This Time for Keeps (Doctors of Rittenhouse Square Book 3)

by Jill Blake

  Slipping off her shoes, she perched on a high stool at the central island and sipped the cherry-scented wine. Watching Luca was a sheer pleasure. Shirt sleeves rolled up, wearing one of Marc’s old chef’s aprons over his jeans, he wielded a knife with casual expertise. Tomatoes, basil, and olives took their turn on the chopping block. The aroma of olive oil and garlic permeated the kitchen.

  “Where did you learn to cook?”

  “My mother made sure we all knew how.” He whisked together balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard, added crushed garlic and spices, then slowly drizzled in some olive oil. “Equal opportunity education, she called it. To make sure Elena, Teresa, and I all grew up self-sufficient. Too many mammoni in Italy these days.”

  “Too many what?”

  “Mammoni. Mama’s boys,” he clarified, winking.

  Well, he certainly wasn’t that. As far as his mother was concerned, though, Isabelle had a hard time reconciling the memory of the woman she’d met in Italy with the picture Luca painted of a mother who didn’t believe in special treatment for her son just because he was a boy. Maria Santoro had struck her as quite traditional, and not particularly friendly. Maybe she’d sensed that Isabelle was merely a temporary diversion for her son. In any case, unless Isabelle planned to vacation in southern Italy again, and do the wine tour that included a stop at the Santoro family vineyard, she was unlikely to meet Luca’s mother again. So this whole line of speculation was moot.

  Luca dressed the pre-washed arugula with freshly shaved parmesan and balsamic vinaigrette, then dumped dry spaghetti into a pot of boiling water.

  “By the time we’re done with the salad, the pasta should be ready,” he said. “Come. Bring your wine.”

  She left her shoes beneath the stool and followed him into the dining room. While he’d unloaded the groceries earlier, she had set the table.

  He served the salad and topped off her glass. “Salute.”

  Her stomach growled. She offered an apologetic smile before diving into the food.

  If the salad was delicious, the pasta was sublime. She practically inhaled it. Flavors burst on her tongue, the mozzarella melting in her mouth, the herbs and garlic perfectly balanced, the wine complementing the dish with a hint of fruit and chocolate. She couldn’t remember when she had enjoyed a meal more.

  After a while, she became aware of Luca’s gaze. He had stopped eating, and was leaning back in his chair, a small smile playing on his lips as he watched her.

  She slowed down, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

  “Don’t stop,” he said. “You’re too thin. We have to work on fattening you up.”

  She blinked. Her eyes strayed to the bank of windows on the opposite wall. She’d forgotten to draw the curtains, and now that night had fallen, she could see her reflection in the glass.

  It had been a while since she’d noticed how she looked. Not that she’d ever paid much attention to her appearance. Scrubs had been her uniform of choice until this past year, when she’d had to invest in some business suits to match her new position.

  She’d never considered herself thin, but now that Luca pointed it out, she realized that she had lost weight. Her appetite had pretty much disappeared in the months after the shooting, and half the time an entire day would go by before she remembered to eat.

  A far cry from the woman she’d once been: a foodie long before the rise and fall of the term itself, roping family and friends into trying out the newest restaurants, Tivo’ing her favorite Food Network shows to watch while running on the treadmill, planning to one day bike her way through Napa so she could stop at all the wineries and gorge herself on truffles and pâté at all her favorite chefs’ eateries. Of course, she’d missed the boat on that one. Foie gras was now illegal in California.

  It all seemed like something from a different life, a different person. She pushed aside her sudden melancholy when Luca rose and started clearing the table.

  “Sounds like you’re taking a lot for granted,” she said, getting up to help. “Like you’re expecting to cook more than just this one meal.”

  He glanced at her sideways, as if to gauge her reaction. “You enjoyed it, no?”

  She replied with a rueful smile. “It was delicious. Thank you.”

  “Bene. Then there is nothing to argue about.”

  She set down her plate in the sink and returned to the dining room for more. Forgetting herself for a moment, she grabbed the glasses with her right hand and the nearly empty bottle of wine with her left.

  In the split second it took for the bottle to slip from her grasp and shatter on the hardwood floor, she froze. Staring at the trickle of red spreading between shards of jagged glass, she flashed back to another scene, the splatter of blood on an exam room floor, the crack of a 9mm firing at close range again and again. The familiar feeling of panic welled up in her chest and she started to shake.

  Luca’s hurried footsteps and low voice barely registered. He rescued the wineglasses from her trembling fingers, set them back on the table, and wrapped an arm around her.

  “Come, you’re barefoot.” He bent, and before she had a chance to understand what he was doing, let alone protest, he hooked his other arm beneath her knees and lifted her, carrying her to the living room. He deposited her gently on the sofa and brushed a finger over her cheek. “You okay?”

  She couldn’t speak. Her throat felt like it was closing up.

  He sat on the sofa and pulled her into his lap, cradling the back of her head against his chest. For a long time, they sat like that, his hand sweeping slowly up and down her back, his voice a soothing unintelligible murmur against her ear, his heart a reassuring steady beat beneath her hand.

  After a while, she stirred. His hand stilled. “What happened?”

  She pulled away, sliding off his lap and out of the protective circle of his arms. “The bottle slipped.”

  “No,” he said, watching as she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I meant with you. What happened?”

  She rested her forehead on her knees and closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing. “I sometimes get panic attacks.”

  “Is that what this was?”

  She shrugged, let the silence stretch. Then she sighed and opened her eyes. Light from the kitchen and dining room spilled over, but not enough to dispel the shadows in the corners of the room. “It’s getting better. Loud sounds still get to me sometimes.”

  He shifted closer, his thigh a warm, solid presence against her hip. “Is there anything that can help?”

  She turned her face toward him, her temple still resting on her knees. “I’m seeing a therapist. I tried medication for a while, but it made me too tired.”

  “How long have you had these…panic attacks?”

  “Eight, nine months. It got really bad around Thanksgiving. Kate dragged me to the therapist.” She took another deep breath. “I guess you could say it’s still a work in progress.”

  He lifted a hand and hesitated before touching her hair. Gently, he tucked a loose strand behind her exposed ear, and trailed his fingers down her cheek. His thumb stroked along her jaw. “Will you be okay now if I go clean up?”

  “I should…”

  “No, you rest. Just tell me where I can find a broom.”

  ###

  She wasn’t aware that she was screaming. In her dreams, she wasn’t able to make a sound. The disembodied screams came from around her, echoing inside her head. Blood flowed from the corpse on the exam table, pooling and mixing with Isabelle’s own blood, which was dripping steadily down her limp arm.

  She felt strong arms wrap around her, and Luca’s voice, raspy from sleep, murmuring in her ear. Even as the remnants of her nightmare lingered on, she knew it was him. He’d insisted on staying the night, sleeping in her guestroom, while she’d tossed and turned in her own bed.

  Pressing against the warm solid wall of his chest, she familiarized herself anew with the texture of his skin, the rough stubbl
e across his cheeks and jaw, the faint smell of sandalwood and musky male. She shifted against him, desperate to get closer, to burrow inside him, to absorb his strength, his firm self-assurance.

  Something nudged against her thigh. She ran her hands down his back and flanks, encountering nothing but naked skin. Completely naked. Oh, God. She rocked her pelvis against him, and felt him hardening, throbbing in response.

  He caught her hands and brought them back up, pressing them against his chest. “We’ll get to that, cara, but not tonight.”

  “Please,” she whispered.

  His lips brushed her temple. “I want you, you must know that. But you have to want me too.”

  “I do.” Unable to free her hands, she arched her hips up and rubbed against his erection.

  “Not out of fear, Bella, but out of desire. Capisci?”

  It took a long time to fall back asleep. But when she did, safe and secure in his arms, she slept soundly, dreamlessly, the first undisturbed sleep she’d had in a very long time.

  Chapter 10

  Isabelle woke up alone. The sheets were cool, though her pillow still bore the indentation of Luca’s head and the faint whiff of sandalwood.

  So it wasn’t a dream. Luca was here. Or at least he had been during the night.

  She wondered where he was now. Had he decided to hightail it out of here? Get away from the crazy woman with her sundry demons and emotional scars? She couldn’t blame him if he did disappear, writing her off as too damaged to be worth the trouble. If her career had been too much for him to handle a few years ago, then the requisite shift from full-time physician to part-time biotech consultant, with all its associated broken dreams and self-doubt and bitterness, was for sure more than he would want to deal with.

  She dragged herself out of bed. Ten minutes later she emerged from the master bath freshly showered, her damp hair finger-combed into a careless pony-tail. She pulled on frayed jeans and an ancient college T-shirt, not bothering with a bra.

  Halfway to the kitchen, she heard a clatter. Her pulse accelerated. She took a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of freshly ground espresso beans.

  Okay, not a burglar. Luca must still be here. Her heart gave a glad little leap. She debated returning to the bedroom for a sexier, or at least more complete outfit, a slick of lip gloss, something, then decided against it.

  Luca stood at the counter, sipping from a mug, using his free hand to scroll through messages on his phone. For a moment, Isabelle hovered in the doorway, admiring his profile: hair gleaming wet, dark stubble over a square jaw, shirt casually unbuttoned to reveal a sprinkling of hair that arrowed down over tight abs, jeans riding low on lean hips and clinging to muscular thighs.

  She remembered asking him, back in Italy, how a university professor managed to keep so fit. He’d winked roguishly, and told her that he enjoyed playing many sports, his favorite being fare l’amore. She’d wondered at the time how many lucky coeds had engaged in that particular sport with him, and was it even legal or ethical for a professor to hook up with a student? It was Luca’s sister Teresa who’d punctured Isabelle’s jealous fantasy by revealing how few women there were in Luca’s field, and later mentioning that Luca was an avid soccer player and rower. Which accounted not only for the physique, Isabelle supposed, but also for the calluses on his hands.

  The hiss of the brushed steel espresso maker recalled Isabelle to the present. She watched as a twin trickle of fragrant brew dripped into a waiting cup. In the four years she’d lived here, the only time the device saw any use was when her brother Marc came by. He even kept his own stash of Lavazza in the cabinet, which Luca had apparently found. While Isabelle loved good coffee, she’d never had the time or patience to grind her own beans or learn how to use the Rancilio Silvia machine that Marc had left behind.

  She must have moved or made some noise that alerted Luca to her presence. One minute he was swiping his thumb across the iPhone screen, and the next he was looking up with a smile that warmed her to her very toes.

  “Buongiorno, Bella.”

  “Morning.” She paused, unsure what to say. Should she even mention last night?

  He solved the problem by pressing a button that completed the coffee extraction process. “We forgot to get milk yesterday,” he said. “So no cappuccino, I’m afraid. You want sugar?”

  “Please.” She watched as he dumped in a couple teaspoons and stirred.

  “Careful, it’s hot.”

  Their fingers brushed as she accepted the cup and electricity shot up her arm. “Thanks.”

  “So, what’s on your agenda today?”

  She took a sip and sighed with pleasure. “I’ve got a bunch of reports to review for work. We’re gearing up to file an NDA soon, and there’s still a lot of paperwork that needs to be done.”

  “What’s an NDA?”

  “New drug application. Basically a summary of all the information we have on our product to date. Like how it works, how it’s made, the pharmacokinetics and toxicity profile, the clinical trial results, the proposed labeling. We submit it to the FDA for review, and hopefully they’ll approve it, so we can move forward with production and marketing.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Certainly can be. The whole process can take eight to twelve years, from preclinical testing to the point where a drug actually comes on the market. Most never make it. Luckily, with this one I came on board near the end, as phase 3 trials were wrapping up. Once I help pull things together for the NDA, I get to go back and work on a few other projects we have in the pipeline that are just starting clinical trials. It’s pretty cool to see things from the development end. Totally different perspective. Everything that’s so frustrating when you’re treating patients, things you can’t cure, like advanced stages of cancer—is fair game in research. What we’re preparing to submit for FDA approval is really amazing. Ground-breaking, actually. It’s called adoptive immunotherapy, and.…” She ground to a halt. “You can’t possibly be interested in hearing this.”

  “On the contrary, Bella. Anything that makes you so excited is definitely something I want to hear. But first things first.”

  He eased the empty cup out of her hands and set it beside his own on the counter. Then he closed the distance between them. Running his thumb along her jaw, he settled his other hand on her hip. She swayed closer, stomach quivering at the feel of his hardening erection through the layers of denim. His mouth descended over hers, and she sighed, half in pleasure, half in relief, as his tongue swept inside. She felt weightless, buoyed by the heat of his response, the convulsive clenching of his fingers on her hip and bottom. He cupped the back of her head with his other hand, angling for better access as the kiss went on and on.

  When they finally broke apart, her heart was racing and she had to force herself to release her grip on his shirt. It took a bit longer for the tension in his muscles to ease. His lips quirked and he gave her backside a gentle squeeze before letting go.

  “Now that, Bella, is the way to start a morning.” He stepped back and picked up her cup. “More coffee?”

  She blinked, bemused by his retreat. A quick glance down showed that he was still aroused. She shook her head and watched as he busied himself washing their cups, then dumping the used coffee grounds and rinsing out the porta-filter. He finished wiping down the counter before facing her again and clearing his throat.

  “So, you were saying about this new immunotherapy…?”

  She slipped onto a stool at the central island and stared at her hands, splayed atop the Blue Bahia granite. It helped focus her thoughts. “Adoptive immunotherapy. Right. It’s genetic engineering, basically. We take a type of immune cell, called a killer T-cell, and reprogram it to attack cancer cells, in this case ovarian cancer.”

  “How?”

  She glanced at his face, to check if he was truly interested or simply being polite. He raised a brow and she flushed, dropping her gaze back to her hands. “The first step is figuring out which prot
eins on the surface of ovarian tumor cells are unique. Then we modify an antigen receptor on the T-cell so it can recognize and bind that protein and trigger the T-cell to kill the tumor cell. The beauty of it is that the modified T-cells won’t touch any cell that doesn’t express that unique protein, so we can really target the therapy without harming normal tissue.”

  “Sounds clever.”

  “It is. Though in the past, when it was tried with various blood cancers, there were problems. Like toxicity when dying cancer cells release massive amounts of breakdown products, leading to kidney failure. And delivery systems for solid tumors weren’t optimal. Plus there was the question of safety if you just left the modified killer T-cells in circulation after completing therapy.”

  “I take it you’ve solved these problems?”

  “Pretty much. Hopefully the FDA will agree.”

  “How long before you find out?”

  She watched as he slowly buttoned up his shirt. “Six, twelve months, if we’re lucky.”

  “That long?” He tucked the shirt tails into his jeans. “And in the meantime…?”

  She shrugged. “We work on other projects.”

  “So you don’t see patients at all now?”

  She stiffened. It was a natural question, but one that had her feeling defensive all over again. Her brother Marc, who did gynecologic oncology in the same hospital where she’d worked, kept raising the issue in the hopes that she’d change her mind. As did her dermatologist sister, and her father, though he’d long ago given up on the idea of Isabelle joining his private ob/gyn practice. He had retired several years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that he’d finally transferred his remaining equity to his younger partners.

  “Bella?”

  “No.” She forced herself to relax. “The only patients I see these days are on paper, in clinical trials.”

  “You don’t miss it?”

  She shrugged.

  He either didn’t notice her discomfort or simply ignored it. “Samantha said you’re a good doctor.”