Winning Back His Doctor Bride by Tina Beckett Read Free Book Online Page B

avoid snapping more glass, he made his way through the inky interior. She hadn’t turned the lights on. Why?
    He reached the narrow hallway and drew up an internal map of the clinic from his visit a week ago. The voices were coming from the right, from the direction of the exam room he remembered seeing. Pausing outside the open door, he again heard Mila’s voice, the low sound coming across as calm and soothing...as if worried about spooking a frightened animal.
    It was then that it dawned on him. She wasn’t speaking English. It was Spanish. She’d trekked through the Amazon basin, so she knew both Spanish and Portuguese.
    He took a deep breath and spun around the corner, a streetlamp shining outside the window making it a little easier to see.
    Mila, who was crouching in the gloom, grappling with someone or something, squeaked out a warning. He braced himself for attack.
    Only the fear on her face was aimed squarely at him, not whatever was next to her.
    â€œGod, James, you almost gave us a heart attack.”
    He’d almost given them ...? The thing next to her was evidently a who...not a what.
    â€œWhat the hell is going on?”
    Reaching to the right, where he remembered the light switch being, he flipped it on. Two pairs of eyes blinked up at him. His attention swiveled to the small figure huddled close to Mila.
    It was a child—a young boy around three years old—not an armed intruder, like he’d feared. Which meant the man who’d run away from the building was what? A father? Boyfriend? Some kind of sexual predator...? His brows drew together in anger. Who broke into a medical clinic and dropped off a kid?
    In one hand, the boy clutched a gray blanket, the satin edge frayed and missing in spots. The child’s other hand was balled into a fist that he held against his mouth.
    No. Not a fist. The child was sucking his thumb, fingers curled tightly into the palm of his hand. And those hollow, tearstained eyes...
    The child stared at him for a second or two longer and then whimpered, cringing closer to Mila. James forced his frown away, realizing he probably made a scary figure standing over them, the emotions churning within him clearly visible.
    â€œEstá bien. No tengas miedo.” Mila’s voice was soft and comforting, even as she sent James another scathing glare.
    She was telling the child not to be afraid?
    What about him? She’d almost set him flat on his ass when he’d seen her kneeling there, envisioning all kinds of terrible things.
    But this child was thin. Very thin and... His gaze stopped, chest squeezing tight enough to stop him from breathing for several seconds.
    His feet. The boy’s feet. They were turned inward at an unnatural angle as if they were pairing up for a duel.
    Clubbed. Both of them.
    His inward curse rattled his ribs and shunted the pressure that had been gathering around his midsection to his throat. The deformity should have been corrected when the child was an infant.
    He knelt next to the pair, his glance meeting Mila’s. “Is this one of your patients?”
    â€œNo.” She placed a hand on the boy’s head as if protecting him. From what? James’s fury?
    He wasn’t angry. Not at the child, anyway. “I thought I told you to wait in the car.”
    â€œI was going to, but I heard crying coming from inside the clinic.” She glanced toward the door just as the sound of a siren swept through the interior of the space. “And I knew the police would arrive at any second.”
    Not soon enough to stop a bullet, though, if Mila had come upon something other than a frightened child. His anger came back in a rush. “You should have waited for them, then. For your own protection.”
    Her face quieted, becoming an icy cold mask that stopped him in his tracks. “I don’t need you to protect me, and you’re not the one who makes my decisions. Not in the past. And certainly not