Page 28 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
It was the latter that fired her forward and she reached Dante just as he shoved his phone back in his pocket.
‘What’s happening?’ Caitlin breathed, trying to peer around his body but not getting very far. ‘Is Alejandro okay? All those people... Is that his room or someone else’s?’ Her eyes were already filling up at the thought of her friend having some kind of unforeseen setback.
‘My brother is awake.’
‘What?’
‘It is as if he’s been having a nap and now he’s up and ready to start the day.’
‘That’s...that’s amazing. I have to go and see him, talk to him...’ She took a step to the left and Dante reached out and blocked her from stepping forward with a hand on her arm.
Caitlin froze. Her mind emptied of everything. All she could feel was the burning touch of his fingers on bare skin.
‘He’s going to be wheeled off for a battery of tests,’ Dante was saying, while she desperately tried to focus on something,anything, other than his hand on her arm. ‘There’s no point in you trying to get to him.’
‘But—’
‘I’ve just been on the phone to my mother and said exactly the same thing to her. As you can imagine, she is as keen to see Alejandro as you are.’
Caitlin finally looked directly at Dante and inwardly quailed because all too clearly she could remember the inappropriate kiss that had galvanised his appalled withdrawal and damning judgement.
Should she bury the memory and pretend that nothing had happened between them? Or bring it out into the open, get rid of the elephant in the room before it started wreaking havoc? Or did it matter anyway, considering she was planning on clearing off as soon as she got back to Dante’s house?
The decision was taken out of her hands when Dante said, coolly and firmly, leading her away from Alejandro’s room towards the double doors back out into the main body of the hospital, ‘You and I need to have a little chat.’
‘About what?’ At that very moment, Caitlin decided that pretending nothing had happened was definitely going to be the best option. ‘I really think I should stick around here for a bit...see what’s happening with Alejandro before I go—’
‘Before you go?’ Dante pulled to an abrupt halt and stared down at her with a veiled expression.
‘Work is beginning to get a little impatient, Dante. I honestly can’t stay over here indefinitely. My parents are also... They’re anxious about me...’
‘You’re a big girl,’ Dante gritted. ‘I’m sure your parents will understand why you’ve stayed on.’
Caitlin didn’t say anything. She had spoken to her mother the evening before and had detected the stress in her voice with a sinking heart. Her parents were clinging to their composure by the skin of their teeth and, more than ever in their lives, relying on her to steady them in stormy times.
Soothing, long-distance conversations were just not the same as seeing them face to face, being able to have a cup of tea, to hold her mother’s hand and assure her that everything was going to be just fine.
Her father was doing his best, but he had always been the easy-going one between the two of them and now that her mother was on the verge of cracking up, her father was fighting his own battle with low-level panic, paralysed by the fear that everything he had worked for, what little remained, would somehow be wiped out from under his feet, and plagued with guilt at the thought that he had been the one responsible for all their problems.
How much longer could she just hang around?
‘Don’t tell me what my parents can or cannot understand,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m overjoyed that Alejandro has regained consciousness. I had planned on leaving later today but now I’ll see him when he’s up to visitors and I will leave for London as soon as I do afterwards.’
Dante didn’t say anything. He had no intention of having any kind of showdown inside a hospital, so he spun round on his heels, making sure to keep his fingers firmly locked round her arm, and began leading her quickly towards the exit, ignoring the bank of lifts in favour of the stairs.
His car, in the underground car park, was waiting for them and they made their way there in complete silence.
There would be enough to talk about in due course, he thought.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a café I know in the Plaza Mayor.’
‘But can’t you just tell me what you need to tell me right here?’ She knew what he was going to say. He was going to mention that wretched kiss. He was going to voice all the suspicions that had been playing around in his head ever since he had set eyes on her. As far as he was concerned, she had offered up conclusive proof that he had been right to have been suspicious. He was going to call her to account and she couldn’t blame him.
But it surely wasn’t going to be a long conversation!
Was it even going to be a conversation at all? Or a full-frontal attack, which she would deal with by being as unresponsive as possible?
