Tempted by Dr. Morales

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘So how come you finally got it cut?’

  ‘My gap year is over,’ Juan said. ‘It is time to get to work.’ He saw her frown. ‘Harry rang me at the children’s hospital on Friday and said that he had found only one applicant suitable and that they really needed two. He said that he wanted me to work at Bayside. The applications have to be in Personnel by Monday and, given I was working till last night, this morning was our only chance for a formal interview.’

  ‘For a three-month contract?’

  ‘No.’ They started walking towards the crowd, who were calling to them to get a move on. ‘For a permanent role.’

  Cate blinked, because seeing Juan every day was going to be hard. Yes, she knew they had something, should be pleased they didn’t have a clock hanging over them now, but to get closer to him, to have to work alongside him...

  ‘I might have to go to New Zealand while the applications are sorted. Harry is going to try and help to sort things with Immigration but we will have to see what happens.’ Then he stopped walking and caught her hand and turned her to face him. ‘Marry me?’ He said it just like that, walking towards the shed where all their colleagues were. ‘I was going to ask that we take things more seriously, that we see how things work out, but I already know what I want.’

  ‘Marriage?’ She looked at him. ‘For a visa?’

  ‘Cate.’ He held her eyes. ‘Ask yourself that question again. Why do you think I want this job, why do you think I want to be here?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You,’ Juan said. ‘We can live here or in Argentina, or...’ He looked at her. ‘I don’t care. I just don’t want to be apart from you. I take marriage seriously, and today I watched you jump out of that plane and, yes, like anyone, I had some concerns. If something terrible had happened, I would have been there. I knew it as truth as I watched you fall. I knew too that if something happened, you would be the first to say we have only been with each other a little while, it is not serious, that I don’t have to hang around...’

  She could feel tears stinging the back of her throat as he continued.

  ‘I want the good and bad, in sickness and in health, and I want them with you.’

  It wasn’t a game.

  The feelings she had been fighting, glimpsing, scorning herself for feeling had been real after all.

  ‘Do I have to ask twice?’ Juan said, and she shook her head.

  ‘That’s a yes,’ Cate said, and it was hardly even a decision because it needed no thought when her heart knew the answer.

  ‘I should warn you,’ Juan said. ‘I’m guaranteed to have a limp when I’m older.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a cane.’ Cate smiled, and her heart swelled as she glimpsed the truth. They had a future, one where his black hair would go silver and he wasn’t temporary but was there with her, for all of it. It was overwhelming, more overwhelming than jumping out of a plane, more exhilarating than freefalling.

  ‘We’re going shopping,’ Juan said.

  ‘Shopping?’

  ‘For a ring.’

  She caught his hand. ‘I’ve already bought the ring, or rather you have.’

  ‘What?’ He half smiled and frowned as she took a silver ring out of her pocket and handed it to him. He turned it over and over in vague recognition.

  ‘I used the money you left for me to get a top on this instead. It was Elsie’s,’ Cate explained. ‘I found it in an antique shop in the village.’

  He looked at the silver ring in his hand and read the inscription and then he looked at her, a woman who didn’t want diamonds, who wanted only his love.

  ‘Je t’adore,’ Juan said, and took her right hand. ‘We don’t have separate engagement rings in Argentina, so this is your wedding band,’ he told her. ‘It is worn on the right hand till our wedding day,’ he explained, slipping the ring on her finger, and it fitted perfectly. It was absolutely meant to be.

  She could hear the screams and shouts from Kelly and Abby as Juan bent over and kissed her in full view of everyone. Readily, Cate kissed him back.

  ‘They’ll want us to go out and celebrate when we tell them,’ Cate warned, as they started running over.

  ‘No,’ Juan said, and he thought about the friend he had made on the train, about the conversation that, since he had met Cate, had been running through his mind. He recalled the feeling of stepping into her house and hearing the sound of her laughter from the garden. ‘We are going back to yours. It’s time for me to stop running away.’

  Juan took her hand in his. ‘We’re going home.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘I AM SO glad to be out of that place for four weeks.’

  They were high above the clouds, on their way to Argentina to get married. Cate’s family was coming out next week, but for now Cate and Juan were sitting sipping champagne. Cate felt guilty that Juan had got business-class tickets and it was nice to be grumbling about work but, in truth, to be happy at work, too. The new nurse unit manager had started and was making very sure that Cate knew who was boss. ‘Marnie’s awful.’ Cate sighed. ‘I don’t think she understands that I resigned rather than that I was demoted and that I have absolutely no desire to do her job.’

  ‘I like her,’ Juan said.

  ‘You like Marnie?’

  ‘I do.’ Juan shrugged. ‘The place is running well. She’s very strict and she takes no nonsense and Marnie’s certainly stopped all the carry-on with Harry and his children.’

  ‘Leave Harry alone,’ Cate said.

  ‘No. If something happened to you, would you want me dragging our baby in at four a.m.?’

  ‘No,’ Cate admitted. ‘But we don’t have a baby and—’

  ‘We could,’ Juan interrupted.

  ‘Isn’t it too soon?’

  ‘Not for me,’ Juan said. He’d seen the look in her eyes last night when Bridgette had told them she and James were expecting a baby.

  Cate looked at him. Sometimes she had to pinch herself, sometimes she actually jumped when she walked into the house and he was still there.

  ‘You were supposed to be a one-night stand,’ Cate said. ‘My wild fling. And now, here we are, talking about babies.’

  ‘You don’t do wild flings,’ Juan said.

  ‘I know.’

  He sat as she contemplated the future. Cate was the least impulsive person he knew, but when she made her mind up, she made it up—he’d realised that.

  ‘Next year,’ Cate said. ‘I want a year of just us and getting to know each other and being as happy as we are. Anyway,’ Cate said, ‘we need to save for it. I’ve just had my first full pay since I demoted myself.’ She gave a small wince. ‘And you’ve blown your savings flying my family out for the wedding and you’ve only just started back at work full time.’

  ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Juan said and he looked over. There was so much to learn, so much to know and so much that hadn’t mattered to Cate that had mattered to so many others.

  As they approached Buenos Aires some time later, Cate woke up and saw a pensive Juan looking out of the window, staring down at his home town. He only stopped when the flight attendant told him to close the shutter for landing.

  ‘Nervous?’ Cate asked.

  ‘Not for myself,’ Juan admitted. ‘I never thought I would be so ready to go back. I just wonder how they are going to react to me.’ He gave her a smile. ‘To the new Juan.’

  They loved him.

  All his family were there at the airport—as unconventional and as glamorous and as exotic as Juan. They welcomed Cate with open arms and it wasn’t just blood family who were there to greet him on his return.

  ‘This is Eduard,’ Juan introduced them, and Cate hugged him as fiercely as Juan had. ‘And this is Felicia...’

  ‘We are so excited,’ Fe
licia said. ‘My English is crap.’

  ‘I taught her,’ Juan said.

  ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘We are so excited,’ Ramona, his mother, told her as they drove towards their home. ‘Pardon my crap English.’

  Cate started to laugh. ‘You have to tell them what they’re saying,’ she said to Juan.

  ‘But I love it too much to spoil it,’ Juan said.

  They chatted about the plans for the wedding and the menu. Their English was littered with the swear words Juan had told them were the words Cate would want to hear.

  ‘It sounds wonderful,’ Cate said to the blue air, even though she had no idea what the dishes that were being talked about were.

  ‘Wow!’ Cate looked out of the window the whole ride from the airport and she had said it often. Buenos Aires was such a busy, vibrant city, a lot like the man it had produced, yet there was incredible elegance too.

  ‘I was expecting fields and horses.’

  ‘This is Recoleta,’ Juan explained. ‘We are nearly at my parents’.’ Cate swallowed as they drove down the very affluent streets. The houses were amazing, the streets lined with trees and golden streetlights. ‘There is Medicina,’ Juan explained, ‘where I studied medicine...and over there is the best dance school. You have to learn the tango before the wedding.’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘You do. I have booked you for lessons, and over there...’ her head turned to where he was pointing ‘...is where we will be having our celebration.’

  He watched as Cate’s jaw gaped. It was the most beautiful restaurant and she cringed when she thought of the cost, worried as her parents had offered to help pay for the wedding of their only daughter.

  She doubted they were expecting something so grand.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Juan winked as he watched her lick dry lips. ‘We’re getting a good discount, given that it’s the owners’ son’s wedding.’

  ‘That’s your parents’ restaurant?’ It was beyond amazing, a huge Parisian-style building, nothing like the corner café she’d been expecting.

  ‘When you said you worked in the café after school...’ She’d had visions of young Juan wrapping up kebabs and mopping floors.

  ‘Oh, I meant restaurant,’ Juan said, and she remembered then how carefully he had chosen that word.

  ‘Liar!’ Cate laughed.

  ‘I was then.’ Juan smiled. ‘I told no one anything of my past. It is one of the best restaurants in Buenos Aires, perhaps the best. My parents are world-renowned chefs—they hoped I would follow in their footsteps and I thought about it for a while.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cate swallowed. ‘So that fish that tasted more amazing than I could begin to describe, that marinade...’

  ‘Is my mother’s recipe,’ Juan explained. ‘I didn’t go fishing that morning—but I knew I could seduce you with food...’ He gave her a nudge. ‘As it turned out, I didn’t need it.’

  ‘Stop!’ Cate blushed at the memory of them in the kitchen.

  ‘Juan is a beautiful cook,’ Ramona sighed. ‘A waste of your talent...’

  They were all mad, all gorgeous and all about to become her family, and then Cate remembered. ‘Oh, God! All those meals I’ve cooked you...’

  ‘What meals?’ Juan checked. ‘You mean cheese on toast, egg on toast, beans on toast...?’ How he teased. ‘You do make a nice roast lamb, if a little dry.’ He put his arm around her. ‘I’m a good catch.’

  He looked at her serious hazel eyes and he was certain.

  More certain in love than he had ever been.

  ‘And I am so glad that I caught you,’ he said.

  EPILOGUE

  IN CATE’S DREAMS she relived it.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ Juan said as he kissed her at the entrance to the church.

  Cate had never seen Juan in a suit, and he looked exquisite. He had on a slate-grey tie that matched his eyes and she knew he would have been so grateful for the fingers able to knot it, so grateful for each button on his shirt that he was able to do up. The dawning smile on Juan’s face when he saw her wedding dress made her blush. It was a very pale lilac, like the skirt she had worn when he’d first kissed her, and it had a halterneck top—together they smiled at the memories they had already created, in the knowledge there was so much more to come.

  ‘We do this walk together,’ Juan’s rich voice told her as, with Juan’s father and Cate’s mother and Eduard behind them, hand in hand they walked down the aisle. And then they faced each other and offered their vows, and Cate needed no translation.

  Every word was heartfelt in whatever language it was spoken.

  Their future was together, come what may, Cate had known as a very special ring was moved from her right hand to her left.

  Caught between waking and sleeping on her first morning as Juan’s wife, she remembered the reception, surrounded by family and new friends. Dancing a terrible tango and drinking fernet and cola, then coming back to the hotel.

  Cate moaned in her sleep as she recalled their lovemaking, because if ever there was a bride more inappropriately named it was Mrs Morales!

  ‘Cate?’

  She heard her name being called but she didn’t want to wake up, didn’t want to move away from the bliss of being kissed by him. His tongue mingled with hers and she relished the scent of him, the feel of his hands roaming her body.

  Juan checked her finger and the ring was there. He ran a hand along her legs and kissed her until they moved and wrapped tightly around him.

  ‘Cate?’

  She heard her name again and moaned as he slid inside her, wanted to be woken like this each and every morning. Her hands slipped up his shoulders and to his neck and he didn’t halt her this time. Nothing was out of bounds now. Instead, she opened her eyes to him as together they lived the dream.

  * * * * *

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin ebook. Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

  Other ways to keep in touch:

  Harlequin.com/newsletters

  Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks

  Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks

  HarlequinBlog.com

  ISBN-13: 9781460326268

  TEMPTED BY DR. MORALES

  Copyright © 2014 by Carol Marinelli

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.Harlequin.com

 

 

 
cale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share