The Italian Doctor's Perfect Family

by Alison Roberts

CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘A date!’

  ‘You don’t need to sound so surprised, Mum. I am female and single and reasonably presentable, I hope.’

  ‘A date!’ From the back seat of the car, Alice echoed her grandmother’s exclamation with much greater evidence of approval. ‘With Dr Costa? Oh…man!’

  Pip looked over her shoulder with an it’s-not-that-big-a-deal kind of expression that was supposed to deny sharing her daughter’s underlying delight with the development. Alice just laughed.

  ‘What are you going to wear?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Shona asked cautiously.

  ‘Out for dinner.’

  ‘Upmarket?’

  Pip thought about that as she slowed down for a red traffic light. With his impeccably cut pinstriped suit and that elegant Rolex watch, Toni gave the impression he could be well used to expensive venues. Could she imagine him out of hours in faded denim jeans and a leather jacket? Perched on a bar stool at a casual bistro maybe? With those waves of black hair a little tousled and those long fingers curled around the stem of a wineglass?

  Oh…yes.

  Pip felt a powerful lurch of what could only be reawakening lust curling deep inside her belly. Shifting gear and pressing the accelerator to get the vehicle moving again was a rather necessary distraction. And hadn’t Shona asked her a question? She dragged her wayward imagination back into line.

  ‘I have no idea,’ she repeated, ‘but I don’t have anything to wear in any case so I’ll have to go shopping, I suppose.’

  ‘Cool,’ Alice said approvingly. ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Shona said. ‘You’ve just been in hospital overnight, young lady.’

  ‘But I’m fine now.’ Alice did look so much better, with colour in her cheeks and a sparkle back in her eyes. ‘And that Dr Murray says that if the pain comes back, I can have that sort of operation thing and I’ll be cured.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Shona didn’t sound much happier. ‘I still don’t think gallivanting around town on a shopping spree is a sensible idea.’

  ‘But I haven’t had any new clothes for ages!’

  ‘That is true.’ Pip cast a sideways glance at her mother. Shona had always taken care of most of the shopping for Alice and there had been a few arguments recently over what was deemed suitable. Maybe this was something Pip could take over. It could prove to be enjoyable, quality ‘girl time’ together. ‘Let’s see how Alice is feeling tomorrow, Mum. It’s late-night shopping and I’ll have to go because the date’s on Friday. You could have an evening to yourself and a bit of peace and quiet.’

  ‘Hmm.’ This time the sound indicated the suggestion might be welcome, which made Pip think of something else that might please her mother. She flicked on the indicator and pulled the car in toward a small group of shops. ‘We’re going to pick up some Indian or Chinese food,’ she said firmly. ‘No cooking tonight.’

  Shopping with Alice had been an excellent idea, Pip realised when she opened the door to Toni’s knock on Friday evening.

  The chosen outfit had seemed a rather radical departure from normal—a skirt that clung to her hips and then swirled around her knees and a camisole top that looked far more like underwear than outerwear.

  ‘It’s what everybody wears now, Pip,’ Alice had stated knowledgably. ‘You’re so old-fashioned!’

  It had been a long time since Pip had taken much notice of fashion and she had been persuaded by Alice’s criticism, helped considerably by finding a gorgeous jacket she could keep on to cover her bare shoulders. Pip had fully intended to keep the jacket on all evening but the look in Toni’s eyes as he took in her appearance undermined that resolve.

  How long had it been since she had felt this attractive? Certainly even longer ago than the purchase of any fashionable clothes.

  A slight awkwardness prevailed when Toni accepted the polite invitation to come inside for a minute while Pip collected her handbag, but maybe she was the only one to sense the approval—excitement even—radiating from both her mother and her daughter.

  An excitement that Pip was trying, very hard, not to catch. This was merely a first date after all. She would be stupid to read anything more into it than an interest.

  A mutual interest.

  How sad that that was enough to spark something like excitement.

  Hope, even, if she was really honest with herself.

  A hope that looked rather likely to be crushed as soon as the small talk was abandoned after choosing their meals from the menu at the small French restaurant Toni had chosen.

  ‘You have a wonderful family, Pippa.’ Toni smiled. ‘You are very lucky.’

  The undertone of sadness was unmistakable and any hope Pip might have had of avoiding painful subjects went out the window. She wanted to know what had caused that sadness and—more dangerously—was more than willing to share her own.

  And all it took to start the ball rolling was a single, tentative query.

  ‘You weren’t so lucky, Toni?’

  His headshake was poignant. ‘I’ve never told anyone about my upbringing. I was startled to find myself confessing that my mother had abandoned me to the less than willing care of my nonna when I first met you.’ Toni toyed with the stem of the wineglass in front of him. Candlelight caught the ruby glints of his chosen wine but Pip was more transfixed by the sight of his fingers—straight out of that brief fantasy she’d had driving home the other night, only far more effective because they were real. And moving. One tapped the stem, as though Toni was undecided, or puzzled, about something.

  ‘It wasn’t as though I was aware of your own circumstances at the time,’ he added. ‘Of anything we might have had in common.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear.’ Pip kept her gaze on the play of light on the crystal glass. And on how still Toni’s fingers now were as he listened carefully. ‘I guess I prefer not to be judged on my past by people who don’t know me.’ She glanced up, her tone becoming a little defensive. ‘And I didn’t abandon my daughter.’

  ‘I know that.’ Toni’s gaze held hers. ‘And that is partly why you impress me so much.’

  Pip felt a small glow of pleasure at those words. She impressed him? A lot?

  ‘It’s very obvious how much love there is in your home,’ Toni continued. ‘You—and your family—have made a success out of what could have been a disaster. What was a disaster in my own case because there was none of that kind of love.’

  How amazing to find a reaction that engendered pride in what had shaped Pip’s life to such an extent. The shame that James had magnified so destructively could, finally, be vanquished.

  ‘It nearly was a disaster,’ Pip admitted. ‘It was my mother who kept everything together.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Toni invited. He touched Pip’s hand when she hesitated briefly. ‘Please.’

  The plea in his touch as well as his tone was all the encouragement Pip needed.

  ‘My father was a doctor,’ she told Toni. ‘A general practitioner. He was a wonderful man and I grew up wanting to be just like him—and to be a doctor who cared so much and was loved by his patients as much as he was.’ Pip paused to mirror Toni’s action and take a sip of her own wine. ‘One day, when I was fifteen, he went out to mow the lawns and had a massive heart attack.’

  The food arrived at that point and there was at least a minute of subdued silence. The waiter looked anxious.

  ‘Is everything all right with your meals, sir?’

  ‘It looks wonderful,’ Toni assured him, but he didn’t pick up any cutlery even after the waiter had gone. He was watching Pip.

  ‘He died?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Instantly.’ Pip could smell the truffles and chicken on her plate. She picked up her fork but couldn’t start eating. She put it down again. ‘I saw it happen from my bedroom window. Mum called an ambulance and they tried their best but it was too late.’ Pip tried to smile and light
en the atmosphere a fraction. ‘It was so sudden! The engine on the lawnmower was still running when it was all over. Nobody had thought to turn it off.’

  Toni seemed to have forgotten his dinner. ‘What a dreadful thing to have happened. Especially when you were so young!’ Toni’s face was such a picture of sympathy, Pip could almost imagine the shine of tears in his eyes. ‘Girls need their fathers, especially when they’re in their teens.’

  ‘It was awful. Mum and I were both devastated. Even now I try to avoid thinking about what it was like for the first few months.’ Pip shook her head as though to clear the memory and a wisp of hair escaped her loose French plait. ‘Anyway.’ She tucked the strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Please, eat, Toni. I’d hate this lovely food to get cold.’

  For a minute they both tasted their food but Pip’s unfinished story hung between them. What Toni really wanted to know about was Alice, wasn’t it? When the waiter walked past their table moments later, with a nod of approval at the fact they were now eating, it gave her the opportunity to start talking again.

  ‘I was so unhappy,’ Pip said slowly. It was easy to look back and realise how badly she had behaved but it was much harder to admit it—especially to someone she would prefer to impress. ‘And I was a self-centred teenager. I needed support and attention and I couldn’t see that Mum needed it as much as I did. I set about trying to get what I wanted in totally the wrong way which only made everything worse, of course.’

  Toni was nodding. It was more than nonjudgmental. ‘I understand,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I tried that myself for a while.’

  ‘Did you ignore your schoolwork?’

  ‘Only until I realised that using my mind was actually the only way I could control my own life.’

  ‘Did you hang out with bad friends?’

  ‘As much as it was possible in the kind of boarding schools I was sent to.’ Toni’s smile was broader. ‘It was probably just as well I didn’t have much freedom.’ His face stilled then, ready to listen and accept whatever Pip wanted to tell him. ‘You had more freedom?’ he prompted.

  Pip nodded sadly. ‘Too much. I chose a new group of friends simply because I knew my mother would not approve of them.’ She took a half-hearted mouthful of food but then put her fork down again. ‘One in particular, Catherine, was bad news but she had the reputation of being “cool”. We got into trouble at school and she got me into parties with her older brother’s friends from uni. There was a lot of alcohol and I discovered it could make me forget for a while.’

  ‘How unhappy you were?’

  Toni also seemed to have forgotten his food. He reached out and touched her. Just a stroke of a finger on the back of her hand, but it conveyed so much that it almost brought tears to Pip’s eyes. He knew what was coming in this story and he understood. He accepted it. Pip had only told this tale to one other man and Toni’s gesture couldn’t be more different to the disgust she had seen in James’s face. It gave her courage.

  ‘Not just my unhappiness. I could stop feeling guilty about hurting my mother by how badly I was behaving. It was at the last one of those parties I went to that I let things get completely out of hand. Realising what I’d done was a wake-up call and I started to get my act together, but I’d left it just a bit too late.’

  ‘You were pregnant?’

  Pip nodded. ‘I didn’t figure it out for a while and then I was too terrified to tell anyone. I realised how much harder I’d made things for Mum and I was way too scared to make it worse by telling her I was pregnant. By the time I did, it was too late to even consider any option other than having the baby, and Mum was just as horrified as I knew she’d be.’

  ‘She was angry?’

  ‘The anger would have been easy to handle. I deserved it. What really got to me was how sad she was. She thought I had ruined my life. The father couldn’t be traced easily. He’d only been in town on holiday from Australia and when Mum finally caught up with him he denied everything and refused any responsibility. We were on our own.’

  ‘But you coped.’ It was a statement rather than a question and Pip could hear the undertone of approval. Respect, even. Not that she could take the credit.

  ‘Thanks to Mum. She refused to let me ruin my chances of having a career. She made me finish school and then persuaded me to follow my dream of medical school. She said it’s what Dad would have wanted for me as well, and if she didn’t do anything more with the rest of her life than making that possible, she would be as happy as she could ever be again.’

  They finished what they wanted of their meals in a rather thoughtful silence. It wasn’t until the waiter appeared to collect their plates that Toni nodded.

  ‘She’s a strong woman, your mother,’ he said approvingly. ‘But she does seem…less than well at the moment.’

  ‘I know. She’s finally been to see our family doctor and he’s referred her back to the surgeon who looked after her when she had the problem with gallstones.’

  ‘That’s good. I’m sure she will be fine.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Pip was happy to agree. ‘I’m not going to let her do so much for me any more, though. It’s funny, but it’s only recently that I’ve realised how much more of a mother to Alice she is than I am.’

  ‘And you don’t like that?’

  ‘I suppose I was flattered that Alice wanted to start calling me by my given name. To pretend we were sisters.’

  ‘From my experience with working with families, I think that a lot of people aspire to being a friend to their children. It just needs to be balanced with the guidance a parent needs to provide.’

  ‘And I’ve let Mum do most of the hard bits. She shouldn’t have to do that twice in a lifetime.’

  ‘But she loves it?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t just push her aside.’

  Toni nodded. ‘And you need to be able to do the job you’re so good at.’ Then he smiled. ‘But you still need a life of your own outside working hours. What sort of things do you like to do for yourself, Pippa?’

  He raised his eyebrows at the silence.

  ‘Have you ever put what you wanted or needed just for yourself above the duty to your family or your studies?’

  I tried that once, Pip thought. When she had believed she’d had a future with James. And that had been a disaster, hadn’t it?

  Toni nodded again at what he apparently read from her expression. ‘I thought not,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe now is the time. You enjoyed eating out?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I’m afraid I spoilt it for you, talking about my self too much.’

  His smile was nothing less than gorgeous. ‘So, we’ll redress the balance. Next time, I shall talk entirely about myself.’

  Pip smiled back, unable to put a lid on the joy the words ‘next time’ had sparked.

  ‘Do you like to dance? Go for walks in a forest or on a beach? Watch a movie?’

  Pip’s smile broadened. ‘All of the above.’

  Toni inclined his head in a satisfied nod. ‘Then that’s what we shall do,’ he announced. ‘All of the above.’

  If he hadn’t been so distracted by catching a glimpse of Pippa at the end of the corridor, Toni wouldn’t have bumped into the edge of the meal trolley and found himself in the undignified position of having to collect the papers that had spilled from the folder he was carrying.

  This was more than embarrassing. Toni Costa had never let a woman get under his skin to this extent since the heartbreak of Ellen walking out on him. To creep, unbidden, into his thoughts almost constantly. To have his heart pick up speed and his awareness of his immediate surroundings fade at the mere sight of her at some distance.

  It was disturbing.

  Then again, when Pip stopped to help him, it no longer seemed to matter that her significance in his life was increasing exponentially. Or that there were others to witness the effects of his clumsiness. It was simply too good to be this close to her. To smell her perfume. To feel the brush of her hand as she passed him the pink 12-lea
d ECG trace.

  ‘They’re a traffic hazard, those meal trolleys, aren’t they?’

  Dio! Her smile was gorgeous. Toni wanted to kiss those curving lips and never mind who was watching. He’d wanted to kiss her last week when they’d been to dinner for a second time and even more last night when they had been to the movies. Why had it seemed so important to restrain himself? To decide that, for the first time in his life, he wasn’t going to rush things. To let physical passion—or worse—the possibility of falling in love undermine rational thinking. He knew only too well how that could lead to disaster.

  But it was so hard! Toni stood up so that he wasn’t on the same level as those eyes but Pip’s attention, fortunately, had been caught by a sheet of paper. She was still staring at it as she straightened and unconsciously followed his move to step to one side of the corridor and stop disrupting traffic.

  ‘Good grief! This doesn’t look very healthy.’

  ‘No.’ He may not be able to kiss her but Toni couldn’t resist the opportunity to talk and keep Pippa close for just a little longer. ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘Supraventricular tachycardia?’

  ‘How do you know it’s not ventricular?’

  ‘The QRS complexes are too narrow for that.’ Pip was touching the paper as she counted. ‘And it’s fast enough to be a pretty impressive tachycardia. The rate must be over two hundred beats per minute.’

  ‘Two hundred and thirty.’

  ‘There’s ST depression but it’s probably rate-related. I wouldn’t think a patient of yours would be suffering angina. If it is a patient of yours?’ Raised eyebrows and the expression of such keen interest made Toni smile. Or was it the pleasure of an excuse to admire those curious gold flecks in the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen?

  ‘It’s a trace from a twelve-year-old I’ve got in the ward. Unsuccessfully trialled on anti-epileptic medication by his GP.’

  ‘For blackouts? Or was he having hypoxic seizures?’

  Pippa’s intelligence was just as sexy as everything else about this woman, Toni decided as he nodded. ‘It’s quite a common mistake, especially in this age group. What is that saying? About hoofbeats?’