“Marco always gets his own way, Lucia told me.”

“Not always,” he said in a husky voice.

“No?” The word squeaked out, betraying her agitation, although Paige was sure he could also hear her erratic heartbeats and feel the nerves jumping in her skin.

“No!” he whispered. “Because right now Marco has an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss your lips—to see if they taste as sweet as they look. Of course, he would pretend it was a thank-you for caring for his sister Lucia—a casual salute. But he was brought up to treat a woman with respect, so he won’t do it, but it’s proof—no?—that Marco doesn’t always get his way.”

As a person who lists her hobbies as reading, reading and reading, it was hardly surprising that Meredith Webber fell into writing when she needed a job she could do at home. Not that anyone in the family considers it a “real job”! She is fortunate enough to live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, as this gives her the opportunity to catch up with many other people with the same “unreal” job when they visit the popular tourist area.

An Enticing Proposal
Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘I CAN arrange for Dougal to see Dr Barclay this afternoon, Mrs Dean, but I know he won’t prescribe antibiotics for Dougal’s cold so it would be a waste of your time, coming back again.’

Paige sighed inwardly, wondering why she bothered to waste breath in an argument she was certain to lose.

‘All I want is some more of the pink medicine,’ Mrs Dean whined. ‘Dr Graham let me have some and it fixed Darryl’s nose so why can’t I have the same for Dougal?’

Forcing back the urge to scream and rant and rave at the woman, Paige explained, for the fourth time in ten minutes, the difference between sinusitis and the common cold, pointed out that the viruses causing the cold would be unaffected by the pink medicine and tried to convince Mrs Dean that rest and a diet including plenty of fluids would soon have young Dougal on the mend.

Young Dougal in the meantime, bored with the conversation, had hooked his thumbs into the corners of his mouth, set his forefingers against his temples and was now contorting his face into various gargoyle shapes which he directed at Paige. If anything, she decided as she listened to Mrs Dean’s praise for pink medicine, it improved the looks of a child with a white pudgy face and small raisin eyes, liberally decorated at the moment with the inevitable nasal effusion of the so-called ‘common’ cold.

A commotion in the waiting room beyond her door suggested restlessness among the natives, so she turned her attention from Dougal’s antics and tried once again to prevent an incursion into Ken Barclay’s freely given but limited time.

‘Look, Mrs Dean, you can ask Carole if Dr Barclay has an appointment available this afternoon, but, believe me, Dougal’s cold will run its course and he’s better off without unnecessary antibiotics.’

The ‘noises off’, as script writers might describe the raised voices outside, were increasing so Paige, with a final smile of appreciation for Dougal’s facial contortions, stood up to show the visit was at an end. Mrs Dean took the hint, rising laboriously to her feet, grumbling under her breath about no-good nurses and services that were supposed to help the needy, not send them away empty handed.

Having heard it all before, Paige ignored the barbed comments, holding out her hand to offer support to the hugely pregnant woman, wondering idly what the Deans would call the new baby, should it be a girl. Darlene? Dorothy? Diana? After Darryl, Denzil, David, Dennis and Dougal, maybe they would change the initial letter.

‘And by the sound of things you’ve got men in the place.’ The grumbling became audible and Paige realised her patient was right. There was at least one man in the waiting room—and not a very happy man at that, if his tone of voice was any indication.

‘Supposed to be for women, Tuesdays!’ Mrs Dean griped, resisting Paige’s attempts to hustle her out the door and calmly rearranging multitudinous layers of clothes around her bulk.

Paige opened the door, more anxious now to discover what was going on than to be free of Mrs Dean. The waiting room was in its usual state of chaos. Children crawled around the floor or fought over the small collection of toys and books she’d managed to accumulate. Their mothers sat on hard plastic chairs, exchanging news and gossip in a desultory fashion, their attention focussed on the confrontation taking place at the reception desk. Some were waiting to see her, but others would have appointments with Sue Chalmers, an occupational therapist who volunteered her time on Tuesday mornings to run a small toy library.

Carole Benn, the community service’s receptionist, was in place behind the high counter, which provided her with little protection from the man who was leaning across it, waggling his finger in her face and growling threateningly at her.

A second man stood slightly behind this aggressive type, looking remote and disinterested, seemingly oblivious to the noise and activity all around him. His colour was bad—olive overlaid with grey. An illness perhaps. Had the pair strayed in here, thinking it was a medical practice? She studied the silent man covertly—from a female not a nursing point of view this time. Bad colour did little to diminish the magnetism of a face which could have been carved from mountain rock—like the heads of presidents somewhere in the United States.

The wayward thought flitted through Paige’s mind as she ushered Mrs Dean towards the counter and raised her eyebrows at Carole. Carole lifted one hand and made an almost imperceptible shooing movement with her fingers but the irate man observed the motion and spun immediately towards Paige.

‘So you are Paige Morgan!’ he said in accusatory tones. ‘This woman tries to tell me you are not available. I am Benelli and this is Prince Alessandro Francesco Marcus Alberici.’

To the astonishment of Paige, and all the occupants of the waiting room, the younger man came to attention and all but clicked his heels together as he indicated the second man with a wild flourish of one hand and a movement of his body that suggested obeisance.

‘Ah, at last my prince has come.’ Paige clasped her hands theatrically in front of her chest and raised her eyes to the ceiling. Then she grinned at Carole. ‘Wouldn’t you know he’d arrive on a Tuesday when I’m too busy for a coronation.’

Inside, she wasn’t quite so light-hearted as bits of her fizzed and squished in a most unseemly manner—the result of another quick appraisal of the second man’s bone structure.

Lust at first sight?

With a determined effort, she turned away, concentrating on the underling, hoping to surprise a smile in his eyes, some confirmation he wasn’t serious.

‘Am I supposed to guess something—or answer a question and get a prize?’ she hazarded. ‘Is it a joke of some kind, or a new form of fund-raising? I’m afraid my sense of humour’s a bit dulled this morning and, as for money, this place takes every penny I can scrounge up.’

Mr Benelli turned an unattractive shade of puce—now she had two bad-complexioned strangers in her waiting room! He jumped up and down—or rose on his toes to give that impression—and began waggling his forefinger at her.

‘This is no joke! He is a prince, a real prince, and he does not want money.’

‘Well, that’s a change,’ Paige replied, risking a swift glance towards the ‘real prince’ and catching what appeared to be a glint of humour in his black eyes. Black eyes? Did eyes come in black? Not that she could see them closely enough to judge eye colour accurately. ‘What does he want?’

She shook her head as she heard her own question. Why the hell was she carrying on this conversation through an intermediary?

‘He wishes to speak with you on a matter of extreme urgency,’ Mr Benelli informed her, and for the first time Paige caught the hint of a foreign accent in his properly worded and pronounced English and realised that he, too, had the dark hair and olive complexion of his companion, a colouring she associated with Mediterranean origins.

Surely it couldn’t be…Her heart skittered at the half-formed thought.

‘I’ll be free at twelve,’ she said crisply, hoping her rising anxiety wasn’t apparent in the words. ‘Perhaps you could both come back then.’ She glanced again towards the second man, realised the grey colour was probably fatigue and added, ‘Or you could wait here if you prefer.’

The offer failed to please Benelli, who all but exploded on the spot as he poured out his indignation.

‘This is urgent, he must see you now. The car waits outside to drive him back to Sydney. He is busy man. Important. Not to be—’

Paige missed the end of the sentence, too intent on trying to settle the new upheaval within her—one that had nothing to do with lust. Perhaps it was a joke, she hoped desperately. Hadn’t she glimpsed a gleam of humour in the dark eyes? And why didn’t the second man speak if it was his errand—his urgency?

He answered the second question almost as she thought it.

‘We will wait, Benelli,’ he said, in a voice that vibrated across Paige’s skin like a bow drawn across violin strings.

Shivering at the effect, she pulled a file from the holder on her office door and called the name of the next patient, seeing Benelli offer the newly vacated chair to the ‘prince’, the man refusing it and propping himself on the window-ledge as her father had done during her childhood when this had been their living room, not a place for those who could not afford other services to wait—and hope.

Her father had been a tall man—a little over six feet—and the window-ledge had been comfortable for him. But she’d never found it anything but awkward to perch there, although at five feet eight she wasn’t a short woman.

And why you’re thinking about how tall you are is beyond me, she admonished herself silently, leading Mabel Kruger into the room, then closing the door firmly on the unwelcome visitors.

‘’Andsome enough to be a prince,’ Mabel remarked, settling into the visitor’s chair and lifting her leg onto the stool Paige had pulled towards her.

‘Why should we expect princes to be handsomer than ordinary mortals?’ she asked crossly, peeling dressings off Mabel’s ulcer as gently and carefully as she could.

‘They are in books,’ Mabel pointed out. ‘And, apart from that Charles, the Queen’s lads are good-looking.’

‘Well, I’m sure she’d be pleased to hear you say so,’ Paige responded, talking to distract Mabel’s attention as she debrided dead tissue, cleaning out the gaping hole and wondering if a skin graft might eventually be necessary or if they were winning the battle against infection. ‘Though I think I prefer blond men. Why are princes always depicted as dark?’

They chatted on, and she knew she was diverting herself as well as Mabel. Not wanting to think about the phone call she’d made, about betrayal—and being caught out. No, the two couldn’t be connected. A simple phone call in return was all she’d expected—wanted.

So why did she feel sick with apprehension? Why was she harbouring a grim foreknowledge that the strangers in her waiting room were connected with Lucia?

She set aside unanswerable questions. Mabel was explaining, with minimal use of the letter ‘h’, about the beauty of the princes she’d encountered in the fairytale books of her youth. She then moved on to wonder about the reliability or otherwise of princes, given the unreliability of men in general. Paige let her talk and concentrated all her attention on her task, peeling the protective backing off the new dressing, then pressing it firmly in place.

‘Now, leave it there all week unless your leg swells or you notice any unusual redness or feel extra pain,’ she told her patient. ‘And rest with your leg up whenever you can—’

‘So I don’t ’ave to go to ’ospital and get a graft!’

Mabel repeated the usual ending to this warning, then she patted Paige—who was still kneeling on the floor, pulling Mabel’s sock up over the dressing—on the head and said, ‘Not that you don’t deserve a prince, girl.’

Paige looked up at her and smiled.

‘Don’t wish that on me. I don’t want any man—let alone a princely one,’ she teased, using the back of Mabel’s chair to lever herself up to her feet.

‘You mightn’t want one,’ Mabel argued, ‘but you’re the kind of girl as needs a man about the place—well, not needs, maybe, but should ’ave. I see your eyes when you look at those kids sometimes, and the babies. That fancy doctor did you no favour, getting you all interested in things like marriage then taking off with that floozy.’

Well, that’s a different take on my break-up with James, Paige thought as she helped Mabel to her feet. Was that how all her patients viewed the nine-day wonder of it all? How her friends saw it?

‘Not all men are the same,’ Mabel declared with as much authority as if she’d made that notable discovery herself.

Paige grinned at the pronouncement. She walked the elderly woman to the door and saw her out, her eyes going immediately to the man framed in the window embrasure. No, all men were not the same, she admitted silently, then trembled as if a draught had brushed across her neck.

Calling for the next patient, she turned back inside so she didn’t have to look at the stranger in their midst.

Well, you mightn’t have to look at him, but you’ll have to think about him some time soon, she reminded herself, grabbing the chubby two-year-old who’d scampered through the door ahead of her mother, intent on climbing onto Paige’s desk and creating as much havoc as she could.

‘Not today, Josephine,’ she murmured as she swung the child into her arms and gave her a quick hug. ‘Is she any calmer on the Effilix?’ she asked, turning to the young woman who’d followed them into the room and settled into the chair with a tired sigh.

Yes, she had more to worry about than princes—or men either—at the moment, she reminded herself, watching Debbie and wondering how she juggled her studies and motherhood.

‘I suppose it depends on your definition of calmer,’ Debbie Palmer replied with a wry grin that told Paige no miracle cure had been effected by the natural therapy. ‘But Susie’s been giving her massages every second day and that seems to have a good effect on her, and the other mothers at playgroup feel she’s interacting much better with their kids.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ Paige said in her most encouraging voice, setting Josie back on her feet and handing her a small bright top, demonstrating how it spun, then watching as the little hands tried to duplicate the action. In her opinion, Josephine was a very bright child with an active, enquiring mind, but too many people had muttered ‘hyperactive’ to Debbie, and the young single mother now feared a diagnosis of ADD—the attention deficit disorder—which was the popular label for behavioural problems used among parents and school teachers at the moment.

Debbie was ambivalent about the drugs used to treat the disorder—some days determined to keep Josie off medication, while on others wanting the relief she imagined they might bring. Paige had come down on the side of a drug-free life for the child and pressed this point of view whenever possible, although at times she wondered how she would feel in a similar situation.

‘I’ve arranged for a paediatrician to see Josie next month,’ she said. ‘It’s a Dr Kerr, and he’s agreed to meet you here so she’s in familiar territory. But as I’ve said before, Deb, there’s no guarantee he’ll come up with anything. It’s very difficult to pin a label on so young a child.’

Debbie looked at her without answering, then she shrugged and grinned.

‘Seems a little unfair, doesn’t it? You get a prince and I get a paediatrician!’

‘I can’t imagine he’s really a prince,’ Paige retorted. ‘And, even if he is, what would I want with one?’

‘Well, he’s decorative for a start,’ Debbie pointed out. ‘And he oozes that magnetic kind of sex appeal only some men have, in case you’re too old to remember what sex appeal is.’

Paige chuckled in spite of the worry Debbie’s conversation had regenerated.

‘Am I walking around looking jaded and depressed? Or like someone gnawing at her bones with frustration?’ she said. ‘Mabel’s just told me I need a man and now you’re here offering me good-looking sex.’

‘Oh, he’s beyond good-looking,’ Debbie argued, taking the top from her daughter before it could be hurled across the room. She leaned forward and demonstrated its action once more, then smiled as she watched the little figure squat down on the floor and try again.

Paige watched the interaction of mother and child, saw Debbie’s smile, so full of love for this difficult little mortal she’d conceived by accident, and felt the tug of envious longing which told her Mabel was right.

But the prince, if prince he was and her assumptions were correct, had come to reclaim his wife, not carry a tired community nurse off into some fabled distance on his shining white charger.

She sighed.

‘Sighing’s usually my line, not yours,’ Debbie told her. ‘Are you OK?’

‘A bit tired,’ Paige explained, not untruthfully. The problem of what to do with her uninvited house guest had been keeping her awake at night for the last month.

‘That’s why you need a change—a holiday,’ Debbie reminded her. ‘You’ve been working for what…four years without a break. You deserve a bit of time to yourself.’

To do what? Paige thought, but she didn’t say it. She did need a break, needed to get right away somewhere so she wouldn’t be tempted to step in if things went wrong at the service, answer calls at night which someone else should take.

But with Lucia?

She sighed again.

‘OK, OK, I get the message,’ Debbie said. ‘I won’t keep you. I brought back the library toys and Sue chose some new ones for Josie, so all I need is a time for Dr Kerr’s appointment and I’m out of here.’ She grinned cheekily at Paige. ‘Leaving you with only one patient to go before the prince!’

‘Lucky me! Who is it? Do you know?’

‘I think it’s Mrs Epstein. I noticed her in the corner, huddling into that black wool coat of hers and trying to look invisible.’

‘Poor thing. She’s not at all well, and hasn’t had a proper medical check since Sally Carruthers left town. She refuses to see a male doctor. I guess eventually someone will have to drive her down to Tamworth to see one of the women in practice down there. Would you send her in, to save me going to the door? Just lift her file out of the slot and give it to her to bring in.’

Paige gave Josie a hug and said goodbye to Debbie, then sat down at her desk and buried her head in her hands. One more patient then the prince to confront. He had to have come about Lucia, so what did she tell him? She could hardly reveal Lucia’s presence in the house without at least consulting her—explaining about the phone call and why she’d made it.

And she couldn’t leave this room to go upstairs and talk to Lucia without being seen by her two unwelcome visitors.

Unless…

She glanced towards the windows, stood up and walked across to open the one closer to her desk. To poke her head out and look up. As a child she’d climbed both up and down the Virginia creeper innumerable times, but would it hold an adult’s weight?

And was she seriously considering climbing up there?

‘Seeking an escape route?’

The deep voice made her spin around, and she knew from the flash of heat in her cheeks that her stupid pale skin was flushing guiltily.

‘The room was warm,’ she sputtered, compounding her stupidity with the lie. She took control. ‘Anyway, I’ve another patient to see before you.’

‘Your patient has departed,’ he responded coolly.

‘Or been intimidated into leaving by your presence,’ Paige retorted, curbing an urge to add a scorching remark about princely arrogance. ‘What’s happened to your sidekick?’

‘Sidekick?’ The man looked bemused.

‘Mr Benelli. The guy who bowed you in.’

‘Ah, you took offence at his behaviour. I can understand that reaction, but to check him, tell him this ceremony was not what I wanted or desired, would have been to humiliate him in front of your patients.’

Paige stared at him, though why his compassion for a fellow man should startle her she didn’t know. Unless she’d assumed princes were above such things! Which reminded her—

‘Are you really a prince?’

He shrugged, moved further into the room and smiled.

Bad move, that—making him smile. The rearrangement of his features made him even more devastatingly attractive—and, coming closer, it had brought his eyes into view. Not black but darkest blue, almost navy.

‘I am Francesco Alberici. The title “prince” is a hangover from bygone days—something I do not use myself. Benelli is an official at our consulate in Sydney. It is he who sees honour in a useless appellation, not myself.’

He’d held out his hand as he’d said his name, and politeness had decreed she take it. But to let it rest in his as he finished speaking? Another mistake.

She took control, stuck her still-warm but nonetheless offending hand into the pocket of her blazer and looked—confidently, she hoped—into his eyes.

‘So, now we’ve cleared up the prince business, how can I help you?’

As if I don’t know, an inner voice quailed, and she regretted not escaping through the window, even if she hadn’t climbed the creeper.

‘You phoned me—left a message.’

Marco watched the colour fluctuate beneath her cheeks—no doubt she was considering what lie to tell him—and wondered about her background. With that pale skin, cornsilk-coloured hair falling in a straight drop to chin level and the smatter of freckles across her nose, she certainly didn’t fit his image of a bronzed Australian. But, then, this New England city in the northern tableland area of New South Wales had the feel of an English market town, in spite of the lush sheep country which surrounded it.

‘You’re Marco?’

Her question, when it came, held surprise—and, he suspected, dread. Or guilt?

‘Who else?’ he said harshly, surprised to find an inner anger surging into the reply. He could usually control his emotions better than that. Tiredness? The long flight? Or the months of gut-wrenching, muscle-straining, heartbreaking worry over Lucia?

He curbed the anger as wide spaced green eyes, flecked with the gold of the sunlight outside, stared warily into his.

‘Why didn’t you phone?’

‘I came instead.’

‘Why?’

The question gave him momentary pause, then the anger churned again, rising, threatening to erupt.

‘To take Lucia home,’ he said bluntly.

Paige had seen him stiffen earlier, guessed at anger, saw the tension in his body, controlled now but ready to explode. She wondered about violence. Was that why Lucia had fled? She had to forget her own reaction to the man—that strange and almost instant attraction. Right now she needed to stall, to buy time. With time maybe she could persuade Lucia to talk about her flight, before revealing her whereabouts to anyone. Or this man’s presence in town to Lucia!

She tried for innocence in her expression—in her voice.

‘Lucia?’ she repeated in dulcet tones.

Wrong move! His body language told her she’d unwittingly lit the fuse to set him off. He stepped closer, spoke more softly, but there was no escaping the rage emanating from his body and trembling in his words.

‘Yes, Lucia, Miss Morgan. And don’t act the innocent with me. You phoned my private work number, a new number only a handful of people know, you asked for Marco—a name only Lucia and my family use to address me. You left a message—said you wanted to speak to me. I haven’t come halfway around the world to play games with you, so speak to me, Miss Morgan. Or tell me where she is and let her explain her behaviour.’

Paige shivered under the onslaught of his words—and the emotion accompanying them. No way could she inflict him on her ill and unhappy house guest. But how to tell an enraged husband—however handsome and sexy he might be—you won’t let him see his wife, without risking bodily harm to yourself? She gulped in some replenishing air, waited for the oxygen to fire into her blood, then squared up to him.

‘I will speak to her, ask her if she wishes to see you.’

‘You will…’

Well, at least she’d rendered him speechless!

She raised her hands as if to show helplessness. ‘I can’t do any more than that.’

He glared at her, his eyes sparkling with the fierceness of his anger.

‘Then why did you contact me? To tease me? Torture me even more? Was it her idea? Did she say, “Let’s upset Marco in this new way”?’

The agony in his voice pierced through to her heart and she found herself wanting to put her arms around him, comfort him—for all her doubts about his behaviour towards his wife.

‘She doesn’t know I contacted you,’ she said softly—feeling the guilt again. Wondering how to explain.

He was waiting, the fire dying from his eyes, the grey colour taking over again.

‘Please, sit down. Do you want a drink—something hot—tea, coffee?’

No reply, but he did slump into the chair. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his dark hair, then stared at her. Still waiting.

‘She came to me—off a backpackers’ coach. Do you know about backpackers?’

He shrugged and managed to look both disbelieving and affronted at the same time. ‘Young tourists travelling on the cheap. But a coach? Lucia? Backpacking? And why would she come here?’

Well, the last question was easy. If you took it literally.

‘The bus company has a number of coaches which follow the same route through the country towns of New South Wales. People buy a six-month ticket and can get on and off wherever they like—staying a few days in some places, longer in others. This is a very popular stopping-off place and the company recommends the health service as a number of the professionals here speak more than one language.’

‘Parla italiano?’

The words sounded soft and mellifluous in Paige’s ears and again she felt a pang of sorrow—a sense of loss for something she’d never had.

‘If you’re asking if I speak Italian, the answer’s no. I used a phrase book to leave a message on your answer-phone. I studied Japanese and Indonesian and can get by in German. Many of the European tourists also speak or understand it, so I can communicate to a certain extent.’

‘Which is a credit to you but isn’t diverting me from the subject of Lucia, Miss Morgan.’

Mellifluous? Steely, more like!

‘Or your phone call,’ he added, in a no-less-determined voice.

‘She wasn’t well, and I sensed…’

How to explain her conviction that Lucia was in trouble—ill, lost and vulnerable—so alone that to take her in and care for her had been automatic.

She looked at the man from whom the young woman had fled and wondered how to tell him why she’d been compelled to phone him.

‘She wasn’t like the usual backpackers I see. Mostly they’re competent young people, clued up, able to take care of themselves, if you know what I mean. Lucia struck me as someone so far out of her depth she was in danger of drowning.’ She met his eyes now, challenging him yet willing him to understand. ‘But I also felt she’d been very much loved and cherished all her life,’ she admitted, ‘and from the little she told me, I guessed someone, somewhere, would be frantically worried about her whereabouts.’

He said nothing, simply stared at her as if weighing her words, wondering whether to believe them.

‘She doesn’t know I made that call,’ Paige admitted, feeling heat flood her cheeks again. ‘I looked through her passport one day and found the number pencilled in the back of it. I felt you—her family—someone somewhere—might need to know she was alive.’

He bowed his head, letting his chin rest against his chest, and she saw his chest rise and fall as be breathed deeply.

‘Yes,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘I—we all—did need to know she was alive.’

She studied him. Saw tiredness in the way his body was slumped in the chair. But when he raised his head and looked into her eyes there was no sign of fatigue—and the anger which she’d seen earlier still lit his from within.

‘Did she tell you why she ran away?’ he demanded.

Paige shrugged.

‘She told me very little,’ she said bluntly. ‘All I’ve done is guess.’

‘Abominable girl!’ the man declared, straightening in his chair and flinging his arms into the air in a gesture of frustration. ‘She’s been spoiled all her life, that’s her trouble. Cherished is right! Of course she was cherished. And how does she repay that love and affection? How does she treat those who love her? By taking off! Running away! Leaving without a word to anyone, a note from Rome to her mother, saying she will be all right! Then nothing for months. We all assume she’s dead! Dio Madonna!’

Perhaps it was as well she didn’t speak Italian. The intonation of the words told her it was a phrase unlikely to be repeatable in polite company. Not that the man didn’t look magnificent in his rage, on his feet now and prowling the room like a sleek black animal, still muttering foreign imprecations under his breath and moving his hands as if to conduct his voice. But watching him perform, that wasn’t getting them anywhere, and no matter how magnificent and full of sex appeal he was, he’d be out of her life by tomorrow so the sooner she got rid of him now, the sooner she could tackle Lucia.

And the thought of her reaction to this latest development wasn’t all that appealing! Paige stood, drew herself up to her full height and assumed her most businesslike expression. The one she used when asking for government funding from petty officials put on earth to frustrate her plans for the community centre.

‘If you rant and rave at her like that, I can understand why she ran off,’ she said crisply. ‘Now, if you tell me where you’re staying, I’ll have a talk to her and get back to you.’

‘Staying?’ He sounded as shocked as if she’d suggested he strip naked in the main street. ‘I am not staying! I have work to do. I must get back to Italy. I am—in fact, we, Lucia and I, are booked on a flight out of Sydney tomorrow morning.’

Paige stared at him in astonishment.

‘You flew out from Italy to Australia for a day? You thought you could arrive here, drive up, wrest Lucia forcibly into the car, then career back down the highway and be out of the country within twenty-four hours?’

Maybe her amazement caught his attention for he stopped his pacing and faced her.

‘I did not know where this town was—how far away from the capital,’ he said stiffly. ‘I gave the telephone number to a person at the embassy. He found the address—this address—and arranged to bring me here. It was not until I was in the car I learned she was at a far-off place—a regional centre I think Benelli called it.’ He paused, then added, ‘He said it was still possible to be back in Sydney late this evening and make the flight tomorrow.’

As that pause was the first hint of weakness she’d seen in the man—apart from the fatigue—she took it as an opening and pounced.

‘Well, I suggest you see Mr Benelli again and ask him to arrange accommodation for you, and rearrange your flight home. Apart from anything else, I doubt Lucia is well enough to travel.’

She watched the colour drain from his face.

‘What is wrong with her?’ he demanded, and a hoarseness in his voice told her of his love for Lucia.

CHAPTER TWO

HOW to answer? Tell a man his wife had gestational diabetes mellitus when he didn’t know she was pregnant? And Marco wouldn’t know because Lucia hadn’t known herself—hadn’t even guessed what might be wrong with her. The diabetes was an added complication, one not usually occurring until late into the second trimester of pregnancy when the foetus was extracting more nutrients from the maternal source, but the trauma of leaving home could have triggered a possible predisposition to it, bringing it on earlier than usual.

The thoughts rushed through Paige’s head and she studied him as she decided what to say. He didn’t look like a man who’d give in easily and telling him Lucia was carrying his child, that would hand him an added incentive to force her to return to him. It would also betray Lucia’s trust. Again!

Hide behind professional discretion?

She didn’t think this man would take too kindly to this ethical solution to her dilemma but what the hell.

‘I need to speak to her before I can give you any information about her health or where she’s staying,’ Paige replied, already feeling the waves of his anger as it built again. ‘Give me an hour—or maybe two—and I’ll contact you, or, better still, you could phone me here.’

She opened a desk drawer to get a card for him then realised it would show this building as her home address as well as that of the health service. Bring him closer than she wanted at the moment. Pulling out a scrap of paper instead, she jotted down her number and pushed it across the desk.

He was standing opposite her, staring at her with an unnerving intensity.

‘I already have your phone number, Miss Morgan,’ he said softly. ‘What I don’t know is Lucia’s whereabouts. Now, are you going to tell me where she is or do I call in your police force?’

She did her straightening-up thing again, hoping to look more in control.

‘Lucia is an adult—able to make her own decisions. No police force in the world can compel a woman to return to a situation from which she’s fled.’

She wasn’t absolutely certain about the truth of this statement but he wasn’t to know that. Not that he seemed to be taking much notice. In fact he was laughing at her.

Derisively!

‘Fled, Miss Morgan? Aren’t you overdramatising the situation?’

Damn her cheeks—just when she wanted to appear super-cool they were heating up again.

‘You said yourself she ran away,’ she countered hotly. ‘And now you’ve arrived, like some vengeful gaoler, to take her back—threatening me with the police force! No, I think if anyone’s overdramatising, it’s you, Prince Highfaluting-whatever. Sweeping in here, making demands. I’m the one who’s being reasonable about this!’

OK, so she didn’t sound very reasonable right now, but he’d made her mad. And that superior expression on his carved-rock face made her even madder.

He ignored her rudeness, nodded once, stepped back a pace from his position near the desk and said, ‘I will give you an hour, Miss Morgan, but that is all. For some reason you are under the impression Lucia will not wish to see me. You are wrong. She will be glad and grateful that I have arrived to take care of her.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Paige muttered with as much cynicism as she could muster, though why his sudden switch to politeness was aggravating her more than his anger had she didn’t know. ‘Well, we’ll let her be the judge of that. Will you phone?’

His eyes scanned her face, as if he wanted to imprint it on his mind, and when he finally replied—saying, ‘No, I will return to this house,’—Paige felt a tremor of apprehension flutter down her spine.

And dealing with Lucia wasn’t any easier. When Paige confessed she’d found the number in the passport and had phoned it, her guest had pouted and turned her face to the wall, prepared to sulk.

‘I had to let someone know you were alive,’ Paige said desperately. ‘It wasn’t fair that all your friends and family should have been worrying themselves to death—imagining the worst of fates for you. I just didn’t expect him to come.’

The slim figure shot upright, delight and apprehension illuminating her usually pale face, giving her a radiant beauty.

‘He’s here? Marco’s here? Oh, why did you not tell me straight away? Where is he? Bring him to me! Now, Paige, now!’

One of the few things she had told Paige was that she’d only been married two months before she’d left. It hadn’t taken her long to learn imperious ways!

‘Are you sure you want to see him?’ Paige asked, mistrusting this swift change of mood. ‘He’s here to take you home.’

The beauty faded, leaving her visitor pale again.

‘Of course! He would have come for that reason. Trust him to do such a thing, thinking he would persuade me.’ She pouted again, then tossed the cloud of soft dark hair and added defiantly, ‘Well, I won’t go!’

There was another pause, and Paige could almost read the expressions that washed across Lucia’s face—hope, longing, doubt and confusion.

‘But I’d like to see Marco,’ Lucia continued tremulously. ‘Will you stay with me while he visits? Not let him bully me or talk me into going home?’

Paige sighed. The very last thing she wanted to do was play gooseberry between a man and his wife—particularly, for some reason, between the man in question and this young woman she’d come to like.

‘I think you should talk to him on your own,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think you owe him that?’

Huge brown eyes gazed piteously into hers.

‘But he’ll talk me into going back,’ Lucia wailed. ‘Into doing whatever he wants. Marco always gets his way.’

I can believe that, Paige thought, picturing the man who’d invaded her office, but the idea of acting as a chaperone at this forthcoming meeting was making her feel quite ill. She patted Lucia’s arm and suggested she get up and have a shower before her visitor arrived.

‘I don’t know about staying with you while you talk to him, but I’ll be right outside the door if you need me.’ She watched Lucia stand and saw her slender frame silhouetted against the light from the window, a neat bulge showing the eighteenth week of her pregnancy but still far too thin to be healthy, and another idea occurred to her.

‘If he does want to take you home and you decide you’d prefer to stay, we can use your health as an excuse. In my opinion, you’re not yet stable enough, even on the insulin, to be undertaking an arduous flight and I’m sure your obstetrician would agree with me.’

From the new expressions on Lucia’s face, this suggestion was receiving a mixed reception. Paige came closer and put her arms around the woman’s narrow shoulders.

‘You’re not happy here,’ she said gently. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be better off at home? Perhaps not with your husband, but with family or friends? People you know and love? People who would care for you?’

Lucia shrugged away from her.

‘My family would say my place is with my husband,’ she said bitterly. ‘I can hear them now. My mother especially—and my sisters. It was their idea I marry, their fault, all of this.’

Paige hesitated. Lucia was emotional, but the words had more petulance than fear and, thinking of the handsome man with the dark blue eyes—remembering his genuine pain when he’d talked of Lucia’s flight—she pressed a little further.

‘Didn’t you want the marriage? Did you love someone else?’

Lucia shook her head and began to cry, silent tears sliding down her cheeks.

‘Love someone else?’ She sobbed out the words. ‘How could I when he was all I knew, the man I was destined to marry? I loved him, and only him—but he…He had different ideas about love—ideas Italian men of position held many centuries ago, not now, although I know many men cheat on their wives. When I told him I would not allow it, he laughed and said he would take a mistress if he wished for who was I to stop him?’ She sniffed, then finished with a tilt of her head, ‘So I ran away!’

Paige stared at her, unable to believe what she was hearing. Well, she could believe the arrogant man she’d met downstairs might have such antediluvian views, but that a vague and possibly teasing threat about some future indiscretion had made Lucia flee? She’d imagined assault—either physical or emotional—shuddered over her mental images of what the gentle, trusting soul might have endured. But to run away because he’d said he might take a mistress one day?

‘Go take a shower and get dressed,’ she said abruptly. ‘And while you’re in there make up your mind whether you want to see him or not. I’ll have lunch ready when you come out, then you’ll have time to see him before we do the next blood glucose test.’

Lucia grimaced but she left the sunny sitting room where she spent most of each day—lying on the couch watching soaps on TV—and turned towards the bathroom. Paige watched her go and wondered, not for the first time, what on earth had prompted her to take the girl-woman in.

Instinct.

Ironic that the same inbuilt warning system had sent up flares when she’d first seen Lucia’s husband! Only then they’d signalled ‘danger’ instead of ‘help’.

‘I will see him,’ Lucia announced when she returned, dressed in loose-fitting tan trousers and a golden yellow mohair sweater—looking stunning for all her poor health. ‘I will see him here and tell him I cannot go home.’

Paige sighed but didn’t argue, going downstairs to the kitchen and fixing a sandwich for the two of them, counting off the calories in Lucia’s meal and writing them down so she knew how many her patient-guest had eaten. In the beginning she’d tried to persuade Lucia to undertake this task for herself, but had finally given up, deciding it was more important to teach her to do her own injections and blood glucose tests.

Huh!

‘OK, your turn to do the injection.’ She said this every time and every time Lucia came up with some excuse for not taking the responsibility. Paige fitted a needle to the syringe, lifted the insulin out of the refrigerator and set it on the table. ‘Just try filling the syringe, Lucia. Pull down to the mark, stick the needle through the rubber top on the bottle and press the plunger in to release the air.’

‘I cannot touch that needle, I might injure myself!’

It was the usual argument—one they had four times a day—so both knew their part in it.

‘You can’t injure yourself if you hold it properly. Do you want to be dependent on someone else all through your pregnancy?’ Paige grinned to herself as she realised why this argument had had little effect on Lucia in the past. Given the princely husband, the younger woman had probably had swarms of servants catering to her every whim—being dependent on someone was a habit rather than a concern.

‘You do it, Paige, just today?’

The voice cajoled and the brown eyes begged.

Paige grumbled about her weakness in always giving in, and filled the syringe with the fast-acting insulin Lucia would need for her body to handle the meal she was about to eat.

‘But I’m not staying with you while you talk to him,’ Paige warned, determined to win one argument today. ‘You’ve got to see him on your own.’

Lucia didn’t argue. In fact, she smiled and looked excited, flushed with a soft and youthful radiance which made Paige feel older than her twenty-five years and unaccountably depressed as she tackled her own lunch with far less gusto than her guest.

And the depression wasn’t lifted by the stern expression on her next visitor’s face. She had sent Lucia upstairs to the sitting room and was waiting outside the house when the long black car with the consular plates drew up. Although the autumn sun was warm, she found herself shivering as he alighted. A fact that didn’t escape him.

‘You should be wearing a jacket,’ he chided, and moved towards her as if to wrap his arm around her shoulders. The cold was replaced by warmth and she dodged ahead, leading him towards the side door which led directly into her flat.

‘No wonder she ran away,’ she muttered, more to herself than him. ‘If you tell a stranger what to wear…’

‘Pardon?’

‘It was nothing.’ She reached the door and paused, then turned to face him, looking into his eyes—hoping to read his reaction to what she had to say. ‘Lucia has agreed to see you, but I’d like to say…’ The words petered out under the intensity of that blue gaze. Pull yourself together! Think of Lucia, not eyes that seem to drill into your soul. ‘She’s in a very fragile state, easily upset, both physically and emotionally. Will you remember that? Treat her gently?’

Or eyes that darken dangerously!

‘And what do you imagine I intend to do to her? Throw her over my shoulder and force her to return with me? Is that how an Australian man would behave, Miss Morgan? How you would like a man to act with you?’

Damn him—and her give-away cheeks! The image had made her go hot all over. Battling to regain control, she tried an imperious look of her own.

‘Australia has as many gentlemen as any other country, though they may not carry fancy titles, and, no, I wouldn’t expect any man to ride roughshod over a woman, but men can exert more than physical power.’

‘And women can’t?’ he countered, fixing her with a look so quizzical she wondered how she’d come to be arguing with him.

‘Just treat her gently,’ Paige said, turning abruptly away before her face betrayed even more of her inner chaos. She’d never felt such a physical reaction to another human being. For the first time in her life, she was beginning to understand what people meant when they talked about instant attraction. And sex appeal! Not only could she now accept its existence, but she had to acknowledge that this man had it by the bucket-load.

Yet his wife had run away from him.

The thought occurred to her as she walked up the stairs ahead of him, hearing his firm tread behind her, feeling his presence in the nerves down her spine, aware even of a faint whiff of some sophisticated cologne or aftershave—not a pungent or overpowering odour, but more a tantalising hint of something smooth and sleek but very masculine.

Help! Now it seemed her thoughts were doing the running away—straight into a fantasy land.

‘Lucia is inside.’

She knocked and was about to grasp the doorknob when the door flew open and a vision of loveliness in a bright mohair sweater flung herself into the waiting arms of the prince.

Which is how all good fairytales should end, Paige reminded herself as she returned to the kitchen to play Cinderella-before-the-ball, washing the lunch dishes, working out a dinner menu, wondering what she could do about arranging nutritious meals for Lucia to take on the plane if her prince insisted she return home immediately.

By the time footsteps sounded on the stairs, she’d not only organised what they’d have for dinner but had cleaned the kitchen thoroughly, written out a shopping list, contemplated polishing the silver and settled for washing the floor instead—anything to keep her mind off what might be happening upstairs.

And, no, she wouldn’t take that thought any further either!

She straightened up as the heavy footfall hesitated only fractionally at the bottom of the steps then turned unerringly towards the kitchen. One glance at the dark scowl on Marco’s face told her the reunion hadn’t gone quite the way he’d planned.

‘Lucia tells me you will explain her medical condition. She pleaded tiredness, a need to rest and, in fact, she does not look well. Is this a new game of hers or is she indeed ill?’

Paige felt the words jar against her brain.

‘She didn’t tell you?’

The scowl deepened.

‘Tell me what?’

Drat the girl? What was Paige supposed to do? Blurt out to the man that his wife was not only pregnant but suffering a complication which required a strict medical and personal regimen of care?

Marco watched the slim, pale-skinned woman pace up and down beside the kitchen table, leaving a trail of shoe prints on the floor she’d evidently just washed, and wondered what he’d said to cause so much agitation. Not that having Lucia as a house guest wasn’t enough to drive anyone to distraction. Spoilt, that’s what she was.

But this woman had seemed so sensible—so ‘together’ as he’d heard it described in English. And she’d taken Lucia in and cared for her, been kind enough to feel concern for her relatives—something which still wasn’t worrying Lucia over-much.

‘If you prefer to walk and talk, I would be glad to be outside for a while. I was cooped up in the plane, then the car journey and a hotel.’

She glanced up at him, as if surprised to hear his voice. Had she forgotten he was there—that he was waiting for an answer? Now she looked at her watch and frowned as if calculating something. How much time she could waste perhaps? How long she could procrastinate?

‘Actually, I have to be outside fairly soon anyway. I have some house calls to make, and as they’re close I usually walk.’ She smiled at him, and he caught an echo of it in her eyes and knew he’d misjudged the frown. That was a real smile, not the plastic version most women he knew could flash at will—trained by years of practice at society functions where a camera could catch any unwary facial grimace and reveal it in the daily papers.

He found himself hoping she’d smile some more during the short time they would have together.

‘I will walk with you,’ he announced, and saw her frown again, sigh, then shrug her shoulders as if she wasn’t happy about his presence but would accept it.

‘Most women would be happy to walk with me,’ he growled, riled by the reaction, but she appeared not to have heard his piqued comment. She slipped past him to the door, turning to say, ‘I’d better check on Lucia before we go.’ Then she disappeared into the passageway.

It was because he was tired that her patent lack of interest in him niggled. Although he’d had his share of attractive women as friends and lovers, he certainly didn’t expect every woman he met to fall at his feet. He glared at the empty doorway, then realised the futility of such an act and chuckled, turning his attention instead to the room where he waited.

It was attractive in a homely way—a big practical kitchen with tiled floors and stained timber cupboards and benches. A long wooden table was scarred by use, and the two comfortable armchairs pulled up close to the fuel stove hinted that this room was the real heart of the dwelling. It seemed to hold the faint echoes of happy family gatherings and the accumulated aroma of good hearty meals. Almost an Italian kitchen in its ambience, he decided, sniffing the air and touching the leaves of the herbs which flourished in pots along the windowsill.

Did this flat at the back of the health service come with Miss Morgan’s job? Did she live here alone—when she wasn’t bringing home stray runaways like Lucia?

He felt the now-familiar clutch of fear Lucia’s disappearance had caused, then said a silent prayer of thanks that she had fallen into such safe and apparently sensible hands.

‘OK, let’s go!’

The soft, slightly husky voice summoned him from the doorway. She’d pulled a padded jacket over her cream sweater and trousers and the dark green colour deepened the colour in her eyes, making them more green than gold. He’d read on the flight that green and gold were the colours of Australia, but she still didn’t match his mental image of an Australian any more than the streets she led him down, lined with trees bright with autumn leaves, fitted his notions of the land they called the sunburnt country.

He took from her the small bag she was carrying and matched her pace, walking silently, unwilling to prompt her again, thinking his own thoughts.

Paige said, ‘She’s pregnant.’

He stopped dead, forcing her to turn back to him as he stumbled into a mess of incoherent, half-formed questions.

‘She’s what? Madonna mia! How—? When—?’

Paige stared at him, unable to believe the man’s shock and disbelief.

‘How the hell do you think she got pregnant?’ she stormed. ‘And as for when, I presume it was shortly after you were married. One thing I did get out of her was the wedding date. How any man could be so insensitive as to speak of taking a mistress before he’d been married less than three months is beyond me.’

Now he looked plain bewildered.

‘Who spoke of taking a mistress?’ he asked, rubbing at his temples as if to massage his brain into working order.

‘You did—or you intimated as much!’ Paige retorted, then she looked at him again and wondered, having second thoughts. ‘Or Lucia understood that’s what you said,’ she amended.

Her explanation didn’t seem to help his confusion.

‘What, in the name of all that’s holy, have my mistresses to do with Lucia?’

It was Paige’s turn for bewilderment—only that was too weak a word. ‘Flabbergasted’ fitted better. She stared at him, carefully controlling a lower jaw which seemed inclined to drop to an open-mouthed gape of disbelief. She wanted to shake him—pummel him—felt her fingers tingle with an itch to belt some sense into him, but it was none of her business how he ran his life.

‘I’ve got patients to see,’ she muttered, turning away from him and striding down the road. He caught up in two paces, so she let him have a short blast of the anger churning inside her. ‘And if you don’t understand how a young sensitive woman like Lucia would view your behaviour—would suffer enormous anguish over it—then I’m certainly not wasting my breath telling you.’

They walked in silence for a few minutes, then he said, ‘OK, so she’s pregnant. Let’s forget the other nonsense and proceed from there. I know I reacted badly to that news. Anyone would.’

Another mind-boggling concept—and one she had to refute.

‘Not in Australia!’ Again she stopped and faced him, wondering how a man who looked so good could be so shallow and fickle and downright stupid. ‘Over here, prospective fathers are usually delighted to receive the news that their wives are pregnant. Most even put on a show of concern for them.’

His frown drew his eyebrows together in a slightly satanic manner.

‘Prospective fathers? What does the reaction of prospective fathers have to do with me?’

Paige shook her head. First a fairytale prince, now fantasy land! Did this man know nothing about the process of reproduction? Or was he assuming the child wasn’t his?

‘Lucia is eighteen weeks pregnant,’ she said carefully, wondering if, in spite of his beautifully correct use of English, he didn’t understand it as well as she’d assumed. ‘Given the date of your wedding, I would say she became pregnant in the early days of your honeymoon.’

It was his turn to do the flabbergasted act.

‘My wedding? My honeymoon? You think Lucia is my wife? That it was me she ran away from?’

Only he wasn’t flabbergasted at all. He was laughing, his head thrown back and the deep rumbles of sound echoing up into the trees.

‘Well, if you’re not her husband, who are you?’ Paige asked the question crossly, cutting across his mirth, shaken by this turn of events and by the effect of his glee on her already stretched nerves.

‘I am Marco,’ he said, with a funny little bow. ‘Lucia’s loving and long-suffering brother. And knowing that, Miss Morgan, shall we start again?’

He held out his hand in a formal gesture and, reluctantly, she took it.

‘It’s Paige, not Miss Morgan,’ she said, wondering where her voice had gone, leaving the words to falter out in a breathless undertone.

‘Now we are friends,’ he announced with complete assurance. He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. ‘Already I’ve delayed you so first we visit your patients, then we talk about Lucia, her marriage, her husband, her pregnancy and her flight. For the moment, it is enough to have seen her and know she is safe.’

Paige tried to think of some objection, considered removing her hand from the warm place where it lay—asserting her independence—but her mind had fled back to the fantasy land and it was only with a strenuous effort of will that she managed to dredge up one weak objection to his plan.

‘You can walk with me but you can’t visit my patients.’

He cocked his head to one side as he looked down at her.

‘They would not like a visit from a prince?’

His lips teased into a smile, and she shook her head, although she knew the three women she was about to see would all revel in a visit from a prince, no matter how ancient or meaningless his title was. All three were housebound and anything out of the usual could provide them with something to think and talk about for weeks to come.

‘These are medical visits,’ she said primly, not wanting to say no outright, but aware of the ethical considerations of taking strangers into her patients’ homes.

‘So a doctor could accompany you?’ he asked. ‘Even a visiting doctor?’

Her hand was feeling increasingly comfortable, and the close proximity of his body was creating havoc with her senses, so she didn’t place any importance on his questions, assuming he was making conversation. She struggled to keep her end of it going so he wouldn’t guess at her thoughts and feelings.

‘Of course, if the patients agreed to see him.’

‘Well, that is arranged,’ he said, satisfaction purring in the deep tones of his voice. ‘You will say I wish to see Australian medicine while in your country and ask if they will allow me in.’

She pulled her hand away and tucked it out of temptation’s reach in the pocket of her jacket.

‘I can’t pretend you’re a doctor just to get you inside a few Australian homes, however interested you may be. And why should you be interested anyway? The health service clients are poor people, not only poor financially but some are lacking the skills necessary to survive without help. This is not typical Australia you’d be seeing, and I don’t know that it’s right to put them…on display, I suppose, for you or anyone else.’

He didn’t reply immediately, but frowned off into the distance as if trying to work out his answer. Or perhaps thinking in Italian and translating into English. She looked at the strong profile, the dark hair brushed back but with one lock escaping control to fall across his temple.

She was glad he wasn’t married to Lucia!

Stupid thought!

‘We have poor people in Italy as well,’ he said, cutting into her self-castigation. ‘And those who are inadequately equipped in living skills as well. I would not judge your country on what I see, but, with that said, shouldn’t a country be judged on how it treats these very people? How it provides support so they can live fulfilling and worthwhile lives?’

She had to smile, having used the same argument so often herself.

‘I agree,’ she conceded, ‘but it still doesn’t make you a doctor.’

She walked on, because smiling at him—and having him smile back—had turned out to be a very bad idea.

‘But I am a doctor,’ he announced, catching up with her in three long strides and falling into step again.

Marco a doctor?

She glanced at him, at the erect carriage, the aristocratic head, and said, ‘Rubbish! You’re a prince. Mr Benelli said so, and even a girl from the back blocks of New South Wales can recognise royalty when she sees it!’

She spoke lightly, jokingly, although she half meant every word.

‘The “prince” is a an old title handed down through my family—inescapable if one is the eldest son—but it isn’t a job description, Paige Morgan, any more than “Miss” describes the work you do.’

‘You are a doctor?’

Disbelief ran riot through the question, but again he bowed just slightly in reply.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘Now, should we continue this delightful chat here on the street or walk on to visit your patients?’

She walked on, remembering Lucia’s words… ‘Marco always gets his way.’

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