Hot Single Docs: The Playboy's Redemption: St Piran's: Rescuing Pregnant Cinderella / St Piran's: Italian Surgeon, Forbidden Bride / St Piran's: Daredevil, Doctor...Dad!. Carol Marinelli
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got a taxi and took my stuff home,’ Izzy said airily, because she certainly wasn’t going to admit she’d spent the afternoon in the bathroom—trying and failing to whip her postnatal body into suitable shape for Diego’s eyes. ‘By the time I got back for her evening feed, your shift had ended.’
‘You’ve got hospital colour!’ Diego smiled as she stood in the lounge. ‘I never noticed it on the ward but now you are here in the real world, I can see it.’
There was a distinct lack of mirrors in Diego’s flat, so Izzy would just have to take his word for it, but she was quite sure he was right. Apart from an occasional walk around the hospital grounds, a few very brief trips home and one trip out with Megan, she’d been living under fluorescent lighting and breathing hospital air, and no doubt her skin had that sallow tinge that patients often had when they were discharged after a long stay.
‘Have a seat out on the balcony,’ Diego suggested. ‘Get some sun. I’ll join you in a minute.’
It was good to sit in the evening sun. Izzy could feel it warming her cheeks and she drank in the delicious view—the moored boats and a few making their way back in. There was no place nicer than St Piran on a rosy summer evening, made nicer when Diego pressed a nice cold glass of champagne in her hand.
‘One of the joys of bottle-feeding!’ Diego said, because Izzy’s milk supply had died out two weeks in.
And then he was back to his kitchen and Izzy could only sit and smile.
He was such a delicious mix.
So male, so sexy, yet there was this side to him that could address, without a hint of a blush or a bat of an eyelid, things that most men knew little about.
‘How does it feel to be free?’ Diego called from the kitchen as she picked a couple of tomatoes out of the pots that lined his balcony.
‘Strange,’ Izzy called, but he was already back. ‘I keep waiting for my little pager to go off to let me know she needs feeding. I feel guilty, actually.’
‘It’s good to have a break before you bring her home.’
‘Most new mums don’t get it.’
‘Most new mums have those extra weeks to prepare,’ Diego said, arranging some roasted Camembert cheese and breadsticks on the table, which Izzy fell on, scooping up the sticky warm goo with a large piece of bread.
‘I’ve been craving this,’ Izzy said. ‘How did you know?’
‘Tonight, you get everything that has been forbidden to you in pregnancy, well, almost everything. Some things can wait!’ Diego said, as Izzy’s toes curled in her sandals. His grin was lazy and slow and she hated how he never blushed, hated that her cheeks were surely scarlet. God, she’d forgotten how they sizzled, Izzy thought as he headed back to prepare dinner.
There were so many sides to Diego and recently she’d been grateful for the professional side to him and for the care he had shown off duty too, but she was in his territory now, not pregnant, not a patient, not a parent on the unit. Tonight she was just Izzy, whoever Izzy was.
And that night she started to remember.
‘You can cook!’ Izzy exclaimed as he brought a feast out to her—shellfish, mussels, oysters, prawns and cream cheese wrapped in roast peppers, and all the stuff she’d craved in the last few weeks of her pregnancy.
‘Not really. You could train a monkey to cook seafood.’ Diego shrugged. ‘And the antipasto is from our favourite café...’
She didn’t know if it was the champagne or the company, but talking to Diego was always easy so she figured it was the latter. They talked, and as the sky turned to navy they laughed and they talked, and more and more she came back.
Not even Izzy Bailey, but a younger Izzy, an Izzy Ross, who she had stifled and buried and forgotten.
Izzy Ross, who teased and joked and did things like lean back in her seat and put her feet up on his thighs, Izzy Ross, who expected a foot rub and Diego obliged.
But it was Izzy Bailey who was convinced things were all about to change.
‘So, what did the real estate agent say?’
‘That it’s a good offer!’ Izzy poked out her tongue. ‘It’s not, of course, but it’s better than the last one, though they want a quick settlement.’
‘Which is what you wanted?’
‘When I was pregnant and hoping to find somewhere before she was born.’ She looked at him. ‘In a few days she’ll be home,’ Izzy said, ‘and as well as having a baby home, I’m going to have to pack up a house and find a new one, and I’m going to have to find a babysitter just so we can date.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘We haven’t even slept together and we’re talking nappies and babysitters...’
He had the audacity to laugh.
‘It’s not funny, Diego.’
‘You’re making problems where there are none. Sex is hardly going to be a problem.’
God, he was so relaxed and assured about it, like it was a given it was going to be marvellous.
The icing on the cake.
‘Come on.’ He stood up.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The movies and then there’s a nice wine bar, they do music till late...’
‘I don’t want to go to the movies!’ Izzy couldn’t believe Mr Sensitive could get it so wrong. ‘And if you think I’ve got the energy to be sitting in a wine bar...’
‘I thought you wanted us to date!’
‘Ha, ha.’
‘Izzy, you need time with your baby and that’s the priority. I’ll slot in, and if it’s an issue that we haven’t slept together yet, well, we both know it’s going to be great.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Oh, I do.’ Diego grinned. ‘I’m looking forward to getting rid of your hang-ups.’
‘Can you get rid of them tonight?’
And suddenly he didn’t look so assured.
‘It’s too soon...’
‘No,’ Izzy said slowly. ‘No heavy lifting, no strenuous exercise...’
‘Do you want me, Izzy?’ He was always direct and now never more so. ‘Or do you just want it over?’
‘I don’t know,’ Izzy admitted, and there should have been a big horn to denote she was giving the wrong answer, but she was incapable of dishonesty with him—or rather she didn’t want to go down that route, saying the right thing just to keep him happy. She wanted the truth with Diego even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
‘What are you scared of?’
‘That I’ll disappoint you,’ she admitted. ‘Because on so many levels I disappointed him.’ She snapped her mouth closed. Diego had made it very clear that he didn’t compare to Henry, which he didn’t, but... She looked over to where he stood, tried to choose words that could explain her insecurities, but there were none that could do them justice. ‘Things weren’t great in that department,’ she settled for, but
Diego’s frown just deepened. ‘I know I was pregnant and so there must have been a relationship...’ She swallowed. ‘His parents take it as proof that our marriage was healthy, that...’ She couldn’t explain further and thankfully she didn’t have to because Diego spoke.
‘It would be nice,’ Diego said slowly, ‘if babies were only conceived in love...’ There was silence that she didn’t break as he thought for a moment. ‘If there was some sort of...’ Again he paused, trying to find the English for a word he hadn’t used in his time