by Kathryn Shay
NO OTHER LOVE
To Serve and Protect
Book 4
Kathryn Shay
Copyright 2017 Kathryn Shay
Cover art by Rogenna Brewer
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Author’s Note
About the Author
Come Back To Me
Prologue
* * *
The slap came fast and furious, stinging so hard her eyes watered. Calla expected it because this wasn’t the first time Lorenzo had hit her, even as his heavy weight on the bed pinned her down. “Now look what you have done.”
Her husband had been impotent the last three times he’d tried to have sex with her. His grip on her arm tightened. “First, you come to me tainted. Then you cannot conceive. Now you have emasculated me. Puttana!”
He’d called her slutty names before. She strained against him. “Let me up.”
Still on top of her, he slapped her again. Harder. “You are not contrite enough.”
“And you are not the same person I married three months ago.” She vaguely remembered the man who had walked her up the aisle of St. Catherine’s Cathedral in Casarina’s capital, handsome and debonair in his white tuxedo. Now he was as ugly as the devil.
“Did you hear me?”
In answer, she bucked, twice, and yanked at his hair, so he rolled off to the side of the mattress. At least she could breathe.
But he came up on his side and clamped his arm over her middle. How many times had he encircled her with warmth and affection when she’d been promised to him? “This cannot go on, Callandra.”
“We should see a doctor.”
“About this?” Horror contorted his face. “I will not subject myself to humiliation.”
“You want an heir.” And that was all he wanted, she’d learned. She was a baby machine to him. Besides, if she had a boy, the child would be the next king of Casarina. This was too much glory for him to give up. And caused him to wait a decade until she returned to marry him. She hadn’t caught on to what he was really like, though, until after the wedding.
She lay still for a few seconds then, sick of this, sick of everything, she clawed at his arm then used her body weight to break his painful grip on her. She was more nimble than he, so she slid off the mattress before he could stop her, found her robe and wrapped it around her, belting it tightly. She crossed to the window and tried to remember how she’d gotten into this situation.
Her first clue had been when he refused to sign the prenuptial agreement her father had not only agreed to for her mother, but had promised Mamá all his daughters would have. She should have realized that when Lorenzo had legal claim to her, he didn’t need to pretend anymore. And in the three months they’d been married, he’d gotten progressively meaner.
“This isn’t working, Lorenzo. I want a divorce.”
His laugh was cruel. “We live in a Catholic country. Divorce isn’t allowed in Casarina.”
“Then an annulment. You can cite the fact I can’t meet my wifely duties.”
“That would be an option.” She heard rustling. He must have gotten out of bed. He came up behind her and clasped her arms in a vise, where she knew he’d leave bruises. “But not now. I refuse to allow you to run back to the Americano and be together. I have not forgiven you for your infidelity.”
“I know that, dear husband, every time you touch me.” She thought of something else. “Maybe your roughness is causing us not to conceive.”
Yanking her around, he raised his fist.
She closed her eyes against the pain.
o0o
Two months later
Renata Marcello Gentileschi sat at her dressing table, rubbing lilac lotion on her hands. She blanked her mind of everything that had happened in the last week and concentrated on the task.
Soon, the door flew open.
“Enough, Renata. You are to come back to my rooms immediately. You have sulked for days and it is time you started acting like the Queen of Casarina.”
If her husband wanted a showdown, they’d have one. Rising gracefully from the bench, as her mother had taught her to do, she walked toward Alessio. He was a descendant of a royal family off the coast of Italy, now the king of Casarina, reigning over their sovereign state. For the hundredth time, she wished he wasn’t still so handsome at fifty-seven. She wished he was shorter, slighter, less muscular. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by his charms. “I am the queen. Therefore, I will do what I want.”
“I forbid you to sleep in your own rooms any longer!”
A black brow arched. “Have you forgotten the prenuptial agreement you signed?”
His dark complexion reddened. “I was a fool. A young, smitten fool who would do anything to get my pregnant girlfriend to marry me.”
When she was seventeen, she’d been madly in love with the young prince and desperately wanted to wed him, but he was seven years older than she, and had a stern side that up until she thwarted him, she hadn’t seen directed at her. Because recalling those days weakened her toward him, she folded her arms over her chest. “I reread the contract. It says you can’t order me to do anything I don’t want to. You can’t cut me off from money, though I have my own from my parents’ trust funds and don’t need your wealth. You can’t forbid me to do anything.” She took a few steps toward him. “And you can’t strike me.”
The horrified look on his face was honest. “I would never.”
She stepped up so she was close to his face. She knew her eyes burned with anger. Black coals, he’d called them. “But you would order your daughter to go back to an abusive situation. I will not forgive you for that.”
“He never signed an agreement as I did, as all the girls’ husbands are supposed to do. And she didn’t tell us. I thought I prevented anything harmful from happening to all of my girls.”
That was true. But he’d done the unthinkable when Callandra had shown up here with a black eye, given to her by that bastardo, her husband.
As if he was remembering, too, he added, “That night she came to us, I sought him out, Renata. I beat him within an inch of his life with my own hands. Told him I’d kill him if he did it again. He begged her on his knees to return. In front of us.”
“And when you came back, you told her to go back to him.”
“I retracted that. After you got so hysterical because I wanted her to go back, and we fought bitterly in front of her, I told her you could be right.”
He had. But she’d taken Callandra to her rooms and discussed options. She’d never forget her daughter’s face.
“You know very well she succumbed to your wishes, against her own, because she believed she was the cause of the rift between us, the likes of which had never happened before. The rift you caused by your initial demands.”
“So it was her decision.”
&nb
sp; “You didn’t even try to make her stay! And I couldn’t.”
“Marriage is sacred.”
In frustration, Renata gestured expansively with both arms. “We could have gotten her an annulment.”
“It was too soon for that. I honestly thought trying to work it out was the right thing.”
“I will never, ever agree with that.”
Alessio sighed deeply. “Renata, tesoro, the marriage seems to be working out. She hasn’t reported any occurrence, has she?”
“Don’t call me darling now. And, no, Callandra hasn’t come to us again. Neither would I. You let her down once, and she won’t ask for your help again.”
Clearly frustrated, Alessio threw up his hands. “What can I do about this?”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t know. I hope the damage you’ve done to her, and to our relationship, can be fixed. But it is not happening yet. Perhaps someday I will reside in your bedroom with you. Perhaps I will make love to you again. But not now.”
“Perhaps?”
Avoiding his persuasive gaze, she looked past him.
“We’ve never been apart this long!”
That was true. When he had to travel, she often went with him. And brought one of the girls along. She’d thought he was such a good father. Maybe that was why this was so hard.
“Renata? Please.”
“I can’t make myself feel differently now.” She turned and walked back to the dressing table. “Go. I won’t argue further.”
He stalked to her and grasped her arms.
She whirled on him. “Don’t you dare touch me when I’ve said no. I will leave you, the palace, but before that, I’ll fight back. Physically, Alessio. I’m able to protect myself.”
His face blanked as if she accused him of adultery. Or murder. Straightening to his powerful six-four height, he turned and strode out of her bedroom.
Distraught, Renata slid into her bed. She wanted to weep for the chasm between her and her husband. She wouldn’t, though. She had to be strong for her eldest daughter who she worried about every minute of the day.
Somehow she fell into a fitful sleep.
Renata awoke with a start. Someone was in her room. Dear Lord, he wouldn’t...
“Mamá,” she heard, recognizing Callandra’s voice, weak though it was.
Rising quickly from the bed, she turned on a nightstand light. And almost fell to her knees. Her child stood before her. One eye was closed shut, one cheek purplish, and her shoulder drooped as if it had been dislocated. “I would hug you, sweetheart, but it will hurt too much.”
A trembling hand gripped her arm. “You must help me, Mamá. I can’t go back to him. I fear for my life.”
“Of course you won’t. You will never go back to him! Never. This I promise you. I will protect you now.”
Chapter 1
* * *
Present Day
“Connor, can you examine the patient in room three for me? A little boy with a rash. I’m needed in the staging area.” Declan, the best surgeon in the Rockford Memorial Hospital emergency department, made the request of Connor and he was already hurrying away from the nurse’s station.
“Get right on it, bro,” he called to Declan’s retreating back, knowing his brother expected to be obeyed, and wasn’t asking permission. He picked up the chart Dec dropped in front of him.
“Older brother still bossing you around?” Kelly Jenkins, a top-notch ER nurse, asked with a smile. She’d been giving him a lot of those lately. Every time she did, he thought of another smile meant to entice and it broke his heart all over again.
“Yeah. I don’t mind. Do you have any siblings?”
“An only child.”
“Lucky you.” Though he didn’t mean it, he thought as he walked to room three. His family was everything to him and had been there for him during the worst time in his life.
The reason for that worst time kept him from asking beautiful, blond Kelly for a date. In the last two months since Callandra Gentileschi sought him out in D.C., he’d been unable to shake the notion that he could be with her now. But he’d said no. After what happened to him the first time she left, a reconciliation was too big a risk.
A nurse accompanied him. Drawing open the curtain, he found his patient, a slight boy with black hair and eyes that shone with concern. “Hey there. I’m Dr. Marino. You’re Paulie?”
“Uh-huh.”
He transferred his gaze to the quiet woman next to the boy. “Hello, Mrs....” He looked down at the chart. “Mrs. Fong.”
“Hello. Thank you for seeing us, doctor.” She spoke English well.
“I understand you have a rash, Paulie.”
Paulie nodded. Connor noticed he held his mother’s hand.
“How long have you had it?”
“Years.” The woman spoke for her son. “Doctors did tests. Told us different things, gave him various treatments. But nothing worked. Today, he woke up unable to stop scratching. He has sores from it.”
“I’m glad you brought him in.” After washing his hands and donning blue gloves, he walked to the side of the bed and gestured to Paulie’s hand. “May I?”
The boy nodded. On his wrists were runny, raw abrasions. He pulled back the sheets. The same on his legs. “Could you turn over?” The sores on his back weren’t as vicious, more than likely because he couldn’t scratch there.
He asked Mrs. Fong, “Did you get your pediatrician’s records for what’s been tested?”
“No.”
“Will you consent to releasing them?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll send a nurse in with the paperwork. In any case, we’ll run a series of our own tests here.” He said to Paulie, “Meanwhile, we’ll give you some steroids that should clear this up enough so the rash is tolerable. We’ll also apply topical cortisone cream.”
The boy’s eyes filled. “It hurts. I want to scratch.”
“No, Paulie, you can’t. But that itching will stop, soon, I promise.” He spoke to the nurse who’d come in when he did. “Could you get cold compresses? Apply them to his arms and legs and spread a larger one under him for his back. After ten minutes, put cream on him. I’ll order the tests.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He left the room, filled out a form and handed the clipboard to Kelly behind the desk. “Would you help his mother get the boy’s records from his doctor? The name’s on the intake form. I’ll be back in ten minutes to see how he’s doing.”
“Of course.”
Connor walked down the hall to an office. The room was empty and he went to the computer. He’d seen virulent rashes in Syria, but this was different. He planned to search the medical textbooks for comparable ones. He hoped this three-prong approach could help the boy.
o0o
Syria, 18 months ago
Heat consumed him as he walked into the hut. Connor had been sweating all day from the relentless sun beating down on the unsubstantial roof. As it was only June, the worst was yet to come. In December, the opposite happened, and it was cold here. The conditions in medical outposts kept getting worse with the constant bombings. And even though he’d been in Syria six months, he still wasn’t used to how the weather drained him or chilled him depending on the season.
Five boys sat on a cot next to each other in the exam room to greet him in this tiny village on the outskirts of Aleppo. “ As-salāmu ʿalaykum.”
The children responded in kind.
He picked up one boy’s arm and winced. The angry sores oozed with pus. He pointed to the boy’s wound area and the other four boys lifted arms affected by the same rash. He could tell this wasn’t poison ivy, impetigo, fungus or shingles. What the hell was it?
“Bug bites.” The words came from behind him. He turned to see a vision amidst all the squalor and sickness. Black as night hair, pulled back in thick knots. Raven brows arching over huge nearly black eyes. “I said those are bug bites. I had a rash of them, pardon the pun, on the Eastern side of the c
ity.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
“A salve of...” She went on to give him the ingredients but he was distracted by her husky voice. “Doctor, are you listening to me?”
“Um, no. Who are you?”
“Calla Gentileschi. Dr. Calla Gentileschi. I’ve been transferred to your area.”
“How do you pronounce your last name again?”
“In Italian, it’s Gen-tee-less-ski. But most Americas use till for the second syllable.” She smiled. “We’re from a sovereign state off the coast of Italy.”
“You don’t have an accent.”
“Our schools teach English in addition to Italian.”
“And you came to this village to help out?”
“Yes. You lost some personnel this week, I understand.”
“We did.” They’d put in their time for the grueling work. Connor himself had signed on for a year.
She said, “I brought my translator, too.”
“Oh, thank God. I’m drowning here. And not being able to communicate is part of the reason.”
“His name is Razim. He’ll be right in...oh, here he is.”
A tall, skinny Arab man walked up to her. Razim had dark hair like the beautiful doctor and sported even darker eyes. He said to her, “I cannot find the supervisor.” His English was accented but perfect.
She smiled at the young man and he smiled back. “Razim, this is Doctor...what’s your name?”
“Marino.” Connor held out his hand. “Connor Marino.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Supervisor’s here,” someone called from outside.
“I will be right back.” This from Razim before he left them.
“Where are your supplies?” Dr. Gentileschi asked. “I’ll make the salve for you. I’m assuming you’re equipped like we were and have the materials on hand.”
“We got restocked yesterday. We were lucky the planes got in.” He couldn’t help but grin at her. “But I should learn, so come on, I’ll show you where the room is.”