“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.
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