by Dianne Drake
“With my first husband,” she whispered. “I didn’t want those things with him.”
Dante didn’t say anything for a little while. Instead, he paced the room, from the entry door to the window on the opposite side then back again. Finally, after several minutes, he stopped in front of the bed. “But you kept telling me you loved me, yet it wouldn’t work.”
Catherine shut her eyes for a moment. This had not been part of any of her scenarios, but it was time for this, too. She did love him. It was going to be difficult, but he had to understand. “When I was a girl, I idolized my father. To me, he was larger than life. Everything he did was wonderful. But he pushed me away, Dante. No matter what I did, he pushed me away. Rejected me. And the more he rejected me, the more I tried to please him. But I always failed.
“And my mother did the same thing. At least in my young mind, when I saw her crying all the time and shutting herself in her room, I thought it was about me. It’s easy to get detached when everyone you love doesn’t love you back. I became…compliant. Do whatever they wanted and maybe they’d love me. Let them make my decisions, tell me what to do and maybe my father would be my father again.”
“Build up the wall around yourself before you got hurt. Dear God, Catherine,” Dante choked. “It was never about my racing, was it?”
Catherine shook her head. “Easy excuse, and it took me a long time to figure it out. There were so many layers to peel away, and they were painful.”
“After my father’s heart attack, when I went home and changed my life without letting you know…”
“And expecting me to be a part of it,” she added. “That’s all I ever wanted, Dante. To be a part of it.”
“But I wouldn’t let you, and it was like your father rejecting you all over again. Catherine, I’m so sorry.”
“You couldn’t have known, Dante, because I didn’t know. I’d never stopped being that little girl trying to get her daddy’s attention any way she could. I’ve told myself so many things, been angry, been hurt, been indifferent. In the end my father died and I didn’t make it right with him, and I suppose that was the ultimate rejection. He went away and I never had his love. All those years of being the compliant, good little girl wasted.”
“And you saw that in me?”
“In some ways, yes. My father was documentary film maker, an adventurer, Dante. He climbed mountains, raced speedboats, jumped out of airplanes…people paid him to do those things and film it. And sponsors endorsed him for the risks he took. Much like the way people sponsor you to race.”
Dante came to the bed and sat down next to Catherine, taking her hand into his. “I didn’t know. You never told me.”
“Because the first time we were together, those kinds of things didn’t matter. I didn’t want them to matter because I was afraid of them. It seems I’ve built up this brilliant way of avoiding the obvious, then rearranging what I can’t avoid.” She smiled sadly. “All those things should have mattered because I knew from the start I was falling in love with you. But to say them out loud meant to risk rejection. You see, by the time I was ten, I’d totally shut out my father. I hated him. Told him so on so many occasions. Hate the man then his rejection wouldn’t hurt so much. Hate Dante, then his rejection wouldn’t hurt so much. Reject first so I wouldn’t be rejected. That’s why I snapped at you that day about Gianni. I know what it’s like to be the child of someone who might die the way Gianni’s father did, or the way my father did. My father shut me out because he loved me and didn’t want me to get hurt if he was killed. He pushed me away for what he thought was my own good, and when I saw Gianni, who so adored you, that’s all I could think of…the way I adored my father, and how his lifestyle took that away. It broke my heart for Gianni since he’d already suffered a loss that I truly understand. And it broke my heart for me because I’d lost so much, too.”
“Your father died because…?”
“Climbing accident. His greatest passion. He’d had a near miss or two before, but this time he was on a rockface in Utah. He got part way up and slipped. But it didn’t kill him right away. He lived nearly a year as a quadriplegic before an infection overcame him. And my mother cried every day then. I was only sixteen, and during that year I hated my father for what he’d done to us, and I wouldn’t go near him. He died thinking…” She slapped angrily at the tears streaming down her face. “He died thinking I didn’t love him, when I always did, and I broke his heart, Dante. Which is why you’ve got to know that I’ve always loved you. From that very first day.”
Dante pulled Catherine into his arms and held her tight. “Once you told me that Dario knew I loved him, I’ve thought about that so many times these past months. Thought about it until I realized you were right. We do things we later regret to the people we love, but in the end the love doesn’t go away. It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with Dario’s death, but you helped me see that the fight between us didn’t matter. He always knew how I felt. And your father always knew how you felt, Catherine. He knew you loved him, which is why he pushed you away…because you loved him so desperately and he didn’t want to hurt you. It was his choice, and I’m sure that in that last year of his life he knew your heart was breaking like his was, too.”
Catherine shuddered a sob. “When I fell in love with you, you were safe. Then you went away and became a race driver, and you weren’t. But I couldn’t stop loving you, Dante. I wanted to. I even thought if I married someone else it might help, but it only made the pain worse because he wasn’t you.” She sniffled. “I wanted to get over you, Dante. I honestly tried. But I couldn’t.”
He chuckled. “And that’s a bad thing?”
She rubbed her belly. “No,” she whispered. “No, it’s not.”
“I can give up the racing, Catherine. If that will make you feel better. Take away the stress.”
She shook her head as she swiped at her tear again. “No. You can’t. Don’t you understand? That’s who you are. Part of the man I fell in love with. You have to be who you are.” She relaxed against his chest. “My mother always told me to never marry a man like my father, but when I went home she also told me she wouldn’t have had her life any other way. But my mother isn’t a strong woman. She wasn’t able to cope with what it took to be married to my father, which is why I didn’t get everything from her that I needed. Everything she had was for him, and she loved him desperately. But I’ve got more than that, Dante. So much more, if you want it.”
“I do want it, Catherine. All of it.”
“Are you sure? Because until you came to Aeberhard, I turned all the emotion in on my work. That wouldn’t reject me. It was safe. It was an excuse, just like hating your racing was an excuse. I had to have those excuses, Dante. They were the only things that propped me up, and knowing all that doesn’t mean it will be easy for me to change.”
“I’ll help you,” he said. “And you’ll help me to include you in everything I am and everything I have. That’s all I want. Catherine. But I’m a Baldassare and we’re…”
“Overbearing?”
“Sometimes.”
“Larger than life?”
“Sometimes.”
“Passionate?”
“Always.”
In his arms, she sighed contentedly. “True love, Dante, is not making someone change who they are but loving them enough to support them. A very wise man once told me that, and I didn’t listen well enough at the time. But he’s reminded me a few times these past months…”
“I want to marry you, Catherine.”
“And I want to marry you, Dante.”
“No fears?”
“Always fears, but not about being rejected. You’re not my father. You wouldn’t do that. Not to me, not to Gianni, not to our child.”
“So what do we do?”
She drew in a quivering breath. “Make compromises. You go off to your races, and I’ll bring your sons to watch, but otherwise keep them home with me and have a normal family.”
“Sons?” he asked. His voice cracked.
“Gianni. And Dario. Dario Emil Baldassare. Named for the two men we’ve loved and lost. And I have an idea that our son, being a Baldassare the way he is, as well as a Brannon, will have your blood, as well as my father’s. He’ll be a real risk-taker, I think. True to his nature. And I’m getting used to the idea. Or, trying to. But I’ll need help.”
“You’ll have help. And you’ll be fine, because our son’s mother is quite a risk-taker herself,” Dante said.
“You’re not a risk, Dante. I can’t promise you that I won’t be nervous about your driving, or about what Gianni and Dario will eventually want to do, but I will support you in it. And support our sons in whoever they turn out to be. Oh, and for my part in this family…Max has recently deeded over more of the clinic to me. Do you mind living in Switzerland? I know you have your home in Tuscany, but there’s a nice little castle not so far away that’s for sale, and I thought…”
“I’d love to come and live in Switzerland with you,” he said, kissing her, but not on the lips. On the belly! “In a castle, or a tool shed. Doesn’t really matter to me as long as we’re together. So, let me see…Five months pregnant. If the doctor in me remembers this correctly, I can still make love to my soon-to-be bride, can’t I?”
“My choice,” Catherine said.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he said, then placed a kiss on hers.
“A doctor in the family!” Marco crowed, pulling Catherine into his arms. “I’ve always wanted a doctor in the family.” It was a change of heart for the old man, who’d hated doctors for quite a while now, but he meant it, if the smile on his face signified anything.
“Dante’s going to practice medicine a little while he’s at Aeberhard,” Catherine warned him, well aware of his opinion of doctors in general.
Marco nodded thoughtfully. “As well he should. Why let all that education go to waste?”
“But I thought…” Dante started, but Catherine laid a warning hand on his arm. It was best leaving well enough alone. Especially today of all days.
“We’ll take our holidays in Tuscany,” she said, feeling a little guilty over being the one to split the Baldassare family up. But Dante was fine with it, and that’s all that mattered.
“And we’ll take ours in Switzerland,” Marco replied enthusiastically. “Long holidays to come and see my grandson!”
“Grandsons,” Dante corrected him, glowing with pride.
“What?” Marco exclaimed. He blinked widely, then pulled off his cap and threw it into the air. “The doctor is giving me another grandson? Another Baldassare?”
“Dario,” she said softly.
Tears came to the old man’s eyes. “Dario,” he repeated, then he nodded. “He should be a great racer one day, too. Like his father.” He pulled Catherine into his arms again, kissed her on the cheek, then whispered in her ear, “Or a great doctor, like both his parents.”
“I’m not going to be a racer,” Gianni interrupted, coming into the hotel room.
“A doctor?” Catherine asked.
He shook his head. “A downhill skier,” he said resolutely. “I want to win the Olympics.”
“Spoken like a true Baldassare,” Catherine said, laughing as she reached out to take Dante’s hand. One thing was for sure. Life with the Baldassares was going to be eventful. “Beginner hills for now,” she warned Gianni.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5626-5
ITALIAN DOCTOR, FULL-TIME FATHER
First published in Great Britain 2008
© Dianne Despain 2008
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