The Doctor's Courageous Bride. Dianne Drake

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      Dinner was a simple affair. Lobster, an array of fresh, sautéed vegetables, baked potatoes, freshly made crusty bread. And, oh, yes, ice cream for dessert. With a wonderful dessert selection, Solange chose plain vanilla ice cream, and Paul couldn’t talk her into the truffle or the tiramisu or even the crème brûlée. It had to be the vanilla ice cream. “You have a hearty appetite,” Paul commented.

      She laughed. “One thing I’ve learned, living with only the barest of necessities, is that when you do manage the good fortune to have something extra, you never, ever waste it. Especially lobster.” She longingly eyed a chunk of succulent tail meat sitting on his plate. “You’re not going to let that go to waste, are you?”

      “With you around, apparently not.” He speared it with the seafood fork, dragged it through the butter and held it out for her. As her fingers brushed his in taking the fork, a shiver ran up his spine and he caught himself wondering what it would be like to feed her that lobster with his fingers.

      His fingers? Where the hell had that come from? Paul shook his head, trying to rid himself of that image. He really didn’t know enough about her to be having these feelings. No, he didn’t know nearly enough to be so blithering. “So tell me about your clinic in Miami,” he said, trying to get his mind off the obvious.

      “I was there three years. It was closing so I left.”

      Matter-of-fact words. Too matter-of-fact for the flash of anger he saw in her eyes. “Did you like the work?” he asked, trying to return to neutral ground.

      “I loved the work,” she snapped. “But that wasn’t enough.”

      No, definitely not neutral ground. And to top it all off, her body language was going rigid. What had been friendly and open was suddenly cold and defensive, which meant he was wandering down the wrong path with this topic. Or probably any topic right now, judging from the scowl onto her face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

      “I’m sorry about being so abrupt. It’s an old wound that, apparently, isn’t as well healed as I thought it was.”

      Old wound. At least it wasn’t something he’d said, and he was glad about that.

      “He hurt you badly, didn’t he?” Paul refilled her wineglass and handed it to her. He might have liked to have made a night of it here, sitting and talking, but the truth was, he did have to get back to Bertrand’s party shortly. The night was still quite young, and he had work to do. Funny, that! In a way, he was like Solange—going only so far, then pulling away with an excuse of work. It was safe. He knew it. Apparently, she knew it, too.

      “He pulled the rug out from under me. I thought we were partners in more ways than one, but we weren’t, as it happened. So I suppose you could say that I needed the rug pulled out. After three years, when you haven’t made the right commitments, they aren’t going to come along. Not in the sense that you want them to, anyway.”

      “You mean as in marriage?”

      “It went far beyond that. We were medical partners.” She paused, shaking her head vehemently. “Let me rephrase that. I thought we were medical partners, but in the end I was his employee, with no say in the practice. He decided it was time to go upscale, sold out and moved on up.”

      “And here you are.”

      “Here I am, doing what I want to be doing. Simple, predictable story. I let him do it, he did it. But the ending was as it should have been.”

      “Even though you’re not over him.”

      “I’m completely over him. Maybe a little bitter around the edges about the circumstances of my medical practice with him, and definitely much wiser when it comes to life and matters of the heart. I should have taken a better look at him from the start.”

      “There are a lot of things you don’t see when you fall in love. Either it sneaks up on you or blindsides you and, however it happens, it’s not exactly an objective period in your life, is it? What you’re looking at isn’t necessarily what’s really there.”

      “But you got over it, didn’t you?” Solange asked him, bending forward to spoon up a bite of the ice cream.

      “Better than I thought I would once I saw that Joanna wasn’t the one for me, and I certainly wasn’t the one for her. She got happy when she left me, and the hell of it is, looking back, I’m not sure I ever saw her truly happy with me.”

      “Did you get happy, too, when it was over?”

      “Oddly enough, yes. Even though I didn’t end up with the love of my life like she did, I got happy. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t so torn between my obligations any longer—obligations like trying keeping the hospital funded and keeping my wife happy at the same time, which was nearly impossible since the expectations of both seemed to always be on a collision course with each other. So, you said you’re a little bitter, but is there any happiness in there for you now that you’re single again?”

      “I’m getting happy. I’ve got a ways to go, but the biggest part, I think, is that I’ve found what I was meant to do. My work defines me, and being back here on Kijé, traipsing around in the mountains with Frère Léon, that’s what makes me happy.”

      Paul spooned a bite of ice cream from the bowl, then raised it in the air for a toast. “Here’s to getting happy, one and all.”

      Solange chinked ice-cream spoons with him, then smiled shyly. “I really am sorry for getting so grumpy and making all kinds of assumptions. Mood swings…Living in the mountains will do that to you, I think.”

      “Apology accepted. Look, I’ve got to get back to Bertrand’s little soirée. Believe me, I’d much rather spend the rest of the evening here with you, but that’s what I do. I mingle with the people who will give me money, and there’s a lot of money to be had in there if I make the right connections. So what I’d like to do is take you back to my hospital in the morning, introduce you to the staff, get you acquainted with what we have available, then maybe travel up the mountain with you, if that’s OK. I have a few days before I need to leave Kijé, and since I’m going to get to show you mine, I’d love to have you show me yours.”

      “You are talking hospital?” she asked, scooping up the last bite of ice cream.

      “Unfortunately, yes.”

      “And just why would you want to come back to my infirmary?”

      “I need a reason?”

      Solange laughed, then wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re not an easy man, Dr Killian.”

      “That’s the reason,” he replied. “The way you do that cute little wrinkle to your nose. I’d like to spend more time with that wrinkle, get to know it better.”

      “Not good enough since that wrinkle is strictly off limits to everybody now.”

      “OK, I’d like to catch up with Frère Léon. Haven’t seen him for quite a while and he’s an old friend, so I’d like to see how he’s doing. Give him his yearly physical.”

      “His physical? You’re telling me you’re Frère Léon’s physician?”

      Paul dropped his linen napkin СКАЧАТЬ