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‘All the cousins will be there—’ it was Isabella’s turn to tease ‘—including the lovely Donatella. She’s still single, Stefano.’
‘Fortunately for both of us, my taste in women doesn’t run to children,’ Stefano said wryly and Isabella giggled.
‘She’s twenty-one, Stefano, hardly a child. And she’s been trying to remind you of that fact for a few years now. Surely you haven’t forgotten last Christmas? The push-up bra and the low-cut top? I thought Papa was going to have a stroke. Anyway, she wants to sit by you for Christmas Eve dinner.’
‘Donatella finds me so intimidating that she can barely speak in my company,’ Stefano reminded her in an acid tone. ‘If you throw her in my way at Christmas it would be cruel to both of us. Isabella, drop this subject.’
‘She’d be a traditional Italian wife, Stefano.’ Isabella was clearly enjoying herself. ‘She would stay at home and cook you pasta.’
‘Unfortunately for Donatella one of my requirements in a life partner is that they’re able to sustain an intelligent conversation for at least eight seconds. Sadly, she can’t. Or at least, she can’t when she’s with me.’
Isabella snorted with laughter. ‘You’re so harsh. Frankly I can’t see why she’s so crazy about you. I mean, I know you’re filthy rich and good-looking but you’re unbearable to people who aren’t as bright as you are and when you’re really bored, which usually takes far less than eight seconds by the way, you can be horribly cutting.’
Taken aback by that blunt assessment of his attributes, Stefano was about to answer when his sister made an impatient sound.
‘Anyway, it’s nonsense to say you need a woman with a brain. According to that actress of yours, you don’t waste any time talking to women.’
Stefano glanced at his watch. ‘I’m a busy man, Isabella. Was there something else you wanted to say?’
‘She gave such an embarrassing interview to all the papers. What did you ever see in her? No—don’t answer that, it’s obvious. Why are men so shallow?’
Stefano gave a deadly smile. ‘Because women wear pushup bras and we are easily distracted,’ he purred. ‘I’m so pleased you called me. Your conversation is always so…intellectual.’
‘Don’t try and intimidate me.’ But Isabella was laughing. ‘I rang you for a chat because I love you, even though you sometimes forget that you have a family and you’re basically horrible. I’ll see you at Christmas, Stefano. I’m sure Donatella is already choosing her dress.’
Stefano closed his eyes briefly. ‘Maledizione—’
‘Don’t swear in front of your sister!’
There was a sharp rap on the door and Stefano looked up with a frown, irritated by the interruption. Greg Hampton, one of the casualty officers, stood in the doorway and Stefano’s mouth tightened. Unlike Phil who had managed to impress him, this particular junior doctor’s attitude was far too casual for his liking. ‘I’ve got to go. Ciao.’ He terminated the call and dropped his phone into his pocket. ‘Sì? There is a problem?’
‘Can you check an X-ray for me before you get dragged into Resus? Everyone else is still tied up with the RTA that came in an hour ago.’
Stefano slung his coat over the back of the chair, ignored the mound of paperwork on his desk and strode towards the door. ‘Who is the patient?’
‘That’s the bad news.’ Greg pulled a face. ‘A screaming, uncooperative kid with a bruised finger. I sent her for an X-ray.’
Stefano dealt him a measuring glance, less than impressed by the younger doctor’s dismissive tone.
They arrived at the main area and Stefano automatically glanced at the computer screen on the wall. It listed every patient in the department and enabled the staff to track their progress. That one glance was enough to tell him that he was in for a busy morning despite the fact it was barely light.
His mind still half on the conversation with his sister, his gaze shifted to the smaller computer next to the screen that was displaying an X-ray of a finger. He hit a button, zoomed in closer and stared at the image. Why did his family see the need to interfere with his life? If it wasn’t his love life, it was his profession. ‘No fracture. How was the finger on examination?’
Greg shrugged. ‘I haven’t examined her yet.’
‘You sent her for X-ray without examination?’ Stefano transferred his gaze from the X-ray to the doctor and Greg frowned slightly.
‘The child was really difficult. Didn’t seem to want to be distracted by anything. Trust me—no one could have done anything with this kid, and as for the mother…’ with an exaggerated shudder, he picked up the notes ‘…she was your average nightmare. Reminded me why I didn’t do paediatrics. Caring for kids is all about the mothers, isn’t it? What’s the point of seven years’ training if I have to waste my skills on a load of hysterical women?’
‘What skills?’ Stefano spoke softly and Greg’s smile lost a fraction of its arrogance.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You told me that you don’t want to waste your skills,’ Stefano said silkily, ‘but I am still waiting to see a demonstration of these skills in which you have so much pride and which you seem so reluctant to waste in my department, Dr Hampton. They weren’t in evidence when you needed to examine the child.’
Greg cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t manage to examine the child.’
‘Precisely.’ Stefano watched with cold detachment as the less experienced doctor flushed to the roots of his hair, suddenly a great deal less sure of himself.
‘The kid was freaking out.’
‘Then it is your job to “un”-freak them,’ Stefano advised helpfully. ‘After all, what is the point of seven years of training if you cannot get close enough to your patient to carry out an examination?’
‘I ordered an X-ray,’ Greg said stiffly, and Stefano raised an eyebrow.
‘So you sent her to X-Ray with no examination and you were planning to discharge her without examination? You have good medical defence insurance, I hope? A skilled lawyer? Because if that is the way you practise medicine, you will need both.’
Greg’s face was scarlet. ‘I assumed that the X-ray would tell me what I needed to know.’
‘An X-ray is simply one part of the overall picture. Never again even consider discharging a patient without carrying out the appropriate examination. You are a doctor, not a car mechanic. The decisions you make affect people’s lives.’ Stefano let the doctor squirm for a few more moments and then he flicked off the X-ray.
‘Mr Lucarelli—’
‘One more thing.’ Stefano’s icy tone cut through the doctor’s feeble attempt to redeem himself. ‘In this department, if a mother tells you that she has a bad feeling about her child, you will listen to what she has to say with both ears open and your mouth closed. Understood?’
Greg stared at him. ‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ Stefano watched him with cool appraisal. ‘Most mothers are uncannily accurate when it comes to assessing the health of their children. Remember that. They sense things that we doctors, even with years of training, can take longer to detect. Now, given that you have been unable to examine the patient, show me where she is and I will do it for you.’
Stiff and defensive, the casualty officer led the way down the corridor and into one of the small cubicles.
Prepared to deal with a very distressed child, Stefano stopped dead in the doorway, astonished to see the little girl laughing and smiling.
Liv was kneeling on the floor, chatting away happily and the child sat listening, clearly absorbed by the conversation. Her eyes were fixed on the nurse in fascination and Stefano found himself reacting in much the same way.
From his vantage point in the doorway, his gaze was drawn to the curve of her soft mouth and suddenly he found himself comparing the sweetness of her smile to Francine’s sexy scarlet pout.
Surprised by the direction of his thoughts, Stefano wondered why he was comparing two women who were so blatantly unalike.
Francine was an actress and a model—her looks were part of her job. Whereas Liv—well, she was entirely different. She wasn’t beautiful in the conventional sense. Her mouth was too wide and she had a pronounced dimple in her left cheek when she smiled, but there was something about her face that made it difficult to look away. Her eyes were bright and intelligent, and she radiated warmth and good humour as she talked to the child.
Stefano’s gaze swept her body in an instinctive male appraisal.
Her uniform wasn’t tight, but there was no missing her enticing curves and he felt the immediate and powerful response of his body. As irritated by his reaction as he was surprised, he turned his attention back to the child, assuming that it was just that ridiculous conversation with his sister that was suddenly turning his thoughts to sex in the middle of his working day.
‘So you sit next to Annabel.’ Liv spoke in a calm, gentle voice that removed all the stress from the room and smoothed Stefano’s frayed nerves like the stroke of a velvet glove. ‘And who is your teacher?’
‘Miss Grant.’ The little girl smiled at her. ‘She has her hair in a ponytail, like you.’
‘Well, that’s the best way to wear it for work, especially if it’s curly because it can get in your eyes. So how did you fall on your finger?’
Aware that Greg Hampton was about to speak, Stefano silenced him with a lift of his hand and a searing glance, intensely irritated that the man would even consider intervening when the nurse clearly had full control of the situation.
Fortunately the child hadn’t even noticed their presence. ‘I did it yesterday. We were practising the nativity play,’ she was saying, ‘and I tripped over a sheep. I mean, not a real sheep, actually it was Gareth, dressed as a sheep. But I fell on my finger, I mean like all my weight was on my finger.’
Stefano watched as Liv listened attentively to the child’s story and then carefully examined the child’s finger.
Her hair was the rich brown of a conker and it gleamed and shone under the harsh emergency room lights. Although it had been pulled back into a ponytail, several curls had escaped and now drifted around her face. Having not looked twice at a woman for months, Stefano found himself staring. She wasn’t wearing a trace of make-up and yet her lashes were thick and dark and her cheeks had a healthy glow. But what really drew his attention was her absolute focus on the little girl.
She wasn’t thinking about herself or her appearance. She hadn’t even noticed that he was standing in the doorway.
Suddenly his mind drifted back to the conversation he’d overheard the day before.
Why did Anna want to buy her hot sex for Christmas?
Stefano dismissed the question instantly as one of those things that women laugh about and men are better off not knowing.
But his eyes trailed back to her mouth and lower.
She didn’t look like a woman who needed someone else to find her hot sex.
Why had Anna been hugging her? Had something happened? Was there something wrong in her life?
‘Ouch. That’s the bit that really hurts.’ The little girl winced as Liv gently manipulated her fingers.
‘It’s bound to hurt because it’s really bruised, can you see? It’s just a bit black there—over the joint. I think you’re incredibly brave.’
The little girl looked doubtful. ‘I was crying.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Liv’s tone suggested that anything less would have been unthinkable. ‘If it were my finger, I would have cried, too. I think you’ve been amazing. But what we need to do now is fix it so that it doesn’t hurt so much. What were you in the nativity play?’
‘A star. Is it broken?’
‘Well, I’m going to take a look at your X-ray and then have a chat with the doctor.’
‘Not the same doctor as before?’ The child shrank slightly. ‘He was really angry with me—’ Suddenly noticing Greg in the doorway, she snatched her hand back. ‘He’s not going to touch me.’
The atmosphere altered in the blink of an eye.
Deciding that swift intervention was called for if he wasn’t to lose all chances of examining the child himself, Stefano cast a meaningful glance towards his less experienced colleague and strolled into the room.
‘Ciao, cucciola mia.’ He addressed the little girl directly but her eyes were fixed on Greg in horror.
‘I don’t want him to be my doctor.’
‘He isn’t your doctor.’
‘So why is he here?’
‘Because he works with me.’ Well aware that his height and physique could make him intimidating, Stefano dropped into a crouch so that he was at the same level as the child. ‘So you fell off a stage, is that right?’
‘Yes.’ Finally the little girl looked at him and her expression was curious. ‘Why do you speak with a funny accent?’
Stefano smiled. ‘Because I’m from Italy.’
‘Like pizza? I love pizza.’
‘Just like pizza. So tell me…’ Stefano gently took her hand in his and examined her fingers ‘…what is your favourite pizza?’
‘Margarita, but not too cheesy and no lumps of tomatoes.’
‘Obviously you are a woman who knows what she wants.’ Amused, Stefano turned the child’s hand over. ‘Show me how you fell on your hand.’
‘I fell all on one finger, like this…’ The little girl pretended to stab the ground and Stefano pulled a face.
‘Well, that is why your finger is hurting. You are supposed to walk on your feet, not your finger.’ Gently he manipulated the finger. ‘Does this hurt? This? Can you squeeze—make a fist?’
As he examined the dark bruising over the back of the finger, he was acutely conscious of Liv next to him. He allowed himself one sideways glance, but she wasn’t even looking at him. All her attention was still focused on her little patient.
‘I thought it was probably a volar plate injury,’ she murmured and Stefano silently compared her calm efficiency with Greg’s ineffectual arrogance.
‘I agree.’ Impressed, he gave her a rare smile but she didn’t even seem to notice.
She didn’t blush, stare or send him a subtly flirtatious look. In fact she didn’t look at him at all. Instead, she rose to her feet, her eyes still on the little girl. ‘You’ll have to be careful with that finger for a few weeks, Bella.’
Stefano was so accustomed to being cautious in his interaction with women that for a moment he was taken aback by her apparent indifference to him.
For a brief moment in Resus yesterday he’d felt a powerful explosion of chemistry and he was sure that she’d felt it too. But clearly it had been his imagination.
He almost laughed at himself. Had he really grown so arrogant that he expected every woman to look at him?
Unfortunately the child’s mother was looking at him with what she obviously believed to be feminine allure.
‘You’re the consultant?’ She scanned Stefano’s face and her eyes widened slightly. ‘What’s a volar plate? I’ve never heard of it.’
Stefano ignored the look in her eyes and kept his response cool and professional. ‘Your finger joints are like a hinge, yes? They must bend and straighten. The bones are connected together by tough bands of tissue called ligaments. In this joint—we call it the PIP—the strongest ligament is the volar plate.’
The mother studied his face a little more intently than was necessary. ‘So she’s pulled a ligament? Like a sprain, you mean?’
Instinctively adjusting his body language to create distance, Stefano stepped back. ‘This particular ligament connects the proximal phalanx to the middle phalanx on the palm side of the joint.’
‘These two joints,’ Liv said quickly, demonstrating on her own hand and Stefano gave a faint smile because he realised that he’d made his explanation far too complicated, which was unlike him.
But he’d been extricating himself from the flirtatious glances of the mother.
Forcing his mind back onto his work, he tried again. ‘The ligament tightens as the joint is straightened and keeps the joint from hyper-extending—bending too far back, in other words. But if you do overextend this joint, the volar plate can be damaged.’
The little girl’s face drooped with disappointment. ‘So does that mean I can’t be a star in the nativity?’
