LITMIR.BIZ

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and moonbeams and anything else romantic the world had on offer.

      He threw a coin up into the air, caught it and slapped it down on the back of his hand as if he were playing heads or tails with himself. His face lit up with a huge smile. One so sweet it near enough tore her heart from her chest.

      “...and so they said we’d get together for a football game or something.”

      “Sorry? What was that?” She’d been staring at his mouth and not listening to the words again. “You mean soccer?”

      “No, American football, you doofus.” He crossed over to the ambulance, threw the clipboard he’d been filling in onto the gurney then crooked his elbow around her neck and gave her one of those goofy knuckle-rubs on her head. The kind you’d give a brother...or a little sister. Two months ago? Perfect. Now? It felt like she was being downgraded.

      What a difference a reconciliation with your family could make.

      “Ah, Murph, good times, eh? It’s been great catching up with them. Like I’ve become whole again.”

      She watched as he drifted away to that faraway place she’d seen him revisit again and again over the past few weeks before remembering he was in midconversation. “You’d love them,” he tacked on, a shot of panic in his amber-flecked eyes making the Great Unsaid of the whole exchange come through loud and clear.

      “All it takes is an invitation!”

      Take that, you unwitting heartbreaker.

      “Thanks, Miss Manners. Got it.” He tapped his head as if storing away a great tip for folding napkins at his next formal dinner party. In other words, straight into the mental garbage can.

      She turned away, fighting the painful sting of tears.

      She wasn’t going to meet them. Not unless she suddenly needed a neurosurgeon, an epidemiologist and a pediatric-transplant surgeon all at once.

      And yet?

      None of this was sitting right. Santi didn’t give panicky glances. He was all male. A macho, muscled-up hombre with a take-no-prisoners smile. He looked like a poster boy for the Marines he had so recently belonged to. Throw away the gun, toss in a stethoscope and boom! Santiago Valentino. She snuck a peek at him, her scrubbing arm coming to a slow halt as she did.

      She gave her shoulders a shake and started scrubbing again. Hard.

      “So, um...” Santi began with an uncharacteristic absence of speaking skills.

      She took a stab in the dark at what he was trying to say. “Catch you later?”

      “Yeah, I guess. Maybe we’ll grab a bite if I get back in time?” He gave her a weird, halfhearted pat on the back, a distracted peck on the cheek—one you’d give your grandmother—and wandered off, lost in the deepest of thought.

      She grabbed hold of the door and sank onto the thick lip of the ambulance’s bumper as a sour cramping sensation rushed into her gut so violently she gasped.

      He wanted out.

      Now that he had his brothers in his life again—brothers he had fastidiously avoided introducing her to—he didn’t need to do good deeds anymore.

      “Hey, Valentino!” she shouted after his retreating figure, hands pressed to her knees in a facsimile of looking good, feeling good. “Don’t worry about dinner. I think I’m going to try and grab another shift. I heard they’re short tonight.”

      “Oh! All right.” He nodded as if really taking the news on board and finding it difficult to digest. “Good. Good. See you later, then.”

      “Santi?” she called out again.

      When he turned around the look of hope and expectation on his face all but took her breath away.

      Those eyes of his, amber-flecked portals to all the answers of the universe. His beautiful mouth, lips slightly parted as if he were about to ask her a question. That dark hair she’d become addicted to running her fingers through could’ve done with a bit of a tweak right now. Not that devilishly rakish didn’t work for the man. Far from it. She felt a small tremor begin to take hold of her fingers, spreading and gaining traction throughout her body. The sum of this man’s parts was now adding up to one terrifying reality: she was in trouble. And in the one way she’d vowed never to get hurt again.

      “Drive safe.”

      It came out as more of a whisper than the cheery goodbye she’d been aiming for.

      “Will do.” Santi gave her a half wave and, if she wasn’t mistaken, a confused shake of the head as he turned and picked up his long-legged stride toward his motorcycle.

      The physical ache she felt as she watched him leave threatened to consume her on the spot. Head down, shoulders tightly hunched up toward her ears so that they all but blocked out the roar of Santi’s motorcycle being shifted from low to high gear as he swept out of Seaside Hospital’s parking lot and off into the glowing remains of the evening light.

      An emptiness began to fill her like darkness.

      She shook her head again and again. She hadn’t traveled this far and worked as hard as she had only to become a victim again.

      This time she was in charge of her destiny.

      This time she held the reins.

      * * *

      It was worth it. At least it would be. Wearing the emotional flak jacket to stave off Saoirse’s death glares and poorly disguised disappointment in him.

      He knew he was being protective of her meeting his brothers. But not for the reasons she thought.

      The number of times he’d thought of telling them about her...he just couldn’t pick where to begin when they were still working their way around their newfound relationships.

      “So...there’s this girl I met...”

      “Funny thing happened at work the other day.”

      “What do you get when you put an Irish paramedic and a Heliconian Marine in a courthouse?”

      An arranged marriage!

      It wasn’t funny. And it certainly wasn’t a joke.

      A tug at his conscience reminded him of the streak of sadness in Saoirse’s voice when he’d left tonight.

      He’d caused that. And he’d be the one to fix it. Turn her frown upside down.

      Dios!

      What a dork.

      He opened the throttle on his bike just to remind himself of his own virility.

      Taking the turn into town instead of off to the Keys was equally satisfying.

      He was putting down roots. Building a new future.

      All that was left to discover was how big a role Saoirse was going to play in it.

      * * *

      “Hey! Where’s the fire?”

      “Amanda! Sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Saoirse’s focus had been so intent she’d marched straight past her friend. “You off shift?”

      “Yeah, how did you guess?” Her friend gave her trademark smirk as she retied the bikini neck strings looping over the back of her baggy sweatshirt.

      “Meeting James at the beach?”

      “And the observational powers prize goes to Saoirse Murphy!”

      Saoirse’s jaw dropped.

      “What? What did I say?” Amanda looked over her shoulder as if the words were still lingering there.

      “You got it right.”

      “What right?”

      “My name. It’s the first time you’ve got

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