by Lynne Graham
‘When will you be home?’ Beppe asked plaintively. ‘I miss you both.’
‘Tomorrow. We’ll join you for dinner,’ Ellie promised and she finished the call because Polly had already texted her twice asking her to ring.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked her sister worriedly minutes later.
‘You have to open Lucy’s envelope,’ Polly told her and then she explained why and Ellie came off the phone again looking worried.
‘What’s wrong?’ Rio pressed, lifting his handsome dark head from his laptop.
‘Well, that kid sister we’ve been trying to find?’ She sighed. ‘It turns out that we didn’t really think things through properly at the start. Because we didn’t know who our fathers were, we assumed Lucy would be in the same boat. But Lucy’s had access to her original birth certificate since she was eighteen and her father’s name is probably on it. After all, he was living in London with our mother when she was conceived. All the investigator has been able to discover from enquiries is that Lucy’s father is Greek and he thinks it’s possible that the reason we can’t trace her is that she could be in Greece.’
‘That’s reasonable, so stop fussing and open the envelope. It’s only a name and a ring, nothing more important.’
‘It just feels wrong,’ Ellie muttered, going upstairs to extract the envelope from her case and clattering back down into the sitting room. She opened the envelope and extracted a ruby ring and read the name. ‘Kreon Thiarkis,’ she sounded out uncertainly.
‘I think I’ve heard that surname before. I’ll look into it. Text the name to Polly so that she can pass it straight on to the investigator,’ he urged unnecessarily because she was already doing exactly that.
‘Stop with the bossy stuff,’ she warned him.
‘Have you ever listened to yourself talking to Beppe? Telling him to eat more vegetables and drink less wine? Urging a man, who is physically very lazy, to go for walks? It’s not going to kill him to be a little overweight at this stage of his life,’ Rio opined. ‘You climb on your healthy-living soapbox every time you’re on the phone.’
Ellie winced. ‘Have I been overdoing it?’
‘No. Beppe enjoys being fussed over. He’s never had that before. And if it’s any consolation, you’re giving him very good advice but he’s very set in his ways.’
Afternoon tea was served to them out in the little garden and Ellie sat watching the canal traffic wend past in all its tremendous variety while she ate a divine slice of blackberry-limoncello tart. She was thinking about how very happy she was and that it seemed downright incredible to her that she had only been married for four short weeks.
After all, she had made some very major decisions during those four weeks. Finding Beppe, marrying Rio and discovering she was pregnant had forced her to have a serious rethink about her future. She had withdrawn at the last minute from her scheduled placement in London and was officially unemployed. But she was learning Italian as fast as she could and with Rio’s assistance had already collected up the documents required for her to register as a doctor in Italy. Her career wasn’t taking a back seat, she reasoned, she was simply on a go-slow diversion for a few months. Obviously, her priorities had changed.
She didn’t want to leave Italy now that she had found her father. With Polly married to Rashad and living in Dharia, she had no family waiting for her back in London. She wanted the time and the space to get to know Beppe, as well. And she loved Italy and saw no reason to demand that Rio live in the UK when it was perfectly possible for her to work in Italy. That decision had removed much of the stress and the fear of the future weighing her down.
And she was so happy with Rio, even though he was the sort of near-workaholic who brought his tablet out even for afternoon tea in the sunshine. They had still contrived to enjoy the most incredible honeymoon exploring Venice. Well, she had explored and he had guided, occasionally complaining bitterly when she dragged him into old buildings or shot what she thought were interesting historical facts at him. They had wandered hand in hand off the beaten track and eaten wonderful food at little restaurants known only to the locals.
Many a morning had drifted long past noon before they got dressed. He was insatiable or maybe she was, she reflected ruefully, but they at least seemed well matched in that field. For the first time ever Ellie was learning what it was to have time to waste, to be indolent, to read a something that wasn’t a textbook or a research paper.
And throughout every step of that most entertaining renaissance of hers, Rio had encouraged her and supported her. He made her happy: it was that simple and that was probably why she loved him. They still argued though. After she had told him the story of her grandmother’s brooch, Rio had made the very extravagant gesture of buying her a star-shaped brooch studded with enough diamonds to sink the Titanic. ‘You deserve it,’ he had told her while she was trying to remonstrate with him over the expensive jewellery he kept on buying for her even though she rarely wore jewellery because she had never had much to wear. Stone Age man went hunting and dragged a carcass home to his cave to feed his woman. Rio’s equivalent was inviting exclusive jewellers to visit the house to show her an array of fabulous gems worth a small fortune. And if she said no, he looked frustrated and hurt, and it was the hurt she couldn’t bear to see.
If she made any sort of comment relating to gold-diggers, he froze and changed the subject. No, he still hadn’t apologised but she was bright enough to know that the flood of expensive jewels was Rio’s way of telling her that he no longer nourished such insulting suspicions about her. And the one thing he wouldn’t talk about was his time in the orphanage and his dealings with his mother as an adult. For some reason the story of his early years was a complete conversation killer.
Ellie stirred that night soon after she heard the phone ring, for working in the medical field had wired her to take greater note of alarms and phone calls. Coming sleepily awake, she sat up and watched Rio pace the floor naked. He was speaking in Italian and far too fast for her to follow, shooting urgent questions to whoever was on the other end of the call. And he was upset, lines grooved into his lean dark features, mouth a thinned tense line. Disturbed by what she was seeing, Ellie breathed in deep, bracing herself for trouble of some kind.
Rio made another call and then looked across at her with unconcealed anxiety. ‘We need to go home. Beppe’s in hospital. He had a heart attack while one of his friends was dining with him. He received immediate attention…which is good. Isn’t it?’ he demanded jerkily, seeking reassurance.
Ellie braced herself, fighting the strong emotions tearing at her at the very thought of losing the father she had only recently found. ‘Yes, it will greatly improve his chances of making a full recovery,’ she muttered hollowly, striving and failing to be more upbeat.
CHAPTER TEN
‘SILLY FUSS,’ BEPPE said again as Ellie gripped his hand. ‘No reason to come back early.’
Even though Ellie was no stranger to the environment of an Intensive Care Unit, she was having a first-hand experience of how very intimidating it could be to see someone she loved lying in a railed bed, and Beppe looked so small and shrunken. She breathed in deep and slow, composing herself, because she was determined not to inflict more pressure on her father by overreacting.
Beppe had had an emergency angioplasty to clear a blocked artery soon after his arrival at the hospital and his prognosis was good if he followed the rules on how best to maximise his recuperation. But her father’s heart attack had given him a terrible fright because he had not spent even a day in hospital before and had enjoyed excellent health.
Rio, however, had suffered an even worse fright, Ellie acknowledged. For during the flight that had whisked them back to Florence in time to see the dawn, Rio, sky-high on anxiety, had sat lost in his thoughts and barely speaking. Right at that moment he was poised at the foot of Beppe’s hospital bed trying to act strong and optimistic for Beppe’s benefit but Ellie could spot a pretence when she
could see one. One of Rio’s hands was clenching and repeatedly unclenching in a betrayal of stress that could not be hidden. And for the first time—and she scolded herself thoroughly for it being the first time—she finally recognised that Rio loved Beppe as much as she did, indeed probably more because Beppe Sorrentino had been a part of Rio’s life since he was a child.
‘Want to live to see grandchildren,’ Beppe told them apologetically, his speech abbreviated and slurred by the medication. ‘Never had family, want that now.’
‘And you’ll have that family,’ Ellie assured him soothingly.
‘Maybe sooner than you think,’ Rio slotted in, ready, Ellie could see, to expose her there and then as a pregnant bride if it helped his godfather to look forward and raised his spirits.
‘Hopefully we’ll have news of that nature sometime soon,’ Ellie delivered to silence Rio.
A nurse adjusted the machinery surrounding Beppe and a more senior nurse with a clipboard questioned her quietly from the doorway.
‘Franca…’ Beppe murmured with a weak smile in the direction of the woman in the doorway. ‘Wondered when you’d visit.’
Ellie watched Rio freeze in patent disbelief and then slowly turn round. Her own brain, drained by the sleepless night and the stress, seemed to be refusing to function. The nurse in the doorway was Rio’s ex? Or another Franca entirely? Could she possibly be the woman Rio had once planned to marry? The same one who had run off with his one-time business partner, Jax, when Rio’s property venture failed? It was a moment when Ellie would happily have given ten years of her life to be seated in the right place to actually see Rio’s face and interpret his reaction.
‘Franca…’ he acknowledged after a noticeable pause and he addressed her in quiet Italian, moving forward and indeed stepping outside into the corridor to speak to her at length. She was a small, fragile brunette with big dark eyes and ridiculously pretty and right at that moment she was gazing soulfully up at Rio as though he had hung the moon for her.
Beppe squeezed Ellie’s limp fingers to attract her attention and her shaken eyes darted back to him. ‘She’s been working here for years,’ he whispered. ‘I knew and never said. He didn’t know.’
‘They’re old friends though,’ Ellie pointed out with forced casualness, deliberately avoiding any hint of discomfiture for the older man’s benefit.
Beppe patted her hand. ‘Good girl,’ he mumbled. ‘Sensible girl.’
Ellie watched his eyes drift shut and slowly breathed in again, feeling almost giddy as the oxygen hit her lungs. Switching her attention back to Rio and Franca, she saw a doctor joining them and she rose from her chair quickly, keen to join the medical discussion clearly taking place in the corridor. But as she straightened she lurched and stumbled, a sudden wall of blackness closing in around her. And her last thought was, How could you be so stupid?
Rio scooped up Ellie at such speed that he almost tripped over Beppe’s bed in his haste to reach his wife. ‘She’s pregnant,’ he announced in a panic to anyone who cared to listen.
Guilt slashed at Rio as he carted Ellie out to the waiting limousine. He had dragged her out of bed in the middle of the night and she hadn’t eaten in hours. That combined with the stress of Beppe’s condition had been too much for a newly pregnant woman. Why hadn’t he paid more attention to Ellie’s needs? As Franca had explained, Ellie was probably experiencing low blood pressure and low blood sugar at this stage.
Ellie began to try to sit up in the car, saying limply, ‘What are you doing? I don’t want to leave the hospital—’
‘Beppe is asleep. For the moment, the crisis is over and there’s no reason for you to stay by his bedside,’ Rio argued forcefully. ‘Right now, you need to eat and rest. And no,’ he instructed, actually daring to rest two long fingers against her parted lips in reproof. ‘Don’t bother reminding me that you’re a doctor when you can’t remember to look after yourself.’
A furious flush mantled Ellie’s cheeks. She felt the sting of his censure all the more because it was warranted. But there had been no food on the private jet because there had not been time to restock it for the emergency flight from Venice, so eating had not been an option during the flight, and since their arrival she had only seen the inside of the ICU.
‘Beppe didn’t see me faint, did he?’ she pressed worriedly.
‘No, he was fast asleep—’
‘What did his doctor tell you?’
‘That he’s on the mend but that he needs to make the changes you mentioned.’ Rio swore under his breath in driven Italian. ‘I feel guilty now. I should’ve tried to talk to him too—’
‘At the end of the day, it’s his life and his decision,’ she said tiredly. ‘I think he’ll be practical, especially once he realises the next generation is on the way, although how he didn’t guess from the way you were talking I’ll never know!’
‘Dio mio…’ Rio growled out of patience. ‘We are talking about a man who had an adulterous affair with your mother! Beppe wasn’t perfect. Why would he expect us to be?’
Ellie sniffed, still reluctant to be exposed as the loose woman who had ended up on a sofa with Rio within days of her arrival in Italy. Not even in a bed, her censorious alter ego reminded her darkly. Rio made her reckless but he also made her happy…well, when he wasn’t annoying her or worrying her.
‘So was that the same Franca you once planned to marry?’ she simply shot at him, going straight for the jugular, in no mood to contrive a subtle approach.
Rio flexed his broad shoulders and sprawled back in his corner. ‘That was a surprise but I gather Beppe knew and never mentioned it.’
‘I didn’t know she worked in the medical field—’
‘How would you?’ Rio parried. ‘It’s not relevant in any way.’
Ellie pursed her lips. No, it might not be relevant on his terms, she was thinking grimly, but that one little fact of Franca’s nursing profession and her treatment of him could certainly shed some light on Rio’s reluctance to view medical staff as being ‘caring’ and the suspicious reception he had given Ellie.
‘How did you feel seeing her again?’ Ellie asked baldly, knowing it was intrusive but unable to kill the question before it leapt off her tongue. Because, in truth, the answer to that one little question was literally all she wanted to know.
Rio treated her to an incredulous appraisal. ‘I’m not going to answer that. It’s a stupid question.’
Ellie nodded, mouth compressing harder than ever.
And Rio thought quite spontaneously that Beppe would never have got the chance to stray from his marital vows with a wife like Ellie around. Ellie picked up on every nuance, dissected it, stressed about it and absolutely had to talk about it immediately. And sometimes it drove Rio crazy because his brain didn’t work like hers. Why would he even want to talk about Franca? Aside from the reality that that liaison had happened what felt like half a lifetime ago? Women discussed feelings but he had never felt that need, had he? He very shrewdly kept that kind of nonsense to himself. Why did Ellie always want something from him that he couldn’t deliver? Time and time again she showed him that he was failing to meet her expectations.
His jawline setting like granite, Rio brooded about yet another major flaw in his character. He didn’t know how to talk about feelings, where even to begin, never mind end. He had had lots and lots of feelings when he was a boy, but he had learned through hard experience that it was wiser and safer to suppress them. He was resolutely practical and always had been. There was no point wanting what you couldn’t have and even less point in wasting energy agonising over life’s misfortunes. That creed had served him faithfully for thirty years. So, how had he felt seeing Franca without warning? Surprise and curiosity. Nothing wrong with those reactions, was there?
‘You go to bed while I make you something to eat. What would you like?’
‘You can cook?’ Ellie gasped.
‘Proficiently,’ Rio assured her with satisfaction.
&n
bsp; ‘Could you manage an omelette? Omelettes are kind of complicated, aren’t they?’ Ellie said in the tone of a woman who lived off salads and ready meals.
‘Not that complicated,’ Rio told her.
He led Ellie up to the master bedroom in his house and her luggage was brought up. She studied her surroundings with tired interest. Luxury fabrics and pale oak furniture lent the bedroom a traditional, almost feminine opulence that disconcerted her because it was very far from what she had expected to find in a rampant womaniser’s intimate lair. Had she been less tired she might have noticed that Rio was scanning the bedroom, as well, in a manner that suggested he was equally unfamiliar with it.
And so he was, having hired a decorator to chuck out his man cave accoutrements and decor while they were in Venice. Everything was new, fresh and Ellie approved even though she didn’t know it because he had made note of her favourite colours and the style of furniture she liked. She didn’t like cutting-edge contemporary and she didn’t like flashy and his former bedroom decor would have qualified in both categories. There had also been the serious risk of inadvertently encouraging Ellie to think about how many other women could have visited his home and slept in that bed. No, Rio was convinced that keeping Ellie happy meant acting as if that past of his didn’t exist. He understood her passionate possessiveness, in fact, it warmed him as much as the hottest day, but he didn’t want any element of his libidinous past coming between them.
And that included Franca. If he talked about Franca, he would be clumsy and he might well say the wrong thing. For that reason it was much better not to discuss Franca at all. Thinking that that was the troublesome topic of Franca now as done and dusted as a gravestone in a cemetery, Rio went downstairs to make an omelette worthy of a cordon bleu chef because he never missed out on an opportunity to impress Ellie and he had just realised that she couldn’t cook.
As removed from the real world as a zombie, Ellie opened her case, extracted the necessities and went into the bathroom. She had a quick shower, discovered she had left her toothbrush behind in Venice and searched the drawers in the storage units. She found several new toothbrushes, a giant box of condoms, a choice of several different lipsticks and make-up containers and two unmatched earrings. All had clearly been left behind by previous visitors. Tomorrow she would dump them. Right at that moment, she was reminding herself that Rio was her husband, that, yes, he had had a past with other women, but that that was nothing to do with her, certainly not something she should be worrying about.