Olivia Gates - Emergency Marriage

“All right. Why I want to get married:

“I’m pushing forty. My mother would love me to get married. I expect I will buckle under social demands and get married sooner or later, so why not now? The usual mid-life crisis, really.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

He sighed. What would it take to satisfy her? The truth? He doubted it. But what would she do if he told her that he hadn’t slept one solid night since he’d laid eyes on her? That he hadn’t known such violent sexual attraction was possible, that it made him wonder if it was a symptom of a breakdown of some sort? That all he could think of when he had a moment to himself was how it would feel to have his body buried in hers, his senses full of her taste and his head full of her cries of pleasure?

She’d probably run screaming.

Dear Reader

For me, writing has always been a delight that nothing else surpasses, an escape into a world where anything can and does happen. A world that I create and control. How magnificent and satisfying is that? My characters are real people to me, people I laugh and cry with, live and love with. I also love pitting them against impossible odds, both in the world around them and inside their hearts and souls. They really have to earn those happily-ever-afters I end up giving them.

As well as writing, I love singing, painting, reading in every genre, and keeping fit. And besides sharing my life with my characters I'm blessed to share it with my wonderful, supportive family and friends.

There is nothing better.

Olivia Gates

Recent titles by the same author:

DOCTORS ON THE FRONTLINE

Emergency Marriage

Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This one is for you, Mom.

For believing in me, for being there for me,

and for everything that you are.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

“LAURA—you fool!”

Laura Burnside almost dropped the arms of the woman she was dragging along the ground.

Freezing, eyes darting around the chaos, heart shaking her apart, she sought the source of the furious shout.

Someone’s shoulder slammed into hers, jolting her back.

Concentrate, Burnside, all her senses screamed. It doesn’t matter who’s calling you or calling you what. It can’t be him anyway. Get out of here. Drag that woman away…

Another outburst of shots. Another man fell a few feet away from her. No way to help him, not now. One victim at a time. Bending again, tightening her grip on the woman’s wrists, she dug her heels in and pulled. Much heavier than her, getting heavier with every inch. Pain stabbed her side again.

Fool. That was what the voice had called her. His voice. It couldn’t be him, of course. What would he be doing here, in Buenos Aires, hundreds of miles away from his home and work? His rage must be reaching out to her all the way from Santa Fe. No one disobeyed Armando Salazar.

It could also be her mind calling her a fool, using his voice. And it would be right. She’d gotten herself into this, thought she could do it. It was amazing what looked plausible—not to mention how a mind could stray—in a desperate situation…

Violent purple with sickening yellow blotches exploded behind her eyes. Someone’s forehead had rammed her left cheekbone. She staggered, letting go of the woman’s wrists, colors fading to gray. She held herself still as her consciousness wavered, drained, willing light and colors to come back. If she succumbed, let herself be KO’d, it’d be over for that woman. For her.

Another body, then another collided into her, fists and feet plowing into her gut and shins. She was the only one going against the tide, and they were sweeping her backwards with them in their blind escape path.

In the uproar, her own angry shouts reached her ears as if from a distance. The woman. She had to get back to her. She didn’t know how, but she made it.

Just as she bent to her again, a thundering “Laura!” drowned even the cacophony of human shrieks and gunfire.

It was him.

Her head swung instinctively, violently, looking for him in the stampede. The next second a missile whizzed by her head. A fist-sized rock thrown with all the strength and fury of someone deranged by oppression and desperation. If not for his shout, it would have smashed her skull.

Then he was there, materializing above her, face grim, wings spread, filling her vision.

This is how Dracula—no, Batman—must look. A little voice inside her made the ridiculous, untimely observation. Swooping down on his quarry, staggering, scary even to those he saved.

In the next heartbeat he snatched her up and under the protection of his massive body. It was almost a surprise to realize his spread wings were not a cape but a jacket, held up to block rocks that were falling short of their targets, pelting them instead.

“Don’t— No… ” She resisted him, desperate to return to her casualty. He only swept her higher. Her feet kicked air.

Her fingers dug into his arm, his chest, anywhere, trying to gain his attention, to regain her freedom. “Put me down, Salazar! That woman—she’d been trodden on—and those two men…”

She was talking to his jaw as he plastered her to his side, running with her to… Where was he going?

The idiot man had taken them right into the thick of the riot!

Her breathing stopped as the masses battered them. She’d rushed to the woman when they’d started receding, forced back by the police forces, when she’d thought she’d had a chance of pulling her away. It had been scary enough, dangerous enough then. She had the bruises to prove it. But now—being right in the middle of it all…

Dread smeared her vision gray and red. Huge and strong though he was, no way was he a match for this mindless crowd. He was starting to stumble, her weight no doubt hampering him, compromising his balance.

“Put me down, Salazar!” This was no longer indignation. This was survival. If he didn’t, he’d soon be brought to his knees. Then they’d both be trampled to death.

“Shut up, Laura!” He swung her around to face him, forcing her thighs around his waist, one large hand clutching her buttocks, the other a steel harness behind her back, carrying her like she’d once carried her baby brother and sister. “Hold on—tight!”

She did, clamping her legs around him, clinging for dear life. Not that she needed to. He crushed her if he were trying to hide her inside him. Her flesh felt battered into his, her breath took in his heat and sweat and anger.

Her senses sharpened, receded. Fear and anger and awareness dragged her under. She made herself surface, frantic to see what was happening around her, where he was taking her. One eye’s field of vision was all she managed to free. The hundred and four jarring steps she’d counted had delivered them from danger and to one of La Clínica’s beat-up ambulance vans.