Kitabı oku: «Unwordly Secretary, Gorgeous Boss», sayfa 7

‘Well …’ Her hand shook a little as Laura swept her fingers through her hair, and he saw that she was embarrassed as well as a little upset.

He silently abhorred his inability to make the kind of real connection he secretly craved with her. Then, in the next second, he told himself he would get over it. His reactions were all at sea because for the first time in months he was starting to relax, as he was here in his favourite city with the pretty, vivacious woman who was going to give him the thing that he desired most … a family. He could surely be forgiven if he didn’t feel quite himself?

‘I can’t believe we flew here in a helicopter all the way from Tuscany!’ she finished.

‘I would never make half the meetings I have on time here in Italy without it,’ Fabian replied, grateful that the tricky moment had passed.

‘It’s such a different way of life you lead, compared to my own back in the UK.’

‘And do you think you will grow to like it?’

‘I hope so.’ Some of the light seemed to go out of her mercurial eyes, and the taut muscles around his stomach clenched hard in concern.

‘You seem doubtful?’

‘It’s going to take some adjusting to, that’s all. My feet feel as if they haven’t touched the ground for quite a while! And now that the dust has started to settle I find myself wondering what a man like you—a man who could probably have anything in the world that he desired—including his pick of beautiful women—sees in a woman like me?’

Her hand was touching her fringe again as she said this, and Fabian frowned. ‘If the scar bothers you so much, I could arrange for you to see a very good plastic surgeon. I do not like it that you feel it diminishes you somehow.’

‘I don’t.’ She flushed. ‘Not really. I’ve grown to accept my imperfections as time has gone on. In a way, having them has made me stronger … as well as less focused on the more superficial aspects of life. I’m just happy to still have my life after what happened. No … it was you I was thinking of, Fabian. You—with your beautiful house and beautiful things. You move in the kind of circles where these things matter. How will you cope with having a wife who hardly conforms to the standards of beauty your friends and peers might expect?’

‘First of all, it is a problem only in your mind, Laura … not mine! Do you think I care what anybody else thinks? After years spent living with my father I will not be dictated to on how to live my life by anyone! And beautiful things have their place, but I do not attribute such importance to them as you may think. So let us focus on the future we have resolved to make together, and not be so concerned with the opinions of others.’

‘All right. I’ll try.’

‘You have the strength to do anything you put your mind to. I have sensed this many times since I met you.’ ‘I suppose I’m a survivor … that’s why.’ ‘You are indeed a strong woman … I admire that.’ ‘It’s funny … but after Mark I—’ She cut the thought off abruptly, and even though he hated himself for it Fabian was glad.

Sitting in his favourite café on a glorious day with his pretty new wife, and contemplating an enjoyable afternoon’s sightseeing, he perhaps selfishly wanted to keep the mood as light as possible. And encouraging Laura to talk about her past would probably mean that she would then turn the tables on him. She had already tried by bringing up the subject of his ex-wife. Wanting to resist more pain, he stayed deliberately silent.

‘Fabian?’

‘What is it?’

‘Are you sure you don’t regret—?’

‘I am perfectly satisfied that I have done absolutely the right thing in marrying you, Laura. In time, you will also come to see that. Now, drink your coffee and do not spend another moment worrying. We only have a week here in Rome before we go home again, so let us just try and relax and enjoy our time together.’

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS only the second day of their holiday. They were strolling through a busy piazza, having just exited a fascinating gallery of Renaissance art. One moment Laura was walking along, then the next it was as if she was in a dream sequence, where she was running but didn’t seem to be able to move fast enough.

Fabian had been talking quietly at her side, pointing out landmarks as they headed towards the great cathedral of St Peters’ and she had been entranced by everything. Then there had been the sound of rubber tyres screeching on concrete, a woman’s scream puncturing the air, and a child’s small perplexed face in the front of a small knot of people as the out-of-control motorcycle careened towards him at speed. Her attuned senses registered everything, and in less than an instant Laura found herself racing towards the child and snatching the small body safely up into the air as the motorcycle veered off course at the last second—but not before the handlebars glanced sickeningly against her hip.

Somebody—man or woman she didn’t register right then—pulled the now crying little boy out of her arms just as Laura felt herself sink to the ground in dizzying pain. The next instant Fabian was leaning over her, a stream of frantically voiced words leaving his lips but making no impression upon its recipient, his handsome face bleached of all colour and the sheen of sweat standing out on his brow. Wanting to reassure him, Laura reached out, but just as her hand touched his shirtsleeve darkness swallowed her whole …

She blinked, and blinked again. Her mouth felt like a dried-up riverbed, and the light—clinical and harsh—made her feel as if someone was sticking needles into her eyes. She heard a small sound leave her lips, but felt strangely detached from it—as though it hadn’t come from her at all.

‘Laura?’ A hand lay on top of hers, and she saw that it was Fabian’s. When she turned her head towards him she saw by his expression that he’d visited a place he never wanted to visit again.

‘Where am I?’

‘You are in the hospital. You saved a little boy from a runaway motorcycle and you were hit yourself. Do you remember?’

‘I don’t feel any pain.’

‘The doctor gave you a painkiller as well as a sedative.

You came round more or less straight away, but then in the ambulance you became very upset and agitated. Can you not remember anything?’

The concern and fear in his eyes seemed to double, and Laura again felt the strongest impulse to reassure him. ‘I’m sure it will all come back to me in time. The last thing I remember was walking towards St Peter’s … then there was that horrible sound of tyres screeching.’ Swallowing hard over a throat that seemed to grow more parched by the second, Laura tried to sit up.

Immediately Fabian stood up from his chair by the side of the bed and started to urge her back down against the single white pillow behind her head.

‘I need a drink … I’m so dry!’

‘Of course you can have a drink—but do not try and sit up so suddenly.’

The plastic tumbler of cool water tasted like nectar to Laura. A few thirsty sips and she felt her head clear a little. Enough to note that she was in a small screened-off area, with the attendant sounds of a busy casualty department audible outside it.

‘You risked your own life to save that child’s. It was an incredible thing to do, but perhaps incredibly foolish too. My heart has barely stopped racing since it happened!’

‘I’m sorry I frightened you.’

Her voice a mere husk of its normal tone, Laura stared at his still stricken face and knew she was perilously close to the kind of tears that would not be easily subdued. She felt as if something was unraveling, and she fought hard to contain the sea of emotion that swelled inside her. Fabian didn’t trust emotions, she remembered, and she wouldn’t disgrace herself in front of him.

‘The little boy … it’s coming back to me now.’ She held the side of her head and frowned. ‘He wasn’t hurt? And what about the girl on the motorcycle?’

‘The little boy was completely unscathed, thanks to you. His parents have been in the waiting room all this time, wanting to come in and thank you for what you did. The girl suffered a broken leg, I believe, and is having treatment as we speak. It could have been much worse for her … and you.’

There was that look on his face again—part fear, part admonishment for being so reckless. Laura sighed, glad to hear her impulsive rescue attempt had not been in vain, but also sad that what had started out a bright, hopeful day was now inevitably marred by events.

‘I’d like to go home.’ She wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that … where was her home now? ‘Please … can we just go, Fabian?’

‘You have to see the doctor first. You will not be able to go anywhere until you are thoroughly checked over, and I will not be taking you anywhere until you are!’

Sinking reluctantly back down onto the pillow,

Laura shut her eyes to blank out the misery that suddenly descended. Why couldn’t he kiss her? Be tender? Say something kind? Because the kind of marriage she had entered into with him was not the kind that was born out of love on his part, she reminded herself. Now all she wanted to do was curl up tight into a little ball and try and become invisible.

He had died a thousand deaths in those surreal moments when Laura had suddenly left his side and sprinted like an athlete towards the crowd of people on the opposite side of the road. His heart in his mouth, Fabian had almost caught up to her when the motorcycle had reached her first, veered sharply to the left to avoid hitting her, and then—with sickening inevitability—glanced against her anyway.

After the child had been grabbed from her arms, she had sunk to the ground as graceful as a ballerina. For a moment Fabian had been paralysed by the shock of what had happened, then he’d been leaning over her, registering with violent regret the look of pain and puzzlement on her whitened face and cursing himself for not reacting more quickly and pushing her out of the way of danger. When she had passed out he had been half out of his mind with fear, thinking he might be going to lose her, and the relief he had experienced when she’d opened her eyes again had been off the scale. But Fabian had been even more traumatised by the scene in the ambulance.

The accident seemed to have triggered distressing memories of the car accident in which her husband had been killed, and Laura had cried out his name in anguish again and again—the sound almost cutting Fabian’s heart in two. Her arms had been flailing wildly, and the attendant paramedics had literally had to hold her down to prevent her from harming herself. That was when she’d been given the sedative.

Now back in his apartment, having been advised by the doctors to rest for the next couple of days, she lay on one of the sumptuous sofas in his living room, subdued and pale, her thoughts in a place where he couldn’t join her.

‘Why do you not try and sleep for a while, hmm?’

Lowering his hard lean frame into the armchair opposite, he rested his elbows on his knees. If a man could age a hundred years in one day, then he had surely done just that.

‘I don’t want to sleep.’

‘Are you hurting?’ Fabian’s stomach rolled in a violent somersault at the idea she might be. He glanced at his watch. ‘I can give you another painkiller in about an hour. They are very strong, and we have to be careful.’

‘You don’t have to nursemaid me!’

There it was again … that bitter edge to her voice that was so unlike the woman he had come to know it unsettled him completely. Shock and trauma had obviously set in, and he would have to be patient while she recuperated and returned to her true self.

‘Why do you reject my help?’ he asked, completely against his better judgement. Her repudiation had definitely touched a very raw nerve.

‘Because I can deal with this much better on my own! Why do you assume I need the help of any man? All they ever seem to do is hurt me and cause me grief!’ Biting her lip in anguish, she turned her face away from him.

‘You called out your ex-husband’s name in the ambulance … several times.’ His voice low, Fabian had to garner every bit of courage he possessed to even mention the fact. But something told him if they didn’t talk about it now it would fester between them like an untended wound that would grow worse, possibly poisoning any chance of truly making their union work.

‘Did I?’ Still she wouldn’t look at him.

‘You talk of grief. Do you still miss him? Want him?’ His voice sounded as if it rolled over gravel.

‘What?’

Easing herself up against the mound of cushions at her back, Laura stared at him.

‘I have never heard a woman so distraught … not since my mother, of course. But that was not because she cared about my father.’ Not liking the thread of pain that wove through his words, and jealous and fearful of the road his own questioning was taking him down, Fabian pushed to his feet. ‘You are clearly not over him … are you, Laura?’

‘How could you believe that after I told you I definitely wasn’t in love with him any more?’ Slowly she shook her head. ‘I regret that he died the way he did—of course I do! But I don’t miss or want him! Living with Mark was like living with a time bomb—he was a gambler, a liar and a cheat, and that was just for starters! I knew our life together was going to blow up in my face one day. He was insanely jealous and possessive, and at times I was a virtual recluse in my own home because he didn’t want me seeing either family or friends without him there. My only freedom was when I was working. As for my “talent”—that didn’t please him at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. He viewed it as a threat—a threat that I might one day have a ticket out of the prison I was in!’

Swallowing hard, Fabian didn’t remove his gaze from her for an instant.

‘The day of the accident … he picked me up from work as usual, and as soon as I got into the car I could smell that he’d been drinking. I tried to get out but he pulled away quickly, guessing my intention. I found out that he’d been gambling heavily the night before and had lost virtually everything, so he was angry and resentful and wanted someone to blame for his bad luck. That role usually fell to me.’

She tossed her head a little, as if the memory cut deep and Fabian saw the glitter of tears in her eyes.

‘I’d been building up to telling him I was leaving him for months before, and suddenly I couldn’t hold back the words—even though I knew he’d ultimately make me pay for them. He lashed out at me, taking his hands off the steering wheel. He yelled that if I tried to leave him he would kill us both! It was a rainy evening and the tyres skidded badly on the wet road, sending the car completely off course. Drinking always brought out his darker side … especially whisky … and that was what I’d smelled on his breath. Anyway … his reactions were severely slowed down by the amount of alcohol in his blood, and before he could steer us out of the way we hit a van coming in the other direction. In the second before it happened I can remember screaming his name … I guess what happened to me today must have temporarily taken me back there. Oh, God—it was a living nightmare!’

It was then that Fabian recalled the horrified look on her face when he’d told her what his father would surely have done if his mother had sought to leave him. Laura had actually been in that frightening situation herself. This time he didn’t resist the impulse to go to her and offer comfort. Truth to tell, he needed to be close to her right then. He could hardly believe what he had just heard, and it disturbed him deeply.

Sitting on the edge of the couch, he tipped up her chin and looked straight into her eyes. ‘But that dreadful time is over now … in the past. And now you can make a new life … a much better life for yourself … free from fear and in a place where there are no difficult associations or reminders of what happened before. As soon as we return to Tuscany I will see what I can do about that teaching post. At least I can get you an interview, and the rest will be up to you.

‘Your ex-husband sounds like a very dangerous man … He had the kind of problems that would inevitably have got worse over the years, and he would have made anyone close to him suffer. I cannot admit to being sorry that he is dead. Selfishly … I am glad. You carry wounds that might take a long time to properly heal, Laura, but I can help you. I will take care of you and make sure you do not come to harm. But you have to promise me not to put yourself in the way of danger again at the slightest provocation! I did not realise I was contemplating marriage with Superwoman!’

‘Believe me, I’m no heroine!’ Grimacing at first, her expression gradually turned into the most cautious of smiles. ‘As for today, I just acted on instinct. It was because he was a child … a little boy with his whole life ahead of him. I couldn’t have borne seeing him hurt, and his parents suffering for the rest of their lives!’

‘Not many people would have done what you did. Again you sell yourself short. Now you must rest and recover, so that hopefully in a couple of days’ time I can show you all the sights you missed seeing today!’

‘Perhaps I will try and sleep a bit, then.’

Laying her head back against the bank of pillows, she let Fabian arrange the blanket more securely around her. A muscle flinched in the side of his jaw. ‘Your hip will be covered in bruises tomorrow, so the doctors tell me.’

‘I can believe that! I feel like I’ve had an argument with a battering ram!’

‘It is hardly a matter to joke about!’

‘Bruises will heal, Fabian … you mustn’t upset yourself.’

‘I just wish you had more respect for your own safety!’

‘I promise no more heroics for the rest of our holiday.’

‘I am going to hold you to that … you can count on it! Now, get some sleep. I will be right here if you need me.’

Laura sucked in a deeply shocked breath at the sight of the vivid bruising discolouring her hip the next morning. The mass of contusion resembled an illustrated map of the world, and would probably take a little while to fade completely. She’d slept like a baby, though, in spite of all the drama, and had woken to a sun-filled room in the huge king-sized bed that only she occupied. But she hadn’t spent the night alone.

Fabian had joined her soon after insisting she go to bed and get a proper night’s rest, and she had registered his arms around her practically the whole time. It made her feel a little fluttery inside to realise he had held her without wanting to make love—clearly solicitous of what had happened to her and not succumbing to needs of a more intimate nature. Needs that had the power to drive them into each other’s arms at the slightest provocation, it seemed to Laura. And all this care and concern from a man who prided himself on staying emotionally detached …

Frowning into the bathroom mirror, her drained, tired-looking face made her stomach turn over. What now? she asked herself. Where do we go from here? Because she didn’t know the answer, she turned abruptly away.

‘Who is this stunning woman?’

Lifting the framed photograph off of the polished bureau, Laura studied the vivacious brunette dressed to the nines for an evening out, and concluded she didn’t look unlike some glamorous sixties movie star.

‘That is my mother—Eufemia.’

When Fabian didn’t elaborate, just continued to study the newspaper in front of him, Laura felt her stomach plummet a little. She’d noticed that there weren’t many photographs in the beautifully appointed apartment, and although she had learned some things about his less than happy family life it still surprised her. He was such a closed book, and she yearned to know more about him—about the past that had shaped him and made him an island she couldn’t quite reach.

‘Won’t you tell me something about her?’ she asked, her heart pumping slightly against her ribs.

The newspaper was lowered reluctantly, and his brows were furrowed as he turned from his seat on the couch to regard her. ‘What would you like to know?’

Holding onto the photograph in its elegant frame, Laura’s fingers curled round it with sudden determination.

‘What kind of woman was she? Were you close to her?’

‘She was both kind and sensitive—perhaps too much so—devoted to her faith and to me, her son. But she was not a strong woman like you. Hurt—however slight—could shatter her into a million pieces. It was a miracle that she survived as long as she did, married to my father. When she contracted pneumonia after a bout of flu I knew then—even though I was only ten—that it was just a matter of time before she died.’

‘How sad for both of you to lose each other so early on!’ Laura could only try to imagine what it must have been like for a small child of just ten to lose the mother who adored him at such a tender age, and be left alone with a father who was tyrannical and frightening. ‘I can tell by the way you speak about her that you must have loved her very much.’

‘Was there anything else you wanted to know?’

Even though he’d forced himself to ask the question, Laura could tell by Fabian’s tone that he did not intend to easily give up any more personal information. Somehow, that made her angry, as well as regretful.

‘Please don’t shut me out, Fabian. I know you don’t trust emotions and think they can only be misleading—but I want to get to know you better. Talking about the past can be painful, I know … but it can be healing too. I heard something once—after Mark—and it helped me tremendously. It was something about fear stopping you from loving … but if you let yourself love it can stop the fear. Can’t you try and let down your guard a little for me? I promise never to manipulate what you tell me or use it against you in any way.’