With her hair half in her face, making her look so damn sexy to him, she finally calmed down. But unshed tears were in her large, clear eyes. “Why do you keep doing this?”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Like hell you haven’t! Why were you with her? Let’s start there. Why were you with the beautiful Miss Bella Caine? Do you wanna trade me in? Am I too old for you now? Is that it?”
Mick’s heart squeezed in agony when she said those words. He looked deep into her soulful eyes. How could she think he would do that to her? How could she think he would be that shallow?
But he was giving her nothing. She had no other answers. She needed to make sense of the pain he continually inflicted upon her. Was it her growing insecurities, or was it his ass like every instinct in her body was telling her it was? “I’m not good enough for you anymore? Is that it? Are you tired of me? Is that it?”
Tired of her? Was she out of her mind? “That’s not it, Roz,” he said. “Not in the least.”
“What is it then? All you have to do is tell me. Why were you with that woman in Rome? I don’t wanna be with somebody who don’t wanna be with me. I’ll never be that girl.”
“Roz--”
“Do you love her?” Roz wanted answers and she wasn’t stopping until she got some. “Is that why you can never get enough of her? You love her? Is she your girlfriend now?”
Anger would have overtaken Mick had it been anybody else asking him that ridiculous question. But it was Roz. Therewas more sadness in his eyes than anger because he knew it was his actions that brought her to this kind of lowdown neediness that wasn’t Roz on any day of the week.
But he also didn’t want to get into his knee situation. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said.
But that only made Roz even more puzzled. “Then why were you with Bella, Mick?”
There was a pause, which only made her more unsteady. But then he answered her question. “I had surgery,” he said.
It was nowhere near what Roz expected to hear. “Surgery? What do you mean you had surgery? What happened?”
Mick took his hands off of her arms and placed them around her waist. And it was only then did Roz finally realize the oddity of Mick lying in bed, under covers, in the middle of the day. And the word surgery only heightened her concern and scared her. “Why would you need to have surgery in Rome?” Then she pointed her finger at him. “And you’d better not tell me you have some incurable disease and you only have a few months--”
“No. No. It’s nothing like that.”
That gave her great relief. “Then what is it? Why would you need to have surgery in Rome of all places? Did something happen?”
“My knee was injured. I had to get it worked on.”
Roz couldn’t believe it. “You had knee replacement surgery in Rome?”
There was a slight hesitation. It was obvious that Mick originally had no intentions of letting her know. Which concerned her on a different level. “I had surgery on my knee, yes,” he finally said.
“But why, Mick? The best doctors in the world are right here in the United States. Why would you go to Rome to have asurgery?” She didn’t even care about Bella being with him. She was gravely concerned about him!
“I flew my doctors over there. They supervised the surgery. They couldn’t do it here in the States because the robotic technique that keeps you down for only a few days hasn’t been approved here in the States. And I wasn’t about to be down for up to six months. My enemies would decimate me if they knew I was incapacitated for that long. But with the procedure in Europe, I was down for only four days. Was able to walk a mile and even run in six days. I had the operation in Europe because of the quick turnaround recovery period.”
That wasn’t the full reason. The injury actually happened in Europe and he couldn’t be flown out. That was the full reason. But he never discussed that side of his life with Roz.
“Why hasn’t it been approved in America?” she asked him. “Because it may not be the best way to recover from knee surgery?”
“Or because that fat-cat doctors’ lobby wants us to pay for their fat salaries with constant post-op visits.”
Roz stared at Mick. He’d never been the conspiracy theory type in the past. What was up with him? Because something was. She could smell it. “If you were back to normal in less than a week,” she said, her eyes searching his large green eyes for clues to what was really going on, “then why did you stay there for an additional week?”
“My surgeons wanted to keep an eye on me for that additional week out of an abundance of precaution. They needed it to work.”
“Why?”
“They want to use it in the States. They need documented proof of its safety.”
But Roz was still puzzled. Her eyes were still searching his. “But why wouldn’t you just tell me what you were goingthrough so that I could be there with you? Why wouldn’t you just tell me, Mick?”
