The Man Who Risked It All

‘One thing I will never be is a nurse,’ Lexi returned, determined to keep this light from now on, even if it killed her, because she didn’t ever want to send Franco back into that terrible dark place he’d just emerged from. ‘And you’ve seen me wearing less, so stop complaining.’

‘I was not complaining, merely making an observation.’

‘Well …’ The next deep breath she took felt dreadfully cluttered up. ‘If you can stand up, lose the trousers, then we’ll be even.’

He wasn’t joking about the wound she saw once the chinos lay discarded on the bed. There was a thin trail of blood seeping through the dressing.

She chewed on her bottom lip for a second. ‘So, what do we do now?’

‘I remove the dressing and take a look while you fetch me a fresh one.’ Sitting down again, he began to pick at the sealed edges of the white strip. ‘In the bathroom, by the washbasin,’ he instructed.

Lexi moved off obediently. She had a feeling he was deliberately playing things light too, because he didn’t want things to kick off between them again.

How had they done that? Got so far they’d almost ended up screaming at each other?

She had screamed at him, she remembered, as she took a minute to wash her hands thoroughly before picking up the sealed sterile dressing packet and taking it back into the bedroom along with a clean towel.

‘Squeamish?’ he asked when she went still half a metre away.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen an open wound before.’

&n

bsp; ‘It isn’t open.’

He peeled the last of the old dressing away and she saw that he was telling the truth. A four-inch purple line was all that was left to show for the surgery, except for a tiny gape in the middle, which must be where he’d knocked it.

‘That healed quickly.’ Walking forward again, she sat down beside him on the bed. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not much. If you open that packet you will find a small plastic tube in there, filled with clear liquid.’

Franco took the tube from her, snapped its seal and applied the liquid to the wound. ‘What does it do?’ she asked curiously as she watched.

‘Accelerates the healing process … You ask a lot of questions for a reluctant nurse.’

‘I’m not the one doing the nursing. It’s not bleeding any more …’

‘There should be a clean, dry pad in the packet,’ Franco prompted, and she found it and offered it to him, then watched again while he used it to soak up the excess liquid. When he was done she took it from him and silently handed him the fresh dressing strip, which he proceeded to smooth into place.

‘Lexi, I’m sorry,’ he murmured suddenly. ‘About everything we put you through.’

The ‘we’ sounded odd, but she didn’t pick him up on it. She was more concerned with the tension knot she could feel inside her tummy, because there was something in the way he’d made that apology that she didn’t quite like.

‘I was an easy target.’ It was amazing, she thought, how a big row followed by a fright could bring on concessions. ‘I was hateful to you most of the time.’

‘With reason.’

‘Yes, well …’ Needing something to do, she gathered up the discarded items and stood up. ‘I’ll put these in the bathroom wastebin.’

‘Then go back to bed.’

She stilled halfway to the bathroom, oddly wounded by the flat way he’d said that. ‘Thanks for the permission,’ she whispered.

‘And tomorrow, if you want, you can go back to London.’

Now she knew what it felt like to be stabbed in the back. She swung round, her face paled to parchment. He was sitting there, still smoothing his long fingers over the white dressing as if he expected it to fall off if he stopped. His head was dipped. In fact she realised he hadn’t looked at her properly once since she’d seen that horrible strained, haunted look when she’d pulled his hands away from his face.

‘Y-you want me to leave?’ Even she heard the hurt choking up her voice.