He nodded.
“Let’s get going, shall we? You’re late and I need to run you through everything in the truck before we go anywhere.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a sharp salute.
“I’m not screwing around.” She gritted her teeth to stop a whole mess of impolite images his faux obedience elicited. A riding crop might’ve been one of them. And a nonregulation issue nurse’s outfit. Neither matched the other, but neither did she and this...this...übermale slanting a dubious eyebrow in her direction.
“Neither am I.” One look up into those eyes of his told her Santiago was serious. Very. “Do you want to continue this display of who’s more important than who or should we just get to work?”
Turning around and getting into the cab of the ambulance was her only option. With a little bit of slamming.
Damn, that man pressed a whole lot of buttons. Nearly every single one of them...a little too well.
* * *
“You’re not a big fan of speed limits, are you?” Santi finally broke the silence after fifteen minutes of oppressive quiet in the front cab of the ambulance.
“I think you meant to say, do you always deal with the heavy traffic of Miami so beautifully, Murphy? Especially since I was late and now require you to take the law into your hands so we can get to our assigned area in time.”
“Absolutely. That’s exactly what I meant to say.” He nodded and grinned, his hand slamming against the dashboard as she took another corner without hitting the brakes. “Practicing for the racetrack?” he threw out, trying to add some more light to her thunderously bad mood. Not that his was all that brilliant.
“You’d better believe it. I’ve got three races on Saturday and I’m not letting the likes of you hold me back from the winners’ circle.”
“No joke?” He pushed against the dash, turning in the seat so he could face her, even though her eyes were glued to the road and the last thing he’d be receiving was eye contact.
“I wouldn’t joke about something like that.”
He felt her mood lift.
“What kind of races?”
“Pony car,” she answered, as if there weren’t any other type of racing. “They might be smaller than the muscle cars but definitely require greater skill at the wheel!” She mimicked a television announcer as she spoke then tacked on a little musical sound-effects riff for added impact, wrapping up with the first smile he’d seen on her lips all day.
“Respect.” Santi flick-snapped his fingers and gave a low whistle. So she was a speed junkie. Now, that was sexy. He could picture Saoirse in racing gear a little too easily. The image took fireproof underwear to a whole other level of sexy! He swept away a cluster of torrid images and focused on her fingers, snugly tucked around the steering wheel. Three o’clock. Nine o’clock. The girl didn’t mess around with one-fingered casual driving. Chances were, she didn’t mess around with casual much of anything.
“I’d like to see you in action.”
She shot him a quick sidelong glance. “What do you mean by that?”
“Driving. Why? What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing,” she answered too quickly, a hit of red streaking along the length of her cheekbones. “Nothing at all.”
He turned toward the side window to hide his smile, palm trees and fast-food joints flashing past them at a rate of knots. He seemed to bring out the sandpapery side to Saoirse. How long would it take, he mused, the smile still playing on his lips, to shift the rough to the smooth? Not that he couldn’t apply the analogy to himself.
Or know if he had the staying power. Just arriving in Miami—far better by bike than plane—had set off the creeping tendrils of wanderlust. After years abroad he knew his dragon slaying had to happen here, on his home turf. Face up to the responsibilities he’d left behind. But arriving armed with that knowledge wasn’t proving to make the task any easier.
A flash of blond caught his eye as Saoirse gave her head a shake, her brain clearly as busy as his was, each of them thinking their way through problems neither of them were ready or willing to share.
All of which suited him just fine.
Working with Murph was shaping up to be a much-needed antidote to the tangle of disasters he was trying to sort out in his personal life.
“Those two chaps...” Saoirse began tentatively, tossing a quick glance in his direction. “The ones standing at the ER desk beside me. Are you related or something?”
The mood in the cab shifted again—the chill factor on his side of the cab increasing by the second.
Santi swallowed the urge to deny fraternity until he’d set things right. He’d come home to fix the fractured bonds, not make them worse. Who knew how dark a white lie could turn if it crept outside the confines of the ambulance?
Her question—innocent enough—was a reminder that he didn’t know Saoirse at all and no matter how un-getting-to-know-you their conversation had been up to this point, he wasn’t up for this sort of fact-finding mission.
“What makes you say that?”
She made a “duh” sound before putting on a perfect mimicry of a Miami Beach party-girl voice. “I know I’m just a little girlie-wirly, but I have these things called eyes in my head and I used them and then I added up everything I saw and I am beginning to think your parents had more than one child. What’s the deal? They seemed all fancy-surgeony. And you obviously know a whole lot more than a paramedic. Why the downgrade?”
“Isn’t this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?” Santi shot back. “You’re not an ‘ordinary’ paramedic from what I’ve seen.”
“I used to be a NICU nurse.” The information was given reluctantly.
“So do you see yourself as a ‘downgraded’ specialty nurse?”
Saoirse bit back quickly. “Not in the slightest.” It was just too painful to stay in NICU. All those little babies...
Her knuckles whitened against the steering wheel as she trotted out her line. “I just felt I could be more hands on when I moved here if I drove an ambulance.”
“Ditto.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t say hi. I mean, they are your brothers, aren’t they?”
“Qué?”
“You heard me. I saw the look in your eyes. You couldn’t get out of there fast enough. What did you do? Steal their lunch money or drop one of them on their heads when they were a baby?”
Santi’s left hand shot out instinctively, his fist connecting with the door in a short, sharp punch. El horno no está para bollos! “Remind me not to play darts with you, chica.”
“Easy, tiger...just wanted to know who I’m stuck with on shift, is all.” There was a curl of an apology woven through the shock in her eyes. And more than a little wariness. Santi wouldn’t have blamed her if she pulled a wheel-screeching U-turn, headed back to the hospital and requested a new partner. Punching things wasn’t his style but she’d aimed, shot and unwittingly scored a bull’s-eye. He’d made all of his brothers’ lives a whole lot more difficult than they’d needed to be after his parents had been killed, and hauling around the burden of guilt for the last fifteen years had all but buried him.
“Sore subject.”
“No