Kitabı oku: «The Italian's Suitable Wife», sayfa 2

CHAPTER TWO

RICO’S eyes were fixed on the doorway when Gianna walked in. She couldn’t miss the expression of disappointment that clouded his expression briefly before he masked it.

“Hello, piccola mia. Did Andre ask you to come and keep him company waiting for me to wake up?”

The endearment did things to her heart when Rico said it that didn’t happen when Andre called her his little one. She smiled, her relief that he was talking so acute, she couldn’t get a word past the blockage in her throat for several seconds. She stopped beside the bed, noticing someone had raised the guardrail.

“I couldn’t have been kept away,” she said with more honesty than was probably wise.

One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Always the nurturer. I still remember the cat…”

His words trailed off. He looked tired. Exhausted, really. “He turned out to be a lovely pet.”

“So Mama thought. She gave him the run of the place until he died,” he replied, speaking of a tabby cat she had rescued from the road after it had been injured when she was ten.

“Pamela was furious with me and wanted to call the animal people to come take it away,” she said, speaking of her stepmother. Gianna smiled. “You wouldn’t let her.”

“What kind of cat do you have now?”

She’d always had pets, usually strays picked up from somewhere, but once there had been a puppy her parents had given her when she was four. He’d been a wonderful friend and she’d cried buckets when he died. “I don’t have any animals.”

His face registered surprise. “That’s not like you.”

It wasn’t by choice. She lived in campus housing and pets weren’t allowed. She had no intention of burdening Rico with her problems, however. So she just smiled again and shrugged.

“You haven’t asked how I’m feeling.”

She gripped the bedrail to stop herself from touching him. She’d gotten so used to the freedom over the past five days. “You look like you’ve been pummeled on the playground by the school bully. I don’t imagine you feel much better.”

That made him chuckle and she rejoiced in the sound. Then he sobered. “My legs don’t move.” His expression and voice had gone blank.

She couldn’t resist the urge to take his hand. “They will. You’ve got to be patient. You’ve had a terrible experience. Your body is still in shock.”

His eyes remained unreadable, but his hand returned her grip with betraying fierceness. “Where is Chiara?”

Oh, Heavens. Gianna had forgotten to call the other woman. She felt guilty color stain her cheeks. “I was so excited you’d come out of coma, I forgot to call.” She reluctantly pulled her hand from his. “I’ll do it right away.”

“Tell her to come round in the morning.” His eyes closed. “I’ll be more myself then.”

“All right.” She moved toward the door. “Sleep well, caro,” she whispered. The endearment was so common it was like saying hey you, but she said it with a surfeit of emotion she prayed he could not hear.

He didn’t reply.

Rico waited impatiently for Chiara to come. Andre and Gianna had both been in to see him again this morning and stayed until he had tired. Gianna looked exhausted and thinner than he remembered. He wondered if her job as an assistant professor was taking too much out of her. He’d have to talk to his mother about it.

But even exhausted, Gianna exuded an innocent sensuality that he’d never been completely able to ignore. At times it had made him feel guilty because his body reacted even though his mind saw her as more sister than woman. Regardless of his body’s baffling response, he’d never once considered pursuing it. He didn’t bed virgins and until recently, marriage had held no appeal.

His damn legs still wouldn’t move and the doctors could not tell him if the paralysis was permanent or not. Gianna was convinced it was temporary and had said so again that morning. She was such a sweet little thing. He was surprised she wasn’t married yet. She’d be twenty-four next year, but then American women married later, he thought. It was too bad Andre didn’t see her as marriage material. Rico wouldn’t mind having her in the family.

A surge of something dark and inexplicable stabbed him at the image of Andre walking down the aisle with Gianna. He tried to convince himself it was because Rico didn’t know if he would be able to walk down the aisle with Chiara when the time came. He could very well still be in a wheelchair. But something ugly had shifted in him at the thought of Gianna married.

Was he such an egoist he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her innocent adoration? The thought did not sit well.

“Caro! You mustn’t glare like that. You’ll scare the nurses off and then who will bring you your lunch?” A trill of laughter accompanied Chiara into the room.

He watched his beautiful fiancée’s entrance. Any man would be proud to claim Chiara for his own, but she belonged to Rico. “Give me a kiss and I won’t feel like frowning any more.”

She made a moue with her mouth. “Naughty man. You’re sick.”

“So kiss me and make it better,” he taunted.

Something flickered in her eyes but she came forward and offered her lips for a brief salute. He wanted to demand more, but he allowed her to step back from the bed.

“You weren’t here last night,” he said.

Her eyes filled with tears and her expression was wounded. “That brother of yours and the little paragon,” she must have meant Gianna, “they kept me out of it. They didn’t call me for hours after you woke up.”

Why hadn’t his brother called Chiara right away? “They were here. You were not.”

The tears spilled over. “That horrible girl! She’s infatuated with you. She wouldn’t leave your side. There wasn’t even room for me next to the bed. Half the staff are convinced she’s your fiancée.”

He couldn’t imagine Gianna doing something so cruel. “You’re exaggerating.”

Chiara spun away and her shoulders shook with misery. “I’m not.”

“Come here, bella.”

She turned around and returned to stand by the bed, her face wet with tears. “She lied to get into your room the first night. She told them she was related to you. And she never left, just like some pathetic clinging vine.”

“Everyone was upset.”

“But I’m your fiancée. I want you to tell her to stop acting like she is and not to spend so much time here at the hospital. I don’t want to be tripping over her.”

“Are you jealous?” he asked, the thought not unpleasant considering the state of his body.

She pouted with expert effect. “Maybe, a little.”

“I’ll talk to her,” he promised.

Gianna walked into Rico’s room an hour after she’d woken from the first unbroken stretch of sleep she’d had in six nights. Andre had insisted she take the other bedroom in his suite, saying it was just going to waste until his parents could arrive. She’d been grateful as her budget did not stretch to Manhattan hotel prices or taxi fares from a less expensive part of the city. She hadn’t relished the thought of sleeping in her car or depleting her small savings account to nothing.

Rico looked up, his smile of greeting conspicuous in its shortness.

She stopped a few feet from the bed. “You look better.” And he did. His skin wasn’t so pale under the tan and his eyes were clearer.

“Gianna, we need to talk.”

He’d found out how she had refused to leave his side. He knew she loved him and he pitied her.

She swallowed the knot of pain her pride had lodged in her throat. “Yes?”

“You are like a sister to me.”

She hid the pain those words caused, but remained silent.

“You care about my health and this is understandable, but cara, you must not push Chiara aside in your concern for me.”

He thought she’d pushed his fiancée to the side? Gianna wanted to defend herself, but to do so would require telling him Chiara hadn’t wanted to be with Rico when he was so sick. She couldn’t do it. It would hurt him too much when he was vulnerable from his injuries.

“I didn’t mean to push her aside,” she said instead.

“I did not think you did. You are too tender-hearted to deliberately hurt someone like that, but you must be more considerate in future, no?”

She nodded, choking on the words she wanted to say. “I’ll try,” she promised.

“Chiara does not want you visiting so often,” Rico went on.

“What do you want, Rico?” she asked helplessly.

“I want my fiancée to be happy. This is a trying time for her. I do not want her upset further.”

It was a trying time for him too, but Rico never considered his own needs. He thought only of protecting those he loved. “Andre said you refuse to contact your parents.”

“There is no need for them to cut short their holiday.”

“Your mother would want to be here.”

“I do not want to be fussed over.” The impatience in his voice made her smile.

“I’m surprised you’re not working.”

“San celio. Andre refused to bring in the laptop and the doctor ordered the phone removed when he found me talking to our office in Milan last night.”

“What time last night?” she asked, pretty sure she knew the answer.

“What time do you think? When the office opened.”

Which would have been roughly 3:00 a.m. No wonder the doctor had the phone removed. She shook her head. “You are supposed to be resting. How can you get better if you won’t let your body recuperate?”

“What choice have I?” he demanded, indicating his still legs below the blanket.

She took several involuntary steps forward until she was next to the bed. She laid her small hand across his large one. “You don’t have any choice right now, but you will get better.”

His silver gaze caught hers and his hand turned until their fingers were entwined. “Cara, you always believe the best, no?”

She nodded, unable to speak. The feel of his hand holding hers was such a sweet torment she didn’t want words to intrude.

“I believe the best also. I will walk again.” He said it with such arrogance, how could she help believing him?

“When have you merely walked, Rico?” she asked with a husky voice she did not recognize.

His free hand came up and cupped her cheek and a look she did not understand passed across his face. She went completely still, allowing every fiber of her being to absorb the delicious feeling produced by his touch. It would be gone all too soon and she didn’t want to waste a moment of it.

His eyes narrowed. “Chiara believes you are infatuated with me, cara.”

“I…” She swallowed.

“I told her you are like my sorello piccola.”

Like his little sister? Yes, she knew he saw her that way, but she did not look on him as a big brother and her senses were running riot with his hand on her cheek and his fingers entwined with hers. “Right.”

He brushed his thumb across her lips and she shivered.

Silver eyes turned gunmetal gray. “You are cold?”

“No,” she whispered. Why was he touching her like this?

“What is going on in here?” Chiara’s voice raised in furious censure, broke the spell of Rico’s touch and Gianna jumped back.

She forgot her hand linked with his and was pulled up like a dog at the end of its leash as his hold on her did not lessen.

She tugged against her hand, but Rico didn’t let go. He was looking at Chiara, his expression unreadable. “I am visiting with Gianna. She is not too busy to spend more than five minutes in my company.”

Two things became apparent to Gianna at once. Chiara was jealous and Rico knew it.

“I’ve spoken to Gianna about letting you take your rightful place at my side, but you must be here to do so, bella.”

Chiara’s beautiful face turned red with temper and she glared at their entwined hands. “I am on assignment. You know I cannot spend every waking moment at the hospital like your pet limpet.”

“She has her own job. Yet she finds the time.”

He hadn’t even bothered to protest the pet limpet remark, so she did it. She yanked on her hand. Hard. He let go. “I’m no one’s pet, Chiara. I’m a friend and I didn’t realize my visiting Rico would upset you so much.”

Chiara’s glare did not lessen. “You expect me to believe that, the way you’ve carried on for the last week. Andre treats me with contempt and you, he insists on keeping in his own suite at the hotel.”

“You are staying with Andre?” Rico demanded, a tone in his voice that sounded very much like disapproval.

“There are two bedrooms in the suite. I’m using one until your parents arrive.”

“They aren’t coming.”

“Because you won’t call them,” she said with some exasperation.

He ignored that. “It is not seemly for you to stay with an unmarried man alone in his hotel suite.”

“It would be even less seemly for me to sleep in my car.”

“Per favore, spare us the dramatics,” Chiara jeered.

Gianna wanted to smack the beautifully painted red lips, but she wasn’t a violent person…at least she never had been. She supposed there was a first time for everything. “Where I stay is neither of your business,” she said firmly.

Chiara’s eyes shot disdain at Gianna. “It is when you take advantage of the generosity of my fiancé’s family to keep yourself underfoot and in the way.”

“Stop playing the shrew and come here. I want my kiss of greeting,” Rico demanded of Chiara.

He hadn’t bothered to deny she was in the way and for all Gianna knew, he felt the same as his fiancée. He’d told her not to visit him as much. But he had taken Chiara to task for being rude. That was something at least.

Still, perhaps it was time for Gianna to go back to Massachusetts. She hadn’t had her position long enough to accrue significant vacation time and since she wasn’t related to Rico by blood, the university administration did not see her absence as a family emergency. The department head had already made one not very veiled threat regarding her job if she wasn’t in class teaching the following Monday.

Chiara was obeying Rico with an overkill of enthusiasm. Gianna turned to give the couple some privacy, but the kiss lasted minutes. Finally, the pain of being in the room with the man she loved while he kissed another woman got to her and she walked out, sure they wouldn’t notice.

“I told you she had a crush on you.” Chiara’s voice floated out the open door and down the hallway to where Gianna waited for the elevator.

Gianna felt waves of mortified color sweep up her skin. She’d spent eight years nursing a secret love and to have it laid bare for that witch to mock was more than she could bear. She was furious with Rico too. He’d used her to make his barracuda of a fiancée jealous. All that touching that had meant so much to her had been nothing more than a ploy to keep Chiara in line.

Evidently Rico didn’t approve of his fiancée’s flying visits any more than Gianna and Andre did.

“Gianna’s feelings for me are of no concern to you.” Rico could hear the bite in his voice and did nothing to mitigate it.

Chiara’s kiss had not blinded him to her vicious attitude toward Gianna, an attitude he would not tolerate. “And you will not speak to her again as you did when you arrived. Her genuine concern for me is not something to mock.”

Chiara’s eyes widened in shock. “How can you say these things? Another woman’s feelings toward you are definitely my concern.”

“Gianna is no threat to you.” But even as he said the words, he wondered at their truth. Would he have kissed the younger woman if Chiara had not arrived when she did? He didn’t like to believe he was capable of such a dishonorable act. His affections were committed to Chiara, but he hadn’t wanted to let go of Gianna’s hand and the feel of her soft lips under his fingertips had caught at his emotions in a way Chiara’s extended kiss had not.

“She’s a little schemer and it devastates me that you can’t see that.” The tears welling in his fiancée’s eyes did not move him as they once would have done.

She’d spent too little time at his bedside and her complaints about Gianna simply did not ring true. He wondered just who the schemer in this situation really was.

Gianna waited until the following evening to visit Rico again.

He was talking on a hospital phone and typing on a laptop set up on a desk across his legs when she came in. She smiled wryly to herself. Nothing and no one could keep Rico out of business circulation for long. He looked up and spotted her. He motioned to a chair near the bed and she sat down, waiting patiently for him to finish his call.

Lines around his eyes made him look tired, but he had more color and his jet black hair had been washed and styled in its usual neat fashion. He wore a navy-blue silk pajama jacket that looked brand new. It probably was. She didn’t imagine Rico was the type of man to wear pajamas to bed.

He rang off and moved the desk with the portable computer aside. “Been busy sightseeing?” he asked with an edge to his voice.

“Sightseeing?” she asked incredulously.

“You have not been in to see me since yesterday morning.”

He needn’t sound so accusing. “You said Chiara didn’t like me visiting so much.”

“I did not mean for you to stop coming all together.” Silver eyes snapped their disapproval at her. “For all you knew I had slipped back into a coma.”

He was being totally unreasonable and for some reason she found that terribly endearing. It was almost as if he’d missed her. “I’m here now,” she said soothingly, “and Andre would have told me if you’d taken a turn for the worse.”

“Si. Andre, whom you share your hotel room with.”

“We don’t share a room.” She examined his face for a clue to the source of his irritability. “Are you in pain?”

He glared at her. “I have been shot and hit by a car driven by a man who could not see his hand in front of his face in a brightly lit room. Of course I have some pain.”

He sounded so outraged, she had to stifle a grin. “I don’t think the driver was expecting a man to fall in the street in front of him.”

Rico dismissed that with a flick of his hand. “Blind fool,” he muttered.

“Andre said you saved the woman’s life. They caught the mugger and he had a list of prior offenses as long as your arm, most of them were violent assault and he’d already killed two women.” Andre had also told her that the woman had come by the hospital to thank Rico, but he had told his security to keep out all visitors except her, his brother and Chiara. “You wouldn’t let her thank you.”

“I do not need this thanks. I am a man. I could not drive by and do nothing.”

“If you ask me, you’re more than an average man.” She smiled at him, letting him see her approval. “You’re a hero.”

His eyes warmed slightly. “Chiara believes all this,” he indicated his unmoving legs, “is my fault.”

Gianna jumped up and laid her hand protectively on his arm. “No. You mustn’t think that. You were being the best kind of man. You paid a price, but you wouldn’t let that stop you from doing it again.”

His hand came up to hold hers and she was reminded of the day before, both of the wonderful feelings his touch invoked and the way she’d felt used when she realized he’d touched her only to make Chiara jealous.

She pulled her hand away and stepped back. “I don’t plan to stay long,” she said quickly, lest he think she was clinging like the limpet Chiara had accused her of being.

“Why? Do you have a hot date with Andre?” he asked scathingly, his unreasonable anger back in full force.

“He’s taking me to dinner, but I’d hardly call it a hot date.”

“Do not pin your spinsterish hopes on my brother. He is not ready to settle down.”

She clenched her teeth. “I’m not pinning anything on him, much less a desire to marry. We’re going to dinner because he doesn’t mind my company.”

“I do not mind your company.” He pointed at his chest with an arrogant finger. “You could have dinner here, with me.”

“What’s the matter, can’t Chiara get away from her busy modeling schedule to share a meal with you?” Gianna asked with uncharacteristic bite, still stinging from the way he had used her to make the other woman jealous the day before.

His remark about spinsterish hopes had done nothing to make her feel more charitable toward him, either.

His look could have stripped paint. “My fiancée is none of your business.”

Gianna’s heart melted. It had been a rotten thing to say and she just knew all that anger was hiding pain. Chiara was a totally selfish person who wouldn’t know how to put herself out for another human being if her life depended on it. Worse, here was Rico, tired, in pain, not sure if he’d walk again and Gianna doing her best to act like a witch as well.

“I could call Andre and ask him to pick up dinner and bring it here,” she offered by way of a peace offering.

“I will call him.” And he did just that. He made arrangements with Andre in a burst of staccato Italian before hanging up the phone.

“I told him to get you your own room.”

“I heard you, but it won’t be necessary. I’ll only be staying one more night. Surely my reputation and his virtue will be able to survive such a short test.”

Rico looked disgruntled. “I did not say you would attack him.”

“How else would a spinster like me expect to get a macho Italian male like your brother to the altar?”

“Why do you say you will only be staying one more night?” he asked, sidestepping her taunting words.

“I’m going home tomorrow.”

“Why would you do this? I am not well. Do you see me ready to leave this place?” He sounded like a man ready to explode.

She couldn’t imagine why. “You don’t need me to stay and hold your hand. You’ve got Andre and Chiara. And your fiancée doesn’t like having me underfoot.” The words still rankled.

“You did not remain by my bedside for five solid days for Chiara’s sake.”

So, he knew about her vigil. Probably realized how much she loved him, too, which was all the more reason for her to leave. Her pride had already been dented but good by Chiara’s nasty comments.

“You’re better now.”

He reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her close to the bed. His expression was intense, the hold on her wrist almost bruising. “I am not well. I am not walking.”

“But you will walk.”

Frustration was apparent in the set of his firm lips. “Yes. You believe this. I believe this, but my brother, my fiancée, they have their doubts.”

“You’ll just have to prove them wrong.”

He nodded, heartwarming in his arrogant confidence of his return to full health. “I do not wish to do this alone.”

Such an admission from Rico was astonishing and she couldn’t gather her wits enough to respond.

“I need you here, believing in me, cara.”

She almost fainted, she was so shocked at his words. “You need me?” she asked in a choked whisper.

“Stay.” It sounded more like an arrogant command than a plea for her support, but Gianna knew what it had cost him to say it and she could not refuse.

“Okay.”

He smiled and pulled her close for a kiss of gratitude.

At least that’s what she assumed it was supposed to be, but Rico kissed her lips, not her cheek and the moment their mouths connected, their surroundings ceased to exist for her.