Pregnant with His Baby!
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‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘Fine, I’ll see you then,’ she said, trying to match his businesslike tone and, she suspected, failing pretty comprehensively.
She put the phone down and turned to Sue. ‘You got the gist of that?’
Sue nodded. ‘You’re riding shotgun on the kid until Dad gets here.’
Dervla nodded.
‘And after that?’
‘After that, I suppose …’ Dervla’s slender shoulders lifted. ‘I don’t really know,’ she admitted. ‘He’ll be here in about half an hour. I suppose I’d better get my things together.’
‘I put your holdall in my bedroom.’
‘Thanks.’ Sue followed her into the bedroom and watched while she unzipped the bag to check the contents.
‘So you’re not coming back, then?’
‘I suppose that depends.’
‘On whether you choose Gianfranco or a baby?’
Hearing it put so bluntly made Dervla blanch.
‘You know, I never even knew you wanted a baby. I thought you were totally all right with the situation.’
‘I was, or at least I thought I was,’ she amended huskily. ‘Maybe,’ she speculated, pushing her hair from her face with the crook of one elbow as she bent forward to pick up her toiletries from the floor, ‘I’d just never met a man whose children I wanted to have.’
‘You really love him, don’t you?’
Dervla gave a laugh, pulled a scarf from her bag and, bunching her hair at the base of her neck, wound it around to secure it there. ‘He’s the only one who doesn’t seem to realise I do, which, considering he’s supposed to have a mind like a steel trap, is kind of ironic.’
‘You could tell him?’
Dervla turned and angled her helpful friend an incredulous look. ‘It’s the last thing he wants to hear.’
‘Maybe he should hear it. What are you going to do about the fertility treatment?’
‘I suppose I’ll just have to forget it.’
‘Can you?’
Dervla’s face creased with anguish as she admitted, ‘It won’t be easy. It was much easier to accept never having a child of my own while I knew there was no hope, but now …’ Dervla stopped, unable to continue as her voice became totally suspended by tears.
Her visit to the fertility specialist had opened up all sorts of possibilities she hadn’t let herself think about before.
Before Gianfranco had entered her life she had genuinely believed that she had accepted her infertility. There were, after all, other things in life than children.
It didn’t make her any less of a woman.
Or did it, in Gianfranco’s eyes at least?
She had never been able to push the question from her mind. He was such a terrific father to Alberto it seemed impossible to her that he wouldn’t want other children and a woman who could provide those children.
As it turned out her fears had been totally unfounded. Gianfranco didn’t want her babies.
‘The chances of me conceiving naturally are virtually zero. Or “entering miracle territory”, to quote the fertility specialist I saw.’
‘You’ve already been to see a specialist?’
Dervla could understand her friend’s surprise. It was a bit of a turn-about for someone who had always said she couldn’t understand women who put themselves through repeated courses of IVF when statistically the chances of conceiving were so low.
‘I know I said there was no way I’d put myself through that sort of thing, but at the time it wasn’t a viable option for me. If you can’t have something it makes life easier if you tell yourself you don’t really want it.
‘The doctor was cautiously optimistic, but this is a new technique and they’re looking for suitable patients to be involved in a clinical trial. The chances are it wouldn’t have worked anyway,’ she said, zipping the bag and hefting it onto her shoulder.
Was she going to allow her reluctance to let go of that faint possibility kill her marriage stone-dead?
‘Marriage is about compromise,’ she said, as much for her own benefit as Sue’s. Halfway to the door she stopped and turned, her eyes filled with tears she refused to allow to fall.
‘You know, every time I feel like I’m getting close he pushes me away. He doesn’t care for me the way I—’ She stopped abruptly. Regretting and deeply embarrassed by the impulsive confidence the moment it left her lips, Dervla lifted her chin to a determined angle and smiled mechanically as her eyes slid from Sue’s. ‘I’d better go downstairs and wait for Eduardo.’
She was on the stairs when Sue’s voice drifted down the stairwell echoing against the concrete walls.
‘Maybe he cares too much, Dervla, and it scares him. Just a thought …’
Sue meant well, but she didn’t know Gianfranco; he wasn’t scared of anything.
The limousine was waiting for her. The chauffeur jumped out when he saw her and took her bag, enquiring politely after her health.
Dervla slid into the back with a murmured, ‘Hello, Eduardo.’
As the engine purred to life she was unable to prevent her thoughts returning to the first time she had travelled in this car. It had been a day for firsts: her first trip in a limo and her first time with a man.
Neither had been planned. She had not woken up that day and thought, Hey, this would be a good day to lose my virginity. Who can I think of to oblige? And if he owns a limo that would be a ‘two birds with one stone’ scenario.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ACTUALLY that day had started out a bit of a stinker. One of Dervla’s patients, a dear old man who had fought his way back to health after heart surgery, had passed away quite suddenly.
Not inclined to linger and chat in the changing rooms, she had hurried hoping to catch the earlier bus home. As she’d walked through the swing doors of the main entrance she had paused to pull up the hood of her jacket against the rain.
Peering up at the grey sky had not improved her mood. She had been preparing to make the dash across the busy road to the bus stop when she’d felt a hand on her shoulder.
She had turned and found her eyes on a level with the middle button of an expensive leather jacket. She had known that underneath the jacket the owner wore a pale grey cashmere sweater.
She had tilted her head and just managed to keep the inappropriate—almost as inappropriate as wondering about what he’d look like minus the cashmere—gasp locked in her throat. As her eyes had connected with his dramatically dark eyes the weariness that had made her steps leaden had been instantly swept away in the wake of an adrenaline rush.
At least she had hoped it was adrenaline, but if her hormones had been involved she would have been in trouble because she had forgotten how to breathe. It might have helped if he’d moved his hand, but it had still been on her shoulder and he’d been showing no inclination to move it any time soon.
Breathing unevenly, but breathing, which was a relief, she had sketched a smile.
For the past week she had seen Gianfranco Bruni every day. Dervla had been able to observe first hand the satisfactory healing of the wound she had sutured. She had also been able to observe his devotion to his son and his ability to function with very little sleep.
He had sat at his son’s bedside for thirty-six hours straight before finally leaving it for long enough to shower, change his clothes and return clean-shaven. Dishevelled and bloodstained he had looked more good-looking than any man had a right to—scrubbed up he had been simply off-the-scale gorgeous!
Once news of his presence had spread people had started appearing from all over the hospital on the limpest of pretexts until John had let it be known that his unit was not a zoo, and anyone there without a valid reason would have some explaining to do.
Despite the fact Gianfranco’s absences had only ever been brief he had still oozed a restless vitality. You got the impression that if invited to scale the odd mountain before supper he’d leap at the chance.
More than once as Dervla had reached the end of a shift she had wished she could plug into some of his energy reserves. Mostly, though, she had tried not to think of him at all, because he was a very distracting man.
‘Mr Bruni.’ The moisture clinging to his face and plastering his dark hair to his skull suggested he’d been standing there for a while.
‘My name is Gianfranco.’ He elevated a dark brow but Dervla was too flustered by his presence—his much too physical presence—to respond to the enquiring signal. She was painfully conscious of his continued light, casual touch on her shoulder and her response to it being anything but casual. ‘Alberto calls you Dervla?’
She nodded, finding his level gaze hard to return, but discovering contrarily that she couldn’t have torn her eyes from his lean, chiselled features even if her life had depended on doing so.
‘Yes.’
‘It is an unusual name.’
‘My grandmother was Irish. I was named after her.’
He turned his head and nodded towards the grey night. ‘You are going home?’
She nodded.
‘And you are tired, hungry because you worked through your supper break and wondering,’ he added with a flash of his wolfish smile, ‘how I know these things.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘How do you know?’ Hidden cameras or was he psychic?
‘I watch you.’
Three words, but they had roughly the same effect on Dervla as the world tilting on its axis, which, if she remembered rightly, could result in the end of all life on the planet as we knew it.
The thought of those dark eyes following her sent a rush of heat through her body. It seemed pretty pointless telling herself the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach was disgust when her skin literally tingled with illicit excitement.
‘I’d be flattered if I thought there was much else for you to look at,’ she said in an attempt to laugh off his comment.
It was more difficult, in fact impossible, to laugh off the expression in his dark intense eyes as they moved over her face, then drifted lower down, skimming her body.
The muscles low in Dervla’s abdomen tightened and continued to flutter uncontrollably as she struggled to fight back the insidious lethargy that was stealing the strength from her limbs and making mush of her brain.
‘It is never a hardship to watch a beautiful woman.’
‘Me!’
Her startled exclamation drew a rumble of laughter from his chest.
‘It is infinitely preferable to watch you than your friend the muscular charge nurse. You two are an item, perhaps?’
‘John!’ She was genuinely startled by the suggestion. ‘No, of course not.’
‘He watches you too.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she retorted crossly.
‘Poor John,’ he said softly. ‘And now I have made you think about it you realise that I am right. It is useless to deny it. You have the most transparent face I have ever seen.’
He made it sound like a flaw and Dervla was inclined to agree with him. There were thoughts going through her head at that moment she would have been happier to be ignorant of herself! The idea that she might be broadcasting them horrified her.
‘You’re mistaking real life for a daytime soap. I think, Mr Bruni, that you’ve had too much time on your hands. Your imagination has obviously got out of control.’
A slow, sensual smile tugged the corners of his mobile mouth … When it came to imagination running wild, hers got totally out of control every time she made the mistake of looking at his sinfully sexy mouth.
There was a glint in his eyes she didn’t dare analyse as he readily conceded her point. ‘It could be that you’re right there and imagination is no substitute for reality. Not when it becomes painfully frustrating …’ he murmured, staring at her soft pink lips in a way that made the knot of need low in her belly tighten.
‘Actually, Mr Bruni, I find that reality rarely lives up to imagination.’ His distracting mouth for instance. There was no way he was as good a kisser as those sculpted sensual lips suggested.
‘That gives me no great opinion of the men in your life.’
It took a few seconds for his meaning to sink in, and when it did the colour flew to her cheeks. ‘I wasn’t talking about sex!’
‘Of course not,’ he soothed, looking amused by her outrage. ‘Food is a much more comfortable subject. I thought you might like to go for something to eat—real food, not imaginary?’
She blinked up at him totally nonplussed. ‘You’re asking me to dinner?’
‘We are both hungry and I am alone here …’
He said it with the manner of a man without a friend in the world, which was so totally implausible she almost laughed. ‘And you couldn’t pick up a phone or simply snap your fingers and have gorgeous, agreeable, intelligent company?’
His grin flashed. ‘I thought the lonely card was worth playing,’ he admitted with no trace of remorse. ‘You are agreeable, intelligent company.’
‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’
‘So?’ He arched a brow. ‘You will come?’
‘That’s out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m in my uniform and you’re …’ She stopped, her glance sweeping upwards from his toes to the top of his glossy sable head. Oh, God, but he really was the best-looking man she had ever seen.
One corner of his mouth twitched. ‘I’m what, Dervla?’
The way he said her name in that seductive velvet voice sent a rush of colour to her cheeks. She lowered her eyes. With a voice like his he could make a shopping list sound sexy.
‘People like you don’t go to dinner with people like me.’
People like him went to dinner with glossy long-stemmed beauties, women with blonde dead-straight hair and interesting lifestyles that did not require them under any circumstances to wear something that resembled an ill-fitting and not very flattering uniform.
‘There is a law to this effect?’
Dervla pursed her lips primly, stared at her feet and thought there ought to be. She was deeply ashamed of and painfully conscious of her physical response to his overt brand of rampant raw masculinity.
‘You make it sound as though we are different species, Dervla.’
‘We might as well be, Mr Bruni.’
‘Gianfranco.’
‘It’s really very kind of you, Mr Bruni, but you don’t have to take me to dinner just because you bumped into me. Most relatives express their gratitude with a tin of toffees.’
‘I am all out of toffees.’ He held out his hands palm up to illustrate the point.
Dervla’s glance moved to the long fingers extended towards her.
‘And I did not bump into you; I was waiting for you.’
Her eyes flew to his face. ‘Why would you do that?’ she demanded, unease unfurling low in her belly. Along with it was an equally uncomfortable flutter of excitement.
‘Why do men usually wait for you, Dervla?’
‘They don’t and will you stop calling me that?’
‘Is it not your name?’
‘Not the way you say it. The way you say it makes it sound like someone else.’
‘Good, then act out of character and get into the car.’
She turned her head in the direction he indicated. ‘What car?’
How had she missed that?
The limousine with the tinted windows pulled up to the kerb beside them was massive.
She felt his hand fall on her shoulder and didn’t see the harm in letting it stay there just for a minute.
‘You need cheering up.’
Their eyes meshed and Dervla felt the resistance weaken as she gazed into his deep velvet brown eyes.
‘I’m not in need of cheering up,’ she protested, tugging her arm free. ‘Seriously.’
‘I am in need,’ he retorted. ‘Seriously.’
Something in his voice made Dervla pause in the act of pulling away. Her eyes lifted slowly, a crease of concern appearing on her brow as she registered for the first time the dark shadows under his eyes and the lines of strain etched into the skin around his mouth.
Her belligerence melted away. For some people prayer, adrenaline and caffeine took them through the early critical stages of a loved one’s illness, but later, when the critical danger passed, the emotional backlash hit them. The effect could often be debilitating.
It was difficult to imagine a man less likely to rouse her maternal instincts. It was also difficult to think of one more likely to push himself too far.
‘You must be very tired.’ This man really doesn’t need looking after, her inner voice of reason and logic pointed out.
‘I could do with a change of scene. I thought you’d be pleased I was taking your advice. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me for days via your excellent charge nurse?’ he asked innocently. ‘A more sensitive man might assume you were reluctant to talk to me …?’
‘I thought you might find advice easier to take if it came from a man.’
‘You think I have a problem with strong women? Actually I like a woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to tell a man.’
It could be she was hearing sexual innuendo that wasn’t there. All the same she struggled to keep the blush at bay.
‘Taking instruction from a woman in the right circumstances can, in my experience, be most agreeable.’
Oh, no, it was most definitely there!
She ignored the dangerous kick of excitement in her stomach and gave him a level look. It only stayed level until she saw the glitter burning deep in the dark depths. ‘Don’t look at me like that!’
Inside the hospital she was in control; outside there was no name badge to hide behind. Their roles were reversed and it scared her.
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t like it.’ Not totally a lie—liking had very little to do with the shivers walking up and down her spine.
‘Have dinner with me.’
‘I wouldn’t be good company.’
‘I’ll take the risk. Relax.’ The advice almost made her laugh … relaxing around this man was a clinical impossibility. ‘You’re hungry, I’m hungry … where is the problem?’
He turned aside to speak in rapid Italian to the driver before opening the rear door of the plush vehicle for Dervla.
After a pause she slid inside. It was only a meal and sometimes you had to live a little dangerously—and all that was waiting for her at home was a microwave dinner for one.
‘Gracious, this is bigger than my kitchen!’ she exclaimed, too startled by the extravagant luxury to maintain any level of nonchalance. ‘You’re not worried about your green credentials, then.’ This monster had to have a gigantic carbon footprint.
‘I would be a poor businessman if I wasn’t—’
‘And not a “ruthless financial genius”,’ she quoted with a twinkle.
He shook his head and gave a rueful grin. ‘That Sunday supplement quote will, I suspect, go with me to my grave.’
‘Is this the way a genius travels?’
‘I am no genius and I generally find it more convenient to use a helicopter.’
The retort drew a laugh from her. ‘What about ruthless?’ she asked curiously.
His charismatic smile flashed. ‘That rather depends on who you’re talking to.’
‘I’m talking to you.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you can’t give a straight answer. Perhaps you should go into politics.’
‘So you want to know the man behind the trashy headline?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t have that sort of time.’ This man was so complicated that she suspected it would take a very long time to even begin to work out the kinks in his personality. ‘This is just one dinner date.’
His dark lashes lifted from the razor-sharp angle of his sculpted cheekbones. Dervla’s stomach flipped as their eyes connected.
‘It doesn’t have to be one dinner date.’
The earthy warmth in his steady scrutiny made her stomach flip. She tried to laugh to reduce the tension that had sprung up in the confined space, but her vocal cords were paralysed.
‘You are probably right not to commit yourself. Wait and see how this evening goes.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
DERVLA wanted to tell Gianfranco that the evening was going nowhere but the excitement circulating in her bloodstream resisted her efforts. Her heart was thudding so loud that she was sure he must be able to hear it.
A few moments later their sumptuous ride drew to a halt—an abrupt halt, and equally abruptly Dervla shot forward. She gave a knee-jerk scream and closed her eyes as impact with the glass panel separating them from the driver seemed inevitable.
At the last moment she found herself pulled backwards, anchored to the seat by an arm like a steel band around her waist.
The glass partition slid down and the driver’s anxious face appeared. ‘Sorry about that. A dog ran out,’ he said, speaking excellent English but with a more pronounced Italian accent than his employer.
‘You avoided it?’
The driver nodded. ‘Lucky you were wearing seat belts back there.’
‘Very lucky,’ Gianfranco agreed, his sardonic gaze levelled on Dervla’s guilty face.
The glass partition closed and while the driver got out to open the passenger doors Gianfranco’s arm slid from her waist.
He was still so close she could feel the heat of his body and smell the shampoo he used on his silky ebony hair. She struggled against a sudden crazy impulse to sink her fingers into that lush pelt.
‘I always wear my seat belt,’ she said defensively.
‘Clearly not always …’
Her breath came a little easier as he moved away, but every nerve ending in her body remained painfully inflamed. ‘Well, always before today.’
She turned her head and connected with his dark eyes.
Her rueful smile guttered.
His eyes were blazing, a nerve beside his clenched mouth throbbing and the bruises on his forehead stood out livid against his deathly pallor. Gianfranco looked incandescent with rage.
‘Are you a total fool?’
Dervla’s first instinct was to defend herself against his blighting scorn, but it was pretty hard to defend the indefensible.
‘How many people have you seen brought into Casualty after going head first through windscreens?’
From his expression Dervla suspected he had witnessed such an event himself, maybe even been personally involved, which would explain his somewhat dramatic reaction to the incident.
‘All right, I should know better,’ she admitted, shamefaced.
‘That face could have been …’ His chest lifted as he dragged in deep before he reached across and placed one big hand around the curve of her cheek. A distracted expression drifted into his deepset eyes as he rubbed his thumb in a circular motion across the apple of her cheek.
Dervla, mesmerized, stared up at him, her eyes half closed as the friction of his thumb against her skin increased the growing liquid ache low in her pelvis.
‘Next time I might not be there to save you. Promise me,’ he demanded huskily, ‘that you will never do that again.’
Dervla had no trouble supplying the promise he demanded, but she did have trouble making it audible as her enraptured eyes stayed locked on his lean face, her throat clogged with emotion she couldn’t put a name to.
The opening of the limo door provided the necessary distraction to allow her to escape the sensual thrall that held her immobilised and break free of that intense stare.
Dervla was so flustered that she didn’t immediately register as she stepped out into the damp night that there were no eateries, casual or otherwise, in the residential square.
‘This isn’t a restaurant,’ she said, levelling an accusing glare at him as they approached the porticoed entrance of a large Georgian building.
‘This is my house.’
‘Which part?’
‘All of it.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Of course it is.’
The door was opened before they reached it. A dark-haired woman in her thirties wearing a navy skirt smiled pleasantly at Dervla, who, impelled forward by firm hand in the small of her back, stepped forward into the elegant hallway lit by chandeliers and dominated by a sweeping staircase a full orchestra could have been neatly tucked away beneath.