Italian Doctor, Full-time Father. Dianne Drake
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on that backside? That, along with a cup of coffee, had been the perfect way to start the day, especially when he’d come back to bed to take care of the mood he’d always put her in.
There she went again! Just one look and she was off on another fantasy. Which she could ill afford, and didn’t want happening.
“You look like you’ve seen something awfully pleasant,” he commented. “Anything I might want to know about?”
“Don’t mistake my bedside manner for anything personal,” she warned, trying to sound professional when her skipping heart was anything but. “I’m always pleasant with my patients.”
“Except me.”
“You can certainly request another doctor, if you’re not happy with me. The owner of the clinic himself is available. He’s the finest rehabilitation specialist in the world, a very pleasant man, and I’m sure he’d be able to fit you into his schedule.”
“When did you become so uptight, Catherine? You used to have a spark about you. An eager optimism. You always smiled, yet I haven’t seen you smile since I’ve been here, and that’s a pity with your beautiful smile.”
“You haven’t earned the right to comment on my smile, Dante.” Her voice was so chilly it swept out of her on shards of ice. “Or anything else about me except my professional abilities.”
Naturally, he commented on that. “See what I mean? You’re uptight. Stiff. You don’t find any pleasure in your life, and it’s going to make you very old, very fast.”
“You don’t know me well enough any more to say those things.” Catherine stepped in behind the wheelchair, giving it a sharp nudge towards the door. “We had six months together, and in those months we never even…” Got to know each other. Got to be honest. “We were merely satisfying certain biological urges for a short period of time, and that’s all there was to it. We mistook hormones for emotions and thought that was enough to make a marriage.”
Dante laughed. “Hormones aren’t necessarily a bad way to start a marriage.”
“I’m not surprised you’d think that.” Although, with the chemistry they’d had between them, he wasn’t altogether wrong.
“Do you ever think about us, Catherine? Over the years, have you ever wondered what it might have been like if things had worked out differently?”
She had, on so many occasions. But she wouldn’t tell Dante that. “No. When it was over, I moved on.” Like he had, only he’d moved on even before it had been over. “No point in lingering over something that wasn’t meant to be.”
“Was I that despicable a lover?” he asked. “I thought I satisfied you, gave you what you wanted. I thought we were good together.”
“In bed, we were fine. You were fine. I had no complaints that way.” Just as they reached the hallway door, Catherine stopped pushing the wheelchair and spun it part way around to face her. Then she bent down to him. “But sex is all it was. Something convenient in two hectic lives. It happened, it ended. We’ve moved on. So, please, be enough of a gentleman to let it go. That will make your stay here much easier…on both of us.”
“I never meant to hurt you, Catherine,” he said, his voice suddenly dropping to a whisper. “I told you that every time I called. What happened to me wasn’t what I’d expected in my life. It was a difficult time.”
“Was it, Dante? Was it really?”
Briefly, he looked at a loss, but that passed all too quickly. “You don’t know a damned thing about it!”
“Don’t I? Because what I seem to recall is that you left medicine and became a race-car driver. People don’t just do something like that, Dante. You know, go to medical school all those years, become a surgeon, then drop all that to spend your life driving around a race track. And, oh, by the way, forget to mention that to the person they intend marrying.”
“And I did apologize for that. Besides, it’s not like you didn’t know my family was in racing. That I’d had a brief try at it when I was younger.”
“And your brother was better, but that was fine with you because your true passion was medicine. You told me all that, Dante. Silly me, I believed it.”
“My father needed me. My family needed me.”
“They needed you to make a worldwide announcement that you were returning to the sport before you even mentioned it to the woman who thought she was marrying a doctor? Or were you ever really planning on marrying me? Maybe that was just another of those conveniences we had, something to make us feel a little more proper about our relationship?”
“I told you—”
“What you told me, Dante, was that you had to race. That was it. No alternatives in there for me.”
“My father was sick, Dario was gone, the entire Baldassare racing team was struggling. At the time I was barely able to get through it, and I coped the only way I knew how. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Catherine, but I’m not going to apologize any more because it’s wasted on you.”
“Yes, it is wasted because while maybe you didn’t mean to hurt me, you also didn’t mean to think about me through all of it. You left me out, Dante. Totally out. But so you’ll know, I wasn’t hurt.” Such a lie, and she knew, full well, that dauncy look was creeping into her eyes again. “Just a little disappointed, but I got over it.”
“Yes, you did, didn’t you? You went on and found yourself a magnificent life. You’ve done well for yourself, and I’m not surprised about that. You were…are…a brilliant doctor. I’m happy you got the life you deserved.”
What was there to say about that? Nothing to argue, nothing to snap at. This was a bit of the old Dante, the one she’d never been able to resist, never been able to stay angry with for more than ten seconds. Damn it all, she still wanted to be angry. Wanted to snap at him, to argue with every little thing he said. But he’d just disarmed her, something he’d always been so brilliant at doing. He’d say something like he just had then they’d tumble into bed and…
Catherine cleared her throat. “I need a fresh look at your ankle, Dante. There’s a reason why you’re not healing as you should, a reason why you’re still having so much pain. The old X-rays your doctor in Tuscany sent didn’t show anything so I need a new look. With any luck I’ll figure out what’s going on, and by end of the day have you on a real road to recovery.” Then out her door, and out of her life. Again. But for good this time.
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