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CHAPTER THREE
THERE had been no question of where Dervla would go.
When she was in trouble it had been totally predictable where, or rather who, she would bolt to, sure of a welcome and equally sure her best friend Sue wouldn’t push her for explanations until she was ready.
Her actions were actually so predictable that she couldn’t even pretend that Gianfranco’s silence was due to his inability to locate her. He would know her destination without cause to use the mental powers some people nervously suggested bordered on the paranormal.
She couldn’t even picture him desperately searching for her. The only thing Gianfranco was desperately doing was ignoring the fact she existed, ignoring the fact he had a wife.
She was considering his seeming indifference to her flight when the phone rang.
For a moment Dervla froze and stared at it as if it were a striking snake.
It would serve him right if she ignored it.
Even before the thought was half formed she literally dived for it. Her hand shook as she lifted the receiver and raised it to her ear.
‘Hello.’ She was barely able to force the quivering word past the emotional occlusion in her aching throat.
The pathetically eager smile on her face faded dramatically as the voice the other end assured her that they were not selling anything before launching into their slick sales pitch.
Slender shoulders hunched, Dervla sank disconsolately onto Sue’s sagging sofa, ingrained good manners making it impossible for her to hang up. So she let the disembodied voice describe uninterrupted the superiority of the double-glazing they were selling and resisted the temptation to enquire bitterly if this marvellous system, which could apparently do anything, could make a man love you.
Or, failing that, make a person fall out of love? Yeah, that would work and make them a lot of money; love really wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.
‘So our sales representatives are in your area next week. Would you like one to call?’
Dervla roused herself from her bitter reflections and said apologetically, ‘Sorry, I’m not the home owner. I’m just camping on the sofa because I walked out of my marriage.’ And my husband shows no sign of giving a damn. For all she knew he could be celebrating his freedom. Maybe not alone?
The startled intake of breath on the other end almost made her smile as she put the receiver down. She glanced at the clock and could not believe it was still only three o’clock.
Each agonising minute of the interminable day had felt like an hour. The wistful ache became a pain as she allowed thoughts of Gianfranco to invade her thoughts.
You walked, she reminded herself.
And he hadn’t followed. She’d never forgive him for that.
What are you going to do, Dervla? she asked herself. Spend the rest of your life two feet from this phone just in case he decides to remember he has a wife? It was pretty clear that Gianfranco was getting on with his life, and wasn’t it about time she did the same thing?
One thing was certain: if she wanted to retain a crumb of self-respect she couldn’t sit around in this pathetic needy way.
She was going to have to start making plans for her future as a single woman. Fortunately she was well qualified so there would be no problem earning a living, even if that did mean some agency work initially.
She picked up the TV control and, with about as much enthusiasm as she could muster for the prospect of picking up the threads of her old life, clicked on the TV.
The face of a smartly dressed woman fronting the news channel filled the screen. She looked to Dervla like someone whose personal life was not a total messy disaster area, or maybe that wasn’t possible?
Maybe personal lives were by definition messy?
“On the first anniversary of the tragedy…”
Dervla’s eyes widened as the serene newscaster was replaced by an image reminiscent of a war zone—total devastation filled the screen, torn metal, screaming sirens, then they cut to a dazed-looking man with blood on his face praising the emergency services.
“A remembrance service is being held,” said the voice-over.
Dervla’s expression went blank with shock. Gianfranco as a survivor had received an invitation to that service, but, a firm believer in living in the present and looking to the future not the past—a slightly ironic attitude for someone who had never recovered from the death of his first wife—he had politely turned it down.
I forgot…How, she wondered, loosing a small incredulous laugh, was that possible?
How could she forget the day that changed so many lives? And not just those of the victims. There was a ripple effect with such tragedies, though in her own case the ripple that had caught her up and carried her as far as Italy had been more of a tidal wave!
It had officially been her day off, but once the hospital she had worked at had been put on red alert following the detonation of a bomb in a crowded street she, like other essential off-duty staff, had been called in.
By the time she had arrived the staff on duty in the unit had already freed up as many beds as they could, transferring those fit enough to general wards to make way for the casualties.
Young Alberto Bruni had been one of those casualties and Dervla had been designated his nurse. Glancing at the clock just as the swing doors were pushed open to admit the trolley bearing the youngster from Theatre, she had been shocked to realise that she had already been on duty eight hours straight.
‘Dervla, when did you last take a break?’
Dervla turned to smile at the concerned face of the charge nurse, John Stewart. The bags beneath his blue eyes had doubled their capacity since yesterday. Dervla wondered if she looked as tired as he did.
‘My patient is just arriving from Theatre, John. I’ll wait until he’s settled.’ She glanced down at the name on the notes that had just arrived. ‘Bruni,’ she read out loud. ‘Another tourist, do you think?’
‘Maybe. It sounds Italian.’
Dervla’s brow puckered as she nibbled thoughtfully on her full lower lip. ‘I wonder if he speaks English?’ she said aloud, trying to anticipate any problems, not even suspecting that six feet five inches of major life-changing problem was at that moment walking into the room.
‘Well, if he doesn’t,’ the charge nurse said, lowering his voice as he inclined his head towards the open door, ‘he does. The father, do you suppose…? Now that is a turn-up for the books,’ he observed, not looking thrilled with the development.
‘Who…?’ Dervla turned and stopped, her eyes widening as she saw the cause of the tired charge nurse’s comments.
The cause was actually pretty hard to miss—definitely not the fade-into-a-crowd type! Several inches over six feet, the man who walked beside the trolley moved with a riveting fluid grace Dervla normally associated with athletes or dancers.
The dust and dirt coating his face and hair proclaimed him to be one of the walking wounded and though his clothing was filthy and bloodstained he wore it with such assurance that you only noticed this after you had noticed the man who wore it.
For a moment she stared, jaw ajar, and she wasn’t the only person present to forget her clinical objectivity! He was quite simply the most utterly incredible-looking man Dervla had ever seen. She had only ever read about men who looked like him—in actual fact she had read about this man, because her young patient turned out to be the son of none other than Gianfranco Bruni.
And pretty much everyone in the Western world had read about him!
Standing a few feet away, it wasn’t hard to see why he fascinated the media. There were probably any number of Italian aristocrats who could trace their lineage back for centuries, but very few had built a financial empire out of virtually nothing. Even fewer would have matched up to the average person’s image of what such a man should look like.
Gianfranco Bruni did.
He had the hauteur, the flashing eyes, chiselled photogenic cheekbones and sensual sexy mouth. He had the stunning body, muscular, tall and broad-shouldered.
Then he had the less definable qualities, namely raw, undiluted sex appeal. Unwilling to admit even to herself that it was this latter quality that had caused her brain to momentarily stall, Dervla put down to exhaustion the light-headed sensation she experienced as she looked at him.
‘Is that really Gianfranco Bruni?’ For once the media hadn’t exaggerated when they had extolled his looks.
The man beside her laughed. ‘Well, if he isn’t he’s his twin brother. Be sure you take care with phone enquiries, Dervla. Once the press get onto this they’ll be all over us like a damned rash. And if he gives you any problems refer him to me.’
‘Don’t worry, John, I can handle him.’ Laughably she actually believed it at the time!
But she wasn’t the first to make that fatal error, though she would have preferred to lose her shirt to him than her heart.
‘Just do your job, Dervla, and leave the politics to the men in suits. Talking of which…I’ll go and deal with those two,’ he said, nodding unenthusiastically in the direction of the two high-ranking hospital administrators who were shadowing the Italian.
‘They’re probably trying to hit him for a donation to the kidney unit.’ Dervla was only half joking.
‘Not while I’m in charge, they’re not.’ He stopped as the nurse who had escorted the boy approached, and demanded irritably, ‘Why didn’t you get the father to wait outside?’
‘I did,’ she protested, looking flustered. ‘Well, I tried,’ she corrected. ‘But he, well…’ she glanced towards the tall Italian and shrugged, rolling her eyes ‘…what was I meant to do when he ignored me? Sit on him?’
Dervla’s eyes followed the direction of the theatre nurse’s gaze. She could imagine there were any number of females who lacked her professional objectivity who would jump at the chance to sit on him!
Her patient’s father was standing motionless beside the stationary trolley, surveying the room. You definitely got the sense that his present inactivity was not the norm for him. The high-powered financier had presumably not got his billions by being someone who did relaxed or passive on a regular basis.
Dervla flashed the other girl a look of sympathy. ‘She’s got a point, John.’ This was clearly not a man who responded to requests unless he wanted to.
You could tell just by looking at him that he was one of those individuals hard-wired to take control. The message couldn’t have been clearer had he walked in with ‘dominant male’ stamped on his broad, intelligent, bloodstained forehead.
Not that a forehead could be termed intelligent as such.
But eyes were another matter. And the diamond-hard eyes through which the Italian had surveyed the room as he paused there in the entrance made a cut-throat razor look dull-edged.
Pretty astounding, considering he had been through an experience that would have had most people lying sedated in a hospital bed!
As she stared curiously his sweeping scrutiny reached her.
Dervla’s body and mind reacted to the brush of those dark eyes set in the perfect symmetry of his chiselled golden skinned face in a similar way it might to a jolt of neat electricity.
A wave of scalding heat washed over her fair skin, then receded leaving her feeling shivery as she reacted helplessly to the predatory sexual magnetism this incredible-looking man exuded.
Was it her imagination or had his glance lingered longer than required…? But then a split second could seem longer when you were holding your breath, and she had been!
Once his glance moved on Dervla’s brain started functioning again and she was able to put her mortifying reaction in perspective.
Obviously it had had more to do with fatigue than anything hormonal. He wasn’t even the type of man she found attractive. She never had gone for arrogance or the whole smouldering Latin thing. If it had been otherwise she might have been more concerned about the little aftershocks she experienced as she approached him—shocks presented in the form of pulse racing and uncomfortable shivery sensations.
As she reached his side she realised that the theatre nurse hadn’t been the only person he’d ignored in the hospital, because she couldn’t believe nobody had suggested—pretty forcibly—that he have the gaping wound on his forehead sutured.
And goodness only knew what lay concealed, besides golden tautly muscled skin, beneath his torn and bloodstained clothes. Give that shirt a tug and she’d find out, Dervla thought, registering the one button stopping the garment being open to the waist. As it was it really left very little to the imagination!
If a person had been asked to judge from his body alone what the Italian billionaire did for a living she suspected a lot would have plumped for professional athlete.
He had the natural grace and the sleek muscle definition that few beyond those whose livelihood depended on it ever achieved.
A man who spent his life making money might be expected to carry a bit of excess weight around the middle. Staring at his she could see that it was washboard-flat.
Dragging her eyes upwards, her cheeks gently tinged with colour, she felt her tension level rise as her eyes connected with eyes that were startlingly dark, heavily fringed by a screen of jet lashes and hard as diamonds.
She wondered guiltily if he’d seen her ogling—not an ideal first impression.
‘Hello, I’m Dervla Smith.’ She flashed her practised soothing smile and had no response. ‘I’ll be the nurse looking after Alberto. Second cubicle,’ she said, nodding to the waiting porter. ‘If you’d like to wait outside someone will come and get you when Alberto is settled.’
‘No.’
Dervla blinked. ‘Pardon…?’
‘Are you hard of hearing?’ he wondered sardonically.
Her smile wobbled as she reminded herself that people reacted to shock and trauma in many ways. Some became aggressive, some became obnoxious—occasionally you came across one who combined the two. Then again maybe this was standard billionaire behaviour…?
Not that it made any difference to the way she’d treat him. As far as she was concerned he was her patient’s father. His bank balance was no more relevant than the preposterous length of his eyelashes—and actually far less distracting.
‘I said no, I would not like to wait outside.’ Leaving her standing there, he began to follow the porters.
Mouth twisted into a rueful grimace, she watched his broad back retreat. Well, you really established your authority there, Dervla. He definitely knows who is boss.
John, having ejected the men in suits, walked by and raised an enquiring brow. ‘All right, Dervla?’
‘Absolutely.’
Her annoyance with the Italian drained away as she approached the bed and saw his expression in profile as he looked down at the unconscious figure of his child. She had seen gut-wrenching fear before and watched people struggle to contain it.
A wave of empathy washed over her—Gianfranco Bruni was living his nightmare.
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