LITMIR.BIZ

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      He reached the narrow hallway and drew up an internal map of the clinic from his visit a week ago. The voices were coming from the right, from the direction of the exam room he remembered seeing. Pausing outside the open door, he again heard Mila’s voice, the low sound coming across as calm and soothing...as if worried about spooking a frightened animal.

      It was then that it dawned on him. She wasn’t speaking English. It was Spanish. She’d trekked through the Amazon basin, so she knew both Spanish and Portuguese.

      He took a deep breath and spun around the corner, a streetlamp shining outside the window making it a little easier to see.

      Mila, who was crouching in the gloom, grappling with someone or something, squeaked out a warning. He braced himself for attack.

      Only the fear on her face was aimed squarely at him, not whatever was next to her.

      “God, James, you almost gave us a heart attack.”

      He’d almost given them...? The thing next to her was evidently a who...not a what.

      “What the hell is going on?”

      Reaching to the right, where he remembered the light switch being, he flipped it on. Two pairs of eyes blinked up at him. His attention swiveled to the small figure huddled close to Mila.

      It was a child—a young boy around three years old—not an armed intruder, like he’d feared. Which meant the man who’d run away from the building was what? A father? Boyfriend? Some kind of sexual predator...? His brows drew together in anger. Who broke into a medical clinic and dropped off a kid?

      In one hand, the boy clutched a gray blanket, the satin edge frayed and missing in spots. The child’s other hand was balled into a fist that he held against his mouth.

      No. Not a fist. The child was sucking his thumb, fingers curled tightly into the palm of his hand. And those hollow, tearstained eyes...

      The child stared at him for a second or two longer and then whimpered, cringing closer to Mila. James forced his frown away, realizing he probably made a scary figure standing over them, the emotions churning within him clearly visible.

      “Está bien. No tengas miedo.” Mila’s voice was soft and comforting, even as she sent James another scathing glare.

      She was telling the child not to be afraid?

      What about him? She’d almost set him flat on his ass when he’d seen her kneeling there, envisioning all kinds of terrible things.

      But this child was thin. Very thin and... His gaze stopped, chest squeezing tight enough to stop him from breathing for several seconds.

      His feet. The boy’s feet. They were turned inward at an unnatural angle as if they were pairing up for a duel.

      Clubbed. Both of them.

      His inward curse rattled his ribs and shunted the pressure that had been gathering around his midsection to his throat. The deformity should have been corrected when the child was an infant.

      He knelt next to the pair, his glance meeting Mila’s. “Is this one of your patients?”

      “No.” She placed a hand on the boy’s head as if protecting him. From what? James’s fury?

      He wasn’t angry. Not at the child, anyway. “I thought I told you to wait in the car.”

      “I was going to, but I heard crying coming from inside the clinic.” She glanced toward the door just as the sound of a siren swept through the interior of the space. “And I knew the police would arrive at any second.”

      Not soon enough to stop a bullet, though, if Mila had come upon something other than a frightened child. His anger came back in a rush. “You should have waited for them, then. For your own protection.”

      Her face quieted, becoming an icy cold mask that stopped him in his tracks. “I don’t need you to protect me, and you’re not the one who makes my decisions. Not in the past. And certainly not now.”

      She was right. She was a grown woman, and this was her clinic. Not his. “I was worried. I lost sight of the man I was chasing, and when I came back and saw the car empty...”

      Mila’s mask cracked, then fell away. “I’m fine.” Her head shifted toward the boy. “He said his uncle left him here. I think he was hoping to get the boy some help.”

      “Medical help, I assume.” He nodded toward the boy’s feet.

      “Yes.”

      “And then just ran off? What kind of a—?” He bit off the word, not sure how much English the boy understood. “What kind of person does something like that?”

      “Fear can make people do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

      “Like abandon someone they’re supposed to love?”

      As he said the words he was gripped by a huge sense of irony. Fear had caused him to do that very thing. Abandon Mila on the cusp of their wedding, leaving her hurt and alone. No matter that he’d thought it a necessity at the time. And then when he’d discovered it hadn’t been necessary, when it had been too late to take it all back, the tabloids had exploded with the news of their broken engagement, comparing it to his parents’ ugly divorce years earlier. It had reminded him of all the reasons he should just leave things as they were. Mila deserved better than him and his dysfunctional family.

      Freya had been there to pick up the pieces for her friend, and to rake him over the coals. He didn’t think his sister had ever quite forgiven him for what he’d done to her dear friend.

      The sound of voices shouting from the entrance to the clinic cut off anything she might have been getting ready to say, and they were soon caught up in chaos as the police rushed in, followed by the emergency technicians once the all clear was given.

      Worse was the fact that a lone firefighter showed up, right on the heels of everyone else. Concerned eyes took in the scene, and Mila stood to hug him, leaning in to whisper something in his ear.

      The man shrugged with a crooked smile. “I know. I was worried. Sorry. The address that came over the com was for Bright Hope. I had to check it out.”

      Tyler Richardson, Mila’s ex. He evidently wasn’t out of the picture as completely as Mila had said. And he was evidently allowed to worry about her safety, whereas he himself didn’t have that privilege.

      Taking in the lean muscle and short cropped hair of the other man, James stiffened. Emotions he’d thought long dead surfaced as he watched her describe what had happened, including the police officers in her explanation.

      Mila never once lost her cool during the events that followed, and she didn’t allow James—or even her ex—to speak for her, not that the man tried. He knew enough not to, which made James’s chest tighten further. Tyler knew the woman Mila was today.

      He forced himself to stand a few feet back and watched her, a strange sense of admiration rolling through him. She was confident and matter-of-fact. So different from the shy but passionate woman who had taken his senses by storm six years ago.

      She’d traveled the world. Alone. Had probably faced hundreds of situations far more dangerous than the one they’d found at the clinic.

      Would she have gotten the chance to grow and change if they’d stayed together? Or would the overprotective nature his sister accused him of having press her into a box she was afraid to leave? Or worse?

      He had no idea whether he was trying to assuage his guilt in leaving her, or if it was a genuine question for which there was no answer. But, whatever it was, Mila had been changed in some undefinable way.

      The firefighter who still stood by her side seemed to respect her as well. In fact, the three of them—woman, child and man—looked like the kind of family you saw on greeting cards.

      And James didn’t like it. At all.

      He

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