The days began to quickly roll by as London turned into Denmark, which turned into the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden. Every couple of days, they were in a new country, until finally, they arrived in Italy where the tour was going to set up camp for more than just one night. Noelle was especially excited about being in Italy. It was the one place that she always dreamed of visiting. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was going to be in one of the most romantic places on the planet with Brian. Not that anything romantic was going to go on. The feelings that radiated between them definitely helped Noelle to experience the whole Italian atmosphere.
Brian was almost to a point where he didn’t want to fight his feelings for Noelle any longer. On more than one occasion, he had planned to tell AJ about his and Leighanne’s separation and pending divorce, but something always stopped him. He would either be distracted, something would interrupt him or the embarrassment of failure would hang like a dark cloud in his soul and keep him from spitting the words out.
Now, Brian was exhausted. Keeping secrets took a lot out of man’s spirit, especially when he was also touring the world and trying to fight his growing affections for a beautiful brunette who was always around.
After the concert that night, Noelle had gone off to a late dinner with AJ, while Brian had retreated back to his hotel room. It was actually a welcome night alone. He needed to let his brain and body readjust.
Sometime after midnight, Brian had drifted off to sleep, but was awoken by someone knocking on his hotel room door. Brian jumped out of bed and pulled a pair of sweat pants on over his boxers. As the knocking at the door persisted, he quickened his pace and flung the door opened. He squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light.
In the hallway stood Noelle holding a pizza box in one hand and a DVD in the other. She looked beautiful in the same casual dress she’d worn to the concert earlier that night.
“Hey Sexy,” Noelle greeted. Her face warmed slightly as she gazed at Brian’s bare, toned chest. “You weren’t seriously in bed, were you?”
“Yeah, actually, I was,” Brian replied as he opened the door wider for her to enter. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
Noelle shrugged as she made her way through the door. “Sure, but I figured that you might want some authentic Italian pizza and a little company?”
Brian smiled and flicked on the light as Noelle made herself comfortable on the bed. He watched as she flipped opened the pizza box, turned the TV on with the remote and crinkled her nose at the Italian sports network that the channel was set to.
“Didn’t you eat already?” Brian asked as he took his place next to her on the bed.
Noelle nodded. “But you didn’t. Eat.”
Brian did as he was told. He pulled a piece of pizza out of the box and took a big bite. The truth was that Brian had skipped dinner. After the Backstreet Boys’ show that night, he had just wanted to come back to the hotel and sleep. “So, what movie did you get?”
Noelle dropped the DVD case between them and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Something in Italian. It looked good though.”
Brian laughed. “Neither one of us know how to speak a word of Italian.”
“It’s about body language, Brian,” Noelle replied, smiling. “You can know exactly what’s going on without understanding a word.”
“Is that right?” Brian replied, a small smirk playing about his lips.
“That’s right.” She couldn’t help but to gaze into Brian’s smiling eyes as he leaned against the headboard of the bed, his legs splayed out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. Sitting there like that, lounging in bed with the pizza box between them, they almost seemed like a real couple—relaxed, in love, or at least falling in love. Noelle dropped her gaze back down to Brian’s chest. She reached up to trace the thick scar that cut him into two equal halves.
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“I had heart surgery about ten years ago.” Brian replied with a sigh. His surgery was the glue that held him and Leighanne together to begin with. She had been there when no one else had.
Noelle’s heart fell to her knees. He’d had heart surgery when he was just two years younger than she was now. “Why did you have to have surgery?”
Usually, Brian didn’t like to talk about it. It’d happened so long ago that it seemed inconsequential, but to Noelle the want-to-be doctor, it was probably fascinating. “I was born with a congenital heart defect. When they opened me up, they found that not only was my heart enlarged, I also had two holes that needed to be patched up.”
“Wow,” Noelle replied softly. “That’s scary.”
“Yeah, it was,” Brian responded. “So, you haven’t really talked much about your budding medical career. What kind of doctor do you want to be?”
“I want to specialize in fertility. Research mainly,” Noelle sighed, softly. “But that doesn’t matter. My medical career isn’t so budding anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Brian questioned.
Noelle shook her head. “I don’t mean anything.”
“You can talk to me, you know,” Brian replied.
Noelle nodded slowly. “I know. I just—I don’t know that I want to talk about it.”
Brian nodded, too, and sighed. “Okay.”
“It’s just that, well, I might have been taken advantage of a little—or, hell, I might have been the one taking advantage.” Noelle shook her head, not knowing where this verbal diarrhea had come from.
“Okay,” Brian repeated. His eyebrows were knitted in confusion.
“See,” Noelle continued as she turned in the bed to face him. “There was this professor of mine, Doctor Matheson. We worked closely together and I guess that he developed some kind of feelings for me and one thing led to another and well, you know.”
Brian nodded. He did know. “You slept with him?”
Noelle sighed and nodded. “I did. We maintained this relationship, honestly, for a while. He’s one of the top doctor’s in the field of fertility and he was teaching me, taking me on as his apprentice and I fell in love with him.”
“You’re an adult,” Brian replied, softly. “It shouldn’t really matter that you date a professor, should it?”
Noelle shook her head. “I guess it would raise questions no matter what, but that wasn’t really the problem. He’s married. Really married. Like, completely, living in the same house, no plans of leaving his wife—married. Well, he told me that he was planning on leaving his wife, but whatever. He never did. You get the point.”
Brian felt like the air was sucked out of him at Noelle’s confession. Someone seriously could have driven a knife though his heart and at that point he probably wouldn’t have even felt it. “So, what happened? How did it end? Or is it even over?”
“It’s over. His wife got suspicious. She hired a PI. It turns out that over the years, I wasn’t the only one that he’s quote-unquote ‘taken under his wing’.” Noelle rolled her eyes in disgust. “His wife is the Dean of the College of Medicine, which I didn’t even know right away because she uses her maiden name. She kicked me out of school. He got suspended. My reputation is tarnished and his is bright and shiny as ever. It just… sucks.”
“I could definitely see how that would suck,” Brian replied.
He didn’t know if it was hypocritical to hate the guy for what he’d done to Noelle. Brian was still married. His separation was due to be finalized any day now, but his things were still in his house—only because he hadn’t been back home to retrieve them. He hadn’t had relationships with any other women and he most definitely was getting out of his marriage. Still, on the surface, the story sounds so much the same. “Do you still speak to him?”
“No. He’s sent text messages. He’s tried to call and tell me that I was different than the others, but whatever. I have too much respect for myself to fall for that again. I should have had enough respect for myself to never get involved with him in the first place. The worst part about it was that, even though I didn’t exactly know who his wife was at the time, I still knew that he was married and I still let it happen. I’m just as much to blame.” Noelle hated herself for the waver that she heard in her voice. She could feel the tears beginning to build beneath her eyelids.
“Maybe you can’t take complete responsibility off of yourself, but the guy knew what he was doing.” Brian reached over and brushed a falling tear off of her cheek. “He did take advantage of you and it happens all the time. Women fall for someone that they see in a position of distinction that they hope to someday achieve for themselves. You’re not alone, Beautiful.”
Noelle laughed and brushed her own tears away quickly. “I know that should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. It just means that I’m ordinary. I’m like everyone else. Not to sound conceited, but doctors aren’t supposed to be ordinary.”
“Even doctor’s are human, Sweetheart,” Brian replied softly. Seeing Noelle cry tore him apart inside. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and take all of her pain away.
“Ugh,” Noelle groaned as she gave herself a little shake. “That’s enough feeling sorry for myself. I’m over it. I’m not a victim. I’m going to overcome.”
Brian smiled as she repeated what he thought might have been her mantra.
“I’m not a victim. I’m going to overcome.” Noelle inhaled a deep breath and then exhaled.
“Better?” Brian asked, softly.
“Better.” She slung her legs over the side of the bed and started to get up. “I should probably go. It’s getting late and I know that you need your beauty rest.”
“You don’t have to,” Brian replied, wanting her to stay. “We have the day off tomorrow. I can sleep in.”
“Yeah, but still, I’m getting pretty tired and you were already sleeping before I got here.” She stood up, but turned when she felt Brian’s hand wrap around her wrist.
“Stay,” Brian whispered intensely. “Here with me. Stay.”
Noelle started to shake her head. “Brian, I can’t. What if Alex starts looking for me and we said no more of this. No more sexual… anything… between you and me.”
Brian smiled. “Nothing sexual. Just stay. If AJ comes looking for you tonight, which I sincerely doubt by now, you can just tell him that Hunky came looking for you.”
Noelle laughed and sat back down slowly. She had to admit that the idea of waking up next to Brian was more than just slightly appealing. She nodded, kicked her shoes off and swung her legs back on top of the mattress. “Okay, I’ll stay.”
Brian smiled and kissed Noelle’s cheek softly. He threw the half-empty pizza box onto the floor and then got up to quickly shut off the light. Noelle threw the blankets over her bare legs and waited for Brian lie down next to her. When Brian got under the covers and finally settled in, she closed her eyes and slung one leg over the top of him.
“Goodnight Brian.”
Brian smiled and sighed peacefully. “Goodnight, Noelle.”
***
The next morning, Brian and Noelle woke up wrapped in each other’s arms. Neither of them remembered reaching out for the other, but sometime during the night they had gotten tangled up in each other, and they were both perfectly content being there.
They remained undisturbed until Noelle’s cell phone buzzed, signaling that she had a text message. She sighed, debating whether she should look at it or not. It was most likely only one of two people—either Rob or Alex. If it was Rob, it would ruin all of the warm feelings she had in that moment with Brian. If it was Alex, she was quite possibly caught not being in her room. To Noelle, it was lose-lose.
Brian chuckled. He could see the wheels turning in her head as she debated with herself. “Are you going to get that?”
Noelle snuggled closer into Brian’s chest and laughed quietly. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Want me to take a peek at who the sender is?” Brian offered with a grin. “Maybe it’ll lessen the blow a bit.”
Noelle nodded and reached behind her to the bedside table to grab the phone. “Please do.”
Brian smiled as he flipped the phone opened behind Noelle’s back. “And the winner is… Alex.”
Noelle laughed softly, though she didn’t know if she should be all that relieved. “Just go ahead and read it. Give it to me fast, Brian.”
Brian laughed. “Well, okay.”
“Get your mind of the gutter and THEN give it to me fast,” Noelle repeated, though she too, giggled.
“It says…” Brian paused as the screen loaded with the new message. “It says, Breakfast. Question mark.”
“That’s it?” Noelle replied.
Brian shrugged. “That’s it. Do you want to reply?”
“Say, ‘Sure. Meet you in 15.’,” Noelle replied as she snaked her way out of Brian’s arms.
Brian quickly texted AJ back and then placed the phone down on the bed. “If you don’t want AJ to see you leaving here, you’d better get to gettin’.”
Noelle nodded. “Yeah, I know. It was fun though… last night. Staying here with you.”
“You could stay with me every night if you wanted,” Brian replied sincerely.
Noelle blushed and ran a hand through her unbrushed hair. “You shouldn’t say things like that. I might take you up on that offer.”
Brian laughed softly. “I wouldn’t mind if you did.”
Noelle smiled and bit her bottom lip in hopes of keeping her blush from rising. “I need to go. Alex is going to either be coming down the hall or waiting impatiently downstairs and I still need to go get dressed.” She grabbed the purse that she had brought in with her the night before and started to leave. “Why don’t you give me a little bit of a head start and then meet us down there in a little while? 20 minutes or so?”
Brian nodded and sat up in bed. “I’ll be there.”
“Good,” Noelle replied. “Then I’ll see you in a little bit.”
Brian watched as Noelle walked out of the room. When the door closed, he laid back down against the pillow-topped mattress. He hadn’t been this content in as long as he could remember. He’d slept so well in Noelle’s arms that he couldn’t imagine how he’d ever slept without her arms around him.
His heart still wrenched with thoughts of her heartbreaking story about her affair with her married professor. Brian sighed. He wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t going to hurt her like that. He wasn’t the same as that scum-bag doctor. There were few things that he knew for certain at this point in his life, but one of those things was that Noelle McLean was too special for him to let slip though his fingers.
