Patient Nurse

by Diana Palmer

  He stood aside. “Talk to her,” he said unexpectedly. “See if she’d rather go back to her apartment. Miss Plimm can go with her, and she’ll have any other help she needs.”

  “That’s decent of you, sir,” Donaldson said, surprised.

  Ramon’s dark eyebrows arched expressively. “Have I shocked you, Donaldson?”

  The younger man shifted nervously. “Everyone knows how much you dislike Noreen.”

  He nodded toward Noreen’s bedroom and went back to his study, closing the door quietly. But he was far too preoccupied to do any work.

  Brad grinned around the door at Noreen, who brightened a little when she saw him.

  “Down in the dumps again?” he teased, closing the door until it was barely cracked. His expression cleared at once. He sat down beside her on the bed. “Dr. Cortero just said that if you want to, you can go back to your apartment now. He’ll send Miss Plimm with you, and you can have any help you need.”

  Her breath escaped in a rush. It was a relief. Such a relief. Being near Ramon was torture. “When?” she asked immediately.

  “As soon as you like, I gather. He told me to mention it to you.” He touched her hair gently. “You don’t like it here, do you?”

  She shook her head, lowering her eyes to his chin. “He’s been very kind,” she said, “but I’d like to be at home, with familiar things around me. I’m sure that I get in his way, even though he’s careful not to let it show. He can’t even have…people…in while I’m lying around.”

  “People?”

  She shrugged. “Women,” she murmured.

  “That would be one for the books,” he replied. “Not even the notorious grapevine can find one single bit of gossip about him. He doesn’t go out with anyone. I suppose he’s still mourning his wife.”

  “Yes,” she said, and the thought hurt. “He was obsessed with Isadora. They had to drag him away from the coffin at the graveside service.” She didn’t like remembering that.

  “He must have loved her very much.”

  “More than his life. That’s why he hates me so much. I suppose he’s not as judgmental as he was, not since this happened to me. But the fact is, he left me in charge of her welfare and I let her die.” Her eyes were haunted as she looked up at him. “I loved her, too,” she said gruffly. “Even if none of them thought so. She could be kind, when she wanted to. She couldn’t help the way she was. Everyone spoiled her because she was so pretty—even me.”

  “Beauty is skin deep,” he said coolly. “It doesn’t have a thing to do with a person’s character. I’d take you, any day, if I were free.”

  She smiled gently. “Thanks.”

  He patted her hand. “You never date, either,” he murmured. “Are you eating your heart out, figuratively speaking, for someone you can’t have, too?”

  She didn’t want to answer that. She had to harden her resolve. Ramon was willing to let her leave, so apparently he was getting tired of her presence in the apartment. It must be torment to him, a constant reminder of Isadora. She refused to dwell on those kisses. Probably he’d been lonely so long that any female, in whatever condition, would have evoked the same response from him.

  She lay back against the pillows. She’d have to let Miss Plimm come with her, and somehow she’d have to manage her salary. But she would.

  “Ask him,” she said finally, “when I can leave.”

  Ramon’s face didn’t betray a single trace of emotion when Brad put the question to him.

  “I’ll make the arrangements,” he said, showing Brad to the door. “I’ll tell her. The sooner the better.”

  Brad nodded. “Thanks. I really believe she’ll get back on her feet sooner if she’s in familiar surroundings. No matter how cushy someone else’s place is, it’s never home.”

  “So I see.” Ramon closed the door behind Brad and hesitated before he went into Noreen’s bedroom. She was sitting very stiffly against the pillows, her hands folded tightly in her lap. Miss Plimm had gone out to lunch and was taking a few hours off afterward to do her banking and shopping, since it was Friday.

  “You can go in the morning if you like,” he told her without preamble. “I’ll speak to Miss Plimm when she returns. There’s just one thing,” he added, nodding toward the kitten curled up at her feet on the coverlet. “You can’t take Mosquito with you.”

  “I know that,” she said sadly. She’d grown attached to the tiny thing. But rules were rules, and she couldn’t hide the cat if the owner and his wife were coming in and out of the apartment—which they would, being the kind of people who did whatever they could for the sick.

  “I’ll take good care of her,” Ramon added.

  She nodded.

  He made an irritated sound. “Look here, why don’t you want to stay? You’ve got everything you need at hand. Donaldson visits all the time. Why are you so anxious to go home to that lonely apartment?”

  She looked up at him with a drawn, weary face. “Because it’s mine,” she said. “It’s all I have.”

  He felt that right down to his shoes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I live alone,” she said. “I like living alone. I’m uncomfortable around people.”

  “Around me, you mean.”

  Her jaw tautened. “Yes.”

  He moved closer to the bed. His dark eyes probed her face. “I make you uncomfortable.”

  Her eyes darted away. Her heart was racing wildly, betraying her excitement.

  “Talk to me,” he said sharply.

  Her hands gripped each other as if her life depended on it. She clenched her teeth. She wouldn’t look at him at all.

  He rammed his hands into his pockets to keep from grabbing her. As always, she aroused fierce emotions in him. But now he was less armored against them than usual.

  “It isn’t that I don’t appreciate all you’ve done for me,” she said after a minute. “I’m very grateful. You saved my life. You certainly didn’t have to sacrifice your privacy on my behalf, as well.”

  “My privacy, as you put it, is a very lonely one,” he said, surprising her into looking up at his lean, handsome face. “I don’t entertain. I thought you knew.”

  “But…you always used to,” she began.

  “When Isadora was alive,” he agreed. He searched her drawn face quietly. “Isadora had parties. She couldn’t live unless she was surrounded by people and music. I spent more and more time at my office, because I never had the solitude to review my medical journals or prepare papers here. She resented my work, almost from the beginning of our lives together. She wanted me to give it up, did you know?”

  She shook her head. “It would have been a pity if you had,” she said. “You’re the best in your field. Didn’t she know how many lives you’ve saved?”

  “She didn’t care,” he said simply. “Isadora’s only real interest was Isadora. That’s what happens to many spoiled children. They grow up with no compassion for others, only concerned with their wants, their needs. Then they marry and have families and they aren’t equipped to deal with the self-sacrifice. Eventually, they fall apart. Just as Isadora did.”

  “She always seemed very happy,” she told him. “So did you.”

  “Oh, one puts on a public face, so as not to admit one’s failings,” he mused. “We were the picture of the ideal happy couple, yes? And underneath was Isadora’s jealousy and discontent, and growing dependence on alcohol and parties to get her through the long, lonely days and nights.”

  He’d never spoken in such a way. She gaped at him, totally without the capacity to interrupt.

  “It wasn’t enough for her to love. She had to own. Possess. But she was cold inside. She had nothing to give except her beauty and the shallow affection behind it.” He sighed, staring at Noreen quietly. “In bed, she was the coldest human being I ever knew. She only wanted it over with, and she was obsessed with contraception.”

  “But she said that you didn’t want children,” she blurted out.

&nbs
p; “I wanted them, all right.”

  She knew what he meant, suddenly, instinctively. There was something in his passionate nature that adored children, wanted them, valued them. But she hadn’t known, because Ramon had never spoken of these things to her before.

  “I’ve gone hungry for a woman’s passion,” he said gently. “I’ve been starved of it. That’s why I lost control with you. The novelty of a woman’s willing mouth and clinging arms was almost too much for me. I’d never known it, you see. Isadora wanted my fame and my wealth and my name. But she never wanted me.”

  “She adored you,” she protested.

  “She adored my money,” he said with a cynical laugh. “And what it could buy her. Do you know, she’d had a lover before me? And she didn’t give him up, just because she was married. She had the same lover when she died. She wanted to go to Paris with me because she knew he was going to be there. She warned me that if I made her stay at home, she’d do something to get even with me.” His eyes were full of bitterness as he spoke of it. “She did, too. She got even in the basest way she could. She died, and left me with the guilt of responsibility for it.”

  “You blamed me,” she began.

  “I blamed myself,” he said angrily. “I still do. Blaming you was the only way I could live with it, for a long time.” He searched her face with dark, solemn eyes. “As if you could let anyone or anything die,” he scoffed, “with that tenderness in you that makes me curse myself for all the harsh words and accusations I’ve thrown at you in the past.” He drew in a harsh breath. “You did nothing except show me what Isadora was. Worse, you showed me what she wasn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How could you?” he asked grimly. “You don’t know me. I couldn’t let you know me, because it was dangerous for us to be close to each other.”

  Her eyes were frankly puzzled.

  “You don’t understand?” he asked with soft amusement.

  “No,” she said honestly.

  He moved slowly to the bed and sat down beside her. His lean hand went to her lips and he traced them softly, his gaze holding hers until her heartbeat erupted into a frenzy of excitement.

  “Now, do you understand?” he asked in the merest whisper. “Here. Feel.”

  He brought her hand to his chest and pressed her fingers, palm down, to his heart. It was beating wildly, just like her own. In his dark eyes, she could see the same turbulence she was feeling. But as she looked up into the face she loved most in all the world, she saw only desire. He wanted her, yes. But it wasn’t a desire that rose out of love. It was a physical trick of the senses. Just that.

  She let her hand fall back to the coverlet with a soft sigh. “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do,” he replied grimly. “You’re afraid to let yourself see it.” He put a finger over lips that tried to form words. “I know that you’re attracted to me, Noreen, and you don’t want to be. I’ve worked too hard at making you hate me over the years.”

  That was funny, but she wasn’t laughing. He really had no idea how she felt about him. He thought she only wanted him. Her gaze fell to keep him from seeing what was in them, and she drew back against the pillows, defensively.

  He mistook the action for fear and got to his feet. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I won’t make any blatant passes. Everyone seems to feel that I’m the reason you aren’t improving rapidly enough. If you want to go back to your apartment, I’ll send you there. You can have anything you want to make you more comfortable. Well, anything except Mosquito,” he murmured, smiling faintly as the kitten stretched and rolled onto its back.

  She noticed the way he looked at the tiny thing, and her heart ached for the children he didn’t have, the animals Isadora had refused to have in the apartment.

  He looked up and caught that expression in her eyes. He was surprised and delighted by it. “Are you feeling sorry for me, ¿querida?” he asked gently.

  “Quizás un poco,” she murmured in Spanish. Perhaps, a little.

  He moved closer to the bed. “Your accent is flawless,” he said softly. “Do you understand it as well as you speak it?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted, “but it depends on the speaker. I understand a Cuban accent best, because my Spanish professor was from Havana.”

  “We tend to drop the ‘s’ in words or run over it,” he mused. “So you can understand me when I speak Spanish,” he added calculatingly. His lips pursed. “Then, if you stayed here, until you’re well enough to take care of yourself, I could read Baroja to you in the evenings.”

  She bunched the bedspread under her hands. “Isadora gave you a copy of Paradox, Rey,” she recalled.

  “Which you picked out for her,” he replied, surprising her, “because Isadora never spoke one word of Spanish. She thought it a boring language, and she had nothing but contempt for Spanish authors like Baroja.”

  “He was one of my favorites,” she admitted. “He was a renegade, but he knew so much about suffering and poverty. He knew people inside out.”

  “Of course. He was a doctor before he was a novelist.” He smiled. “Do you like Zorrilla?” She smiled. “Don Juan Tenorio,” she quoted.

  “How appropriate that you should remember that particular work,” he murmured, smiling faintly. “Unlike the Don Juan who was damned in Tirso de Molina’s version of the story, Zorrilla’s Don Juan was saved from hell by the love of a good woman.”

  “Yes. It was a wonderful story.” She moved her shoulders and lay back against the pillows with a long sigh, wincing because she was still having some discomfort. Her hand went to the scar.

  “You won’t have much of a scar when it heals,” he remarked, watching her touch the incision. “I pride myself on my stitching.”

  She smiled. “You do it very well.” Her gaze lifted to his. “You’ve been very kind to me.”

  “And you think that kindness was prompted by a guilty conscience?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  His hands moved in his pockets. “Well, it isn’t altogether guilt. Not anymore, at least.” He looked at her quietly. “I like taking care of you, isn’t that strange?” he mused. “I’ve never really had anyone to come home to before, much less someone of my own who needed tending to.” His mouth twisted. “I’ve gotten…used to having you here.” The smile faded. “You’ll hate your apartment,” he said abruptly. “Even with Miss Plimm for company.”

  “You think that your company is so indispensable?” she asked irritably.

  “Perhaps it is, Noreen,” he said, his voice deep and somber. “I don’t think you quite realize how accustomed you’ve become to my routine. You fit in here.”

  Her heart raced again. She felt hemmed in, imprisoned. Yet he hadn’t taken even a step toward her.

  “Stay,” he said roughly.

  She was flustered. She couldn’t get her mind to work at all. “I’m in the way,” she faltered. “And Brad comes, and you don’t like him here…”

  “I can tolerate your friend,” he said shortly. “You don’t get in the way.”

  She hesitated. She didn’t want to stay, but she didn’t want to leave. It was a risk, being near him. He didn’t know yet how she really felt about him, but if she stayed here long enough, he would. On the other hand, she’d had a tremendous scare about her heart. It was comforting to her to have him close at hand, for professional as well as personal reasons. Too, there was Mosquito. She’d miss the kitten. She had exquisite meals, prepared by his daily cook. The room was nice…

  Her rationalizing irritated her, and she glared at him for putting the temptation in her path.

  He only smiled. “Stay,” he coaxed. “I’ll read to you every night.”

  “Baroja?” she asked softly.

  “Whatever you like,” he said huskily.

  She could imagine that deep, velvety voice reading Spanish poetry in a lamplit room, and she blushed.

  “Nothing sensuous,” he teased. “We want y
our heart beating nicely, not galloping. Not just yet, anyway.”

  She was already lost. “If I’m really not in the way…”

  The kitten came stretching and yawning up to her shoulder and curled up against her neck. Her hair, in its bun, began to escape with Mosquito’s restless movements.

  “Your hair needs washing,” he remarked. “Miss Plimm can do it for you tomorrow, if you feel up to it.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you ever let it down?” he asked.

  “Not very much,” she confessed. “It gets in the way at work, and when I try to sleep, it gets in my eyes and mouth. I thought about getting it cut, but I love long hair.”

  “So do I,” he said. He stared at her for a moment, picturing that wealth of hair in his hands, against his bare chest…

  He turned abruptly, catching his breath. “I’ll tell Miss Plimm to stop packing.”

  There were so many things she wanted to ask him, to tell him, but nothing came to mind at all. She closed her eyes. How suddenly living with Ramon had become a way of life. She hadn’t really wanted to leave. For whatever reasons of his own, he seemed to feel the same way. Only time would tell if she’d made the right decision.

  “There’s one other thing,” he said from the open doorway.

  “Yes?”

  “Your aunt and uncle would very much like to come and see you,” he said, watching her face tighten. “I know how you must feel about them, but in their way, they’re sorry and they want to make amends.”

  She looked up at him helplessly, her mind full of the long years without love, without tenderness. It was there in her big gray eyes, an open wound.