“You have a choice. Be thrown out now or later. But the check’s only good for ten minutes, Sandra. I’d think it over.”
With that, Javier slid back out of the doorway, letting the heavy door slam shut behind him. Sandra shook, letting her body shudder as sobs spilled from her body. She’d been so close to everything, and now?
Now all she wanted was to go home.
Chapter Eight
His heart wouldn’t stop racing, but then again, that matched his thoughts. The meeting with the union had finally resolved the lingering problems that had been plaguing their biggest European factory for months. It should have been a happy moment. When they finally all turned their cells back on, his heart sank. The message hadn’t made sense. Today was supposed to be a good day. He was finally solving huge problems, and Jules had taken Tonya to scout the locations she needed. Everything was great.
Now it wasn’t.
Tonya’s frantic voice on the recording had chilled his blood.
“She passed out and the doctors are doing tests right now. They’re not sure what it is. We’re at the San Domingo Hospital near the Gothic Quarter. Hurry!”
He’d texted Tonya back, but she didn’t answer.
Confused and heartsick, Xavier had jumped in his limo and sped back to the heart of the Catalan province, all the while hoping that his beloved was safe. They had to have found out what was wrong with her. It was an excruciating two-hour race back through the mountains from the remote factory to Barcelona, to the hospital that held the woman he loved.
As he rushed down the hall, he was greeted by the sight of his brother, Javi. The man was standing by the nurses’ station with a cell phone to his ear. That wasn’t an unusual image. After all, his brother was an even bigger workaholic than Xavier was. It calmed him somehow, this familiar part of his life. If Javier was calm, then it had to mean Jules was okay, that she’d be fine.
“Hermano,” he said, sweeping his brother into a frantic hug. “Where is she? Is she okay? What’s going on?”
Javier pulled away and patted his shoulders. “You need to calm down. Everything is going to be okay. But you should probably sit down.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She has a gall bladder issue. She’ll need to go home to the States to have some minor surgery. She’ll only be gone a few weeks.”
“But she could have it here, right now.”
“She said she didn’t want to do this without her family, and that she needed some time to recover where her mom could watch her,” Javi continued.
Xavier started to pace. “That doesn’t make any sense. I’d fly her mother and father and anyone else she wanted here in a private jet today. She can have the surgery just as well in Barcelona.”
“Her mother had a connection at Hopkins, and to be frank, this surgery can have some indelicate side effects.” Javier said, his brow furrowed. “I think she didn’t want to be that sick in front of you.”
“I could weather anything with her. If she was a little sick or had bedhead or whatever, I’d understand.”
“You have only been dating for over three months,” Javi pointed out. “You barely know her, realistically speaking. The best thing you can do is accept that there are things she wants, and she’ll call you when she needs to.”
“I do know her. I’ve slept beside her every night for months,” he replied, put off by Javier’s coldness at a time like this.
“You thought that about Tina too. I’m only saying that if she needs boundaries now when she’s ill, then respect that. Send her an e-mail in a week or two when she’s recovered and on her way back.”
“That’s not me, and you know that,” he said. “Can I talk to the doctor?”
“About a patient, probably, but I told you all there is to know. Trust me, you just need to let her and her family handle it at the best hospital on the planet, and then she’ll be back here. Until then, the company will give you more than enough to do,” his brother finished, putting a hand on his back and steering Xavier toward the elevator. “Trust me.”
***
She had another call from Xavier. He’d called her several times a day and e-mailed her more than that. Sandra had screened all of it, too scared to look at everything laid out before her. She knew that Javi must have told Xavier everything, at least his version, and she didn’t know how to hear that same hatred in Xav’s voice that she’d heard from his brother.
Yes, there were reasons for what had happened to her, for what it looked like she’d done. The facts lined up badly, even though everything in Javier’s assumptions was false. The last thing she wanted was to open her over-packed voice mails to tirades from the man she loved about how she’d hurt him.
Or worse.
About how he never wanted to see her again.