followed me!” she cried in a combination of anger and exasperation.
“Guilty as charged.”
No one had ever looked less penitent. “How did you get in here?”
“They weren’t going to let me in, but I found your clinician. When I told her I was your fiancé she took pity on me.”
Of course she did. Serena was a female. No woman was immune to Valentino’s charm.
Clara should have been furious he’d found out her secret, but it was so like Valentino to go where angels feared to tread when he wanted answers to questions, she started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Maybe it was contagious because he laughed, too. Soon the tears actually trickled from the corners of both their eyes.
They were still laughing when a smiling Serena poked her head inside the door. “I’ve never heard you laugh before. There’s nothing like a fiancé showing up to turn your world around, eh, Clara? I didn’t know you had such a gorgeous one. You’re a dark horse, you know that?”
After giving Valentino another once-over, she grinned and shut the door again. It wouldn’t be long before Serena connected his looks with the legend that preceded him and would know it was all a lie. But right now Clara didn’t care.
Those intelligent dark eyes of his searched hers for endless seconds. His expression grew solemn. “How long have you been undergoing these treatments, piccola?” he whispered in a shaky voice.
“Three weeks.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her with his tanned hands clasped between strong legs. She saw him looking at the graft below the place where she’d rolled up her sleeve. The loop had been surgically inserted in her right arm where her blood was drained and bathed in solution to separate the impurities before returning to her bloodstream.
She heard his sharp intake of breath. “Is this the reason you’ve lost so much weight?”
“No. I was perfectly healthy until two months ago when I cut my leg on one of the thorny twigs of a lemon tree at the farm. It developed into a blood infection that led to hemolytic uremic syndrome. That caused an acute failure of my kidneys.”
A pulse throbbed at the corner of his hard, male mouth. “They don’t function at all?”
Clara shook her head. “I have what’s known as ESRD.”
A bleak look entered his eyes. After a long pause, “Does this mean a kidney transplant is the only cure?” She felt his solemn tone in every sick atom of her body.
“Yes, provided it’s the right match. My parents and siblings have tried to donate theirs, but because of weight problems or high blood pressure or pregnancy, they’ve been turned down.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Tell me you’re on a waiting list—”
“Of course.”
“What kind of time are you talking here?” He fired comments and questions at her so fast she was dizzy. In fact she’d never known him to be this intense. The businessman in him had come out.
“I don’t know. Waiting for a suitable match is a complicated process. You think there’s one available, but then, for one reason or another, it can’t or doesn’t happen.”
“You have a big extended family. Surely there’s someone.”
“Two of my relatives would be matches, but they have diabetes so that rules them out. One of my aunts was prepared to go through tests, but she has had cancer in the past and the risk is too high for her. My best chance is to receive a kidney from an altruistic donor, but they’re hard to come by when thousands of people ahead of me are waiting for one.”
“Tell me what you mean by altruistic.”
“A non-related person who wants to give a kidney to a loved one, but it’s not a match, so they still donate a kidney to someone who is. There are chains of groups of people who do this, but it’s a case of finding them and linking up so their serum can be tested against my PRA.”
He frowned. “PRA?”
“It means my serum has been mixed with a panel of sixty random donors to see the reaction to the antibodies. Mine is fairly low which is a plus. Kidney allocations are based on a mathematical formula. It awards points for factors that affect a successful transplant.”
“What are the other factors?”
“Age and good health. I have all those things going for me.”
He reached out to grasp her free hand. “How often do you come here?”
“Three times a week.”
“That’s virtually every other day—” He sounded aghast.
“It’s not so bad when you consider there’s no other way for my blood to get filtered.”
“Why isn’t someone in your family driving you here and picking you up?”
“I don’t want to be a burden to them.”
He seemed to have trouble sitting there. “You’ve never been a burden to anyone in your whole life.”
Unbidden tears filled her eyes. “I am now. Everyone works so hard at the farm. It’s bad enough that I can only do my part on the farm three days a week. There’s Nonna who needs taking care of now that she’s in a wheelchair and learning to talk again. Bianca has a baby and another one on the way, and Maria’s expecting for the fourth time.”
Valentino squeezed her fingers gently. “I’ve upset you when I didn’t mean to. Every time we’ve been together, you’ve always had to leave. It has been so unlike the Clara I used to know, I’ve been at a loss. Because you didn’t explain your condition to me, I had to find out the truth for myself. Forgive me for bursting in on you like this?”
His pained eyes were so imploring, she didn’t want him to feel bad. After the painful experience he’d had with his father the other morning, she didn’t want to add to it. “There’s nothing to forgive. I didn’t say anything because I’ve loved spending time with someone who didn’t know about my condition and treated me like a normal, healthy person. If anything, I’m the one who needs to ask your forgiveness.”
“Clara…”
She smiled at him. “You wouldn’t be Tino if you hadn’t made up your mind to do something no one else would think of doing to get inside this room.”
“How did all this start?”
“You don’t want to hear all this.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
She moved her head back and forth. “Are you sure?”
Lines hardened his features. “You know me well enough to realize I never do anything I don’t want to do.”
Perhaps that was true once. She had no way of knowing what he was like now, but, since he showed
