Nina rolled on to her back and scrubbed at her eyes. ‘It’s my fault for not telling him the truth from the start. He has every right to be angry. He married the wrong woman.’
‘What rubbish!’ Elizabeth said. ‘He married the right one, if you ask me. You are everything he needs. You are loyal and faithful and would rather suffer yourself than hurt someone else. What more could a man ask for?’
Nina’s chin wobbled. ‘I just wish I could tell him how I feel.’
Elizabeth got to her feet. ‘Do it.’ She handed her the phone from the bedside table. ‘Call him now and ask to see him.’
Nina stared at the phone for a long moment.
‘Go on,’ she urged. ‘What’s his number and I’ll dial it for you.’
Nina took the phone with an unsteady hand. ‘No … no, I’ll call him.’
‘Good girl.’ Elizabeth gave her an encouraging smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ She went to the door and turned back to add, ‘Good luck.’
Nina gave her a tremulous smile and, although she’d only said she’d call Marc to get her friend off her back, she looked down at the phone in her hands, surprised to see she had pressed more than half the numbers in already. She took a shaky breath and pressed the last three.
‘Nina?’ Lucia answered on the second ring. ‘Dio! Where are you? We have been so worried! Georgia is not sleeping and Marc is—’
‘Is she all right?’ Nina gasped.
‘She is missing her mother,’ Lucia said.
‘Where is Nadia?’
Lucia made a noise of disgust in the back of her throat. ‘Not that mother—you. Your sister took the money and left.’ ‘What money?’
‘The money she asked for in exchange for Georgia,’ Lucia informed her.
Nina closed her eyes. ‘And … Marc? How … how is he?’ ‘He is angry.’
‘I know.’ Nina bit her lip. ‘I don’t blame him.’
‘Where are you?’ Lucia asked. ‘He will want to see you.’
‘He told me he never wanted to see me again.’
‘That was then, this is now. Come around tonight. I will take Georgia home with me so you can have the evening together to sort things out.’
‘I don’t know if it can be sorted out.’
‘Just come home, Nina. This is where you belong.’
Nina was sitting on the edge of the sofa in Marc’s house when she heard his car come up the drive. She’d spent an hour with Georgia before Lucia had taken her with her, the baby settling as if by magic as soon as Nina tucked her into the baby seat in the back of the housekeeper’s car.
She heard Marc swear as he entered the house, the rough expletive cutting through the air like a knife. She rose to her feet as the lounge room door was pushed open, her hands in a tight knot in front of her body, her eyes hesitantly searching for his.
He came to a complete halt as his eyes met hers, his colour draining away as if he’d just been given the shock of his life.
‘Nina?’ He stepped towards her, then stopped. ‘It is you?’
‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘I was not sure …’ He pushed a hand through his hair, making it even more untidy than it already was. ‘I was expecting your sister. She called today, asking for more money.’
‘What did you say to her?’
He gave her a quick glance before looking away. ‘There is not much I can say until the adoption papers are processed.’ ‘She’s letting you adopt Georgia?’ ‘Yes, for a price, of course.’ ‘Of course.’
He met her eyes once more, his expression guarded. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I wanted to see Georgia.’
He held her gaze for an interminable second or two. ‘Is that all?’
‘No.’ She took another breath and added softly, ‘I wanted to see you.’
‘Why?’ His one word held a note of accusation as if he thought she too was after his money.
‘I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for what I did. I thought I was doing the best thing for Georgia but … I can see now how terribly wrong it was. I thought you would take her away from me but I know you are not the hard man you pretend to be. You are …’ She tripped over a little sob. ‘You are the most wonderful man I have ever met.’
‘You are her mother in ways your sister could never be,’ he said, his voice suddenly rough with emotion. ‘I was wrong to speak to you the way I did. I was so angry at how you had deceived me. I never once stopped to think of what you had sacrificed in order to protect Georgia from Nadia.’
‘W-what do you mean?’
A shadow of a smile haunted his mouth. ‘You gave yourself to me. I had no idea what you were doing at the time. I simply assumed you had had a difficult birth with Georgia, never once suspecting that not only were you not her mother but that you were also a virgin.’
Colour seeped into her cheeks and she had to look away.
‘No.’ He stepped towards her, taking her by the shoulders in a gentle hold so she had no choice but to meet his eyes. ‘Do not hide the truth from me any longer. You gave yourself to me and I want to know why.’
‘I …’ Her eyes fell away from his. ‘I couldn’t help it. I had never felt that way before.’ She lifted her eyes back to his. ‘I think I fell in love with you that first day when you came to my flat. You picked up Georgia and you had tears in your eyes. I know you were grieving the loss of your brother but you still had room for her in your heart and were prepared to do anything to protect her. I had the very same feelings. It made me realise we were more alike than different. I couldn’t help falling in love with you.’
He swallowed convulsively as he reached for her, burying his head into her neck. ‘I have wronged you so abominably. How can you love me?’
She felt the moisture of his eyes against her skin and hugged him tightly. ‘I just do. No rhyme or reason. I just do.’
He pulled back from her, his expression tortured. ‘I cannot believe I am hearing this. You mean you forgive me for what I said to you?’
‘You were angry.’
‘Not just angry,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I was so hurt. I imagined you laughing behind my back at how you had hoodwinked me.’
She gave him a quizzical look. ‘I thought you said you never allowed yourself to get hurt?’
He smiled. ‘You are not the only one who can tell lies, you know. Of course I was hurt. In spite of what I believed to be true of you, I had fallen in love with you. I wanted to believe you were not capable of the behaviour that had led to my brother’s death, but every now and again you would remind me of it by acting like your sister. I had no choice but to think you were one and the same.’
‘And yet you fell in love with me?’
He gathered her closer. ‘How could I not? You were always so loving towards Georgia and you responded to me so delightfully. I ached for you day and night and, while I hated myself for my weakness, there was nothing I could do to stop myself from touching you.’
She sighed against the solid warmth of his chest. ‘I can’t believe you love me.’
He stroked a hand through her hair, pressing her to his heart. ‘You had better believe it. I have been out of my mind these last few days trying to find you. I have not slept or eaten in days.’
She smiled up at him. ‘Me neither. I missed you so much.’
He gave her a suddenly serious look. ‘I have lain awake at night agonising over the ways I have insulted you. Do you know how wretched I feel? You are the most beautiful person, your nature is gentle and loving and your natural shyness so endearing. I have been such a fool for not seeing it from the first. If I had been thinking clearly I would have, but I was torn apart by Andre’s death and my father’s demands to claim Georgia no matter what the cost. I knew he was dying, time was running out and I had to do whatever I could to fulfil his last wish.’
Nina stroked his jaw tenderly, her eyes shining with moisture. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. I was the one in the wrong. I should have told you right at the
beginning when you came to my flat but I was frightened you’d take Georgia away. I didn’t think. I just acted on impulse and then it was too late to back out.’
‘I railroaded you, cara,’ he said with regret. ‘I can see that now. I was determined to show you for the money-hungry opportunist I believed you to be. I didn’t allow for any other explanation.’
‘But it’s over now,’ she said. ‘We have each other and we have Georgia.’
‘But you have been cheated out of so many things.’ His expression turned serious again. ‘A proper church wedding, for one thing, and a honeymoon. I do not know how I am going to even begin to make it up to you.’
She gave him a twinkling smile and nestled close. ‘I don’t mind so much about the wedding but I do mind about the honeymoon. How soon can we go on one?’
Marc smiled as he scooped her up in his arms and carried her towards the door. ‘How about now?’
The Italian’s
GP Bride
Kate Hardy
About the Author
KATE HARDY lives in Norwich, in the east of England, with her husband, two young children, one bouncy spaniel, and too many books to count! When she’s not busy writing romance or researching local history, she helps out at her children’s schools; she’s a school governor and chair of the PTA. She also loves cooking—see if you can spot the recipes sneaked into her books! (They’re also on her website, along with extracts and stories behind the books.)
Writing for Mills & Boon® has been a dream come true for Kate—something she wanted to do ever since she was twelve. She’s been writing Medical Romance™ for nearly five years now, and also writes for the Riva™ series. She says it’s the best of both worlds, because she gets to learn lots of new things when she’s researching the background to a book; add a touch of passion, drama and danger, a new gorgeous hero every time, and it’s the perfect job!
Kate’s always delighted to hear from readers, so do drop in to her website at www.katehardy.com
For Fi, with much love
(and thanks for the asparagus!)
CHAPTER ONE
‘IF THERE’S a doctor on the plane, please could you make yourself known to the flight attendants by switching on the light above your head.’
The announcement that every doctor secretly dreaded. Especially on a plane, where space was so tight that it was difficult to work. Eleanor knew that the crew were trained in basic life support, so the problem was obviously something more complicated than that. They needed her help—her knowledge, her experience in emergency medicine. She switched on her light, and one of the flight attendants came over to her.
‘One of our passengers has collapsed. Would you be able to take a look at her, please?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘Of course,’ Eleanor said, keeping her voice equally low. She knew some people wouldn’t want to get involved, but she’d never stand by and leave someone needing medical help. And in a way this was going to help her, too: instead of spending the whole of the flight from London to Naples wondering just what she was letting herself in for and worrying that maybe she wasn’t doing the right thing, she had something to keep her mind occupied.
‘Oh—do you have any identification?’ The flight attendant swallowed hard. ‘Sorry, I should’ve asked you that first.’
‘No problem,’ Eleanor said. Either the flight attendant was new to the job, or the emergency was something that had thrown her. Eleanor really hoped it was the former. The cramped aisle of an aeroplane, several thousand feet up in the air and half an hour from an ambulance wasn’t the ideal place to deal with something major. ‘You need proof that I’m a qualified doctor.’ Luckily she kept her hospital ID card in her credit-card holder. She fished it out and showed it to the flight attendant, who looked relieved.
‘Would you come this way, please, Dr Forrest? One of my colleagues is fetching the emergency kit.’
Eleanor followed her up the aisle to where a middle-aged, plump woman was slumped in her seat. A quick check told her that the patient wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. She needed to get the woman flat and start CPR now.
‘Did she bang her head at all?’ she asked the woman seated next to her patient, who was sobbing.
The answer was a flow of Italian that Eleanor really couldn’t follow.
Ah, hell. The chances were that the patient hadn’t hit her head so there wasn’t a risk of a spinal injury, and right now the most important thing was resuscitation. Just as she was about to ask the flight attendant to find someone who could speak Italian and English, to translate for her and get some help in moving the woman so Eleanor could start giving CPR, a man made his way down the aisle, following another flight attendant.
‘Orlando de Luca, family doctor,’ he introduced himself. ‘May I help?’
His English was perfect, not halting in the slightest, though she was aware of his Italian accent. And he had the most beautiful mouth she’d ever seen.
Though now was absolutely not the time to be thinking about that. They had a patient to save. And right now she needed his skills—language as well as medical. ‘Eleanor Forrest, emergency registrar,’ she replied. ‘Thank you. Her pulse and respiration are flat, so we need to start—’
‘CPR,’ he finished, nodding.
Good. They were on the same wavelength.
‘I don’t speak much Italian. The patient’s travelling companion either doesn’t speak English or is too upset to cope in a different language. Can you ask her if our patient hit her head, is taking any medication or has any medical conditions?’
‘Of course. But first …’ He turned to the flight attendant who’d brought him to the patient. ‘We need your help, please, to fetch supplies. Do you have an Ambubag and a defibrillator? It should be kept with the captain.’
‘I’ll check,’ she said, and hurried away.
Then he spoke to their patient’s travelling companion in Italian much too rapid for Eleanor to follow, given the basic Italian she’d started learning two weeks before. The only word she could catch was ‘dolore’—what was that? Sorrow?
And then she heard him say ‘l’infarto’—it sounded close enough to ‘infarct’, she guessed, for it to mean ‘heart attack’. Usually if a patient was unconscious and there was no pulse, it meant a cardiac arrest—though it could also be a grand mal epileptic seizure.
As if Orlando had guessed what she was thinking, he said, ‘Our patient’s name is Giulietta Russo. She’s travelling back to Napoli—Naples—with her daughter Fabiola. Giulietta complained of a pain in her chest and then collapsed. No history of epilepsy, no history of angina, no other medical condition Fabiola can think of, and she didn’t hit her head when she collapsed.’
So far, so good. ‘Can you ask Fabiola if her mother has a pacemaker?’ she asked.
Another burst of rapid Italian. ‘No,’ he confirmed.
At the same time, Orlando and Eleanor moved the unconscious woman to the aisle and laid her flat. Gently, Eleanor tilted the patient’s head and lifted her chin so she could check the airways. ‘No sign of blockage. Airway’s clear.’ But the B and C of ‘ABC’ were a problem: Giulietta still wasn’t breathing and there was still no pulse: no sign of circulation.
‘Then we start CPR,’ Orlando said. ‘You bag and I do the chest compressions, yes? Five compressions to one breath?’
‘Thank you,’ Eleanor said.
At that moment, the flight attendant arrived with an Ambubag. ‘We’re still checking for the defibrillator and the drugs kit,’ she said.
Eleanor really hoped there was a defibrillator on board. Otherwise their patient had no chance, because even if they landed at the nearest airport it’d take too long to get the help she needed. Without defibrillation, even with CPR, their patient’s chances of survival dropped drastically with every minute.
‘Thanks,’ she said. At least the Ambubag meant that they could give their patient positive pressure ventilation. But when their patient recovered consciousne
ss, she’d need oxygen—more than that available from the aircraft’s emergency oxygen masks. ‘Is there any supplemental oxygen, please?’
‘I’ll check,’ the flight attendant said, and hurried away again, quickly returning with the defibrillator.
‘I’ll attach the defibrillator. Do you mind carrying on with the CPR?’ she asked Orlando.
They both knew that you couldn’t stop the CPR except for the moment when she was ready to administer a shock—if this was a case where she could use a defibrillator. If the monitor showed a different heart rhythm from VF, they were in real trouble.
‘No problem,’ Orlando said.
Lord, he had a gorgeous smile. The sort that would’ve made her weak at the knees if she hadn’t already been kneeling next to their patient. She glanced up at the flight attendant. ‘I need your help to keep doing the breathing while I attach the defibrillator,’ she said. ‘If Dr de Luca tells you what to do, can you keep going for me, please?’
The other flight attendant nodded, and followed Orlando’s instructions while Eleanor attached the defibrillator and checked the monitor reading.
‘She’s in VF,’ she told Orlando, hoping that the abbreviation was the same in his language. Certainly the words would be: ventricular fibrillation, where the heart wasn’t contracting properly and was just quivering instead of beating.
She really needed access to Giulietta’s neck veins to administer the adrenaline, but in the confines of the aisle space she didn’t want to interfere with ventilation. ‘I’m going for IV access in the right subclavian vein,’ she said to Orlando. ‘Administering one milligram of adrenaline. Six-oh-six p.m.’
‘Got you.’ Although he was a family doctor—a GP—obviously he knew the protocol in this sort of case: one milligram of adrenaline every three minutes. He smiled at her, and kept directing the flight attendant while Eleanor put the paddles of the defibrillator in place.
‘Shocking at two hundred joules. Clear,’ she said.
As soon as Orlando and the flight attendant had taken their hands off the patient, she administered the shock and continued looking at the readout. ‘Still in VF. Charging to two hundred. And clear.’
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