Here I Am (Arabesque) - By Rochelle Alers Page 0,43
needed, he would do whatever was possible to give it to her.
“You’re going to have to tell me about it so I’ll know how to spin it.”
“Are you certain you want to get involved in something that has nothing to do with you?”
Brandt pondered her cryptic query. Ciara’s disclosure that she wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything had been nothing more than bravado. She was frightened. But of whom? “It’s too late for that, Ciara. We’re already involved, whether you’re willing or want to admit it.” He didn’t have to tell her that nurses didn’t kiss their patients or simulate making love with them. Nurses also didn’t do double duty as hostesses for their patients. “And if I were able to stand on my own I’d show you just how involved we are.”
Ciara found the very thought of making love to Brandt exciting because of her rediscovered sexual awakening. She’d always known of the strong passion within her even if she hadn’t recognized her needs. Since breaking up with Victor, she’d realized she had to be alone in order to find out what she really wanted for herself and her future. She knew Brandt Wainwright did not figure anywhere in her future. He wasn’t her Mr. Right, but Mr. Right Now.
“I’ll tell you later.”
Brandt heard the finality in her statement. He didn’t want to wait until later to find out what had prompted the woman with whom he’d found himself more involved with each sunrise to leave one of the best hospitals in New York to become a private-duty nurse.
“Talking about it later isn’t going to change anything.” His voice was soft, coaxing.
Chapter 11
Brandt reached for Ciara’s hand, lacing their fingers together and pressing a kiss to her hair. It smelled like fresh coconut. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”
Ciara settled against Brandt’s chest and closed her eyes. What she was about to tell Brandt she had never disclosed to anyone, and that included her mother. She and her mother had a relationship based on an open dialogue, yet she didn’t and couldn’t tell Phyllis about her relationship with Dr. Victor Seabrook away from the bright lights and cameras. The closest she’d come to disclosing why she’d walked away from Victor was when she’d confessed to Sofia that he had attempted to control her life.
“What do you want to know?”
“Where did you grow up? Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“I grew up about thirty miles west of Albany. My parents divorced the year I turned ten, after my mother discovered my father had another wife.” Brandt smothered a curse under his breath. Ciara smiled. “My sentiments exactly.”
“So,” he crooned in her ear, “I don’t have to contribute to the cuss jar?”
“Not this time. And to answer your question about siblings, I’m an only child. After high school I enrolled in a downstate college, graduating with a BS in nursing. Less than a year after working at the hospital I was attacked by a male patient…who claimed I’d teased him because I wore my uniforms too tight.”
“Did he hurt you, Ciara?”
She shook her head. “If you’re asking if he raped me, then the answer is no. If it hadn’t been for the other two patients in the room, I can’t imagine what would’ve happened. One rang the nurses’ station while the other shouted for help.”
“Is that why you wear smock tops?”
“Yes.”
Brandt gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “You can’t blame yourself for one sick son of a bitch.”
Raising her chin, Ciara met Brandt’s eyes. They were cold, reminding her of chipped glass. “Tell that to a twenty-year-old.”
“How old were you when you graduated college?”
“Nineteen. I graduated from high school at sixteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty-three.”
Burying his face in her hair, Brandt pressed a kiss against her scalp. “And after thirteen years you’re still hiding?”
“I only wear the smocks when I have male patients.”
“Does it work?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Ciara. It didn’t work with me, and do you know why?”
“No. Why?”
“You don’t realize how close you came to the truth when you called me Superman. You were deluding yourself when you tried hiding behind those ugly tops because I just happen to have X-ray vision.”
Ciara laughed softly and shifted to a more comfortable position. “I’m not that gullible, Brandt.”
Brandt kissed her hair again. “Tell me what he did to you. And you know I’m not talking about the patient who attacked you.”
She inhaled, held her breath, then let it out in an audible sigh. “I was known at the hospital as the