she leaned closer to clean the wound her nostrils quivered in response to the male scent of his body. The harsh artificial light, not normally flattering, served to emphasise the hollows and planes of his strong-boned face.
‘I’m sorry.’ Under the accumulated grime and blood there was a grey tinge to his skin that she was guessing was not normal.
‘For what?’
‘Hurting you.’
‘I think it’s hurting you more than me.’ The realisation brought a flicker of amusement to his deepset eyes. ‘Are you sure you have the right temperament to be a nurse?’
‘Not everyone,’ she retorted tartly, ‘thinks empathy is a bad thing.’ She paused, a swab in her hand, and asked hopefully, ‘Are you sure that you wouldn’t prefer one of the doctors to do this? It really is a deep wound.’
‘Just get on with it.’
‘Fine, if that’s what you want. I’ll just put in some local anaesthetic to—’
He shook his dark head irritably. ‘Forget that. Just sew the damned thing up.’
‘You really don’t have to prove how macho you are. There’s nobody here but me.’
He looked at her with a contemptuous smile. ‘I thought you’d enjoy having me at your mercy,’ he taunted.
Like most nurses Dervla had ducked more than one blow from drunks in Casualty, and on one memorable occasion had had her shoulder dislocated by a confused patient who had wanted to jump out a second-floor window, but none had made her feel quite as vulnerable or as angry as this man did.
Dervla, who had always prided herself on her professionalism, was deeply dismayed. In her job you simply couldn’t mix professional with personal—it was a line you simply did not cross.
Of course she was only human and inevitably she felt a personal connection with some patients that she did not with others.
With this man she wouldn’t want a connection of any variety!
‘Fine.’
She worked as swiftly as she could, her tongue caught between her teeth as she concentrated on knitting the torn flesh neatly together. He didn’t flinch, which could mean she was really good at what she was doing, but more likely meant he was too stupidly stubborn to admit it hurt.
‘There,’ she said, taking a step back to view her handiwork. ‘You’re done. Now take things slowly—you might feel …’
Before she had finished speaking he had removed the sterile towel she had placed around his shoulders and was on his feet.
He stood, drew back the curtain and arched an enquiring brow at her.
‘I might feel what, Nurse?’
‘Faint if you get up too quickly.’
For a moment his teeth flashed white, his lean bronzed face making him look momentarily a lot younger, and—had it not been clearly impossible—even more attractive. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
A wet coat being slung onto the sofa beside her jerked Dervla abruptly back to the present. She blinked from the images on the television screen to the figure who was heading to the kitchen where the sounds proclaimed she was filling a kettle.
Sue returned a moment later. ‘It’s absolutely foul out there,’ she complained, running her hands through her wet dark curls. ‘You’ve been crying!’ she accused, peering at Dervla’s damp face.
‘No …’ Dervla lifted a hand to her face and felt the salty moisture on her skin. ‘I suppose I might have,’ she admitted.
‘This,’ her friend said, kicking off her shoes quite literally—they hit the opposite wall, ‘is driving me crazy. I’ve respected your privacy but I’m only human. I have to know—why did you walk out on the delicious Gianfranco? Who clearly adores the ground you walk on.’ She flopped down on the sofa beside Dervla and pushed her coat on the floor. ‘So spill. Give me all the lurid details.’
‘He doesn’t adore me or the ground I walk on.’ The only thing Gianfranco adored was his son and the memory of his dead wife. Dervla raised her empty mug. ‘To new beginnings!’
‘What?’ Sue said, staring at her friend’s bitter face with concern.
‘That was the toast Carla gave when she took me to lunch that first week. She said it was marvellous that Gianfranco had met me, that he was finally able to move on and have a relationship without feeling he was being unfaithful to Sara’s memory.’
‘Well, I’d prefer the woman if she had the odd skin blemish, but she’s got a point, Dervla—’
‘Only she was wrong,’ Dervla cut in huskily. ‘He hadn’t moved on—he hasn’t, and he doesn’t love me.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Of course—’
‘No.’ Dervla shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘He never pretended to, he still loves her.’ My life isn’t over, she reminded herself. It just feels that way. ‘It’s not a baby he doesn’t want—it’s my baby.’
Sue stared at her with eyes like saucers. ‘Baby! But I thought that you couldn’t have a baby. You thought it would be the deal-breaker when you told him,’ she reminded her friend. ‘You were over the moon when he said it was no problem with him.’
Dervla nodded miserably. ‘He said he already had Alberto and he didn’t want any more children. That we had a ready-made family.’
‘But you want your own, and there’s a chance …?’
Dervla nodded. Sue was one of the few people she had ever told about the tragic long-term consequences of complications after a perforated appendix and the subsequent peritonitis that had put her on the critical list in her teens.
‘I might be able to have a baby, but not,’ she added, the tears beginning to overflow in earnest from her tragic emerald eyes, ‘with Gianfranco. I have to choose a baby or him.’
Sue’s arms went around her as she began to weep loudly.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WELL, what do you think?’ the man at the head of the table asked, lifting his dark head from the spreadsheet he had been studying.
There was a silence in the room as he allowed his hooded gaze to rest on each face in turn. He could read panic in several faces as the executives frantically tried to decide what he wanted to hear.
Gianfranco felt a flash of irritation—he did not surround himself with yes-men or -women.
‘Does nobody have an opinion?’ Or a backbone?
It seemed that nobody had, or if they did they were unwilling to express it. Gianfranco felt his frustration escalate in the growing silence.
‘Perhaps there is somewhere else you want to be?’ he suggested with silken sarcasm.
