‘That’s merely a physical reaction.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s more to it than that, and you know it. It isn’t just sexual attraction. When you kissed me at the surgery. When you held my hand at Pompeii. Every time you’re near me. I know how it makes me feel—and I think it’s the same for you. Or are you going to lie to me as well as to yourself?’
He didn’t answer, and as they reached her stop, she stood up. ‘I’ll see myself back.’
‘I said I’d see you back, and I keep my word. Look, I’m trying to be completely honest with you,’ Orlando said, following her off the train.
‘Honest?’ she scoffed.
‘Yes. I like you, Eleanor. A lot. And I find you attractive. The way I feel about you …’ He swallowed hard. ‘All right. You want honesty? I’ve never felt like this about anyone before. If you must know, it scares the hell out of me because I’ve no idea what I’m doing. Though what I do know is that I’m making a complete mess of things,’ he added wryly.
‘What do you want, Orlando?’
He shook his head. ‘How can I answer that? I don’t believe in love. I’ve seen my mother like this, so sure her current love was The One—the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. And then I watched the disillusionment set in when she realised he wasn’t, and saw a good relationship sour into contempt and hatred. Time and time again. She’s been divorced five times, and in and out of love more often than I can count. I don’t want that to happen to me. To us.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, I know you want to be part of a family. I can tell you now mine’s a mess. Stepsiblings and ex-stepfathers I don’t see, a father I can barely remember from my childhood. I don’t know if I can give you what you want out of life.’
‘Then it’s simple,’ she said as they reached hotel. ‘Don’t bother.’
Orlando watched her disappear through the revolving doors, feeling as guilty as hell. What was wrong with him that he couldn’t just tell her that he wanted to take the chance—to see if their relationship could grow and develop into something really special? Tell her that he was beginning to believe in ‘The One’—and that she was it, for him?
‘You,’ he informed himself as he walked home, ‘need your head examined.’
No. What he really needed to do was apologise. Ask her if they could start again.
It was just a question of working out how.
Eleanor spent a restless night, not sure whether she was more furious with Orlando for being difficult or with herself for having such lousy judgement in men.
She’d just dragged herself out of the shower the next morning when there was a knock at the door.
Huh? She hadn’t ordered room service.
Pulling her dressing-gown tighter, she opened the door a crack.
‘Dottoressa Forrest? I have a delivery for you.’
It was the most beautiful hand-tied bouquet of roses and freesias. She frowned. ‘Are you sure it’s for me?’
In answer, the maid handed her an envelope addressed to Dottoressa Forrest.
‘Thank you,’ she said, accepting the flowers with a smile and then fumbling for her purse so she could tip the maid. ‘Um, where would I be able to buy a vase?’
‘I can bring one for you,’ the maid said with a smile. ‘I’ll get it now.’
‘Grazie.’ Eleanor set the arrangement on the dressing-table and opened the envelope. There was a small card inside.
I apologise. We need to talk. Please meet me for breakfast. I will be waiting for you in the foyer. Orlando.
Right at that moment she wasn’t sure she wanted to see him. But she got dressed anyway. When the maid had brought the vase, Eleanor arranged the flowers. So Orlando wanted to see her. And he was waiting downstairs in the foyer. Did this mean he’d brought the flowers himself? Come to think of it, florists didn’t usually deliver on a Sunday.
So he must have been waiting for at least ten minutes.
Good.
He could wait a bit longer.
She managed to hang it out for another fifteen minutes before she went downstairs. Immaculately made up, so he wouldn’t be able to see the shadows under her eyes and guess that she’d slept badly. She was going to play this so cool she’d be the queen of the Antarctic.
He was sitting in one of the chairs, ostensibly absorbed in a newspaper. But she could tell that he had one eye on the stairs, because the moment she started walking down them he folded the newspaper and stood up. ‘Buon giorno, Eleanor.’
‘Good morning, Orlando.’ She wasn’t in the mood to compromise. Even though he had sent her flowers. ‘Thank you for the flowers,’ she added politely.
‘They were the least I could do.’
‘I didn’t think florists were open on Sunday mornings.’
‘The Mercarto dei Fiori—the flower market—by the Castel Nuovo is open at sunrise every morning.’
‘So you picked these yourself?’
A slight smile curved his mouth. ‘Yes, but I admit that the stall-holder arranged them for me. Hand-tying a bouquet is a little beyond my skills.’ His smile faded. ‘I owe you an apology. I’m sorry, Eleanor.’
She inclined her head in acknowledgement.
‘Will you join me for la prima colazione—for breakfast?’
His eyes were huge; he looked as guilty as a puppy who’d been caught chewing a favourite pair of shoes. And when he gave her a smile that beautiful. Even though she was still angry with him, how could she say no? ‘All right.’
‘Bene. Would you prefer to stay here, or go to a little place I know round the corner that does the best almost croissants in Naples?’
She’d bought pastries to go with morning coffee at the practice a couple of times the previous week, so he knew her weakness for them. Particularly almond croissants. She made the effort to sound cool, calm and collected. ‘As you wish.’
‘Then let’s go.’
When they were ensconced in the little caffè, with a lattè each and a plate of almond croissants between them, he looked at her. ‘You look as bad as I feel.’
She stared at him for a moment, not quite believing what she’d just heard. Was this his idea of a truce? ‘Oh, thank you.’
He noticed the acid edge to her tone and winced. ‘That came out wrong.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I used to be good with people. No, I am good with people. With patients. It’s just … you.’
She’d noticed. But she also knew he wasn’t going to say the words. And, without those, she definitely wasn’t playing.
‘Let me start again. I feel horrible about the way I behaved towards you yesterday.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m not offering any excuses. I don’t do relationships—well, only the very lightest ones—and the fact I’d even consider something different with you scares me stupid.’
She opened her mouth to speak, and he lifted a hand to forestall her. ‘No, Eleanor, please, hear me out. I’ve been thinking about what you’re doing, and even though I don’t agree with you completely I can understand why you want to do it. But you can’t do it on your own—even though your Italian’s come on in leaps and bounds, you might feel groggy in the hospital and not be able to follow what people are saying or make them understand what you want. You need someone with you. A support person. So I’m proposing …’
Her heart did a funny sort of wiggle and she dug her nails into her palms. He didn’t mean that sort of proposal, and she knew it.
‘I’m proposing that I’m that person. Your support person,’ he emphasised.
When she said nothing, he continued, ‘I made some phone calls this morning. Certain people owe me favours. So I called them in. I’ve arranged tissue typing. I’ll take the blood from you myself, first thing tomorrow morning—any future procedure will be done by the doctor at the hospital, but if we wait to register you with another doctor the paperwork will take for ever. Time I know you don’t want to waste.’ He paused. ‘And it’s your decision whether you spend your mornings at the practice or n
ot this week. No pressure.’
She could only focus on the first bit. He’d arranged tissue typing. He was going to support her, help her as much as he could with the bone-marrow donation. ‘You’ll do the blood test,’ she echoed.
‘And I’ll take the blood over to the hospital in my lunch-break. It takes five days to get the results, so if I’m there by about half past one we’ll have the results on Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, I’ll register you with the practice, so Alessandro or Giacomo can be your doctor—not me, because it’s not ethical.’
‘They’re my colleagues, too,’ she pointed out. ‘So are you saying things are different between us—that you don’t see me just as a colleague?’
A muscle tightened in his jaw. ‘Don’t interrupt.’
‘You can’t run from this for ever.’
‘I’m trying to focus on practical things, Eleanor.’
‘Do you or do you not see me as just a colleague.’
‘What do you want, blood?’ He gritted his teeth. ‘All right. I admit I don’t see you just as a colleague. But don’t give me a hard time over this, because right now I’m not in the mood for dealing with it,’ he told her. ‘Now, as I was saying, we can arrange a full medical examination—with your permission—to save time when we get the results back.’
‘If I’m a match.’
‘If. But, as you say, Bartolomeo is your father. Unless your mother’s haplotypes clash badly with his, the odds are that you will be a match.’ He looked at her. ‘This is going to be a big deal, Eleanor. Physically and emotionally. You’re not going to have room in your life for … other stuff.’
Other stuff. He meant the attraction between them. The way they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other on Friday night. The way he’d kissed her in the surgery. The way their hands had kept touching, the way they’d kept looking at each other and wondering. ‘That’s a cop-out.’
He smiled wryly. ‘Maybe.’
‘Come on. You know it is.’
‘It is also, perhaps, buying time.’
She frowned. ‘How do you mean?’
‘My head’s all over the place right now. But I do know one thing I definitely don’t want.’
She was almost afraid to ask. ‘What’s that?’
‘For you to walk out of my life. That’s a first for me. I’ve never felt that about anyone before.’
‘And you want to take things slowly.’
‘Until I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Look, you’ve been badly hurt. It’s going to take time for you to trust again. And I never trusted in the first place. It’s going to take time for me to learn.’
‘Time. Which Bartolomeo doesn’t have,’ she said.
‘Exactly. If the transplant goes ahead, the procedure will take days, weeks. Time when we have space to think, to sort things out in our heads—well, my head,’ he admitted, ‘but we’re not apart either.’
‘That sounds suspiciously like having your cake and eating it.’
‘I’m not that arrogant.’ He spread his hands. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Eleanor. If we rush this, it’s going to go wrong. Badly. We both need time to get to know each other better, be sure what we both want. This will give us that time.’
He was being sensible, she knew. Though it hurt that they’d shared the ultimate closeness and he still wasn’t sure how he felt about her.
‘Eleanor?’
She considered it. What other option did she have? Finally, she nodded. ‘All right. The other stuff goes on hold. Until Bartolomeo’s had the transplant and we know whether it was successful.’
‘And I’ll support you through this.’ He held her gaze. ‘As your friend.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON MONDAY morning, twenty minutes before Orlando’s first patient was due in, Eleanor sat on the chair next to his desk with her arm propped on a pillow, exposing her inner elbow.
‘Before we do this, I need to know something because it might affect the results,’ Orlando said. ‘Have you had a blood transfusion recently?’
‘No. For the record, I’ve never had a transfusion.’
‘That’s good. Now, make a fist for me.’
He used his thumb to probe for the vein in her inner elbow; although the gesture was completely impersonal and professional, one she’d done herself countless times, the touch of his skin against hers still made her heart beat faster.
Stop being so pathetic, she told herself silently.
‘I thought you said you weren’t scared of needles?’
‘I’m not.’
He gave her a half-smile. ‘That’s not what your veins are saying. They’ve gone into hiding. Squeeze and release your fist. And again. And again.’ His smile broadened. ‘Bene. You’ll feel a sharp scratch.’ And then he was fitting a test tube to the end of the syringe, and deep red liquid was trickling into it.
Eleanor was silent while he took the blood sample, then switched to a second test tube and then a third. She tried to crack a joke. ‘How much do you want, a whole armful?’
He regarded her seriously. ‘You’re having a full medical as well as tissue typing. We’re looking at Us and Es, full blood count, glucose—the usual blood work-ups. We need to check your renal function and your liver and your thyroid.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my kidneys or my liver or my thyroid.’
He ignored her. ‘And we need to be sure you haven’t picked up anything that might compromise Bartolomeo’s system.’ ‘I was teasing about the armful.’
He gave her a half-shrug, finished taking the sample, then placed a pad of cotton wool over the injection site before removing the needle. ‘Press on that. It’ll mean you’re less likely to bruise.’
She already knew that, but assumed it was his way of trying to put some professional distance between them—treating her as if she were a patient. And talking about procedures was safe. It meant she’d concentrate on work instead of emotions—it’d help her ignore the way her skin tingled when he touched her, even as impersonally as taking a blood sample. ‘So what happens now?’
‘For the tissue typing, the haematologist will look at about ten different DNA markers. The important ones are the recognition ones—the antigens that tell the immune system whether to attack or leave them.’
‘So they’ll be looking at chromosome six,’ Eleanor said. ‘The MHC—the major histocompatibility complex. And there are a large number of proteins involved, so it’s rare to find a perfect match with the human leucocyte antigens.’
‘It doesn’t need to be a perfect match,’ Orlando reminded her. ‘Just good enough. Remember Bartolomeo has had several blood transfusions, so he’ll already have a large number of antibodies circulating against HLAs. When they test the HLAs, if your A, B and DR ones match, we’ll be fine.’ He paused. ‘Your blood groups need to be compatible, too. If your blood group is O, it’s the universal group so you can help anyone.’
Eleanor knew what he’d left unsaid: if her blood group clashed with Bartolomeo’s, it wouldn’t work. Her blood group wasn’t a rare type, though: it was the second most common. ‘I already know my blood group. It’s A,’ she said. She dragged in a breath. ‘Don’t say we’re going to fall at the first hurdle. I know that my blood group means that his has to be A or AB for this to work.’
Orlando picked up his phone and handed it to her. ‘Call him. Find out. And if it’s A …’
‘Check if he’s positive or negative. I know.’
Two minutes later, she had the answer. ‘A-positive. Same as mine.’
‘ Bene. Had you been O, it would still have worked. Except he would have acquired your blood group because your bone marrow will be making his blood cells in the future.’
‘You’ve done a lot of research on this, haven’t you?’
‘I checked a few extra things yesterday,’ he admitted. ‘Like you, I was able to get access to a haematologist.’
‘And he was helpful?’ The question was out before she could stop herself.
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Orlando clearly knew exactly what she was asking. ‘Yes, she was,’ he said coolly. ‘And, just for the record, she’s old enough to be my mother.’
Eleanor flushed. ‘I.’ Oh, lord. Talk about putting her foot in her mouth. And what gave her the right to be jealous anyway? They weren’t officially an item.
‘This is what happens when you put emotions into things. It gets messy,’ Orlando said dryly. He labelled the test tubes and took them to the practice nurse’s room to store it in the samples fridge. ‘I’ll take this over myself at lunchtime,’ he said. ‘And you are going to have to be patient for the next five days. I’ve already pulled strings so the test results will be available on Saturday—we would normally have to wait until Monday.’ ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s not just the HLA we’re looking at—I’m asking for other blood tests as well. You work in emergency medicine.’ He looked grim. ‘I should have asked you this before. Have you ever had a needlestick injury?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Any scares of any sort?’ ‘I’m not with you.’
‘Maybe there was an emergency—maybe a case like the one on the plane, where you didn’t have the right equipment with you but you were morally bound to help. Say you rushed in to help someone, didn’t have gloves on, they were bleeding and maybe there was a cut on your hand—and obviously you wouldn’t know if your patient was HIV-positive when you treated them. So have you been exposed to blood that might have been infected?’
‘No.’
‘Good. So, Eleanor.’ He leaned back against his chair. ‘Are you spending your mornings here this week?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that all weekend,’ she admitted. ‘Working with you is going to be a strain.’
‘Unless you keep your emotions out of it and treat me as you would any other colleague.’
She wasn’t sure she could do that. And he’d admitted that he didn’t see her as just a colleague, either. ‘If I have to wait for five whole days with nothing to do except wonder what the results of the tissue-typing and medical tests will be, I’ll go crazy. I need to keep busy.’
Latin Lovers: Italian Playboys Page 29