Return of the Rebel Surgeon

by Connie Cox

  All rational thought fled, including her own earlier decision to confront Cole and demand he either acknowledge Adrian or go away.

  Every nerve fiber screamed to protect herself, protect her heart, protect her carefully constructed and controlled world. “Later. It’s been a long night—a long week. We’ll talk later.” Later, with the safety of a phone line between them, it wouldn’t hurt so much, would it?

  She looked to David for support.

  “This conversation is long overdue, Isabella,” David said.

  David’s pronouncement felt like the ultimate betrayal.

  Cole crossed his arms, looking imposing. “We can do this in private or we can do it right here.”

  How could she expose those old wounds to the man who had created them? No, she would not let him call the shots.

  She crossed her arms as well, but in self-protection rather than in an attempt to intimidate. “Or we can not do it at all. After all these years, there’s no need to discuss anything.”

  As her voice quavered, she acknowledged self-preservation quickly overtaking rationality.

  “Isabella...” David took a glance back at Adrian sitting in the dark, fondling his scarf “...you need to get the air cleared. For Adrian’s sake as well as your own.”

  David had never deserted her before. But now he was taking Cole’s side. Still, they were sobering words. David was half right—for Adrian’s sake.

  Every boy needed a father, and her boy needed one more than most.

  She would do anything for her son—even cut out her own heart and hand it over on a silver platter. “Fine. We’ll talk now.” Emotionally overwhelmed, she walked in a daze to the parking lot.

  Inside Cole’s car, Bella felt claustrophobic. Very precisely, Cole drove to the hotel, his neck and shoulders stiff, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Even the heavy air felt permeated with Cole’s anger.

  How could he not have known? She’d left messages on his cellphone, sent letters through the mail, pleaded with his friends to have him call her, right up to the night before the wedding.

  But her blistering anger had burnt out many years ago, leaving behind only ashes. At least that was what she’d told herself. Apparently, she had only banked the embers. Now she could feel a slow burn flicker to life deep in her core.

  As soon as he’d parked, he stalked around the car and opened the door for her. He didn’t put out his hand to assist her but she wouldn’t have taken it if he had. This was not a one-sided story.

  While he didn’t touch her, Cole stayed close enough that she could feel the fury coming off his skin in waves. At the bank of elevators, he punched in his floor number without discussion, and escorted Bella to his suite.

  At his door, she thought about turning around and leaving, but she wasn’t that girl who couldn’t stand up for herself anymore. If confrontation was what Cole wanted, confrontation was what he would get.

  * * *

  Once inside his rooms, Cole raked his hand through his hair. Rage throbbed at his temples. The effort he exerted to control his temper made his throat ache with the strain.

  Bella stood with her back to the door, her hands strangling her purse strap as if she wished it was his neck in her fists. She held her chin high, daring him to challenge her. Her stance was strong, her legs long on her petite frame.

  Her legs. What a distraction.

  How could he hate her and want her at the same time?

  No, he didn’t hate her, even though he’d tried all those years ago. What did he feel for her? Right now, he would go with desire and leave it at that.

  But he’d left her before and it had been the wrong thing to do.

  “I don’t know where to start.” He paced the length of his suite, putting distance between them. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he paced back, closing the space between them.

  When Isabella flinched, he took a tighter hold on himself and backed off a half dozen steps, giving her plenty of breathing room.

  Her jaw jutted and her lips pressed together, such a sharp contrast to the softness of her upswept hair beginning to fall in wisps down her neck. Why didn’t she say something? Anything? What would it take to ease the tightness of her lips?

  The distracting urge to cover her mouth with his own could easily turn into an obsession.

  “I would never hurt you, no matter how angry I become. Don’t you know that about me?” he asked in a restrained, hoarse whisper.

  Still she looked wary. “What does either of us know about the other anymore?”

  I know you make me burn hotter than I’ve ever burnt before. That she was the mother of his child made him want her even more. “Did you know you were carrying my baby when you married him?”

  “You know I did, Cole. That was the reason I married David. It was in the letters.” The hard stare she gave him seared him to the bone. “You didn’t read them, did you?”

  Cole thought back to all the letters he had torn to shreds without opening. And to that final terse letter he’d sent her. Even after all these years, he remembered every word he’d written: “Everything between us is in the past. You’ve made your choice. Now live with it and leave me alone to make my own life.” He’d enclosed a copy of the engagement announcement in the letter to emphasize his point, then dropped it into the mailbox, swearing never to look back.

  Fury flooded him—a self-consuming inferno in his veins—as understanding flooded through him. Not knowing about his son was all his own fault.

  He ached as if all the anger in his heart had turned into razor-sharp shards of glass and was now being carried with his blood supply.

  He had done this to himself—and to Bella and his son.

  The pain was excruciating. He hurt so bad, he couldn’t hold himself up anymore. Leaning his back against the wall, he admitted, “I tore them up without reading them.”

  Bella asked again that all-encompassing question she had asked earlier before they’d danced. “Why, Cole?”

  “I had no idea you could possibly be pregnant. We were careful.” As soon as he’d said it, he knew they hadn’t been. In their youth they hadn’t understood that coitus interruptus had a very high failure rate as birth control, especially for teenage boys.

  “Not always.” Bella gave him a lopsided smile, remembering, too, no doubt. “You didn’t read even one? Weren’t you even curious about what I had to say?”

  “I was too—” Nothing but truth here. After all these years, they both deserved nothing but the unvarnished truth. “I was too wounded. I was struggling, trying to find my way in a strange place when I’d never even been outside New Orleans before. When I wasn’t studying, I was waiting tables. I didn’t have the time or energy to grieve for our relationship and I thought that’s all those letters would be. Just a rehash of why you didn’t love me anymore.”

  He reflected on all the phone messages he’d erased without listening to them first, the friends from home he’d berated when they’d even tried to bring up Bella’s name. He’d even broken ties with his best friend when that friend had insisted Cole really needed to call Bella.

  “Did David know before you married?” Cole twisted his neck back and forth and shrugged his shoulders, trying to stop the terrible ache that throbbed from the base of his skull, radiated down his arm and made his fingertips buzz. “Did he know you were carrying my child?”

  “Of course he did. What kind of person do you think I am? Did you think I would try to fool him?” Bella’s normally stoic face flushed with uncharacteristic passion.

  The quiet, reserved Bella he used to know had so rarely shown high emotion, except in bed. As reticent as she was in public, she was bold and magnificent in private—or at least she had been at eighteen. Did she still get a rosy glow all over when she was satisfied, or was she too jaded now? And why was Cole thinking of those bygone days?

  “So David married you to cover for my mistake.” A roaring vortex of possessiveness rushed through him at the thought of a
ny man claiming his son—or his woman. He turned to stare out the window to avoid glaring at her. He could see Bella’s reflection in the dark glass, her face stark in shadows and light.

  “My son is not a mistake.”

  “Of course he’s not. The mistake was my sloppy form of birth control. I take full responsibility.”

  “It’s a bit late for that.” Anger edged Bella’s controlled voice.

  He didn’t need to see her reflection in the glass to know she moved toward him. He could feel it in the tingling down his spine.

  “You turn your back on me, Cole? You shut me out now? You’re the one who wanted this conversation.”

  He whipped around to face her, knowing he couldn’t hide the emotions on his face—and not wanting to anymore. She should see his anger for wanting and not having, his anguish over leaving her, his soul-grieving destitution for all he’d missed. “What I want is my son.”

  Bella. Magnificent in her fury. So full of emotion it glittered in her amethyst eyes, daring him to answer her challenge. Could there be any stronger aphrodisiac?

  Bella braced her hands on her hips. “He is my son. All you’ve done is contribute the sperm.”

  The stark reality of Bella’s statement hit Cole like a glove to the face.

  Since he’d seen that engagement announcement, Cole had never desired a family, never wanted the ties, the responsibility, the permanence. Now, he craved that bond so strongly he felt he’d never be whole and healed again without it. Heaven help him, that craving wasn’t only for healing. It was for Bella, in every form a man could crave a woman.

  He swallowed, trying to get a handle on his passions. “So you made a few attempts then let it drop? Why, Bella? Why didn’t you at least contact me after the divorce?”

  “If you really want to discuss this, Cole, why don’t we sit, like civilized people?”

  “Civilized. It’s been a while since anyone called my civility into question. But, then, it’s been a while since I’ve felt this feral.” He turned and stood next to a chair while gesturing toward the couch. “Won’t you please take a seat? Is that civil enough for an Allante?”

  Bella took steps toward the couch, but continued to stand as if she was ready to bolt at any second, just like she’d done when she’d been a skittish teenager. That kind of vulnerability had called forth the protector in him while it called the bully in others.

  She looked him straight in the eye. “You always did take offense where none was meant. I’d have thought you would have gotten past that by now.”

  He laughed at himself, a short, tight burst. “Me, too. You bring out the old reactions in me.”

  But that wasn’t true. Those had been the reactions of a boy. Now his reactions were man-size.

  He ached for her like he had never ached for another woman, even after all these years. This was no teenage lust. This was a full-grown yearning, much deeper, much more intense. Bella was the woman who evoked his deepest desires.

  Now he understood why he had never been able to find that elusive satisfaction to his yearning. He’d been looking in all the wrong places.

  * * *

  Isabella sat on the edge of her seat, too uptight to bend her spine even the slightest degree. With all the adrenaline rushing through her, she had to force herself to stay seated, though she wanted to pace. But her steps had carried her closer and closer to Cole even while her mind told her body to walk away.

  Cole, folded into a chair too small for his large frame, watched every move she made. The intensity in his dark brown eyes turned them to polished obsidian.

  The caregiver in her wanted to relieve the pain etched into his face, smooth the furrows of his brow. The female in her wanted to run her hand along the sharp plane of his cheek, feel the roughness of the shadow of beard that emphasized his maleness.

  Instead, she clenched her fingers even tighter, feeling the leather of her purse straps bite into her hand.

  Why, after all this time, did she still feel the pull between them? It had always been this way, since the first time she’d spotted him wearing scuffed, secondhand shoes, his hair too long and his eyes hinting of a world she had never seen before—the ultimate bad boy. He’d been sitting alone in the school cafeteria, eating the mediocre food as if he hadn’t eaten in days, daring anyone and everyone to come close to him—except her.

  She had felt she had no choice but to go to him. Exactly like she felt now—but now she knew how dangerous he could be for her.

  Taking over every inch of chair space, he looked just as out of place now—and just as hungry. The way he looked at her, she felt like a kitten thrown into a starving lion’s den.

  She had thought with each of them taking a seat, she wouldn’t feel so overpowered by his size. But it wasn’t his physical size—it was the massiveness of his presence that made her feel so

  diminutive.

  Cole emanated an essence so electric that she felt like a radical electron being pushed and pulled around his orbit.

  What did she feel for Cole Lassiter? Anger wasn’t the right emotion.

  She looked at him, really looked at him, trying to find that boy she’d known beneath the man’s exterior, the wild boy who would be tamed only by her. The soulful boy who would listen for hours when everyone else thought she had nothing to say. The knightly boy who’d treated her like a precious princess when everyone else found her mousy and dull.

  It definitely wasn’t in the cast of his jaw or the clench of his mouth, once so determined but now so grim.

  She searched his eyes for a flicker of who he used to be—of who they used to be.

  He blinked, letting loose the full extent of his emotions, making her shiver.

  Fifteen years ago, Cole’s passion could carry her beyond her everyday world to a place of ecstasy. His eyes still flashed with that same promise, that same passion, that same desire that used to make her feel so alive.

  As he stared at her right now, she felt the same way.

  She had too many emotions roiling around to sort them out right now. And soon Cole would be gone, so why should she expend the energy? She would answer his questions, he would leave, and that would be the end of this unexpected encounter.

  “You wanted to talk?” she challenged him. “Talk.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw as he leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and tapped his fingertips together.

  The way he held his neck and shoulders, the angle was off. She’d seen that posture before. It meant pain, physical pain. No doubt this emotionally painful conversation intensified it.

  More gently, she said, “No secrets between us. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  He stopped tapping. “What about the engagement? One Saturday night I kissed you goodbye, expecting to have a long-distance relationship. Two weeks later I got a letter with your engagement notice in it. You never even gave me a chance.”

  She gave him an ironic smile. “I had my first bout of morning sickness the morning you left. My mind-body studies would say that was my way of reacting to losing you.”

  “Turn off the therapist, Bella. You’re using it as a barrier between us.”

  She flushed, one part anger at being castigated by Cole, two parts shame at Cole being right.

  “Who do you think you are, Cole Lassiter, to tell me what to do?” What should have sounded like rebellious independence sounded petulant instead.

  “I’m the father of your child. You owe me answers.” His eyes reflected his need to know, his passion for the truth.

  Hadn’t they wounded each other enough with their failure to communicate on so many levels? Wasn’t it time to acknowledge and take responsibility for the scars they had left on each other’s lives?

  She licked her lips, wishing she had a glass of water to hide behind.

  Cole’s eyes focused on her mouth, so intense she had to put her fingers to her lips to break his stare. Under her fingertips, her lips buzzed with sensitivity. He could command a r
esponse without even touching her.

  She swallowed her own response, so thick in her throat, and told him the truth as best she could. “I didn’t realize I was pregnant until later that week. I thought I had food poisoning or something.” She’d been so naive back then. “My father is the one who figured it out. He called David’s mother and that’s when the problems began.”

  She had been so confused and so embarrassed. Her gentle, loving, overwhelmed father who had tried to nurture and guide his motherless girl-child the best he could had been just as baffled about what to do next as she had been.

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I had no way to contact you those first few days. You were traveling and you didn’t have a phone.” She had been so confused, so scared.

  Cole’s fisted fingers clenched tight. “David’s mother found me. The engagement announcement was waiting for me when I checked into my dorm.”

  “I don’t know how she knew where to send the letter, or even why she would think she should send it to you. I was so careful to—”

  “To hide your socially unacceptable boyfriend.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be seeing you. Every time I snuck out to stay with you, I told my father I was staying with girlfriends.”

  Isabella felt her face flush as Cole’s accusation hit home. Seeing Cole on the sly had felt wild and rebellious when she had always been so meek and biddable. Stolen moments with Cole had been the most exhilarating time of her young life. In fact, being around him now still made her feel that way.

  “Yeah, I know.” He shifted then looked her in the eye. “I guess something good came out of all that social class prejudice. I used all your friends’ snide remarks and insults to spur me on so I could prove I was as good as anyone else. Could that be why you agreed to the engagement, Bella? I wasn’t good enough?”

  “No! Of all the things I was unsure of, that was never one of them.” But deep down Bella questioned herself. While she’d never consciously thought about Cole’s inability to care for her and baby, had her subconscious reasoned it out?