скачать книгу бесплатно
More than once as Dervla had reached the end of a shift she had wished she could plug into some of his energy reserves. Mostly, though, she had tried not to think of him at all, because he was a very distracting man.
‘Mr Bruni.’ The moisture clinging to his face and plastering his dark hair to his skull suggested he’d been standing there for a while.
‘My name is Gianfranco.’ He elevated a dark brow but Dervla was too flustered by his presence—his much too physical presence—to respond to the enquiring signal. She was painfully conscious of his continued light, casual touch on her shoulder and her response to it being anything but casual. ‘Alberto calls you Dervla?’
She nodded, finding his level gaze hard to return, but discovering contrarily that she couldn’t have torn her eyes from his lean, chiselled features even if her life had depended on doing so.
‘Yes.’
‘It is an unusual name.’
‘My grandmother was Irish. I was named after her.’
He turned his head and nodded towards the grey night. ‘You are going home?’
She nodded.
‘And you are tired, hungry because you worked through your supper break and wondering,’ he added with a flash of his wolfish smile, ‘how I know these things.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘How do you know?’ Hidden cameras or was he psychic?
‘I watch you.’
Three words, but they had roughly the same effect on Dervla as the world tilting on its axis, which, if she remembered rightly, could result in the end of all life on the planet as we knew it.
The thought of those dark eyes following her sent a rush of heat through her body. It seemed pretty pointless telling herself the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach was disgust when her skin literally tingled with illicit excitement.
‘I’d be flattered if I thought there was much else for you to look at,’ she said in an attempt to laugh off his comment.
It was more difficult, in fact impossible, to laugh off the expression in his dark intense eyes as they moved over her face, then drifted lower down, skimming her body.
The muscles low in Dervla’s abdomen tightened and continued to flutter uncontrollably as she struggled to fight back the insidious lethargy that was stealing the strength from her limbs and making mush of her brain.
‘It is never a hardship to watch a beautiful woman.’
‘Me!’
Her startled exclamation drew a rumble of laughter from his chest.
‘It is infinitely preferable to watch you than your friend the muscular charge nurse. You two are an item, perhaps?’
‘John!’ She was genuinely startled by the suggestion. ‘No, of course not.’
‘He watches you too.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she retorted crossly.
‘Poor John,’ he said softly. ‘And now I have made you think about it you realise that I am right. It is useless to deny it. You have the most transparent face I have ever seen.’
He made it sound like a flaw and Dervla was inclined to agree with him. There were thoughts going through her head at that moment she would have been happier to be ignorant of herself! The idea that she might be broadcasting them horrified her.
‘You’re mistaking real life for a daytime soap. I think, Mr Bruni, that you’ve had too much time on your hands. Your imagination has obviously got out of control.’
A slow, sensual smile tugged the corners of his mobile mouth … When it came to imagination running wild, hers got totally out of control every time she made the mistake of looking at his sinfully sexy mouth.
There was a glint in his eyes she didn’t dare analyse as he readily conceded her point. ‘It could be that you’re right there and imagination is no substitute for reality. Not when it becomes painfully frustrating …’ he murmured, staring at her soft pink lips in a way that made the knot of need low in her belly tighten.
‘Actually, Mr Bruni, I find that reality rarely lives up to imagination.’ His distracting mouth for instance. There was no way he was as good a kisser as those sculpted sensual lips suggested.
‘That gives me no great opinion of the men in your life.’
It took a few seconds for his meaning to sink in, and when it did the colour flew to her cheeks. ‘I wasn’t talking about sex!’
‘Of course not,’ he soothed, looking amused by her outrage. ‘Food is a much more comfortable subject. I thought you might like to go for something to eat—real food, not imaginary?’
She blinked up at him totally nonplussed. ‘You’re asking me to dinner?’
‘We are both hungry and I am alone here …’
He said it with the manner of a man without a friend in the world, which was so totally implausible she almost laughed. ‘And you couldn’t pick up a phone or simply snap your fingers and have gorgeous, agreeable, intelligent company?’
His grin flashed. ‘I thought the lonely card was worth playing,’ he admitted with no trace of remorse. ‘You are agreeable, intelligent company.’
‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’
‘So?’ He arched a brow. ‘You will come?’
‘That’s out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m in my uniform and you’re …’ She stopped, her glance sweeping upwards from his toes to the top of his glossy sable head. Oh, God, but he really was the best-looking man she had ever seen.
One corner of his mouth twitched. ‘I’m what, Dervla?’
The way he said her name in that seductive velvet voice sent a rush of colour to her cheeks. She lowered her eyes. With a voice like his he could make a shopping list sound sexy.
‘People like you don’t go to dinner with people like me.’
People like him went to dinner with glossy long-stemmed beauties, women with blonde dead-straight hair and interesting lifestyles that did not require them under any circumstances to wear something that resembled an ill-fitting and not very flattering uniform.
‘There is a law to this effect?’
Dervla pursed her lips primly, stared at her feet and thought there ought to be. She was deeply ashamed of and painfully conscious of her physical response to his overt brand of rampant raw masculinity.
‘You make it sound as though we are different species, Dervla.’
‘We might as well be, Mr Bruni.’
‘Gianfranco.’
‘It’s really very kind of you, Mr Bruni, but you don’t have to take me to dinner just because you bumped into me. Most relatives express their gratitude with a tin of toffees.’
‘I am all out of toffees.’ He held out his hands palm up to illustrate the point.
Dervla’s glance moved to the long fingers extended towards her.
‘And I did not bump into you; I was waiting for you.’
Her eyes flew to his face. ‘Why would you do that?’ she demanded, unease unfurling low in her belly. Along with it was an equally uncomfortable flutter of excitement.
‘Why do men usually wait for you, Dervla?’
‘They don’t and will you stop calling me that?’
‘Is it not your name?’
‘Not the way you say it. The way you say it makes it sound like someone else.’
‘Good, then act out of character and get into the car.’
She turned her head in the direction he indicated. ‘What car?’
How had she missed that?
The limousine with the tinted windows pulled up to the kerb beside them was massive.
She felt his hand fall on her shoulder and didn’t see the harm in letting it stay there just for a minute.
‘You need cheering up.’
Their eyes meshed and Dervla felt the resistance weaken as she gazed into his deep velvet brown eyes.
‘I’m not in need of cheering up,’ she protested, tugging her arm free. ‘Seriously.’
‘I am in need,’ he retorted. ‘Seriously.’
Something in his voice made Dervla pause in the act of pulling away. Her eyes lifted slowly, a crease of concern appearing on her brow as she registered for the first time the dark shadows under his eyes and the lines of strain etched into the skin around his mouth.
Her belligerence melted away. For some people prayer, adrenaline and caffeine took them through the early critical stages of a loved one’s illness, but later, when the critical danger passed, the emotional backlash hit them. The effect could often be debilitating.
It was difficult to imagine a man less likely to rouse her maternal instincts. It was also difficult to think of one more likely to push himself too far.
‘You must be very tired.’ This man really doesn’t need looking after, her inner voice of reason and logic pointed out.
‘I could do with a change of scene. I thought you’d be pleased I was taking your advice. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me for days via your excellent charge nurse?’ he asked innocently. ‘A more sensitive man might assume you were reluctant to talk to me …?’
‘I thought you might find advice easier to take if it came from a man.’
‘You think I have a problem with strong women? Actually I like a woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to tell a man.’
It could be she was hearing sexual innuendo that wasn’t there. All the same she struggled to keep the blush at bay.
‘Taking instruction from a woman in the right circumstances can, in my experience, be most agreeable.’
Oh, no, it was most definitely there!
She ignored the dangerous kick of excitement in her stomach and gave him a level look. It only stayed level until she saw the glitter burning deep in the dark depths. ‘Don’t look at me like that!’
Inside the hospital she was in control; outside there was no name badge to hide behind. Their roles were reversed and it scared her.
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t like it.’ Not totally a lie—liking had very little to do with the shivers walking up and down her spine.
‘Have dinner with me.’
‘I wouldn’t be good company.’
‘I’ll take the risk. Relax.’ The advice almost made her laugh … relaxing around this man was a clinical impossibility. ‘You’re hungry, I’m hungry … where is the problem?’
He turned aside to speak in rapid Italian to the driver before opening the rear door of the plush vehicle for Dervla.
After a pause she slid inside. It was only a meal and sometimes you had to live a little dangerously—and all that was waiting for her at home was a microwave dinner for one.
‘Gracious, this is bigger than my kitchen!’ she exclaimed, too startled by the extravagant luxury to maintain any level of nonchalance. ‘You’re not worried about your green credentials, then.’ This monster had to have a gigantic carbon footprint.
‘I would be a poor businessman if I wasn’t—’
‘And not a “ruthless financial genius”,’ she quoted with a twinkle.
He shook his head and gave a rueful grin. ‘That Sunday supplement quote will, I suspect, go with me to my grave.’
‘Is this the way a genius travels?’
‘I am no genius and I generally find it more convenient to use a helicopter.’
The retort drew a laugh from her. ‘What about ruthless?’ she asked curiously.
His charismatic smile flashed. ‘That rather depends on who you’re talking to.’
‘I’m talking to you.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you can’t give a straight answer. Perhaps you should go into politics.’
‘So you want to know the man behind the trashy headline?’
