Miracle for the Girl Next Door / Mother of the Bride: Miracle for the Girl Next Door

When he reached it and mounted the narrow staircase to the next level of the town, she was nowhere in sight. There were more residences than shops in this area. He looked all around, noticing the local clinic on his left. He’d never known a dental office to be in there, but maybe things had changed.

Give her a few more minutes before you burst in looking for her, Casali.

If he did find her inside, he’d be risking her anger because it smacked of invading her privacy. She might never speak to him again.

After the conversation they’d had the other day on the subject of maintaining one’s privacy, there was a certain irony to this kind of thinking—and danger. But that was what he thrived on. At this late date he couldn’t change his character if he tried and determined to take his chances.

He watched the locals go in and come out the doors of the clinic. He waited another minute, then walked inside. Just as he’d thought, the wall plaque didn’t indicate any dentists in the building. Beyond the foyer was a waiting room full of patients. He couldn’t see Clara among them. She might not be here at all, but he had to check.

Chagrined that he hadn’t followed her more closely, Valentino had no choice but to approach the receptionist at the desk. When she got off the phone he said, “Could you tell me if Clara Rossetti has already gone in for her appointment?”

“I’m sorry. Even if she were a patient here, I can’t give you that information unless you’re the police or her next of kin.”

For no good reason the hairs lifted on the back of his neck. The receptionist had given nothing away, yet for the first time since coming back to Monta Correnti a little frisson of alarm darted through him. It was that same feeling he got on the racetrack when he sensed something wasn’t right and braced himself for what was coming around the next curve.

“I’m her fiancé,” he lied without compunction. “I’ve been at sea for a long time, but got shore leave specifically to see her. Her sister Bianca told me I’d find her here for her ten o’clock appointment.” If lightning struck him, he didn’t care.

“In that case, go back to the foyer and down the hall to the dialysis clinic.”

Dialysis—

A shudder rocked his body. That meant kidney failure. People died from it.

No. Not Clara. He’d just come from being with her. Though she’d looked tired, she’d seemed healthy to him.

He shook his head, trying to make sense of it.

She couldn’t be dying. That was preposterous! Valentino didn’t believe it. He must have misunderstood the receptionist.

Bile rose in his throat. He couldn’t seem to swallow.

“Signore? Are you all right?” The woman at the desk stared up at him anxiously.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“You didn’t know?”

A groan escaped his throat. Her question made it all too real. It meant that the first day he’d seen her on the staircase between the buildings, she’d just come from the clinic.

And the other morning when she’d said she had shopping to do, she’d been on her way here…

He half staggered out to the foyer where he saw the sign for directions to the dialysis clinic.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER having to tear herself away from Valentino, Clara had been plunged into a new low of despair. This time it was for him.

Luca Casali wasn’t his birthfather?

Though Valentino might have been living with that knowledge since childhood, a boy would still yearn to know his own flesh and blood father, or at least have some information about him. While Cristiano and Isabella had lived with the security of enjoying both parents’ love, Valentino couldn’t claim the same thing.

If Clara’s life didn’t depend on this treatment, she wouldn’t have left him standing there in front of Bonelli’s looking tortured.

Like a slot machine that went chink chink chink, little pieces of memory started fitting together in a mosaic that explained to some extent why he’d been drawn to Clara more than his own siblings during those early years. When he’d lost his mother, he’d needed a friend, no doubt because he didn’t feel as if he belonged to the Casali household in quite the same way as the other two.

No one at school had had any comprehension of his struggles, including Clara. While she lay there, she wept for the boy inside the incredible man he’d become.

It was impossible to settle down and concentrate on anything else right now. Normally after she was hooked up to the large hemodialysis machine and the clinician had left the room, she could absorb herself in a good mystery novel. She’d put a new one in her purse, but hadn’t opened it yet. She couldn’t.

As weak as she’d felt after getting off the bus earlier today, the sight of Valentino wearing jeans that molded his powerful thighs had set off a burst of adrenalin, giving her an extra boost of energy.

He was an impossibly handsome man. In that headscarf and sailor shirt revealing his welldefined physique, he looked like a cross between a dashing pirate and a Gypsy. It couldn’t be easy being so famous he had to go to such lengths to avoid the constant crush of the media.

It took a remarkable man to rise above his pain. Valentino made every moment of life exciting. That was one of his many gifts. Who else would have ordered a decadent chocolate dessert they could share and make the moment seem like a fabulous party he’d created just for her?

If Silvio knew the true Valentino the way she did, he wouldn’t have grilled her so mercilessly the other morning while she’d been running the fruit stand. He’d fired questions at her she couldn’t answer and wouldn’t anyway.

When Valentino had come by the farm in the latest model Ferrari, it had reminded her brother of the differences between them, but that wasn’t the underlying reason for his bitterness. To her dismay, the girl her brother had been infatuated with in high school had wanted nothing to do with him because she’d been so crazy about Valentino and he had gone through girls like water.

Even though Silvio had moved on to other women and had eventually married Maria, her brother’s pride had never got over the rejection. As Valentino’s fame grew, so did Silvio’s envy for the women—the money—everything that seemed to come to him with what looked like no effort at all. In truth he couldn’t forgive Valentino and didn’t want Clara to have anything to do with him. In this area, he’d become irrational.

If he knew how hard it had been for Valentino growing up, even if Luca had been good to him, her brother would have a different perspective. Silvio basked in the love of both parents. All of the Rossettis did. How lucky they were!

Depleted physically and emotionally by the distressing revelation, she let out a deep sigh and closed her eyes, aching for Valentino’s pain and wishing the treatments didn’t take so long. But she couldn’t complain, not when they were keeping her alive.

While she lay there on top of the cot fully dressed, she heard the door open. The clinician checked on her every little while. With her eyes still closed she said, “I’m doing fine, Serena.”

“That’s music to my ears,” sounded a deep, familiar male voice.

Her eyelids flew open at the same time her heart clapped inside her chest. She discovered Valentino bigger than life, standing at the side of her bed opposite the machine. He removed his sunglasses and scarf, revealing disheveled dark brown hair. It only added to his potent male appeal.

“You followed me!” she cried in a combination of anger and exasperation.

“Guilty as charged.”

No one had ever looked less penitent. “How did you get in here?”

“They weren’t going to let me in, but I found your clinician. When I told her I was your fiancé she took pity on me.”

Of course she did. Serena was a female. No woman was immune to Valentino’s charm.

Clara should have been furious he’d found out her secret, but it was so like Valentino to go where angels feared to tread when he wanted answers to questions, she started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Maybe it was contagious because he laughed, too. Soon the tears actually trickled from the corners of both their eyes.

They were still laughing when a smiling Serena poked her head inside the door. “I’ve never heard you laugh before. There’s nothing like a fiancé showing up to turn your world around, eh, Clara? I didn’t know you had such a gorgeous one. You’re a dark horse, you know that?”

After giving Valentino another once-over, she grinned and shut the door again. It wouldn’t be long before Serena connected his looks with the legend that preceded him and would know it was all a lie. But right now Clara didn’t care.

Those intelligent dark eyes of his searched hers for endless seconds. His expression grew solemn. “How long have you been undergoing these treatments, piccola?” he whispered in a shaky voice.