by Dianne Drake
She nodded, feigning interest in the same page of Dante’s chart she’d been staring at for the past five minutes. Another two weeks with Dante? She wasn’t sure how she was going to endure it. “If he’s ready to advance, let’s increase his therapy by one more session a day. Include some strength training in that, and progress him from the crutches he’s using to a quadcane before he goes to a regular cane. And don’t let him talk you into anything else.” She hastily scribbled those orders in the chart, snapped it shut and handed it back to the medical clerk on that ward. “I’ll try and have a look at him before lunch.” Not that she wanted to, but it was her medical duty.
“He’s free right now,” Hans suggested. “We’ve already done his morning session, and I’ve left him in his room. If you’re not busy now…”
Nothing like being cornered. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Hans shook his head. “Can’t. Dante’s free, I’m not.” With that, he trotted off to his next patient, leaving Catherine standing in the hall, looking for someone to buffer her next meeting with Dante. But no one was available.
“You’re being silly,” she muttered as she drug herself to Dante’s room, resisting each and every step along the way. “Just plain silly.”
“I am not!” came the tentative little voice from around the corner.
Catherine stopped first, then took two steps forward and peeked around that corner, at the little boy standing there. Young, probably seven or eight, he had black hair a little on the curly side, deep blue eyes that would be lady-killers in another few years and a grin she recognized almost immediately. He could only be Dante’s nephew, but if this was Gianni, he was the image of his uncle. “You’re not being silly?” she asked him, trying to keep a straight face. The child was already melting her heart, the way he was looking up at her. Dante’s eyes, Dante’s charm.
“No. It’s silly, being silly. I’m not supposed to be.”
“Why is it silly?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She finally gave in to a laugh. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I was the one who was being silly and not you, since you’re not supposed to be.”
“What were you doing that was silly?” he asked.
“Being afraid of someone I shouldn’t be afraid of.”
“Why?” he asked
She exaggerated a big frown for him, then huffed out a dramatic breath. “I don’t know.” Gianni’s serious expression softened, and so did her heart even more. “I guess that is being pretty silly, isn’t it?”
“That’s OK. My papa says sometimes you have to be a little silly. That it makes you feel better.” Finally, he grinned at her. “As long as you’re not silly all the time. Are you?”
“Am I silly all the time?”
Gianni nodded.
“Only when I have to be.” She held out her hand to him. “And your papa is right. Sometimes it does make you feel better. My name’s Catherine Wilder. And you are?”
“Gianni Baldassare,” he said in all seriousness as he shook Catherine’s hand.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Gianni. Welcome to Aeberhard.”
“I’m spending the night here,” he boasted. “With my papa. He said I could.”
“Does he know where you are right now?”
Gianni blushed. “He was busy with Uncle Cristofor and Papa Marco. I went for a walk and I, um…”
“Are you lost?”
He nodded, a slight blush creeping into his cheeks. “Just a little. I thought this was where his suite is, but it isn’t.”
She held out her hand to the boy. “I know you probably aren’t supposed to go with strangers, but your father and I are friends. How about I take you back to his room and sneak you in so he’ll never know that you got lost?”
There wasn’t a scrap of reluctance in the way Gianni latched onto her hand, and he held tight to her as they walked down the hall to Dante’s suite. He did hang back a little at the door, however. Anticipating punishment, perhaps? Or reluctant to admit a mistake?
Catherine bent down and whispered, “Here’s the plan, Gianni. I’ll go in first and start talking to your father. That will distract him, then you can sneak in. Go and sit in the little room off to the side of the entrance and he’ll never know you were gone.” A brilliant plan if you were a child, but Dante would see, as he should. It would be interesting to watch the way he dealt with the boy.
Gianni nodded, pleased with the plan. “Thank you,” he whispered back, then did a most unexpected thing. He gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. Like Dante would do. Actually, like Dante had done on more than one occasion. Had Gianni learned it from Dante—seen Dante do it to other women?
Catherine knocked lightly on the door, waited a moment then entered, taking care to leave the door behind her slightly ajar. As she entered the room, she glanced back once at the cute little face looking in. Dante was a lucky man. Very lucky. “I need to have a look at your ankle,” she announced as she moved forward into the main part of the suite. “I’ve approved you for an extra therapy session every day to help you get your strength back and left an order with Hans to progress you to the quad cane, and I want to make sure you’re ready for the advancement.” She nodded to Cristofor, whom she recognized instantly, glanced briefly at Dante, and immediately fixed her stare on the one she thought was Papa Marco. An older, silver-haired version of Dante. One thing was for sure. The Baldassare men, from the youngest to the oldest, had their fair share of good looks. Lady-killers, one and all. “You’re all welcome to stay. This won’t take a minute.”
“Quad cane?” Dante asked, shaking his head. “Not me. I’ll use a regular cane, or walk without one.”
“And risk reinjury. That’s your choice, Dante. If you don’t want to drive next season…”
“You do like the doctor tells you!” Dante’s father piped up. “If she says you need this quad cane, you need this quad cane.”
Catherine immediately liked the older Baldassare. The man was loud, the man was genuine.
“He gives everybody a hard time this way,” Marco said, extending his hand to Catherine. “I’m Marco, and you must be Dr Wilder. Cristofor has told me all about you.”
Cristofor, not Dante. That caused an unexpected lump in her throat. Nobody in Dante’s family had ever known about their relationship, their engagement. Suddenly she felt excluded again. “Nice to meet you, Mr Baldassare.” She took his hand. Nice grip. Soft. But not soft life Dante’s. A flash of Dante’s hands the first time she’d felt them on her caught her off guard, and she physically shook her head to rid herself of that image.
“Call me Marco. Everybody does.” He twisted to give Dante an exuberant smile and a big wink of approval, then returned his attention to Catherine. “So, if he does his therapy the way you want him to, when can he drive?”
“As in competitively?” she asked, knowing that’s what he meant. “Or for his own personal transportation? Because right now, if he doesn’t follow my orders, his driving will be limited to a wheelchair, and for that, he’s ready right now.”
Marco threw back his head and laughed, then pulled Catherine into his arms and gave her a big hug. “I like this doctor, Dante. She can keep up with you.” He released her, then stepped back for an appraisal. “And she looks good, too. Almost as good as your mama when I first met her. Now, that was a good-looking woman!”
“Papa, I don’t think…” Dante started, but something behind Catherine caught his attention, and he stopped. Then he looked up at her. “Is there something going on I should know about?”
“Such as?” she asked, still a little overwhelmed by Marco’s enthusiastic greeting.
Dante lowered his voice. “Such as why my son is sneaking in behind you?”
Catherine shook her head. “No, there’s nothing to know. Nothing at all.”
“And I can trust that?”
She nodded. “You can trust that, Dante.”
He thought about that for a mo
ment, then nodded. “Fine. So, do your exam.” Dante’s chosen chair was a recliner near the window. He forced the recliner back until his ankle was sufficiently elevated for Catherine’s examination, then shut his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“Protecting Gianni’s dignity. It’s not easy being his age, living the life we do. It’s good he found a champion to protect him.”
“What would you have done to him otherwise?”
He chuckled. “Nothing nearly so frightening as he was anticipating. Fearing the punishment is often worse than the punishment itself.”
“He’s great, Dante. You’re doing a good job with him.”
“He’s doing a good job with me. I love being his father.” He studied her for a moment, then smiled. “See? This isn’t so bad between us, is it?”
Rather than answering Dante, Catherine removed his shoe, then his sock, and had a look at his ankle. On the exterior it seemed fine. No unusual swelling, no redness. The scars were healing nicely—he had two major scars from the surgeries and several tiny ones from the injury itself. “What caused these?” she asked, running her fingertips over the small ones to make sure they were not hot to the touch.
“The car was on fire,” Marco offered. “Dante got out before it exploded, but his ankle was broken and he had to drag himself across the road.”
“But you weren’t burned?” she asked, an image of the accident now forming. Car crashed, Dante injured, trying to escape the fire. It could have so easily gone the other way. Car crashed, Dante injured, not able to escape the fire. That thought caused her hands to tremble, and she immediately withdrew them from his foot.
“Fire retardant suit,” Dante said. “That, and the fact that even with a broken ankle I can be pretty damned fast when I have to be.”
All three Baldassare men laughed at that remark, but Catherine didn’t find it funny in the least. If anything, she was sickened even more by what she’d heard—sickened that they were taking it all so lightly. “And the fact is, running on your ankle like you had to do may well be the reason the injury was so bad initially. Of course, not following doctor’s orders, like you’ve been doing, hasn’t helped. And if you want my opinion, you’ll be lucky to get a full range of motion back if you mess up again.” Or go through another car crash.
“Don’t need a full range. Just enough so I can drive again,” he riposted, although he sounded more serious about it than she’d expected. Men like Dante shrugged these things off. Sustain an injury, move on. Sustain another injury, risk your life, move on.
“And that’s all there is?” she snapped, not intending to. It just slipped out and she couldn’t help it. “Driving? You escape with your life once, and you can’t wait to get back into your car and tempt fate yet another time?” She shook her head in disgust. “I thought you valued life more than that, Dante! For someone who went to school to preserve life, you’ve become reckless…irresponsible with your own.”
“And you care?” He pushed up in the chair and gave his father and brother the signal to leave the room. But Catherine turned, trying to leave before them. He grabbed her by the hand and held onto her, though. Held on tight until they were alone. “What the hell is this about, Catherine?” he snapped.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your lecture. Your attitude. Both are uncalled for, not to mention the fact that what I do with my life is none of your business.”
“Your brother getting killed wasn’t a wake-up call, Dante? Because it should have been.”
“My brother getting killed was one of the unfortunate consequences of racing. It happens. We know that. It’s always a tragedy. But it wasn’t a wake-up call. When you step into the car you take on the risk…”
“Of getting killed. I understand that, Dante.” As a doctor. Especially as a daughter. She’d been the child who’d lived with the fear of those risks. Every day, every night. Just like Gianni did. Dear God, her heart went out to the child. “But what I don’t understand is why. And I don’t understand how you could give up such a noble position in medicine to…to take those risks.” She wrenched her hand from his grasp. “And what about Gianni?”
“Gianni understands racing.”
“For God’s sake, Dante,” she cried. “He’s just a little boy. How can he understand anything?” At that age, she hadn’t. She’d lived with the fear but had never understood why until she had been much older. Which was when she’d started loathing the reason.
“Catherine, what’s this about? What’s this really about?”
She drew in a deep breath, trying to regain control. He was right. This was none of her business. Her responsibility here was to heal him. That’s all. She had no claims, no right to any emotions other than what a patient’s physician might feel. And the way she was acting…silly, and not one of those moments when Dante had told Gianni it was OK to be silly. “What this is about is a doctor who’s concerned that the next time her patient is involved in a car crash, he’ll injure his ankle again, possibly to the point that it can’t be fixed.”
“You’re lying,” he accused, but in a gentle tone.
A tone that had always melted her. She refused to look into his eyes because what she would see would melt her even more. “No, Dante. I’m not. As a doctor, you know that what I’m saying could be the truth. You don’t think like a doctor any more, however.”
“Maybe that’s the case, but that’s not what this has been about, Catherine, even if you’re not willing to admit it.” He glanced around Catherine as Gianni finally crept into the room. Gianni, whose eyes never left Catherine. “And what have you been doing with yourself this past hour?” he asked, even though the answer was clear on the boy’s face.
“Just sitting,” he said, then pointed to the anteroom. “In there.”
“That’s all?”
“I…I met Catherine,” he said, taking care not to divulge the particulars.
Dante glanced up at Catherine, a seductive smile crossing his lips. “My son has excellent taste in women. Women who have a fierce need to protect the men they care for, it seems. Do you think that woman would care to join two of the Baldassare men for dinner tonight—here, in the suite? I understand there is an excellent caterer in the village. Brilliant pastries. Are you still a vegetarian?”
This was the way he always did it. He’d get her worked up, then do something nice, something totally unexpected to catch her off guard. But tonight would be safe, having Gianni there. Admittedly, the thought of a pleasant evening with Dante did seem appealing. Of course, it would be a good way to get their doctor-patient relationship back on track. Talk out the rough patches, work out the details. At least, that’s what she was telling herself when she accepted.
“Around seven?” Dante said. “I know it’s a little early, but one of the Baldassare men has an eight o’clock bedtime.”
“Around seven,” Catherine repeated, then turned and made a rather hasty departure, hoping her shaky knees didn’t give way before she was out in the hall.
“OK, so I knew her in Boston,” Dante admitted to his father. They’d been arguing the subject of Catherine Wilder for the past ten minutes and his father wasn’t going to give up until Dante made a confession.
“And how did you know her?” Marco asked, a very knowing smile sliding to his lips.
“We were medical colleagues. Worked in the same hospital.”
“Baldassare men aren’t just colleagues with beautiful women like that. And that one…she has passion, Dante. Feisty eyes. That’s where the passion shows. It’s for you, perhaps?”
“It’s for her work. She’s driven. Doesn’t want a home, doesn’t want a family. All she wants is her job.” He didn’t remember that hardness in her before but, admittedly, there were a great many things he’d failed to notice about Catherine back then. His loss.
“But a Baldassare man can always make a woman change her mind, eh?”
Except for Cather
ine. There wasn’t a Baldassare man alive who could penetrate that steely fortress, if she didn’t want it penetrated. But he wasn’t going to tell that to his father. It would simply give the old man more of a reason to pursue Catherine as a future daughter-in-law. Which was something that wasn’t going to happen. “A Baldassare man can always make a woman change her mind if the Baldassare man wants to change her mind,” he said, hoping that would be the end of the discussion. But he was wrong.
“Tell me why he wouldn’t…why you wouldn’t.”
“We don’t get along, Papa. That’s all there is to it. Catherine and I do not get along. And we don’t want the same things.”
“But I see that look in her eyes…in your eyes.”
“It’s called frustration, anger.”
Marco laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you were not my son. Baldassare men are wiser than that where a good woman is concerned. So I think you’re trying to fool yourself. Or fool that lady doctor.”
“I think I’m trying to have a conversation about car modifications that can give us better traction when the course is slippery.” He glanced over at Cristofor, who’d positioned himself in the corner in a chair, reading a racing magazine and purposely avoiding the discussion about Catherine. “Which is your department,” he said to his brother.
“Getting better traction on a slippery course?” Cristofor smiled. “Or in a slippery relationship?
“Gianni’s still swimming,” Dante said as Catherine entered the suite. “One of the physical therapy aids took him to the pool a little while ago and I’m afraid that our company, compared to playtime in the swimming pool, didn’t merit a second thought. But he did say to tell the nice lady hello.”
It was the same suite she’d been in hundreds of times, with dozens of different patients. Yet tonight, with Dante, it looked different, more intimate, more…more the place of something other than a casual meal with an old friend, a former lover, a colleague, a patient, or whatever Dante was to be considered. The lights were dimmed. The music playing in the background was faint…Tchaikovsky, she thought. Champagne was chilling, crudités of Belgian endive, teardrop tomatoes, blanched asparagus, fennel bulbs and red peppers were chilled and waiting with a balsamic dip. And if she wasn’t mistaken…She inhaled deeply. “Is that eggplant involtini? And foccacia with savory and picholine olives?” He remembered her favorite meal. They’d dined on it at a little Italian restaurant not far from her flat a few days before he’d left her. “You didn’t have that catered here,” she said, fighting with herself to remain unaffected. The truth was, a good eggplant involtini had gotten Dante everything he’d wanted on more than one occasion. Was that what he had in mind now? Gianni was gone for the evening so bring in the food he knew could seduce her?
