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CHAPTER TWO

GIANFRANCO’S wish was not granted.

When they got back to the house Carla, wearing a swimsuit encrusted with sequins and quite obviously designed more for displaying her perfect body beside a pool than swimming in, asked Gianfranco if she could beg a seat in his helicopter the next morning.

‘I thought you had things to get back to.’

‘No, I’m all yours,’ the older woman responded, apparently oblivious to the strong hint. ‘And the staff are back so you won’t need to vanish into the kitchen. You’re both so eccentric,’ she murmured, shaking her head before pleading with a pretty smile for Gianfranco to apply some sunscreen to her back.

Dervla stiffened, her hands balling instinctively into fists as an image of Gianfranco’s hands on the other woman’s warm, smooth skin formed in her head.

‘I don’t think you’re in danger of burning, Carla. It’s six-thirty.’

With a quick smile at Carla, Dervla followed him indoors. ‘Will you not be so rude to Carla,’ she hissed.

He arched a brow. ‘You wish me to put cream on other women? I think not. I saw your face. You’d have pushed her into the pool if I’d tried.’ He did not sound displeased by the discovery.

The colour flew to Dervla’s cheeks. ‘No, I’d have pushed you into the pool, but this is Carla—she doesn’t mean anything by it.’ Be tolerant, Dervla, be tolerant. ‘She’s like that with all men.’

He gave a grimace of fastidious distaste. ‘You mean she comes on to all men.’

Dervla’s eyes flew wide. She pressed her hand to her stomach feeling suddenly nauseous. ‘She’s never … with you, has she?’

‘A gentleman does not speak of such things.’

‘So that leaves you free to spill the dirt.’

Gianfranco threw back his head and laughed. ‘She is really not my type, cara,’ he promised, lifting a hand to stroke her cheek. ‘And you need not worry about her feelings. She has the skin of a rhino. Short of showing her the door, we’re stuck with her until tomorrow. I suppose we’ll just have to grin and bear it.’

During dinner Gianfranco showed very little inclination to follow his own advice, so it was left to Dervla to supply the extra smiles.

By the time the Italian woman was midway through a lengthy description of the famous people she had rubbed shoulders with at a recent celebrity auction Dervla’s facial muscles were aching from the marathon.

‘What charity was the auction for?’ she asked when Carla paused for breath.

‘For …?’ The older woman looked at her blankly for a moment.

‘The charity it was raising money for?’

‘I really can’t recall.’

Dervla bit her lip, and didn’t dare look at Gianfranco, she knew he’d make her laugh.

‘Did I mention that I spoke to the prince? A charming man.’

Before Dervla had a chance to adopt an appropriate expression of polite enquiry Gianfranco cut in with a dry, ‘Yes, you did, Carla—several times.’

Dervla shot her husband a look of warning from beneath the sweep of her lashes and said brightly to fill the awkward silence, ‘Are you sure you won’t have some of this lemon tart, Carla?’

‘No, no pudding, I’m watching my weight.’ The glance she slid the second slice on Dervla’s plate suggested that she thought Dervla ought to be doing the same. ‘But, you could lend me your husband, just for a few minutes. Boring financial stuff …’ She angled a look of enquiry at Gianfranco. ‘If it wouldn’t be too much of a bother …?’

There was a pause and for one awful moment Dervla thought Gianfranco was going to say yes, it would be too much of a bother, when he got to his feet, his attitude more polite resignation than eagerness. ‘If it’s urgent?’

‘Well, you probably won’t think it is, but I have been worried.’

‘Would you like to come to the study?’ His enquiring glance slid towards Dervla.

‘I’ll wait here.’

Carla smoothed her creaseless skirt down over her slim hips and patted Dervla’s hand. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t keep him a minute.’

The minute Carla had spoken of stretched into an hour while Dervla sat alone at the dinner table drinking coffee. When the maid came in she refused the offer of another pot and told the girl with a smile she could clear away.

Another five minutes and she decided she might as well go to bed. As she passed the door of Gianfranco’s study she heard some very unfinancial-sounding laughter before she shouted her intention of retiring.

‘I’ll be up in a moment!’ Gianfranco called out.

It turned out his grasp of time was just as sketchy as Carla’s. It was actually midnight when Gianfranco finally did join her in their bedroom. Hearing his footsteps in the corridor outside, Dervla leapt into bed, picking up a magazine from the table on her way.

‘What did she want?’

Conscious that this was one of those situations where it would be very easy to sound like a jealous wife, Dervla was careful that nothing in her manner suggested her interest in Gianfranco’s response to her question was anything but tepid.

Actually she had spent the past hour pacing up and down, her eyes drawn continually to the hands on the clock. It wasn’t that she was jealous as such of Carla, and she was sure that Gianfranco did not think of the older woman in that way, but they had a history, a history she was excluded from, memories she did not share.

Carla had been a close friend of Alberto’s mother, Sara. Had the conversation in the library turned to Sara?

While every snippet of information she’d gleaned from Carla had only confirmed her suspicion that Sara had been the love of Gianfranco’s life, some hitherto unsuspected streak of masochism in her made Dervla hungry for the details even though she was tortured by every new proof of how special their love had been.

Gianfranco gave a disgruntled snort. ‘Some stuff about shares, hardly urgent.’

The same could not be said of his desire to join his wife in their bed. The light from the bedside lamp picked out the gold in her burnished hair and made the nightgown she wore almost transparent. His body hardened as he looked at her; her slim, supple curves never failed to arouse him.

‘Finally,’ he said, walking towards the bed where she sat hugging her knees, ‘I have you all to myself.’

She tilted her head and reminded him, ‘This weekend was your idea.’

‘It was a bad idea.’ Slipping the buttons on his shirt, he sat down beside her on the bed. He reached for the magazine in his way and Dervla, catching a glimpse of the cover, tried to snatch it away.

‘What are you reading that you don’t want me to see?’

‘Nothing, nothing, let me have it, Gianfranco.’

The anxiety in her voice made him frown. He leaned back, the magazine in his hand, and turned it over. His teasing smile faded. It was a medical journal.

Dervla sighed. ‘Oh, all right, I didn’t want to tell you this way, but the doctor suggested I read this article …’

‘Article?’ He glanced down. The front cover announced the contents included the latest research on a new drug for breast cancer.

It took his mind a microsecond to make the next sickening leap. He felt as if someone had just reached inside his chest and placed an icy hand around his heart.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, telling himself that his feelings were not important, this was about Dervla and he had to be strong and stay positive for her.

Her eyes slid from his, her lashes brushing her smooth cheeks as she turned her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.’

He cupped her chin in his hand, drawing her face up to him as he moved closer to her on the bed.

‘You are a terrible liar.’ Please, God, let this not be happening. ‘Look, whatever it is we can face it together … It is never hopeless—they are coming up with new cures for …’ He stopped and took a deep breath. He had to stay positive for her sake. ‘Cancer is just a word.’

She gave a small cry of denial, her eyes widening in horrified comprehension. ‘No … no, it’s nothing like that. I promise you, Gianfranco, I’m not ill.’

‘You’re not?’

When she shook her head positively he released a long sigh, his shoulders slumping as the most intense relief he had ever felt in his life washed over him.

There was, he realised, a degree of truth in the old adage that said you didn’t know how much you cared for something until you were faced with the prospect of losing it—or her!

‘You’re sure?’

She caught hold of both his hands and, drawing herself up to her knees, rubbed her nose against his. ‘Totally.’

He jerked her hard towards him and kissed her fiercely on her soft, parted lips. ‘If you ever do that to me again,’ he promised when he finally released her, ‘I will throttle you.’ His eyes went to the slim pale length of her throat. Desire thickened his voice as he added, ‘Do you understand?’

Dervla sank back onto her heels, looking flushed and deliciously tousled but not unduly concerned by the growled threat, and nodded.

‘I understand.’

‘So as we have established you are not dying on me—’ despite the flippancy in his voice he was forced to shove his hands in his pockets to hide the fact they were still shaking ‘—just what are you doing reading that?’

Dervla looked at him through her lashes, her green eyes sparkling with suppressed excitement. ‘You read it,’ she suggested, opening the magazine and stabbing the page with her finger before handing it to him.

It didn’t take him long to skim the relevant article. When he’d finished he closed the magazine and put it on the bed. The article discussed the success rate of a brand-new fertility treatment that would, it suggested, offer hope to women who previously had none.

‘Well?’ she asked excitedly. ‘What do you think? They’re looking for suitable women for the next clinical trial. I know there’s no guarantee, but—’

He cut across her. ‘This is what you have worked yourself into such a state about?’ Shaking his head, he reached for her and she came willingly warm and soft into his arms. He held her close, his fingers meshed in her shiny, sweet-smelling hair, her head pressed to his heart as he reminded her, ‘I told you, Dervla, before we married that I don’t want children.’

‘I know what you said and it was kind—’

‘It was not kind; it was true.’

She pulled away and tilted her face up to his, her smooth brow furrowed and her expression shocked as she impatiently blotted a solitary tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.

Far from swaying or softening his attitude, previously women’s tears had evoked irritation in Gianfranco, but Dervla had never used her tears as a weapon to manipulate him.

She felt things more deeply than anyone he had ever met. Her emotions were incredibly close to the surface, her face as easy for him to read as a neon sign. But despite her almost unnerving transparency she did her crying in private.

‘You really don’t want children.’ She shook her head, a frown pulling her arched brows into a bemused straight line as she added as if speaking to herself, ‘No, that can’t be right. I’ve seen you with Alberto and with the other children. You’re great and—’

‘A baby is a lot of work. Babies kill your social life, cara. Call me selfish—’ better get that in before she did ‘—but I don’t want to come home to a wife who is too exhausted to do more than crawl into bed.’

She looked at him as though he had grown a second head and it wasn’t a particularly attractive one.

‘You don’t mean that, Gianfranco.’

‘It is not me who has changed my mind,’ he reminded her harshly. ‘It is you.’

‘I thought that you’d be pleased that there was a chance,’ she choked in a voice thick with tears and disillusion. ‘Kate is giving Angelo a baby, I want to—’

‘We are not Kate and Angelo. The cases are not similar.’

He watched the pinpricks of bright blood appear on the quivering curve of her lower lip as she released it to say in a voice wiped clean of all expression, ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

‘I already have a son.’ A son he would gladly have laid down his life to protect … just as his mother had.

It was this knowledge that gave him the strength to withstand the appeal in her eyes. Of course he knew that nobody blamed him for Sara’s death and rationally he recognised it had not been his fault, but the fact remained that had he not been irresponsible enough to get her pregnant, had he not cajoled her into marriage with promises of a luxurious lifestyle and persuaded her against a termination, she would be alive today.

Dervla’s full lower lip wobbled and there was a tremor in her voice as she said bleakly, ‘But we could have a baby together. I don’t have a son. I don’t have a baby. The doctor said there have been incredible advances in IVF over the last few years.’

‘And you went to see a doctor behind my back …’ Gianfranco blocked his growing feelings of guilt with anger.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Gianfranco.’

‘Like what?’ he asked her coldly.

She slung him an exasperated look. ‘I think you’d have been happier if I’d just told you I was having an affair!’ she accused.

Another man—that was funny … Her lips twitched and a burble of borderline hysteria escaped them, causing the fine lines of tension and anxiety around her mouth to briefly smooth out.

Gianfranco watched her, his face like stone. Dervla being touched by another man did not make him feel like laughing or even smiling. It ignited a rage deep inside him.

Dervla sighed and shook her head in a slow negative motion. She made a conscious effort to lower the escalating antagonism.

‘I wasn’t going behind your back—just wanted some facts before I discussed it with you. I didn’t see any reason to raise your hopes, and he said that—’

Gianfranco cut across her; he didn’t want to hear what any doctor had said. It had been a doctor who had told him that the diabetes that Sara had developed during pregnancy was no cause for concern. Gestational diabetes, he had explained, was common but rarely a problem after the birth.

And like a fool he had believed him.

Far from vanishing after the birth, Sara’s condition had progressed to full insulin-dependent diabetes requiring daily injections.

And again he had been won over by the confident medical assertion that there was no reason that Sara could not live a full normal life.

It had been three months later that he had buried Sara, who had died of an accidental overdose of insulin.

‘I thought our marriage was based on transparency?’

‘No our marriage—’ She bit back, pushing herself off the bed … God, if she didn’t she’d have strangled him! ‘What about what I want, Gianfranco? What I need?’ Pushing her arms into a robe, she turned and threw him a look of challenge.

‘I thought I gave you what you want and need.’

‘I want this baby.’

‘There is no baby, Dervla.’

‘There could be, there could be!’ she wailed, frustrated by his refusal to even consider what she was saying.

‘I know people who have been down the IVF route. It took over their lives, put a lot of strain on their relationship, not to mention the emotional and physical strain being pumped full of chemicals has on the woman.’

‘Some people think it’s worth it … and if you never even try you’d always wonder.’

‘That is not a route I wish ever to go down. Besides, from what you told me the chances of you getting pregnant would be remote.’ If it took brutal to get his point across, so be it.

Dervla pressed her clenched fists tight against her stomach; she felt physically sick.

‘But there is a chance.’ She couldn’t believe that Gianfranco couldn’t see she had to take it. The icy hand inside her chest tightened as she watched him slowly shake his head.

‘There is no use begging, Dervla. I will not give you a baby.’

Anger flooded through her, releasing adrenaline into her bloodstream. Maybe it wasn’t a baby he didn’t want—it was her baby. ‘Then maybe I’ll find myself someone who will.’

If he had reacted angrily, if he had done almost anything but thrown back his head and laughed, she might have calmed down … but he did laugh.

‘You think I wouldn’t?’

He stopped laughing.

Dervla shivered as their eyes connected. She had never seen his eyes look so cold.

‘I know you wouldn’t.’ Because if he caught a man within sniffing distance of her he would make sure they never sniffed again!

Dervla’s eyes narrowed to icy green slits. ‘Is that a fact?’ she said in a conversational tone. ‘What do you know? Infallible Gianfranco Bruni turns out not to know everything after all.’

‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she began to rush around the room erratically flinging open doors and drawers and flinging the contents she extracted into a bag.

‘I’m packing.’

His patrician features tight, he gave a contemptuous sneer. ‘You’re being ridiculous.’ She wouldn’t go.

She went to the drawer and pulled out her passport. ‘No, I’m finally not being ridiculous. Marrying you, I must have been mad! You’re the most selfish man I have ever met,’ she choked. ‘I’ll take a car. I’ll leave it at the airport.’

CHAPTER THREE

THERE had been no question of where Dervla would go.

When she was in trouble it had been totally predictable where, or rather who, she would bolt to, sure of a welcome and equally sure her best friend Sue wouldn’t push her for explanations until she was ready.

Her actions were actually so predictable that she couldn’t even pretend that Gianfranco’s silence was due to his inability to locate her. He would know her destination without cause to use the mental powers some people nervously suggested bordered on the paranormal.

She couldn’t even picture him desperately searching for her. The only thing Gianfranco was desperately doing was ignoring the fact she existed, ignoring the fact he had a wife.

She was considering his seeming indifference to her flight when the phone rang.

For a moment Dervla froze and stared at it as if it were a striking snake.

It would serve him right if she ignored it.

Even before the thought was half formed she literally dived for it. Her hand shook as she lifted the receiver and raised it to her ear.

‘Hello.’ She was barely able to force the quivering word past the emotional occlusion in her aching throat.

The pathetically eager smile on her face faded dramatically as the voice the other end assured her that they were not selling anything before launching into their slick sales pitch.

Slender shoulders hunched, Dervla sank disconsolately onto Sue’s sagging sofa, ingrained good manners making it impossible for her to hang up. So she let the disembodied voice describe uninterrupted the superiority of the double-glazing they were selling and resisted the temptation to enquire bitterly if this marvellous system, which could apparently do anything, could make a man love you.

Or, failing that, make a person fall out of love? Yeah, that would work and make them a lot of money; love really wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

‘So our sales representatives are in your area next week. Would you like one to call?’

Dervla roused herself from her bitter reflections and said apologetically, ‘Sorry, I’m not the home owner. I’m just camping on the sofa because I walked out of my marriage.’ And my husband shows no sign of giving a damn. For all she knew he could be celebrating his freedom. Maybe not alone?

The startled intake of breath on the other end almost made her smile as she put the receiver down. She glanced at the clock and could not believe it was still only three o’clock.

Each agonising minute of the interminable day had felt like an hour. The wistful ache became a pain as she allowed thoughts of Gianfranco to invade her thoughts.

You walked, she reminded herself.

And he hadn’t followed. She’d never forgive him for that.

What are you going to do, Dervla? she asked herself. Spend the rest of your life two feet from this phone just in case he decides to remember he has a wife? It was pretty clear that Gianfranco was getting on with his life, and wasn’t it about time she did the same thing?

One thing was certain: if she wanted to retain a crumb of self-respect she couldn’t sit around in this pathetic needy way.

She was going to have to start making plans for her future as a single woman. Fortunately she was well qualified so there would be no problem earning a living, even if that did mean some agency work initially.

She picked up the TV control and, with about as much enthusiasm as she could muster for the prospect of picking up the threads of her old life, clicked on the TV.

The face of a smartly dressed woman fronting the news channel filled the screen. She looked to Dervla like someone whose personal life was not a total messy disaster area, or maybe that wasn’t possible?

Maybe personal lives were by definition messy?

“On the first anniversary of the tragedy …”

Dervla’s eyes widened as the serene newscaster was replaced by an image reminiscent of a war zone—total devastation filled the screen, torn metal, screaming sirens, then they cut to a dazed-looking man with blood on his face praising the emergency services.

“A remembrance service is being held,” said the voice-over.

Dervla’s expression went blank with shock. Gianfranco as a survivor had received an invitation to that service, but, a firm believer in living in the present and looking to the future not the past—a slightly ironic attitude for someone who had never recovered from the death of his first wife—he had politely turned it down.

I forgot … How, she wondered, loosing a small incredulous laugh, was that possible?

How could she forget the day that changed so many lives? And not just those of the victims. There was a ripple effect with such tragedies, though in her own case the ripple that had caught her up and carried her as far as Italy had been more of a tidal wave!

It had officially been her day off, but once the hospital she had worked at had been put on red alert following the detonation of a bomb in a crowded street she, like other essential off-duty staff, had been called in.

By the time she had arrived the staff on duty in the unit had already freed up as many beds as they could, transferring those fit enough to general wards to make way for the casualties.

Young Alberto Bruni had been one of those casualties and Dervla had been designated his nurse. Glancing at the clock just as the swing doors were pushed open to admit the trolley bearing the youngster from Theatre, she had been shocked to realise that she had already been on duty eight hours straight.

‘Dervla, when did you last take a break?’

Dervla turned to smile at the concerned face of the charge nurse, John Stewart. The bags beneath his blue eyes had doubled their capacity since yesterday. Dervla wondered if she looked as tired as he did.

‘My patient is just arriving from Theatre, John. I’ll wait until he’s settled.’ She glanced down at the name on the notes that had just arrived. ‘Bruni,’ she read out loud. ‘Another tourist, do you think?’

‘Maybe. It sounds Italian.’

Dervla’s brow puckered as she nibbled thoughtfully on her full lower lip. ‘I wonder if he speaks English?’ she said aloud, trying to anticipate any problems, not even suspecting that six feet five inches of major life-changing problem was at that moment walking into the room.

‘Well, if he doesn’t,’ the charge nurse said, lowering his voice as he inclined his head towards the open door, ‘he does. The father, do you suppose …? Now that is a turn-up for the books,’ he observed, not looking thrilled with the development.

‘Who …?’ Dervla turned and stopped, her eyes widening as she saw the cause of the tired charge nurse’s comments.

The cause was actually pretty hard to miss—definitely not the fade-into-a-crowd type! Several inches over six feet, the man who walked beside the trolley moved with a riveting fluid grace Dervla normally associated with athletes or dancers.

The dust and dirt coating his face and hair proclaimed him to be one of the walking wounded and though his clothing was filthy and bloodstained he wore it with such assurance that you only noticed this after you had noticed the man who wore it.

For a moment she stared, jaw ajar, and she wasn’t the only person present to forget her clinical objectivity! He was quite simply the most utterly incredible-looking man Dervla had ever seen. She had only ever read about men who looked like him—in actual fact she had read about this man, because her young patient turned out to be the son of none other than Gianfranco Bruni.

And pretty much everyone in the Western world had read about him!

Standing a few feet away, it wasn’t hard to see why he fascinated the media. There were probably any number of Italian aristocrats who could trace their lineage back for centuries, but very few had built a financial empire out of virtually nothing. Even fewer would have matched up to the average person’s image of what such a man should look like.

Gianfranco Bruni did.

He had the hauteur, the flashing eyes, chiselled photogenic cheekbones and sensual sexy mouth. He had the stunning body, muscular, tall and broad-shouldered.

Then he had the less definable qualities, namely raw, undiluted sex appeal. Unwilling to admit even to herself that it was this latter quality that had caused her brain to momentarily stall, Dervla put down to exhaustion the light-headed sensation she experienced as she looked at him.

‘Is that really Gianfranco Bruni?’ For once the media hadn’t exaggerated when they had extolled his looks.

The man beside her laughed. ‘Well, if he isn’t he’s his twin brother. Be sure you take care with phone enquiries, Dervla. Once the press get onto this they’ll be all over us like a damned rash. And if he gives you any problems refer him to me.’

‘Don’t worry, John, I can handle him.’ Laughably she actually believed it at the time!

But she wasn’t the first to make that fatal error, though she would have preferred to lose her shirt to him than her heart.

‘Just do your job, Dervla, and leave the politics to the men in suits. Talking of which … I’ll go and deal with those two,’ he said, nodding unenthusiastically in the direction of the two high-ranking hospital administrators who were shadowing the Italian.

‘They’re probably trying to hit him for a donation to the kidney unit.’ Dervla was only half joking.

‘Not while I’m in charge, they’re not.’ He stopped as the nurse who had escorted the boy approached, and demanded irritably, ‘Why didn’t you get the father to wait outside?’

‘I did,’ she protested, looking flustered. ‘Well, I tried,’ she corrected. ‘But he, well …’ she glanced towards the tall Italian and shrugged, rolling her eyes ‘ … what was I meant to do when he ignored me? Sit on him?’

Dervla’s eyes followed the direction of the theatre nurse’s gaze. She could imagine there were any number of females who lacked her professional objectivity who would jump at the chance to sit on him!

Her patient’s father was standing motionless beside the stationary trolley, surveying the room. You definitely got the sense that his present inactivity was not the norm for him. The high-powered financier had presumably not got his billions by being someone who did relaxed or passive on a regular basis.

Dervla flashed the other girl a look of sympathy. ‘She’s got a point, John.’ This was clearly not a man who responded to requests unless he wanted to.

You could tell just by looking at him that he was one of those individuals hard-wired to take control. The message couldn’t have been clearer had he walked in with ‘dominant male’ stamped on his broad, intelligent, bloodstained forehead.

Not that a forehead could be termed intelligent as such.

But eyes were another matter. And the diamond-hard eyes through which the Italian had surveyed the room as he paused there in the entrance made a cut-throat razor look dull-edged.

Pretty astounding, considering he had been through an experience that would have had most people lying sedated in a hospital bed!

As she stared curiously his sweeping scrutiny reached her.

Dervla’s body and mind reacted to the brush of those dark eyes set in the perfect symmetry of his chiselled golden skinned face in a similar way it might to a jolt of neat electricity.

A wave of scalding heat washed over her fair skin, then receded leaving her feeling shivery as she reacted helplessly to the predatory sexual magnetism this incredible-looking man exuded.

Was it her imagination or had his glance lingered longer than required …? But then a split second could seem longer when you were holding your breath, and she had been!

Once his glance moved on Dervla’s brain started functioning again and she was able to put her mortifying reaction in perspective.

Obviously it had had more to do with fatigue than anything hormonal. He wasn’t even the type of man she found attractive. She never had gone for arrogance or the whole smouldering Latin thing. If it had been otherwise she might have been more concerned about the little aftershocks she experienced as she approached him—shocks presented in the form of pulse racing and uncomfortable shivery sensations.

As she reached his side she realised that the theatre nurse hadn’t been the only person he’d ignored in the hospital, because she couldn’t believe nobody had suggested—pretty forcibly—that he have the gaping wound on his forehead sutured.

And goodness only knew what lay concealed, besides golden tautly muscled skin, beneath his torn and bloodstained clothes. Give that shirt a tug and she’d find out, Dervla thought, registering the one button stopping the garment being open to the waist. As it was it really left very little to the imagination!