had been involved she would have been in trouble because she had forgotten how to breathe. It might have helped if he’d moved his hand, but it had still been on her shoulder and he’d been showing no inclination to move it any time soon.
Breathing unevenly, but breathing, which was a relief, she had sketched a smile.
For the past week she had seen Gianfranco Bruni every day. Dervla had been able to observe first hand the satisfactory healing of the wound she had sutured. She had also been able to observe his devotion to his son and his ability to function with very little sleep.
He had sat at his son’s bedside for thirty-six hours straight before finally leaving it for long enough to shower, change his clothes and return clean-shaven. Dishevelled and bloodstained he had looked more good-looking than any man had a right to—scrubbed up he had been simply off-the-scale gorgeous!
Once news of his presence had spread people had started appearing from all over the hospital on the limpest of pretexts until John had let it be known that his unit was not a zoo, and anyone there without a valid reason would have some explaining to do.
Despite the fact Gianfranco’s absences had only ever been brief he had still oozed a restless vitality. You got the impression that if invited to scale the odd mountain before supper he’d leap at the chance.
More than once as Dervla had reached the end of a shift she had wished she could plug into some of his energy reserves. Mostly, though, she had tried not to think of him at all, because he was a very distracting man.
‘Mr Bruni.’ The moisture clinging to his face and plastering his dark hair to his skull suggested he’d been standing there for a while.
‘My name is Gianfranco.’ He elevated a dark brow but Dervla was too flustered by his presence—his much too physical presence—to respond to the enquiring signal. She was painfully conscious of his continued light, casual touch on her shoulder and her response to it being anything but casual. ‘Alberto calls you Dervla?’
She nodded, finding his level gaze hard to return, but discovering contrarily that she couldn’t have torn her eyes from his lean, chiselled features even if her life had depended on doing so.
‘Yes.’
‘It is an unusual name.’
‘My grandmother was Irish. I was named after her.’
He turned his head and nodded towards the grey night. ‘You are going home?’
She nodded.
‘And you are tired, hungry because you worked through your supper break and wondering,’ he added with a flash of his wolfish smile, ‘how I know these things.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘How do you know?’ Hidden cameras or was he psychic?
‘I watch you.’
Three words, but they had roughly the same effect on Dervla as the world tilting on its axis, which, if she remembered rightly, could result in the end of all life on the planet as we knew it.
The thought of those dark eyes following her sent a rush of heat through her body. It seemed pretty pointless telling herself the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach was disgust when her skin literally tingled with illicit excitement.
‘I’d be flattered if I thought there was much else for you to look at,’ she said in an attempt to laugh off his comment.
It was more difficult, in fact impossible, to laugh off the expression in his dark intense eyes as they moved over her face, then drifted lower down, skimming her body.
The muscles low in Dervla’s abdomen tightened and continued to flutter uncontrollably as she struggled to fight back the insidious lethargy that was stealing the strength from her limbs and making mush of her brain.
‘It is never a hardship to watch a beautiful woman.’
‘Me!’
Her startled exclamation drew a rumble of laughter from his chest.
‘It is infinitely preferable to watch you than your friend the muscular charge nurse. You two are an item, perhaps?’
‘John!’ She was genuinely startled by the suggestion. ‘No, of course not.’
‘He watches you too.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she retorted crossly.
‘Poor John,’ he said softly. ‘And now I have made you think about it you realise that I am right. It is useless to deny it. You have the most transparent face I have ever seen.’
He made it sound like a flaw and Dervla was inclined to agree with him. There were thoughts going through her head at that moment she would have been happier to be ignorant of herself! The idea that she might be broadcasting them horrified her.
‘You’re mistaking real life for a daytime soap. I think, Mr Bruni, that you’ve had too much time on your hands. Your imagination has obviously got out of control.’
A slow, sensual smile tugged the corners of his mobile mouth … When it came to imagination running wild, hers got totally out of control every time she made the mistake of looking at his sinfully sexy mouth.
There was a glint in his eyes she didn’t dare analyse as he readily conceded her point. ‘It could be that you’re right there and imagination is no substitute for reality. Not when it becomes painfully frustrating …’ he murmured, staring at her soft pink lips in a way that made the knot of need low in her belly tighten.
‘Actually, Mr Bruni, I find that reality rarely lives up to imagination.’ His distracting mouth for instance. There was no way he was as good a kisser as those sculpted sensual lips suggested.
‘That gives me no great opinion of the men in your life.’
It took a few seconds for his meaning to sink in, and when it did the colour flew to her cheeks. ‘I wasn’t talking about sex!’
‘Of course not,’ he soothed, looking amused by her outrage. ‘Food is a much more comfortable subject. I thought you might like to go for something to eat—real food, not imaginary?’
She blinked up at him totally nonplussed. ‘You’re asking me to dinner?’
‘We are both hungry and I am alone here …’
He said it with the manner of a man without a friend in the world, which was so totally implausible she almost laughed. ‘And you couldn’t pick up a phone or simply snap your fingers and have gorgeous, agreeable, intelligent company?’
His grin flashed. ‘I thought the lonely card was worth playing,’ he admitted with no trace of remorse. ‘You are agreeable, intelligent company.’
‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’
‘So?’ He arched a brow. ‘You will come?’
‘That’s out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m in
