The Spanish Duke's Holiday Proposal

“Thanks again for your robe,” she said as she walked into his small but comfortable living room, tying the attached terrycloth belt of the over-large robe even tighter. She stared at him lounging on his sofa and licked her dry lips, trying to sound calm and normal instead of absurdly nervous. Which was obviously a ridiculous way for a mature woman to feel, but boyfriends had been few and far between in her life, mostly because she’d quickly learned that none of them had been interested in her, just in her name and the Davenport money and connections. “Are my...are my clothes almost dry?”

“They need maybe ten more minutes.” Unfolding his body from the deep leather sofa, he moved toward the bathroom with Benny, now wrapped in a towel to keep the dust from getting everywhere, tucked under his arm again. “I hope you left some hot water for us.”

Her mouth went even dryer. “You’re...going to shower? Now?”

Dark eyebrows lifted at her as he paused. “Do you object to me using my own shower? I believe I’m covered in even more silt than you were. And I can’t exactly pass Benny on in his current state, since you refused to take him in with you.”

“Of course I don’t object.” Which was a lie, because she really wanted to say, Yes! I’d really rather you wait to take off your clothes until after I’m gone! “And I didn’t refuse, you said you’d take care of washing him.”

“Because I’m an excellent dog washer, and I suspect you don’t have much experience with canines.”

It was true, but the way he said it seemed to imply he thought she was a prima donna or something. “You sure do claim to be excellent at everything. And I’m sure I could handle washing a little dog.”

“I have no doubt you handle all kinds of things with aplomb, Dr. Davenport.” That quick grin of his flashed before he disappeared into the only bedroom.

Apparently, she’d fooled him pretty well, because there was only one thing she was really good at, and that was being a doctor. Something she’d worked hard to do, trying to live up to the Davenport name. The family she only sort of belonged to, and would probably never be worthy of.

The sound of the bathroom door clicking behind him sent Miranda to perch on the end of the sofa, looking around his small apartment. His decor could be described as minimalist, but the furniture was obviously expensive, and the few pieces of art unusual and eclectic. Not posters from a cheap store but beautifully framed originals hung on the walls, and several excellent sculptures were placed on the modern tables.

She ran her finger across a bronze with fluid lines. Interesting and unexpected that an EMT would have the financial resources for art like this. Maybe he was the kind of man who bought very little, but when he did, it was only the best.

Pondering the man, she absently picked up a magazine, surprised to see that it was about horses and horse-breeding, and flicked through the photos of beautiful animals, hoping for a distraction from her nerves. Until the sound of the shower put a completely different image in her head. Picturing a naked, muscular Mateo with water streaming down the dark hair on his chest shortened her breath and did other things to her body that embarrassed her all over again, reminding her of exactly how she’d felt in that tunnel when he’d been lying on top of her.

Lord, this was ridiculous. What in the world was wrong with her? She was twenty-nine years old, for heaven’s sake, and a doctor who’d seen plenty of naked men in her career. Naked men were in her life every day!

Except Mateo wasn’t a patient, and she couldn’t remember a single man she’d ever known, patient or otherwise, who’d been even close to as gorgeous as he was.

She blew out a breath, and just as she was about to go to the small laundry closet to check on her clothes and throw them on, damp or not, a loud knock sounded at the door to his apartment.

She stared, frozen. Should she answer? The distant sound of the shower told her Mateo wasn’t even close to being done, and if she hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t be answering anyway, right? Besides, what if it was a girlfriend or something? How could she explain being in his apartment in his robe? Then she remembered it might be whoever was coming to get Benny, and decided she’d better answer before they left, assuming no one was home. She moved toward the door as a man’s voice boomed through it.

“Mateo! Are you there?”

To Miranda’s surprise, she heard the keypad beep just before the doorknob turned. The door opened to reveal an older couple, probably in their early sixties. The petite woman had dark hair with streaks of gray, coiffed into an elegant chignon, and the man was tall and unusually slender. He held a cane and was walking slowly, a step behind the woman as they came into the apartment. Both stared at her with raised eyebrows as their gazes took in her wet hair and the fact that she was standing there naked except for Mateo’s robe.

The embarrassment she’d felt before flamed another hundred degrees, and if there’d been anywhere she could have run, she would have torn right out of there.

“Is Mateo here?” the woman asked, her eyes remarkably cold-looking for being a warm, velvety brown.

“Um, yes. He’s...he’s in the shower. See, there was an accident today, part of the subway tunnel collapsed, you might have seen it on the news, or gotten stuck in all the traffic? So I went to help and Mateo was in there rescuing a man and his dog, and we got all dirty, and then...” Her voice faded away. Lord, she must sound like a raving lunatic. “Um, come in. I’m sure he’ll be out in—”

“Mother. Father. What are you doing here? I thought you’d already left for home.”

Miranda turned to see Mateo standing in the doorway to his bedroom, and what little breath she had left backed up in her lungs. Because he was wearing a towel around his waist and nothing else, with a sheen of water droplets in relief on his wide shoulders and athletic chest, a few dripping down the dark hair on his taut stomach just as she’d visualized earlier. Only even better.

She gulped. Obviously, he’d heard voices and hadn’t taken the time to fully dry off, and between the vision in front of her and her embarrassment that these two people were his parents, she thought she just might go into a swoon.

“Our plane is ready to go, but we decided to come here before we left, hoping to convince you to come home with us now, instead of waiting. But apparently you are otherwise engaged.”

His mother turned those cold eyes to Miranda, and they reminded her so much of the way her stepmother had always looked at her, it made her heart constrict oddly. Made her feel as unwelcome as she had in her teens when she’d first shown up at the Davenport mansion, which was absurd. She didn’t even know these people, but she couldn’t help feeling like she’d somehow shoved herself somewhere she was unwelcome anyway.

Mateo folded his arms across his damp chest, his features stony. “I told you I’d be coming home soon. And I will.”

“It must be very soon. There are things we need to address right away. You are the heir now!” His father pulled a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket and held them out to Mateo, his hand shaking with what looked to be a tremor as he did so. “Your mother and I are trying to manage until you arrive, but it is difficult for us to attend to everything. Too many people are relying on me, on you, to be ignored.”

Miranda looked from Mateo to his parents, and back. What in the world were they talking about? Unlike his mother, his father’s attention was focused exclusively on Mateo, who made no effort to introduce her to them. Which shouldn’t have bothered her, except it made her feel even more like the lowly interloper that Vanessa Davenport had clearly viewed her as thirteen years ago. And still did.

“I understand. I’ll let you know when I’m going to arrive, which I promise will be in just a few days.” Mateo’s biceps bulged as he lifted his arm to squeeze the back of his neck, his expression grim. A now clean, tail-wagging Benny ran from the bedroom to stand next to Mateo’s feet, looking up at him adoringly as Mateo dropped his arm back to his side. “However, as you can see, I’m rather busy right now.”

“You have a dog? In this ridiculously tiny apartment you insist on living in?” his mother asked in an incredulous voice.

“It’s not my dog.”

A man of few words. Miranda had to wonder about the odd exchange between Mateo and his parents, with him obviously not wanting to share anything about the events of the day. It was also obvious they weren’t going to be sharing warm and fuzzy hugs. She knew how it felt to have a strained relationship with your own family, and hoped it didn’t bother him the way her own situation always had.

“Well. We will see you at home, then, and look forward to your arrival.”

His mother’s eyes rested on Miranda one more time before she turned and swept out into the hallway without another word, her husband slowly following. It struck Miranda that their bearing was remarkably regal, their clothes obviously expensive. It was somehow surprising that these two unusually elegant people had a son whose chosen profession was that of a paramedic. But as she watched Mateo move to close the door behind them, it struck her that there was something intangibly noble about his bearing too.

He turned, his face impassive. “Sorry about that. Probably your clothes are ready.”

His words reminded her that she was still standing there in his robe, otherwise naked, and that he was practically naked, too. She found herself staring again at the beyond sexy contours of his torso, the beautiful golden shade of his skin, and the dark hair covering his pectorals and hard stomach, which she knew felt soft to the touch. Jerking her eyes up to his didn’t help the breathless feeling that came over her, as they only managed to land on his chiseled jaw and the beautiful shape of his unsmiling mouth, and her own lips parted to suck in a much-needed breath.

What was it about Mateo Alves that had her feeling so peculiarly stirred up and uncomfortable and embarrassingly aroused whenever he was near?

One hand lifted to clutch her robe tighter to her throat before he turned to get her clothes from his small laundry closet. Eyeing the wound on his back as he opened the dryer, she nearly offered to bandage it for him in case it started bleeding again, but decided she needed to keep her hands off his body. Getting dressed and out of there as soon as possible was the best plan, and she practically snatched the warm clothes he brought from the dryer.

“There are a pair of women’s sweatpants on my bed for you. It’s the best I could do.”

“Anything is better than walking down the street with only one pants leg,” she said, feeling a little strange about wearing pants that had presumably belonged to a lover of his, but she didn’t have much choice. “I’ll get dressed, then out of your hair.”

Finally respectably covered up, she swiped on a little lipstick, still feeling oddly jittery as she went back to his living room.

“Thanks again for letting me get pulled together here. I guess I’ll see you around the hospital sometime.”

“Are you feeling all right?” The way he was carefully looking at her made her wonder what he was seeing. “Not stressed or odd about having concrete showering down on you, wondering if it was going to get worse? It’s okay if you do. Even after regularly being in harm’s way, plenty of people suffer emotional aftereffects from it.”

“Well, as you pointed out, it’s pretty much my own fault for going in there to begin with. Makes you think about how quickly things can happen, doesn’t it? I see the results of bad accidents in the hospital every day, but somehow I never think about it happening to me.”

“So next time promise you’ll stay put and get someone trained in search and rescue.”

“I’m hoping there’s no ‘next time.’ But I can’t promise—I took an oath to help sick or injured people, and if I have to put myself in harm’s way, I’m going to do it.”

“Yep, a very stubborn woman.” A small smile curved his lips even as he shook his head in exasperation. “Just be sure to take care of yourself, and if you start to have bad dreams or flashbacks, talk to someone about it.”

“Don’t worry, I really am fine. But thanks.” Maybe he thought she sounded stubborn and brave, but the truth was, she fervently hoped she never came across another situation like that in her life. “I do have vacation time coming up this week. I’m planning to get out of the city, do something fun.”

“Like what?”

“Still figuring that out.” The main reason to go away was so she didn’t have to be at the big Thanksgiving family gathering at the Davenports’. She shoved her hand toward his, and his warm one engulfed hers. “Goodbye, and thanks again.”

The way she rushed out of his apartment probably made him wonder if she really did have some post-traumatic stress going on, but she couldn’t worry about that. She had enough to worry about.

Like what she was going to do with her week off, and why she’d had a sudden, astonishing urge to ask Mateo Alves to join her.

CHAPTER THREE

THE CHILD’S PIERCING shrieks would have unnerved even the most hardened EMT, and Mateo stepped up the pace to get her into the ER fast. Based on what the father had told him when he’d picked the wailing child up off the sidewalk, it seemed unlikely she had an internal injury. No blood, no visible head injury, no misshapen limb told him it probably wasn’t extremely serious. But because he couldn’t know for sure, that’s why they were heading to the hospital—to check out the possibilities then go from there.

The anxious father had agitatedly told him the story of how the three-year-old girl had been sitting on his shoulders as they’d walked through the crowds. The dad hadn’t expected his daughter to suddenly lunge sideways to get a better look at a toy store’s glittering Christmas window display, and he’d lost his grip on her legs.

“I just couldn’t catch her all the way, you know?” the father repeated as Mateo and the other EMT lifted the stretcher out of the ambulance. “I partially broke her fall to the sidewalk, but I’m so scared she might be really hurt.”

“I know it’s scary,” Mateo said in a calm voice he hoped would keep the poor guy from hyperventilating. “But Manhattan Mercy’s ER docs are the best so, whatever’s going on, they’ll figure it out. Try not to worry.”

The man nodded and gulped in some air, and Mateo turned to his patient. “Almost there, Emily,” he said, giving the girl an encouraging smile. “Soon the doctors will figure out why you’re hurting and get you something for your pain, okay?”

“What do you think is wrong?” the girl’s father asked. Apparently, Mateo’s attempts to reassure him weren’t working. His voice was panicky, and his knuckles were white as he hung onto the gurney Mateo propelled through the ER’s doorway. “It...it didn’t look like she hit her head, but I couldn’t tell for sure, you know?”

“Her vital signs are normal, other than an accelerated heart rate, probably caused by pain. I’m guessing it’s not anything major, but we’ll have the doctor take a look.” Hopefully, whoever the doctor was would do a better job calming the dad than he’d managed to accomplish.

A nurse sent them to an exam room, and when a white-coated doctor with chin-length brown hair appeared in Mateo’s peripheral vision, he knew it was Miranda Davenport before he’d even looked up. As if he’d somehow sensed it was her, and how strange was that? Also strange that he couldn’t help the smile that formed on his face just from seeing her again.

“Hi,” Miranda said with a sweet smile as she came to lean over the child and give her a comforting pat. “What’s going on?”

“Three-year-old girl fell from her dad’s shoulders onto the sidewalk.” Mateo began his report as he unbuckled her from the gurney. Being careful to not jostle her, he gently moved her to the bed. “Ambulatory at the scene. Heart rate one twenty, BP ninety over fifty. Her name is Emily, and this is her father.”

“What do you think, Doctor?”

The man’s anxious eyes stared at Miranda, and Mateo decided that the professional but still warm smile she gave him would have had anyone breathing slightly easier. “We’re about to find out,” Miranda said as she turned that smile to Emily. “I know you’re hurting, but can you be brave for me? Just like the princess here always is?”

Miranda tapped the sticker of a glittery cartoon princess she had attached to her name badge, and, remarkably, the child nodded and hiccupped as her crying lessened a little.

“Wow, you really are brave, like her! So, can you tell me where you hurt?”

The child waved her left hand toward the right side of her body, and Miranda moved her hands gently over Emily’s head, then her arms and torso. Her careful fingers slowly went to touch Emily’s neck, and Mateo instantly saw the swelling forming there. The child shrieked again, and Miranda lifted her head, her gaze meeting Mateo’s for a long moment before moving on to the child’s father.

“It looks like she has a fractured clavicle. See the bulge here on her collar bone? That might not sound like good news since she’s hurting so much, but it’s a comparatively simple injury that will heal well on its own. We’ll get her pain meds right away to make her comfortable, then an X-ray to confirm the diagnosis. But I’m sure that’s what the problem is.”

That smile, her quick diagnosis, her ability to calm the child and her father, and the utter confidence illuminating her amazing blue eyes, all wrapped up in what Mateo knew was a hell of an attractive body, were one irresistible package.

“Thank God it’s nothing super-bad,” Emily’s father said, swiping his hand across his brow. “What can you do for it? My wife is probably gonna kill me. I really need to know what to tell her when she calls me back.”

“We’ll get her a sling called a clavicle strap to keep her arm and shoulder from moving as it heals. And you can tell your wife that it’s very common for young children to fracture their clavicles, sometimes even from a simple fall in their own homes. So she’s actually a pretty tough cookie, aren’t you, Emily?”

The child sniffled between whimpering cries and nodded as Miranda pulled one of the princess stickers from her coat pocket and handed it to Emily. “I hope this will always remind you how brave you were today. Your mom and dad should be proud of you.”

Another nod, and as Emily even managed to smile through her sniffles this time, Mateo realized that Miranda had a special gift for soothing little ones.

“You don’t put a cast or anything on it?” the father asked.

“If the two ends of the broken clavicle are in the same state, I promise it will heal on its own.” Miranda sent the man another encouraging smile before giving instructions to the nurse about not moving Emily’s arm or shoulder, and what pain medication to give her.

Mateo’s job was done here, and though he would have liked to stay a little longer to watch Miranda work her magic, he figured he should get the ambulance back to the station. He pushed the gurney from the room, but as he passed Miranda in the hallway, she paused in typing her instructions into the computer chart and turned to look at him.

“Busy day?”

“Not too bad. No collapsed tunnels with crazy doctors running inside.”

“Or dusty dogs to deal with.” Her lips curved. “Did John’s family come and get Benny?”

“Yes. My apartment seemed quiet after the little guy was gone.”

“So getting a dog might be on your to-do list?”

“Probably not.” He had other things on that list. Like being forced to move back home when he didn’t want to, despite being needed there, and the guilt of his feelings about all that gnawed at his gut. He couldn’t tell his parents he didn’t deserve to step into his brother’s shoes to take over the family’s estate full-time. That his not being there for Emilio, for not doing more to help him, might be part of the reason he wasn’t alive anymore. That memories of his laughter and jokes, of their closeness and all they’d done together their whole lives, were a constant ache every moment he was back in Spain.

The weight of all that hung heavily on his shoulders, as it had for the past six months, and he didn’t know what he was going to do about it. Didn’t know how he could convince his parents that it would be fine for him to be home just a few months of the year, when they expected him to be there full-time now that Emilio was gone.

As he stared at Miranda’s pretty face and smiling eyes and thought about the disapproving looks his parents had given her, a radical idea struck him, slowly forming fully in his mind. And the more he thought about it, the more he liked it.

Yes, it just might be brilliant, and actually work. But would she possibly agree? He had no idea. But what he did know? Trying to persuade her just became the number one thing on that to-do list.

* * *

By the end of the day, Mateo had become convinced that the idea that had developed in his head earlier was the perfect solution to his problem. If Miranda was willing to go along with it, that was.

After all, what did he have to lose by asking her? He definitely couldn’t suggest it to one of the women he casually dated, because they might read more into it than he wanted them to. But since he and Miranda barely knew one another, he couldn’t imagine she’d read his proposal the wrong way. Plus, she was a Davenport. Someone from a wealthy and powerful family wouldn’t think his lineage was a big deal and because of that, she’d be unlikely to get excited about it, like the women back at home always had. Women who wanted nothing more than to snag a wealthy duke, live a lavish lifestyle, and lord it over everyone who worked for his family, like his sister-in-law had.

Which was just one of the reasons he liked living anonymously in a big city like New York. He could date women for a short time who didn’t want anything from him. No long-term commitments offered or expected, and that’s how he wanted to keep it.

Miranda had said she didn’t have a boyfriend, which he found incredibly surprising, but was more than glad about. She had also said that she’d like to get out of the city for a week or so. Get away from work and the challenges of getting to her apartment while the subway was being repaired. Away from memories of the tunnel collapse and how scary he knew that had to have been for her, even though she’d put on a brave front.

He thought about that again while he waited around for her shift to end. Frustrated with her as he’d been at that moment, now that she was safe and it was over with he had to admire that she’d run in there to help. Search and rescue had been his passion since his days in the Spanish military, but she lived her life on the receiving end of casualties in the ER. Without a doubt, lots of physicians would have waited for the rescue crews to bring out any injured before they got to work taking care of them.

He leaned against the wall of the hospital corridor, his gaze on Miranda standing farther down the hall, talking to the doctor taking over her patients. Did she always take this long to tie up loose ends after her shift was over? He glanced at his watch, impressed that, unlike some of the docs in the hospital who ran out the door the second their shift was over, she obviously wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of before she left.

Restlessly squeezing the back of his neck, he wondered if there was any way she’d agree to his proposal. If she said no, he’d just be in the same situation he was in now, right? But maybe he’d get lucky and she’d say yes, which would solve his problem at least in the short term. At the same time, he’d get to look at her pretty face and enjoy her lively mind during the time they spent together.

He’d always taken a second and third look at her whenever he’d brought in a patient, never dreaming he’d have her lush body beneath his the way it had been in the tunnel, or her nearly naked in his apartment. The memories of how both those things had made his blood pump hard and his breath get short had him turning to look somewhere other than at her before his body reacted all over again.