Every step she took into the club, her insides shook. The past three days, all the morning sickness she hadn’t been having had hit at once. If she threw up on him, he had it coming.
Dante didn’t know any of that because after Monday’s grueling craniotomy and tumor removal, he’d “loaned” her back to the hospital. No explanation, he’d just gotten her out of his sight, whether she wanted to go or not.
It hadn’t taken her that long to work out what was going on. He’d changed his mind, he just hadn’t bothered to tell her about it.
What she didn’t know was whether he’d changed his mind before or after she’d told him about the baby. The night before, when he’d found her asleep on the sofa, things had been really good. They’d both wanted a family, it had been the driving force of their coming together, so her pregnancy didn’t feel like a valid reason for him to lose it like this.
If he was backing out now, he could darn well give her an explanation.
“Hey,” she called, and flagged down the server who’d supplied her with a steady mojito stream that first night.
It took some persuading and flashing her ring as proof, but she found herself standing before Dante’s office door for what felt like an hour. She was only certain time was still moving because of the waves of nausea hitting her.
This could go one of two ways, she figured. She could just leave him without being willing to try again. Or she could confront him and he could realize that this was all flaming out, and change.
Actually letting those words take shape in her head made her want to run away.
No. She didn’t need to run, she’d done nothing wrong—except for maybe overlooking warning signs for far too long. That had been wrong, and stupid, and a rookie error.
But he’d talk to her first—she deserved that.
After? She didn’t want to think about after.
She was strong. Knew how to adapt. She could be enough for this child. None of her plans ever went off without hitches, and she always muddled through.
“Just do it,” she whispered under her breath, stopping the mental pep talk.
It’s better to know.
It was better to know. The truth may not always be easy or pretty, but it was healthier.
Dropping her hand onto the knob, she pushed her way right in.
Dante’s office looked precisely like as she’d pictured: another uncomfortable sofa—which Dante currently lay on with a tumbler of booze in one hand—plain walls, file cabinets, a heavy wooden desk, and a few musical instruments strewn about.
He preferred this to being with her?
Another wave of nausea hit, stronger than the others. She took two steps to a trash can and bent over it, ready for another wave to turn her inside out.
There would be no convincing him or changing him.
“Lise?” He said her name but didn’t come to help her, despite her obvious distress,
Once more her stomach lurched, but she made herself stand up straight.
“You do remember me, I see.”
She’d practiced the things to say all day long, but she’d never discovered a magic order, a manner, or the right something that would make Imaginary Dante react in a way that saved their little family.
Even Imaginary Dante refused to play along anymore.
“Much as I drink, I do still remember you.”
“So this is it, then?” she asked, breathing slowly and deeply as her body seemed ready to try and rid her of her supper. Despite the difficulty that came with talking in this condition, she turned her head to look at him. “This is how your marriage scheme ends? With you hiding in a bar, drinking, and me trying to interpret your silence every hour of the day, trying to find some way to make sense of it?”
“Just get to what you wanted to say,” Dante said, and she could see he wasn’t drunk—he watched her like a doctor, ready to help, though he never made any move toward her.
“I deserve to know why.” She cried the words, shaking her head. “You’ve been different since Mateo. Why? Did he die and you decided not to tell me so I couldn’t be involved?”
“He’s alive,” Dante muttered, and took another drink of the amber liquid. “That’s not what you want to do here. You want to yell, but it won’t change anything. You’ll still be angry in the end. Trust me.”
“Why in the name of all that’s holy would I trust you over anything?”
“Good point.”
“That’s it? Good point? That’s all you’re going to say?”
Dante plowed a hand through his hair. “What else is there? You’re hurt but you originally wanted to be a single parent. You know you can do it alone.”
“So you’re rejecting both of us? Let me guess, she’ll be born outside wedlock, so she won’t be a real Valentino, much like your brothers’ wives.”
“I never said that. But us splitting up is the right decision. You raising the baby is the right decision. I’ll provide financially anything either of you need, but we can’t raise this child together.”
“You still haven’t said why. You don’t want me now. I get it. I don’t know what I did. And the funny thing is that this was after I discovered your weakness: you can’t lie during sex. But I can’t even bring that kryptonite into play with you avoiding me.”
“You don’t know every time I lie to you, Lise. Did you work out that I manipulated you into agreeing to this hare-brained scheme?”
“How did you do that? With sex? Conversation? Spending time with me? That’s not manipulation, it’s a relationship.”
“I handed you a bloody, traumatized baby the week after I learned that you had no family and it scared you to think about what might happen to your children if something happened to you. So I made that happen, and counted on your goodness to take you exactly where I wanted you to go.”
The words he said made sense as words, but they still didn’t want to settle into a pattern she could understand. “You made the accident happen?”
“I saw Eli as an opportunity and handed him to you. Then it was just a matter of saying the right thing when you came to me heartbroken over him.”
“You’re lying. You wouldn’t do that. No one would do that!” She felt the food rising again.
“Mateo and I—”
“No!” she yelled. “Don’t you say another word.”
“I saw a chance to unburden myself—to take some of the red out of my books with Mateo—and I used you without even a fleeting thought for your welfare.”
She spun on heel and began pacing his office, her knees itching with the desire to run, and every piece of her heart wanting to plug her ears and not listen.
“I picked you and decided to marry to keep my family from worrying about me. That—keeping up appearances—was ninety-seven percent of my reasoning.”
“Was the other three percent sex?”
“We have outstanding chemistry.”
Lise stopped pacing in front of him and held out her left hand, fingers extended, flashing the engagement ring weighing down her third finger.
“What?”
“Take it back. I don’t even know why you gave it to me to start with.”
She’d put it on every time, but if he took it off once, maybe she’d be able to accept this as done, and this was not simply some kind of horrible misunderstanding.
And maybe he’d really realize what he was doing by her making him take it off her finger, because that stupid thought continued to rattle around in her mind. She’d always known she shouldn’t trust him, but he’d made her, and now she wanted to. She wanted to throw him a lifeline, or just a darned hint, and if nothing else, the ring was the best hint she had to offer.
Dante looked at her hand, unmoving, while her heart and stomach ganged up on her.
&
nbsp; After a tense moment his voice lost any emotion again, and he said, “Keep it.”
A bitter laugh tore from her, “I never wanted it. I only demanded it as a way to bide time before telling anyone about us. Because I was afraid of this.” She wrenched the ring violently from her finger and dropped it straight into his tumbler of booze.
He flinched back then, and slammed the glass onto the nearest table.
“I knew this could never work out, but I still wanted it to. Enough that I walked right toward the cliffs, telling myself that you deserved the benefit of the doubt.”
She felt herself breathing faster, trying not to vomit.
Just wrap it up.
He’d probably only lie to her if she actually got an explanation from him anyway. Finish it.
“Transfer me back to the hospital permanently, would you? Off Neurosurgery—any surgical unit will work. Just do it fast, or Monday I’m quitting, and you know how important it is for a single parent to have a stable job.” She marched for the door, but stopped and turned midway to come back to him, digging keys, a garage door opener, and her sonogram image from her bag. She dropped them on the sofa beside him.
“I’m no good for you, Lise. You’ll see. This is for the best. I know you’ll be a good mother.”
“Shut up, Dante. Crawl back into your bottle and your pretend life. Or, you know, talk to someone you trust—someone clearly not me, ironically. And if no such person exists, get a dog. Because whatever it is that’s wrong with you...it’s a cancer.”
* * *
Monday morning Lise reported to her first day as a regular RN on the general surgery floor at Seaside Hospital. Having contacts at each hospital had facilitated a quick transfer. At least here she could visit Cassie and Saoirse. Kiri would’ve no doubt been kind to her had she stayed at Buena Vista, but meeting Dante would always have been a possibility around the next corner. The other Valentinos would be easier to run into.
She wouldn’t be in surgery for the foreseeable future, until she got a new surgical nurse position. If she decided to do that.
It wasn’t the same kind of high-technology facility that she was used to at Buena Vista, but Kiri’s help had gotten her out of Dante’s territory, which was worth the step down in skill and pay.
Because Dante had taken time off and she was his employee, there weren’t any laws being violated by her not giving two weeks’ notice. Now, if she could just avoid the brothers who roamed these halls, she might make it through this.
That plan had lasted until Wednesday afternoon when she’d come across Santiago and Saoirse in Emergency, and the pregnant Irish woman had cornered her to check on her.
“I can’t talk about this,” Lise said immediately. “He’s not my business anymore. He doesn’t want us around, so I just needed to be out of Buena Vista. Here, the only people who’ll know my story aren’t likely to put it on the rumor mill.”
Saoirse touched her arm and Lise shrugged back. “Please don’t be kind to me right now, I’ll cry. It’s not a good thing to do at a new job.”
“If you need anything, even if you two aren’t together anymore, that baby is still family and you have every right to hold onto that. Keep in touch, and if you do need anything you call me and Santi first. You’re always welcome at our house.”
“Dante wouldn’t be happy.”
“So what? He won’t be there. And he’s—”
“On vacation,” Lise finished up. “I heard. Caribbean or somewhere.”
“He didn’t go on vacation. He’s just not answering phone calls or speaking to anyone. Rafe went over to make sure he wasn’t dead, and got a bottle chucked at his head. We only found out you guys had split after you called Kiri.”
So he was self-medicating with booze. What reason did he have to be upset? He didn’t want them.
“I’ll think about it. I still have two hours left on my shift—don’t want to lose my job, so I’d better go.”
Working was preferable to speaking with his lovely family. That led to thinking about him, and that just wouldn’t work for her right now.
Working was much better.
She should put her CV in at other local hospitals to see if she could get a surgical nurse position somewhere that she didn’t have to run into his family.
Maybe she should aim for Ft. Lauderdale. Or Anchorage.
* * *
Lise stepped into the bodega’s back room on inventory night.
“I’m giving him some space. I don’t like being target practice.” Rafe’s voice boomed like a wall that surrounded them and kept her frozen at the door.
She paused at the door, giving them an opening to tell her to leave.
They all quieted and turned to look at her, but no one ordered her to go.
“I can see this time. Dark sunglasses outside means less sun-blindness when I come into this dark room.”
“He’s not here, Lise,” Alejandro said, his voice gentle.
“Neither are the other Valentinos, it looks like. Everyone okay?”
“They’re fine. At home, cooking something,” Santiago answered, then turned the question back on her. “Are you okay?”
She wasn’t going to lie to him, but she also didn’t think she should just answer that question truthfully. “I’m here to count. I had a talk with your lovely wife and she reminded me of something important.”
“What’s that?”
She took the fourth clipboard ledger with pen, and went to the fourth area to start looking for the applicable items. “That I should maintain contact with the family of my child. I’m not here to talk about Dante, and only because he’s not here. I don’t have any family of my own. And it’s an immense comfort to me to keep in mind that one of you could take and raise my baby if something ever happened to me. So that’s why...I’m here.”
She stumbled over the last bit, and felt even more nervous than she sounded, trying to put the words together.
“Of course we would do that,” Rafe said, his words gruff. “We can even have it put into writing if you wish. If it’d give you peace of mind.”
She nodded quickly. “It would. Thank you. I appreciate that a lot. I don’t know the gender yet, or if that matters to who might want to do the raising. Just discuss amongst yourselves and let me know, and I’ll get papers drawn up. And thank you again.”
“Gender doesn’t matter. And use me and Cassandra. We’ll gladly sign. And you’re using insect repellent, right? She told you to do that.”
“Religiously. Thank you for that too.”
The door rocked open and Dante trundled in, a flask in one hand.
Lise froze, then felt herself shrinking, trying to hide behind the flats of canned goods.
She didn’t want him to see her. If Saoirse hadn’t said that he was avoiding everyone, she would’ve just called!
Could she get to the store door and out that way to avoid going past him?
He began speaking in loud and somewhat slurred Spanish, and she understood nothing he said. She heard her own heart beating in her ears, deafening.
The rest of the room had gone quiet too, and Dante finally picked up on it. He paused, cocked his head to the side, and then turned and looked straight at Lise.
Her pulse shot up to speeds high enough to make her feel light-headed.
Carefully, she laid down the clipboard and reached for her purse. Slow and easy, as if moving in front of a wild, angry animal.
“Por que are you aquí?” He shouted the Spanglish question at her, and she knew those words.
“I was just here to...” Her thundering heart wasn’t about fear, she realized. She was angry. Just angry right now. “I was asking for volunteers to raise your child in case something happens to me. Is that all right with you? What are you doing here? Really think you
can count helpfully when you’re seeing double?”
Dante groaned loudly and paced away from her. Again the language switches happened, back and forth, and at a speed and volume that only let her know one thing: he wasn’t sad any more, he was angry, too. Angry! The nerve of that man!
And not a damned bit of it made sense.
There was something about ruining his life, and something else about his club.
She could’ve laughed, only she didn’t know if the brothers would pick up on it or not. She also really could’ve enjoyed beaning him on the head with a can of tomatillos, but he was doing a good enough job of killing brain cells without her helping.
“I was here first, doofus. You can’t stalk someone by going somewhere first when you never expected them to show up. And? Don’t worry, I’m leaving anyway. I’m going to go to this club I heard of, The Inferno? See if I can’t find an idiotic musician to sleep with!”
Dante opened his mouth and then closed it again.
Clearly, she could only out-yell him when he was drunk out of his mind and she couldn’t understand most of what he said.
The last thing she heard from inside was Rafe asking, “What club are you talking about? You own a club?”
* * *
Dante watched through bleary eyes as Lise left. Then Rafe was saying something he couldn’t work out.
Club?
He wasn’t sober enough for this conversation. Was it always going to hurt like this?
Turning, he headed for the door and got it cracked open before an arm came around his neck and dragged him back inside.
When Rafe released him, all three of his brothers blocked his path and shoved him down onto one of the crates.
“What’s going on with you? You fall for her, bring her to meet us, get her pregnant, then dump her?” Rafe spat out one question after another. And what could Dante say? Yes. He’d done those things.
“But you don’t want to feel broken up, so you crawled into a bottle of bourbon?” Alejandro asked. His youngest brother thought he knew best now.
“Someone get coffee going,” Rafe said, snagging Dante’s bottle and handing it to Santiago as he dragged a chair over to sit in front of him. “Spill it. If there’s a problem, we’ll work out how to fix it.”
Dante's Shock Proposal Page 16