She only needed her own skin to experience the power in his hands but it was her heart that registered the astonishing gentleness with which that power was being harnessed.
Georgia had never been made love to like this. Carried to a place of such a mind-blowing release that it was inevitable that the roller-coaster would dip in its aftermath. Even so, it was a bit of a shock to find it so hard to swallow past a painful constriction in her throat as she lay in Matteo’s arms, feeling the thump of his heartbeat finally returning to a normal level.
If she had been a crying type—which she certainly wasn’t—she would have tears trickling down her face by now, wouldn’t she?
It was a shock, too, to realise how hard it was going to be to walk away from this man.
She’d just given Matteo more than her body. Right now, her brain was fighting to retrieve her heart.
‘I want to see you again,’ Matteo murmured. ‘Soon...’
Georgia turned her head so that she couldn’t get undone by those eyes. She wanted to see him again soon as well. So much that it scared her.
‘You live in Italy,’ she reminded him. ‘Scotland is a long way away.’
‘Nessun problema.’ He was smiling. ‘I can find a way. I’m ready for new adventures. Scotland must be a very exciting place to work on rescue helicopters, yes? Lots of mountain work?’
Oh...help... How amazing would that be? To have Matteo living and working in Scotland? To be with him again, like this...
Again and again. To forge a relationship that could last the rest of their lives?
She’d done it again, hadn’t she? Fallen in love at the drop of a hat and now she was dreaming of that little church and the house with a picket fence and a whole tribe of adorable children.
She couldn’t do this.
She’d promised herself she would never be stupid enough to do this again. And she’d meant it.
The sliver of fear already in existence gathered force and shivered its way down her spine. There was a hint of anger there as well, that she’d allowed herself to let things go this far.
Not just the falling-in-love kind of far. She’d taken a huge risk in having unprotected sex.
Using Matteo as a sperm donor hadn’t even crossed her mind when she had been swept away by this overwhelming chemistry. When she’d told him it was safe, it had been because she had somehow convinced herself that she was in a safe part of her cycle.
She had to be, because she hadn’t been able to fight a desire like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
However long the odds were, however, the possibility was there. And if she hadn’t won that spin of the pregnancy roulette wheel, there would be consequences she didn’t want to have to think about.
What she could think about were the consequences of imagining that this initial head-rush of falling in love could last and become something permanent and trustworthy.
She knew how unlikely that was.
She knew how gutting it was when the dreams crashed and burned.
Georgia had just had one perfect night. The best thing she could do would be to keep it like that. Bottle it into a memory that would never get tarnished.
‘I can’t do that,’ she heard herself whisper, her words strained with the effort of releasing them.
She felt the subtle shift of Matteo’s body. The birth of a tension that encompassed bewilderment and something else. Something darker.
‘Why not? I... I thought we had something special here, cara.’
‘We do.’ There was a gap between them now but that couldn’t entirely explain the chill she could feel. ‘But that’s just it. This is here. Anywhere else would be...impossible.’
She had to meet the intense gaze she could feel on her face. Even in this dim light she could see the expression in those dark eyes.
She was hurting him and she hated herself for that.
Enough that she could change her mind and break her vow? Take the risk that her heart was insisting would be worth it this time?
She actually parted her lips to tell him that but she didn’t get the chance to speak.
Matteo was rolling away from her. Getting to his feet and starting to gather his clothes.
‘So this was just a one-night stand for you?’ He had dragged on his underwear and now his trousers.
The slip in his excellent English was poignant enough to make Georgia catch her bottom lip with her teeth. To generate the prickle that warned of tears she would never allow to fall.
Matteo didn’t bother doing up his belt. He was pushing his arms through the sleeves of his shirt with jerky movements.
‘There’s someone else, isn’t there?’ He sounded angry now. ‘Someone in Scotland? You’re cheating on someone?’
Oh, how was it possible for one word to convey such ultimate disgust?
Georgia closed her eyes.
She remembered the conversation over drinks that first night. When Kate had been shocked to discover not only that Luke was no longer married but that his best friend had never known his ex-wife’s name and only referred to her as ‘the cheating cow’?
She could hear Matteo’s words echoing in the back of her mind.
‘If someone cheated on me or lied to me like that, I would never let her name pass my lips again...’
This was it. The easy way out. No further excuses would have to be found and Matteo’s attitude to both cheating and lying would ensure that he didn’t try to contact her again. He believed he’d been used for no more than a bit of fun. Worse, fun at someone else’s expense. Someone who would possibly be devastated if they found out.
She knew that Matteo had been aware of the same level of connection she’d discovered with him so she couldn’t blame him for being so angry. If the situation were reversed she would feel exactly the same way.
Getting her next word out was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.
She couldn’t do it, in fact. All she could manage was a single nod of her head and that felt like an acknowledgement of how justified Matteo was to be reacting like this but, of course, it was interpreted as a confirmation of his accusation that she was cheating on a boyfriend back home.
And, maybe, the sane corner of Georgia’s brain had intended it to be taken that way.
As she closed her eyes, she saw Matteo swoop on his shoes and socks but she knew he hadn’t bothered to put them on.
Because she heard the door of her room slam shut only seconds later.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS OFTEN the case that normal life could seem dull in the aftermath of an overseas holiday or a challenging adventure.
And Georgia Bennett had combined both of those into the few days of the Rally Rakovi international medical rescue competition. It had been the most extraordinary few days of her life and it was no surprise that she felt flat for a while after getting home.
But surely this heavy cloud of fatigue laced with waves of something that bordered on misery at frequent intervals should have worn off by now?
It had been weeks...
Enough time for the glory of arriving home as a winner and impressing all her colleagues at the Edinburgh Emergency Response Centre to have worn off.
Enough time to have had evidence that she been right to assume she had been in a safe part of her cycle when she’d slept with Matteo. That, even if she’d gone further down that unwise path of hoping to get pregnant by someone she would never have to see again, a one-off encounter would have been a disappointing failure.
And it was a huge relief. Of course it was.
She wasn’t disappointed because she hadn’t expected anything different. She had, in fact, been waiting for her period to start with an acute anticipation of the relief that it would bring.
It would be a line being drawn under that very brief chapter in her lif
e. It would make it so much easier to put it all behind her, neatly packaged in a memory box that could be labelled ‘The Rally’. Or, probably more accurately, ‘Matteo’.
Georgia would, at last, be able to embrace life and the job she was so passionate about with all the enthusiasm and determination that was so much a part of who she was.
But there had been a note of, not disappointment, but sadness to be found amidst that wash of relief. She had taken a risk after all, and so there’d been that small chance that she could have conceived. Her brain might be telling her in no uncertain terms that it was a good thing she wasn’t but her body—and her heart—were whispering a reminder of how much she wanted to become a mother. That, if it had happened, it would have been a genuine accident so she could have avoided the guilt of knowing she had done something she knew would have been so wrong.
As a final kicker, it almost felt as if someone or something in the cosmos was mocking the fact that she had stepped back, however briefly, into that fantasy planet of true love and happy-ever-afters. Of holding her own baby in her arms for the first time and feeling like her heart would burst from the joy of it.
She was putting a brave face on it, of course, and she was confident that nobody had guessed the internal struggle she was grappling with.
Certainly not her crew partner, Sean, whose face brightened with the priority call that was coming through on their pagers.
‘Yes...a cardiac arrest. Finally—we get to save a life today. Come on, champ.’
It had been her new nickname on station ever since she had come back with the trophy that was now proudly on display in the staffroom. Every paramedic who worked here and even the doctors and other medical professionals she encountered during her working hours had wanted details about the competition. A description of how it all worked, of what the scenarios had involved and about the level of skill other competitors had displayed.
She’d told them everything they’d wanted to know. Encouraged them to think about entering themselves for a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. The one thing she never mentioned, however, was what had left the most lasting personal impression.
Matteo Martini.
Georgia followed Sean at a run, slamming the passenger door of the ambulance and reaching for her safety belt as the garage doors came up and Sean put his foot down on the accelerator, flicking on the lights and siren the moment they exited the station gates.
Thank goodness the interest in the competition had finally worn off. She’d spent far more time than was healthy reliving every moment she had had with Matteo anyway. Every conversation, every glance, every touch. Being reminded of him every time she had talked about the rally to people who had no idea how much of an impact it had had on her had been a form of emotional torture.
It was still all bottled up inside her and she had no idea how to deal with it.
She couldn’t even tell Kate about it, which had always been her go-to therapy for any emotional woes because Kate was more than a little starry-eyed about reconnecting with her friend from medical school and Luke was Matteo’s best friend and it was all...complicated. Just a bit of mess, really.
Thrown into her seatbelt as Sean braked behind a slow car that seemed unaware of the noise of the siren and flashing lights was a helpful distraction. The blast he gave on the air horn to order the car to pull over and let them through the traffic was enough to tickle her adrenaline levels and she actually laughed as the ambulance swerved and even mounted the kerb briefly to get past the obstruction.
Sean sent a grin sideways.
Her favourite crew partner was enjoying this as much as she was. Relatively new to their station, Sean had become instantly popular. Tall, good looking and with a very cute Irish accent, he was particularly popular with his female colleagues and a month or two ago Georgia might have been interested herself, despite having sworn off the search for a long-term relationship in the wake of that crushing break-up with Rick.
But not now.
She liked him. And she loved working with him but as far as anything more was concerned, she couldn’t summon even a flicker of interest.
Because he wasn’t Matteo Martini?
Yeah... The bar had been reset at an impossibly high level, hadn’t it? Which was a good thing, Georgia told herself, because she didn’t want to go there. She didn’t want to get lured back into a situation where the odds of it ending well, as in not ending at all, were sadly virtually non-existent in her experience. And she was at risk because she fell in love too easily.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing she’d learned about herself during those intense few days of the competition was that she was actually capable of falling in love at first sight...
‘Next on the right,’ she called. ‘And then second on the left. ETA two minutes.’
‘Roger. Hold onto your hat. And it’s your turn to lead.’
With a nod, Georgia focussed on what lay immediately ahead. It would be a long shot, saving someone who had been found in cardiac arrest, given that it had been an unwitnessed collapse so they didn’t know when it had happened, or whether effective bystander CPR was currently being performed, but she would give the effort everything she had.
Probably a little bit more, even, because this was her life and she wanted to love it again with the same passion she’d had before she’d gone to that damn competition.
* * *
The battle hadn’t been won.
The resuscitation effort had been protracted, messy and, in the end, very sad. The victim had only been in his early fifties and his first grandchild was due to be born next week. His wife had been distraught and then his pregnant daughter had arrived at the house as they had been clearing away their gear and waiting for the doctor to come and sign the death certificate.
Georgia was not going to allow herself to dwell on this case, however. If she did, she knew she would sink even further into a space she knew was there but didn’t recognise.
A dark space where the hovering cloud of bone-deep fatigue with those shards of misery would come down and block out any remaining light in her life. Where she might start to feel so sorry for herself that it would become too hard to pick herself up and make things better.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Georgia Bennett had faced worse things than this in her life and she had learned that she could not only beat them, she could become stronger.
Her share of the best things in life were just around the corner.
Maybe she couldn’t see exactly where that corner was just yet but if she didn’t stop moving forward, she would never find it.
So she put the distressing end to her shift firmly into the part of her brain reserved for work hours and made every effort to enjoy being home. She loved this little stone cottage that she shared with Kate, with its pretty garden and cosy kitchen and the steep, narrow staircase that led to their attic bedrooms.
She loved Kate’s company, too. And her cooking. It was no hardship to tackle the dishes after eating the dinner that her flatmate had prepared tonight and their conversation offered an opportunity to think of someone other than herself for a while.
It was way past time that Kate and Luke got together—the way they had promised they would when they were both back in Scotland. How good would it be if she could look back on that competition and realise that it had been the catalyst for something amazing instead of the dark cloud that was making life so much less bright for herself? If something wonderful came from the interest she knew that Kate had in Luke?
‘Make it happen,’ she urged Kate. ‘You never know—it could change your life.’
When they went into the sitting room to finish their evening by relaxing in front of the television and Kate discovered a text from Luke on her phone, Georgia was dismayed to find herself feeling...envious?
How would she feel if she found a text fr
om Matteo on her phone?
It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, was it? He could easily get access to her phone number by asking Luke to get it from Kate.
She could get his number by reversing the route.
And say what? Admit that there was no boyfriend that had been waiting for her back in Scotland so she hadn’t been cheating on anyone?
By doing that, she would be admitting that she’d lied to him. Only by omission, but Georgia knew instinctively that a boundary like that would mean nothing to Matteo. Playing by the rules and, above all, being honest was an unshakeable foundation for the character that made him who he was.
Someone genuine. Trustworthy.
Luke was genuine, too, but Kate was shaking her head over a proposed date that wasn’t going to fit with her hospital shifts. Saying that maybe it was never meant to happen.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Georgia was in danger of losing patience. ‘What were the odds of you two meeting up again on a mountaintop in the Czech Republic? It was totally meant to happen.’
Kate’s smile was endearingly shy. ‘It was certainly unexpected.’
And then her smile widened. ‘And it was you who had the mad idea of hooking up with someone while we were there. It was the last thing I was planning on doing.’
Oh... God...talking about that crazy plan she’d had for the competition was the last thing Georgia wanted to do. Trying to dismiss this conversational track, Georgia shrugged and turned away.
‘I’m not the only one who’s been a bit quiet since we got back. What aren’t you talking about?’
‘Nothing.’ She thought she’d managed a tone light enough to squash any suspicions but it didn’t seem to work. She could feel Kate staring at her back.
Twin Surprise for the Italian Doc Page 5