Lise lifted the baby back out of the crib just to hold him, and once more confirmed the instructions. “Thank you, Doctor. Do you know how they found out his name?”
“Someone from the mother’s workplace recognized the car on the highway and called the police to check after she got to work.”
“Does he have family coming for him? His father?”
“That I don’t know, but I hope so.” Dr. Dhawan repeated the instructions, and then slipped out.
“I hope your daddy comes, Elijah. Eli. I think it’s Eli...” She pulled her flashlight from her pocket and got ready to check his pupils.
He’d sleep through this while the sedative was still in his system, but she harbored no hope that he’d sleep through the neuro checks she’d keep doing after it wore off. She’d take an inconsolable infant over one that quietly slipped away because his nurse didn’t want to wake him.
She would still hope they’d find his daddy soon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BY TWO IN the afternoon, Lise had settled into Eli’s hospital room. He’d been admitted for overnight observation, and none of his family had yet materialized for him. She couldn’t leave.
He went through periods now and then when his volume decreased, and it seemed like he might be calming down, but the faintest noise would set him off again.
Every half hour she tried to get him to eat something or take a bottle.
Milk, refused. Apple juice, refused. She even tried chocolate milk, and he didn’t want that either.
Nearing midnight, long after she’d begun needing to swipe her cheeks before the unit nurses came to check on him, lying back in a stiff leather recliner, Eli finally gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep on her chest.
Afraid to wake him, she simply lay with him, holding on, giving whatever comfort his tiny, bruised body and soul would accept in slumber.
A couple of hours later at shift change, the new RN came to check on him and informed Lise that an aunt had been located in Tennessee and was expected to arrive in the morning.
In the silence as she waited out the night, one encompassing fear ricocheted through her.
What if he’d had no family to come for him?
What if Dante hadn’t wanted a neurological nurse to stay with him?
What if he’d been her child?
Would there have been someone to hold him while he sobbed and screamed his way through the trauma?
* * *
Lise knocked hard on Dante’s front door. She’d rung the bell twice already, maybe her knuckles would resound through the beach house enough to get him to the door.
Even if she looked like death, Lise couldn’t bring herself to care. She needed to see him.
She waited. It felt like hours, but probably wasn’t even a whole minute.
What could be taking so long?
Giving in to compulsion, she mashed the doorbell a third time.
No patience left, she hopped off his front porch and barreled around the large house to the veranda, praying those doors were open.
He was probably sleeping in. Sleeping!
Without even checking once to see how Eli was doing after handing the bloody baby off to her about twenty-five hours ago. She wanted to smack Dante and then wrap his arms around her so she could get that feeling again—like he’d held her that night on the beach.
Ducking around the breakfast table, she made it to the French doors and tried the knobs.
Locked. Every part of her ached—body, heart, mind—and he couldn’t even answer the door.
She knocked again and yelled his name this time.
Was he drunk in there?
Dead?
In bed with someone he’d picked up at the club last night?
This was stupid.
Energy depleted, she spun away from the doors. Spotting a large, closed beach umbrella leaning against the house, she grabbed it, opened it, and stepped off the veranda to bring the handle down into the sand with all her might. She’d wait, but she’d do it in shade. It had been too hard a night to sit here and burn up—the sun was already higher than the horizon and it was August.
She’d just bent to sit on the step when she heard the French doors open.
“Lise? For God’s sake, stay at one door until someone—”
Lise heard his voice and turned to look back at the doors she’d been rattling. Dante stood there in the open door, wearing nothing but boxers.
* * *
Dante struggled to see in the bright sunshine at his back door. When sleepy eyes adjusted, irritation died in his throat.
Crying. She’d been crying. And she was wearing her old scrubs—but this was Friday, and they didn’t work Fridays.
“She died?” The question came from her as a cry. “When you operated? She died? What happened?”
She was still awake from yesterday? The realization settled in his gut like lead.
“Did you have the baby all night?”
“Yes. His aunt drove down from Nashville and came straight to the hospital, got there an hour ago.” Her lower lip quivered while she spoke. “He wouldn’t stop crying. He wouldn’t eat or drink anything. They had to sedate him to examine him, he couldn’t stop crying!”
Her eyes grew rounder and rounder as she spoke, tears stood in her eyes and she blinked rapidly to try and dispel it.
Even without a drop of food in his stomach, Dante could’ve vomited. What had he been thinking?
Opportunity had presented itself, a way to subtly urge Lise to come around to his way of thinking, reinforce the idea that it would be valuable for her children to have a father, not just a sperm donor. A way to recommend himself without saying another word.
And he hadn’t hesitated, even though it had involved exploiting something personal about her past that hurt her, that shined a light on the fact that she had no family.
It should’ve been two or three hours max, not twenty-four. Not a night of emotional torture.
Still only in his boxers, Dante made a direct line for her across the veranda and pulled her against him.
“She died?” she croaked against his chest, like she couldn’t quite believe it. He should have words for her but his throat refused to work, to make words. So he nodded against her head and cleared his throat. This was it, something he’d hoped would never happen: fresh, potent shame—one of two things he could feel guilty over.
After a night like that she deserved an answer.
He tried again. “She died on the table. We were there nearly twelve hours, trying to get her skull back together and remove glass and splintered bone from where the debris was cutting in. I don’t know how she lasted that long. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Lise. I didn’t think you’d still be with him at that time, and Dr. Dhawan told me he’d had no neurological symptoms. So I left.”
He felt her tears wetting his bare chest, squeezed her tighter, and steered her back into the house.
She was crying.
Dios!
The sofa was the closest thing to sit her down on, but it should’ve been like her sofa. What comfort could be gotten from this hard leather thing?
Still, he sat with her, tugging her back against him.
No more words came that might help. He could engineer an experience designed to play on her weaknesses and manipulate her into doing what he wanted, but he couldn’t think of a single thing that would make it better afterward.
In silence they sat, the soft sniffling now in the crook of his neck gutting him over and over.
“Tell me,” he finally said when her tears didn’t seem near to stopping. “Tell me everything that happened.”
So I can fix it.
She looked up at him, eyes red and swollen, and it all began to tumble out.
Her heartbreak for little Eli. How she’d prayed for his mother the whole night as she’d sat holding him, afraid to move because he’d finally fallen asleep. The relief she’d felt when Aunt Nikki had arrived and he’d finally taken a bottle and eaten some oatmeal.
The crush of guilt that had bloomed in her when—while Aunt Nikki had fed and held Eli so he could feel her presence—Lise had asked for an update on the mother and found out that she’d died.
Guilt wasn’t a strong enough word for that kind of mistake. Apologies tumbled from her lips again and he knew she wasn’t apologizing to him.
Nothing could make this better for them.
Every part of the account pummeled him, a series of body blows. By the time she’d purged the hours of sadness, frustration, pity and fear, all he could do was what she’d tried to do for that baby. Hold her. Offer his pathetic, useless wish for her comfort.
Heedless of his inappropriate state of dress, he pulled her into his lap and kissed her face, then wound the wet, salty kisses to her mouth.
Like lightning hitting dried wood, the spark erupted and Lise caught his face, holding his mouth to hers. No sweet, badly aimed smooch this time. She leaned into it, hungry, starved, and bleeding need into the blistering kiss. An ache exploded in him like he’d never experienced, summoning his own guilt back to the front, into that part of his brain housing his often neglected conscience.
Her salt-tinged kisses stung.
“No. No puedo, ángel...”
“Please.” She spoke English, making him realize that he’d slipped into Spanish on her.
“I can’t. Not right now.”
“But that’s what I need. Please?”
In that moment he couldn’t tell what would make him less of a bastard—giving her the comfort she wanted or refusing to because she was too vulnerable to really comprehend it.
Another look into her eyes, and he got his answer. Her need wasn’t for sex. It was for solace.
“Come to bed. We’ll sleep.” He stroked her hair back, but kept one arm anchored around her shoulders to keep her close. “You’re exhausted. You can curl up with me. It’ll be better after you sleep.”
“You don’t want me right now?” she asked, then added, “Too snotty?”
He smiled at that, but only to recognize the hint of humor he still saw in her through the heartache.
“Too heartbroken for you and that baby,” he whispered.
And too heartbroken over what he’d done.
His words seemed to resonate with her. She sniffed, rubbed her bleary eyes, and climbed off his lap. “Okay, but don’t let go of me.”
“I promise.”
The bedroom wasn’t far, and he steered her there after a stop to lock up the veranda doors.
The bed he’d just crawled out of would still be warm, and now that the tears had stopped she looked like she could collapse at any second, like the only thing keeping her upright was stress.
He sat her on the edge, then knelt down to get her shoes off, then lifted her feet to encourage her into the bed in her scrubs.
Planting her hands on the mattress, she shifted her feet from his grasp. “No.”
“You don’t want to sleep?”
In answer, she leaned on her elbows and lifted her bottom, tugging the scrub bottoms down to her thighs. The will to complete the task left her, or maybe her strength just failed. She flopped onto her back and lifted her knees to him. “Can you?”
Help her get comfortable.
Dante tried not to stare, not to ogle her, not to let that spark of desire in them flare back up. He was supposed to be comforting her, undoing the damage he’d done. This wasn’t him pulling the clothes off his lover, not yet. Even if he wasn’t looking now, his mind kept replaying the glimpse he’d allowed himself of the clingy pink panties encasing her curves and the way the color complemented her pale skin.
Not the time for those thoughts.
Solace. Not sex.
Once he slid the bottoms down, she lifted her hands to him and he helped her sit back up.
Before he could ease her back into the bed, she released his hands and whisked the scrub top off as well and tossed it onto the floor.
If he knew one thing about women, he knew that bra was coming off next.
His intentions right now were good but shaky. If he stayed standing there, letting her disrobe before his eyes...
He wasn’t strong enough for that.
Leaning onto the bed beside her, he levered himself up to the top of the bed so that the sight of delightfully large breasts he’d glimpsed encased in the matching pink bra couldn’t tear down his composure or his resistance. The view of her back was temptation enough... The dip of her waist... The flare of her hips.
“Do you want a T-shirt or something?”
“No.” She reached behind her and slid up the bed toward him and his flagging restraint, every inch making heavy dents in his limping morality.
“Lise, we’re going to sleep.”
She half turned toward him, baring those glorious breasts to him and completely derailing his thought process.
“I want skin,” she said, her voice soft and tired. “I need to feel skin. It could be your back. I just need contact.”
The weariness in her voice was enough to tear his gaze away from the curves upon curves.
Lying back, he opened his arms and she crawled into them, settling her body at his side and tucking her face against his neck.
Through the guilt, and even through the sexual fog that dampened his ability to think—in the back of his mind he still felt it—that exultant preen that wanted to crow his victory.
He tamped it down but couldn’t fail to acknowledge he’d won. She’d marry him now.
She’d say yes, and he’d figure out some way to make this right.
Later.
After she slept enough to stop trembling.
* * *
The last remnants of light faded the twilight sky to dark blue, and Dante looked back down at Lise sleeping on his chest. She lay sprawled, facedown across him, her cheek pressed into his shoulder, face turned up so he’d been able to spend the last hour studying her face in sleep as the light faded from the room.
Peaceful, so peaceful he’d delayed waking her, even though her stomach had been growling intermittently for at least as long as he’d been awake.
He didn’t even want to know how long she’d gone without eating because of him, but somehow doubted that she’d eaten anything while in the hospital, trying to take care of the inconsolable baby, and he knew she hadn’t since he’d been trying to take care of an inconsolable Lise.
And he’d be further damned if she got through to another calendar day without eating on his watch.
Carefully, wanting her to sleep until the last possible minute, he plucked his phone from the bedside table, and in a few clicks had a pizza ordered for delivery.
An hour later, after the doorbell rang through the house without waking her, he made his stealthy trip to the door. Dropping the delivery on a table in the living room, he made his way back to her, eased into the bed and touched her arm. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
Light shone through the open door, letting him see the instant consciousness returned to her. Lise’s pale blue eyes peeked open, and she stretched hard, then scooted closer to him. “You smell like pizza.”
“It’s my new cologne.” He smiled at her sleepy face, doing his best to be gentle with her and not let his libido steer this conversation. He had to get her out of this bed if he was going to get a line on how she was doing before he complicated things.
He eased off the bed and moved toward the door. “Get up, then. I put some clothes on the bureau for you.”
It felt good just taking care of her. It was the second ti
me he’d felt compelled to do that, and neither time had been as altruistic as it would’ve been had she been the one doing the caring.
“I don’t want to get up.”
Dante stopped at the door and turned back to look at her. The light spilling into the dark room was like a spotlight—her pale skin glowed, and there was a lot to see. She’d sat up, and the sheet pooled around her waist. The breasts he’d been strenuously avoiding actually seeing stood proudly from her slender shoulders. Everything he’d been imagining since he’d seen her in that red dress.
His neck started to sweat. He had to drag his gaze away before his body responded.
“You have to eat something.” It all came out a little rougher than he wanted, but it felt like every word was a struggle even to take shape in his mind.
When he looked at her again he realized he’d somehow moved all the way back to the bed, only stopping when the beaded edge of the mattress pressed into his shin.
“No.”
With the grunt of an old man standing from too comfortable a chair, Dante tried to right the course of his thoughts—which were going right where she was leading. Back to bed. On to sex.
“Well, you have to.”
Not his best. He might as well just do whatever she wanted right now—or whatever she thought she wanted. She needed to eat something.
“Later.”
Tearing his gaze away again, he focused on the ceiling and his ability to think improved. Slightly. “You have to put those things away. They’re hypnotic.”
Things? He could practically feel his IQ dropping.
“So if I sway from side to side, like a metronome, will you become suggestible so I can take advantage of you? I’ve tried everything else.”
Dante couldn’t not laugh at her question, but he closed his eyes to keep from looking—not that he couldn’t picture it just fine on his own.
Then he felt the edge of the mattress moving rhythmically against his leg.
“You’re doing it, aren’t you?”
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