Dante's Shock Proposal
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“I can call HR and scheduling, see if she’s called in,” Carrasco said.
Although she’d already scrubbed in to prep, and picking up a phone would mean she would have to scrub in again, Dante said, “Do it.”
A moment later, she was in the scrub bay, dialing.
Again Thursday’s question came: had Lise left with Jefferson?
That was four days ago. If she’d gotten into trouble that long ago...
He fumbled the scrub brush and it fell into the sink. Containing a sigh, he grabbed a new one and started over.
Carrasco spoke with someone, heard her confirm that Lise hadn’t called in.
“Not with HR,” she confirmed, and dialed another number.
He didn’t want another surgical nurse for this procedure. Lise was the best. He wanted Lise. Carrasco technically was also a surgical nurse, but he had Lise for today, it was on the schedule.
“I’m here!”
The sound of Lise’s voice had him turning from the sink, relief tinging his irritation so that he didn’t quite know how to feel, which of course ticked him off. “Couldn’t get out of bed this morning, Bradshaw?”
He took in her appearance, and he felt his neck heat. The too-big scrub top she always wore had been replaced by one with a different cut—one that wrapped over her chest like that dress had done.
She’d made the gray scrubs sexy.
“Nothing so restful as that.” She rushed around the small bay, getting what she’d need to start scrubbing. “I know I’m a little later than usual, but we’re still a good fifteen minutes from the start of the surgery...”
Dante didn’t want excuses. He also didn’t want to cause a scene at the hospital, even if she threw him off balance yet again. He wanted Old Lise, not the one who knocked him so hard she had him wondering if maybe he was the mark here.
She stepped to the open bay beside him and began the process of cleaning her hands.
Hair covered by scrub cap—how he always saw her. No makeup—but no lower face cover yet. He’d like the chance to look at her clean-faced—or grill her for an excuse. But it would have to wait.
If she hadn’t wanted to face him after their brief time at The Inferno, he’d put that straight to her. No reason they couldn’t be professional. It had been a little kissing, not as much as he admittedly still wanted, but they’d survive.
He exited the bay, leaving the nurses to finish scrubbing in. Another tech gowned and gloved him, and he took a moment to make sure everything was as he wanted before the patient arrived.
“Are you going to report in about your date last week?” another member of the team asked as soon as Lise stepped into the OR proper.
“No. It’s really not the time for that. If you want a report, I will be happy to make one after surgery.”
Voice tight. Posture stiff. Happy? Yeah, right. No way could he misread that reaction.
He just didn’t know whether it was Jefferson or their dancing making her unhappy now.
If the date had shown up he hadn’t made a better impression on her. Unless it was their dalliance making her unhappy.
What the devil was wrong with him? He’d never had this much trouble reading someone. At least, not since those early days on the cons that had almost gotten him arrested in his youth. Repetition had improved how well he could read between the lines, except when it came to Lise.
The door opened and in rolled the trolley with his patient on it, a woman in her thirties who had three children.
That was what he needed to focus on, doing well by this patient and her family. Never be the one who broke a family.
He always learned what he could about his patients so he could keep in mind what was riding on successful surgery. He took a moment to check with her, make sure she understood what the neuro-endoscopy entailed, and to reassure her again that he’d do his best. Things he always did for his patients, even those who didn’t have children at home or in the waiting room—or, as had been the case with him, waiting in the chapel, praying it all would go all right.
His gentle encouraging words delivered, he nodded to the anesthetist. The sooner their patient was unconscious, the sooner she’d stop worrying. And, he hoped, the sooner he’d have out the Rathke cleft cyst growing behind her pituitary gland.
One more tally removed from the ledger where he kept memories of his old ways, and he hoped to eventually get out of the red.
* * *
No sooner had Dante left the surgical suite than Sandy Carrasco repeated her earlier demand.
“Tell us how the date went.”
Lise had avoided thinking about the date all weekend, and that had included preparing what she was going to say when inevitably asked.
“Oh, just great, I guess.” Messing with rude people was a bad habit she’d apparently picked up from Dante.
When Sandy laughed, Lise went with it.
“I got a brand-new dress for the evening. Jefferson and I had spoken briefly on the phone a few days before and confirmed where we’d meet in texts—deciding on a club he liked. Since I never go to clubs, I got the new red dress. I arrived, went in on my own as he wasn’t waiting for me outside. Drank a mojito. Danced.”
“He was inside, waiting?”
“Oh, no. He wasn’t there, either. I amused myself. Mojitos. Dancing. Talking with a handsome musician.” Not. Dante. Don’t mention Dante. Then she laid out being stood up, the Large Woman nonsense, and that he’d tried to come after she’d sent him a picture of her red dress.
Confrontation wasn’t usually her thing, though it sometimes came with being truthful and direct about things—or when humiliated and inebriated. But sometimes, like right now, it came in handy.
Before Sandy could do anything but look embarrassed, Lise—having already discarded her surgical gown—gestured to the new well-fitted scrub top and her relatively flat tummy and waist.
“I’m not tiny. But I’m pretty sure Large doesn’t describe me. I tend to wear a ten in scrub bottoms and, of course, a higher size when I require a cut that accommodates disproportionate breasts. And before you get any ideas, I’m still counting that as my third date, so that’s only...”
She paused then and revulsion for the whole experience changed her mind. “Whoever was in charge of picking Bachelors Four and Five should cancel now. I’m done. Be disapproving all you like, but my plans don’t hinge on whether or not my coworkers approve of my decisions. And now, I apparently need to go be yelled at by Dr. Valentino. Please excuse me.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE DOOR TO the office Dante used when staffing the neurosurgery unit swung open. He looked up just as he flipped off his phone, and caught Lise closing the door behind her.
Brows pushed together, mouth actually turning down at the corners in a frown, posture stiff, hands balled into fists... She was either very angry or very worried.
Something other than unflappably calm for the first time ever in his presence at Buena Vista, but she’d also embraced another first—at least as far as he was concerned: No scrub cap. The silky blond locks he’d spent the weekend remembering the feel of on his hand had been braided around her head like a crown. She didn’t keep her hair just tucked up beneath those caps. Still nice.
But not what he should be focusing on.
She stepped in front of the chairs opposite the desk, appeared to think better of it, and moved around until she stood behind them again and dropped her hands onto the seatback.
Rather than question her, he let her get around to it. She knew why he’d summoned her.
When words again failed to come, she stepped around to the front again, but this time sat.
“Do you have a cat?” he asked, unable to help himself.
“Because I’m unmarried and twenty-nine? How many cats am I supposed to have at this point?”
“You just walked all the way around that chair about one and a half times before you sat down. My guess was either cat or a musical-chairs aficionado.”
“You’re funny today.” Yet she neither looked nor sounded amused.
“I was funny on Thursday too. You should’ve stuck around to find out.”
“If you said anything funny on Thursday, it would’ve been in some kind of Spanish purr and I wouldn’t have understood it anyway.”
Quiet Lise had been once more replaced by a snarky copy. She was there to entertain him, it seemed. But he had a plan for this meeting, so he moved past the cat conversation.
“Are you all right? You looked anxious when you came in. Afraid I was going to yell at you for your tardiness?”
“A little. And I just told off Sandy and called off the remaining fix-ups. Told them I didn’t need their approval to live my life. It was really...I don’t know, either empowered or rude. Maybe both.”
“Sometimes you have to be rude to get things done,” Dante murmured, leaning back in the other chair as he tried to decide how to handle this.
“You didn’t need to be rude to get things done.”
Her phone.
“I didn’t know you well enough to trust you.”
Getting off track.
“You’ve worked with me for two years.”
“And yet I barely know you.”
Rarely did he ever do anything in his adult life without having a plan for how it should work out. That was how he’d gotten through the time after his parents’ murders, through college and medical school, fellowships, even to securing a placement at his preferred hospital. His career path still had an ongoing plan. He had plans for the club, and a great manager to make those plans happen. The only goal he was flying blind with was on how to go about finding a wife with his particular marital complications.
It was time he had his own family. And he had to marry if he was to have a happy family.
Lise had a habit of disrupting his plans. When he’d gone to her table at first, his plan had been simple: find out what she knew and make sure she didn’t tell anyone about The Inferno. That plan had lasted all of two minutes.
He’d formed a new plan for the way that evening should’ve ended as they’d danced and the chemistry had grown, and that hadn’t worked out either.
When he’d instructed she come to his office, he’d been planning to demand answers to her tardiness—mostly to make sure she hadn’t overslept after a long sexy weekend with the jerk who’d stood her up.
“Why did you stand me up?” he asked.
And another plan went down the drain. Probably not the best use of a work environment, but his plan to keep his work and his club completely separate had also blazed out when Lise had walked into it in that dress. Besides, how else was he supposed to figure her out but to ask questions?
She looked momentarily confused again, but embarrassed too. “I didn’t think you wanted those places to cross-contaminate each other. Am I supposed to call you Dante or Dr. Valentino right now?”
“Dante,” he answered immediately—he liked it when she said his name. “I didn’t want it, but it happened anyway.”
“You sexy-danced with me and sang Spanish into my ear. That’s not just something that happens.” Her voice had gone up, the same as when she’d yelled at him about being rude in the club. She might not plan to behave differently in the club and in the hospital, but she did.
“You being there happened. Everything that came afterward was a choice, and nothing I regret.” He cleared that up, so she couldn’t think he was blaming her for his apparently clumsy seduction. “So, why did you leave?”
“So I wouldn’t sleep with you.”
“Why? You wanted to. You wanted a last hurrah. I’d guaranteed a last hurrah without complications.”
She all but rolled her eyes at him. “It’s easy to say no complications, but it would’ve messed everything up. It’s already messing things up, and all we did was dance and kiss.”
Dante scooted his chair toward her, then grabbed the arms of her chair to drag her to face him.
She made a face as her chair slid on the carpet, a flash of pain that gave him pause. But it was gone as fast as it had come, so he tried to stay on plan—the new plan, the one that had re-formed without his reasoned intention a moment ago.
“This right now is only awkward because you ran out. Did you think I would force you to do something you didn’t want?”
“No. I wanted it. But it was a bad decision, fueled by mojitos and hormones and because, well, I’ve been lonely, if you must know. And you’re very handsome, and then there was the dancing and the sexy stuff you said in Spanish.” She blew out a breath slowly and reached up to rub her face.
She looked just as frustrated as he was. “If you’re going to storm into single motherhood, you need to get better at handling social interactions. In the future, you can just say, ‘Thanks, but I changed my mind.’”
“Thanks, but I changed my mind,” she repeated, but, despite the sarcastic repetition of his words, not an ounce of it rang in her voice.
“Cute.” He reached out and snagged one of her hands to force her to focus on him—contact with another had a great side benefit of granting the appearance of trustworthiness, and he needed an advantage with her. “I was actually worried about you. Something you’ll become familiar with as a single parent, trust me.”
“What were you worried for?” She didn’t pull away, but her arm had a stiffness that spoke of inner turmoil, and when she met his gaze he felt the balance shift.
“I saw your face during the set. You were smirking at your cell phone. WonderDate texted you back.”
“WonderDate?” she repeated, and then grinned despite herself. “He did. But don’t call him that—he’d have to have shown up to be any kind of wonder. In fact, I didn’t even text him back. You were worried that he’d come for me and I just forgave all and ran off with him?”
“You’d had at least three mojitos, and I’d been doing my best to seduce you, so it was possible I’d contributed to you making a bad decision.”
Mild exasperation had her shaking her head at him, even though she still didn’t pull her hand away. “He texted several times after getting the picture. I never answered. When he finally texted that he was on his way and would be there well before your set ended, I decided to get out before I did anything stupid.”
“Explain stupid.” He kept her hand, kept looking her in the eye. It had a double benefit, as he also got to look at her clean-faced, and the pale blue eyes drew his own gaze.
“You know what stupid is. Stupid is what we were doing. What we were going to do. What we might be doing now!” She wriggled her hand out of his, but the buzzing connection he’d felt lingered.
“That wasn’t stupid. That would’ve been a much-desired reprieve from reality for a while. You feel it.” He gestured to her freed hand. “I know you do.”
“It’s just chemistry. It doesn’t mean that the rest disappears.”
He caught both her hands and stilled, holding her wary gaze while the buzz resumed and morphed to a persistent tingle that either required more touching or none at all.
More.
Dante leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and brought one small hand to his lips to brush a kiss across her knuckles, then turned it until it was palm up, and feathered a trail of kisses from the center of her palm to the tender inside of her wrist.
Her breathing changed, and when he lifted his eyes to hers again, her mouth was open and she had that excited haze settling in her eyes again.
“That connection you feel? Sex with us would be like that—intense and hot. It’s kind of silly that we’re still talking about this when we both know it’s going to happen.”
“You don’t know that.” She breathed, blinking her eyes and pulling her hand free, gently but firmly. She knew it too, but she didn’t want to know it. Why, though, he couldn’t fathom. “And what did you mean before?”
“When?”
“When you said that I would know about worry,” Lise said, grabbing for anything to chase away the charge in the air. Today had been far from her image of a great day at work. It had started out badly, she’d dropped instruments in surgery and new ones had had to be broken out of their sterile packaging. Twice. She never dropped instruments. Now every cell in her body was zinging and she wanted more contact with his skin, with his lips... She wanted to dance, she wanted to argue with him more—probably the weirdest part of the compulsion she felt to engage with him.
The sooner they got past this, the better it would be—as it was, she struggled to resist that sensation, which turned it into that need, that near ache.
Being a sarcastic witch had always been helpful in persuading men that she was entirely not worth the effort, but so far, not Dante. “Is that an implication you worried about me like a parent?”
Lise sat up straighter in her chair, then regretted it. Her neck and right shoulder had started to ache from the accident this morning, and sitting up straighter just put added tension on those muscles.
“I’ve been a parent. I know what it is to worry. And,” he said, mirroring her actions, sitting up but taking it a step further with folded arms, “in no way do I feel parent-like toward you.”
“You have kids?” The image of her ducky nursery swam into her mind.
“Had. Younger siblings. I raised them with my brother when our parents were murdered.”
When our parents were murdered.
The words curdled deep in her belly, but she didn’t see even a trace of emotion on his handsome face.
In surgery, she could read his eyes—she had a context and two years’ practice interpreting his looks to make that possible. Now? His expression had gone as blank and as unaffected as his voice had been.
An innate desire to help and heal had made her become a nurse, but this was so big and his words were so heavy that she couldn’t even focus on them. Shifting sand, that’s what it was like to speak with the man. No direction ever looked safe, but plodding directly for what had to still be a wound felt the least safe.
Talk about the kids. “How old are they?”
“Now or then?”
“Then.” Though she doubted he’d entirely given up those parental feelings, no matter how old they all were now.
“Alejandro is youngest, he was ten. Santiago was fourteen. Rafe and I were eighteen.”
“You have a twin? You mean there’re two of you?” She nudged his foot with her toe and settled her foot beside his, shoes touching when all she really wanted to do was reach for his hand again, and...what? It had been a long time ago.
“Fraternal. Not identical.” He smiled, but despite the little tease he didn’t say anything else.
What comfort could she offer after all these years?
He hadn’t told her because he wanted comfort. Of course it still hurt—she could summon the shock and anguish of losing her father in an instant, but that was different. His had been a double-whammy violence perpetrated by others, not them simply deciding to die.
There was something else he’d meant. Her plan. “You think I’m making a mistake going forward with my pregnancy plan because I have no family.”
That surprised him. That expression she could identify. He really didn’t know anything about her, so why it surprised him, she couldn’t guess.
“You have no family?” Alarm. Identified. “No one at all?”
Great.
Lise sighed. This had gotten too far off track, and she didn’t know how to get it back on track. Not with her contradictory reaction to wanting him, and his single-minded focus on tempting her—either physically or emotionally.
They barely knew one another, even if she knew one really terrible thing from his past. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let the fact that I don’t have a family keep me from having a family. Don’t go down that road.”
A knock at the door cut off whatever he’d been about to say. Dante stood up, one of his knees between hers, his body so fleetingly close it dominated her personal space and pulled at her like gravity—so like that moment after the kiss to end all kisses, when he’d stood over her, hand fisted in her hair, and the pull between them so strong other people in the club had felt it.
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and she felt herself craning forward to look up at him, but a shot of pain radiated down her right arm. She lowered her chin again and he stepped around to head for the door.
“Hello, Dr. Valentino. I wanted to check in and see if you’d heard from Lise Bradshaw? Do you want to file disciplinary action against her?” a woman’s voice asked from the other side of the door, sounding entirely too cheerful considering the words she’d chosen.
Disciplinary action?
Who was that? Human Resources?
She tilted her head to try and see past him, but Dante’s body blocked the small opening in the door.
“She arrived just after we hung up with you earlier. No need for disciplinary action. This was her first tardiness, and she had a very good excuse.”
They hadn’t even talked about why she’d been late. Was the man allergic to the truth?
He spoke with her a moment longer, then added a doozy. “But it’s good you stopped by. I want to start paperwork to have Nurse Bradshaw transferred to my team full time.”
He gave reasons—not all entirely true, but mostly. They came to some kind of agreement, and Dante closed the door and returned to sit with her.
“How do you know I had a good excuse? I haven’t told you anything about why I was late.”
“You’re not the tardy sort.” His phone rang and he held up one finger, checked the screen, and said, “It’s Recovery. I’ve got them giving me updates every twenty minutes.”
So he’d assumed, which was different from lying how? Not at all. She could have a terrible excuse for all he knew.
For the most part Lise was confident in her personal life. She might not have been had she known her fellow nurses were judging her for the size of her scrub tops, but generally she felt confident in her abilities, her job, her life plans, her moral compass...
But she wasn’t so confident as to assume she knew everything. Did unreasonable confidence make something not a lie?
Another reason she should run the other direction. Dante hadn’t even asked if she wanted a full transfer to his team, he’d just started the ball rolling.
Dante rang off and dropped the phone back into his chest pocket. “So, you were saying?’
“I was asking why you just lied, because you never asked why I was late.”
“No one will question it. Our secret, then? I was simply giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
“I don’t like secrets. And you admit you had doubts.” Lecturing a grown man about honesty wasn’t a smart use of her time, and yet...prior to this morning Lise would’ve never thought she could enjoy arguing with anyone, and she really didn’t want to examine why she liked arguing with him.
“You’re right. Tell me why you were tardy.”
“Because I was rear-ended this morning on the way to work,” she said. “Which, granted, is a good excuse. But the point is—”
“You had a car accident on the way to work?” He cut her off—much as the driver ahead of her had done, which had ended in her being rear-ended. “You had an accident and you were only about fifteen minutes later than usual? Did you have yourself checked out? That’s why you were dropping instruments and why you keep rubbing your shoulder?”
Muttering an expletive, he didn’t wait for her to answer the questions at all, just stood, rounded her chair, and ran his fingers along her vertebrae. Thumb. It was the pad of his thumb—she could even feel the texture of his skin, the ripple of every ridge of his thumbprint seemed to stand out to her.
The man went from smirking and self-assured to angry doctor mode in an instant. She couldn’t keep up, and moments before smirking and self-assured, he’d been all sexy.
“I’m a little sore. It didn’t destroy my car. They didn’t have to cut me out with the Jaws of Life. My back bumper fell off. I got a jar forward but I’m okay. I’m just a little sore.”
“A little sore deserves to be checked out.” He swore again and once again one hand slipped around the front of her neck, long index finger and thumb cradling the underside of her mandible while his palm and fingers cupped her throat.