Taming the Notorious Sicilian

She’d watched him square up to those two men in the casino and she’d wanted to dive between them and kung fu them into keeping away from him.

The strength of her protectiveness towards him had shocked her.

It was how she used to be with Beth. If you messed with one twin you messed with the other.

And like it had been with Beth, when she was with Francesco she felt safe. She felt complete. It was a different completeness but every bit as powerful.

‘Will you come to Melanie’s wedding with me?’ She blurted out the words before she’d even properly thought of them.

Her heart lurched to see the palpable shock on his face.

‘Sorry. Forget I said anything,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a silly...’

‘You took me by surprise, that’s all,’ he cut in with a shake of his head. ‘You want me to come to your sister’s wedding?’

‘Only if you’re not too busy. I just...’ She bit her lip. ‘I just could do with...’

Francesco didn’t know what she was trying to tell him, but the darting of her eyes and the way she wrung her hands together pierced something in him.

‘Will there be room for me?’ he asked, stalling for time while he tried to think.

A sound like a laugh spluttered from her lips. ‘If I tell them I’m bringing a date they’ll make room, even if it means sitting one of the grandparents on someone else’s lap.’

‘Okay,’ he agreed, injecting more positivity than he felt inside. ‘I’ll come with you.’

The gratitude in her eyes pierced him even deeper.

* * *

It wasn’t until midmorning they got into the enormous bath together. After a night of making love and snatches of tortured sleep, Hannah was happy to simply lie between Francesco’s legs, her head resting against his chest, and enjoy the bubbly water.

Her phone, which she’d placed on the shelf above the sink, vibrated.

‘Leave it,’ he commanded, tightening his hold around her waist.

‘It might be important.’

‘It will still be there in ten minutes.’

‘But...’

‘Hannah, this can’t continue. You’re using your phone as an emotional crutch and it’s not good for you.’ There was a definite sharpness to his tone.

Since they’d started seeing each other properly, she’d been acutely aware of his loathing for her phone. Not her work, or the research papers or her studying; just her phone.

‘I think it’s a bit much you calling it an emotional crutch,’ she said tightly. ‘If one of my patients dies when I’m not on shift, then I want to know—I don’t want to get to work and come face-to-face with bereaved parents in the car park or atrium or café or wherever and not know that they’ve just lost the most precious thing in their lives.’

The edge to his voice vanished. ‘Is that what happened to you when Beth died?’

She jerked a nod. ‘When Beth was first admitted, the doctor was very clinical in his approach, almost cold.’ She fixed her gaze on Francesco’s beautiful arms, adoring the way the water darkened the hair and flattened it over the olive skin. ‘Beth died in the early hours of the morning, long after that first doctor had finished his shift. Luckily, she was in the care of some of the loveliest, most compassionate doctors and nurses you could wish for. They let us stay with her body for hours, right until the sun came up. I remember we had to go back to the children’s ward as we’d left Beth’s possessions there when she’d been taken off to Intensive Care. We got into the lift and that first doctor got in with us.’

She paused, swallowing away the acrid bile that formed in her throat.

‘He looked right through us. Either he didn’t recognise us as the family of the young girl he’d been treating twenty-four hours before, or he did recognise us and just didn’t want to acknowledge us. Either way, I hated him for it. My sister was dead and that man didn’t even care enough to remember our faces.’

‘Do you still hate him?’

She shook her head. ‘I understand it now. There are only so many times you can watch a child die before you grow a hard shell. We all do it. The difference is, he let his shell consume him at the expense of the patient. I will never allow myself to become like that. I never want any of my patients or their loved ones to think I don’t care.’

‘That must take its toll on you, though,’ he observed. Francesco had only watched one person die: his mother. He’d made it to the hospital in time to say goodbye, but by that point the essence of her had already gone, her body kept alive by machines.