consciousness …?’ His low, slightly accented voice had a tactile quality that sent an illicit shiver along Dervla’s susceptible nerve endings.
She was accustomed to dealing with tearful, distraught relatives, but this man did not fit neatly into that category—or, she suspected, any other!
Superficially at least he appeared utterly composed.
She might have called him cold if she hadn’t been given that brief glimpse behind the mask of clinical composure. She couldn’t see his face as he leant forward and brushed a strand of dark hair from his son’s waxy brow, but she could see the tell-tale tremor in his long tapering brown fingers.
‘These things are hard to predict.’
‘Try,’ he recommended tersely. ‘And please take that expression off your face,’ he said without actually looking at her.
Dervla started guiltily and wondered if eyes in the back of his head were the secret to his success?
‘I do not need sympathy. I need answers.’ His clinical detachment slipped another notch as he added angrily, ‘Neither do I need you to dumb down for my benefit. I may not have a medical degree but I am not an imbecile!’
Dervla was not offended by his manner. She had dealt with anxious parents before, though admittedly not one who looked like a fallen angel.
She was pretty sure that if she had met him outside the precincts of the hospital in a non-professional capacity—a pretty unlikely scenario as they inhabited different worlds—she might have found Gianfranco Bruni overwhelming.
But that was not the case now.
And even if it had been she could hide any inappropriate feelings behind her professional mask, because here it didn’t matter how much money he had or how many politicians or film stars he classed as close personal friends. Here and now he was a father worried out of his skull about his son and it was her job to make sure the son got well and the father stopped worrying.
Dervla was good at her job.
‘I’m sure the doctors have already explained the situation.’
Her soothing tone that calmed so many patients had no visible effect on this man. He silenced her with an imperious movement of his head. ‘The doctors talk and say nothing!’ He sounded disgusted.
‘And you thought I’d be easier to bully. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.’
He raised an astonished ebony brow and muttered something under his breath in Italian. Dervla struggled to maintain her serene smile as that heavy-lidded gaze moved across her face as though he was seeing her for the first time.
She got the distinct impression he wasn’t overly impressed by what he saw.
‘You think I’m a bully?’
It was pretty obvious that he didn’t actually give a damn what she thought of him. She was starting to doubt he cared what anyone thought about him. But he did sound genuinely curious.
‘I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know that you’re a worried father.’ Her eyes softened as they swept across the face of the unconscious youngster. ‘He really is in the right place, you know.’
She turned her head in time to see emotion flicker in the back of those spectacular obsidian eyes, but a moment later as they fixed on her there was no residual softness reflected in the dark surface.
‘Pity, Nurse, he were not in the right place at two this afternoon.’ He inhaled, turned his head and passed a hand across his eyes as though to banish nightmare images that were playing in his head.
‘Look, is there anyone I can contact for you?’ In her opinion this was not a time when anyone should be alone.
‘I am more than capable of making a phone call should I need to.’
It was clear he was also capable of being even more abrasively rude if he felt she had trespassed on personal territory. ‘Fine.’ She accepted the latest snub with a smile but risked another by adding, ‘Alberto’s mother or …?’
The hand dropped and he looked at her coldly, condensing what must have been a heartbreaking event in his life into a short factual sentence. ‘Alberto’s mother is dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And to save you the bother, it’s not a juicy titbit that the papers will shell out for. Old news, I’m afraid. The media have already done the story to death.’
It took a few seconds for the implication to sink in. When it did the angry colour flew to her cheeks.
With a forced smile she levelled her glittering gaze on his face. ‘I can assure you, Mr Bruni, that like myself all the hospital staff here take patient confidentiality very seriously.’
‘I made you angry.’
He sounded surprised … Good God, how did the wretched man expect her to feel? He’d just virtually said she’d sell her soul if the price was right! She compressed her generous lips into a tight smile. ‘I’m not angry,’ she lied.
Her denial appeared to amuse him, if the cynical curve of his sensual mouth could be termed a smile. ‘The voice was good but the eyes need some work … they are very expressive.’ His glance lingered briefly on her wide emerald-green eyes. ‘No insult was intended, Nurse …’ his heavy lidded eyes swerved to the name badge on her heaving bosom before he inserted ‘… Smith.’
His cynical drawl got so far under Dervla’s skin that she really struggled to remember that he was a man in an emotionally vulnerable position in need of sensitive handling.
‘It’s nothing personal,’ he added. ‘Everyone has their price.’
‘If I believed that, I’d be too depressed to get up in the morning, Mr Bruni. There’s a coffee machine in the relatives’ sitting room,’ she added, hoping that coffee was an impersonal enough subject to suit this cynical man with the obvious allergy to sympathy. ‘If you’d like to go there while I make Alberto comfortable …?’
‘I would have thought that making my son comfortable with half a dozen tubes sticking out of him is well nigh impossible.’
‘They do tea and hot chocolate too. Though it’s actually pretty hard to tell the difference,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s wet.’
‘Tea … per amor di Dio!’ he echoed, looking at her as though she were a raving lunatic. ‘The British think tea cures all things. Are you sure that’s not what you’re drip-feeding him?’ he asked, his eyes shifting to the bag of fluid suspended above his son’s bed. ‘I require no refreshments and I prefer it when you are trying to antagonise me than when you are trying to mother me.’
‘I wasn’t trying to antagonise you!’ she protested, then added belatedly, ‘Or mother you.’ Being forced to talk to the back of his head gave her the opportunity to see that underneath the layer of dust, blood and grime his hair was black as ebony and silky straight. It was the sort of hair that might be pleasant to run your fingers through—if, of course, it were on someone else’s head.
‘Actually
