didn’t know what arrangements you’d made, and I was already late for work. I was afraid I might leave you stranded.”
“I’m a big girl. I make it a point never to get myself into a situation that I can’t get out of.”
Rafe himself lived by that same motto, actually. He never let himself get embroiled in something that might require any emotional input. Or painful goodbyes. Even the job he’d chosen reflected that. Although he was an MD, he’d chosen epidemiology as his specialty. He was one step removed from being in contact with patients on a daily basis. A buffer zone that physicians didn’t have. His role was more detached. And that’s the way he’d chosen to live his life.
Deciding whether or not to give a hair tie back to its owner was as personal as he wanted to get. And even that was giving him some trouble.
But it was on a whole different level from deciding whether or not to disconnect life support. He’d vowed never to be put in that position again. So as long as the only people he allowed into his life were his brothers, he was good to go. Besides, he should be celebrating. Santi, the brother who had up and disappeared for a long period of time, had just come back into their lives.
He switched his thoughts back to Cassie and her statement about not getting into situations she couldn’t get out of.
“And yet you came to Mad Ron’s because of one, didn’t you?”
She gave a visible swallow, not answering immediately. And then she said, “Shall we go see Renato?”
He let the subject go, waiting for her to pass him, then he followed her down the hallway. The decision about what to do with the hair tie was made. It would stay in his pocket, and when he got home he would throw it away. And then he would most definitely forget about it.
And her.
* * *
Poor Renato had been poked and prodded so much since he’d been born, and yet the baby was taking everything much better than she expected him to.
Maybe even better than she was. Rafe had seemed so genuinely puzzled over her reaction to the money he’d left her that it had put her mind at ease. She’d been just about ready to forgive the lapse in judgment, and then he had to go and poke at what was still a very sore spot: her reasons for going to Mad Ron’s in the first place. Her cheating fiancé, who she’d heard from exactly once since she’d caught him in flagrante, had asked for the ring back. Good thing she hadn’t dumped it down the storm sewer outside the bar, like she’d thought about doing. She’d sent it via certified mail, gratified that his signature closed the final chapter on that relationship. Thank goodness she’d discovered who he really was now, rather than after they’d been married.
And yet it still hurt that someone she’d trusted could do something like that to her. Especially since she didn’t hand that trust out to just anyone. Tossed from foster home to foster home—she’d been seventeen before a kind couple had decided to adopt her—she’d learned very early on that most relationships didn’t last.
So she’d avoided them altogether. Until Darrin. Who’d seemed like everything she could possibly dream of—steady, good-looking, career oriented. He was all those things. But he wasn’t faithful.
Well, she was putting it all behind her. No more dating for a while.
Was that why she’d jumped into bed with the first available guy?
Ugh! No, Rafe was simply the punctuation mark that ended her relationship with her ex. From now on her job and her patients were what she was going to focus on. They were enough.
She forced her mind back to where the man in question was carefully listening to Renato’s heart. “He has a slight murmur.”
“Yes. He has a prolapsed mitral valve. And his breathing isn’t quite where we want it to be yet, although it seemed fine right after birth.”
“All Zika-related?” Rafe glanced up from the exam table.
“We’re not sure. The mitral valve issue is common enough in the general population that we have no idea if it’s due to the virus or if his valve would have been that way anyway.”
“Any of the other cases include heart valves?”
What could seem like random anomalies, if taken on a case-by-case basis, could actually be part of a disease process if they occurred in clusters.
“Neither of the other two infants had heart involvement at all. But then again Renato doesn’t have clubbed fingers or a cleft palate like one of the other patients.” She hesitated. “And, honestly, if we don’t see any more suspicious cases of birth defects, I will be ecstatic.”
“So will the CDC. But we can’t operate under that assumption.”
“Any advances on the vaccine front?”
Rafe, who had handed her back her stethoscope, went to test the baby’s grip reflex. Renato’s fingers curled around the epidemiologist’s thumb and held on.
A strange quiver went through her stomach when he didn’t immediately tug free and move on to the other hand, but rather stood there, looking down at the baby. When he glanced up again, his eyes were dark, pupils large. “There are a couple of promising trials coming up. Hopefully we won’t have very many more Renatos before a breakthrough is discovered.”
Her throat tightened. “It’s so terrible, isn’t it? He had his whole life in front of him, and now...”
“I know.”
Somehow, Cassie sensed Rafe really did know. She’d never found out exactly why he’d been drinking that night. He’d figured her reasons out by watching her take off her ring. But once they’d left the bar he hadn’t been all that interested in holding lengthy conversations. He’d been too busy kissing her.
And more.
There it was again. That stream of heat that started in her head and rushed rapidly to the outer reaches of her body. If this was what hot flashes felt like, she wanted no part of them.
“Do you need anything else?”
“I think I have enough for this visit.”
This visit? As in there would be more? She had been counting on this being a chance meeting. A fluke. Kind of like Mad Ron’s had been.
Rafe eased his thumb from the baby’s grip and carefully picked him up, tucking him under his chin and holding him close for a moment.
The warm flush grew despite her best efforts. Some woman was going to be lucky to get him. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and she could tell babies held a special place in his heart.
Except she had a feeling she wasn’t the first woman he’d picked up in Mad Ron’s. And she probably wouldn’t be the last. That should tell her right there that he wasn’t a one-woman kind of man.
Well, neither was her ex.
Yes, and it was a good thing she’d thought of Darrin, because it was enough to put her back on the straight and narrow. Maybe she could find a convent that would take her in.
As ridiculous as that was, the thought made her stop. She didn’t want to join an actual cloister or abandon the human race entirely, but couldn’t she turn her heart into one? She’d let one man in and it had been a disaster. One she didn’t want to repeat. If she could figure out how to fashion her life into an impenetrable fortress, she could stand in its turret and rain arrows down on any man who ventured too close.
Like Rafe?
No, he’d been a one-night stand, a fling, nothing more, nothing less.
Liar, liar...
Rafe’s amused words during their meeting in the conference room came back to haunt her.
She may have been lying about her name, but she wasn’t lying about the one-night-stand part. This man was dangerous. The less