by Dianne Drake
“And it’s a bit ticklish because we are bringing people over the border. The Dharavaj government is very gracious, but the fact remains that some of these people…most of these people don’t have visas that allow them into the country so, in essence, we’re smuggling them in.” He paused to breathe. “I need to sit…”
Taking a firm hold of him around the waist, Solaina grumbled, “You need to be in bed, so put your arm up over my shoulder.”
By the time they’d taken the few steps back to the porch, he was almost a dead weight on her. His legs were moving, but the bulk of him was upright only because of her strength. “Just sit down in the chair,” she snapped, “and I’ll go get your friend, Matteo.”
“I don’t need him,” David gasped, sinking cautiously onto the wooden deck chair. “I’m fine.”
“You’re as stubborn as a mule,” she snapped, stooping to help him position his legs.
“And you’re not?” He laughed. “Of course, on you stub-born’s becoming.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, looking up at him. “It was a mistake that I won’t make again. But you owe me one thing before I leave, David. You owe me an explanation.”
They were so close, mere inches from each other, that she could feel the gentle heat radiating from his body. Gentle heat now, not a raging fever. And they were no longer nurse and patient; they no longer shared the intimacy that nursing a person back to health entitled her to. So she stepped back from him. “Why did you leave me like you did? To worry? You owed me better than that.”
“You’re leaving Dharavaj, Solaina. You don’t need to be tangled up with whatever kind of mess it is that I’ve got going.”
“That’s not it, David. You don’t lie well.” She could see it in his eyes, hear it in the tone of his words.
“That’s part of it. Honestly. I don’t know what this is and I really don’t want you involved.”
“And the other part. The real reason?”
“Because I have feelings for you, Solaina.” He took a deep breath, then frowned. “You wanted honesty. Here’s more. I imagined you in a role I couldn’t put you in. And a role you didn’t want to be put in. So I left before it got out of hand.”
At least he was honest. More so than she’d ever expected. “You’re supposing that I would have let you get that close.” She might have, though. She probably would have. Frightening thought that it was, her guard had been coming down with David from the first moment she’d heard him babble on about the trees, and part of her was glad he’d had enough of his guard up for both of them, because hers was temporarily out of order. “And you were merely saving me from you?”
David chuckled. “It seems that way, doesn’t it? I can’t do justice to a relationship, and you don’t want to try.”
“But that’s supposing a relationship exists between us.”
“And I was supposing a relationship. From the first moment I opened my eyes and there you were, that’s all I could think about. All I could think about after I got back here. And, like it or not, that is a relationship, Solaina. One I couldn’t draw you into, so I left. Believe me, everything in me wanted to get involved.”
“And that just about says it all, doesn’t it?” She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then shook her head. “You know, I really shouldn’t have come here,” she murmured, stepping away from him. “And I won’t again.” She’d just been rejected in something she was fighting so hard against. It was humiliating, and she was hurt in spite of the fact that David was correct. She didn’t want this between them. So how stupid was it that she was feeling this way when she should be thanking him right now? Wishing him well. Walking away with what she truly wanted.
But somehow she felt utterly miserable.
She’d made a wrong turn on the road to Kantha, and now it was time to turn back.
“I’m glad you’re doing well, David.” Solaina extended her hand to him. “I don’t expect we’ll cross paths again, so I suppose this is goodbye.”
He took her hand and held it for a second. “I’m glad you did come,” he whispered. “Even though I’m so conflicted about this, I wanted to see you again, almost from the moment I left you. And I apologize for not doing that better. You deserved better, Solaina. When I say that I can’t get involved with you, that’s the truth. I can’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to, because that’s all that I want. Which is the reason I can’t. If that makes any sense to you.” He smiled, then leaned forward and kissed the back of her hand. “So will you forgive me for hurting you, pretty lady? Because I’d rather crack another rib than do that.”
Solaina drew in a ragged breath. She was leaving, David was staying. So there was no destiny involved here, and she simply had to keep her head about that. “David, this—”
Before her words were out, he stood up and pulled her into his arms. There, locked in his embrace, battling with surrender and yet still contemplating retreat, the feel of his lips on hers came as a shock—not so much because she hadn’t expected the kiss but because she hadn’t known how much she’d wanted it.
And as his tongue stole into her mouth, brushing over hers, taunting it playfully and begging for her response, Solaina finally set aside her doubts and questions and gave herself over to the moment. But only the moment.
Lifting her hand, she slipped it around his neck and ran her fingers through the scraggly blond hair brushing across his collar, delighting in the demanding force of his jaw as he journeyed from her mouth to trace his lips down the contour of her chin then lower, to her throat. Like the pouring of sweet, golden honey, it was slow and deliberate, as though he was savoring every tingling inch of her flesh.
And her flesh did tingle so deliciously wherever he touched it.
David breathed deeply, and a muted growl rumbled deep inside his throat. Then he pulled away—abruptly. Much sooner than she’d expected. Much sooner than she’d wanted. And even in the fading light of the day, she saw that he regretted what had just happened. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, raising her hand to her lips. Already they were swollen, and she knew if the light was better he would see the scarlet of her cheeks and the keen disappointment in her eyes. Because she was disappointed and, yes, even embarrassed. But mostly disappointed.
“It matters more than you know,” he rasped.
“We are what we are,” Solaina said. “And there’s no getting around it, is there?” She stepped off the porch, then turned back to David. “I’m glad you’re better. And I wish you well here at Vista.” This wasn’t the way she’d wanted it to end, but maybe it was for the best. Foolish notions didn’t have a place in her life, and David was a foolish notion. A foolish, romantic notion. “Goodbye, David,” she said as she picked up her pace to her car.
She wasn’t returning to her cottage tonight—the long trip back to Chandella would allow her ample time to get over this silliness. Besides, the cottage would call back her brand-new memories of David and remind her of how slow-witted she’d just been. And if there was one thing Solaina didn’t require, it was a reminder.
“Wait, Solaina,” David called. He stepped off the porch, but buckled over before he could run to her.
She turned around in time to see David crumple over, and her first impulse was to go back to him, to help him to his bed, which was where he rightfully belonged. But this was a hospital, and there were others here infinitely more qualified to take care of him than she was. Infinitely more qualified and infinitely less confused. So she continued to her car, and when she arrived she took one more look, only to see David sinking to his knees in the dirt. “Damn,” she muttered, running back to him. “Why do you keep doing this to me? Letting me get only so far, then pulling me back to you?”
“Because you have an uncanny way of being in the wrong place for you at the right time for me,” he grunted, as she helped him stand.
“Or because you have an uncanny way of collapsing in the wrong place for me at the right time for you.” He was leanin
g heavily into her, not at all averse to letting her support him. “Are you bleeding?” she asked. “Your shoulder?”
“Don’t think so,” he grunted.
“Your ribs?”
“The same.”
“Can you stay here while I go get someone to help get you inside? Because right now you shouldn’t be walking.”
“Think I might collapse again.”
“Then lean on me, David. It’s only a few steps.” And a proximity to him that was much closer than anything she wanted ever again. But he was, after all, still her patient in a farfetched sense of the word, she supposed. Once she delivered him back inside to his friend Matteo, though, it was over. For good!
CHAPTER EIGHT
“SO I told her I couldn’t get involved, but that I wanted to get involved, then I kissed her and she left, and I went after her…”
“And I’m surprised she waited around after all that, but she said she wanted to, until I finished examining you. She’s in the waiting room, although I can’t promise you how long she’ll stay after that merry-go-round you’ve put her on. Once she hears that you’re fine, I think she’ll leave. With good cause.” Matteo looked down at David, sprawled out on his bed, and shook his head skeptically. “That was the most pitiful acting job I’ve ever seen, by the way.”
“Meaning what?” David snapped.
“Meaning that deliberate fall to your knees. You looked like a centenarian with gout, getting down to the ground the way you did. You’re lucky she didn’t back over you.”
“It wasn’t an act. I feel like a centenarian with gout.”
“Then maybe you should have groveled a little while you were down there. The kiss was good, though. I think she might have enjoyed it. But to shove off like you did, and in the middle of it? She should have backed over you twice for that one.”
“And exactly how much weren’t you watching?”
Matteo chuckled. “I always figured it was bound to happen to you, but you don’t have much of a knack for it, do you? And I’m betting you didn’t ask her about the Léandre connection either.”
David pushed himself up to a sitting position, holding his breath against the pain. “So what if I didn’t?”
“You’re pitiful. That’s what. You’re so crazy in love with the girl you’re afraid to find out the truth about her, afraid to get tangled up with her, afraid to let her go, afraid to—”
“OK, I get the point.”
“And the point is sappy, old friend. Which makes me very happy for you, if you can get it worked out, because this time you’ll know better than to ignore her. As if you could. Solaina’s not the kind of lady a man can ignore. Oh, and as you’re figuring out how to make things right between you two, see if she’s connected to IMO in ways other than the obvious. How much? And how is she related to this other Léandre who’s in charge now, and is he the one behind the sabotage?”
“Well, that will just make things spiffy between us, won’t it? I love you, but I can’t because I’m an emotional mess over my past failures. Oh, and by the way, did someone in your family try to kill me?”
“When you put it that way, you’re right. I think you’re going to need a little more than spiffy here,” Matteo quipped.
“Just send her in, will you?” David snapped. “And don’t spy on us this time. OK? Let me humiliate myself without the public display and commentary afterwards.”
“The object of the kiss, Davey, boy, is to keep her there, not send her running. Just keep that in mind next time you get the urge.” Matteo was still chuckling on his way out the door, while David was doing some mental head-banging on the wall.
So, what had all that been about anyway? For sure, the kiss had been an accident, and ending it when he had done had been rude, but probably the wisest thing to do, as he shouldn’t have been kissing her in the first place. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Let me count the ways.” Ways he didn’t want to think about. Ways in which he was falling so hard for Solaina Léandre he couldn’t even think straight any more.
“Matteo said you’re fine?” Solaina took only a few steps into David’s room before she stopped.
Her demeanor was cold, her arms folded across her chest. Protecting herself, probably. And who could blame her, after everything he was putting her through?
“He said something about you being overcome by exhaustion, that your ribs are fine and your shoulder hasn’t ripped open again. And he asked me to stay until the exam was finished. He said you were begging me to.”
David fought back a grin. Good old Matteo. Ever the romantic. And the consummate liar when it was necessary.
“I just wanted to apologize to you one more time. And say thank you for helping me. And he was right. It was only exhaustion.” That was no lie either. He was tired, and thinking about it made him want to go back to Solaina’s bed to rest.
“Then I should get going. It’s a long trip, and I have to be back in Chandella by morning.” She still hadn’t come all the way into the room. Not even far enough to close the door behind her, and she was already backing away from him. Uncomfortably.
“Solaina,” he said. “Stay here. Just tonight. I know you’re afraid of the way I feel and, to be honest, so am I. But I want just one more night. Besides, it’s too far to go, and it’s so late now. The roads can get dangerous at night if you’re not familiar with them.” This was definitely awkward between them; the tension was so thick in the room it was practically sucking the oxygen right out. “You can stay in the guest quarters.”
“David, I can’t. I’ve really got to go home, back to my real life. I appreciate the offer, but this little back and forth we’ve got going between us won’t work. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t want to know what it is. And you don’t either, which is why you left the cottage the way you did this morning.” She shrugged. “You keep things simple in your way, and I keep them simple in mine. It works out, and sometimes it works out by running away. Apparently, for both of us.”
“You do scare me,” he admitted. “When I came to, out there on the road that night, and saw you…” He shook his head. “You scare me because I want to know everything, Solaina. Everything about you. Who you are, where you come from, what makes you who you are.”
“Why, David? What’s the point? I tell you mine, you tell me yours, then where does it get us, besides another step closer to not understanding what we’re doing? Hey, if it’s sexual, I can deal with that. If it’s intellectual, I can deal with that. But we’ve put ourselves off limits to each other, which makes it all the more tempting. And I don’t understand that kind of temptation because, honestly, I’m never tempted. Not until I met you.”
She hesitated in the hallway outside the door. “I don’t want to understand it because it comes with all kinds of expectations, and expectations only lead to disappointment. I really don’t want more disappointment, David. Or more expectations of me.”
Two more steps and she would be out of his sight. Then out of his life. Once she left, she would not return. “But why does it have to lead to disappointment, Solaina? Is that what you expect from all your relationships?”
She smiled sadly. “You yourself have this same conflict, don’t you? You want a relationship, but you can’t have it because you think one failure sets your path. Isn’t that already a disappointment?”
“More than you know.”
“We’re strangers, David, and that’s the way we should leave it.”
“But do you want to leave it that way, Solaina?” he asked, not sure why, except he knew that, deep down, he didn’t want them to part as strangers. Aside from the physical attraction—and admittedly, he’d never been as powerfully attracted to another woman as he was to Solaina—there was something about her that drew him in all the way. “As strangers? We met as strangers and part as strangers? Is that what you really want from this?”
Solaina laughed. “You know, just before you ran out into the road, I was fashioning a mental image of the man I’d l
ike to meet someday. It was you, David. Believe it or not, right down to the roots of your hair, it was you. At least, in looks. I hadn’t gotten past that part, though, because in truth I’ve never gotten past that. That’s where it stops for me, and there’s never been any point in going further because I always move on. Which is what I’m doing now. Moving on.”
“Because you haven’t found what you’re looking for?”
“Because I haven’t been looking. You said you wanted to know me, and that’s me, David. Solaina Léandre, always passing through on her way to another destination.”
That was the first time he’d heard her say her last name, and it caused his breath to catch. A much harder catch than he’d expected, considering his suspicions. Here he was with so many complications between them, yet he was practically begging her to stay.
“One evening, Solaina. That’s all I want. One evening where I’m not the patient and you’re not my nurse. You can stay on that side of the room, next to the door, ready to pass through it and run away any time you feel the need, and I’ll stay here and hope that you don’t. And we’ll talk. Try to figure out what this is, what we can do about it…”
“Why, David?”
“Because you feel it as much as I do. And I think you’re honest enough to admit it. Otherwise why would you have come after me?”
Solaina took two steps back toward his door, but still didn’t enter the room. “Out there that night on the road, you said you were glad I was the one who found you, that you’d dreamt I would come for you. And you mentioned me by name. You also said I smelt of jasmine just like the last time.” She finally crossed the threshold. “At the time I didn’t pay much attention because you were delirious, and I was busy, trying to take care of you. But now it’s time to be honest with me. You know me, don’t you? Before that night, you knew me.”
He shook his head. “Not in the sense that we’d actually met.”
“So what is it?”
“I saw you once, in the hospital. You were directing a group of nurses, giving them instructions. And I stopped for a minute to watch you.” And fall in love.