suspiciously like him. Now that she was thirty and her biological clock had started making ominous noises, she didn’t think that situation would change any.
“You could always retrain for a different specialty or get a different job. The emergency room sounds almost as dangerous for the staff as it is for the patients.”
He didn’t know the half of it, but she shook her head and pulled a couple of bottles of orange soda from the fridge, giving one to Frank. It had a distinctly different taste than American orange sodas, more tangy like real oranges. “I’ve never spent much time around babies aside from my training.”
He thanked her for the soda and took a deep drink. “That hits the spot. It’s getting warm outdoors. As for babies, right now I have five nieces and nephews, all under six years old or so. Two of my sisters married right out of university and have been having babies every year, it seems.” He smiled fondly. “They are quite adorable, and besides, it takes my mother’s attention off me, at least temporarily.”
Because his mother wanted him to settle down and have a baby? Of course she did. Frank was the only son of a family that relied on the ancient custom of primogeniture—where the oldest son inherited everything. He would need a son of his own to keep up the tradition and not splinter the family holdings. Now that he had passed his thirtieth birthday, maybe his biological clock was ticking, too.
But she didn’t ask. She was afraid to bring up the question, afraid to hear the answer. For all she knew, his mother had picked out a suitable upper-class Portuguese maiden for a potential bride. Maybe she was even a virgin. Was that a requirement to marry a duke? Virginity—at least for the women—had been a requirement to marry into royalty for hundreds of years, petering out only in the last couple decades.
Curiosity overcame her. It wasn’t as if she were still a virgin, although that was in fact his fault in the first place. If he hadn’t been so darn sexy at twenty and she hadn’t been so crazy about him…well, as the saying went, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. She’d eagerly participated in the Azorean version of the droit de seigneur, the largely legendary custom of the lord of the manor to get first dibs at the local virgins. “Are you seeing anyone at home?”
He looked shocked and then guilty. Guilty?
“Frank, did you forget to mention something? Or someone?”
“Julia, it is not what you think.”
Her stomach knotted, the orange soda suddenly making her queasy. She forced herself to speak calmly. “Why don’t you tell me what is going on?” After all, she didn’t have any claim on him—not anymore.
He set his bottle down on the counter. “My sister has a friend—her name is Paulinha and we’ve known each other for years.” He sighed. “Paulinha has never made it much of a secret that she considers me more than a brotherly figure. But me, I didn’t feel the same. On the other hand, I always thought that I would be married with a family by now. Paulinha is a soft-spoken woman, shy and good-natured.”
Julia blinked her eyes hard. Her own escapades at work would definitely not qualify as soft-spoken and shy. Although she was fairly good-natured, wasn’t she? Maybe not, especially to the crazy patient who’d cracked her in the head. But that was his fault, not hers, and she tried not to feel guilty for getting herself out of that mess.
Undoubtedly Princess Paulinha would have screamed or swooned like a proper upper-class Portuguese senhorinha. Julia had swooned, sure, but she had the concussion to blame. Even then it was only a temporary swoon before she’d done what she had to do.
“And you see Paulinha as a possibility in the marriage and family department?” Julia fiddled with the soda label, peeling the corner down with her thumbnail. Was it weird or what, discussing eligible women with the man she’d desperately loved so many years ago? How sophisticated they both were.
“No.” His reply was short and immediate. “Not anymore. I was considering spending more time with her to find out if there could be sparks between us, but the ever-practical Benedito pointed out that I was fifteen hundred kilometers away from her and it didn’t seem to bother me.”
“And Benedito could tell you weren’t pining away for her?” she asked skeptically.
“Oh, yes. Benedito knows pining when he