The Man Who Risked It All

‘You will have this particular talk to my face, cara, because I don’t want a divorce.’

She swung round yet again. ‘Until today we haven’t so much as spoken a word or set eyes on each other for three and a half years!’ Lexi reminded him. ‘Of course you want a divorce. I want a divorce.’

That said, she turned and reached for the door handle, heard a sound from behind her that sent a cold chill racing down her spine, and spun right back to discover that Franco was sitting up and attempting to pluck out the shunt from his hand. But his coordination was obviously wrecked by the drugs.

‘What do you think you are you doing?’ Shrieking alarm sent Lexi darting back to the bed to cover his hand and the shunt with her both of her own hands in an effort to stop him, but he just changed tack and threw back the covering sheet instead. Even as she tried to grab it the cage went flying onto the floor. The next shock wave hit her when she saw for the first time what the cage and sheet had been covering up. More bandaging strapped one powerfully structured thigh, but it wasn’t that that shocked. Even in the gloom she could see the sickening extent of his bruising, which spread right the way down his left side.

‘Oh, my God,’ she choked, fighting to wrest the sheet from him at the same time as she tried to block him from getting up off the bed. The beeps and alarms started sounding like crazy. Reacting as if programmed to do it without thinking, Lexi reached out and took Franco’s face between her palms, made him look at her.

‘Please stop it,’ she begged, then, because he looked so totally hurt and stubborn, she bent her head and crushed her trembling lips against his.

She kissed him without understanding why she kissed him. And she continued to kiss him even after Franco stopped fighting and went perfectly, perfectly still. It was like her own moment of madness: she didn’t even stop when bright lights were suddenly blazing and the nurse was letting out a sharp gasp of shock. The alarms played a riotous symphony in harmony with the stirring mud of long subdued pleasures that split open huge fissures across her aching heart.

When she did eventually pull away she was breathing fast. She felt his fast breath feather her face and looked into eyes turned to stunning black-onyx. Tears gathered—hot tears, pained tears—and she was trembling.

‘I’ll stay,’ she shook out thickly and brokenly. ‘I will do anything so long as you lie down again. Please, Franco. Please, I will stay …’

CHAPTER THREE

LEXI sat in one of the chairs in the anteroom beside Franco’s room and clutched the hot cup of coffee the nurse had just pressed on her, while a white coated man who had introduced himself as Dr Cavelli sat beside her, waiting for her violent shivers to stop.

She was in shock. She still couldn’t take on board what she had done. Her lips burned and felt swollen. Tears smarted her eyes; she was still feeling the buzzing effects of the fear and panic she’d felt when she’d seen Franco trying to get up off the bed. If she had not witnessed it for herself she would never have believed that he could behave in such an irrational way. For a man basically made up of one big bruise, he’d displayed shockingly phenomenal brute strength.

‘You have to understand, Signora Tolle—’ Dr Cavelli spoke gently ‘—your husband does not require twenty-four hour nursing surveillance because his physical injuries require such intensive monitoring. It is his mental state which concerns us the most.’

Lifting her head up, Lexi repeated, ‘His mental state?’ with a strangled breath of disbelief.

‘Overall, your husband is exceptionally strong and healthy—as he has just demonstrated.’ The glimmer of a rueful smile touched Dr Cavelli’s lips. ‘His physical injuries are many, but already they are beginning to heal. However, he has recently lost his closest friend in violent circumstances, and his feelings of shock and grief are great.’

‘Franco and Marco were like twin brothers.’ Lexi nodded in bleak understanding. ‘Of course he’s feeling Marco’s loss very deeply.’

‘It is the way he is dealing with that loss that concerns us. As I believe you have already witnessed, if Signor Clemente’s name is mentioned your husband either ignores the subject or becomes—agitated.’

‘Of course he becomes agitated.’ Lexi fired up in Franco’s defence. ‘How would you prefer him to react? Fall into a fit of weeping? He’s a man. He’s in shock and he’s injured. He must be suffering terrible feelings of guilt because he survived when Marco did not, and—’

‘Signora, that is the point I am trying to make,’ Dr Cavelli intruded. ‘Men and women react to extreme stress differently. A woman generally vents her distress in some way.’

Recalling the way she’d just kissed Franco, Lexi dipped her eyes from the watchful doctor’s as a heated blush surged through her face.

‘A typical male’s response, however, is to protect himself by detaching himself from the tragedy. He blocks it out.’

‘He just needs time to—recover a little.’ Lexi leapt once again to Franco’s defence. ‘The accident only happened this morning, but already you’re telling me he’s on some kind of suicide watch!’

Franco suicidal? Were they all mad?

‘I don’t think I used quite such dramatic language,’ the doctor protested distractedly.

Glowering at him—because what he’d said had been very dramatic to her way of thinking—Lexi was disconcerted to find that he was studying her from beneath a seriously puzzled frown, and there was an extra throb in the tension surrounding them that made her glance at the nurse, who was back at her station. She saw that she was staring oddly at her too.

‘What?’ she demanded sharply. ‘What have I said to make you look at me like that?’ Prickling with alarm all over again, Lexi set down the coffee before she spilled it. ‘He hasn’t attempted to—?’

Dr Cavelli gave a quick shake of his head to dispense with that fear. ‘Signora … the accident took place three days ago.’

Lexi blinked. What was he talking about? ‘But I saw it on the news today,’ she insisted, ‘It said …’ But she couldn’t remember if it had given an actual time or a date. ‘And Franco’s father only called me this morning—’

‘Your husband has been drifting in and out of consciousness for two days and only regained full consciousness this morning.’

Lexi continued to stare at him, feeling a bit like an owl perched on a branch that she was in danger of tumbling off. Twitter. She’d heard Suzy talking about Twitter. Her inner vision glanced back at the fifty-inch flat screen and recalled for the first time that they must have been watching one of those news review channels—the kind that loved reporting gory crashes and …