Her Hard to Resist Husband
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Tina Beckett
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20
Chapter One
TRACY HINTON DIDN’T faint.
Her stomach squirmed and threatened to give way as the scent of death flooded her nostrils, but she somehow held it together. Calming herself with slow, controlled breaths was out of the question, because breathing was the last thing she wanted to do right now.
“How many are there?” She fitted the protective mask over her nose and mouth.
“Six deaths so far, but most of the town is affected.” Pedro, one of her mobile clinic workers, nodded towards the simple clay-brick house to his left, where an eerily still figure was curled in a fetal position on the porch. Another body lay a few yards away on the ground. “They’ve been dead for a few days. Whatever it was, it hit fast. They didn’t even try to make it to a hospital.”
“They were probably too sick. Besides, the nearest hospital is twenty miles away.”
Piauí, one of the poorest of the Brazilian states, was more vulnerable to catastrophic infections than the wealthier regions, and many of these outlying townships relied on bicycles or their own two feet for transportation. It was hard enough to make a twenty-mile trek even when one was young and healthy, which these poor souls had not been. And cars were a luxury most couldn’t afford.
She wouldn’t know for sure what had caused the deaths until she examined the bodies and gathered some specimens. The nearest diagnostic hospital was a good hundred miles from here. In any case, she’d have to report the possibility of an epidemic to the proper authorities.
Which meant she’d have to deal with Ben.
Pedro shook his head. “Dengue, you think?”
“Not this time. There’s some blood on the front of the man’s shirt, but nothing else that I can see from this distance.” She stared at the crude corral where several pigs squealed out a protest at the lack of food. “I’m thinking lepto.”
Pedro frowned. “Leptospirosis? Rainy season’s already over.”
The area around the house consisted of a few desiccated twigs and hard-packed clay, confirming her colleague’s words. The sweltering heat sucked any remaining moisture from the air and squeezed around her, making her nausea that much worse. Situated close to the equator, the temperature of this part of Brazil rarely dipped below the hundred-degree mark during the dry season. The deadly heat would only grow worse, until the rains finally returned.
“They have pigs.” She used her forearm to push sticky tendrils of hair from her forehead.
“I saw that, but lepto doesn’t normally cause hemorrhaging.”
“It did in Bahia.”
Pedro’s brows went up. “You think it’s the pulmonary version?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Do you want to take samples? Or head for one of the other houses?”
Reaching into the back pocket of her jeans, she eased out her cellphone and glanced hopefully at the display. No bars. What worked in São Paulo obviously didn’t work here. “Is your phone working?”
“Nope.”
She sighed, trying to figure out what to do. “The tissue samples will have to wait until we come back, I don’t want to risk contaminating any live patients. And maybe we’ll come within range of a cellphone tower once we hit higher ground.”
* * *
Benjamin Almeida pressed his eye to the lens of the microscope and twisted the fine focus until the image sharpened, making the pink stain clearly visible. Gram negative bacteria. Removing the slide, he ran it through the digital microscope and recorded the results.
“Um, Ben?” His assistant’s hesitant voice came from the doorway.
He held up a finger as he waited for the computer to signal it had sent his report to the attending physician at the tropical disease institute of Piauí. The man’s office was fifteen steps away in the main hospital building, but Ben couldn’t take the time to walk over there right now. Dragging the latex gloves from his hands and flicking them into the garbage can to his right, he reached for the hand sanitizer and squirted a generous amount onto his palm.
“Yep, what is it?” He glanced up, his twelve-hour shift beginning to catch up with him. There were two more slides he needed to process before he could call it a day.
“Someone’s here to see you.” Mandy shifted out of the doorway, the apology in her cultured Portuguese tones unmistakable.
“If it’s Dr. Mendosa, tell him I just emailed the report. It’s a bacterial infection, not a parasite.”
A woman appeared next to Mandy, and Ben couldn’t stop his quick intake of breath. Shock wheeled through him, and he forced himself to remain seated on his stool, thankful his legs weren’t in charge of supporting his weight at that moment.
Inky-dark hair, pulled back in its usual clip, exposed high cheekbones and a long slender neck. Green eyes—right now filled with worry—met his without hesitation, her chin tilting slightly higher as they stared at each other.
What the hell was she doing here?
The newcomer adjusted the strap of a blue insulated bag on her shoulder and took a small step closer. “Ben, I need your help.”
His jaw tensed. Those were almost the exact words she’d used four years ago. Right before she’d walked out of his life. He gave a quick swallow, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray his thoughts. “With what?”
“Something’s happening in São João dos Rios.” She patted the bag at her side, words tumbling out at breakneck speed. “I brought samples I need you to analyze. The sooner the better, because I have to know why people are suddenly—”
“Slow down. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She bit her lip, and he watched her try to collect her thoughts. “There’s an outbreak in São João dos Rios. Six people are dead so far. The military police are already on their way to lock down the town.” She held her hand out. “I wouldn’t have come if this wasn’t important. Really important.”
That much he knew was true. The last time he’d seen her, she had been heading out the door of their house, never to return.
He shouldn’t be surprised she was still roving the country, stamping out infectious fires wherever she went. Nothing had been able to stop her. Not him. Not the thought of a home and family. Not the life she’d carried inside her.
Against his better judgement, he yanked on a fresh pair of gloves. “Do I need a respirator?”
“I don’t think so. We used surgical masks to collect the samples.”
He nodded, pulling one on and handing another to her, grateful that its presence would hide those soft pink lips he’d never tired of kissing. Ben’s attention swiveled back to her eyes, and he cursed the fact that the vivid green still had the power to make his pulse pound in his chest even after all this time.
He cleared his throat. “Symptoms?”
“The commonality seems to be pulmonary hemorrhage, maybe from some type of pneumonia.” She passed him the bag. “The bodies have already been cremated, unfortunately.”
“Without autopsies?” Something in his stomach twisted in warning.
“The military let me collect a few samples before they carted the bodies away, and the government took another set to do its own studies. I have to document that I’ve destroyed everything once you’re done.” She lowered her voice. “There’s a guard in your reception area whose job it is to make sure that order is carried out. Help me out here. You’re the best epidemiologist around these parts.”
He glanced at the doorway, noting for the first time the armed member of the Polícia Militar leaning against the wall in the other room. “That wasn’t one of my most endearing features, once upon a time.”
He remembered all too well the heated arguments they’d had over which was more important: individual rights or the public good.
Biting her lip, she hesitated. “Because you went behind my back and used your job as a weapon against me.”
Yes, he had. And not even that had stopped her.
His assistant, who’d been watching from the doorway, pulled on a mask and moved to stand beside him, her head tilting as she glanced nervously at the guard. Her English wasn’t the best, and Ben wasn’t sure how much of their conversation she’d grasped. “Is he going to let us leave?” she asked in Portuguese.
Tracy switched to the native language. “If it turns out the illness is just a common strain of pneumonia, it won’t be a problem.”
“And if it isn’t?”
Ben’s lips compressed as he contemplated spending an unknown amount of time confined to his tiny office.
With Tracy.
He had a foldable cot in a back closet, but it was narrow. Certainly not large enough for...
“If it isn’t, then it looks like we might be here for a while.” He went to the door and addressed the official. “We haven’t opened the tissue samples yet. My assistant has a family. I’d like her to go home before we begin.”
Ben had insisted his office be housed in a separate building from the main hospital for just this reason. It was small enough that the whole thing could be sealed off in the event of an airborne epidemic. And just like the microbial test he’d completed for a colleague moments earlier, any results could be sent off via computer.
Safety was his number-one priority. Mandy knew the risks of working for him, but she’d been exposed to nothing, as far as he could tell. Not like when Tracy had rushed headlong into a yellow fever epidemic four years ago that had forced him to call in the military authorities.
The guard in the doorway tapped his foot for a second, as if considering Ben’s request. He then turned away and spoke to someone through his walkie-talkie. When he was done, he faced them. “We’ll have someone escort her home, but she’ll have to remain there until we know what the illness is. As for you two...” he motioned to Ben and Tracy “...once the samples are uncapped you’ll have to stay in this building until we determine the risks.”
Mandy sent Ben a panicked look. “Are you sure it’s safe for me to leave? My baby...” She shut her eyes. “I need to call my husband.”
“Have Sergio take the baby to your mother’s house, where she’ll be safe. just in case. I’ll call you as soon as I know something, okay?”
His assistant nodded and left to make her call.
“I’m sorry.” Tracy’s face softened. “I thought you’d be alone in the lab. I didn’t realize you’d gotten an assistant.”
“It’s not your fault. She’s worried about the risks to her baby.” His eyes came up to meet hers, and he couldn’t resist the dig. “Just as any woman with children would be.”
He mentally kicked himself when the compassion in Tracy’s eyes dissolved, and anger took its place.
“I was concerned. But it was never enough for you, was it?” Her chest rose as she took a deep breath. “I’m heading back to São João dos Rios as soon as you give me some answers. If I’m going to be quarantined, I’m going to do it where I can make a difference. That doesn’t include sitting in a lab, staring at rows of test tubes.”
He knew he’d struck a nerve, but it didn’t stop an old hurt from creeping up his spine. “Says the woman who came to my lab, asking for help,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you did.”
They stared at each other then the corners of her eyes crinkled. She pulled down her mask, letting it dangle around her neck. “Okay, maybe I did...a little. But at least I admitted that I need you. That has to count for something.”
It did. But that kind of need was a far cry from what they’d once had together. Those days were long gone, and no matter how hard Ben had tried to hold onto her back then, she’d drifted further and further away, until the gulf between them had been too huge to span.
Bellyaching about the past won’t get you anywhere.
Ben shook off the thoughts and set the insulated bag on an empty metal table. He nodded towards the aluminum glove dispenser hanging on the far wall. “Suit up and don’t touch anything in the lab, just in case.”
She dug into her handbag instead and pulled out her own box of gloves. “I came prepared.”
Of course she had. It was part of who she was. This was a woman who was always on the move—who never took a weekend off. Tracy had thrown herself into her work without restraint...until there had been nothing left for herself. Or for him.
He’d thought she’d stop once the pregnancy tests went from blue to pink. She hadn’t. And Ben hadn’t been able to face any child of his going through what he had as a kid.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, he glanced around the lab, eyeing the centrifuges and other equipment. They’d have to work in the tiny glassed-off cubicle in the corner that he’d set up for occasions like this.
Keeping his day-to-day work space absolutely separate from Tracy’s samples was not only smart, it was non-negotiable. If they weren’t careful, the government could end up quarantining his whole lab, meaning years of work would be tossed into the incinerator. He tensed. Although if their findings turned up a microbe that was airborne, he’d willingly burn everything himself. He wouldn’t risk setting loose an epidemic.
Not even for Tracy. She should know that by now.
“I have a clean room set up over there. Once we get things squared away with Mandy, we can start.”
Tracy peered towards the door where the phone conversation between his assistant and her husband was growing more heated by the second. “I was really careful about keeping everything as sterile as I could. I don’t think she’s been exposed to anything.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m going to take your bagged samples into the other area. Can you wipe down the table where they were with disinfectant?”
As soon as Ben picked up the insulated bag, the guard appeared, his hand resting on the butt of his gun. “Where are you going with that?”
Ben motioned towards the clean room. “The samples can’t infect anyone else if they’re kept enclosed. You can see everything we do from the reception doorway. It’ll be safer if you keep your distance once we’ve started testing, though.”
The guard backed up a couple of paces. “How long will it take? I have no wish to stay here any longer than I have to.”
“I have no idea. It depends on what we’re dealing with.”
Putting the bag in the cubicle, he gathered the equipment he’d need and arranged it on the set of metal shelves perched above a stainless-steel table. He blew out a breath. The eight-by-eight-foot area was going to be cramped once he and Tracy were both inside.
An air handler filtered any particles floating in and out of the clean room, but there was no safe way to pump air-conditioning into the space. They’d have to rely on the wheezy window unit in the main lab and hope it kept them from baking. He could offer to send Tracy on her way before he got the results—but he was pretty sure he knew how that suggestion would be met, despite her waspish words earlier.
You couldn’t coax—or force—Tracy to do anything she didn’t want to do. He knew that from experience.
Mandy appeared in the doorway to the reception area just as Ben turned on the air filter and closed the door on the samples.
“It’s all arranged. Sergio called my mom and asked if she’d care for the baby overnight. He’s not happy about staying home from work, but he doesn’t want me to stay here either.”
“I don’t blame him. But look on the bright side. At least you can go home.” He smiled. “Tell Sergio he should count his lucky stars I haven’t stolen you away from him.”
Mandy laughed. “You’ve already told him that yourself. Many times.”
Tracy spun away from them and stalked over to the metal table she’d previously sanitized and began scrubbing it all over again. She kept her head down, not looking at either of them.
“Is the guard going to take you home?” He forced the words to remain cheerful.
“They’re sending another policeman. He should be here soon.”
“Good.” He had Mandy go back and wait in the reception area, so there’d be no question of her being anywhere near those samples. Returning to the sealed cubicle, he slid the insulated bag into a small refrigerator he kept for just this purpose. The air was already growing close inside the room, but he’d worked under worse conditions many times before. Both he and Tracy had.
He could still picture one such occasion—their very first meeting—Tracy had stepped off the Projeto Vida medical boat and stalked into the village he had been surveying, demanding to know what he was doing about the malaria outbreak twenty miles downriver. He’d been exhausted, and she’d looked like a gorgeous avenging angel, silky black hair flowing behind her in the breeze, ready to slay him if he said one wrong word.
They’d barely lasted two days before they’d fallen into bed together.
Something he’d rather not remember at the moment. Especially as he was trying to avoid any and all physical contact with her.
She might be immune, but he wasn’t. Not judging from the way his heart had taken off at a sprint when he’d seen her standing in that doorway.
Tracy dumped her paper towel into the hazardous waste receptacle and crossed over to him. “I just want to say thank you for agreeing to help. You could have told me to get lost.” She gave a hard laugh. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had.”
“I’m not always an ogre, you know.”
Her teeth caught the right corner of her bottom lip in a way that made his chest tighten. “I know. And I’m sorry for dragging you into this, but I didn’t know where else to go. The military didn’t want me to take the samples out of São João dos Rios. They only agreed to let me come here because you’ve worked with them before...and even then they made me bring a guard. I honestly didn’t think anyone else would be affected other than us.”
“It’s not your fault, Trace.” He started to reach out to touch her cheek, but checked himself. “The government is probably right to keep this as contained as possible. If I thought there was any chance of contamination, I’d be the first one to say Mandy needs to stay here at the lab with us.”
He smiled. “If I know you, though, not one microbe survived on that bag before you carried it out of that town.”
“I hope not. There are still several ill people waiting on us for answers. I left a colleague behind to make sure the military didn’t do anything rash, but he’s not a doctor, and I don’t want to risk his health either.” She blew out a breath. “Those people need help. But there’s nothing I can do until I know what we’re dealing with.”
And then she’d be on her way to the next available crisis. Just like she always was.
His smile faded. “Let’s get to work, then.”
The guard stuck his head into the room. “They’re sending someone for your friend. They’ll keep her at home until the danger has passed.”
Ben nodded. “I understand. Thank you.”
When he went to the doorway to say goodbye to Mandy, she kissed his cheek, her arms circling his neck and hugging him close. When she finally let go, her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “I’m so grateful. I can’t imagine not being able to tuck my Jenny into bed tonight, but at least I’ll be closer to her than I would be if I stayed here.”
His heart clenched. Here was a woman whose baby meant the world to her—who didn’t need to jet off to distant places to find fulfillment. Unlike his parents.
Unlike Tracy.
“We’ll work as quickly as we can. Once things are clear, make sure you give her a kiss and a hug from her uncle Ben.”
“I will.” She wiped a spot of lipstick from his cheek with her thumb. “Be careful, okay? I’ve just gotten used to your crazy ways. I don’t want to break someone else in.”
Ben laughed and took off one of his latex gloves, laying his hand on her shoulder. “You’re not getting rid of me any time soon, so go and enjoy your mini-vacation. You’ll be back to the same old grind before you know it.”
Mandy’s escort arrived, and as soon as she exited the building, he turned back to find Tracy observing him with a puzzled frown.
“What?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Nothing. I’m just surprised you haven’t found a woman who’d be thrilled to stick close to the house and give you all those kids you said you wanted.”
“That would be impossible, given the circumstances.”
“Oh?” Her brows arched. “And why is that?”
He laughed, the sound harsh in the quiet room. “Do you really have to ask?”
“I just did.”
Grabbing her left hand, he held it up, forcing her eyes to the outline of the plain gold band visible beneath her latex glove. “For the same reason you’re wearing this.” He stared into her face. “Have you forgotten, Mrs. Almeida? You may not go by your married name any more, but in the eyes of the law...we’re still husband and wife.”
