by Annie O'Neil
The memory of being able to tuck her head in that secure nook between his shoulder and chin, her forehead once getting a tickle when he’d experimented with growing a beard.
Despite herself, she laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jamie asked, pulling back to examine her.
“Do you remember when you wanted to grow a beard? It was wintertime, wasn’t it?”
“Winter into spring,” he answered, the memory lighting up his own eyes as he spoke. “That’s why I ended up shaving it off.” He scrubbed a hand along his bare chin. “That thing itched something crazy once the weather started warming up. What made you remember that?”
“Just popped into my head.” A white lie. What else was she going to say? Being this close to you made me want to nestle into your chest and relive some of the most perfect moments of my life? Hardly.
“Memories are funny things.” Jamie loosened his hold on her and then dropped his hands to his sides. “I’ve been having quite a few myself today.”
Bea’s forehead lifted, though it wasn’t in surprise. How could he be immune to the fevered trips down memory lane she’d been tearing along from the moment she’d seen him again?
“Shall we?” Jamie tipped his head toward the square, where the crowd was less thick.
She shook her head. “I should probably be getting back to my apartment. I’m an early-to-bed sort of woman these days.”
“No more double alarms?”
They both laughed at the memory and she shook her head. No. That had all changed.
“I’m up with the lark these days,” she said, grateful for the reprieve from looking into Jamie’s beautiful green eyes when he turned to forge a path through the crowd for the pair of them.
When they’d been together she’d slept like a log. So deeply she would turn off her alarm without even remembering having batted around in the dark to stop its beeping.
That had all changed when she’d returned to Italy. She’d blamed it on the one-hour time difference knowing full well it was nerves. A permanent feeling of foreboding, as if she knew marrying Marco would never bring her the joy loving Jamie had.
She stared at his back as he worked his way steadily, gently through the crowd. If she’d been with him she would never have...
Ugh. Sigh.
She would never have done a lot of things.
Like agreeing to have an IVF “honeymoon baby.” Marco had pushed her into it so that no one would know he was infertile. Completely incapable of providing the Rodolfos with the heir they craved.
Not that she’d ever jumped into bed with him to see if the doctors had been wrong.
And not that he’d protested.
Having this mystery baby had never been a question for her. It was hardly the child’s fault she’d agreed to marry someone whose pedigree rendered him more playboy than prince.
The only relief she felt now was that the baby wasn’t his. The way things stood, the child growing inside her belly was one hundred percent hers and hers alone.
“Time for a drink?” Jamie asked over his shoulder, as if sensing the discord furrowing her brow.
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t really.”
“I won’t bite. Scout’s honor.” He turned, crossed his heart, then held up his fingers looking every bit the Boy Scout she knew he’d once been.
“Are you still in touch with your old den leader?”
“Dr. Finbar?” He shook his head. “Not for a while.” His gaze shifted up and to the right as he made a calculation. “Must be a year or so before I left since I saw him. I should’ve gone to see him before I up and went, but—” his gaze returned solidly to hers “—I wasn’t at my best.”
“I’m so sorry, Jamie. If I could have done anything—”
“No.” He cut her off. “It wasn’t you—it was a patient. Why I left.”
Something in his tone told her that wasn’t entirely true, but Jamie was allowed his privacy. His pride. He’d been the one left behind to pick up the pieces. To explain to everyone why she’d left after they’d seemed so perfectly happy with each other.
Being humiliated in front of the enormous crowd at her wedding had served her right. She wouldn’t have been the slightest bit surprised to have learned Jamie had raised a glass at the news. A bit of schadenfreude for the embittered suitor.
“How is it you can even face me?” she asked, surprising herself as much as Jamie by the forthright question. “After what I did, I’m surprised you can even speak to me—let alone not hate me.”
“Oh, my beauty. Ma bella Beatrice...” He pronounced it the Italian way, hitting each vowel and consonant as if he were drinking a fine wine. He stroked the backs of his fingers along the downy soft hairs of her cheek. “I could never hate you. I think I hated myself more than anyone.”
A sad smile teased at the corners of his mouth. His lips were fuller than most men’s. Sensual. She could have drowned in his kisses, and just the thought of never experiencing one again drew shadows across her heart.
“I can’t imagine why you would feel that way. What would make you think so poorly of yourself?”
“Oh...” He clapped his hands together. “About a million reasons. Not putting up a better fight. Not—I don’t know—challenging him to a duel? Confronting your parents? Showing them I was every bit as worthy as...”
He paused and swallowed down the name neither of them seemed able to say.
“Water under the bridge.” The words rolled off his tongue as if he’d said them a thousand times before in a vain effort to convince himself it was true. “We’re both grown-ups. We’ve moved on. Whatever happened, it happened for a reason, right?”
She shrugged and tried her best to smile, not really coming good on either gesture. The last thing Jamie was to her was water under the bridge. A moment of perfection embedded in her heart was more like it. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”
Jamie shook his head. A clear sign he didn’t want her to plead with him. Beg him to try again as she so longed to do.
“We’re on different paths now, Beatrice. But it doesn’t mean we can’t be on friendly terms for the length of your contract. So, what do you say?” He put out his hand in the space between them. “Truce? At the end of the summer you go your way, I go mine?”
A voice inside her head began screaming again and again. No, it cried. No! But a softer, more insistent voice told her that to do anything other than agree would be unfair. Cruel, even. He’d endured enough. And she didn’t deserve him.
She and her baby would find another place, another way to be whole again.
She put her hand out and met his for a solid shake.
“Truce.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“IT DEFINITELY LOOKS worse than it is, Hamish.” Bea took a step back from her patient and gave him an appraising look. “The stitches should cover the worst of it, but opting out of wearing a helmet while kayaking...? Not a good move.”
“But no one else was!” Hamish gave his chest a thump with his fist. “Scotsmen are hard!”
“Doesn’t make them smart. You could’ve been a trendsetter. Using what’s inside your head instead of bashing the outside of it on a boulder!”
She tried to keep the admonishment gentle, but threw him a stern look as she tugged off her gloves and popped them in the bin. He had a pretty deep gash in his forehead, and if it hadn’t been for one of his friends pulling him back up into the kayak and keeping a compress on it until they arrived at the clinic he might easily have died.
“You’re going to have to keep the dressing dry and—” she wagged an admonishing finger at him “—you need to let your friends know one of them is going to have to stay with you at all times for the next two days. Concussion watch.”
“Ach, no! I’ve still g
ot another few days here!” The young man protested. “I’ve been saving for months!”
“You could very well have a concussion.” Bea pressed down on his shoulders when he tried to get up from the exam table and wobbled. “Any dizziness, nausea, headaches...all signs of a concussion.”
“It’s all right, Doc!” Her patient waved off her concerns and launched himself toward the curtains around the exam room.
“Hold on!” Bea ran the few steps toward him and tried to get under his arm to support him, but he pulled away and brought them both crashing to the ground.
Her instinct was to pull away. Protect her stomach. She knew the baby was still only teensy—tiny—but she’d already messed up her own life. She wasn’t prepared to mess up the little innocent soul inside her.
Seconds later she felt a pair of hands pulling her up.
“Are you all right?”
Jamie’s rich voice swept along her spine as she lurched into an upright position, far too aware of how close they were to one another. One arm was grazing against his chest. And her breasts. Ooh...that was a sensual trip down memory lane she didn’t need to take. Especially with everything in her body on high alert.
Touch.
Sensation.
The pair of lips just millimeters away from her own. The bottom lip fuller than the top. Just perfect for nibbling. A bit of blond stubble around them, highlighting just how soft those lips were to touch in contrast to the tickle of his five-o’clock shadow...
“Beatrice?” She felt Jamie’s grip tighten on her forearms. “Your patient is waiting.”
Pregnancy brain be damned!
As quickly as she could, Bea wriggled out of Jamie’s arms, unsure just how many precious moments she’d lost to daydreaming about his mouth. And kissing it.
Another shot of heat swirled around her belly. Santo cielo!
“Si, Dottore. I’m fine. Grazie.” He could play the white knight all he wanted, but she needed to prove to herself she could stand on her own two feet.
“Are you sure you’re okay to treat this patient?”
He rocked back on his heels, his eyelids dropping to half-mast as if he were suddenly in doubt as to her skills as a physician. Desired effect or not, it slammed her back into the moment. She might be a lot of things, but she was no slouch as a doctor.
“Si, Dottore. If you’ll excuse me? Hamish and I have to finish our discussion about concussions.”
“I think I’ll join you.”
Her eyes flicked to his, searching them for more meaning than she could glean from his neutral tone.
“In case Mr.—” He leaned over her shoulder to glance at the patient assignment board, giving her another waft of undiluted alpha Jamie. “In case Mr. McGregor, here, decides to take matters into his own hands again.”
Beatrice didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious. Her lips were dangerously close to tipping into a scowl, but ever the professional, she put on a smile, reminding herself she probably would need an extra hand in case Hamish decided to flee the scene again. Concussions were no laughing matter.
* * *
“Now, Mr. McGregor—” Jamie gestured toward the exam table “—what do you say we take another look at you?”
He knew he sounded like an uptight by-the-letter diagnostician, but it had thrown him off his axis when he’d seen Beatrice hurtling through the curtains as if in a full-on rugby tackle.
His every instinct had been to protect her. When he’d lifted her up and she’d pulled away from him as if he were made of kryptonite it had more than stung. It had riled him. Which meant he still cared—and that made the silent war he was waging with himself to treat Beatrice as he would treat anyone else even harder.
He had loved her with every pore in his body. And had spent every waking hour since she’d left trying to forget her.
Unsuccessfully, as was beginning to become wildly apparent.
Moving to Italy hadn’t helped. The language, the food, the blasted snowcapped mountains were all reminders of her. He should have accepted the job in the Andes. He still could have had his snowcapped mountains, but also extra servings of beef charred on an enormous open fire and about twelve thousand miles between himself and his memories.
As if you could outrun something branded onto your soul...
“Just hold still for a moment,” he heard himself saying, going through the examination by rote even as his mind played catch-up with life’s strange twist of events. “I want to take a look at your eyes.”
“I’ve already examined the cranial nerves,” Beatrice said.
The exam area was small and she was close. Close enough for him to smell the sweet honey-and-flower scent that seemed to travel in her wake.
“Given that Mr. McGregor has had a second fall, I thought I’d just check again.”
He felt a huff of air hit his neck. One that said, Why are you treating me like a plebeian? You helped train me. You, of all the people in the world, should know I’m the best.
Who knew a little puff of air could contain so much sentiment?
“I’m not going to have to pay for this twice, am I?” Hamish asked, leaning around Jamie as if the only real answer could come from Beatrice. He pulled out the pockets of his shorts to show they were empty.
“No. All part of the service.” Jamie leaned in closer to the young man with his medical torch, taking note of Hamish’s various pupil responses and all the while pretending not to hear Beatrice’s sotto voce grumblings behind him.
Caveman this...
Entitled Englishman that...
To her credit, she was saying it all in Italian, so the Scotsman appeared none the wiser.
Despite the fact that her venom was directed straight at him—like verbal darts in his back—Jamie smiled.
If someone had treated him like this, he probably would have responded in the same way. Boorishly barging in and repeating what was a standard exam was straight out of the Cro-Magnon handbook. But he hadn’t liked seeing the look of terror on her face as she hit the floor, curling in on herself as if protecting a small child in her arms. It had frightened him. And though he might have closed his heart to the idea of loving her again, he damn well wasn’t going to see her hurt. Not on his watch.
“Right, Mr. McGregor! It looks as though Dr. Jesolo has done her best by you. What did you recommend in regard to follow-up?”
He turned to Beatrice, only to receive a full hit of Glaring Doctor. Arms crossed tightly over her chest. Foot tapping impatiently. One eyebrow imperiously arched as if in anticipation of another admonishment. Something told him not to laugh if he didn’t want to turn that heated gaze to ice.
Through gritted teeth she began detailing what she’d presumably already run through with her patient. Rest. No kayaking or other contact sports—with or without a helmet—for at least forty-eight hours. A close watch by others on whether he was feeling nauseous, dizzy, light-headed, and some paracetamol—
“But no aspirin,” Jamie interjected, suddenly feeling playful. They’d used to do this when they went on rounds together. See who could come up with the most obscure information on a case. Out-fact each other.
“I also made it clear to Mr. McGregor that if he loses consciousness, has any clear fluid leaking from his ears or nose, or feels unusually drowsy while awake, he should return immediately.”
“Or has a seizure,” Jamie couldn’t help adding, knowing it would send that eyebrow of hers arcing just a little bit higher on her forehead.
“Or loses power in any part of his body. An arm or a leg, for example.”
“And if he has a headache that worsens, that’s a definite cause for concern.”
“As is consuming any alcohol, engaging in stressful situations or losing eyesight.”
This time he couldn’t stop
himself from smiling. She’d seen through him now. And was meeting him medical beat for beat.
“Perhaps he should also consider returning if he has problems speaking. Or understanding other people.”
“You two are really freaking me out!” Hamish broke into this verbal one-upmanship. “Am I going to totally die or something?”
They turned to him as one and began apologizing. Jamie took the moment to recuse himself from any further involvement in the case, faking a pained look at the same time. “I’ve got to dash. Lovely to see Dr. Jesolo has given such thorough treatment. All the best for the rest of your holiday. Toodle-pip for now!”
He took two long-legged strides, yanked the curtain open and closed it behind him and then looked up to the invisible heavens.
Toodle-pip?
His family would have had a right old laugh at the antiquated expression. One usually used by Britain’s upper crust—not a working-class family like his.
He gave his head a shake.
Beatrice.
She was the only one who could put him in a tailspin like this. Truce or no—he was going to have to continue to watch his back if he wanted to be in one piece by the end of the summer.
He shook his head again and headed toward the assignment board to find himself a patient.
Toodle-pip...
* * *
Teo looked at Beatrice and Jamie as if they’d both morphed into mountain goats.
“What do you mean, you’re not coming? Everyone on the last shift is heading out to the piazza for the Midsummer Festa. I think the crew inside are even taking it in turns to run out and get a bite to eat before drinks this evening.”
He flicked a thumb toward the main square, where it seemed the town’s entire population was headed.
“Gotta meet my missus. She’s eating for two and I want to make sure I get a look-in.”
Jamie didn’t miss the sideways glance Bea shot him from the other side of the doorway they were inhabiting.
Was it hearing about “the missus”? Or the news that she was pregnant that had caught Bea out?
“C’mon, guys!” Teo persisted. “What are you waiting for? Grub’s up!”