Exotic Nights

“Why do you smile for everyone but me?” he asked.

She seemed startled, but she quickly masked it. “That’s not true. And I could ask why you look so severe. Did I do something wrong? Have I mixed the fish fork with the dessert spoon again? Seated the priest beside the prostitute?”

She was trying hard to be irreverent, but the catch in her voice surprised him. He worked to force away the dark clouds wreathing his mind. “It’s nothing.”

“You say that quite a lot, Marcos,” she said, her gaze on the center of his chest as they moved.

“Do I?”

“You do. Last night, and this morning when I asked you about the tattoo.”

Her eyes were troubled. He looked away, over her head at the sea of dancers. She almost seemed worried about him. He didn’t like the way that made him feel. Like he wanted to share things with her, to make her under stand.

She intrigued him like no on else, and he wasn’t accustomed to it.

“There are things I don’t wish to talk about, with you or anyone.”

“Sometimes it helps to talk about the things that trouble us.”

“Really? Do you intend to share your secrets with me? To tell me why you refuse to believe a man could want you, or why you love this Jacques Fortier so much that you would risk your life for him?”

“I never said a man couldn’t want me. I said I wasn’t the usual type of woman you were attracted to.”

“Ah yes, you know so much about me. I had forgotten. And what about Jacques, Francesca?”

She refused to look up at him as they swirled across the floor. “I told you he took care of me when no one else would. I—I was very ill. He nursed me back to health.”

He didn’t like the way the thought of her being sick pierced the shield around his heart. “You are well now? It is nothing that will return?”

“I’m recovered, Marcos,” she said, meeting his gaze with an evenness that somehow seemed contrived. “No lingering effects.”

“You wished to return the favor, yes?”

“Absolutely. Jacques saved me, and I want to save him.”

“Then you will be pleased to know I’ve had an update from the hospital. They believe he is a good candidate for an experimental treatment with a high success rate.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked rapidly to keep them from falling. “Really? They think they can save him?”

“There is no guarantee, Francesca. He is very sick. But they have hope.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I have only just had the call since we’ve been here, querida. They needed my authorization to begin.”

“Your authorization? Gilles is his next of kin.”

“Yes, but I am paying. And this particular treatment does not come cheaply.”

She fixed her gaze on his chest again. The tip of her nose was red, he noted. She was struggling not to cry. A pang of some emotion he couldn’t name stabbed into him. What would it be like to have someone love you so much that your well-being was their first priority?

When she looked up again, her eyes were still shiny. But the tears seemed to be under control for the moment. “Why did you approve it, Marcos?”

He found he couldn’t give her an easy answer. Why had he approved an expensive, experimental treatment for a man he didn’t know when the usual treatments might also work, and at a lesser cost?

“Because it was the right thing to do,” he said simply. “And because you would want me to.”

He’d spent years being unable to care for anyone but himself. Now that he had money, how could he say that one life was worth less than another? That he could only do so much?