A loud clattering noise followed, as if she’d dropped the phone.
Then there was nothing more.
Eight
Rafael lost his mind.
With every heartbeat, he lost it again and again.
Eliana’s phone was out of service. She wasn’t in Copa D’Or, the hospital that was flooded with casualties in the aftermath of the accident.
A dump truck exceeding the allowed height had smashed into a pedestrian bridge, which had collapsed onto dozens of cars in the morning rush hour. Four people were killed. Dozens had injuries ranging from minor to critical. He turned the place upside down looking for her, questioned everyone. No one could report on Eliana’s condition. Or where she’d gone.
Richard believed this meant she was well enough to walk out on her own. But the only thing that mattered to Rafael was that he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t protect her. His men and Richard’s were combing the streets and had already looked in all the places she could be. She wasn’t at her apartment or at her father’s villa in Copacabana or his offices. Neither was her father, who Rafael belatedly remembered was back in San Francisco. And the damn man’s phone was out of service, too.
Long past his wits’ end, he charged over to the last place he could think of. His mansion.
Of her usual haunts, it was the farthest away from the hospital, more than a two-hour drive in this traffic. And there was no reason she should go there with him out of town and with her own apartment only twenty minutes away. But he had nowhere else to try.
Feeling the world crumbling around him, he arrived at his mansion just after dusk. The guards said no cars had come near the gates. And the mansion was empty since he’d given everyone time off while he was away.
He still tore through the mansion roaring for her. Then he exploded into his bedroom...and almost keeled over.
She was on his bed.
Curled on her side with her back to the door, her hair was a wild mass of loose curls rioting across his pillow. Her pastel green skirt suit was ripped in places and smudged in soot and blood.
And she wasn’t moving.
Feeling like he had when he’d had too many brutal punches to the head, he staggered toward her, heartbeats shredding his arteries.
He crashed to his knees beside the bed, terror razing through him.
He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t discover that she...she...
No. She was all right. She’d come all the way here. She must just be exhausted from the ordeal....
But she was so still. As if she wasn’t breathing.
Throat sealing shut with panic, his tongue swelled, twisted on butchered pleas. “Eu imploro, por favor, meu amor...Eliana, I beg you please...wake up.”
Nothing happened. No response. And he knew.
If she didn’t wake up, he didn’t want to live.
With the new certainty, knowing he wouldn’t suffer long without her if she weren’t with him anymore, he finally had the strength to reach out and touch her.
His shaking hand closed over her neck. And before a heartbeat could reanimate him, her heat devastated him.
Warm, hot, and she...she...
She opened her eyes.
“Rafael...”
That tremolo was a thousand volts to his heart, reanimating it after it had shriveled. And he was all over her, his hands everywhere, exposing her flesh, gliding over every inch, making sure all of her was intact, was functioning...was there.
A maddened beast rumbled in his gut at every bruise and graze he found. It dismantled his mind all over again that he’d been unable to prevent her injuries and was now unable to erase them. His lips documented each and every one, tried to soothe and seal them, pouring litanies of regret all over her for failing to do so.