Rafael's One Night Bombshell

“I see you found another hair band.”

Cassie’s fingers went to the bun at the back of her head. “I did. You wouldn’t happen to know where my other one went, would you?”

Any twinge of conscience he’d had over taking it vanished at the way her voice lowered, the sultry edge he’d heard the night at the bar coming back.

“Not a clue.”

Ha! If she knew the thing was about to burn a hole in his pocket, she’d probably kill him and leave his body in one of the supply closets.

It was one night, Rafe. Hardly worth mentioning.

Besides, he wasn’t here to talk about hair ties or what they’d done. He was here to see if Zika was growing to epidemic proportions on their shoreline. “You haven’t been to any of the countries involved, have you?”

She frowned as if confused by the question. “No. But it can be passed sexually, from what we’re hearing.”

“Yes. It can.” Thank heavens they’d used condoms over the course of the night. “Your ex?”

She gave a short sound that could have been described as pained. “He barely steps out of his office, much less travels out of the country.”

But they both knew that there were many diseases that could be spread down the line if there were multiple partners involved. And from what he’d sensed in Cassie at Mad Ron’s a month ago, the man had done some straying.

Maybe she sensed what he was thinking because her chin tilted. “Do you want to go see Renato? Or not?”

There was a definite chill to her voice that hadn’t been there a few moments earlier. He guessed she didn’t take kindly to him mentioning the man she’d once been with.

“Yes.” As she started to walk past him he touched her arm. “Sorry for leaving you alone in the hotel. Did you make it home okay?”

Her brows came together and she motioned to the conference room. “Yes. I’m not quite destitute, as you can see. I didn’t need your...contribution. I found it insulting, actually. I left it for the maid.”

Contribution? Oh, the money.

“I 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 she had to do with him, the better.

Maybe she should make things as plain as she could for him—and for her—to make sure his references to “next time” were just idle talk. Especially if the Zika thing was actually a “thing” and they really did need to work together more than this one time.

She hesitated.

Come on, Cassie. Embarrassment is a small price to pay to make sure things don’t get more awkward than they already are.

“Can I say something?”

He glanced up, the baby still tucked close. “Of course.”

“That night at the bar was... Well, I wasn’t myself. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not looking for a relationship.”

A frown appeared. “You made that pretty obvious when you came in with an engagement ring and handed me a fake name. But, just for the record, I agree with you. It was a one-time thing. Not to be repeated.”

The quick stab of pain was unexpected, but necessary. So were her next words. “As long as we’re both clear. And I’d appreciate your keeping what happened between us.”

“I wasn’t planning on writing any journal articles or using you as a reference on my résumé, if that’s what you’re worried about.” This time his voice was a little harder than it had been. She ignored it.

“Great. It sounds like we’re on the same page. Now, I’ll take the baby, if you’re done examining him.”

As he handed Renato back to her, Cassie breathed an inner oath to herself. As of this moment she was going to stay true to her word and watch her Ps and Qs with this man.

Although, if she were very, very lucky, there would be no more Zika cases at her hospital, and no reason to see a certain epidemiologist ever, ever again.

CHAPTER TWO

BONNIE CORNERED CASSIE in the cafeteria a few hours later, dropping into the seat across from her. “So what was that all about?”

Her friend was everything she wasn’t. With untamed red hair and a personality to match, they were about as opposite as they could be. And yet they’d been friends since elementary school—their friendship the only stable thing in an unstable childhood. Bonnie had dared her to do some outrageous stunts during the course of their lives, most of which had been turned down with a shocked “Are you insane?” Her friend was the one, though, who had talked her into going to medical school, saying she had the “smarts.” Working at the same hospital with her was both fun and, at times, extremely scary. Like right now.

She decided to play it cool. “What was what, Bon?”

“Um...that CDC man thinking I was you? He may have said my name, but he was staring right at you.”

“Was he?” Hadn’t she just asked Rafe not to mention their little tryst? She gulped. Well, he probably didn’t have someone like Bonnie grilling him. He seemed like a loner.

Her friend propped her arms on the table, leaning forward and giving her a dark glare. “If you could have seen the look on your face when he said he’d already met ‘Bonnie’ you wouldn’t bother using that innocent act on me. I can see right through it. What happened?”

“I picked him up at a bar.” Yep. She would just keep what had happened to herself. She gave an internal eye-roll.

“You...what?”

Cassie couldn’t prevent a laugh. “Okay, so if your face looks anything like you say mine did, then I’m in big trouble. Close your mouth, silly.”

Bonnie obliged with an audible click of her teeth. “Okay, just let me wrap my head around this for a second. I cannot imagine you picking up anyone. Especially so soon after Darrin. Where did you go?”

“Mad Ron’s. And it was the same night as the break-up actually. I yanked the ring off on the way through the door.”

“Wow. Just wow.” Her friend snagged a grape from Cassie’s plate and looked at her with something akin to envy. “This is probably the only impulsive thing you’ll do in your entire life, and I didn’t even get an invitation. Or a video.”

“Um... I don’t think you would have wanted an invitation, and certainly not a video, for part of it.” Most of it, actually. Her friend knew how to keep a secret so there was no harm in letting her in on it. Right?

Bonnie popped the fruit into her mouth, chewing for a few seconds. “Maybe not. But I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall. That still doesn’t answer my question, though. Why did he think I was—” She stopped, eyes widening. “Oh, wait. You gave him my name. You...you impersonated me.”

“I didn’t impersonate you. I would have had to wear a wig and get a personality transplant to do that. I just didn’t think I’d ever see the man again. And if he turned out to be some kind of weird stalker...”

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