But Armando had denied her that time. He’d talked GAO’s administrative body into making La Clínica GAO’s base of operations in Argentina. And in La Clínica he made his own rules and dispensed them with an iron hand.
He stopped at nothing to achieve his goals. Distorting truths, manipulation, outright lying. He hadn’t needed her team’s expertise as he’d said, he’d only needed GAO’s resources. In the month they’d been in La Clínica, he’d totally excluded them and was dispensing GAO’s resources whichever way he pleased, throwing its agendas and protocols out the window. No wonder he felt he deserved to be reported.
What infuriated her more was her own reaction. She’d taken his abuse lying down. It didn’t make her feel any better, wailing that her personal mess had drained most of her stamina. An excuse worse than the offense. Weak, foolish, stupid!
But it was over now. Diego was dead, and her love for him long before that, and she wasn’t needed in any other way here.
Time to put her expertise in cutting her losses to use.
“Well?”
So he was still waiting for an answer! “I’ll call you whatever I like, not what you like.” Her words were cool, tight. “And I will continue to recuperate. Just not at La Clínica.”
“Oh, no?” He slowed down and shoved his face closer to hers. Space shrank and air disappeared. “Where else will you have your operating surgeon, the only one really qualified to follow you up? To handle any complications that may yet develop? To remove the stitches all over your face? Or do you intend to do it yourself back in your villa before your posh welcome-home party?”
An involuntary hand went to her facial dressings. “I can remove my own stitches.”
“Even the ones you can’t see without the help of a mirror?”
His persistence finally wore her nerves down. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to dwell on my injuries, on the accident, on…on… I want—I need closure.”
“Who doesn’t? But you think you’ll ever have it if you have scars to remind you every time you look in the mirror? Maybe every time you take a breath?”
“I’m sure you did a great job putting me back together, that there’ll be no complications…”
“Is that your informed medical opinion, Dr. Burnside?” His generously shaped lips twisted, and suddenly she felt something new towards him. The need to physically strike out at him. To wipe off that abrasive superiority written all over him.
Stupid urge. You can’t afford more of those. Just shut him up.
She breathed in. “Listen, if anything happens, I’ll seek immediate help. But right now I’m not going to La Clínica. Not as a patient. Haven’t you demoted me enough already? I’ll just get on with my life. I don’t need your permission to do that.”
His fleeting, severe look hit home. Then he spoke the three words, slow and distinct, “Yes, you do!” A few strands of his hair caught the sun that had bleached them copper as he took a turn into a road she recognized, the road leading to Santa Fe and La Clínica. “Going back for your full postoperative period is non-negotiable, Laura.”
“I—”
“Drop it.”
Staring ahead at the boundless horizon she was still unused to, she fell silent, stymied.
Armando heard her frustration loud and clear. He kept his still-scalding eyes on the demanding road, slowed down some more. She’d been battered too much already.
“So how bad am I beneath these dressings?”
Her subdued question surprised him into biting off, “Bad enough!”
He caught a more-than-crude expletive back at the last moment.
Why had he said that?
Oh, what the…? It was just as well. She had to face the reality of her injuries, didn’t she? And anyway, at the moment her injuries did look bad. And they could remain so if she compromised her recuperation. Laura Loca Burnside, philanthropist extraordinaire, glittering, brilliant society darling, who had no idea just how dangerous and desperate it really was here.
The moment he’d learned she’d left, he’d predicted she’d head for GAO’s headquarters, smack dab in the middle of the city center the riots were ravaging. He’d never driven so recklessly. All the way, Diego’s accident, his death, haunted him, taunted him. He could have ended up the same today, chasing after her.
But in either case, she hadn’t asked either of them to…
“Anything more specific to add to that delightful and sensitive report of my impending metamorphosis into a monster?”
His attention snapped back to her. Was that sarcasm? She had a sense of humor? He’d thought she took herself too seriously. She’d never cracked a smile, not in his presence. And he’d been present almost all the time she’d been in Argentina. Her glares were something, though. It was almost a surprise he hadn’t turned to stone. Parts of him had…
He was really losing it! If her resentment affected him this way, he didn’t want to know what a smile, a touch would do…
Stop it, moron!
He inhaled. “You’ll see for yourself when I remove your stitches.”
“I must be really mangled if you elected to do a primary repair of my facial wounds during a life-saving operation, risking extending the already dangerously long anesthesia time.”
He had been aware of that danger. But he’d weighed everything—her condition while on the table against the risk of the wounds healing by secondary intention, raising the probability of scarring. He’d felt it safe to go ahead.
So why was the unfamiliar urge to justify his decisions to another, to her, riding him—again? Her eyes on him had always made him feel this way. Ever since he’d laid eyes on her—the last thing he’d expected Diego’s new woman or GAO’s mission head to be.
He tried to stifle the urge as usual. He failed this time. “For best esthetic results, you know it’s optimum to close wounds within eight hours of injury.” Wasn’t it enough to feel defensive? Did he have to sound it, too?
She tilted her head, her braid sliding with an audible thud to her right shoulder. He tightened, ached. He’d never had it this bad. Then she gave him a strange look—a skeptical one?—and his heart, his hands, itched.
“If the patient isn’t stable enough, if it’s in any way risky, primary repair could be delayed by as much as seventy-two hours without significant change in esthetic outcome.”
“Significant being the operative word here. Scars might seem insignificant to you now, but later they will be. Trust me.”
“I trust my clinical experience. I used significant as a figure of speech. In my experience, delayed repair—with proper wound occlusive care—yields the same esthetic result.”
“You mean I should’ve waited until you revived from anesthesia, then put you under again while you were recovering from major trauma surgery and even more vulnerable? Not to mention that I couldn’t predict how your post-operative period would go. What if you’d deteriorated? For long enough to lose the golden time window for primary repair?”
“You know you could have done it under local.”
“I’m sure you would have appreciated the extra joy of local anesthetic jabs in your condition!”
“I wouldn’t have minded a few nerve blocks, and I would have preferred to be awake while you worked on my face.”
“Why? Did you want