by Dianne Drake
“Hans is correct. I refused.” He hated the damned thing. Besides being ugly, it was a nuisance. Pick it up, move it forward then walk into it and start the whole process again. Hans and Catherine were lucky he hadn’t thrown it out the window. “Too much trouble. Won’t use it.”
“Then what do you intend using?” she asked. “Because if you go from wheelchair to fully weight bearing, and your ankle snaps, your career is over. You’ll require more pins to put your ankle back together, it will be permanently stiff this time, and you won’t be able to drive if driving entails anything to do with your right foot. So tell me, Dante, what’s your suggestion?”
He held out his hand to stop her talking, then listened into the phone. He could hear Gianni in the background, make out his voice but not what he was saying. Although he could guess. For eight, the boy was quite the little negotiator. He knew what it took to get his way, and most of the time he got it. That was Dario in him. Dario had been the smooth, charming one. A natural leader with a cheery disposition. People had loved him, adored him, given in to him because it had always been such a pleasure to do so. While he, on the other hand, was not…Dario. Gianni was, though, and Dante could hear him working his grandfather like the eight-year-old pro that he was.
When the voices trailed off, Dante turned his attention back to Catherine. “My suggestion is something other than a walker. You’re the rehab doctor—I’ll leave the decision up to you.”
“And my decision is that I want you up bearing very little weight on a walker.”
“Except the patient is refusing. I do have that right, you know.” That, and he did enjoy arguing with Catherine. She positively glowed when she was antagonized.
“You know, Dante,” she said, her voice filling with exasperation, “I’d have never slept with you if I’d known how stubborn you are. This is ridiculous. I know what’s best for you yet you’re refusing to listen to me, which puts me in the awkward position of recommending something that’s second best. And I don’t like it, not one little bit.”
Yes, she positively glowed. “Something I remember from medical school, Catherine, is that patients do have rights in their medical decisions. I’m merely exercising mine not to agree with you. Don’t take it personally.”
“Personally? What would you do if one of the other doctors recommended a walker?”
“I’d give it all the consideration it was worth then refuse.”
“So it’s the walker? Not me?”
He shook his head. “I said don’t take it so personally. I hate walkers, that’s all. I sprained my knee a couple of years ago, refused the walker then and tottered around on crutches for a while. I do it pretty well.”
“And you couldn’t have mentioned that before?”
Rather than answering, Dante held out his hand again, waving it to silence her. “And what did he say?” he enquired into the phone.
“That he’ll bring me to see you, and we can set up the computer. Cristofor also has a cell phone where you can take your picture and send it to me.”
“You really want my picture?” he asked. It touched him that Gianni missed him so much. “Don’t you remember what I look like?”
“But you could change, Papa.”
“I’m not changing. Promise.”
“Can I bring the phone anyway?”
“Do you think you could ask Uncle Cristofor to get a phone for you, where you could take your picture for me?” Bad question. Gianni was already off in search of his uncle, leaving Dante to dangle on the other end of the line again. He chuckled, then looked at Catherine. “Gianni’s eight. Very enthusiastic.”
She nodded, but didn’t respond. No expression on her face, not a hint of a smile, not even a frown. Which made him wonder.
“He said yes!” Gianni squealed into the phone, at which Dante, once again, pulled the receiver away from his ear. “Enthusiastic, and loud. Youthful exuberance,” he whispered to Catherine, then turned his full attention to the phone call. Three minutes later, when Gianni had run out of stream, Dante saw that Catherine had slipped out of the room. He’d wanted to tell her about Gianni, but that would have to wait until later, he supposed. According to his schedule, it was time for lunch. Then off to have his hair cut, which actually didn’t sound half-bad.
It was eight o’clock and Catherine was going home. Time to call it a day and get to bed at a decent hour for a change. She wasn’t on call, didn’t have a patient in dire need, and there was nothing to keep her in the clinic any longer. Tomorrow and all its headaches and triumphs would come soon enough. So Catherine bundled herself in to her wool coat, wrapped her cashmere scarf around her neck and headed directly to the nearest exit, her mind full of Max’s decisions and Dante’s refusal to follow orders. Most of all, her mind was on the child he’d called Gianni. Admittedly, she was bothered that Dante had a child, bothered that during the months they’d been together he’d never mentioned it to her. He could have been divorced, then. The time line was certainly right for that. Still, not to even mention a marriage or a relationship that had produced a child. And most of all not to mention a child…
But the way he’d talked to Gianni. She’d heard his voice, heard a tone from Dante she didn’t recognize. Adoration was as close a way to describe it as she could think of. It had been more than Dante’s voice, though. It had been the look in his eyes—an amazing look that told the whole story. Dante had a love in his life that was greater than anything she could even imagine and his eyes didn’t hide the fact. Adoration again.
He was lucky to have that. For a time, during those weeks when they had been together, she’d wondered what it would be like to have his child. She hadn’t been ready for a child, of course. They’d never even broached the subject. But it felt so odd that some woman had beat her to it—given him a son long before it had crossed her mind that she herself might want to have his child. In a way, she envied that woman. But she also feared for the child because Dante could turn out to be a wonderful father, or like her own father, who had always caused the family so much worry, who had always caused her family to live on the edge of a nervous breakdown. That was so difficult. So painful.
Catherine didn’t wish that for anybody else.
Did Gianni’s mother sit at home and worry about Dante the way her own mother had worried? Did she worry that the next race might bring about something worse than a broken ankle?
As Catherine slipped down the hall, past the entry to the solarium, a heavy blanket of gloom spread over her, thinking about all the times her own mother had sat at home, worrying. Those hadn’t been happy days. Her mother had closed herself into a dark room and cried much of the time, then pretended everything was all right. But it never had been. They’d always lived with the fear, the distress. The unknown. Her mother had always said that a man like Emil Brannon should never have married and had children, and that a woman had to be crazy to fall in love with someone like him.
Her mother had always loved her father, though. Loved him like crazy, in spite of the worry and the hurt. But Catherine had suffered her own hurt, too, something that hadn’t been part of her mother’s. She’d been left out. Her mother had been so caught up with her own worry that she’d often turned her back on her daughter. And Catherine’s father had been addicted to a lifestyle to which Catherine had never been admitted. So she’d grown up a lonely child. Then it had been too late. Her father had died and nothing could be changed.
Of course, going off and getting engaged to one man who had excluded her from matters important to her life then marrying another who was just like that seemed to be a pattern. One she would not repeat, especially now that she was better able to understand it and stop it from happening again.
As Catherine passed the solarium, she glanced in and saw that it was empty, apart from one figure sitting near the window, shrouded by the near-darkness. Catherine shivered when she saw him, knowing instinctively who it was. He’d always had that effect on her years ago, the one that caused shive
rs. Things hadn’t changed much, and that was a problem. She truly didn’t want to shiver over Dante any more. But her responses weren’t altogether under her own control, which was another leftover from the past she’d have preferred not repeating.
For a moment she thought about stopping in to see him, then decided against it, and continued down the hall. But ten steps past the door she turned back and entered the solarium, forcing her steps to blend into the quite solitude of the place.
She didn’t say a word as she approached him from behind, and he didn’t flinch. But there was a keen awareness between them, something much more than the shiver running up her spine and gooseflesh rising on her arms. “Can I take you back to your room?” she finally whispered, for a lack of anything substantive to say.
“I like it here. Like to sit and look out. Back home, I have a large picture window where I like to sit and look out over my trees. The view is nothing like this, not nearly as spectacular, but it’s nice there. A good place to return to after I’ve been on the road for a while.” He turned his chair to face her. “Care to join me?”
“I’m not in the mood to argue, Dante. And that’s all we do. How about I simply apologize for my behavior after you did Mrs Gunter’s trach, tell you how sorry I am and how wrong I was, then leave before we start something else?”
“You’re sorry?”
She nodded. “I was way out of line. But you don’t exactly bring out the best in me.”
“I’ve seen times when I’ve brought out the very best in you.”
Catherine had the decency to blush over that comment. “Once in a while,” she admitted. “But I got over you.”
“And even got married.”
“Yes, I even got married.”
“And it was good for a while?”
“No, it wasn’t ever good. He was set on one thing, I was set on another. He wanted children right away, almost before the honeymoon ended…wanted a typical family life. You know, a stay-at-home wife, someone domestic. A small detail we hadn’t discussed before the wedding. And I couldn’t fault him for what he wanted because it’s a good life for someone else, but not for me as I didn’t want any of what he did. So we ended the marriage before we did something foolish, like having a child. He married a few months later and has one child already, with another on the way.”
“And you have your career. It seems you both must be happy, getting everything you wanted.”
She pulled off the cashmere scarf and unbut-toned her coat. But she wouldn’t take it off because it was not her intention to stay. She wanted to, which was why she would not. “I took over part-ownership of the clinic today. We’re going to expand, take on new doctors, offer new services. That’s what makes me happy, Dante. So, yes, I did get everything I wanted.”
“But are you happy enough, Catherine?” he asked. “I don’t see any joy in your eyes, not the way I saw it when you were still a resident. All I see is…seriousness.”
“Because I am serious, Dante. I think the Catherine you got to know back then was an anomaly, someone who really didn’t exist.” Or someone who had been happier for that brief time than she had ever been in her life before that. Even though that had been an illusion.
“Ah, but I believe she did exist—in flesh and blood and in spirit. She was an amazing woman, someone you should meet again. I think you’d like her.”
“We make our choices, Dante. You made yours when you gave up medicine to be a race-car driver. I made mine when I took up the life I live now. And in a very real way I do believe that who we are dictates our choices as much as our choices dictate who we are.”
“Then who were you when we slept together, Catherine?”
“A young woman who very much got caught up in the world of a dashing, exciting young surgeon.”
“So all you wanted was a surgeon?”
“All I wanted was what I had.”
He reached across and took her hand. “I wish it could have been more. Wish we’d had more time together.”
“It was what it was, Dante.” She didn’t pull her hand from his. Rather, she remembered that touch, remembered that softness. It hadn’t changed. But she had, and Dante was the reason. For that she thanked him, and cursed him. “A very nice time during a brief period of our lives. Like you said of your son earlier…youthful exuberance.”
“Gianni,” he said fondly, still holding onto her hand. “Everything I ever wanted.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a son, Dante? He would have been three when we were together. And you never mentioned him. Not a word. Nothing about his mother, either. Were you married then? Or now?”
“He’s not my son, Catherine.”
She frowned, clearly puzzled. “What?”
“He’s Dario’s son. My brother’s. Dario’s wife, Louisa, died a few weeks before Dario did—victim of a fast, virulent strain of pneumonia. I always thought he got back into the car to race too soon after that shock, which is part of what I think caused his accident. He was preoccupied, didn’t have his power of concentration.” He paused for a moment, a sad smile passing over his face. “Anyway, I lost my sister-in-law, then my brother, and took Gianni to live with me. He’s my nephew, but I’ve adopted him as my son. And, no, I wasn’t a married man, cheating on his wife. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not so proud of in my life, but I’d never do that.”
“That’s not fair. You told me practically nothing about your family. Nothing about yourself either, really. So how was I supposed to know anything?”
“Is there any point in going through this again?” His voice went thin with anger. “I did what I did, and there’s no going back. You couldn’t live with my choices, and I had to.”
“Your choices for me, Dante,” she flared. “That’s what it was about. If I’d let you choose my life and come to you the way you wanted, would I have even known a child was involved before I got there? Or was me becoming a mother to your nephew another one of those things you’d have simply decided for me? Maybe let me find it out through another of your sister’s premature announcements?”
“You couldn’t live with someone who didn’t want to be a doctor. That shattered your prefect image of what we were to become, and I do understand that, Catherine. That’s why you’re bitter.”
“Bitter, Dante? Do you think I’m bitter?” He didn’t understand, and that was the problem, then and now. It wasn’t about the choice, it was about the lack of it, and she just didn’t have the heart to go through the argument again.
The problem was, she could find herself right back in that same spot with him so easily. She’d known that the first instant she’d learned he was to be a patient there, and that feeling hadn’t gone away as she’d hoped it might once she confronted him. If anything, she’d come to see this pull towards Dante as a flaw in herself—one that would make it so easy to go back to him over and over again, the same blind feelings on the line. Five years older, five years wiser in so many ways but this.
Apparently, five years were not enough for her, although one thing she did know with certainty—she couldn’t afford the inevitable outcome of getting involved with Dante a second time. Yet the inevitable was so close if she’d allow it. One crook of the finger, one suggestive glance in his direction…
Catherine drew in a breath to brace herself. “Look, you’re right. We don’t need to go through all this again. What’s done is done, and dwelling on it will just make us argue even more. I don’t want to argue with you, Dante, so I’ve got to get going. I have…work to do at home.”
“Are you sure you want to go?” he asked, his voice so low and utterly sexy she went weak in the knees. “Maybe we could have tea?”
Tea and whatever came with it. No, she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. Not sure at all. Which was why she pulled away from Dante altogether and walked to the door, taking care not to stagger from the sheer weight of what could have gone on between the two of them if she’d let it. For Dante it would have been just another night wit
h another woman. She understood that about him more than she ever had before. But for her it would have been the start of another broken heart—a heart that had not yet mended fully from its first break, she’d just come to realize. “I’m sure, Dante. I’m very sure.” Very sure, and very sad.
CHAPTER SIX
IT HAD been four days since Catherine had last talked to Dante in any way other than medical, and his progress was remarkable, all things considered. He was working hard at his therapy, motivated to push himself towards recovery. To get away from her? she wondered.
At this phase of his recovery her presence wasn’t absolutely necessary unless something went wrong, and nothing was going wrong. So she stayed away from Dante as much as she could. That’s the way it had to be in order to keep their personal differences out of his recovery. Which did concern her. Aggravation could hinder progress, and what they had going between them was definitely aggravating. She didn’t want to impede his remarkable progress in any way.
“He’s actually going to progress to a cane in another few days,” Hans reported. “Very co-operative patient now. I wish everyone worked as hard as Dante does.”
Very co-operative for everyone but her. Dante was playing on that, damn him. Even when they weren’t together, he ended up taking control of every speck of her thoughts. Controlled her thoughts, dictated so many of her movements. Dante Baldassare was creeping his way in, and she lacked the will to defend herself. Did that mean she wanted it? No, of course not! She didn’t, couldn’t…absolutely not! “Very co-operative,” Catherine repeated breathlessly, trying to put the other thought out of her mind. “So, what’s your estimate on his length of stay here, taking into consideration his current level of progress?” Was tomorrow too soon to rush him out the door? she wanted to ask, even though she knew better.
“Another couple of weeks, at the most,” Hans replied. “Probably a few days less than that. He’s coming along well, but he’s not ready to get back into any type of typical physical routine yet, which is what will happen once he’s out of here. Especially with his race schedule for next season. So I think he needs more healing time because of his lifestyle factors.”
