got people dropping like flies all around me. Formalities to deal with. A company that refuses to stop running just because I want it to. The phones keep on ringing. We are sinking beneath a wave of sympathy that, to be honest, I could do without right now.’ His voice was growing husky—he could hear it.
Would she scream abuse at him if he also admitted that he wanted to pick her up and carry her off to the nearest bed to lose himself in her for an hour or two?
‘The thing is, Shannon, I need to ask a big favour …’
She tensed. He grimaced as his mind made a connection with what he’d been thinking and what he’d just said. But, of course, Shannon didn’t know about that.
‘I need to be sure you are OK, you see,’ he went on. ‘Thinking of you alone in some faceless hotel room when you are not here does not make me feel OK.’ He turned his head to look at her. The sunlight was trying its best to put some colour onto her drawn cheeks but it wasn’t succeeding, and her mouth looked so vulnerable he wanted to—
‘So I would like to take back my offer to find you somewhere else to stay. I want you to go on living at my place. I will move out if you prefer,’ he offered, watching her carefully for some kind of reaction, but he wasn’t getting one. ‘But I would rather stay there too. That way I will know you will not be on your own if the—’
‘Don’t say it,’ she said.
‘No,’ he agreed, looking down at his long fingered hands hanging limp between his spread knees.
While Shannon looked at the top of his dark head, watching the sun gloss it with a silken sheen. If the worst happens during the night, was what he had been going to say. Having shared her time between Keira and the baby, she was more than aware that the ‘worst’ wasn’t very far away. As she watched the baby grow stronger with every passing hour she watched the baby’s mama slowly fade.
‘About last night,’ he inserted suddenly.
Shannon sucked in a sharp breath. His hands moved, flexing tensely before pleating together, and she saw a nerve at the edge of his jaw give a jerk.
‘I went a little crazy,’ he admitted. ‘I am ashamed of myself for taking my—feelings out on you.’
‘We both went a little crazy.’ She shifted tensely.
‘It won’t happen again,’ he promised.
‘No,’ she agreed.
‘So will you stay at my apartment?’
She looked down at her lap where the remains of her half-eaten sandwich lay slotted in its triangular casing and watched it blur out of focus on the onset of tears. ‘Keira isn’t ever going to wake up, is she?’ she whispered.
Luca didn’t answer for a moment, then he shook his dark head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he responded huskily.
‘I’ll stay,’ she agreed on a thick swallow.
Luca sat back against the bench suddenly and the air hissed out from between his teeth in a tense, taut act of relief. A moment later something dropped on her lap next to the sandwich carton.
It was a plastic security card. ‘Access,’ he explained. ‘You might need it if I cannot get here to collect you.’
She nodded.
‘If I cannot make it then my driver Fredo will come for you. You remember Fredo?’
‘Yes.’ Another nod while she stared down at the card. Fredo was a wiry little man with amazing patience—he needed it for the hours he tended to hang around waiting for Luca to appear.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I don’t have to worry about you getting into the back of some stranger’s car.’
It was a joke. She hadn’t expected it. It surprised her enough to force a small laugh out of her. Luca laughed too, one of those deep, soft, husky sounds of his that caressed the senses. But it all felt so strange and wrong to be laughing in the circumstances that soon they both fell silent and still.
‘You don’t have to worry about me at all,’ she thrust into that stillness.
‘Worry is not the word that shoots into my head,’ he countered. ‘Someone should be here with you supporting you through this. Here.’ Something else landed on her lap. She stared in surprise at the sight of her own mobile telephone. ‘It was in my overcoat pocket. I found it this morning,’ Luca explained. ‘Here is my private number. Log it in the phone’s memory. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need me, Shannon.’ It was a serious threat more than polite reassurance.
Then he stood up so suddenly that he made her blink. Big and lean and dark and tense, he blocked out her sunlight. She felt cold—bereft. He was going to leave and she wanted to fling herself at him and beg him to stay!
But he had duties to return to and she had a bedside vigil to keep.
‘I have to go.’ He stated the obvious and tension zipped through the air like electric static. ‘Use the phone, do you hear me?’
Shannon pressed her lips hard together and nodded. He turned and strode away without glancing back and she remained sitting there with the sun trying to put back the warmth he had taken with him.
It didn’t.
Luca had never felt so inadequate or useless in his entire life as he did when he walked away from her like that. But he had things to deal with, lousy, throat-locking, soul-stripping things that could not be put off.
But his mind was locked into Shannon—or was it his heart? He didn’t know. What he did know was that Shannon might have betrayed him two years ago but he was betraying her now by not being there when she needed him.
And it had to be him. That was the other part of his inner conflict that was flaying him alive. He did not want someone else to be there with her. He didn’t even want to think about her leaning on someone else.
‘Dio, leave me in peace!’ he rasped when the land-line on the desk began to ring.
It was a reporter wanting him to make a statement. This was not the first insensitive lout he’d had to deal with today and probably would not be the last. As he was replacing the receiver Renata put her head round the door to look him a question. She’d added ten years in twenty-four hours. They all had.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was the press, not the hospital.’
Renata remained hovering in the doorway and he knew she wanted him to hold her. Walking across the room, he took her in his arms and let her weep into his shoulder and wished it could be OK for him to break down and weep.
‘How is Mama?’ he asked when the flood subsided.
‘She’s awake now, and looking a little stronger,’ Renata told him, then added carefully. ‘Luca, about Shannon—’
‘Don’t go there, Renata,’ he warned thinly and was glad of the excuse to move away from her when the phone rang again. His sister hovered for a few seconds longer, silenced by his censure and waiting to find out who was calling before slipping away once she knew
