CHAPTER ELEVEN
ERIN managed to maintain a shaky illusion of composure until she was safely in her own room. Once there she sank onto the bed with her head in her hands.
Her face was tear-stained when a few minutes later she lifted her head and exclaimed out loud, ‘Oh, my God, I really said I’d go back to Italy with him.’
Walking over to the old-fashioned washstand, she turned on the cold tap and splashed her face with water. There were water droplets trembling on her lashes as she looked at herself in the mirror. The indent between her feathery brows deepened as she sighed.
How did I manage to fool myself? she wondered. It seemed incredible that she had for one moment believed that just because it would be convenient she had fallen out of love with Francesco.
Love didn’t work that way; at least it didn’t for her. The important thing now was that she didn’t lose sight of the fact that love didn’t automatically equate with happy ever after, especially when the object of your affections had never really been in love with you in the first place.
No more self-delusion—she had to see things as they really were, she told herself sternly.
The problem was that seeing things as they were did not produce any magical solution. As she dried her face and applied a thin layer of concealing tinted moisturiser Erin nursed the depressing knowledge that there was no solution, magical or mundane.
God, this was a nightmare!
Her troubled gaze trained on the horses in the paddock underneath her window, she lifted her chin. Perhaps it was best not to try and think of a solution to everything, just concentrate instead on sorting one problem at a time.
The scene on the patio when she went downstairs was of domestic harmony. Sam was seated on a wrought-iron chair reading the newspaper while his wife was irritating him by reading aloud headlines that caught her eyes.
It was the sight of Francesco sitting on a rug spread on the grass, making baby Gianni, who was kicking his legs, chuckle by blowing raspberries on his bare tummy that stopped Erin in her tracks.
The hand around her heart tightened as she watched him. He would make the most incredible father.
Valentina was the first to notice her. ‘Erin! Grab a scone before this greedy piglet scoffs the lot,’ she said, ruffling her husband’s hair.
Erin glanced towards the plate of scones liberally laced with cream and shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’ She made a conscious effort to look anywhere but at Francesco, who had turned his head when Valentina had called her name.
Erin looked at the spot on the rug that Francesco patted. She slipped off her shoes and began to walk towards him across the wet grass. Just looking at him made her ache with love. It was a mystery how she had ever managed to fool herself she could ever feel anything else for him.
Before she reached them her phone began to ring. She gave an apologetic grimace and pulled it from her pocket. ‘It’s Mum,’ she said, pretending not to notice the looks her hosts exchanged at the information. ‘I’ll just take it …’ She gave a vague gesture towards the house and walked barefoot in that direction.
Once out of sight of the group she lifted the phone to her ear. ‘Damn, no signal!’ She gave a frustrated sigh and looked around. She spotted the flight of stone steps that led to the room above where Sam stored the horses’ feed and headed for it at a fast trot.
She slipped on her shoes before running lightly up the steps. At the top she scanned the screen on her phone and gave a sigh of relief when she saw she had a signal.
‘Mum, what’s wrong?’ It was safe to assume that something was wrong—her mother had a talent for timing her crises to coincide with social occasions. A less generous person might have suspected she timed it deliberately!
Erin sat on the top step and listened with more resignation than concern—she’d been there too many times before to panic—as her tearful mother explained between sobs that her father had walked out.
‘I’ll be right th—’ She let out a startled yelp as the phone was pulled unceremoniously from her fingers. She lifted her head in time to see Francesco lift it to his ear.
‘No, Erin won’t be there. She has a previous engagement.’
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she yelled furiously.
‘Something you should have done a long time ago—cut the apron strings,’ he informed her callously.
Erin rose to her feet quivering with indignation. Though he was standing a couple of steps below her she still had to tilt her head to look him in the face. ‘How dare you? You had no right! She was in a terrible state; she needs me.’
‘No, she uses you,’ he contradicted.
‘You’re talking about my mother.’
‘And she’ll carry on using you,’ he said, ignoring her furious insertion, ‘until you break the cycle. It’s about habit and guilt. If you go every time your mother calls you’re simply reinforcing her behaviour.’
Her eyes flashing dangerously in response to his extraordinarily high-handed attitude, she glared up at him. ‘And if I let you run my life and decide who I talk to I’m simply reinforcing your inclination to be a total despot!’ she yelled back. ‘My mother needs me.’
‘So does your family.’
‘But she is my …’ Lower lip caught between her teeth, she shook her head as she caught his meaning.
‘The baby and I … we are your family now, Erin. What are you going to do when the baby is born? Drop everything including him when she calls?’ he suggested bitterly.
She felt as though she were being torn in two directions. At one level she knew he was right—he was after all only echoing thoughts she had had herself. But she resented him for making his point this way, for making no allowances for her feelings.
‘The situation is untenable, Erin,’ he said quietly.
Did he think she didn’t know that? ‘I feel responsible.’
‘Get over it,’ he recommended unsympathetically. He tossed the phone and she automatically caught it. ‘If you don’t like the situation you can change it—the choice is yours.’
Some choice, she thought, staring at the phone in her hand. ‘You’re asking me to choose between my mother and you.’ He shrugged. ‘It is not something you should have to think about.’
‘You have no right to ask me!’ she quivered, lifting a hand to her head. ‘You’re just as bad,’ she accused shrilly, ‘as she is! Get out of my way. I’ve had enough of this!’
‘That’s right,’ he jeered. ‘If things get difficult or even mildly uncomfortable, run away.’
‘“Mildly uncomfortable!”’ she yelled back. ‘Maybe this is a minor irritation to you—’
‘You’ve never been a minor anything!’ he retorted.
Her mistake, Erin decided when analysing the moment at a later date, was turning her head to look back at him as she ducked under his arm to reach the next step. If she hadn’t she would have been able to regain her balance when her heels snagged in the hem of her jeans and she wouldn’t have taken a dive down the shallow flight of stone stairs and ended in an inelegant heap on the floor on the cobbled yard below.
She lay there, winded, her eyes wide open. As she struggled to get her breath she was aware of Francesco falling to his knees beside her.
‘Are you all right?’ Without waiting for her to respond, he added furiously, ‘Dio! You little idiot! What the hell did you think you were doing!’ Before she had either the breath or the opportunity to respond Francesco launched into a low, incensed sounding tirade in Italian.
Erin only understood one word in three, but one sentiment she did pick out was a very heartfelt wish that he had never set eyes on her.
‘And I,’ she gasped, hoping he attributed the weak tears that flooded her eyes to pain. ‘wish I’d never laid eyes on you, either.’
‘You just threw yourself headlong down a flight of stairs. You could have killed yourself, and what about the baby?’ ‘There was no throwing involved. I just fell over my own feet.’ Clumsy, she
was willing to admit to, but not stupid! ‘And it wouldn’t have happened in the first place if you hadn’t been …’ She stopped, wide eyes lifting to his face. ‘Oh, my God, the baby!’ She tried to ease her weight off one hip and winced. The cramping pain that extended like a band around her middle made her gasp. ‘You are hurt!’
She was, but it wasn’t her own safety that Erin was worrying about.
‘Here, let me help you.’
She shook her head. ‘I think I might stay here for a moment.’ Please, please, God, make the baby all right. If anything happened to it she would never forgive herself. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘I think perhaps you should call an ambulance, just as a precaution.’
Even before she had finished speaking he had his phone out and was punching in the emergency number.
‘Ambulance,’ he snapped. ‘The nature of the emergency? My wife has fallen down a flight of stairs. No, she’s conscious and … look, she’s twelve weeks pregnant. Just get here.’ He gave the address before sliding his phone back into his pocket. ‘They said just stay still.’
Erin nodded as he pushed the hair back from her brow with cool brown fingers. ‘Pretty much what I planned to do. You know I’m sure everything’s fine.’
‘Of course it is,’ he agreed.
If it wasn’t—his firm jaw tightened as he pushed aside the thought he wouldn’t permit himself to contemplate such a possibility.
‘I’m just being c-cautious.’ Erin strove to hide her terror, but it was a struggle.
‘You want this baby a lot, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do.’ She wanted this baby with a ferocity that she had not imagined she was capable of. She might not be able to have the man, but the baby was hers.
He reached out tentatively towards her stomach and then drew back. ‘Are you still in pain?’
‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘I think I must have caught my side on the bottom step.’
Francesco looked at the sharp edge and cursed under his breath. When he turned back to Erin she was dabbing the tip of her tongue to the beads of sweat along her upper lip. He had no doubt at all she was playing down her symptoms for his benefit.
‘You will make them save my baby, won’t you, Francesco, if I’m out of it for any reason?’
Francesco, pale under his tan, closed his eyes. ‘You won’t be out of it,’ he told her hoarsely.
‘But just in case,’ she persisted.
‘I will do everything that is necessary.’ To keep you safe and well, he added silently.
The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. Francesco watched, feeling increasingly useless as they loaded Erin into the back of the ambulance. Before getting in himself, Francesco babbled a brief explanation to a shocked and concerned Sam and Valentina who had appeared.
The presence at Erin’s side of a paramedic who monitored her condition meant he couldn’t even hold her hand. Once they reached the hospital casualty department the situation got, if anything, more frustrating. She was whisked away immediately, while they expected him to be content with a promise from a harassed-looking doctor that they would tell him as soon as they knew anything.
Francesco was not content.
He was expressing his discontent to an officious and most obstructive person whose name badge identified him as some sort of administrator when a doctor older than the one who had spoken to him earlier approached.
‘Mr Romanelli, is it?’
Francesco took the hand extended to him.
‘James Ross.’
‘What is happening to my wife?’ The conspiracy of silence was driving him crazy. Did these people not appreciate that with no information it was natural to assume the worst? ‘I need to be with her.’
The doctor gave a soothing smile. ‘And you shall be,’ he promised. ‘Come with me—we’ll go somewhere a little more private.’
Wasn’t that what they said in medical dramas before they broke bad news?
Francesco refused tea, refused a seat, and explained that the only thing he was interested in was information concerning his wife’s well-being.
‘Yes, well, I’m afraid that your wife has some internal bleeding.’
He looked understanding as Francesco, deathly pale beneath his naturally vibrant colouring, sank into the chair he had just rejected.
Francesco had felt like this only once before. On that occasion he could remember thinking that a man could only endure this sort of pain once. Yet here he was alive and feeling as if someone had pushed their hand into his chest and ripped out his heart.
‘That is bad?’
‘Well, any surgical intervention carries a risk.’
The breath left Francesco’s body in a long shuddering sigh. ‘You mean you can do something?’
‘Good Lord, yes! I’m sorry I wasn’t clear.’
Francesco suspected it was his mental acuity and not the doctor’s communication skills that were at fault.
‘Hopefully we will be able to perform the procedure via a laparoscope—no need, you understand, for an incision? That is the method of choice, but there are no guarantees. Depending on what we find, we might have to go in.
‘Your wife is very concerned about what the operation will mean for the baby, but I have made it quite plain to her that there is really no option.’
‘The baby is all right—alive?'Amazement swept over him. ‘I assumed when you said …’
‘No, your baby is doing very well, and there is no reason that it should not survive the surgery without taking any harm. Though again, and I emphasise this, there are no guarantees.’
‘But it has a fighting chance?’ If anything happened to the baby, Erin would never forgive him—he would never forgive himself!
‘Absolutely. Now would you like to see your wife?’
Francesco leapt to his feet. ‘I would.’
The doctor spoke into an intercom and a nurse appeared. ‘Would you take Mr Romanelli to his private room to see his wife?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE room was little more than a box, white and clinical. Francesco approached silently. Erin appeared to be sleeping, or possibly they had given her something to make her sleep? As he looked at her lying there she seemed so small and scarily fragile with an intravenous infusion attached to her arm.
Francesco stood at the bedside, his chest tight with the emotions that swelled and grew as he looked at her.
The cover was white, the gown she wore was white and her skin was if possible even whiter, her freckles standing out in stark relief across the bridge of her nose! The only colour was her glorious hair that peeked out beneath the ridiculous cap they had put on her head.
He closed his eyes. His silent prayer was interrupted by the sound of a slurred voice.
‘You look terrible.’
He opened his eyes and saw her looking up at him. ‘I thought you were asleep.’
She shook her head and made a weak flailing gesture, which he correctly interpreted as an effort to catch hold of his hand. Francesco caught her hand between the two of his.
‘They gave me something. I feel a bit drunk … do I sound a bit drunk?’
Francesco smiled into her glazed eyes. ‘A little,’ he admitted.
‘Thought so … Did they tell you?’
He nodded. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he promised.
‘And the baby will be fine?’ She looked at him with total trust that pierced him like a knife. He didn’t deserve her trust–if it hadn’t been for him there would have been no accident.
‘Absolutely,’ he said, hoping with all his heart that he was right.
Erin gave a sigh. ‘Good. Do you know that you have the most incredible … no, better than incredible mouth?’ she slurred. ‘Thank you.’ ‘I like your eyes, too.’
Before she had commented on any other parts of his anatomy two porters and a nurse arrived with a trolley.
They let him walk with them as far as the entrance to the anaesthetic room. She lay with h
er eyes closed, her small hand tightly curled over his.
He bent and kissed her lips before they wheeled her inside, resisting the urge he had to yell at the person who removed her hand from his.
As they closed the door the last thing he heard was a slurred, ‘And great legs, too!’
The first thing Erin became conscious of was voices, male and female; she couldn’t understand what they were saying.
‘Go away,’ she said crankily. ‘My head hurts. I’m thirsty.’ She lifted a hand to protect her eyes from the strong light shining in them. ‘Where am I?’
Someone spoke, Erin heard them say, ‘She’s back with us,’ and there was a click and light filtering through her fingers vanished.
The next thing that Erin was conscious of was fingers, cool on her forehead. They stilled for a moment. She tried to say don’t stop but her vocal chords did not respond. She struggled to open her eyes but gave up—her eyelids felt too heavy, and besides the soothing, cool fingers were stroking again.
‘If anything happened to you … per amor di Dio, I would never have forgiven myself.’ Francesco, his lean face contorted with self-recrimination, looked down at the pale, still-sleeping features of the woman he had married.
The woman he had nearly lost.
His tortured eyes darkened and he tensed expectantly as her eyelashes fluttered against the pallor of her waxen cheek. A sigh escaped him when after a moment they stilled and there was no other sign of returning consciousness.
A nurse materialised quietly at the bottom of the bed.
‘Shouldn’t she be awake by now?’ he asked, anxiety making his manner abrupt.
The nurse gave a soothing smile and promised him everything was just as it ought to be. ‘She’ll probably sleep until the morning,’ she informed him with a lot more cheer than he considered the situation warranted. ‘If she does wake up she’ll be pretty woozy. Maybe you should go home and get some sleep?’
He reacted irritably to the tentative suggestion. ‘I’ll stay.’
After studying his face she did not argue the point. ‘Would you like a blanket?’
‘I do not need a blanket.’ What he needed was his wife to open her eyes.
Happy Mother's Day! Page 25