nearly lied, but there was no point, they were all too well known. ‘No, but I’m an old family friend. I’ve known him forever.’ Her voice cracked, and she tried again. ‘They’re all away—they’ve gone skiing. We were about to join them. Please, tell me how he is.’
‘He’s had an accident and he’s going to surgery. That’s all I can tell you. Can you give us his full name and family contact details, please? We need to ring them urgently.’
Urgently? Her heart lurched in her chest, and for a second she thought she was going to be sick.
‘Um—yes—he’s Giovanni Valtieri. His brother Luca’s a doctor at the hospital—a professor. Contact him. He’s with the others.’ She gave them Luca’s number just to be certain, then raced to the hospital, her heart in her mouth. But in the hospital emergency department she met another brick wall, built, no doubt, by the same protocol.
‘I spoke to a nurse,’ she explained. ‘I was calling Giovanni Valtieri, and the person who answered his phone said he was here. Can I see him?’
‘Are you family?’
Yet again, she thought of lying, but it was pointless, so she just trowelled on the connection. ‘No, but I’m an old family friend. We’ve been very close since we were born—almost like brother and sister.’
And ex-lovers, she nearly added, but that was nobody else’s business and she wasn’t going to spread something so personal all over the hospital. Not when his brother worked there.
So they wouldn’t tell her any more, but that was fine. There were strings she could pull, and she fully intended to pull every single one of them. Starting with Luca…
He felt like hell.
He lay there for a moment, assessing his body. It was throbbing, and after a bit the throbbing separated out so he could catalogue it.
His right hand hurt. He tried to flex his fingers, but it didn’t seem like a good idea and anyway his hand seemed to be heavily bandaged.
OK. Right thigh—well, that certainly hurt, with a deep ache close up by his groin, but thankfully not that close.
And his right foot. They’d cut his jeans off to get to his leg, and they’d wanted to cut the boot off—his favourite boots. It had taken ages to break them in like that. He’d refused to let them, vaguely detached from it all through loss of blood. Until they’d eased it off. He hadn’t been detached then, and the last thing he remembered was the sickening pain. He must have passed out at that point.
And he had a killer headache. He frowned. She hadn’t touched his head, but maybe when he’d fallen he’d cracked it on the wall behind him. Either that or she’d had a rock in that ludicrous bag.
He breathed in, caught the hint of a familiar scent and his eyes flew open, searching for her.
‘Anita?’
She came into view, her warm brown eyes troubled. She was smiling, but there was a slight tremor in her lips, and she was pale. He’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
‘Ciao, Gio,’ she murmured, leaning over him to brush a kiss against his cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine,’ he lied, but she just snorted and raised a slender, disbelieving eyebrow a fraction.
‘I am. Of course I’m all right.’
‘Well, you don’t look it. You look like you’ve been partying with the vampires.’
‘Very funny,’ he said, turning away so he didn’t have to see the worried look in her eyes.
‘I called Luca,’ she said, and he snapped his head back round again.
‘You what?’
‘I called Luca. They wouldn’t tell me anything, wouldn’t let me in to see you, so I pulled strings.’
Damn. ‘What did he say?’
‘He’s threatening to come back.’
‘That’s ridiculous! It’s just a scratch—’
‘Gio, you don’t get taken into Theatre for a scratch!’
She broke off, took a breath and then carried on in a level tone, ‘Anyway, your mother snatched the phone off him before he could say much and she’s pretty upset. I promised I’d get you to ring her the moment you came round.’
He let out a short, harsh sigh and closed his eyes.
He shouldn’t have called her—except, of course, he would have had to because he was supposed to have been picking her up en route. And when he didn’t turn up and she couldn’t get him, she would have rung alarm bells anyway.
‘You shouldn’t have called him.’
‘They already had. They asked me for family contact details, and they wouldn’t tell me anything so I had no idea how badly you’d been hurt, but it sounded bad. They used the word “urgent”,’ she said drily. ‘It didn’t seem like the time to argue.’
No, of course not. What was he thinking? The moment he’d been admitted and they found out his identity they would have been on the phone to his brother, because he worked in the hospital and was known to all of them.
And now apparently Luca was threatening to come back and his mother was in hysterics and all because some stupid, stupid woman had come after him.
‘So—what actually happened?’ she asked, perching on the edge of the chair beside him and reaching for his hand, then thinking better of it because of the bandages.
‘A client’s ex-business partner hit me with her handbag,’ he said, his voice disgusted, and she gave a tiny incredulous laugh.
‘Excuse me? Her what?’
‘Humiliating, isn’t it,’ he said drily, ‘but it gets worse. I ducked out of the way, tripped over the kerb and fell over my own refuse bag. That’ll teach me to do my recycling properly.’
Anita glared at him. ‘Gio, how can you joke about it? They told me it was serious! What really happened?’
He gave a short, dry laugh. ‘That is exactly what happened, and believe me, it feels pretty serious. I hurt like hell.’
‘I can imagine.’ She bit her lip, puzzled. She still hadn’t got to the bottom of this, she was sure. ‘So—what did she actually do to you? Really?’
‘Apart from attempting to knock me out with her handbag? Nothing. She didn’t need to. Goodness knows what she keeps in it, the thing weighed a ton. Anyway, it knocked me off balance and I fell over the refuse bag. Then I pulled the glass out. Not a smart move.’
She rolled her eyes, then frowned, sifting through his words again and coming up with something she didn’t understand. ‘What glass, Gio? Pulled it out of what?’
‘I reckon it was a wine bottle.
