by Annie O'Neil
“Hello? Luca?” Fran was waving her hand in front of his face. “You’ve obviously got things on your mind, and about this much patience for me—” She pinched at a smidgen of air, then crushed it between her fingers. “So if you’d just point the way, I’m sure I can find it myself.”
“No, you can’t.”
He bit back a smile as Fran bridled at his pronouncement.
“I happen to have a very good sense of direction.”
“I’m sure you do, but we haven’t put any signs up on the doors, so it’ll be tricky for you to find your cottage.”
“Cottage?” Fran’s eyes widened in delight as she tugged a couple of medium-sized tote bags out of the truck onto the stone plaza.
She did that a lot. As if everything new was a pleasure rather than a burden. Each corner turned was a moment of thrilling excitement rather than full of the dread that enveloped him whenever a foreman or a staffer headed his way with a purposeful gait and an I-need-to-bend-your-ear-for-a-minute look in his eye.
Fatigue. That was all it was. The clinic was a massive project. The ramifications of failing were too weighty to bear.
“Shall we?”
Fran gave him a wary look, shifting her weight so that her crossed arms formed a protective shield. “Look. I know we didn’t get off to a very good start yesterday.”
“That would be putting it mildly.” They were past niceties. She might as well know she could count him out of her new-friend posse.
“I’m really, truly, incredibly sorry about what happened, but—no offense—I’m much sorrier for Bea, who has to deal with all the mess left by that ratbag fiancé of hers.”
“Ratbag?” Luca quirked an eyebrow. Honesty. He liked that in a woman.
“Ratbag,” Beatrice replied solidly.
“At last.” He picked up one of her bags from the ground where she’d let them drop. “Something we agree on.”
“Phew!” She gave a melodramatic swipe of her brow before picking up the other tote bag and running along after him. “And I just want to say I am genuinely grateful for the chance to experiment up here with Pia and the dogs.”
“Experiment?” Luca dropped the bag and turned on her. “I don’t have time for experiments! I need exacting, perfect, unrelentingly driven, skill-based superiority in everything. In everyone who comes through these gates! Doctors, nurses, cleaners and, most of all, you! You are the one person I’m relying on most to help!”
Fran’s jaw dropped open, her eyes widening as the stream of vitriol continued.
As the words poured out and he felt his gestures grow more emphatic Luca abruptly clamped his lips tight and stuffed his fists into his pockets. Baring his heart to Bea in the form of this tirade was as good as...as good as showing his hand.
He almost laughed at the irony. His poker face was as poor as his father’s. His father had lost the family fortune. Had he just lost Pia’s shot at a bit of independence? Some much-deserved fun?
Extraordinarily, Francesca just stood there. Dry-eyed. Patient. Listening to his tongue-lashing as if in fact he was calmly explaining that he was terribly sorry, but he’d been under tremendous pressure owing to the imminent launch of the clinic and, as a result, his concern for his niece and her welfare was escalating. That it pained him to admit it, but he needed support. He needed her.
“Feel better?” Fran finally asked after the silence between them had grown heavy with expectation.
“Not really,” Luca answered, furious with himself for letting down his guard. He reached for her bags again. “Let’s get on with this, shall we? I’ve already wasted too much time today.”
Fran held her ground. “I want you to know I’m willing to stake everything I am on those dogs.”
“And what is that exactly? Beyond, of course, wedding whistle-blower and circus-trick performer?”
“That’s not fair.”
“My time is precious, signorina—I’m afraid I didn’t catch your surname.”
Fran’s eyes narrowed. Her teeth took part of her full lip captive, unfurling it bit by bit.
“Martinelli.”
When she said it, he saw a change in her. A hint of something he knew he saw when he bothered to look at his own reflection in the mirror. Not the scar. The pain. The pain that came from no longer being part of something he should have cherished so much more than he had.
Family.
One simple word that equaled a heady combination of love, guilt, trying to do better and not getting a single damn thing right.
“Looks like there’s a story there,” Luca said.
She shrugged.
“Complicated?”
“Very.” Her lips pressed forward before thinning into a tight smile.
Luca tipped his chin in understanding. “Looks like we’ve found two things in common.”
If there was anyone who grasped complicated, it was him.
“Let’s cut across here.” Luca pointed toward a short covered alley. “It’s the long way around.”
Fran arched an eyebrow at him.
“I like to get to know my staff.”
“I’m not charging you, so technically I’m not staff.”
“I can fire you, so technically you are. My niece is the single most important person to me in this world. If I’m not happy, you’re gone.”
Free or not, he wasn’t letting just anyone get involved with Pia.
“My niece seems to like you. I have yet to be persuaded. With the clinic opening, and no time to look for someone else, I’ll give you a chance to prove me wrong.”
“And for that I humbly thank you, my lord.” An effervescent laugh burbled up and out of Fran’s throat as she went into a deep curtsy. “Or is it Your Excellency? How does one address a baron?”
If he hadn’t been so irritated, he would have laughed. She was right to mock him. The arrogance! Since when had he become such a stuck-up prig?
“It’s Luca,” he said finally, willing himself not to smile. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Got it.” Fran winked, tapping the side of her nose. “Your undercover name.”
“Something like that.”
He pointed her toward the path they’d need to take to her cottage. Close to his cottage. Too close, he realized now. Yet another note for his to-do list: don’t get attached. She’ll be gone soon enough.
CHAPTER FIVE
“DID BEA TELL you anything about me?” Fran asked once they’d walked for a bit in silence, stopping at a bench overlooking the peaks and folds of the surrounding countryside. She focused on a field full of sunflowers. A reminder of all the good she hoped would come of moving back home.
“No. Why?” Luca eyes narrowed, interesting little crinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes as he tried to figure it out on his own.
“Well, for starters, my full name is Francesca Lisbetta Martinelli.” Fran gave him a moment before asking, “Nothing?”
“I’ve not got all day, Francesca.” A flicker of impatience crossed his features.
“Vincente Martinelli... Lui è mio padre.”
Saying it in Italian seemed to come more naturally. She and her father spoke it at home. She might as well pronounce her paternity in his native tongue.
“Basta! No? Really?”
A panoply of reaction passed across Luca’s face. It was a little bit like watching a short film. Such an interesting face. Not just the scar, which she was aching to touch. There were other stories there. Stories she’d love to hear if only her presence didn’t drive him so batty.
“So that makes you...?”
“The daughter of a billionaire.”
A flash of understanding lit up his eyes, then disappeared so quickly she thought she’d imagined it.
“And your point is...?” Luca spun his finger in a keep-talking swirl, then gave his watch a sharp tap.
Not the usual reaction. That was nice. Most people wanted to know why she didn’t walk around dripping in jewels and designer labels.
“I’m moving home at the end of the summer.”
“And...?” Luca’s impatience was growing.
“I’ve not lived there for a long time. Or ever accepted my father’s help. But this time...this time he’s going to invest in my business.”
“The dogs?” Luca’s eyebrows lifted.
He obviously thought it was a weird choice, but it wasn’t his money, so...
“The point being I’ve never accepted money from him. Ever. And I’m not going home with a fail on my books before I’ve even started.”
Luca blinked, processing that.
“Why are you accepting his help now?”
“Because I want my dad back in my life. And I want him to be proud of me. I believe in what I’m doing this time.”
“This time?” A flash of concern darkened his features.
“I used to be a physiotherapist. Well, physio and hydrotherapy.”
“Why did you give it up?”
She considered him for a moment. He didn’t need to know the whole story. Going into business with a “friend” only to discover he’d thought being partners with her meant tapping into her father’s wealth.
“One of my patients asked me to help a dog with arthritis. Working with dogs seemed more...”
“Satisfying?” Luca suggested.
“Sounds like the voice of experience,” she countered, unwilling to tell Luca how betrayed she’d felt. How hurt. She’d wanted to go to her father, but had felt too ridiculous to confess how foolish she’d been. The last thing she expected from Luca—or anyone—was sympathy. Being an heiress was hardly tragic. Just...tricky.
“So you just abandoned your patients? Left on a whim?”
“No. I oversaw their treatment until I could transfer them all to someone I trusted.”
“A boyfriend?”
Where had that come from?
“My mentor. She took on each and every patient.”
“And once you’d shaken off your responsibilities—”
“I didn’t shake them off!” Fran protested.
“You left.”
“I was young.”
“And why should I believe you won’t do the same to Pia?”
“You’re just going to have to trust me.”
Luca’s jaw tightened. Trust. That was what it was going to boil down to.
“Why should I trust you?”
“I did what was right yesterday, even though it could have cost me the friendship I hold dearest in my heart.” Fran’s eyes clouded with more emotion than she’d hoped to betray. She swallowed it down and continued, “That, and the second I saw you were the person I’d be working for I could’ve turned the car around and left right then and there. But the dogs seemed excited. They like Pia. Which makes sense. They seem to like you. Which makes less sense. But I trust them. Dogs are loyal.”
“Three,” Luca said grimly.
“Three?”
“Three things we agree on. Dogs are the only sentient creatures who have any loyalty. Excluding, of course, my niece. If she can stick with me, she can stick with anyone.”
“Ah! Finally admitting you’re a bit of a Mr. Cranky Pants, then?”
Fran teased at the corner of her T-shirt. Had she overstepped the mark with that one?
“Not a chance, carina.”
Fran looked up at his change of tone and was caught completely off balance as Luca flashed her a wicked smile.
Santo cielo! A swirl of sparks swept through Fran’s tummy, lighting up all sorts of places she’d rather not think about when she was trying to be serious and grown-up. Sort of. Maybe...
“Whatever.” She clucked dismissively, feeling a bit more like herself. “Just you wait. Beatrice has assured me we’ll be friends. That’ll be my summer challenge.”
Luca grunted. “We’re a long way from friends, bellissima. And we’re nearly at your cottage.” He tipped his head toward a wooden door.
Shame she couldn’t convince him to stand there all day. Backlit by the sun. Hair tousled by the gentle breeze. The outline of his body looking rugged and capable. The perfect alpha male to have a summer romance with and then get on with the rest of her life.
As if that would ever happen.
“Any final tidbits of wisdom about assistance dogs you want to impart before I drop you off at your cottage?”
“So you’re going to let me stay?”
She watched as he processed her question—his teeth biting together, his jaw giving that telltale stress twitch along the line of his scar, his lips parting to demand one last task.
“Give me one word to describe the change you see in your customers once they have a Fran Special.”
One word?
“Wait—give me a minute.” She scrunched her eyelids tight in order to think and came up blank. In a panic, she looked up into Luca’s espresso-dark gaze and it came to her. “Breathtaking.”
* * *
Just like you, bellissima.
The words popped into Luca’s mind and near enough escaped his lips as Fran’s blue eyes lit up, her cheeks flushing with pleasure and undiluted pride in what she did.
It was the same sensation he felt when a reconstruction surgery had gone to plan. Particularly when a patient picked up a mirror for the first time and, eyes brightening, exclaimed, “It’s the old me!” That was far better than the enhancement surgeries that paid the bills. If Mont di Mare could one day do charitable cases, that would be a dream come true.
He shook the thought away. An impossibility right now. A far-off dream.
“So, what’s your decision?”
Luca shook his head, temporarily confused. “What decision?”
“Are you going to let me stay—” she swung her thumb toward the village entryway “—or do we have to drag these bags back to my car and pick up the dogs so I can hoof it?”
Pragmatics told him to send her away.
Fran was chaos. He needed peace.
But a splinter of doubt pierced through his more reasoned side.
Perhaps it wasn’t chaos she brought. Perhaps it was...possibility. And that meant change. Never easy, but sometimes necessary.
The look of glee on his niece’s face when she’d seen not only the dogs but Fran had tugged at his sensibilities. Not to mention the sheer expectation on Fran’s face now, which was making too great a play on his heartstrings. The strings of the heart he was beginning to realize had never quite regained its usual cheerful cadence since the accident. The very same heart he felt opening, just a sliver, to this ray of joy standing before him. Besides, he didn’t have to spend time with her. Pia did.
“Si.” He gave Fran a quick nod before adding wryly. “Pia might disown me if I say otherwise.”
A whoop that might have filled a football stadium flew out of Fran’s throat and she immediately launched into some sort of whirling happy dance, the likes of which, he was quite sure, the streets of Mont di Mare had never seen.
Oh, Dio!
Had he really just welcomed Hurricane Fran into their lives?
Dance finished, Fran eventually came to a standstill, chest heaving with excitement, eyes alight with the power of that single yes.
“Really?” Endearingly, her voice hit the higher altitudes of her range and her fingers went all pitter-patter happy. “I promise you won’t regret it. And when Pia’s at school I will totally help with painting or putting up wallpaper or making beds—anything you need. I’ll even change bedpans when the patients arrive if it will help.”
<
br /> “We have moved a bit beyond bedpans in terms of patient care.”
“Cool.” Fran was unfazed. “Whatever the least favorite jobs are, count me in.”
He began to shake his head no, but she stopped him with a finger on his lips.
“I won’t take no for an answer. You’re helping me more than you know, and from what I’ve gleaned—” they both turned to watch yet another delivery truck begin its way up the bridge toward the clinic “—you have a lot to do. Another pair of hands isn’t going to hurt anything, is it? Three years of boarding school has ensured my hospital corners are excellent in the bed-making department.”
“How’s your grouting?” he asked, in a tone more suited to a master tiler than a doctor doing his best to bring a thousand loose ends together into one beautiful tapestry.
“Unparalleled!” she shot back without the blink of an eye. “My sanding skills are a bit rusty, but I know my way around a mop and bucket something serious.”
A sudden urge to pull Fran into his arms seized Luca. If he had Fran on his side she’d no doubt start spreading her pixie dust and turn the entire workload from a burden into an adventure. Why shouldn’t he have a partner in crime?
Because the bank was threatening to take it all away.
If you’d paid more attention to your father, seen how low he was feeling...
Their gazes connected, meshing in a taut sensation of heightened awareness, powerful currents of electricity surging between the pair of them. Holding them together as one. Sensations he hadn’t felt for a long time charged through him, lighting up parts of his body to a wattage he hadn’t felt in even longer.
The buzzing of his phone checked the sensations. The raw attraction.
He glanced at the screen.
Work.
The consultant for one of his patients who’d be flying in by helicopter a week from today.
Fun and spontaneity would have to wait.
The first hit of genuine attraction he’d felt in years would have to go untended.
He had bills to pay.
“Scusi. I’ve got to take this.”
“Of course.” Fran’s smile bore the same shade of disappointment he felt in his marrow. “Patients come first.”