by Olivia Gates
“I had the nearest town’s cobla, our Catalan music ensemble, come over to play for us. The Sardana is never the same without live music. It’s always made of four Catalan shawm players…” He pointed toward four men holding double-reed woodwinds. “Two trumpets, two horns, one trombone and a double bass.”
“And what’s with that guy with the flutelike instrument and the small drum attached to his left arm?”
“He plays the flabiol, that three-holed flute, with his left hand and plays that tamborí with the right. He keeps the rhythm.”
“Why not just have twelve players, instead of saddling one with this convoluted setup?”
He grinned. “It’s a tradition some say goes back two thousand years. But wait till you see him play. He’ll make it look like the easiest thing in the world.”
She grimaced down at her casted arm. “One thing’s for sure, I’m not a candidate for a flabiol/tamborí player right now.”
He put a finger below her chin, raised her face to him. “You soon will be.” Before she gave in and dragged his head down to her to take that kiss she was disintegrating for, he turned his head away. “Now watch closely. They’re going to dance the first tirada, and we’ll join in the second one. The steps are very simple.”
Letting out a steaming exhalation, she forced her attention to the circle of dancers that was forming.
“It’s usually one man, one woman and so on, but we have more women than men here, so excuse the nontraditional configuration.”
She mimicked his earlier hand gesture, drawled, “Women rule.”
He threw his head back on a peal of laughter at her reminder, kept chuckling as he watched his womenfolk herding and organizing their men and children. “They do indeed.”
The dance began, heated, then Rodrigo tugged her to join the rotllanes obertes, the open circles. They danced the steps he’d rehearsed with her on the sidelines, laughed together until their sides hurt. Everything was like a dream. A dream where she felt more alert and alive than she ever had. A dream where she was one with Rodrigo, a part of him, and in tune with the music, his family and the whole world.
Then, like every dream, the festivities drew to an end.
After calling good-night to everyone, Rodrigo walked her as usual to her quarters, left her a few steps from her door.
Two steps into the room, she froze. Her mouth fell open. Her breath left her lungs under pressure, wouldn’t be retrieved.
All around. On every surface. Everywhere.
Red roses.
Bunches and bunches and bunches of perfect, bloodred roses.
Oh. God. Oh…God…
She darted back outside, called out to him. But he’d gone.
She stood there vibrating with the need to rush after him, find him wherever he was and smother him in kisses.
But…since he hadn’t waited around for her reaction, maybe he hadn’t anticipated it would be this fierce. Maybe he’d only meant to give her a nice surprise. Maybe he’d had every other woman’s room filled with flowers, too. Which she wouldn’t put past him. She’d never known anyone with his capacity for giving.
She staggered back into her room. The explosion of beauty and color and fragrance yanked her into its embrace again.
The need expanded, compressing her heart, her lungs.
It was no use. She had to do it. She had to go to him.
She grabbed a jacket, streaked outside.
His scent, his vibe led her to the roof.
He was standing at the waist-high stone balustrade overlooking a turbulent, after-midnight sea, a lone knight silvered by the moon, carved from the night.
She stopped a dozen steps away. He didn’t turn, stood like a statue of a Titan, the only animate things his satin mane rioting around his leonine head and his clothes rustling around his steel-fleshed frame. There was no way he could have heard the staccato of her feet or the labor of her breathing over the wind’s buffeting whistles. But she knew he felt her there. He was waiting for her to initiate this.
“Rodrigo.” Her gasp trembled against the wind’s dissipation. He turned then. Cool rays deposited glimmers in the emerald of his eyes, luster on the golden bronze of his ruggedness. She stepped closer, mesmerized by his magnificence. A step away, she reached for his hand. She wanted to take it to her lips. That hand that had saved her life, that changed the lives of countless others daily, giving them back their limbs and mobility and freeing them from pain and disability. She settled for squeezing it between both of her trembling ones. “Besides everything you’ve done for me, your roses are the best gift I’ve ever been given.”
His stare roiled with his discomfort at receiving gratitude. Then he simply said, “Your book beats my roses any day.”
A smile ached on her lips. “You have issues with hearing thanks, don’t you?”
“Thanks are overrated.”
“Nothing sincere can be rated highly enough.”
“I do what I want to do, what pleases me. And I certainly never do anything expecting…anything in return.”
Was he telling her that his gift wasn’t hinting at any special involvement? Warning her about getting ideas?
It wouldn’t change anything. She loved him with everything in her, would give him everything that she was if he’d only take it. But if he didn’t want it, she would give him her unending appreciation. “And I thank you because I want to, because it pleases me. And I certainly don’t expect you to do anything in return but accept. I accepted your thanks for the book, didn’t I?”
His lips spread in one of those slow, scorching smiles of his, as if against his will. “I don’t remember if I gave you a choice to accept it or not. I sort of overrode you.”
“Hmm, you’ve got a point.” Then, without warning, she tugged his hand. Surprise made him stumble the step that separated them, so that he ended up pressed against her from breast to calf. Her hand released his, went to his head, sifting through the silk of his mane, bringing it down to hers. How she wished she had the use of her other arm, so she could mimic his earlier embrace. She had to settle for pressing her longing against his forehead with lips that shook on his name.
They slid down his nose…and a cell phone rang.
He sundered their communion in a jerk, stared down at her, his eyes echoing the sea’s tumult. It was shuddering, disoriented moments before her brain rebooted after the shock of interruption, of separation from him. That was her cell phone’s tone.
It was in her jacket. Rodrigo had given it her, and only he had called her on it so far. Who could be calling her?
“Are you expecting a call?” His rasp scraped her nerves.
“I didn’t even know anyone had this number.”
“It’s probably a wrong number.”
“Yeah, probably. Just a sec.” She fumbled the phone out, hit Answer. A woman’s tear-choked voice filled her head.
“Agnes? What’s wrong?” Instant anxiety gripped Rodrigo, spilled into urgency that had his hand at the phone, demanding to bear bad news himself. She blurted out the question that she hoped would defuse his agitation, “Are you and Steven okay?”
“Yes, yes…it’s not that.”
Cybele covered the mouthpiece, rapped her urgent assurance to Rodrigo. “They’re both fine. This is something else.”
His alarm drained, but tension didn’t. He eased a fraction away, let her take the call, watching for any sign that necessitated his intervention, his taking over the situation.
Agnes went on. “I hate to ask you this, Cybele, but if you’ve remembered your life with Mel, you might know how this happened.”
Foreboding closed in on her. “How what happened?”
“M-many people have contacted us claiming that Mel owes them extensive amounts of money. And the hospital where you used to work together says the funding he offered in return for being the head of the new general surgery department was withdrawn and the projects that were under way have incurred overdrafts in the millions. Everyone is suing
us-and you-as his next of kin and inheritors.”
Ten
“So you don’t have any memory of those debts.”
Cybele shook her head, feeling crushed by doubts and fears.
It didn’t sound as if Rodrigo believed her. She had a feeling Agnes hadn’t, either. Did they think Mel had incurred all those debts because of her? Worse, had he? If he had, how? Why?
Was that what Agnes had almost brought up during Mel’s funeral? She’d thought Mel, in his inability to express his emotions for her any other way, had showered her with extravagant stuff? Not that she could think what could be that extravagant.
If that hadn’t been the case, she could think of only one other way. She’d made demands of him, extensive, unreasonable ones, and he’d gone to insane lengths to meet them. But what could have forced him to do so? Threats to leave him? If that were true, then she hadn’t been only a heartless monster, but a manipulative, mercenary one, too.
She had to know. She couldn’t take another breath if she didn’t. “Do you know anything about them?”
Rodrigo’s frown deepened as he shook his head slowly. But his eyes were thoughtful. With suspicions? Deductions? Realizations?
“You know something. Please, tell me. I have to know.”
He looked down at her for a bone-shaking moment, moonlight coasting over his beauty, throwing its dominant slashes and hollows into a conflict of light and darkness, of confusion and certainty.
Then he shook his head again, as if he’d made up his mind. To her dismay, he ignored her plea. “What I want to know is what has taken those creditors so long to come forward.”
“They actually did as soon as Mel’s death was confirmed.”
“Then what has taken Agnes and Steven so long to relate this, and why have they come to you with this, and not me?”
She gave him his foster mother’s explanations. “They wanted to make sure of the claims first, and then they didn’t want to bother you. They thought they could take care of it themselves. They called me in case I knew something only a wife would know, that would help them resolve this mess. And because I’m involved in the lawsuits.”
“Well, they were wrong, on all counts.” She almost cried out at the incensed edge that entered his voice and expression. The words to beg him not to take it up with them, that they had enough to deal with, had almost shot from her lips when he exhaled forcibly. “Not that they need to know that. They’ve been through enough, and they were as usual misguidedly trying not to impose on me. I think those two still don’t believe me when I say they are my parents. But anyway, none of you have anything to worry about. I’ll take care of everything.”
She gaped at him. Was he real? Could she love him more?
All she could say was, “Thank you.”
He squeezed his eyes on a grimace. “Don’t.”
“I will thank you, so live with it.” He glowered at her. She went on, “And since I’m on a roll, throwing my problems in your lap, I need your opinion on another one. My arm.”
His eyes narrowed. “What about it?”
“My fractures have healed, but the nerve damage isn’t clearing. Eight weeks ago, you said I wouldn’t be able to operate for months. Were you being overly optimistic? Will I ever regain the precision I used to have and need as a surgeon?”
“It’s still early, Cybele.”
“Please, Rodrigo, just give it to me straight. And before you say anything conciliatory, remember that I’ll see through it.”
“I would never condescend to you like that.”
“Even to protect me from bad news?”
“Even then.”
She believed him. He would never lie to her. He would never lie, period. So she pressed on. Needing the truth. About this, if she couldn’t have it about anything else.
“Then tell me. I’m a left-handed surgeon who knows nothing else but to be one, and I need to know if in a few weeks I’ll be looking to start a new career path. As you pointed out before, the arm attached to my hand had extensive nerve damage…”
“And I performed a meticulous peripheral nerve repair.”
“Still, I have numbness and weakness, tremors-”
“It’s still too early to predict a final prognosis. We’ll start your active motion physiotherapy rehabilitation program the moment we have proof of perfect bone healing.”
“We have that now.”
“No, we don’t. You’re young and healthy and your bones look healed now, but I need them rock solid before I remove the cast. That won’t be a day before twelve weeks after the surgery. Then we’ll start your physiotherapy. We’ll focus first on controlling the pain and swelling that accompanies splint removal and restoration of motion. Then we’ll move to exercises to strengthen and stabilize the muscles around the wrist joint then to exercises to improve fine motor control and dexterity.”
“What if none of it works? What if I regain enough motor control and dexterity to be self-sufficient but not a surgeon?”
“If that happens, you still have nothing to worry about. If worse comes to worst, I’ll see to it that you change direction smoothly to whatever field of medicine will provide you with as much fulfillment. But I’m not giving up on your regaining full use of your arm and hand. I’m stopping at nothing until we get you back to normal. And don’t even think about how long it will take, or what you’ll do or where you’ll be until it happens. You have all the time in the world to retrain your hand, to regain every last bit of power and control. You have a home here for as long as you wish and accept to stay. You have me, Cybele. I’m here for you, anytime, all the time, whatever happens.”
And she couldn’t hold back anymore.
She surged into him, tried to burrow inside him, her working arm shaking with the ferociousness of her hug. And she wept. She loved him so much, was so thankful he existed, it was agony.
He stilled, let her hug him and hold onto him and drench him in her tears. Then he wrapped her in his arms, caressed her from head to back, his lips by her ear, murmuring gentle and soothing words. Her heart expanded so quickly with a flood of love, it almost ruptured. Her tears gushed faster, her quakes nearly rattling flesh from bone.
He at last growled something as though agonized, snatched her from gravity’s grasp into his, lifted her until she felt she’d float out to sea if he relinquished his hold.
He didn’t, crushed her in his arms, squeezed her to his flesh until he forced every shudder and tear out of her.
Long after he’d dissipated her storm, he swayed with her, as if slow dancing the Sardana again, pressing her head into his shoulder, his other arm bearing her weight effortlessly as he raggedly swore to her in a loop of English and Catalan that he was there for her, that she’d never be without him. His movements morphed from soothing to inflaming to excruciating. But it was his promises that wrenched at the tethers of her heart.
For she knew he would honor every promise. He would remain in her life and that of her baby’s. As the protector, the benefactor, the dutiful, doting uncle. And every time she saw him or heard from him it would pour fresh desperation on the desolation of loving him and never being able to have him.
She had to get away. Today. Now. Her mind was disintegrating, and she couldn’t risk causing herself a deeper injury. Her baby needed her healthy and whole.
“Cybele…” He shifted his grip on her, and his hardness dug into her thigh.
She groped for air, arousal thundering through her. Voices inside her yelled that this was just a male reaction to having a female writhing in his arms, that it meant nothing.
She couldn’t listen. It didn’t matter. He was aroused. This could be her only chance to be with him. And she had to take it. She needed the memory, the knowledge that she’d shared her body with him to see her through the barrenness of a life without him.
She rubbed her face into his neck, opened her lips on his pulse. It bounded against her tongue, as if trying to drive deeper into her mouth, mate with her. Every
steel muscle she was wrapped around expanded, bunched, buzzed. She whimpered at the feel of his flesh beneath her lips, the texture, the taste, at the sheer delight of breathing him in, absorbing his potency. “Cybele, querida…” He began to put her down and she clung, captured his lips before he said any more, before he could tell her no.
She couldn’t take no for an answer. Not this time. She had to have this time.
She caught his groans on her tongue, licked his lips of every breath, suckled his depths dry of every sound. She arched into his arousal, confessing hers without words. Then with them. “Rodrigo-I want you.” That came out a torn sob. “If you want me, please-just take me. Don’t hold back. Don’t think. Don’t worry. No consequences or considerations. No tomorrows.”
Rodrigo surrendered to Cybele, let her take of him what she would, his response so vast it was like a hurricane building momentum before it unleashed its destruction.
But her tremulous words replayed in his mind as she rained petal softness and fragrant warmth all over his face, crooning and whimpering her pleas for his response, her offer of herself. He felt things burning inside him as he held back, the significance of her words expanding in his mind.
Carte blanche. That was what she was giving him. With her body, with herself. No strings. No promises. No expectations.
Because she didn’t want any? Because her need was only sexual? Or because she couldn’t handle more than that? But what if she couldn’t handle even that? If he gave her what she thought she wanted and ended up damaging her more?
And though he was nearly mindless now, powerless against the force of her desire, he’d conditioned himself to protect her from his own. “Cybele, you’re distraught-”
She sealed his lips again, stopping his objection, her tongue begging entry, her kisses growing fevered, singeing the last of his control. “With need for you. I sometimes feel it will shatter me. I know what I’m asking. Please, Rodrigo, please…just give me this time.” This time. She thought he could stop at once, that he could possess her then walk away? It wasn’t carte blanche, just a one-time offer? Would all that need she talked about then be quenched? Did she not feel more for him because her emotions had been buried with Mel, even if she didn’t remember?