Royally Claimed - By Marie Donovan Page 0,64
you never would have been put in such a dangerous position. Forced to take a life to save your own.”
“Of course I regret that, but I don’t regret the other parts of my life.” She regretted that he had never knocked at her dorm room door, that she hadn’t taken the train to New York to find him at his apartment.
“Not at all?” He raised a black brow.
It had been a second-best option, but the best one she’d had at the time. “I got to finish my education, get my nursing license. I graduated from graduate school with high honors. I’ve met so many patients and their families, had the chance to help them live, and some of them, to help them die. I don’t regret that at all.”
“It doesn’t seem like a fair trade,” he informed her. “Losing our baby and a happy life with me for sick people you don’t even know.”
She pushed out of his arms. “I don’t need reminding about the baby, Frank. I cried every day for months and had to go to grief counseling to even function. I don’t think it was a fair trade because life is not fair. We don’t get a certain number of points to redeem, and if we lose the tickets, we aren’t given another packet. Why me? Why not me? Do you know how many young people and even children I’ve seen die? They have parents, too, and none of us is spared pain and suffering. Not in this life.” The cold, damp wind blew strands of hair across her face, temporarily blinding her. She brushed them out of the way.
His jaw jumped. “Then forget about that. I insist you come to Portugal and marry me. I can give you another baby—I can give you as many as we can manage. You don’t have to waste your emotions on strangers.”
He still didn’t understand. Her schooling and career was the only thing that had saved her from despair and paralysis. And his second proposal of marriage was about as grim as the first. She told him so.
“Well, excuse me if I am doing this wrong,” he replied sarcastically. “But I have only done this once before and it seems that I’m not doing any better this time.”
“We don’t have to get married. Why don’t we just get together in Boston or I could even come to Portugal to visit? Maybe not right away since I have to go back to work next month and I’ve been on disability leave.”
“What? You’re going back to work?”
“My work means a lot to me.”
“So come work in Portugal. You would learn the language easily and there are plenty of hospitals.”
“It would take me months, if not years to pick up Portuguese well enough to function in a high-pressure work situation.” And then what? Date Frank on her days off? Live with him at the fazenda? Marry him and be the Duchess of Santas Aguas, hobnobbing with royalty and presiding over a huge estate?
“I think I know what is going on. When you work at the hospital, you can be the most caring person around—but only temporarily, and only on the surface.”
“What?”
He nodded. “I understand why, because you would not be able to function if you cared deeply and permanently about your patients. Maybe you are carrying that over to me—to us.”
She frowned at him.
“Julia, this is our life. You don’t have to protect yourself from me.”
“Yes, I do.” She spoke without thinking, but it was true.
“Why? I know I hurt you before without meaning to, but now things are different.”
“No.” She backed away from him. “You love me too much and you want too much from me.”
“What?” He ran a hand through his damp black curls in frustration. “Why is that a bad thing? I don’t understand.”
“I can control things at my job—or at least deal with them better.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, yes, things are so much under control that you had to shoot a murderer in your emergency department. And you would rather go back there than stay with me?”
“Yes, because that was just physical pain. If my heart broke again, I wouldn’t be able to survive.” If she lost another baby, that would be the end of her. Guess that grief counseling hadn’t worked so well after all.
He dropped his hands to his sides. “And that is that, eh?”
“Yes.” Julia tipped her face to the sky, hoping the rain would disguise her wet cheeks. She’d been a fool to