Hearts In Peril (Billionaire Romance) Read online

  Riley swiveled on her heels and headed to her office, not caring whether Dean Matthias, controller of her future, Mr. Billionaire Bachelor of the Year—oh yes, her mom had sent the magazine to her—followed her. She took five deep breaths through her nose and released each one through her mouth. Breathing exercises had gotten her through the stressful, sleepless years of med school; they’d get her through this conversation.

  “This is all wrong,” Dean said as soon as the door to her office closed.

  Riley rounded the desk, glad to put the space between them. He sat in the plastic chair used mostly by Malaya for their nightly chats. In the corner, she spotted his suitcase and bag beside the cot she’d set up for him that morning while hoping he’d change his mind about coming. It wasn’t that she’d disliked him—then, she’d had no reason not to like him; now was another story— but they were functioning fine without his presence.

  “You were supposed to be a man.” Dean rested his elbows on his legs and leaned forward, pausing, like he expected some sort of answer from her.

  “Why?”

  John, the Worldwide Care project manager, knew she was a woman and had no qualms about it. She’d been working there for six months and was doing a great job, just as good or better than any man. She tamped down her the irritation. You can’t go home, she reminded herself.

  “Because that’s what I was expecting.” He stood and paced the floor. “An old, experienced man. Not a young, pretty doctor.” He paused. “You are a medical doctor, right?”

  She stood as well and leaned over her desk. “Get out of my office.”

  He stopped pacing to raise an eyebrow. “You forget who signs your paycheck.”

  She reached behind her and grabbed her framed medical degrees from off the wall. Out here, no one cared about credentials, but it made her feel a little more at home to display them. One from Yale, one from Harvard. She walked around the desk to shove them under his nose. “Is this proof enough?” How had Dean not known that she was a woman? From the little news she got out here, she knew Dean had been in court for the last six months. Not on trial, but heavily involved. Still, this was a detail he should have come across at some point.

  He glanced over the degrees before setting them on the desk, his expression contrite. “I’m a jerk.”

  “No. A misogynistic jerk,” she corrected.

  He winced. “Yeah. I’m not usually.”

  “Really? I find that very hard to believe.” She bit her tongue one second too late. Great. Now he’d probably send her home and hire the good ol’ boy doctor of his dreams.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” He gave her the same insincere smile from the magazine cover. The one he probably flashed at the jury when he testified against his fiancée. “I don’t hate females. At all. I recently got burned by one, and it’s made me a little … untrusting of gorgeous women.”

  “You’re not making anything better for yourself right now.” She rehung her degrees on the wall and faced him with folded arms.

  He ran a hand through his sweaty hair, making it stick up in a few places. “Listen, I owe you an apology.” He slumped into the plastic seat with exhaustion, his cheeks pink. Despite herself, the doctor in her recognized the signs of dehydration. He hadn’t prepared himself for the humidity or the heat at all by wearing several layers of thick clothes.

  She forced her shoulders to relax and walked around her desk to grab a bottle of water from her mini fridge. “Drink it all,” she told him. “I’m going to go check on Room 2 and give us both a few minutes to cool down.”

  She left and entered Room 2 where Malaya had the patient, an old, thin man, lying on the table with his chest exposed for examination.

  “This is Joseph. Age fifty-six. He’s been having chest pain and difficulty breathing for two weeks,” Malaya reported. Riley’s nerves settled as she fell into the familiar role of taking care of people who needed her.

  Riley listened to Joseph’s erratic heart rate and the wetness in his lungs. If only she could send him to the emergency room to receive the meds and monitoring he required. Instead, she gave him a bottle of cough syrup and an antibiotic. “He needs to rest and return in a week for a follow-up.”

  Malaya repeated the message, though all of them knew he didn’t have the luxury of resting for a week if he was going to feed his family.

  “How are things going with Mr. Matthias?” Malaya asked, as Joseph left the exam room.

  “Remember when Jerome got into that care package from my mom and ate the entire bag of hot Cheetos in one sitting?” It had resulted in bright orange-red vomit in Riley’s house, complete with a scent that had taken weeks to dispel. The curious little boy loved visiting Riley, but after that, she made sure to hide the edibles.

  Malaya winced. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Worse.” Riley left the exam room and faced the closed office door. It wouldn’t hurt Dean to wait a while longer.

  She washed her hands in the hallway sink and then headed back into Room 1 to see a baby with an ear infection. Then into Room 2 again, stopping when she saw the familiar woman. Angelina. She held a bloody tissue to a cut over her bruised eye. Riley pulled the tissue back to reveal the one-inch cut.

  “I’ve got the stitch kit ready,” Malaya said. “I’ve numbed the area.”

  Angelina also had a fat lip, but it didn’t appear to require any stitching. She seemed to make her way over to the clinic about once a month. Sometimes it was stitches, sometimes it was wrapping for a fractured bone.

  “Why does she stay with him?” she asked Malaya while she stitched the cut, but she didn’t expect an answer. They both knew Angelina had nowhere else to go and three kids to take care of.

  For the most part, the people here were wonderful, loving, hard-working, humble, and some of the best people she’d ever met. But like everywhere, there were always a few bad seeds—Angelina’s husband was one of those.

  Riley tied off the last stitch and pulled the timid woman into a hug. “You are strong,” she whispered to Angelina.

  Malaya spoke to Angelina before giving her another hug and a couple of suckers for her kids. Riley threw away the soiled supplies and headed back into the hallway to wash her hands.

  Malaya caught Riley’s arm before she could head back into Room 1. Malaya’s black and silver hair had fallen out of her bun, and she tucked it behind her ears, giving Riley a pointed look. “Are you going to make him wait in there forever?”

  Riley sighed. “Can I?” The last thing she wanted to do was deal with Dean Matthias. Especially when so many people were counting on seeing her that day. She didn’t have the energy to deal with coddling Dean and to care for patients. “Maybe he’ll get annoyed and leave.”

  “Or maybe he’ll fire you and close down the clinic.”

  She swallowed the rest of her pride and headed back into the office. Dean had gone through two more bottles of water, and his skin tone looked much better.

  Sure, Riley. You’re only checking out his coloring.

  He’d removed his suit coat and rolled up the long sleeves of his gray dress shirt to his elbows. His tie hung looser around his neck, and he’d positioned her desk fan to blow air across his relaxed face. He was an undeniably handsome man. But it didn’t compensate for his personality flaws.

  “How’re you feeling?” she asked stiffly.

  His eyes popped open, and he stood when she walked into the room. “Good. The water helped. Thank you.”

  She bit back her sarcastic comment about being a good doctor, for a woman. Instead she said, “John mentioned this would be an informational meeting when I spoke with him last week. I compiled the statistics.” The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could be on his way.

  She grabbed a paper from the folder on her desk that gave the numbers of how many patients they saw in a day, week, month, and the total from the time she’d arrived. It also had a list of the most common illnesses and injuries they’d seen, the meds she’d
administered, and medical supplies used.

  What it didn’t tell were the stories, the way she’d connected with the people and how they had changed who she was. How this experience had impacted her life in ways she couldn’t detail in a spreadsheet. She’d flown to the Philippines broken, her confidence low, forgetting why she’d wanted to be a doctor in the first place. But here, she’d found herself and her passion once again.

  At one point in her life, she’d wanted to make a difference on a grand scale—cure disease, save lives, change the world. Doing the Worldwide Care Project, she learned that she wanted to make a difference one life at a time. Unexpectedly, the biggest difference she’d made was in her.

  “This is really impressive,” Dean said, glancing up. “Do you ever sleep?”

  Rarely, but that had little to do with seeing patients at all hours and everything to do with regrets that kept her up at night. She shrugged. “People come from all over the island to see us.”

  “We?” he asked.

  “Me and Malaya. I couldn’t do it without her.”

  “She does seem like a huge help.” He set the papers on the desk and gave her his first sincere look of the day. One that had her noticing the mocha shade of his eyes. “What you’ve done here is impressive. I’d love to see the entire clinic and meet some of your patients—”

  Shouting sounded from the hallway, cutting off a wide-eyed Dean. Riley stood, but the door flew open before she could get to it. A man stumbled into the office, unsteady on his feet. Blood gushed from a wound on his leg. His face was devoid of color, and his lips had turned a dangerous shade of blue. Malaya ran into the room behind him, holding a set of keys.

  Riley caught the man before he fell, his weight heavy over her shoulder. “Help me get him to Room 2,” she told Dean.

  He took most of the man’s weight from her, even as his face paled. They rushed into Room 2, and Malaya led the people waiting there out of the room while Dean eased the man onto the table. “What can I do to help?” he asked.

  She inspected the man’s bloody thigh. A bullet had gone cleanly through his leg. “Grab me a tourniquet from that drawer.”

  He swiveled and found it within seconds and then followed her directive to help her pull it tight. Based on the ashen tint of Dean’s face when the man had initially arrived, she’d assumed he’d bail the moment her back was turned, but he awaited her next instruction with a determined set to his mouth. Despite her lingering anger, she was grateful for another set of hands. She placed a wad of gauze on the wound. “Hold that firmly.”

  He did, his disturbed gaze fixed on the man’s face. “This guy was my tricycle driver.” “He’s going to be fine.” Riley removed the medicine key from around her neck and unlocked the cabinet in the corner. Most people weren’t accustomed to seeing so much blood, especially in someone they’d so recently interacted with. All in all, Dean was handling things okay.

  Malaya rushed back into the exam room, her cheeks flushed.

  “Ask him what happened,” Riley said to Malaya. She scanned the shelf for a few meds and a syringe before heading back to the man.

  Malaya went off in rapid-fire Tagalog. The man’s glazed eyes remained unfocused, but he managed to get out a few breathy sentences in between his moans of pain.

  “His name is Danilo,” Malaya reported, her voice quiet. “He and his father drove out to the road to direct Mr. Matthias’s hired car into the village, since it can be difficult to find. They were ambushed.”

  Riley motioned for Dean to release the gauze. When he didn’t move, she tapped his hand until he lifted it. Malaya stepped forward to take Dean’s place.

  “Who ambushed him?” Dean asked, seeming dazed.

  Malaya asked Danilo, her eyes widening when he responded. “Terrorists. They usually leave the locals alone …” Her voice drifted off.

  “Which group is it?” Riley demanded. There were several, each fighting against the established government for their own ends. She’d been aware of the danger when she’d arrived, but since she posed no threat to their government or way of life, she’d soon put aside her fear and focused on her job. She’d treated some of the local terrorists’ family members, and they seemed to leave her alone as a result.

  “Danilo doesn’t know,” Malaya said. Some of the terrorist groups were more organized than others. If Danilo had crossed them, they would waste no time in killing him and anyone who stood in their way.

  “Did they follow him into town?” Riley grabbed an oxygen tank and placed the mask over Danilo’s face before returning her focus to his leg. The bullet had gone all the way through, which meant she wouldn’t have to dig it out, a fact she was grateful for with the rudimentary tools she’d have to use. And it had missed any major arteries.

  “They can’t be too far behind if they did follow him,” Malaya said.

  Danilo spoke again, and Malaya gripped the edge of the table as if to keep her balance. Riley had rarely seen Malaya so upended.

  “What is it?” Riley asked.

  Malaya swallowed. “The terrorists heard a wealthy American had arrived.”

  Riley paused as all the pieces clicked into place. She turned to Dean, accusation firing in every word. “They’re coming for you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ◆◆◆

  Dean went completely still. The men had shot his driver because they were coming to get him. Riley headed to the sink and scrubbed the blood from her hands. He followed her when she motioned him close. “Go now,” she said in a low voice.

  “I’ll wait for you.” One person had already gotten hurt because he’d come; he wasn’t going to stand by while others were injured as well.

  “I’m staying. If they catch you, they will hold you for ransom or kill you.”

  Icy fear rolled through his veins. “And what will they do to you?”

  “Nothing. They’ve never bothered me before.”

  But things had shifted with his arrival. “Riley, you have to come.”

  “Why?” She unwound her stethoscope from her neck and smacked it on the metal tray between them. “Because you’re a man and you say so?”

  “No.” He gritted his teeth at her obstinacy. Riley didn’t like him. Fair enough. She wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last. But there was no way in this world that he was going to leave her behind. “Leaving is the smart thing to do.”

  She dried her hands carefully on a towel and then opened a medicine cabinet, almost as if trying to bait him with her deliberateness. “And I’m just a dumb girl.”

  He growled in frustration and took her by the hands to get her to stop moving for a moment. “You know that’s not what I meant.” Everything in him screamed that they needed to get out of there right away. Her wide, sea-green eyes met his, and sparks shot between them. All of his protective instincts flared as his imagination went wild with what could happen to a young, pretty doctor if left alone with a terrorist group. Especially one who was connected to him. “They’ll use you to get to me.”

  She wrested her hands from his grasp. “I’m not leaving my patients.”

  Malaya slammed the medicine cabinet shut and grabbed Riley by the shoulders, forcing her to turn and meet her eyes. “Riley, listen to Mr. Matthias. They can’t be too far behind Danilo. And you have no idea what the terrorists can do. If they think they can take you for ransom as an employee of Mr. Matthias, they will.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Riley repeated heatedly. “If I ran every time danger came to the village, I’d never actually be in my office. I’ve got to get this wound disinfected.” She brushed past Malaya and began treating Danilo’s wounds.

  Dean turned to Malaya and unclenched his jaw. “Where should we go?” He had no connections out here, and he’d never faced danger like this before. Even with Veronica, it had been the police who’d discovered her drug schemes and brought the Boston-based operation down. If he’d been in any sort of danger, he’d never known it.

  Malaya tapped her hands against
her mouth. “Try to get back to your airplane. They won’t bother you once you get to the bigger town. It’s too risky; the military will shoot them.”

  “I don’t know if I can find my way back there,” Dean confessed. The winding roads to the village had twisted and turned in every direction.

  “You’ll have to try.” Malaya’s grimace didn’t inspire confidence. But what other choice did he have? He was worth billions of dollars, and they wouldn’t stop searching until they found him. He cursed himself for putting them in this situation.

  Riley ignored them both while she cleaned Danilo’s wound. His trembling had relaxed considerably after the injection she’d given him.

  Dean strode back to Riley’s office and unzipped his suitcase. He grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt to stuff in his backpack. From Riley’s fridge, he took a couple of water bottles and a granola bar as well. He didn’t know how much time they had, but he couldn’t take any chances. He ran back into the exam room, straight to Riley. “We’re leaving now.”

  Her hands moved with practiced precision over Danilo’s leg. “If the terrorists come, people will get hurt, and they’ll need a doctor more than ever.”

  “Riley!” Malaya urged. She and Riley stared at each other in a long, silent battle before Malaya let out a defeated sigh. “This will be the death of you.”

  Dean paused in disbelief. “You’re really not coming?”

  Riley finally looked up from cleaning the wound, determination etched in every line of her face. “Not right now. Send word when you’re safe.”

  Dean waited in the doorway for another moment, hoping she’d change her mind. It took all of his willpower not to pick her up and haul her out of there over his shoulder. He couldn’t just leave her.

  “Go!” Malaya urged, regret in her tone. “I’ll watch out for her.”

  Dean gave Riley one last glance and then followed Malaya when she tugged on his arm.

  Patients huddled around the walls of the waiting room, their voices a buzz of energy and fear. Malaya clapped her hands and said something to everyone. It took only seconds for the cacophony of talking to cease, but an air of expectancy remained. A few more words from Malaya, and the crowd exited the clinic in an urgent mass.