Billionaire, M.D. / Secrets of the Playboy's Bride. Оливия Гейтс
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his companions of his adjustment of her medications as if she wasn’t in the room much less a medical professional who could understand everything they were saying. Frustration frothed inside her. Then it boiled over.
“I remembered a few things.”
Rodrigo went still at her outburst. The other people in the room fidgeted, eyed her uncomfortably before turning uncertain gazes to their boss. Still without looking at her, he hung her chart back at the foot of the bed, murmured something clearly meant for the others’ ears alone. They rushed out in a line.
The door had closed behind the last departing figure for over two minutes before he turned his eyes toward her.
She shuddered with the force of his elemental impact.
Oh, please. Let me have the right to feel this way about him.
The intensity of his being buzzed in her bones—of his focus, of his …wariness?
Was he anxious to know what she remembered? Worried about it? Because he suspected what it was—the husband she remembered only in name? He’d told her of her long-dead father, her existing family, but not about that husband. Would he have told her if she hadn’t remembered?
But there was something more in his vibe. Something she’d felt before. After she’d kissed him. Disapproval? Antipathy?
Had they been on bad terms before the accident? How could they have been, if she felt this vast attraction to him, untainted by any negativity? Had the falling out been her fault? Was he bitter? Was he now taking care of her to honor his calling, his duty, giving her extra special care for old times’ sake, yet unable to resume their intimacy? Had they been intimate? Was he her lover?
No. He wasn’t.
She might not remember much about herself, but the thought of being in a relationship, no matter how unhealthy, and seeking involvement with another felt abhorrent to her, no matter how inexorable the temptation. And then, there was him. He radiated nobility. She just knew Rodrigo Valderrama would never poach on another man’s grounds, never cross the lines of honor, no matter how much he wanted her or how dishonorable the other man was.
But there was one paramount proof that told her they’d never been intimate. Her body. It burned for him but knew it had never had him. It would have borne his mark on its every cell if it had.
So what did it all mean? He had to tell her, before something beside memories short-circuited inside her brain.
He finally spoke. “What did you remember?”
“Who I am. That I’m married.” He showed no outward reaction. So he had known. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I asked about family.”
“I thought you were asking about flesh-and-blood relatives.”
“You’re being evasive.”
“Am I?” He held her gaze, making her feel he was giving her a psyche and soul scan. Maybe trying to steer her thoughts, too. “So you remember everything?”
She exhaled. “I said I remembered ‘a few things.’ Seems I’m a stickler for saying exactly what I mean.”
“You said you remembered who you were, and your marriage. That’s just about everything, isn’t it?”
“Not when I remember only the basics about myself, the name you told me, that I went to Harvard Medical School, that I worked at St. Giles Hospital and that I’m twenty-nine. I know far less than the basics about my marriage. I remembered only that I have a husband, and his name and profession.”
“That’s all?”
“The rest is speculation.”
“What kind of speculation?”
“About the absence of both my family and husband more than a week after I’ve been involved in a major accident. I can only come up with very unfavorable explanations.”
“What would those be?”
“That I’m a monster of such megaproportions that no one felt the need to rush to my bedside.” Something flared in his eyes, that harshness. So she was right? He thought so, too? Her heart compressed as she waited for him to confirm or negate her suspicions. When he didn’t, she dejectedly had to consider his silence as corroboration, condemnation. She still looked for a way out for herself, for her family. “Unless it is beyond them financially to make the trip here?”
“As far as I know, finances are no issue to your family.”
“So you told them I was at death’s door, and no one bothered to come.”
“I told them no such thing. You weren’t at death’s door.”
“It could have gone either way for a while.”
Silence. Heavy. Oppressive. Then he simply said, “Yes.”
“So I’m on the worst terms with them.”
It seemed he’d let this go uncommented on, too. Then he gave a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t know about the worst terms. But it’s my understanding you’re not close.”
“Not even with my mother?”
“Especially with your mother.”
“Great. See? I was right when I thought I was better off not remembering. Not knowing.”
“It isn’t as bad as you’re painting it. By the time I called your family, you were stable, and there really was nothing for any of them to do but wait like the rest of us. Your mother did call twice for updates, and I told her you were doing very well. Physically. Psychologically, I suggested it might not be a good thing in this early phase for you to be jogged by their presence or contact, any more than you already are.”
He was making excuses for her family, her mother. If they’d cared, they wouldn’t have been satisfied with long-distance assurances. Or maybe he had discouraged them from coming, so he wouldn’t introduce an unpredictable emotional element into her neurological recovery?
The truth was, she didn’t care right now how things really stood with her family. What she was barely able to breathe from needing to know was her status with her husband.
“And that’s my not-so-bad situation with my family. But from my husband’s pointed absence, I can only assume the worst. That maybe we’re separated or getting divorced.”
She wanted him to say, Yes, you are.
Please, say it.
His jaw muscles bunched, his gaze chilled. When he finally spoke it felt like an arctic wind blasting her, freezing her insides with this antipathy that kept spiking out of nowhere.
“Far from being separated, you and your husband have been planning a second honeymoon.”
Cybele doubted the plane crashing into the ground had a harder impact than Rodrigo’s revelation.
Her mind emptied. Her heart spilled all of its beats at once.
For a long, horrified moment she stared at him, speech skills and thought processes gone, only blind instincts left. They all screamed run, hide, deny.
She’d been so certain…so…certain.
“A second honeymoon?” She heard her voice croaking. “Does that mean we …we’ve been married long?”
He waited an eternity before answering. At least it felt that way. By the time he did, she felt she’d aged ten years. “You were married six months ago.”
“Six months? And already planning a second honeymoon?”
“Maybe I should have said honeymoon, period. Circumstances stopped you from having one when you first got married.”