had already tried by bringing up the subject of his ex-wife. Wanting to resist more pain, he stayed deliberately silent.
‘Fabian?’
‘What is it?’
‘Are you sure you don’t regret—?’
‘I am perfectly satisfied that I have done absolutely the right thing in marrying you, Laura. In time, you will also come to see that. Now, drink your coffee and do not spend another moment worrying. We only have a week here in Rome before we go home again, so let us just try and relax and enjoy our time together.’
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS only the second day of their holiday. They were strolling through a busy piazza, having just exited a fascinating gallery of Renaissance art. One moment Laura was walking along, then the next it was as if she was in a dream sequence, where she was running but didn’t seem to be able to move fast enough.
Fabian had been talking quietly at her side, pointing out landmarks as they headed towards the great cathedral of St Peters’ and she had been entranced by everything. Then there had been the sound of rubber tyres screeching on concrete, a woman’s scream puncturing the air, and a child’s small perplexed face in the front of a small knot of people as the out-of-control motorcycle careened towards him at speed. Her attuned senses registered everything, and in less than an instant Laura found herself racing towards the child and snatching the small body safely up into the air as the motorcycle veered off course at the last second—but not before the handlebars glanced sickeningly against her hip.
Somebody—man or woman she didn’t register right then—pulled the now crying little boy out of her arms just as Laura felt herself sink to the ground in dizzying pain. The next instant Fabian was leaning over her, a stream of frantically voiced words leaving his lips but making no impression upon its recipient, his handsome face bleached of all colour and the sheen of sweat standing out on his brow. Wanting to reassure him, Laura reached out, but just as her hand touched his shirtsleeve darkness swallowed her whole …
She blinked, and blinked again. Her mouth felt like a dried-up riverbed, and the light—clinical and harsh—made her feel as if someone was sticking needles into her eyes. She heard a small sound leave her lips, but felt strangely detached from it—as though it hadn’t come from her at all.
‘Laura?’ A hand lay on top of hers, and she saw that it was Fabian’s. When she turned her head towards him she saw by his expression that he’d visited a place he never wanted to visit again.
‘Where am I?’
‘You are in the hospital. You saved a little boy from a runaway motorcycle and you were hit yourself. Do you remember?’
‘I don’t feel any pain.’
‘The doctor gave you a painkiller as well as a sedative.
You came round more or less straight away, but then in the ambulance you became very upset and agitated. Can you not remember anything?’
The concern and fear in his eyes seemed to double, and Laura again felt the strongest impulse to reassure him. ‘I’m sure it will all come back to me in time. The last thing I remember was walking towards St Peter’s … then there was that horrible sound of tyres screeching.’ Swallowing hard over a throat that seemed to grow more parched by the second, Laura tried to sit up.
Immediately Fabian stood up from his chair by the side of the bed and started to urge her back down against the single white pillow behind her head.
‘I need a drink … I’m so dry!’
‘Of course you can have a drink—but do not try and sit up so suddenly.’
The plastic tumbler of cool water tasted like nectar to Laura. A few thirsty sips and she felt her head clear a little. Enough to note that she was in a small screened-off area, with the attendant sounds of a busy casualty department audible outside it.
‘You risked your own life to save that child’s. It was an incredible thing to do, but perhaps incredibly foolish too. My heart has barely stopped racing since it happened!’
‘I’m sorry I frightened you.’
Her voice a mere husk of its normal tone, Laura stared at his still stricken face and knew she was perilously close to the kind of tears that would not be easily subdued. She felt as if something was unraveling, and she fought hard to contain the sea of emotion that swelled inside her. Fabian didn’t trust emotions, she remembered, and she wouldn’t disgrace herself in front of him.
‘The little boy … it’s coming back to me now.’ She held the side of her head and frowned. ‘He wasn’t hurt? And what about the girl on the motorcycle?’
‘The little boy was completely unscathed, thanks to you. His parents have been in the waiting room all this time, wanting to come in and thank you for what you did. The girl suffered a broken leg, I believe, and is having treatment as we speak. It could have been much worse for her … and you.’
There was that look on his face again—part fear, part admonishment for being so reckless. Laura sighed, glad to hear her impulsive rescue attempt had not been in vain, but also sad that what had started out a bright, hopeful day was now inevitably marred by events.
‘I’d like to go home.’ She wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that … where was her home now? ‘Please … can we just go, Fabian?’
‘You have to see the doctor first. You will not be able to go anywhere until you are thoroughly checked over, and I will not be taking you anywhere until you are!’
Sinking reluctantly back down onto the pillow,
Laura shut her eyes to blank out the misery that suddenly descended. Why couldn’t he kiss her? Be tender? Say something kind? Because the kind of marriage she had entered into with him was not the kind that was born out of love on his part, she reminded herself. Now all she wanted to do was curl up tight into a little ball and try and become invisible.
He had died a thousand deaths in those surreal moments when Laura had suddenly left his side and sprinted like an athlete towards the crowd of people on the opposite side of the road. His heart in his mouth, Fabian had almost caught up to her when the motorcycle had reached her first, veered sharply to the left to avoid hitting her, and then—with sickening inevitability—glanced against her anyway.
After the child had been grabbed from her arms, she had sunk to the ground as graceful as a ballerina. For a moment Fabian had been paralysed by the shock of what had happened, then he’d been leaning over her, registering with violent regret the look of pain and puzzlement on her whitened face and cursing himself for not reacting more quickly and pushing her out of the way of danger. When she had passed out he had been half out of his mind with fear, thinking he might be going to lose her, and the relief he had experienced when she’d opened her eyes again had been off the scale. But Fabian had been even more traumatised by the scene in the ambulance.
The accident seemed to have triggered distressing memories of the car accident in which her husband had been killed, and Laura had cried out his name in anguish again and again—the sound almost cutting Fabian’s heart in two. Her arms had been flailing wildly, and the attendant paramedics had literally had to hold her down to prevent her from harming herself. That was when she’d been given the sedative.
Now
