Tina Beckett - To Play With Fire

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do. I heard you today. You said the same thing I did.”

“Did not!” Lucas picked up a plastic drink bottle and threw it as hard as he could across the yard.

Marcos didn’t argue with him. But before his dad had left this morning Marcos had told him he was going to be a doctor when he grew up, so he could make him all better.

Lucas’s head had bobbed up and down. “Me, too. I’m going to be the best doctor in the whole world.”

Papai had blinked his eyes several times and then turned away like he didn’t believe them. But he would see. Marcos would make himself smart. Then his dad would stop shaking, and that scared look would go away.

The sound of hands clapping three times outside made them both freeze. Papai never clapped to get in. Only visitors did that.

Marcos snuck over to the tall fence and peeked between the cracks in the boards. It wasn’t Papai. It was a man in a grey uniform. “Polícia,” he whispered.

He started to shake. Just like his dad.

Then the policeman squatted down and peered through the fence, staring right at him...

CHAPTER ONE

HE COULD HAVE heard a pin drop.

Dr. Marcos Pinheiro began the slow, rhythmic countdown in his head as he waited for the patient on the other side of his desk to react.

Her hands slowly tightened on the armrests of the white leather chair.

One...two...three...four...fi—

“N-no more tumor? Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Your latest CT scan came back all clear. No signs of regrowth on your pituitary, graças a Deus. And your hormone levels are back within the normal range.”

He kept his voice low and soothing, knowing she’d braced herself for bad news and was now struggling to process the fact that her worst fears were not going to be realized.

“Graças a Deus,” she repeated, making a quick sign of the cross over her chest.

Fifty-nine years old, with two children and three grandchildren, Graciela Abrigo might have been any number of patients he’d seen over the last several weeks. But she wasn’t. And his little invocation of thanking God wasn’t one he often made—especially not when talking to his patients.

But Graciela was special. She’d worked in the orphanage where Marcos had grown up—had put up with a lot of crap and acting out from him when his brother had been ripped from his side and adopted by some nameless family. He could still see the flash of fear in Lucas’s young eyes.

“Watch your brother.”

Bile rose, and he swallowed hard to rid himself of the taste.

He still didn’t know what had happened to Lucas. No one by that name had shown up on any of Brazil’s registries that he could find—then again, he probably had a new last name now.

But Graciela had assured him that the couple who had come for his brother had been nice. Kind. She’d seen it in their eyes. Lucas would have had a good home. “Graças a Deus,” she’d murmured, in a voice much like the one she’d just used.

As kind as this mysterious couple had supposedly been, they hadn’t wanted Marcos. Hadn’t seemed to care that they’d separated brothers who had still been reeling from their father’s death six months after the fact.

He shook himself free of the anger that still had the power to wind around his gut and jettison him twenty-nine years into the past.

It was over. Those years were long gone.

Forcing a smile, he stood and rounded the desk. Graciela had been there for him when no one else had. And he was glad he’d been able to play a small part in doing something for her in return.

Because Marcos Pinheiro always repaid his debts.

And he always kept his promises.

Graciela stood as well and embraced him, cupping his cheeks and kissing his right one in customary São Paulo fashion.

The click of the door opening behind him sounded just as she said, “I have to get back to the home. Thank you, Markinho. For everything.”

His smile this time was genuine, even as he tried not to wince at her use of his childhood nickname. “I haven’t heard that in ages.”

“Then it is time. You will always be little Markinho to me.”

Turning to walk her to the door, the smile died on his lips when he saw who’d come into his office.

Ah, hell.

His mind blanked out all thoughts of Lucas and the past. Hopefully she hadn’t heard Graciela’s parting shot.

Because Markinho was not the image he wanted to project to those working under him. Especially not to a certain fiery-haired American who’d been “under” him in more ways than one. Actually, she’d been on top, if he wanted to get really technical about it.

Which he didn’t. All he wanted to do was forget it had ever happened.

He saw his patient out and then slowly shut the door, turning to lean against it.

Dr. Maggie Pfeiffer. All long legs, luscious curves...and cool, collected efficiency.

“Posso te ajudar?” Marcos spoke English fluently, having made it a point to drill it ruthlessly into his head as he’d attended med school, knowing it was a necessity in today’s medical fields. But he chose to address Maggie in Portuguese—though she still struggled at times with the language, even after six months at the hospital.

“Oh...um.” After a moment’s hesitation, she worked through her answer. “Yes. I have a question about one of our patients’s treatment.”

Our.

He’d been slowly letting out the reins and giving Maggie more responsibility, especially with international patients. Which served as a blessing, since it gave him some breathing space—time when he wasn’t constantly aware of her scent...of the soft, sexy accent when she spoke his language.

The memory of her straddling his hips in the cramped confines of his car as they’d hammered out all the reasons she should be careful about using certain hand gestures caused a visceral reaction low in his gut. One that came on so fast he had to grit his teeth to fight his way through it. Beads of sweat broke out on his upper lip as the images of that day swept over him.

Get past it, Marcos.

Forcing his thoughts back to the here and now, he focused on a safer subject: her language abilities.

She was doing well, but there were still treatment methods she wasn’t familiar with...words she struggled to translate in her head. And hearing her refer to his patient in a joint sense made something in his stomach shift. His eyes followed suit, moving lower for a split second to where Maggie’s fingers were unconsciously fiddling with one of the buttons on her silky green blouse. Just below the swell of her breasts. Breasts that had filled his hands to perfection.

Hell.

He dragged his gaze back to her face. “Which patient are you referring to?”

“Ana Leandro.”

“What’s the question?” He pushed away from the door and took a step closer, his eyes narrowing when Maggie moved back a pace, her bottom hitting the edge of his desk. She glanced down at the wooden surface in surprise then reached back and gripped it with both hands, sending all kinds of images ricocheting through his skull.

Very bad images. Of him. And her...

And that desk.

“You have her physical therapy scheduled for once a week. But she’s handling it well. Should we bump it up a bit and be a little more aggressive?”

He struggled to remember the patient’s diagnosis, closing his eyes to pull up a physical description of the young woman. Marcos had always been a visual learner, committing things to memory in a way that most people couldn’t. There’d been no books at their house, so he and his brother had both become adept at memorizing images and then trying to outdo the other.

He wondered if Lucas could still...

It didn’t matter. Nothing did, except keeping his mind trained on the task at hand.