuguese, but there are so many ex-pats here I haven’t needed to. Your English is excellent, by the way. Congratulations.”

Maggie grinned back. “That’s because I’m an American, too. And believe me, once I open my mouth, no one would mistake me for a Brazilian, even when I’m speaking Portuguese.”

It felt so good to speak her own language. It was also the reason Marcos had left her here with the mother and daughter. And although she knew she deserved to be in that operating room every bit as much as he did, she didn’t resent being here. She could remember the times her own mother had held her hand when she’d gone to the doctor to have her inoculations...or when she’d been sick. It was important to feel safe.

And Maggie could remember, down to the minute, when she’d no longer felt that way. It had taken her a long, long time to recover. Even now she wondered if she was functioning one hundred percent normally.

Her ex-boyfriend certainly hadn’t given her much reassurance on that front.

But Marcos hadn’t seemed to sense anything weird during their brief interlude. Then again, she hadn’t been paying attention to much outside of how he was making her feel.

One of the nurses came into the room with a pair of hair clippers. “Are we ready?”

“I think so.” Maggie stroked Teresa’s head. “What do you think? Are you ready for those headaches to go away?”

Teresa nodded. “I’m really scared, though.”

Meeting her mother’s eyes, she could see it was taking every ounce of willpower for the woman not to burst into tears in front of her daughter.

Maggie smiled. “I’m going to be with you the whole time. I promise.”

“Even during the operation?”

She nodded. “Even then.”

Her mom’s chin wobbled even more as she mouthed, “Thank you.”

Forty-five minutes later, Maggie stood beside Marcos as he carefully examined the shunt valve he’d removed from Teresa’s head. “The problem’s in here. We’ll need to replace it with a new one.” Setting the device aside, his fingers followed the path of the tubing down the child’s neck and chest, feeling it through her skin. “Everything else seems okay, and she’s got plenty of room left for growth. So let’s get in and get out.”

Maggie busied herself with retrieving the replacement valve and carrying it over to the table.

Marcos took a step back. “Why don’t you connect it?”

Surprised, she glanced at him for a second, before moving closer. Taking hold of the lower section of the catheter tubing, she carefully worked it into the connecting port, and then did the same with the upper end. She checked the seals. Hooking it up took less than ten minutes, but it felt good to be doing actual surgery, instead of feeling like a useless hanger-on.

She also realized that she hadn’t needed to translate Marcos’s words in her head when he’d spoken but had automatically processed and understood them. She gave him a huge smile, only realizing a second later that her mask kept him from seeing it. But evidently he’d seen something in her eyes because he said, “Good job.”

It had taken almost seven months, but maybe she was finally getting the hang of this crazy language.

And maybe even gaining the trust of her fellow neurosurgeon?

They 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 patient?”

The stuttered words drew him up short, making him think about Maggie’s reaction to him. Did he engender fear in everyone he came across?

Forcing a softer tone to his voice, he clarified, “Teresa Allen.”

The nurse tapped the keys of her computer and said, “Recovery room three.”

He strode away before stopping again with a frown. Turning back to the desk, he said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

There. At least she hadn’t stuttered that time.

Arriving at the recovery room, he found Maggie was indeed there, along with Teresa’s mother. He ignored her for the moment, going over to shake hands with the mom and saying in English, “I’m Dr. Pinheiro.”

“You’re the one who did the surgery?”

He glanced at where Maggie stood, chin elevated as if bracing herself for whatever he might say. He cursed his careless words in the operating room. “Actually, Dr. Pfeiffer and I both had a part in it. She’s already explained what we did?”

“Yes. The new shunt should be okay for a while?”

“For a long while, we hope.” He smiled at his patient, who’d drifted back to sleep. “Teresa has to lie flat for the next twenty-four hours, so she’ll need to stay here for another day or two.”

“Can I stay with her?”

“I don’t see why not. It might make her feel more secure to have you here. I can have a cot brought in.”

“Thank you.” They shook hands once again, and Maggie came over this time.

“You’ll let her know I was here?” she asked the mother.

“Yes. She’ll be happy to know that. Can you visit her tomorrow?”

Maggie reached out and hugged her. “Absolutely. I’ll see you later.”

With that she was out the door without a backwards glance at him.

Dammit.

He went after her, catching up to her within a few strides.

“Hey. Espere.”

Maggie stopped in her tracks, the sudden halt not making the slightest sound on the polished linoleum floor. She stayed put but didn’t look at him. He rounded her still form until he stood in front of her, ignoring everything around him as he stared down at her. When she finally glanced up, the cool indifference in the clear blue depths of her eyes was unmistakable, even to him.

An act? Or was she really not bothered by what he’d said to her? Either way, he owed her an apology.

“I’m sorry.” He touched the line of her jaw with his index finger, forcing it not to linger for more than a second on the softness he found there. “I overreacted a little while ago. Markinho is a childhood name. No one uses it.”

“One of your patients did.” Her soft voice spoke volumes.

He’d forgotten she’d overheard Graciela call him that a few days ago.

“She’s different.” He tried to think of a way to explain it that didn’t involve talking about his past. “I’ve known that particular patient for a very long time.”