by Dianne Drake
“Why are we fighting?”
“Because that’s what we do. We have since the first day I stepped into the hospital, and while I’d thought we’d gotten past that, apparently I was wrong.” She took two steps toward the front entry to the hospital and her legs gave out on her, causing her to lurch forward. But Damien was there to catch her before she fell, and for a moment she clung to him, wishing that his desire to hold her came from something more than simply trying to keep her from hurting herself.
“Juliette, I—” he started, his voice almost in a whisper.
Why didn’t he just tell her that he loved her? That would make everything right. But he was running out of chances, and she was running out of hope. Whatever was holding him back was still hanging on, and she didn’t know how to break through it. Not even her near-death had broken through it.
“Look, Damien. I can’t get out of here on my own yet, but I’ve decided to talk to Padre Benicio, to see if he can find someone to help me get back to San José. I’ll have my dad help me from there. I think that’s best for everybody concerned.” For everybody but her. But falling in love with a man who kept himself hidden from love was impossible to deal with. She wasn’t strong enough, now. Her defenses were gone. And, for the first time in her life, she found herself totally without direction.
It was time to go home.
“I think you should stay here for a while. The children need you—”
The children, but not Damien. “The children will be fine. They’ve got you, and you’re turning into a great dad.” She did hate to leave Marco and Ivelis. In fact, the idea that she’d never see them again was tearing her apart. It was amazing how quickly she’d come to love them. But they were great kids. So full of life and eagerness. So adaptable to their new situation. So easy to love. Juliette’s throat tightened when she thought about walking away from them, but she couldn’t allow the emotions she knew would come from that sad scene to stop her from doing what she had to do. The children would get along without her and, as much as Damien loved them, he would eventually adopt them. Maybe he didn’t know that yet, but she did.
“But they huddle around you every minute they can.”
Juliette smiled. “And they adore you, Damien. The thing is, I can’t stay here only because the children need me, especially when I know they’ve got a wonderful life ahead of them.”
“I want to keep them, Juliette, but I don’t know how. They need more than I can provide them.”
“Do you love them?” she asked.
He nodded. “It snuck up on me, but yes, I do.”
He could admit his love for the children, but not for her. It hurt. “Then that’s all they need. The rest will work itself out. See, you need to be a father, Damien. And once you realize that, you’re going to discover some happiness you never thought you could have.” But what he wouldn’t realize was that he needed to be a husband. It was too late for that now, and she had to leave before her emotions affected the children. “Look, I won’t be going for a couple days, because I’m not up to the travel yet, so I’ll have plenty of time to say my proper goodbyes to Marco and Ivelis. And I’ll be gentle about it, Damien, because I don’t want to hurt them.”
“You won’t be coming back again, will you?”
His face was shielded from her, but she wanted to think it was covered with sadness.
“I think it’s time for you to run your ad again. Now, if you’ll help me back to bed, I really do need to rest.” And fight back the tears that wanted to flow. And pray that her heart wouldn’t hurt any more than it did at this moment.
* * *
Damien looked at the truck parked outside the hospital’s front entrance, then turned his head away. He didn’t want to see it, didn’t want it to be here. But it was, and there was no denying the fact that Juliette was about to climb into that truck and leave his life for good. He’d struggled with this for two days now. Struggled from the moment she’d told him she was going until this very second. Why was he letting her do this? Why wasn’t he trying to stop her?
Because she deserved better than this. And this, he was coming to realize, was where he was going to stay because, for the first time in his life, he fit. Anyplace else, he floundered. Either way, it wasn’t enough to offer her.
Did he want her to stay? More than anything. Did he want to work with her and love her and marry her and raise an army of kids with her? He did, so much so that when he thought about life without her he couldn’t breathe. Yet he couldn’t ask. Didn’t have that right because he knew that to have Juliette here would be to deprive her of a life where she truly belonged. Yes, she was a rich girl. And yes, she was used to privilege. But she wasn’t spoiled by it. He’d been so wrong about that. So terribly wrong. But it was a wrong he couldn’t right because, if he did, she would fall into his arms and tell him how much she loved him and if she did that he’d never be able to let her go. And, for Juliette’s sake, she had to go.
“You know you’re going to have to do something about this, don’t you?” George said. He was standing in the clinic door, watching Damien purposely turn his back to the hospital entrance.
“About what?” he said, even though he knew exactly what.
“How stupid can any one man be, Damien? You love her, she loves you—admit it to yourself, you damned fool, then admit it to her, and the rest will be easy.”
“Easy?” Damien spun to face the man. “This isn’t easy, George. And it can’t be easy, no matter what I do. Juliette belongs in a different world, and in time she’ll remember that. Then she’ll resent me for telling her that I love her because that’s what would hold her here. And I don’t have the right to hold her because all I’ll ever be able to give her is a run-down, underfunded little hospital and a hut with maybe enough room to add another room or two.”
“The village will build you a proper house, Damien, if that’s what’s concerning you.”
“Hell, they can build me a mansion. But that’s still not good enough.”
“What’s ‘good enough,’ Damien, is what she wants. Have you ever asked her what she wants?”
Damien turned to look out the front door. The damned truck was still there, still waiting. Still breaking his heart. “Nobody has,” he whispered. “Not her father. Not me.”
“You’re right,” Juliette said, exiting the hospital ward. “Nobody has.”
George walked over to Damien, squeezed him on the shoulder, then retreated back into the clinic and closed the door.
“Why is that, Damien?” Juliette asked. “Why didn’t you ask me?”
“Because I was afraid you’d tell me.”
“Do you really not want me here that much?” she asked.
“No. I really do want you here that much.” This was, perhaps, the most honest thing he’d ever said to her. Maybe the most honest thing he’d ever said to anyone.
Juliette stepped up to him, her face to his back, but maintained a few inches of separation between them. “Then ask me, Damien. Ask me what I want.”
He wanted to, but did he really have that right? “If I ask you, then what?”
“Then I’ll know that, for the first time in my life, someone values me for who I am and not for who they want me to be.”
Damien swallowed hard, then turned to face her. She was so close to him he could smell the scent of her shampoo—the shampoo she always brought with her for her weekends at Bombacopsis. The shampoo he’d grown to love. “What do you want, Juliette?” The most difficult words he’d ever uttered.
“I want to stay here, work in a little hospital where daily hardship is normal. Where I’ll have to scrape for drugs and bandages. Where I’ll have to make beds. And love a man who spends too much time worrying about the things he can’t give me to fully understand what he can give me. Raise two lovely children who need both a mother and
a father, and maybe add a couple more to the mix. Live in a hut, or a cottage, or a mansion or anywhere the man I love lives.”
“And give up everything you’ve ever known?”
“Yet have so much more than I ever expected to have. See, Damien. The thing about falling in love is, it changes everything. Several weeks ago, when I first came here, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay. And, to be honest, I had to do some pretty stern talking to myself to get me back here that second weekend. I loved the work, but I wasn’t particularly anxious to work with you. But, you know, falling in love replaced all that. It changed me so much that by the third week I was actually looking forward to seeing you. I’d spent my whole week away from you wanting to see you. And it wasn’t only you. I wanted to be part of the work here. It made me feel vital, and necessary. Back in Indianapolis, I was...replaceable. Any number of people could have stepped into my job at a moment’s notice, and my absence there would have never been noticed. But here—it’s the first time I’ve ever been necessary for who I was and not for who my father was, or who he wanted me to be. Being necessary—that’s the highest calling a doctor can have. And you know what, it doesn’t matter that I can’t just send someone down the hall for a CT scan or an endoscopy, and all I may have available to fix a serious gash is a simple stick-on bandage. What matters—the only thing that matters—is that you and your hospital allow me to be the doctor I always knew I could be.” She reached up and stroked his cheek. “What I want, Damien, is the rest of my life with you, but I’m not sure you want the rest of your life with me.”
“Do you know what you’re saying, Juliette? Do you understand what a life with me will be like?”
“It’ll be difficult. It will lack the advantages I’m used to. It will be nothing that I’d ever planned for myself. And it will be wonderful because I’ll be facing the challenges alongside the man I love, if the man I love loves me enough to want me there.” She looked deep into his eyes to see if the answer showed, and what she saw was a softening she’d never seen before. Tenderness. Love.
“The man you love does love you. But he’s terrified that the life he’s offering you won’t be good enough. That, in time, you’ll grow to resent it, and him.” He sighed deeply, lamentably. “And I couldn’t bear that, Juliette. Knowing that I couldn’t give you enough to make you happy—”
“Damien, I know what will make me happy. For the first time, I truly know. And it’s not going to change because all I want from you is to have you love me.”
“Juliette, I do love you. More than I can express. But I can’t give you...Egyptian cotton bedsheets. In fact, I’ll be damned lucky to give you a proper bed.”
“Do you think I really care about Egyptian sheets, or proper beds? I’m not that shallow, Damien. Are you still hung up by my wealth?”
“I know you’re not shallow, and I got over my rich girl lunacy shortly after I met you. But to love you is to want to give you everything. That coming from a man who has nothing.”
“A man who has nothing? How can you say that, Damien?”
“Because it’s true.”
“What’s true is that, to me, everything is waking up every morning and seeing the man I love lying there next to me. Everything is raising two wonderful children with the man I love and someday giving him another couple. Everything is working by his side, fighting the odds with him and knowing that, together, we can’t be beaten. Everything is who you are to me, Damien. Don’t you understand that? You are everything.”
“Juliette, I... I...” Words failed him, but his actions didn’t as he lowered his face to Juliette’s, and sealed their unspoken vow with a deep, eternal kiss. A kiss that Juliette melted into and knew that there she would find the rest of her life.
* * *
Damien and Daniel Caldwell looked the handsome pair, standing outside the village church in their matching suits and matching ties, mixing and mingling with the few remaining wedding guests. If it weren’t for the fact that Damien’s hair was long and his face scruffy with stubble, a look she adored on him, and Daniel was clean-shaven with short hair, they were absolutely as identical as Damien had told her they were. Same bright eyes, same dimples to die for, same smile. Zoey, her new sister-in-law, was a lucky woman to have Daniel, and Juliette was a lucky woman to have Damien.
Juliette looked out into the garden, where Marco and Ivelis were playing with their soon-to-be new cousin, Maddie—Daniel and Zoey’s daughter—and Diego, who’d seemed to latch on to their lives and wouldn’t let go. Marco’s and Ivelis’s adoption wouldn’t be final for a while, but they were already a family, in spite of the children’s legal status. And what an amazing family it was—a joining of what, at times, seemed almost insurmountable odds.
“You know this means you’re a grandfather now, don’t you?” she said to her dad.
Alexander Allen cleared his throat, straightened up rigidly. “I’m too young to be a grandfather,” he said, trying to sound stern. But there was no real sternness there. Not from the man who’d packed an entire suitcase full of toys for his new grandchildren.
“Well, Grandpa, like it or not, that’s who you are now. And, for the next two weeks, you’re going to have an awful lot of time to perfect it.” When her father assumed temporary medical duties at the hospital and also took over the care of Marco and Ivelis, while she and Damien slipped away to Hawaii for a honeymoon.
“I did tell you that I’m having a few supplies delivered here because I refuse to work under such primitive conditions. Oh, and antimalarials. I’m having every kind on the market shipped down here so you’ll have them on hand, since you insist on living here with the mosquitoes.”
“Bring in whatever makes you comfortable, because Damien and I expect you to come visit us several times a year, and when you’re here you know you are going to be expected to work with us.”
Alexander finally conceded a laugh. “I was right, you know. I always did say you’d be a great administrator. Just didn’t expect it to be in—” he spread his arms wide to gesture the entire village “—this!”
“Well, get used to this, because it’s now your home away from home. In the meantime, the village is throwing us a festival and Damien and I need to put in an appearance.”
“Only an appearance?” Alexander questioned.
“Only an appearance,” Damien confirmed. “They tend to overindulge a little during their festivals around here, and Juliette and I need to go back to the hospital and get ready to take care of about half the villagers who’ll eventually come in sometime later on.” He took hold of his wife’s hand, then leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s just one of the things we do around here.”
“Mind if I join you?” Alexander asked. “My doctoring skills may be a little rusty but, since you really don’t have anything to treat people with, I don’t suppose anybody will notice.”
“I’m in, too, bro,” Daniel said, stepping into the mix with his wife. “And I’m serious about what I said. Zoey and I will be down here a couple times a year to help you out in the hospital.”
“So I might as well get started tonight, too,” Zoey said cheerfully. “If you could use a nurse on duty.”
“We can always use a nurse on duty,” Damien said.
In the distance, Juliette heard the sounds of the festival and smiled. This was going to be a great life. “Well, why don’t you three head on over to the hospital, while Damien and I arrange for Padre Benicio to look after our children tonight, and we’ll join you shortly. Oh, and scrubs are in the storage closet.”
As Daniel, Zoey and Alexander set off together, Damien and Juliette stood in the road and watched after them for a bit. “This is good, Damien,” Juliette said, turning to face him, and raising her arms to twist around his neck.
“Very good,” he agreed, tilting her face up to his. “Very, very good.”
And there, in the middle of the road, in a remote jungle village in the middle of Costa Rica, to the sound of revelers celebrating her marriage to Damien, Juliette kissed her husband with the first of a long lifetime of soul-shaking kisses. For the first time in her life, Juliette truly knew where she was meant to be.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Dianne Drake
THE NURSE AND THE SINGLE DAD
DOCTOR, MOMMY...WIFE?
TORTURED BY HER TOUCH
A HOME FOR THE HOT-SHOT DOC
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from PREGNANT WITH THE BOSS’S BABY by Sue MacKay.
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