Caroline Anderson, Sara Morgan, Josie Metcalfe, Jennifer Taylor

by Brides of Penhally Bay Vol. 01 (lit)

‘Yes.’ She had no doubt that she’d left the entire village reeling with shock. Marco Avanti just wasn’t a man that women left, especially not a plain, ordinary woman like her, who should have been grateful to have attracted the attention of anyone, let alone an Italian heartthrob.

  And she hadn’t offered an explanation.

  How could she? It had all been too personal, too private. Too devastating.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you home, even if it’s only for a short time. If you hurry, you’ll catch Marco before he starts surgery. He’s pretty busy. I expect you heard about Lucy? She had her baby early and so now they’re a doctor down.’

  Were they?

  She hadn’t had news of Penhally for a year, not since that one, solitary letter she’d received from Kate Althorp, the practice manager, who had once been her friend.

  ‘They must be busy.’ Which made it better for her. Marco wouldn’t have time to argue or make things difficult. She was going to walk into the surgery, say what needed to be said and then leave before he had time to compose arguments. Hopefully he’d be too wrapped up in the needs of his patients to be particularly bothered about an almost ex-wife.

  Amy shivered slightly, her breath leaving clouds in the freezing air. ‘I’ll see you later, Tony.’

  ‘Make sure you do. Pop into the Smugglers’ for a drink before you leave.’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled, knowing that she wouldn’t. What was the point of exposing herself to gossip for the sake of one drink when the entire liquid contents of the pub wouldn’t be enough to dull the pain of seeing Marco Avanti again?

  At the other end of the village in the state-of-the-art GP surgery that served the local community, Marco Avanti lounged in his chair, staring with brooding concentration at the computer screen on his desk. ‘Kate?’ he called through the open door. ‘Didn’t you say that the blood results for Lily Baxter had come through?’

  ‘We haven’t had time to enter them on the system yet.’ Kate walked into the room, carrying a mug of coffee. ‘With Lucy going on early maternity leave, we’ve been concentrating on finding a locum. Being one doctor down over the Christmas period just doesn’t work. I found four more grey hairs when I woke up this morning.’ She moved a stack of journals and put the coffee on his desk. ‘Here, drink this. You’re going to need it. It’s going to take you until this evening to get through the amount of patients booked in today.’

  The pungent, seductive aroma of fresh coffee filled the air and Marco gave an appreciative groan. ‘You made that for me? Truly, you’re an angel, amore.’ He curled long, strong fingers around the mug and lifted it, the smell penetrating the clouds of tiredness that threatened to fog his brain. ‘Tutto bene? Everything OK? Tell me the worst. The village has been consumed by an attack of cholera? Plague? Everyone is queuing to see me, no?’

  ‘Don’t even joke about it. And as for the queue…’ Kate smiled wearily. ‘You don’t want to know. Just take them one at a time and if you’re still here tonight, I’ll bring you a sleeping bag.’

  ‘Just make sure the sleeping bag contains a warm, willing woman,’ he drawled, and Kate smiled.

  ‘You’re incorrigible.’ She moved towards the door and Marco put the mug on his desk.

  ‘Did you find time to call the garage about the Maserati?’

  ‘Yes. They’re coming in a minute to see to it. Give me the keys and then I won’t have to disturb you.’

  Grateful that there was one less thing that he had to manage, Marco reached into the pockets of the coat that he’d thrown over the back of the chair and tossed her the keys. ‘Here. Grazie, Kate. Not only are you molto belissima, you are also efficient.’

  ‘It’s called time management. If I sort out your car, then you spend more time with patients. It’s a solution that works for everyone, so you don’t need to waste your Italian charm on me.’

  ‘Why is it a waste?’ Enjoying the brief distraction of meaningless banter, Marco leaned back and gave her a slow smile. ‘Run away with me, Kate. We could both leave this cold, windy place and live in sin in my beautiful Italy. I own a palazzo in Venice, right on the edge of the canal.’ He watched as a shadow flickered across her eyes.

  Then she noticed his gaze and blushed slightly, smiling quickly as if she didn’t want him to know that she was unhappy.

  ‘Maybe I will leave,’ she said softly. ‘Maybe it is time I did something different. But not with you. I’m not that stupid. My New Year’s resolution is never to get involved with a man who is still in love with another woman and you fall into that category.’

  Marco felt every muscle in his body tense but carefully controlled his facial expression. ‘The only woman I love,’ he purred softly, ‘is currently parked outside this surgery with an engine problem. She is my baby.’ He kept his tone neutral but Kate gave a faint smile and shook her head slowly.

  ‘You don’t fool me, Marco. Whenever Amy’s name is mentioned, you always appear so cool and in control, but I know that you’re not. What’s happening under that cloak you put between yourself and the world?’

  Nothing that he had any intention of sharing.

  ‘You want to know what’s under my cloak? This isn’t the time or the place, tesoro.’ How had they suddenly shifted from talking about her problems to talking about his? He teased her gently, swiftly and skilfully manoeuvring the conversation back to safer ground. ‘I have surgery starting in less than five minutes and that won’t be enough to do justice to your beauty. When I make love to a woman, I need at least twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Stop it or I’ll have to throw a bucket of water over you!’ Kate gave a reluctant laugh. ‘It’s bad enough that all the women in the village are in love with you. They’re all waiting for your broken heart to heal so that they can pounce.’

  ‘My heart isn’t broken.’ Marco reached forward and checked something on his computer. ‘In fact, all my organs are intact and in perfect working order.’

  ‘Well, don’t tell anyone that! There’ll be a stampede and we’re busy enough here.’ Kate’s smile faded. ‘I wish I was more like you. How do you do it? You and Amy were so in love—’

  Taken aback by her frank, personal comment, Marco uttered a sharp expletive in Italian but then noticed the haunting sadness in Kate’s eyes. With ruthless determination he pushed aside dark, swirling thoughts of his wife and focused his attention on his colleague. ‘Kate…’ With an effort, he kept his voice gentle. ‘This is not about me, is it? It’s about you. About you and Nick. Perhaps you should just tell him that you love him. Be honest.’

  ‘What? I don’t…’ Flustered and embarrassed, Kate lifted a hand to her chest and shook her head in swift denial. ‘What makes you say that? Marco, for goodness’ sake…’

  ‘Nick is the senior partner and my colleague,’ Marco drawled softly, wondering why relationships were so incredibly complicated. ‘You are also my colleague. It is hard to miss the tension between the two of you. Often I am in the middle of it.’

  ‘Nick and I have known each other a long time.’

  ‘Sì, I know that.’ Marco sighed. ‘You’re in love with him. Tell him.’

  ‘Even if you were right, which you’re not,’ Kate added quickly, her shoulders stiffening, ‘you think I should just knock on the door of his consulting room and say, “I love you”?’

  ‘Why not? It’s the truth. Speaking as a man, I can tell you that we prefer a direct approach. Feminine games are an exhausting optional extra. If a woman wants to tell me that she loves me…’ he shrugged expressively and lounged deeper in his chair ‘…why would I stop her?’

  Kate laughed in disbelief. ‘Sorry, but I’m just trying to picture Nick’s face if I were to follow your advice.’

  Marco watched her for a moment, noting the dark shadows under her eyes. ‘Your problem is that you have fallen in love with an Englishman and English men know nothing about love. They are closed up, cold, unemotional. Give them twenty-four hours to make love to a woman and they would spend twenty-three of
those hours watching football on the television.’ As he’d planned, his words made her smile.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ She straightened her shoulders, suddenly looking less like a vulnerable woman and more like an efficient practice manager. ‘You’re a good friend. And for a man, you’re very emotionally advanced. It would have been much simpler if I could have fallen for a hot Italian instead of a cold Englishman.’

  Marco thought of his own disastrous marriage. ‘Hot Italians can get it wrong, too,’ he said wearily. Badly wrong. ‘And Nick isn’t really cold, just badly hurt. He carries a lot of guilt. A lot of pain. This has been a bad time in his life.’

  A bad time in both their lives.

  Given the events of the last few years, it was amazing that he and his partner were still managing to run a GP practice.

  Reaching for his coffee, he cleared his mind of the dark thoughts that threatened to cloud the day.

  Not now.

  He wasn’t going to think about that now.

  It was the festive period and he had a punishing workload ahead of him.

  There was going to be no time to brood or even think.

  Which was exactly the way he wanted it.

  Amy paused outside the surgery. The fresh sea air stung her cheeks and from above came the forlorn shriek of a seagull.

  She had ten minutes before Marco was due to start seeing patients and she lost her chance to speak to him.

  Ten minutes to finally end a marriage.

  It would be more than enough time to say what had to be said. And he wouldn’t be able to prolong the meeting because he would have patients waiting to see him.

  Without giving herself time to change her mind, she pushed open the door and walked into Reception. The sudden warmth hit her and she walked up to the desk and saw Kate Althorp in conversation with the receptionist.

  Once, they’d been friends even though the other woman was at least ten years her senior. Had that friendship ended with her sudden departure? Amy had no doubt that everyone in Penhally would have judged her harshly and she could hardly blame them for that. She’d given them no reason not to.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ Crisp, efficient and obviously busy despite the time of day, Kate glanced up and her eyes widened in recognition. ‘Amy! Oh, my goodness.’ Abandoning her conversation, she walked round the desk towards Amy, clearly at a loss to know what to say. ‘You’re home? I thought you were still in Africa with that medical charity!’

  ‘Not any more. Hello, Kate.’

  Kate hesitated and then stepped forward and gave her a warm hug. ‘It’s good to see you, Amy. Really. Does Marco know you’re here? Why didn’t you call?’

  ‘I was hoping—Marco doesn’t know I’m here but I’d like to see him for a moment.’ Amy cringed as she listened to herself. She hadn’t seen her husband for two years and she was making it sound as though she’d just popped in to ask whether he’d be home in time for dinner.

  Doubt flickered across Kate’s face as she glanced in the direction of the consulting rooms. ‘He’s about to start surgery and we’ve been incredibly busy because—’

  ‘I know about Lucy and it’s just for a moment,’ Amy urged, unable to keep the note of desperation out of her voice. If Kate refused to let her see Marco that would mean waiting, and Amy wasn’t sure that her courage would survive any sort of wait. She had to do this now. Right now. ‘Please, Kate.’ Unaccustomed to asking for help from another person, she stumbled over the words and the older woman looked at her for a moment, her responsibilities as practice manager clearly conflicting with her desire to help a friend so obviously in need.

  After a moment of hesitation, Kate walked back round the desk and reached for the phone, her eyes still on Amy’s face. ‘I’ll phone through to him and tell him that you’re—’

  ‘No!’ Amy was already walking towards Marco’s consulting room. ‘I’ll just go straight in.’ Quickly, before she had time to change her mind.

  Her heart pounding rhythmically against her chest, Amy tapped on his door.

  ‘Sì, come in.’

  The sound of his smooth, confident voice made her stomach lurch and she closed her eyes briefly. Despite his enviable fluency in English, no one could ever have mistaken Marco Avanti for anything other than an Italian and his voice stroked her nerve endings like a caress.

  Her palm was damp with nerves as she clutched the doorhandle and turned it.

  He was just a man like any other.

  She wasn’t going to go weak at the knees. She wasn’t going to notice anything about him. She was past all that. She was just going to say what needed to be said and then leave.

  Ten minutes, she reminded herself. She just had to survive ten minutes and not back down. And then she’d be on the train back to London.

  She opened the door and stepped into the room. ‘Hello, Marco.’ Her heart fluttered like the wings of a captive butterfly as she forced herself to look at him. ‘I wanted to have a quick word before you start surgery.’

  His dark eyes met hers and heat erupted through her body, swift and deadly as a forest fire. From throat to pelvis she burned, her reaction to him as powerful as ever. Helplessly, she dug her fingers into her palms.

  A man like any other? Had she really believed that, even for a moment? Marco was nothing like any other man.

  She’d had two years to prepare herself for this moment, so why did the sight of him drive the last of her breath from her body? What was it about him? Yes, he was handsome but other men were handsome and she barely noticed them. Marco was different. Marco was the embodiment of everything it was to be male. He was strong, confident and unashamedly macho and no woman with a pulse could look at him and not want him.

  And for a while he’d been hers.

  She looked at him now, unable to think of anything but the hungry, all-consuming passion that had devoured them both.

  His powerful body was ominously still, but he said nothing. He simply leaned slowly back in his chair and watched her in brooding silence, his long fingers toying with the pen that he’d been using when she’d entered the room.

  Desperately unsettled, Amy sensed the slow simmer of emotion that lay beneath his neutral expression.

  What wouldn’t she have given to possess even a tiny fraction of his cool?

  ‘We need to talk to each other.’ She stayed in the doorway, her hands clasped nervously in front of her, a shiver passing through her body as the atmosphere in the room suddenly turned icy cold.

  Finally he spoke. ‘You have chosen an odd time of day for a reunion.’

  ‘This isn’t a reunion. We have things to discuss, you know we do.’

  His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘And I have thirty sick patients to see before lunchtime. You shouldn’t need to ask where my priorities lie.’

  No, she didn’t need to ask. His skill and dedication as a doctor was one of the qualities that had attracted her to him in the first place.

  His handsome face was hard and unforgiving and she felt her insides sink with misery.

  What had she expected?

  He was hardly going to greet her warmly, was he? Not after the way she’d treated him. Not after the things she’d let him think about her. ‘I didn’t have any choice but to come and see you, Marco. You didn’t answer my letters.’

  ‘I didn’t like the subject matter.’ There was no missing the hard edge to his tone. ‘Write about something that interests me and I’ll consider replying. And now you need to leave because my first patient is waiting.’

  ‘No.’ Panic slid through her and she took a little step forward. ‘We need to do this. I know you’re upset, but—’

  ‘Upset?’ One dark eyebrow rose in sardonic appraisal. ‘Why would you possibly think that?’

  Her breathing was rapid. ‘Please, don’t play games—it isn’t going to help either of us. Yes, I left, but it was the right thing to do, Marco. It was the right thing for both of us. I’m sure you can understand that now that some tim
e has passed.’

  ‘I understand that you walked out on our marriage. You think “upset”…’ his accent thickened as he lingered on the word. ‘You think “upset” is an accurate description of my feelings on this subject?’

  Amy felt the colour touch her cheeks. The truth was that she had absolutely no insight into his feelings. She’d never really known what he had truly been feeling at any point in their relationship and she hadn’t been around to witness his reaction to her departure. If he had been upset then she assumed that it would have been because she’d exposed him to the gossip of a small community, or possibly because he’d had a life plan and she’d ruined it. Not because he’d loved her, because she knew that had never been the case. How could he have loved her? What had she ever been able to offer a man like Marco Avanti?

  Especially not once she’d discovered—

  Unable to cope with that particular thought at the moment, Amy lifted her chin and ploughed on. ‘I can see that you’re angry and I don’t blame you, but I didn’t come here to argue. We can make this easy or we can make it difficult.’

  ‘And I’m sure you’re choosing easy.’ The contempt in his tone stung like vinegar on an open wound. ‘You chose to walk away rather than sort out a problem. Isn’t that what you’re good at?’

  ‘Not every problem has a solution, Marco!’ Frustrated and realising that if she wasn’t careful she risked revealing more than she wanted to reveal, she moved closer to the desk. ‘You have every right to be upset, but what we need now is to sort out the future. I just need you to agree to the divorce. Then you’ll be free to…’Marry another woman? The words stuck in her throat.

  ‘Accidenti, am I right in understanding that you have interrupted my morning surgery to ask me for a divorce?’ He rose to his feet, his temper bubbling to the surface, a dangerous glint in his molten dark eyes. ‘It is bad enough that I am expected to diagnose a multitude of potentially serious illnesses in a five-minute consultation, but now my wife decides that that in that same ridiculous time frame we are going to end our relationship. This is your idea of a joke, no?’