Italian Doctor, Full-Time Father

by Dianne Drake

  He shifted his gaze off her to the outside. And straightened his shoulders. “Unfortunate accident.”

  “Remember, I talked to your other doctor,” she said, her voice gentle. “I do know what happened. You went home too early, did too many things he’d told you not to do. It’s not easy being laid up the way you are, and I understand that. But you can’t keep going against medical advice.”

  “Just one person’s opinion.”

  “Two, actually. Two very good surgeons—the original one who repaired you and the one who repaired you after you reinjured yourself. Both dismissed you as a patient when you went against their orders.” A symptom of his fast lifestyle? Fast cars, fast women? Did he think he was impervious to the inevitable repercussions?

  Her father had thought that, and it had gotten him killed.

  “It was taking too long. I should have been up and about much sooner. They weren’t pushing me hard enough, and I don’t have months and months to spend on recovery. I need it…faster.”

  “Is that a medical diagnosis?” she asked. “Because, as I recall, you were a general surgeon, not an orthopedic or rehabilitation specialist.”

  “You know what they say…that doctors make the worst patients.”

  “Except you’re a race-car driver who’s on the verge of losing a career if he doesn’t follow his doctor’s orders. It’s just that critical now. If you injure yourself again, there’s no guarantee you’ll ever walk normally, Dante. More than that, you might lose your ability to drive competitively. And while I’m not going so far as to say these were self-inflicted injuries, they were caused because you didn’t listen. Or you thought you knew more than your doctors did.”

  “They wanted me flat in bed, or in a wheel-chair, for a ridiculous amount of time. I don’t have time for that.”

  “So let me guess. You got up, went home, resumed normal activities immediately…”

  “An entire week after surgery. They replace hips and send patients home, walking, in three days.”

  “And a shattered ankle repair is far more complicated than a total hip replacement.” Catherine sighed impatiently. “You’re the patient here, Dante. Not the doctor. You’re going to have to act like a patient if you expect us to do our best work.”

  “I thought I was the guest.”

  In spite of herself, Catherine laughed. “Were you always this contentious?”

  He chuckled, then smiled. “That was one of the things that attracted you to me. You even said so on a few occasions. I believe you said you liked your men with some backbone.”

  “Well, if I did, then I was blinded by…other things.” She bit back a smile of her own. “Because it’s not a very attractive feature on you now.” That was a lie, actually. Before, she’d never argued back with him. But now she liked the little tingle that arguing with Dante caused. Although he didn’t need to know that.

  “Or you’re not admitting it. You do have the side of you that tends to hold things back, or see them the way you think they should be. I’m willing to bet that hasn’t changed.”

  That little bit of lightness that had crept into her mood suddenly sobered, good and hard. This was getting too close now, too personal, too uncomfortable. Well, she wouldn’t have it. Absolutely would not have it! “What hasn’t changed is that I’m the doctor, you’re the patient, and I want to give you the best medical treatment I know how to give. And to be honest, Dante, I’m concerned about your medical progress. You’re not co-operative and you’re not a good patient.” Nice, safe ground. She felt better here. “Put all that together and I’m worried that in another few days you’ll up and do what you’ve done before, go against medical advice and injure yourself again. You’re only six days postoperative right now. The hospital in Italy sent you out here as fast as they could because of your checkered history, according to the director of orthopedics. He said he hoped we would have better luck with you and, frankly, I’m worried about that. So, you were a bright doctor. What would you suggest? What would you do if you were the doctor treating a stubborn, rebellious patient such as yourself?”

  “You know, I meant to ask you…how did you come to be director here? You don’t have that many years in the field. Seems to me Dr Aeberhard, with his reputation, might have gone after someone with more experience. And you, if I’m correct, would have had only three or four years in actual practice after your residency, which doesn’t seem like much when it comes to taking over admin duties at a clinic such as this.”

  “Medical admin only,” she corrected. The day-to-day activities of the patient care they offered. “Max still manages the business aspects. And rather than getting involved in an argument over whether or not I have the proper qualifications for my position, which is what you were trying to start, probably as a way to shift attention off the fact that you’re a very bad patient and don’t want to talk about it, let’s get back to what I was talking about. Your attitude. And here’s what I’ve decided. You’ll follow orders—all medical orders—for as long as you’re here.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What were you expecting? Sedatives and restraints to tie you to the bed? We don’t do that here, Dante. What we do is treat patients who want to be treated. If we see that they don’t, we have a long waiting list and not nearly enough beds to accommodate that, so we ask them to leave. So if you want to recover, you’ll follow the protocol we outline for you. And if you don’t, we’ll hire a limousine service that will take you into Bern. From there…well, in truth, I don’t care what you do or where you go.” Catherine stood. “Now, I have an appointment with another patient. You’re welcome to stay here and relax, return to your suite, go to the spa…whatever you’d like to do. Today is free for you. Therapy will start tomorrow.” With that, she started to walk away.

  Halfway to the entrance, Dante caught up to her, wheeling alongside her. “I need to be in form to race by spring,” he said.

  “Then you have a long way to go.”

  “I looked for you, Catherine.”

  That stopped her on the spot, and she spun around to face him. He’d actually looked for her? “When?” she asked, trying not to sound too giddy.

  “Shortly after my first surgery.”

  A tiny jolt of disappointment surged through her. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to hear—that he’d searched shortly after they’d called it quits, or maybe some time quite a while later, when he’d come to his senses and realized what he’d left behind. Perhaps those were words she would have liked hearing, but what she had heard made better sense, especially coming from someone like Dante. He’d looked for her only after he’d needed her medical expertise. Not because he’d needed her. “You thought that I might have something to say about the kind of therapy you’d need? Is that why you tried to find me?” Even though she knew the truth, she still wanted to hear something else, silly as that seemed.

  “Something like that. I always respected your opinion. You were a good doctor, and I wanted to see what you might recommend…”

  Well, there it was. The true pronouncement that their past was merely an insignificant blip in Dante’s life, just as she’d suspected. Nothing that mattered to him. He couldn’t have made that more clear. Catherine bent down to his wheel-chair, placed her hands flat on the armrests and stared him straight in the eyes. “You may have respected my opinion, Dante, but you never respected me.”

  “When did this happen to you, Catherine?” he asked, his dark eyes suddenly gleaming. What was that in them? Mischief?

  “When did what happen?”

  “This need to challenge every little detail.” He patted the armrests on his wheelchair. “If I called these armrests, you’d call them something else, then put it in the medical chart that way to make it so.” He paused, studied her expression for a moment—an expression she was fighting to hold blank—then continued. “It’s attractive on you, actually. And to be honest, I don’t know if that’s the way you were when we were together and I simply didn’t n
otice, or if it’s something new. Either way, it’s a good attitude for you. Sexy as hell.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath and straightened up. This banter was blatantly sexual between them, and wrong. She knew where it could lead, what it could do. And it was so damn easy to fall victim to the Dante effect, which was where she was headed again, if she wasn’t careful. “You’re good, Dante. I’ll give you credit where it’s due.”

  “Good? At what?”

  He arched his eyebrows, trying to feign innocence, but Catherine knew that expression. Knew it because she’d fallen for it so many times. “Is this how you do it? How you charm your women into bed?” How he’d charmed her into bed so soon, so easily, after their first meeting?

  “Is it working?”

  Catherine shook her head as she felt her resistance trickling away. Time to regain control. Time to fight off the Dante effect. “Maybe you being here is a coincidence, Dante. I don’t think you’d lie to me about that. But you’re not going to make light of what we do here, and you’re not going to sabotage your recovery and charm your way out of it. I don’t have time for that, and don’t have time for you if that’s how you’re going to behave.” So now the test of wills was on, and Dante thought he would win. Well, not if she had anything to do with it. “And while we’re on the subject, I don’t like the fact that you’re trying to go against my authority. You may not respect me as a person, and that’s fine, but you owe me professional respect, and if you can’t agree to that, you’ll have your dismissal papers within the hour. Ultimately, I can make that decision.”

  “It’s a pity…” he replied, then didn’t finish the sentence. Rather, he spun around and wheeled out the solarium door, leaving her dangling, waiting to find out what, exactly, the pity was.

  Catherine waited until he was halfway down the way into the hall before she took the bait, chased after him, then asked, “What’s a pity?”

  “That your marriage hasn’t mellowed you more.”

  “I’m not married,” she said, totally unaffected. “Not any more.”

  Dante arched his eyebrows, the odd expression on his face a precursor to something she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear him say. But instead of replying, retorting or otherwise offering some kind of sarcastic remark, which was what she expected from him, Dante merely wheeled away, leaving her stunned by his lack of response.

  “Damn,” he muttered, slamming shut the door to his suite. The game had been fun when she’d been off limits. Admittedly, he’d felt a little twinge of jealousy when he’d learned she was Mrs Wilder, and not Miss Brannon. But that was for old time’s sake, he supposed. And he’d been enjoying this little game of flirtation he’d been putting on. It had been safe. Something to pass the time, to keep his mind sharp while he was here. He’d enjoyed it, and if he’d been reading Catherine correctly, he thought she did, too.

  But damn it all! He was flirting with someone who was not a married woman, and that’s when it got dangerous. His life didn’t accommodate relationships. Just flings. And precious few of those nowadays. Somehow, running off to spend the night with a willing beauty didn’t have the punch to it that it used to, before Gianni came into his life. Actually, before Catherine, too.

  Lately, the more satisfying punch for him was the emotional one. He was a happy, contented man, for the most part. He didn’t need those empty nights with faces he couldn’t remember the next morning. In fact, Catherine had been someone he’d thought would fall into that category when he’d met her…another in the line. A pretty colleague who attracted him, but only for a little while. Except he hadn’t been able to move on, and he’d caught himself liking that. Then had come his responsibilities to Gianni, and it had all blurred together—his old life, his reputation, the new aspects of his life that pretty well consumed almost everything of him.

  Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been with a woman, that’s how long it had been. The racing sensation, Dante Baldassare, a real ladies’ man, truly was not. In reality, he was much less than his reputation made him out to be. But he did have his inflated, if not fictitious, image to mind, after all. It was part of the façade his sister Gina, as the Baldassare publicist, demanded of him. Part of the racing package. A huge part of what made the Baldassare racing team successful, and admired worldwide.

  Just not part of him.

  So, it should have been an innocent flirt with Catherine. But divorced as she was, she’d probably been dragged over the emotional rocks enough. As much as she’d hurt him when she’d left him, he wasn’t vindictive enough to want her hurt back. Harass maybe, as she suspected. But never hurt.

  But she did slap back at him with rather a salty punch, didn’t she? Like she’d never done before. So, what was that about?

  Dante thought about it for a moment, then transferred himself into bed and decided to call Gianni. It really didn’t matter what it was about with Catherine, he decided as he picked up the phone. She was now in the off-limits column. And that was a real pity, because she might have made these next dreary weeks a little more fun.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS going on midnight when Catherine finally decided to call it quits for the day. Her feet ached, she was exhausted, both physically and mentally, and a dull headache was beginning around her temples. Along with all the turmoil surrounding Dante, which turned into her returning about two hours of phone calls to various reporters, she’d seen fifteen other patients today, chaired a board meeting and met with a pharmaceutical representative.

  Now, her eighteen hours for the day were done, and it was time to go home and crawl into bed. Good thing home was on the other side of the compound—a nice little chalet within a three-minute walk of the clinic building. There were times when she thought she should move farther away if, for no other reason than to give herself more separation between her personal life and her job. But who was she kidding? She didn’t have a personal life, and if not for her job, she’d have no life at all. Besides, on nights like this, when she could barely drag one foot in front of the other, her cozy little bed being three minutes away did have an appeal.

  On her way out, Catherine impulsively detoured to the hall where Dante’s suite was located. It was a nice suite—a large living room, a spacious bedroom with all the amenities of the finest hotel, a second, smaller bedroom for a guest, a modest waiting room just inside the entry, and a tiny area with kitchen facilities. Not to mention a lavish bathroom she’d die to have for herself.

  As Catherine grew closer to Dante’s suite, she had a quick rethink on coming in this direction. It was silly. There was nothing to see. Nothing to do here. Nothing to argue, either. Yet the unexplained draw tugged her along the hallway until she was practically standing at his door.

  “Dr Wilder,” Nurse Reasnor said, as she passed by Catherine, scurrying her way to deliver a shot of insulin to Mr Aylesworth. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked, the speculative arching of her eyebrows making it quite clear she wasn’t used to seeing Catherine, or any one else here, at this time of the night.

  “Just taking the long way out on my way home,” she said. “Thought I’d see how my patient was doing.”

  “Mr Baldassare? He’s doing fine. I looked in on him about an hour ago, took his vital signs, checked his ankle, and everything seemed to be in order.”

  Catherine acknowledged her response with a polite smile, and moved past Dante’s door, padding along the marble floor, telling herself how silly this little quest was. There was no need to be here. Dante was, most likely, long asleep, as were most of the guests. Wandering by his door had no point, especially as he’d already had his nightly medical check and she couldn’t use that for an excuse.

  At the end of the hall, she stopped by the nursing station for a moment, made a pretense of studying a patient chart—one other than Dante’s—even though she really didn’t need an excuse to be there, but having one made her feel less silly. After that she finally headed back the way she’d come, only t
o be stopped by Dante, who opened his door at the exact same time she walked by it.

  “I thought I heard your voice,” he said, his voice in a whisper. “Do you live here or do you ever go home?”

  “Actually, I suppose you could say that I do live here.” She did feel a little awkward at being caught. “Why are you up so late?” The doctor in her kicked in. “Are you in pain? Should I prescribe something?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to make myself a cup of tea, and the teas stocked in my pantry are all herbal. I was going to see if I could find regular, black tea.”

  “With caffeine? Are you sure that’s what you want at this time of the night?”

  “Do you ever go off duty, Catherine? Just unwind for a little while and quit being a doctor concerned with everybody’s well-being?”

  She laughed. “It doesn’t seem that way, does it?” The truth was, she never did. Even when she was at home, she was on call for consultations, emergency treatment or whatever was needed. “Look, you go back into your suite, and I’ll see what I can find for you.”

  “Will you join me for a cup?” he asked.

  She hesitated, at first inclined to refuse. That would have been the easiest, most sensible thing to do, but her resolve faltered. What could a little civility between them hurt after all? It could be nice, as a matter of fact. Something to put her patient at ease. At least, that’s what she was telling herself this was about as she caught herself nodding. “I think I will.”

  “You’re welcome to the herbal,” he said.

  Catherine wrinkled her nose. “I may advocate it, like a good doctor should, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”