"That's hardly conclusive. G.o.d, Adam, if you could have seen the blood . . . from your head, your chest . . ."

"Do I seem disoriented?"

"No." She paused, and he could tell she was searching for ammunition. "Not now. But you've been in and out for the past twenty-four hours. Any loss of consciousness is cause for concern."

Why did she have to have a nursing degree? This would be so much easier if she were an ignorant layperson and he could just pat her on the hand and tell not to worry. But no matter how frightened she was, he wasn't moving from this house until he could talk to Gabrio. He tried to take a deep breath, only to wince at the ache in his chest. If only his head would stop pounding . . .

"I can tell you're in pain," Sera said.

"It's tolerable."

"You need a CT scan. That's the only way to know for sure the extent of your injury. And you were hypotensive because of the blood loss. Hypotensive patients with head injuries have twice the mortality rate as-"

"I told you I'm not going anywhere without Gabrio."

"But you need to see a doctor!"

"I'll stay in this room for the rest of my life before I let that kid die."

"Stop it, Adam! Just stop it!"

Her voice was hushed, but the emotion behind her words exploded into the room. She took a deep, quivering breath. "I was so afraid to sleep. I woke up every hour and took your vital signs, gave you more fluids, and put G.o.d on overtime listening to my prayers. I didn't know what the bullet had done, because you kept drifting in and out of consciousness. I was so afraid I'd wake up . . ." She paused, her voice tight with despair. "I was afraid I'd wake up and find you dead."

As tears filled her eyes, the fear and concern he saw there went straight to his heart. He remembered waking to find her hand on his arm, as if she could keep him from slipping away from her as he slept if only she kept on touching him.

"When I heard that you'd been killed in that plane crash," she went on, "I can't tell you how I felt. For two days I mourned you, Adam. I cried until there wasn't a tear left in me to shed, and I can't do it again. I can't. Please, please please let me take you to a doctor." let me take you to a doctor."

The idea of her sitting in this room, crying for his memory, made him wish he could take her in his arms and hold her until she forgot every bit of that. But no matter how much pain it caused her, caused both of them, Adam could not, would would not, put Gabrio's life at risk, even if it meant he was in danger himself. not, put Gabrio's life at risk, even if it meant he was in danger himself.

"I know you don't understand this, but it's because you weren't there. It was the most horrific thing you can imagine." He took her hand. "Robert called Ivan and Enrique. They came to the clinic a few minutes later. Armed."

Sera turned away. "Adam, please-"

"They tied my hands, drove me out to a secluded place. Made me get out of the car-"

"Please don't tell me this!"

"Look at me, Sera."

Slowly she turned back.

"They made me get out of the car. Shoved me to the edge of a hillside, ten paces away. Gabrio asked why. Ivan said, 'Blood spatters.' Then he shot me."

Sera put her hand against her mouth, tears filling her eyes. "If Gabrio cared so much, why didn't he stop them before they shot you?"

"Disloyalty is a capital offense. Gabrio couldn't have saved me. Ivan and Enrique are animals. No conscience. But Gabrio . . . Even with all that in his life, still there's something so good in that kid that when he was faced with a decision like that, he made the right one. He could have let Ivan put another bullet in me, but he didn't, even though he knew the danger it put him in. How can I do anything less for him now?"

Sera sat there for a long time, a battle clearly raging inside her. Finally she looked up again, her voice hushed with resignation. "You can't."

She wiped her eyes with shaky fingertips, then rose from the bed. "You need to eat. I'm going to go fix you something. Then this afternoon I'll go to Esmerelda's as if I'm returning to work. Ivan is always there, and Gabrio's usually with him. I'll find a way to pull him aside and talk to him without his brother around."

Adam felt a shot of apprehension. He hated that she had to work at Esmerelda's just to make ends meet, since n.o.body in Santa Rios could pay her what her services as a midwife were worth. And he hated it even more when men like Ivan came through the door.

"For G.o.d's sake, watch out for Ivan," he told her. "I've seen the way he looks at you. And now that I know just how ruthless he really is-"

"If you want me to talk to Gabrio, I have to make sure where Ivan is first. I don't want him getting in the middle of things."

Adam finally nodded. "Just be careful."

She started to leave the room, then turned back. "What if Gabrio is so afraid of Ivan that he decided to run? What if I can't find him?"

"If that's what's happened, we'll deal with it. But try to find him. Please."

She stared at him a long time. "I wish you were more selfish, Adam. I wish that just once you'd do what's best for you and say to h.e.l.l with the rest of the world. Because if only you would do that, then maybe . . ." She paused, her voice choking with emotion. ". . . maybe I wouldn't love you so much."

She slipped out the bedroom door and shut it behind her. Adam closed his eyes, remembering how he'd lain at the bottom of that hill last night, sure he was drawing his final breaths. To his surprise, it hadn't been Ellen's face that had filled his mind. It had been Sera's. That had to mean something.

h.e.l.l, yes, it means something, you idiot. You're in love with her, too. her, too.

Until this moment, he hadn't actually allowed his thoughts to go down that road. And now that they had, it scared the h.e.l.l out of him, because just about any other man on the planet could give Sera more than he could ever hope to. And the moment she realized that, she'd be gone.

Dave woke to a cool breeze, and he turned to see the gla.s.s door leading to the balcony standing wide open. He rose quickly to close it, only to see his clothes and Lisa's lying in heaps on the balcony. He slipped outside, grabbed them, then came back inside. He shut the door and locked it, drawing the drapes. Turning back, he saw Lisa lying in bed, awake and staring at him.

Suddenly everything that had happened last night came back to him in a blinding rush. After they'd come back upstairs, just being in the same room with her had brought up fresh waves of guilt he hadn't wanted to face, and he'd been thoroughly convinced that she was the last woman on earth he should be making love to. Yet he had.

And he'd never felt anything like it before.

If he wanted to stretch his motivation to the breaking point, he might have been able to blame everything that had happened last night on two beers and one oversize shot of tequila, but he had nothing to blame it on now.

He approached the bed, already feeling himself getting hard again, knowing that as long as they were in this room together he wasn't going to stop wanting her. He wasn't even going to try.

He tossed their clothes at the foot of the bed, then stretched out beside her, leaning on one elbow. He slipped his hand beneath the covers and curled it around her rib cage, but just as he leaned in to kiss her she turned away, rolled over, and sat up on the edge of the bed.

"Wow," she said, stretching a little. "Nothing like a little hot s.e.x to really wear a girl out." She turned around and flashed him a seductive smile. "That wasn't bad, Dave. Not bad at all."

Dave blinked with surprise, her flippant tone setting him on edge. She ran her fingers through her hair, then started to get up. He took hold of her wrist.

"What's the hurry?"

She eased from his grasp. "It's getting late, and we've got places to be."

"It's not all that late."

"I told that guy we'd be there at ten-thirty. It's nine now." She stood up, grabbed her clothes off the end of the bed, then went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

Dave felt as if she'd slapped him.

Contrary to what his brothers thought, there had been women in the past four years. But s.e.x had seemed mechanical and lifeless, little more than a biological act, as if his brain wouldn't allow his body to truly engage. Last night had been different. His body had been engaged on every level, alive and screaming in every way.

But to Lisa it had clearly been no big deal. Something that had been incredible to him had been just one more roll in the hay to her. And the thought of that left him feeling . . .

h.e.l.l, he didn't know how he felt about it. All he knew was that right now, as he pictured them flying back to San Antonio and eventually parting ways, he was struck by a sense of loss he hadn't antic.i.p.ated.

Great s.e.x. That's what you're going to miss.

He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't dealing with reality right now. Not his reality, anyway. He had a life that centered around going to work, going home, taking care of his five-year-old daughter. For better or worse, his life had taken a narrow path that was pretty much cast in stone, and he took the responsibility of it seriously.

Lisa's lifestyle couldn't be more different. Disappearing at a moment's notice. Refusing to be tied down. Scoffing at responsibility and soaring into the clouds.

The irony was almost painful. The things that attracted him to her-her pa.s.sion, her independence, her free spirit-were the very things that had led her to the life she lived, a life she'd made very clear that she had no intention of giving up.

Last night she'd given him every man's dream-hot, breathless s.e.x with no strings attached. He'd even gotten to play the bonus round, but now the game was over. If he were smart, he'd consider himself lucky and get on down the road.

chapter thirteen.

Two hours later, Dave and Lisa took off from a commuter airport in Monterrey in a tiny single-engine four-pa.s.senger plane. Dave wasn't altogether thrilled about flying in an aircraft so small, but the day was bright and clear and the plane was comfortable and Lisa certainly seemed to know what she was doing. In spite of the fact that she still wore his shirt, which was several sizes too large for her, she sat with the confident bearing of a person who was born to be in a pilot's seat. As the city of Monterrey fell away beneath them and they climbed toward the clouds, he felt how much she loved to fly. Exhilaration seemed to ooze right out of her.

"This is the first time you've flown since your crash," he said. "Any problem with that?"

"Nope."

"Confidence still there?"

"Why not? It wasn't my screwup. Give me a flyable plane, and I'll keep it aloft. Give me one with water in its fuel tanks, and there's not much I can do."

"That's how they sabotaged you?"

"That's sure what it felt like. The engine cut out until I swapped the fuel tanks. It was okay for a while, then cut out again. Eventually I had no engine at all. I didn't see water on the preflight, but if they'd tinted it blue, I wouldn't have."

"That's pretty insidious."

"It's Robert Douglas, through and through." She turned to face him. "So, Dave. Ever fly in a private plane before?"

"Nope. This is a first." He looked around, then pointed to the stick beside her. "Is that the throttle?"

"Right. Push to increase power; pull back to decrease."

She showed him the various gauges-altimeter, fuel, oil pressure, heading and airspeed indicators, and about ten others he couldn't keep track of.

"And here are the flaps," she said. "They allow you to stay aloft at slower speeds for landing. And the yoke," she said, patting her hands against the thing that looked like a steering wheel, "is to bring the nose of the plane up or down. Push it forward to tip the nose down, and pull back to bring the nose up. But not too far, or you'll stall."

"Stall? What's that?"

Without a word, she eased the yoke back, tipping the nose of the plane up.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She kept pulling back. The nose kept rising. Soon Dave felt as if they were climbing the first hill on a roller coaster, and he'd always been able to do without roller coasters.

"Lisa?"

She pulled back more. The plane climbed through a low bank of clouds. Then Dave felt a slight shudder. "Uh . . . Lisa?"

The shuddering intensified. They kept climbing. All at once an alarm went off, a deafening booop, booop, booop booop, booop, booop noise that Dave translated as: noise that Dave translated as: We're going to die. We're going to die.

"Lisa. This can't be good."

She continued to climb.

"Lisa!"

Still they were climbing, with the plane at an even sharper angle than before and the alarm still wailing. Dave held his breath, closing his fingers around the seat in a death grip. My My G.o.d. You knew she was impulsive. You didn't know she had a G.o.d. You knew she was impulsive. You didn't know she had a death wish. death wish.

Then she pulled back the tiniest bit more, and all at once it was as if they'd hit the top of that roller coaster. There was a momentary feeling of floating. Then the plane's nose tilted down hard, and they were falling.

"Holy s.h.i.t s.h.i.t!" Dave clutched the door beside him, his stomach soaring right up between his ears in a nauseating rush. As the plane plummeted through the clear blue sky, he was sure he was on the verge of drawing his last breath.

"Lisa!" he shouted. "What's happening? Lisa! Lisa! " "

She reached for the throttle and pushed it forward. The plane's engine vroomed vroomed, and they pulled out of the dive and leveled out from the gut-wrenching drop in a huge parabolic swoop.

After a moment, they resumed flying as they had before, with everything calm and sedate and blessedly removed from the jaws of death. It took Dave a good ten-count to pry his fingers away from the door and relax the expression of sheer panic that had frozen onto his face.

He turned to Lisa. "What the h.e.l.l was that that?"

"A stall." She looked at him innocently. "You asked what one was, didn't you?"

"Did I ask you to demonstrate demonstrate it?" it?"

"No," she said. "That was a bonus."

"That was dangerous as h.e.l.l!"

"Nope. Not dangerous at all. Well, I suppose it could be if the plane was a little too close to the ground. You've got to watch it on landing. Go too slow with the nose too high, and it's all over. At greater angles, the wing produces less lift and more drag. The more drag, the slower the speed, so the wing gives even less lift. Pretty soon you're not flying anymore."

"Hence the nosedive."

"Exactly."

Dave let out a long breath. "I don't know if you've noticed, Lisa, but I'm not exactly one to engage in thrill-seeking behavior."

She flashed him a smile, apparently thinking she was quite the humorist. "Maybe you need to expand your horizons a little."