BWWM Interracial Romance 2: Open Heart (3 page)

“Uncle Tony said I had to, since I’m not going to die or anything,” Amanda told her, making a face.

Ashley laughed. “Well, getting your homework done is really important. If I hadn’t done my homework every night, they wouldn’t have let me become a doctor.” Uncle Tony gave her an approving look. Amanda considered that point and nodded. “So, munchkin; how’s the stomach? Still hurting?”

Amanda made a face. “Yeah. I’m glad I’m not barfing anymore though. I’m starting to get hungry, actually. Can I eat something?”

Ashley looked at the girl’s chart. She hadn’t thrown up for a few hours, and the medicine would be wearing off soon.

“If you still haven’t thrown up in another hour or two, they’ll bring you food then,” Ashley told her. “We want to make sure you’re able to keep it down. But the fact that you’re feeling hungry is good! It means you’re getting better.” Amanda smiled, and Ashley could see in a flash why the little girl was her uncle’s favorite. There was something engaging and warm, totally unguarded and brightly intelligent about the girl, when she wasn’t dehydrated and miserable with a stomach bug. “We’re going to keep you here overnight, so it might be a little weird for you—not being in your own bed to sleep. But there’s always someone around. The nurses will be checking in on you a few times, but you don’t have to try to wake up for them.”

Amanda nodded slowly. “Will they play with me if I get bored?” she asked.

Ashley grinned. “There’s a whole big box of toys and games near the nurse’s station. As long as there’s not any emergencies, I’m sure there’s at least one nurse who’ll be on tonight who will want to play. Or maybe if your parents come in to sit with you, they’ll play too.”

Amanda beamed at her uncle. “Uncle Tony! Why didn’t you tell me they had toys? We can totally play instead of doing homework.” Ashley stifled her laughter at the girl’s directness. Amanda looked at her archly. “The real reason Uncle Tony is making me do my homework is because I said I was bored, and he ran out of stories to tell me about his company.”

Ashley nodded sagely. “Well, the toys and games are there for anyone who wants to play with them. But, you know…” Ashley made a mock-solemn face at the little girl, “you really should do your homework first, and then play games, if you’re feeling strong enough for it.”

Amanda gave a gusty sigh.“I guess you’re right. But after.” She looked at her uncle. “Promise?”

Tony grinned. “I promise, Peaches. After you finish your homework, I’ll bring a whole mess of toys in here and we’ll play whatever you want.”

Ashley finished up the visit, reassured that the girl’s condition was stable and would improve overnight.

When she would have said goodbye, the uncle forestalled her. “I think we got off to the wrong start this morning, Doctor Ashley,” he said, standing. At some point during the day he had taken off the jacket of his tailored suit, and Ashley was able to see that he was very fit indeed. She cast the thought aside. “I was worried about Mandy here, because she was so sick, but I shouldn’t have acted like such an as—jerk.” He substituted the word with a glance at his niece.

“I appreciate the apology,” Ashley said, surprised that he was—obliquely at least—actually apologizing to her.

“Ah—I’m not quite finished. I was hoping you would let me make it up to you. Please allow me the honor of taking you out for a nice dinner on your next evening off.” Ashley was startled; she hadn’t thought that the man had seen her as anything other than a face and a set of scrubs. Certainly he hadn’t given her any indication that he was attracted to her any of the times that she had come by the room to check on his niece.

She couldn’t deny the fact that he was actually a very attractive man. Ashley hadn’t been able to deny it to herself even when she had been chewing him out. She didn’t usually go for blonds, but there was something about his face, his demeanor, that intrigued her in spite of herself, and of all the blond men she had seen, Tony was one of the nicest to look at. His features were sharp, a look of shrewdness to his eyes; he wasn’t one of those that she mentally called “California blonds”—bright, sun-fair hair and dark skin. His blond hair was a little darker, almost sandy, and his skin, while not pale, was certainly not sun-bronzed. He was clean-shaven as well, which she liked. But it wasn’t a matter of her being attracted to him or not. “I’m afraid it’s against hospital policy—and my personal policy—to date a patient,” she said hurriedly. For a moment, disappointment flickered in the man’s bright eyes, and Ashley prepared for the awkwardness. She was startled again when he flashed a bright smile at her.

“Fortunately for both of us, I am not your patient.”

Ashley felt the blood rush into her face; he was right. He wasn’t her patient. His niece was.

“There isn’t a hospital rule against dating the uncle of a patient, is there?”

Ashley struggled to try to find something to say against the idea. “Not—not as such, no,” she said, flustered at his rebuttal, and in spite of herself, impressed with his quick thinking.

“Uncle Tony can take you to a really, really nice restaurant. He’s got so much money,” Amanda piped up from the bed, watching the two adults.

“I’m sure he can,” Ashley said, feeling her heart beating faster. “But—ah—I’m not going to be off for a few days. I’m sure he’s a very busy man, too.”

Tony held her gaze and Ashley felt herself shivering deep down in reaction to the intent look in his eyes. “I am never so busy that I can’t make the time for what’s important,” he told her.

Ashley couldn’t think of anything to say against the idea—and she didn’t want to upset the man’s niece. “I guess—if you insist…” Tony nodded, and Ashley gave him her personal phone number, hesitating only a moment before she rattled it off. “If you give me a call tomorrow, I’ll have a better idea of when I’m free after my shift ends.”

Tony nodded again, smiling broadly and seating himself next to his niece’s bed. Ashley left quickly, blushing once more. She couldn’t quite believe that she had agreed to a date with a man that, hours before she had been telling off. She wasn’t sure whether she would tell Rosalie the interesting ending of that particular interaction—at least, not until after the date.

As Ashley drove down I-95, matching speeds with the surprisingly fast-moving northbound traffic, she thought about the fact that Kent had actually called her. She had deleted the message immediately after listening to it, determined not to give it another thought, but the fact of its existence plagued her mind. She wasn’t sure what to think of it; when they had separated, prior to the divorce itself even, Kent seemed hell-bent on never speaking to her unless he absolutely had to. Ashley had been hurt when he announced he was leaving her, even though she had—somewhat—seen it coming. They had been fighting bitterly for months before Kent left her, and Ashley had thought on more than one occasion that each fight might actually end up being their last, that he’d just walk out in the middle of it one day. For that matter, she couldn’t entirely understand why she had continued to stay when Kent made it clear, over and over again, that their relationship wasn’t working.

She thought of the words he had hurled at her in their fights; that she was a cold fish, that she didn’t care about him at all, only her career. Ashley had had to miss out on some of the romantic nights he planned, and on more than one occasion she had been too tired to do more than change into pajamas, eat dinner, and go to bed when she got home from work. The fights started out with Kent accusing her of cheating on him, or demanding to know why she was so selfish with her time. She couldn’t take time away from work as often as he wanted as she was on call. He became more and more jealous, and there had been a few fights where Ashley had been convinced that Kent was only moments away from hitting her in the heat of his anger.

She understood now that it wasn’t that she was cold to him that bothered Kent. When she got the divorce paperwork, Ashley spent a day crying, wondering what she could have possibly done different. Could she have been sweeter, could she have given him more of her time? But her common sense had asserted itself—though it couldn’t heal the pain she felt at the ruination of her relationship. Kent had been suspiciously broke towards the end of their marriage, demanding that Ashley work more overtime to cover their expenses. When she looked at the bank statements, she noticed that there were an awful lot of withdrawals on his card—in random amounts that she couldn’t match to anything in the house or any of the bills. Their arguments had also changed in tenor from being about her dedication to her job to about the state of their finances before the end. While Ashley had a good head for keeping herself out of debt and managing her money, she had left the paying of the bills mostly to Kent’s discretion, since the long shifts made her tired enough to potentially forget to pay something. When the internet was shut off, they had barely spoken to each other for three days; Kent paid it, but he insisted that it was somehow Ashley’s fault.

She understood, finally, that the reason that Kent left her wasn’t her lack of warmth to him, it was that he couldn’t adjust to the fact that she was making more money than he was. He always wanted to be the one in charge, and the only way that Kent could see himself controlling the marriage was to control the money. Ashley didn’t know where the mysterious withdrawals had gone, but she knew that when she brought them up, Kent had raged at her about how distrustful she was, that he could handle their money. As the divorce dragged out, with arguments back and forth about whether she would or would not pay alimony to him, it became clear that Kent was trying to take revenge on her for the fact that she had been successful and he hadn’t.

It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Kent had learned his mistake, Ashley thought as she hit her exit near Fort Lauderdale. He could have, after months away from her, realized the error of his ways and decided to beg for her to come back to him. But it wasn’t like him to do that. He had always been stubborn, determined to get his own way. Ashley had never even known Kent to really and truly apologize when he was in the wrong, much less beg for forgiveness. She tried to put it out of her mind, but the temptation to call her ex-husband back, to find out what he was really thinking, was strong.

She spent the afternoon by the pool, lazing around on a lounge chair and taking a dip in the water. It was a little chillier than she liked, but in spite of the fact that Christmas was only a week away, the temperature outside was holding steady at 75 degrees, and the pool at Ashley’s condo was heated. She spent a bit of time in the sauna to decompress, made herself a healthy dinner from the leftovers of a big meal she had made on her day off, and watched a little TV before she went to bed.

The next day, Ashley was almost surprised by the fact that Tony actually called her. She had thought that his invitation to go on a date had been a matter of showing off for his niece; that he would forget about it in the shuffle of things, and it would just be one of those times when she gave a guy her phone number and nothing ever came of it. But right as her shift ended, her phone buzzed, and Ashley saw an unfamiliar number. Hitting the answer button, she brought it to her ear.

“I hope you weren’t just saying I could call you to keep my niece from getting upset,” the man on the other end of the line said as soon as Ashley had answered.

She grinned to herself at that opening. “Sort of. It was kind of a dirty trick, to ask me in front of her when you knew she’d stand up for you.”

Tony chuckled. “Well, then, I will have to make sure the date I take you on is sufficient to apologize both for yelling at your friend and yourself, and for putting you on the spot, won’t I?”

Ashley was walking out to her car, crossing the garage. She considered telling him no—after all, his niece wasn’t there to cheer him on, and it wasn’t like there was anything at stake—but her curiosity won. “I’m free two nights from now,” she said. “Am I meeting you somewhere, or did you want to send a private car for me, Daddy Warbucks?” His niece had mentioned that he was rich—his tailored suit had proclaimed him to be at least financially comfortable, but she thought probably the niece had, as most children, a rather inflated idea of her uncle’s wealth.

“Would you be willing to meet me at Puerto Sagua? It’s not far from where I’d like to take you for dinner.”

That would place the date on South Beach. It was iffy—parking would be a beast—but if the evening started early enough, it was doable. “What time?” she asked, finally reaching her car. She pressed the button on her key fob to unlock the doors and got in quickly.

“How about seven? We can grab a cup of coffee, have dinner, and be done just in time to go dancing if you’re up for it.” It had been a while since Ashley had been on South Beach. She thought she wouldn’t particularly care to go dancing with him—but she could easily enjoy coffee and dinner. She agreed.

Ashley spent the morning of her day off getting her hair done; she had made the appointment with Denise weeks before, knowing that she would need to have it taken care of. Ashley had been going to the same stylist for years, ever since she had moved to Broward County to attend medical school at the University of Miami. Denise had helped her pick out the best option for her professional look, and while she sometimes encouraged Ashley to change it up, she understood that as a doctor—and a woman of color—Ashley had to look as professional as possible whenever she was at work. It wasn’t an option, sadly, for her to keep her hair natural; she could have opted to have her hair clipped to a fine stubble, but that wasn’t the kind of look for her. The hospital regulations required an easily-contained hairstyle for both women and men. So Ashley had decided to keep her hair in braids.

As Ashley sat in the chair, having her braids undone, her hair washed and treated, she started telling Denise the story of meeting her date that night.

Denise laughed at her for managing to get a date out of yelling at a guy. “If that worked for me,” Denise said, running fingers through her hair, “I’d have a date every night of the week, the way these men behave.” She asked Ashley what her date looked like and Ashley blushed slightly, giving the stylist a description of him: his blond hair, blue eyes, the tailored suit. “You’re damned right you said yes to a date with that!” Ashley laughed, rolling her eyes at Denise’s reaction. When her hair was treated and ready to go, her stylist and friend let her get up and walk around for a few minutes to restore the circulation in her legs before she sat down for the long, boring process of having her hair re-braided. “You know, since you’re going out tonight, you should do something special. I’ve got these crystals I could weave into the ends,” Denise showed them to Ashley, dangling them tantalizingly. Ashley was tempted—but there were rules against that at the hospital, and she didn’t want to have to come back in just to have them taken out. She told Denise to just do the regular braids, and sat back, reading a medical journal she had brought along while her friend got to work.

That night, Ashley found herself surprised at how nervous she was as she waited for Tony outside of the café. She had arrived punctually—ten minutes before seven—dressed well enough to go to a South Beach restaurant in a casual dress, stockings, and heels. Her heart was beating fast; she realized that she hadn’t been on a real date since she and Kent had separated; one of the other doctors had set her up with a friend, but it had never gone anywhere. Ashley wondered if she was nervous because of the fact that she was on a date itself, or because the date was with Tony.

Tony walked up just after Ashley checked her watch to find that it was five minutes to seven. In his hand was a tiny bouquet—gerbera daisies, bound in twine at the bottom of their stems to keep them neat.  She almost didn’t notice that he was dressed in another tailored suit, this one with a deep crimson tie, snowy, crisp white shirt, and a tiny gerbera daisy fastened at the lapel. Ashley smiled in spite of herself, feeling the blood rushing into her cheeks. It had been so long since someone had brought her flowers that she had forgotten how flattering it was, how appealing to be dealt such an old-fashioned courtesy. “Thank you,” she said, taking them as Tony held them out. “They’re one of my favorites, actually.” The orange and red flowers were also indisputably very fresh—and she wondered where he had gotten them. Certainly this wasn’t some three-for-ten bouquet at the grocery store.

“What’s your favorite flower?” Tony asked her, gesturing for her to precede him into the coffee shop. Ashley considered the question.

“It’s silly, but my favorite is daffodils. My grandmother used to grow them up in Georgia, where my family’s from.” Tony nodded, and Ashley caught the look in his eyes as he filed that information away for future reference. She shrugged it off, but she wasn’t sure if she was pleased or not that he seemed to be actually interested in her.

They ordered coffees, Ashley taking a Café Cubano while Tony chose a Cafecito, and sat down at a table outside, away from the din. Tony asked her about herself, and almost against her better judgment, Ashley found herself telling the man about how she had wanted to be a doctor since she was a child, how she had thrown herself into medical school with the fervor of a convert, and how she had come to be in the pediatric wing to care for his niece.

“You know, she’s 100% better,” Tony told her, inclining his head respectfully toward her. “It was my very good luck that you were her doctor.”

Ashley smiled at the compliment. “There are a lot of equally skilled doctors at Jackson,” she said. “And Amanda’s case was a very easy one to treat. She’d be feeling better no matter who attended her.”

Tony shook his head, his bright eyes glinting at her. “Don’t you know how to take a compliment?” he asked her. “It’s my good luck not only because my niece got the best of care, but also because if you hadn’t been her doctor, I would never have gotten the opportunity to convince you that I’m more than just some jerk who yells at nurses.”

Ashley chuckled. “Well, there are enough people yelling at hospital staff on any given day that I probably would have forgotten you existed before my shift had ended,” she admitted.

Tony shook his head. “My luck increases with every attempt you make to downplay it—if you had forgotten I existed, we wouldn’t be here.”

Ashley shrugged. She was pleased at the attention, but at the same time didn’t know quite how to react to it. She had last tried dating as a young adult; she had only been twenty when she’d met Kent. She wasn’t used to the way that grown, mature people interacted on dates. She sipped her coffee and tried to keep up her end of the conversation, even though part of her mind was back at the hospital. She really only felt comfortable there. Some of Kent’s complaints about her dedication to her job were not without merit, Ashley thought absently as she and Tony compared childhoods. Ashley came alive at the hospital, faced with difficult cases that had to be taken care of immediately. She loved working in the ER, and she loved working in Pediatric medicine, as well as basic care. Knowing that people depended on her, that they were looking for answers and that helping them was in her power had fueled Ashley’s interest in becoming a doctor at a young age.

They finished their coffees and left the café, and Ashley hesitated only briefly when Tony offered her his arm while they walked to the restaurant he had in mind. He hadn’t given Ashley any indication of where he had planned to take her; most of the restaurants on South Beach were pricy anyway. But when he led her up to the front of Barton G, Ashley was shocked; she glanced at him sharply. “You know, this is a first date—you don’t have to go out of your way to impress me,” she said hurriedly, wondering if she wasn’t underdressed for the place.

“I have a standing reservation here,” Tony said, waving aside her concern. “It’s where I bring a lot of my clients to have dinner. Business expense.” Ashley’s opinion of him wavered between being deeply impressed and almost put off by the slight brag that the comment implied. She wondered just what he did, and realized that he hadn’t mentioned it—he hadn’t brought it up once, instead asking her all about her life, her career. That was strange; usually, with men, it was difficult to get them to shut up about themselves—that had been Ashley’s experience in her dating life before, at least. Tony waited patiently for the hostess to come back to the station, unobtrusively caressing Ashley’s inner arm as they stood there. Her feet were starting to hurt from the heels—she wasn’t used to wearing them. The hostess recognized Tony immediately, saying that his usual table was all ready for him; that meant that his boast was accurate.