Secret Baby, Convenient Wife

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!