“I thought I’d add my DNA to the kitchen floor to complicate testing if we’re ever falsely accused of a gruesome crime—more deadly than the illegal surgery, though that was pretty gruesome in a non-murderous way. Anyway, don’t you kind of want to hose the floor down with that glowing CSI stuff and see how it looks? Also we should buy a new table. That one...is not food safe.”
Dante listened to this chirpy morning version of Lise—a version he’d not met before—while retrieving a paper towel to staunch the blood flowing from her index finger. “It doesn’t really need stitches,” he said, then added, “And if they came with the glowing stuff, they’d probably only find Mateo’s.”
“If he ever goes missing, pray no one suspects us.”
He knew that despite an early-morning knife accident, she was trying to play with him—something they hadn’t done all week—but he couldn’t find the humor in the situation.
By the time she’d indicted herself with the wrong pronoun, he lost his ability to smile through it. “Me. They’d suspect me. Not you. In fact, let’s not talk about any of that ever again. Forget you were ever involved.” He squeezed her injured finger, willing the blood to staunch faster so he could let go of her.
She sucked in a breath, and he could only identify it as the warning sound of an incoming fight.
“Too tight!” she grunted, but added, “Why are you freaking out?”
“Because it was illegal and even if he’s not going to go talking about it, if it somehow got out, I can accept the loss of my license, but I won’t accept you losing yours.”
“You’re not telling me this because you don’t trust me not to talk about it with someone?”
“Of course not.”
“But we have three...no, four secrets now. Or I do. I’ve no idea how many secrets you have, only that you’re about to have another.”
“Am I?”
She nodded, her smile returning, “I was making breakfast to surprise you.”
“Lousy secret, corazón. I figured that out already.”
“Because I have news.”
He peeked under the paper towel compress and blood started to run from the slice again. “Damn.”
“Told you you’d squeezed it too hard. Opened it up.”
“Your fingers are too tiny and fragile. I don’t know how much pressure I’m actually putting on them.” He reached for her other hand and transferred it to the compress. “Apply pressure. I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
“Don’t you want to hear my news?” she asked, stopping him before he got out of the kitchen.
“Of course I do. But I also want to get some ointment and a bandage on that cut before doing anything else.” And this was all a little much for him this morning. Knife accident. Chirpy-while-injured fiancée. Him without his first sip of coffee in him yet...
And he hated surprises. Since he’d had no idea she was waiting on news, so that counted as a surprise.
Just like finding her on the sofa last night when she should’ve been at her home had been a surprise.
Surprise finger injury.
Surprise cheerful morning girlfriend.
Surprise breakfast for surprise news...
He snagged the kit from the bathroom and jogged back. On his way through, he found her digging in her handbag on the couch for something.
Surprise! Not where he’d left her.
“You didn’t wait.” And she wasn’t maintaining pressure, she was shuffling through her bag.
“Yes, I did. I didn’t chase you down.” She pulled a piece of paper out and turned it to lay face down on the sofa beside her.
Not worth arguing about. Just get this sorted out and get some coffee.
He peeked beneath the compress again and saw only a small bead of blood on the bottom edge of the down-stroke corner, it wasn’t bleeding freely any more. Good enough.
“Is the paper your news?” he asked, spreading a thin layer of antibiotic ointment over the cut.
“Finish the bandage first. I don’t want to get blood on it.”
“How much coffee have you had this morning?” He pulled open the bandage and carefully wrapped it around her finger. Not the right kind of bandage, but it would do for now.
“None. I’m giving up caffeine. Unless it’s in chocolate.”
Depositing the refuse on the table, he plucked the paper from her and flipped it over.
Testing imaging.
Black and white.
He tilted his head and felt his empty stomach turn inward.
Sonogram.
“Explain, please,” he said, his voice sounding unnaturally tight to his own ears.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SONOGRAM MEANT BABY.
The text above the image and the size of the embryo clashed with the fertility window she’d told him a couple of weeks ago.
“I was wrong about not being fertile that first night,” she said, laying her newly bandaged hand over his. “I didn’t mean to lie to you.”
Of course she hadn’t. While he’d been tap-dancing as fast as he could the past week and his entire state of confusion now necessitated more lies to her, she wouldn’t lie to him.
Find something to say.
“Cassie?” he asked.
“She met me at her office at Seaside last night and we worked it out. It was the day Eli went home.”
The chirpy cheer now made sense. She was genuinely happy.
“Is this what happy looks like on you?” she asked suddenly, pulling his thoughts back to where they should’ve been.
“A March baby, eh?” he asked, then smiled and put the image on the table to open his arms to her.
She lunged into his arms and although she felt good against him—might always feel good against him—he could’ve run away.
“I love...”
Oh, no.
He leaned back swiftly. Pregnancy and love declaration within five minutes of one another.
Of course, it had to happen now—after it had finally become clear to him how much better she deserved.
Now he couldn’t back out.
Lise saw the horror appear on Dante’s face and the first words that appeared to her were lies. “I love him or her already. Don’t you?”
Lies. Lies, because she couldn’t bear that look on his face.
And it seemed to work. His brows firmed up and his mouth closed and eventually morphed into a smile. “I need coffee. And then I need to go to the jeweler.”
“Today? You’re going ring-shopping now?”
“I’ve already bought it. They had to size it and I haven’t pick it up yet.”
Between the speed with which he moved away and a tone in his voice, she knew he wasn’t just going to get the ring. He was running away.
“It can wait. I can wait...”
“No. It’s time for us to make this official.” He disappeared off toward the bedroom—a man couldn’t run away properly in his underwear.
She didn’t care about the ring right now. Baby bean on the table beckoned her, and she picked up the grainy image to look some more.
“I’ll be back soon. Eat some breakfast but be careful of your finger. I’ll get a sleeve for you to cover it with on the way home.”
He stopped in front of her, thought about something, then just as soon dismissed it and walked out.
It had taken all of eight minutes from Look, a baby! to Time to go!
But she was pretty sure the almost I love you was what had made him bolt.
* * *
Monday morning Show and Tell. That was what it felt like to Lise.
She had a gorgeous platinum ring with a princess-cut diamond...
She had a gorgeous fiancé with a diamond-cut rear
end...
She had a secret baby growing inside her who’d done nothing so far but make her feel sleepy all the time, something her coworkers had noticed and explained as tiredness due to going at it with Dante all weekend when they should’ve been sleeping.
Sandy moved a mobile X-ray out of the way but positioned it close should it be needed. “Go on, tell me how he proposed.”
Right. Because she should have a romantic story about that. Dante running after her aborted I love you definitely didn’t count as a good element in those kinds of stories.
“It was more...straightforward than show-stopper,” Lise said, trying to buy time as she and Sandy worked to get the surgery ready before Dante or the patient arrived.
“Details.”
“Where’s Marisol?” It was usually the three of them doing this job.
“Called off. Don’t get off the subject. I want details!”
“There’s not a lot to tell. You know Dante, he’s not a flash-mob, lip-synching kind of viral video proposer. He asked, I said yes. Then he gave me this beautiful ring.”
Quickly she wiped down the last surface to free her hands from the terrible burden of sterility, enabling her to fish the chain and ring that dangled from it out of her neckline to show Sandy. And after hearing the gasp every single woman who’d seen the ring had made—every woman except her—she said, “I’ll show you it better after the surgery.”
She didn’t mention how many weeks apart each step in the proposal had been, or the various negotiations that had happened before they’d moved from one step to the next.
She really didn’t mention how when he’d come back with her engagement ring on Saturday, he’d tossed her the velvet box while walking past, with the excuse that he had to get to the club.
And she’d maybe never tell anyone that the only person who had put the engagement ring on her finger had been herself.
She became aware of someone in the scrub bay and turned to see Dante watching them over the sinks. After stashing the ring safely back in her scrub top, she called out to him, “We’re almost ready.”
Then, on her way to the main door, she told Sandy, “I’ll go pick up the patient. Can you re-glove and set up the instrument tray? I’ll swap out the three things I’d like in different places when I get back. We’ll also need the three-pin, set up at around one hundred and thirty-five degrees for a leftward head tilt.”
She was starting to run out of hope, even though it was all she had going for her right now in relation to Dante. The hope that one day Dante would put the ring on her finger. The hope that when they started spending time together again it would get better. Things had gotten a lot better for them between the starting weirdness of their relationship and Mateo’s surgery. They hadn’t bounced back from that, and now there was engagement weirdness on top of it. And pregnancy weirdness? It still felt like she was the only one happy about that.
Well, she and Cassie. Should’ve been her and Dante.
Maybe he’d come round.
* * *
Everyone wanted to see the ring, and Dante hadn’t even seen it on her yet.
Saturday, after he’d given it to her, he’d spent the rest of the day—well, into the wee hours—at the club, first doing paperwork and then just listening. He’d stayed gone long enough for her to go home. Cowardly. And confusing. And all Dante had to explain it to himself was unease with her since Mateo.
Had she told people she was pregnant along with the news of their engagement?
Every time he tried to think about the two of them—or the three of them—it was like there were bees in his head. Angry bees. Some mix of guilt and fear. The guilt part he understood, he’d summoned her into a situation that was dangerous for her, simply because he’d wanted something.
Anger was there too. It went along with the guilt—he was still angry with himself for putting her into danger. But there was something else, and fear was as close as he could come to naming it. Which should be the first step in figuring out how to fix it.
Finding out she was pregnant while still trying to sort himself out only complicated their situation.
The big door opened and Lise wheeled the patient in on his hospital bed. Several other members of the team trailed in behind her and they moved him over to the table and removed the big bed.
Finishing his scrub, he was gowned and went to speak with his patient as the anesthesiologist moved in and started setting up different medicines for the IV.
“Good morning, Mr. Morris. Can you tell me what we’re doing today?”
“The tumor ain’t rotted my brain yet, Doc. We’re taking it out, I hope.”
Dante smiled at the older man. “I hope so too. Don’t worry, you’re in good hands. My team’s the best around.”
The first push of sedative hit in the next moment, and their patient’s eyes fell shut.
Lise buzzed out of the scrub bay—he could tell and he had his back to her. In the last few weeks he’d learned to identify her by her walk, and even sometimes when she was very quiet he could tell when she’d come near him.
Wonder if that’d show up on an MRI?
Time to get it together. Stop thinking about the incomprehensible moodiness he’d been feeling ever since he’d got exactly what he wanted.
The anesthesiologist indicated Mr. Morris had reached the right level of unconsciousness. Time to begin.
Pretend it was three months ago, don’t focus on what happened three days ago.
“Bradshaw.” He called her by her last name—something he’d stopped doing since they’d been together. It helped him focus.
“Yes, Dr. Valentino?”
He started issuing orders, starting with a call for the clippers to come out.
Without a word she got the razor from a drawer beside the table and turned it on but waited for him to indicate precisely where he wanted the head shaved.
Bradshaw.
Bradshaw.
Valentino. Soon...
It was starting to feel like they populated half the city.
He could understand why she’d gone to Cassie for this, but the idea of his sister-in-law ministering to his wife and child set current sizzling over his head and down his spine.
She wasn’t even an OB/GYN. And Lise would go to a better hospital. Seaside was okay, but Buena Vista had better facilities.
Once it was all out in the open—engagement, pregnancy—she could go to an OB within the facility.
Trimming done, Lise took the next step on her own, slathering an antiseptic wash over the man’s head and part of the way down his face, painting him a strange shade of blue-green.
The sterile drapes came next, and she offered the scalpel he preferred to start with.
After the skin incision was made, the drill was immediately in his hand before he asked.
A quick inspection of the bit size she’d chosen and he saw it was the size he’d have requested.
Inside the upper right parietal quadrant, he carefully bored a hole and handed the drill back. The craniotomy came next.
She was the best damned surgical nurse he’d ever worked with. Maybe that was part of the draw. She anticipated his needs in the OR, she even anticipated them in bed. The more time they spent together outside those two activities, the more she seemed to see. She knew about the club. She knew he’d engaged in illegal activities to provide for his family as a young man. He’d almost told her what he and Mateo had been up to when they’d been busted years ago. Stupid instinct, but she made that open manner of living look so easy. What she didn’t realize was that some people—people like him—couldn’t do that without losing everything.
When she learned enough, she’d eventually have to leave him. She’d already started to pick up on that too—why else would she plainly state that she wasn’t
going to ask what they’d done that meant Mateo had wound up in juvie? Self-preservation. She didn’t want it to factor in.
They’d finally finished the craniotomy to expose the dura covering the brain.
“It’s discolored,” she whispered, those two words letting him know she knew exactly what they were going to find.
Malignancy. They’d known they were going after a meningioma, but so few of those tumors were ever malignant...
All he did was nod, not diagnosing aloud before he confirmed it with his own eyes.
Time for the finer instruments.
She raised a pole with the loops on it that would make it easier to see what he was doing when he got in there right up against the delicate organ.
They’d been in the OR for a couple of hours, and in a few more he’d have to find the family and deliver bad news.
Which was why Valentinos shouldn’t treat other Valentinos. If anything went wrong...
The violence that rose in him at the idea of something happening to Lise made his hand twitch. She’d been just about to place his preferred bipolar forceps in his hand—so he’d been away from the patient at the time—but that kind of undesired, uncontrolled movement spawned by a fleeting idea that something could happen to her? He’d only ever had that stomach-plummeting sensation from fear when thinking of family and losing them.
And now he had it about Lise.
He waited a moment, not trusting his hand or really any part of his body for the moment.
She shifted at his side, and he looked down at her, meeting her concerned eyes. There was a connection between them and it comforted him. It steadied him.
Even though he was the biggest danger to her.
* * *
The Inferno doormen didn’t know her, but Lise had money and a valid ID showing her to be of drinking age. She also had a ring on her finger that should’ve let her through the back, but she paid the cover anyway.
Dante wasn’t answering her calls anymore.
He hadn’t spent any time with her outside of surgery since he’d flung the engagement ring at her a week ago.
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