The Doctor's Forbidden Temptation

“Thanks, but I’ve got it.”

He frowned. “Call me if it hasn’t been delivered. I’ll need to check on its progress.” He wasn’t trying to contradict her or irritate her any more than necessary, but he’d been the one to call the repair shop and have her car towed away. The least he could do was make sure it arrived safely back at her place.

She reached around him and opened the door. “I will. Or I can call Sebastian.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

Up went her brows. “Do you really think this was a good idea?”

“It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

“No. Dinner was great.”

Meaning kissing him had not been. He could call her a liar—hell if she hadn’t kissed him back—but what would be the point? Maybe it was better for them both to just leave things where they were.

They gave each other a quick goodbye, then Adam stepped through the door and waited until it closed and the deadbolt engaged before heading back to his own car. Yes, putting this behind them was the smartest thing. He could only hope that Natália threw that damned fortune from the cookie into the trash and forgot about tonight...and everything leading up to it.

* * *

“We kissed.”

Natália said the words in a pseudo-whisper, even though she and her best friend Maggie Pinheiro were alone in the exam room. Married to a family friend, Maggie and Natália had hit it off from the moment they’d met at the couple’s wedding four years ago. Maggie, her husband Marcos, Natália and Sebastian all worked at the same hospital, in fact. And now Maggie was pregnant. Very pregnant.

“You kissed who?”

Natália shook her head, suddenly remembering that she hadn’t seen Maggie in the two days since she’d had Adam over to her apartment and locked lips with him. Thank God her car had been delivered the morning after, so she hadn’t needed to call him and ask him for anything else. It was all too humiliating. Not only having to confess that she didn’t have a date but kissing the man like a hungry piranha finding its first good meal after the rains came.

Women loved Adam and the man knew it. He had to. She saw the looks they gave him in the hospital corridors.

“Adam Cordeiro.”

“The orthopedic surgeon?”

Maggie was an American who’d come over to Brazil on a special exchange program and who’d ended up staying after she married Marcos. Although she was fluent in the language, she still had a charming accent and periodically stumbled over an unfamiliar word or phrase.

“Yes.”

“Aren’t he and Sebastian good friends?”

Natália crinkled her nose. “Yes. We all kind of grew up together.”

“I bet that was awkward.”

“It was horrible.”

Maggie’s eyes widened as she sat on the table, waiting for her obstetrician to get there. “The kiss? I always thought Dr. Cordeiro was kind of cute.”

“Says the woman who is pregnant with another hottie’s baby.”

Her friend’s hands smoothed over her round belly. “Oh, believe me, I am not looking to swap partners.”

“Adam is not my partner.”

“I would hope not, if he’s a terrible kisser.”

Natália’s eyes closed for a second before she looked at her friend again in exasperation. “That’s the problem. It wasn’t a horrible kiss. It was a good kiss.”

“I thought you just said it was bad.”

This time she laughed. “No. Not the kiss. That was phenomenal. The horrible part was that it was Adam and not someone else.”

“You don’t like him?”

She dropped into the chair across from the table. “He’s like a brother. Well, more like he sees me as an annoying little sister. He only kissed me because the fortune cookie told him to.”

“What? Okay, Nata. You have got to slow this train down a little bit. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I certainly hope not because that would mean everyone else at the hospital knows what happened.”

“Including your brother?”

Natália groaned and leaned forward in her chair, rubbing the scar hidden beneath her white lab coat. Images of her teenage years and the way everyone had coddled and protected her came to mind. Including Adam.

“Don’t even talk about Sebastian. Adam was more worried about him finding out than anything else.” She quickly gave her friend a summary of what had happened between her and Adam, zeroing in on how she had kissed him on the cheek, only to have him suddenly swoop down and cover her mouth with his. It had been...magical. And horrible. And...confusing.

Maggie slid off the table and came to sit on the chair next to hers, making sure her hospital gown was firmly covering her thighs, Natália noticed. Her friend had scars of her own from where she’d self-harmed many years ago. “So, did you want it to be different than it was?”

Did she? Natália had no idea really. Did she want Adam to be attracted to her?

Hadn’t he said that any man in his right mind would be? Yes. Which meant he was just giving her a logical excuse for that kiss. Logical, though, meant that he didn’t see his reaction to her any differently than his reaction to any woman he found attractive.

So how many women besides his ex-wife had he kissed the same way he had her?

Was she kidding? This was Adam she was talking about.

So that number was way more than she cared to imagine.

“It would be far too complicated between us. He is as irritating and bossy as Sebastian. He doesn’t see me as an adult.”

Maggie covered her hand with hers. “I don’t think that’s quite true. If that kiss was anything like you say it was, he definitely sees you as an adult. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it.”

“You think so?” The question was rhetorical, she didn’t really want an answer. Or did she?

“I do.” Maggie stood and wiggled her way back onto the exam table. “And if this baby keeps putting off making an appearance, his little brother is going to be all grown up with children of his own.”

Natália tensed for a moment before forcing herself to relax again. This was one of her best friends. And if anyone deserved to have a healthy, happy baby, it was her.

“You still have six weeks before your due date.”

Her friend groaned. “Do not remind me. I am ready to pop.”

With that, the conversation thankfully returned to Maggie’s pregnancy and how far behind her friend was in decorating the nursery and making room for the pile of baby clothes she expected to amass at the baby shower Natália was throwing for her. “You can’t have the baby before the shower.”

“How about as soon as it’s over?”

Natália laughed. “Yes. As soon as it’s over I will personally drive you to the hospital.”

She could only hope that the party and all the preparations leading up to it would help take her mind off of a certain handsome orthopedic surgeon.

Or else she was in big trouble.

CHAPTER THREE

ADAM CAREFULLY WASHED the exposed femur of all visible dirt in preparation for debriding. A motorcycle accident earlier this afternoon had resulted in Katia Machado’s bone being forced through her skin and clothing as she slid along a dirt road. As a result, small bits of gravel and red clay had been ground into the wound. The warm, moist atmosphere of his patient’s body would provide a haven to all kinds of pathogens, including tetanus. He needed to make sure the injury site and everything inside was pristine by the time he closed her leg back up.

Examining his incision to make sure it was large enough, he began the complex process of undoing all the damage Katia had done to her leg. Kind of like he needed to do with Natália?

Fixing that problem wouldn’t be as cut and dried as the surgery he was now doing. What had come over him? He hadn’t drunk that much. Neither had Nata. And yet they’d both acted completely out of character. And he’d behaved almost as irresponsibly as he had when...

He gritted his teeth to stop the flow of recriminations.

“Suction, please.” Beads of perspiration gathered on his upper lip in the air pocket beneath his surgical mask, but he didn’t stop to blot them, not wanting to further the risk of contamination to the wound.

He and Nata were eventually going to have to sit down and talk this through, or that ill-fated kiss would hang over their friendship and ruin it. He didn’t want that to happen. And he had been aware enough to realize that Natália had had a little crush on him when she’d been a teenager. Thank God that stage hadn’t lasted long. Then those brown eyes had fixed themselves on someone her own age and off she’d gone.

There’s only six years between you, Adam.

It might not seem like a big deal now, but when he had been twenty-three and she’d only been seventeen and still in the midst of her battle with osteosarcoma and the resulting surgery to remove a large section of the bone in her arm, it had been impossible.

It was still impossible, and not because of the age difference. There were a whole lot more factors in play now. And it was just not worth it. Nata knew the happy-go-lucky boy who’d hopped from one girl to another back then. She did not know the cynical, jaded man he’d grown in to.

Or maybe she did.

He could only hope. He wouldn’t have been good for her back then. And he certainly wouldn’t be good for her now.

As soon as the suction cleared away the blood and fluid that had gathered in the tissues, he used a gloved finger to explore further back, making sure everything was tight and secure, no sign that her bone had ripped through any other tissue. Using a squirt bottle, he rinsed the area again, the loupes he wore magnifying everything and helping him spot anything foreign as the water carried it out.

Too bad those special glasses couldn’t help him peer into Nata’s head and help him repair what he had messed up. Instead, he was flying blind and every word he’d spoken in her apartment afterwards had seemed to make things worse.

He knew she’d hated the way he and Sebastian had treated her like cracked glass, afraid the slightest knock would cause her to shatter into a thousand pieces. She’d surprised both of them, not only by not breaking but powering through her whole ordeal with a lot more grace than he might have done. And she’d come out the other end a beautiful and mostly confident woman. There was still that scar that she kept hidden. Brazilian women liked their clothes and when it was hot, those clothes were designed to help keep them as cool as possible. And Adam had never fully understood why Natália had wanted so desperately to be a neonatologist when she couldn’t have children of her own. Or maybe it was because of that.

He avoided that floor of the hospital, because it might not hurt Nata to work there, but it caused a kind of pang in his gut when he thought about her cuddling those babies every single day—especially knowing the awful truth about himself.

Dragging his thoughts back to the job at hand, he inspected his work and made sure everything was as absolutely sterile as he could and then motioned to his assistant. “Let’s line up the bone, so I can set the pins.” Danielle moved to the knee, while Adam stayed where he was, handing his instruments to one of the nurses. Tugging the bones in opposite directions, they were able to maneuver them so the broken ends joined back together. Then, with Danielle keeping everything in place, he quickly drilled the pins into the bones.

He knew where he’d gone wrong with Nata. He just didn’t know how to rectify his mistake. Not without insulting her. Or, worse, hurting her feelings.

Hell, what if they’d spent the night together? He’d have to do something a whole lot stronger than hurt her feelings if that was the case.

Yeah, things could definitely be worse than they were. The only thing to do was finish this surgery and find Natália. Then together they could come up with a game plan on how to handle this whole thing. Either that or he’d better turn tail and run for the next big city. And if there was one thing Adam didn’t do, it was run.

* * *

Propping the tiny form up on her shoulder, she stared at the familiar figure standing outside the viewing area. Adam? Here in the neonatal intensive care unit?

She could count on one hand the number of times he’d been down here. Actually, on two fingers. He’d come to visit her floor exactly twice. She’d been up to Orthopedics lots of times. She had friends up there. She guessed Adam didn’t have any friends in her department. Except for her, that was.

Unless they were no longer friends.

Her heart shot down her throat, lodging somewhere in her abdomen. Was he here to tell her that he wanted nothing to do with her?

He motioned at the interior of the room in an unspoken question. Can I come in?

More than anything she wanted to shake her head and tell him there was no trespassing. Not on her turf and not in her heart. But she also wanted to know what he wanted.

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