Tempted by Dr. Morales

by Carol Marinelli

  He tasted of both him and of her, and she heard his ragged moan as she kissed him deeper, taking him further, and Juan gave in then.

  The shout was primal and it came from somewhere he had never been.

  She felt the jerk and the rush at the back of her throat and she was coming just from feeling him, from tasting him.

  From adoring him.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘STAY THERE,’ JUAN said as the alarm blared like a siren. ‘I’ll bring us coffee.’

  It was stupid to lie there and listen to him in her kitchen for the first time and to think she could miss something that had only happened once.

  She was very close to crying and absolutely determined not to.

  He brought her coffee and they drank it in strained silence. Juan headed off to the shower and then came out and dressed. He sat on the bed and she watched him pulling on his boots for the first and last time.

  He made every moment matter.

  ‘It’s good to hear the rain.’

  ‘It is,’ Cate said. ‘I’ll be told off now for ordering too many burn packs.’

  ‘Better too many than not enough,’ Juan said. ‘I think you made the right choice about work.’

  Cate nodded, she didn’t trust herself to speak.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Juan said, when it was clear she was struggling. ‘I start at eight...’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thank you for last night, for all our times...’

  ‘Go,’ Cate said, ‘or I’m going to fail...’

  ‘Fail what?’

  ‘Living in the moment, not getting too involved.’

  ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘Of course, as long as I avoid any tall Argentinian doctors that happen to be passing through...’

  ‘No regrets?’

  ‘No.’ Cate shook her head. ‘I don’t think so anyway. You?’

  ‘Potentially,’ Juan said. ‘Will you be there on Sunday?’

  ‘No...’ Cate shook her head, she couldn’t put herself through this again, but a part of her couldn’t stand never to see him again. ‘I don’t know.’

  He kissed her again but it didn’t quite work out and he stood. ‘I’m going to go.’ She went to get up, to see him out.

  ‘Stay there,’ Juan said.

  So she did.

  Hearing the door close hurt a million times more than it ever had.

  Cate did get up. She stood back from the window, watched him walk in the direction of the train station.

  She knew then what she’d been scared of right from the very start—not the one night with him, not the casual aspect. It was this part she’d been dreading, and the next part and the next.

  Juan did not look back.

  He felt the rain on his face and he loved it, loved living, loved the freedom. It was time to move on, he told himself.

  He took the train to the city and watched as a young woman in a wheelchair boarded and gave him a dark look as she caught him staring.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Juan said. He did not look away and maybe their souls recognised each other because they got talking, so much so that Juan was going to be late for his final shift in Australia. He was sitting at a train station, having a coffee, when his new friend told him a truth.

  ‘Maybe it’s time to go home, Juan, and face things,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe it’s time to stop running away.’

  ‘I think it is.’

  He was only ten minutes late for work and no one seemed to notice. He walked around the unit with Paddy taking the handover then told him he hoped that he had a good weekend.

  ‘Jason!’ Juan looked down at his very drowsy patient. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Of course he does,’ Lisa said. ‘Jason, it’s Juan, the doctor who brought you here.’

  He saw Jason’s eyes flicker open.

  ‘You’ve had a rough time, haven’t you, my friend?’ Jason had gone downhill a few days after his admission and had been intubated two days ago. They were trying now to extubate him.

  Juan looked over at Jason’s mother and saw Lisa’s eyes brimming with tears. ‘We’re hoping he finally gets the tube out today.’

  ‘It will happen when it’s ready,’ Juan said. ‘You will have heard the saying—difficult intubations mean difficult extubations. We expect this...’

  Lisa nodded.

  ‘We just want him home.’

  There was that word again.

  ‘He will be,’ Juan assured her. ‘It makes it no easier on you but this is, for Jason, normal.’ Juan sat on the bed with his young friend. ‘We’re going to let the sedation wear off this morning and see how his breathing goes, and if he’s keeping his saturations then we’ll think about removing the tube later today.’

  ‘Will you be here?’

  ‘I’m on till tomorrow evening,’ Juan said. ‘We’ll get through this.’

  ‘Then you’re off. To New Zealand, isn’t it? Or so I’ve heard,’ Lisa said.

  ‘I’m not sure...’ Juan looked up as Kent came over.

  ‘You’re popular this morning,’ Kent said. ‘I’ve just taken a couple of calls for you. I said I didn’t know if you were working today but that I’d find out and pass the message on if you were.’

  They were so much more efficient here than at Bayside!

  ‘Thanks,’ Juan said to Kent, and then looked at the note. He grimaced when he read it and then put it in his pocket.

  ‘So, you’re not sure about New Zealand?’ Lisa resumed the conversation.

  ‘Nope,’ Juan said. ‘I think it might be time for home.’

  He gave Jason’s shoulder a squeeze and told him he’d be back to check in on him in a little while. He went out to the on-call room to make a couple of calls that he’d been putting off for way too long now.

  ‘Martina.’ He was kind, he was firm and there was no arguing with someone who had made up their mind. ‘You need to stop calling me.’

  They spoke for a little while and as Juan went to end the call she asked him a question.

  ‘Can we at least be friends?’

  Juan was about to say no, because he didn’t need the constant reminders, but perhaps that did not matter any more—maybe they could be.

  ‘Some day perhaps,’ Juan answered.

  He rang off, but sat there for a very long time with the phone still in his hand. He understood fully why Cate couldn’t stand to catch up with him on social media, how it would hurt to watch someone’s life from a distance.

  Martina didn’t hurt any more.

  He wasn’t just letting go of a love that had once been, he was letting go too of the man that he’d once been. All the dreams and aspirations, even thoughts, that had existed were alien to Juan now.

  The old Juan was gone and it almost hurt to finally let go, but there was a sense of relief when he did.

  He was a different person.

  A wiser person.

  A happy person.

  A good man.

  The second phone call Juan had expected to be the tough one—but it turned out to be the most straightforward decision in his life.

  He wanted to go home.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SOON SHE WOULD have no regrets, Cate told herself.

  In a few weeks from now, surely it wouldn’t hurt so much?

  Cate fervently wished that she could do the casual relationship thing, wished that she hadn’t had to go and fall quite so hard. Walking to the shops on Saturday morning, Cate looked up at the rainbow that had come out, telling herself it meant something. She was determined to buy a delicious top with the money she’d found on the hall table after he’d gone.

  No, it hadn’t offended; instead, it had made
her smile.

  Cate wasn’t smiling now.

  Tears were precariously close and she could see Kelly coming out of the boutique. The last thing Cate wanted now was conversation and she turned to look into a shop window, hoping that Kelly wouldn’t notice her.

  It was an antique shop and Cate looked at the rings, her eyes catching sight of a bevelled silver one with an amethyst and she walked inside.

  ‘Can I look at a ring in the window?’ Cate pointed it out and the assistant chatted as she headed over to fetch it.

  ‘It just went in the window this morning.’ The assistant smiled as she handed it over and as Cate looked, there inside she saw the words she really needed to see, and she thanked Elsie and her lover for them.

  Je t’adore.

  Cate thanked the wonderful old woman who had given her that push to live a little more, as she wanted, rather than how she felt she should. She thanked too the man who had made her feel more adored than she ever had.

  It wasn’t an impulse buy, it was an essential buy, and as she handed over the money he had left, yes, it came from Juan.

  ‘Cate!’ Kelly saw her coming out of the antique store. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Shopping.’ Cate was getting good at forcing that smile. ‘Ready for your jump tomorrow?’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Kelly smiled. ‘You should come.’

  ‘I might come along and watch.’ Cate wondered if it would just make things worse, but the chance of seeing him again, even the sight of him hurtling out of a plane, was surely better than not seeing him at all.

  ‘I meant you should come and jump.’

  ‘It’s too late now, the bookings are all done.’

  Kelly shook her head. ‘There’s a spot that’s opened up. It’s all paid for—it was too late for a refund.’

  Cate twisted the ring on her finger and made the second most foolish choice of her life.

  ‘I’ll jump,’ Cate said, terrified not just at the prospect of leaping out of a plane but at the thought of seeing Juan again and having to say goodbye—again. ‘But I can’t just take someone’s place without paying. Who do I owe?’

  ‘Juan.’ Kelly said, and Cate simply stood as Juan moved out of her life for ever, just as she had always known that he would one day. ‘He said he’d been looking forward to it but had somewhere he needed to be. I think he’s already gone.’

  Cate made it home without crying and when there was a knock at the door she forced that smile and saw that it was Bridgette.

  ‘Thanks so much for your help the other day,’ Cate said.

  ‘It was no big deal. I brought back your plates.’ She handed them to Cate. ‘The lamb was delicious.’

  ‘Thanks to you.’

  ‘So was Juan!’

  ‘I know,’ Cate said. ‘He’s gone to New Zealand...’ She tried to sound upbeat. ‘I knew all along he would, it was just...’ She couldn’t finish, couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t agony for even a second longer.

  ‘Do you want...?’ Bridgette stood there. By now Cate usually would have opened the door and invited her in. ‘Do you want company?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Cate shook her head.

  ‘If you do?’

  ‘I know,’ Cate said, closing the door, her eyes so full of tears that as she walked into the kitchen she faltered and tripped and the plates crashed to the floor.

  Yes, she could have broken her neck.

  As easily as that.

  She stared at the mess and then the tears fell.

  It hadn’t been a fling or a holiday romance, neither had it even been a rebound.

  It was love and she’d lost it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CATE FELT MORE than a pang of guilt for the lecture she’d delivered to Juan about being reckless to even consider the skydive. There was a disabled group jumping before the emergency team and Cate knew that she should have got her facts straight before accusing him of being careless.

  But, then, she hadn’t been thinking very straight at the time and, really—a motorbike?

  Then she thought of Juan riding through the hills, the elation he must have felt, and still felt each day over and over again, as he chose to live his life the way he wanted to, and she smiled for him instead.

  ‘You need to take that ring off,’ the instructor told her, and Cate pulled it off and pocketed it, having visions of it knotting in the strings as she jumped into the sky.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Kelly asked through chattering teeth.

  ‘I’ve never been more scared in my life,’ Cate admitted. ‘Tell me, why am I doing this again?’

  ‘For a good cause?’ Kelly offered as, instructions over, they walked towards the plane. Kelly wasn’t looking quite so confident now.

  ‘I’m sorry I pushed you into this, Cate,’ Kelly said. ‘I’m petrified.’

  It came as little comfort to know she wasn’t the only one as she sat with her fellow suicide and the plane rose into the sky.

  Kelly went first. She left the plane screaming. Abby went second and one by one the rest followed.

  Cate was last, which was so much worse in so many ways—there were no friends to bolster her, no one to watch her shame as she said, no, she couldn’t do it.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, as she was strapped to her skydiver. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘All you have to remember is to lift your legs as we land.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Cate...’ The instructor was more than used to this, but when over and over Cate insisted that, no, this really wasn’t what she wanted, he was about to relent and unstrap her.

  ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t,’ he warned her.

  Cate had heard something like that somewhere before.

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  The instructor took the small window but, even if he hadn’t, now Cate’s mind was made up there would be no changing it.

  That much she knew about herself.

  There was no feeling like it.

  Even with her eyes closed, even pretending she wasn’t really doing it, there was nothing, Cate quickly found out, like it in the world.

  She screamed and screamed as she opened her eyes to a world that was amazing. The sky and the bay were dressed in vivid blues as far as the eye could see. Then she saw the white chop of the waves on the back beaches and the calm stillness of the bay, felt the pressure of the air, and Cate knew why she was doing this now.

  I’m doing this for me.

  She was doing it for the exhilaration of jumping out of a plane and feeling the pressure and the surprisingly strong cushion of thin air, for the fear and the fun and the uncertainty that all too often she had refused to embrace.

  But finally she had.

  Cate felt the chute jerk and the freefall break, and she thought about Juan, understood his need to embrace things, to experience and to fully sample the world. Floating above the tea trees, it happened then, just as Elsie had said it would—her heart soared for him.

  * * *

  ‘Juan!’ Kelly turned. Still giddy from jumping, she smiled when she saw who it was. ‘I didn’t recognise you.’

  ‘I figured it was time for a haircut,’ Juan said. ‘I wanted to come and watch the jumping but I am later getting here than I thought I would be.’ His eyes scanned the gathering, hoping to get a glimpse of Cate; he had been to her home but she wasn’t there and he had hoped she might have come along to give her colleagues moral support, but there was no sign of her.

  ‘We’re going out for dinner afterwards,’ Kelly said.

  Juan gave a noncommittal nod. ‘How was your jump?’ he asked her.

  ‘It was the scariest moment of my life,’ Kelly admitted. ‘I feel terrible for pushing Cate into it, though
I don’t think she’ll jump. She was pea green the last time I saw her.’

  ‘Cate’s jumping?’

  ‘There she is!’ Kelly shouted, and Juan looked up, watched the two figures jumping out of a plane, and he grinned, for he’d known there was a wild side to her.

  ‘Who’d have thought?’ Kelly said as Cate’s screams and laughter came into earshot.

  Me, Juan said silently, because he’d seen a different side to her, the untapped spirit that lay inside and the quiet strength too. He could only smile that she wasn’t crying or miserable, though his ego would have liked a slightly more subdued Cate after he had seemingly left.

  No, he wouldn’t, Juan decided as he watched her land, heard her laughing as she untangled herself and then, dusting down her legs, she walked to the group.

  ‘That was amazing!’ Cate shouted. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this but I want to do it....’ Then her voice halted as she looked at the group of colleagues and friends and saw that Juan was amongst them.

  A different Juan because that long shock of black hair had been cut. She’d loved his hair, yet he looked incredible with it shorter too. And what was with the clean-shaven jaw?

  ‘I thought you were in New Zealand!’ She tried to hide her exhilaration; she didn’t want her colleagues knowing what had gone on between them, but the unexpected sight of him was more breathtaking than jumping out of a plane.

  ‘So did everyone.’ Juan grinned.

  ‘You’ve had a haircut!’

  He nodded.

  ‘How was it?’

  Juan pulled her aside. She knew him, knew the big deal it must have been, and he told her the truth. ‘Can you believe I broke into a sweat as I walked in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The girl must have been all of eighteen and could not have been more bored as she cut my hair. “What did you do to your neck?” she asked when she saw the scar.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Cate smiled at grey eyes she had thought she might never see again.

  ‘That I went to get a haircut.’ Juan grinned. ‘She did not get the joke, of course. I think she thought my English was no good.’