Billionaire, M.D.

Rodrigo was pulling her to her feet.

“Come. We’re starting the Sardana, our national dance.”

She flowed behind him, almost hovered as she smiled up at him, her heart jiggling at seeing him at his most carefree.

The band consisted of eleven players. They’d already taken their place at an improvised stage in the terrace garden that had been cleared for the dancers, evidently all of Rodrigo’s family.

“I had the nearest town’s cobla, our Catalan music ensemble, come over to play for us. The Sardana is never the same without live music. It’s always made of four Catalan shawm players…” He pointed toward four men holding double-reed woodwinds. “Two trumpets, two horns, one trombone and a double bass.”

“And what’s with that guy with the flutelike instrument and the small drum attached to his left arm?”

“He plays the flabiol, that three-holed flute, with his left hand and plays that tambori with the right. He keeps the rhythm.”

“Why not just have twelve players, instead of saddling one with this convoluted setup?”

He grinned. “It’s a tradition some say goes back two thousand years. But wait till you see him play. He’ll make it look like the easiest thing in the world.”

She grimaced down at her casted arm. “One thing’s for sure, I’m not a candidate for a flabiol/tambori player right now.”

He put a finger below her chin, raised her face to him. “You soon will be.” Before she gave in and dragged his head down to her to take that kiss she was disintegrating for, he turned his head away. “Now watch closely. They’re going to dance the first tirada, and we’ll join in the second one. The steps are very simple.”

Letting out a steaming exhalation, she forced her attention to the circle of dancers that was forming.

“It’s usually one man, one woman and so on, but we have more women than men here, so excuse the nontraditional configuration.”

She mimicked his earlier hand gesture, drawled, “Women rule.”

He threw his head back on a peal of laughter at her reminder, kept chuckling as he watched his womenfolk herding and organizing their men and children. “They do indeed.”

The dance began, heated, then Rodrigo tugged her to join the rotllanes obertes, the open circles. They danced the steps he’d rehearsed with her on the sidelines, laughed together until their sides hurt. Everything was like a dream. A dream where she felt more alert and alive than she ever had. A dream where she was one with Rodrigo, a part of him, and in tune with the music, his family and the whole world.

Then, like every dream, the festivities drew to an end.

After calling good-night to everyone, Rodrigo walked her as usual to her quarters, left her a few steps from her door.

Two steps into the room, she froze. Her mouth fell open. Her breath left her lungs under pressure, wouldn’t be retrieved.

All around. On every surface. Everywhere.

Red roses.

Bunches and bunches and bunches of perfect, bloodred roses.

Oh. God. Oh…God…

She darted back outside, called out to him. But he’d gone.

She stood there vibrating with the need to rush after him, find him wherever he was and smother him in kisses.

But…since he hadn’t waited around for her reaction, maybe he hadn’t anticipated it would be this fierce. Maybe he’d only meant to give her a nice surprise. Maybe he’d had every other woman’s room filled with flowers, too. Which she wouldn’t put past him. She’d never known anyone with his capacity for giving.

She staggered back into her room. The explosion of beauty and color and fragrance yanked her into its embrace again.

The need expanded, compressing her heart, her lungs.

It was no use. She had to do it. She had to go to him.

She grabbed a jacket, streaked outside.

His scent, his vibe led her to the roof.

He was standing at the waist-high stone balustrade overlooking a turbulent, after-midnight sea, a lone knight silvered by the moon, carved from the night.

She stopped a dozen steps away. He didn’t turn, stood like a statue of a Titan, the only animate things his satin mane rioting around his leonine head and his clothes rustling around his steel-fleshed frame. There was no way he could have heard the staccato of her feet or the labor of her breathing over the wind’s buffeting whistles. But she knew he felt her there. He was waiting for her to initiate this.

“Rodrigo.” Her gasp trembled against the wind’s dissipation. He turned then. Cool rays deposited glimmers in the emerald of his eyes, luster on the golden bronze of his ruggedness. She stepped closer, mesmerized by his magnificence. A step away, she reached for his hand. She wanted to take it to her lips. That hand that had saved her life, that changed the lives of countless others daily, giving them back their limbs and mobility and freeing them from pain and disability. She settled for squeezing it between both of her trembling ones. “Besides everything you’ve done for me, your roses are the best gift I’ve ever been given.”

His stare roiled with his discomfort at receiving gratitude. Then he simply said, “Your book beats my roses any day.”

A smile ached on her lips. “You have issues with hearing thanks, don’t you?”

“Thanks are overrated.”

“Nothing sincere can be rated highly enough.”

“I do what I want to do, what pleases me. And I certainly never do anything expecting…anything in return.”

Was he telling her that his gift wasn’t hinting at any special involvement? Warning her about getting ideas?

It wouldn’t change anything. She loved him with everything in her, would give him everything that she was if he’d only take it. But if he didn’t want it, she would give him her unending appreciation. “And I thank you because I want to, because it pleases me. And I certainly don’t expect you to do anything in return but accept. I accepted your thanks for the book, didn’t I?”

His lips spread in one of those slow, scorching smiles of his, as if against his will. “I don’t remember if I gave you a choice to accept it or not. I sort of overrode you.”

“Hmm, you’ve got a point.” Then, without warning, she tugged his hand. Surprise made him stumble the step that separated them, so that he ended up pressed against her from breast to calf. Her hand released his, went to his head, sifting through the silk of his mane, bringing it down to hers. How she wished she had the use of her other arm, so she could mimic his earlier embrace. She had to settle for pressing her longing against his forehead with lips that shook on his name.

They slid down his nose…and a cell phone rang.

He sundered their communion in a jerk, stared down at her, his eyes echoing the sea’s tumult. It was shuddering, disoriented moments before her brain rebooted after the shock of interruption, of separation from him. That was her cell phone’s tone.

It was in her jacket. Rodrigo had given it her, and only he had called her on it so far. Who could be calling her?

“Are you expecting a call?” His rasp scraped her nerves.

“I didn’t even know anyone had this number.”

“It’s probably a wrong number.”

“Yeah, probably. Just a sec.” She fumbled the phone out, hit Answer. A woman’s tear-choked voice filled her head.

“Agnes? What’s wrong?” Instant anxiety gripped Rodrigo, spilled into urgency that had his hand at the phone, demanding to bear bad news himself. She blurted out the question that she hoped would defuse his agitation, “Are you and Steven okay?”