The Italian's One-Night Baby

Many a morning had drifted long past noon before they got dressed. He was insatiable or maybe she was, she reflected ruefully, but they at least seemed well matched in that field. For the first time ever Ellie was learning what it was to have time to waste, to be indolent, to read a something that wasn’t a textbook or a research paper.

And throughout every step of that most entertaining renaissance of hers, Rio had encouraged her and supported her. He made her happy: it was that simple and that was probably why she loved him. They still argued though. After she had told him the story of her grandmother’s brooch, Rio had made the very extravagant gesture of buying her a star-shaped brooch studded with enough diamonds to sink the Titanic. ‘You deserve it,’ he had told her while she was trying to remonstrate with him over the expensive jewellery he kept on buying for her even though she rarely wore jewellery because she had never had much to wear. Stone Age man went hunting and dragged a carcass home to his cave to feed his woman. Rio’s equivalent was inviting exclusive jewellers to visit the house to show her an array of fabulous gems worth a small fortune. And if she said no, he looked frustrated and hurt, and it was the hurt she couldn’t bear to see.

If she made any sort of comment relating to gold-diggers, he froze and changed the subject. No, he still hadn’t apologised but she was bright enough to know that the flood of expensive jewels was Rio’s way of telling her that he no longer nourished such insulting suspicions about her. And the one thing he wouldn’t talk about was his time in the orphanage and his dealings with his mother as an adult. For some reason the story of his early years was a complete conversation killer.

Ellie stirred that night soon after she heard the phone ring, for working in the medical field had wired her to take greater note of alarms and phone calls. Coming sleepily awake, she sat up and watched Rio pace the floor naked. He was speaking in Italian and far too fast for her to follow, shooting urgent questions to whoever was on the other end of the call. And he was upset, lines grooved into his lean dark features, mouth a thinned tense line. Disturbed by what she was seeing, Ellie breathed in deep, bracing herself for trouble of some kind.

Rio made another call and then looked across at her with unconcealed anxiety. ‘We need to go home. Beppe’s in hospital. He had a heart attack while one of his friends was dining with him. He received immediate attention…which is good. Isn’t it?’ he demanded jerkily, seeking reassurance.

Ellie braced herself, fighting the strong emotions tearing at her at the very thought of losing the father she had only recently found. ‘Yes, it will greatly improve his chances of making a full recovery,’ she muttered hollowly, striving and failing to be more upbeat.

CHAPTER TEN

‘SILLY FUSS,’ BEPPE said again as Ellie gripped his hand. ‘No reason to come back early.’

Even though Ellie was no stranger to the environment of an Intensive Care Unit, she was having a first-hand experience of how very intimidating it could be to see someone she loved lying in a railed bed, and Beppe looked so small and shrunken. She breathed in deep and slow, composing herself, because she was determined not to inflict more pressure on her father by overreacting.

Beppe had had an emergency angioplasty to clear a blocked artery soon after his arrival at the hospital and his prognosis was good if he followed the rules on how best to maximise his recuperation. But her father’s heart attack had given him a terrible fright because he had not spent even a day in hospital before and had enjoyed excellent health.

Rio, however, had suffered an even worse fright, Ellie acknowledged. For during the flight that had whisked them back to Florence in time to see the dawn, Rio, sky-high on anxiety, had sat lost in his thoughts and barely speaking. Right at that moment he was poised at the foot of Beppe’s hospital bed trying to act strong and optimistic for Beppe’s benefit but Ellie could spot a pretence when she

could see one. One of Rio’s hands was clenching and repeatedly unclenching in a betrayal of stress that could not be hidden. And for the first time—and she scolded herself thoroughly for it being the first time—she finally recognised that Rio loved Beppe as much as she did, indeed probably more because Beppe Sorrentino had been a part of Rio’s life since he was a child.

‘Want to live to see grandchildren,’ Beppe told them apologetically, his speech abbreviated and slurred by the medication. ‘Never had family, want that now.’

‘And you’ll have that family,’ Ellie assured him soothingly.

‘Maybe sooner than you think,’ Rio slotted in, ready, Ellie could see, to expose her there and then as a pregnant bride if it helped his godfather to look forward and raised his spirits.

‘Hopefully we’ll have news of that nature sometime soon,’ Ellie delivered to silence Rio.

A nurse adjusted the machinery surrounding Beppe and a more senior nurse with a clipboard questioned her quietly from the doorway.

‘Franca…’ Beppe murmured with a weak smile in the direction of the woman in the doorway. ‘Wondered when you’d visit.’

Ellie watched Rio freeze in patent disbelief and then slowly turn round. Her own brain, drained by the sleepless night and the stress, seemed to be refusing to function. The nurse in the doorway was Rio’s ex? Or another Franca entirely? Could she possibly be the woman Rio had once planned to marry? The same one who had run off with his one-time business partner, Jax, when Rio’s property venture failed? It was a moment when Ellie would happily have given ten years of her life to be seated in the right place to actually see Rio’s face and interpret his reaction.

‘Franca…’ he acknowledged after a noticeable pause and he addressed her in quiet Italian, moving forward and indeed stepping outside into the corridor to speak to her at length. She was a small, fragile brunette with big dark eyes and ridiculously pretty and right at that moment she was gazing soulfully up at Rio as though he had hung the moon for her.

Beppe squeezed Ellie’s limp fingers to attract her attention and her shaken eyes darted back to him. ‘She’s been working here for years,’ he whispered. ‘I knew and never said. He didn’t know.’

‘They’re old friends though,’ Ellie pointed out with forced casualness, deliberately avoiding any hint of discomfiture for the older man’s benefit.

Beppe patted her hand. ‘Good girl,’ he mumbled. ‘Sensible girl.’

Ellie watched his eyes drift shut and slowly breathed in again, feeling almost giddy as the oxygen hit her lungs. Switching her attention back to Rio and Franca, she saw a doctor joining them and she rose from her chair quickly, keen to join the medical discussion clearly taking place in the corridor. But as she straightened she lurched and stumbled, a sudden wall of blackness closing in around her. And her last thought was, How could you be so stupid?

Rio scooped up Ellie at such speed that he almost tripped over Beppe’s bed in his haste to reach his wife. ‘She’s pregnant,’ he announced in a panic to anyone who cared to listen.

Guilt slashed at Rio as he carted Ellie out to the waiting limousine. He had dragged her out of bed in the middle of the night and she hadn’t eaten in hours. That combined with the stress of Beppe’s condition had been too much for a newly pregnant woman. Why hadn’t he paid more attention to Ellie’s needs? As Franca had explained, Ellie was probably experiencing low blood pressure and low blood sugar at this stage.

Ellie began to try to sit up in the car, saying limply, ‘What are you doing? I don’t want to leave the hospital—’

‘Beppe is asleep. For the moment, the crisis is over and there’s no reason for you to stay by his bedside,’ Rio argued forcefully. ‘Right now, you need to eat and rest. And no,’ he instructed, actually daring to rest two long fingers against her parted lips in reproof. ‘Don’t bother reminding me that you’re a doctor when you can’t remember to look after yourself.’

A furious flush mantled Ellie’s cheeks. She felt the sting of his censure all the more because it was warranted. But there had been no food on the private jet because there had not been time to restock it for the emergency flight from Venice, so eating had not been an option during the flight, and since their arrival she had only seen the inside of the ICU.

‘Beppe didn’t see me faint, did he?’ she pressed worriedly.