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‘Lucky me! Who is it? Do you know?’
‘I think it’s Mrs Epstein. I noticed her in the corner, huddling into that black wool coat of hers and trying to look invisible.’
‘Poor thing. She’s not at all well, and hasn’t had a proper medical check since Sally Carruthers left town. She refuses to see a male doctor. I guess eventually someone will have to drive her down to Tamworth to see one of the women in practice down there. Would you send her in, to save me going to the door? Just lift her file out of the slot and give it to her to bring in.’
Paige gave Josie a hug and said goodbye to Debbie, then sat down at her desk and buried her head in her hands. One more patient then the prince to confront. He had to have come about Lucia, so what did she tell him? She could hardly reveal Lucia’s presence in the house without at least consulting her—explaining about the phone call and why she’d made it.
And she couldn’t leave this room to go upstairs and talk to Lucia without being seen by her two unwelcome visitors.
Unless…
She glanced towards the windows, stood up and walked across to open the one closer to her desk. To poke her head out and look up. As a child she’d climbed both up and down the Virginia creeper innumerable times, but would it hold an adult’s weight?
And was she seriously considering climbing up there?
‘Seeking an escape route?’
The deep voice made her spin around, and she knew from the flash of heat in her cheeks that her stupid pale skin was flushing guiltily.
‘The room was warm,’ she sputtered, compounding her stupidity with the lie. She took control. ‘Anyway, I’ve another patient to see before you.’
‘Your patient has departed,’ he responded coolly.
‘Or been intimidated into leaving by your presence,’ Paige retorted, curbing an urge to add a scorching remark about princely arrogance. ‘What’s happened to your sidekick?’
‘Sidekick?’ The man looked bemused.
‘Mr Benelli. The guy who bowed you in.’
‘Ah, you took offence at his behaviour. I can understand that reaction, but to check him, tell him this ceremony was not what I wanted or desired, would have been to humiliate him in front of your patients.’
Paige stared at him, though why his compassion for a fellow man should startle her she didn’t know. Unless she’d assumed princes were above such things! Which reminded her—
‘Are you really a prince?’
He shrugged, moved further into the room and smiled.
Bad move, that—making him smile. The rearrangement of his features made him even more devastatingly attractive—and, coming closer, it had brought his eyes into view. Not black but darkest blue, almost navy.
‘I am Francesco Alberici. The title “prince” is a hangover from bygone days—something I do not use myself. Benelli is an official at our consulate in Sydney. It is he who sees honour in a useless appellation, not myself.’
He’d held out his hand as he’d said his name, and politeness had decreed she take it. But to let it rest in his as he finished speaking? Another mistake.
She took control, stuck her still-warm but nonetheless offending hand into the pocket of her blazer and looked—confidently, she hoped—into his eyes.
‘So, now we’ve cleared up the prince business, how can I help you?’
As if I don’t know, an inner voice quailed, and she regretted not escaping through the window, even if she hadn’t climbed the creeper.
‘You phoned me—left a message.’
Marco watched the colour fluctuate beneath her cheeks—no doubt she was considering what lie to tell him—and wondered about her background. With that pale skin, cornsilk-coloured hair falling in a straight drop to chin level and the smatter of freckles across her nose, she certainly didn’t fit his image of a bronzed Australian. But, then, this New England city in the northern tableland area of New South Wales had the feel of an English market town, in spite of the lush sheep country which surrounded it.
‘You’re Marco?’
Her question, when it came, held surprise—and, he suspected, dread. Or guilt?
‘Who else?’ he said harshly, surprised to find an inner anger surging into the reply. He could usually control his emotions better than that. Tiredness? The long flight? Or the months of gut-wrenching, muscle-straining, heartbreaking worry over Lucia?
He curbed the anger as wide spaced green eyes, flecked with the gold of the sunlight outside, stared warily into his.
‘Why didn’t you phone?’
‘I came instead.’
‘Why?’
The question gave him momentary pause, then the anger churned again, rising, threatening to erupt.
‘To take Lucia home,’ he said bluntly.
Paige had seen him stiffen earlier, guessed at anger, saw the tension in his body, controlled now but ready to explode. She wondered about violence. Was that why Lucia had fled? She had to forget her own reaction to the man—that strange and almost instant attraction. Right now she needed to stall, to buy time. With time maybe she could persuade Lucia to talk about her flight, before revealing her whereabouts to anyone. Or this man’s presence in town to Lucia!
She tried for innocence in her expression—in her voice.
‘Lucia?’ she repeated in dulcet tones.
Wrong move! His body language told her she’d unwittingly lit the fuse to set him off. He stepped closer, spoke more softly, but there was no escaping the rage emanating from his body and trembling in his words.
‘Yes, Lucia, Miss Morgan. And don’t act the innocent with me. You phoned my private work number, a new number only a handful of people know, you asked for Marco—a name only Lucia and my family use to address me. You left a message—said you wanted to speak to me. I haven’t come halfway around the world to play games with you, so speak to me, Miss Morgan. Or tell me where she is and let her explain her behaviour.’
Paige shivered under the onslaught of his words—and the emotion accompanying them. No way could she inflict him on her ill and unhappy house guest. But how to tell an enraged husband—however handsome and sexy he might be—you won’t let him see his wife, without risking bodily harm to yourself? She gulped in some replenishing air, waited for the oxygen to fire into her blood, then squared up to him.
‘I will speak to her, ask her if she wishes to see you.’
‘You will…’
Well, at least she’d rendered him speechless!
She raised her hands as if to show helplessness. ‘I can’t do any more than that.’
He glared at her, his eyes sparkling with the fierceness of his anger.
‘Then why did you contact me? To tease me? Torture me even more? Was it her idea? Did she say, “Let’s upset Marco in this new way”?’
The agony in his voice pierced through to her heart and she found herself wanting to put her arms around him, comfort him—for all her doubts about his behaviour towards his wife.
‘She doesn’t know I contacted you,’ she said softly—feeling the guilt again. Wondering how to explain.
He was waiting, the fire dying from his eyes, the grey colour taking over again.
‘Please, sit down. Do you want a drink—something hot—tea, coffee?’
No reply, but he did slump into the chair. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his dark hair, then stared at her. Still waiting.
‘She came to me—off a backpackers’ coach. Do you know about backpackers?’
He shrugged and managed to look both disbelieving and affronted at the same time. ‘Young tourists travelling on the cheap. But a coach? Lucia? Backpacking? And why would she come here?’
Well, the last question was easy. If you took it literally.
‘The bus company has a number of coaches which follow the same route through the country towns of New South Wales. People buy a six-month ticket and can get on and off wherever they like—staying a few days in some places, longer in others. This is a very popular stopping-off place and the company recommends the health service as a number of the professionals here speak more than one language.’
‘Parla italiano?’
The words sounded soft and mellifluous in Paige’s ears and again she felt a pang of sorrow—a sense of loss for something she’d never had.
‘If you’re asking if I speak Italian, the answer’s no. I used a phrase book to leave a message on your answer-phone. I studied Japanese and Indonesian and can get by in German. Many of the European tourists also speak or understand it, so I can communicate to a certain extent.’
‘Which is a credit to you but isn’t diverting me from the subject of Lucia, Miss Morgan.’
Mellifluous? Steely, more like!
‘Or your phone call,’ he added, in a no-less-determined voice.
‘She wasn’t well, and I sensed…’
How to explain her conviction that Lucia was in trouble—ill, lost and vulnerable—so alone that to take her in and care for her had been automatic.
She looked at the man from whom the young woman had fled and wondered how to tell him why she’d been compelled to phone him.
‘She wasn’t like the usual backpackers I see. Mostly they’re competent young people, clued up, able to take care of themselves, if you know what I mean. Lucia struck me as someone so far out of her depth she was in danger of drowning.’ She met his eyes now, challenging him yet willing him to understand. ‘But I also felt she’d been very much loved and cherished all her life,’ she admitted, ‘and from the little she told me, I guessed someone, somewhere, would be frantically worried about her whereabouts.’
He said nothing, simply stared at her as if weighing her words, wondering whether to believe them.
‘She doesn’t know I made that call,’ Paige admitted, feeling heat flood her cheeks again. ‘I looked through her passport one day and found the number pencilled in the back of it. I felt you—her family—someone somewhere—might need to know she was alive.’
He bowed his head, letting his chin rest against his chest, and she saw his chest rise and fall as be breathed deeply.
‘Yes,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘I—we all—did need to know she was alive.’
She studied him. Saw tiredness in the way his body was slumped in the chair. But when he raised his head and looked into her eyes there was no sign of fatigue—and the anger which she’d seen earlier still lit his from within.
‘Did she tell you why she ran away?’ he demanded.
Paige shrugged.
‘She told me very little,’ she said bluntly. ‘All I’ve done is guess.’
‘Abominable girl!’ the man declared, straightening in his chair and flinging his arms into the air in a gesture of frustration. ‘She’s been spoiled all her life, that’s her trouble. Cherished is right! Of course she was cherished. And how does she repay that love and affection? How does she treat those who love her? By taking off! Running away! Leaving without a word to anyone, a note from Rome to her mother, saying she will be all right! Then nothing for months. We all assume she’s dead! Dio Madonna!’
Perhaps it was as well she didn’t speak Italian. The intonation of the words told her it was a phrase unlikely to be repeatable in polite company. Not that the man didn’t look magnificent in his rage, on his feet now and prowling the room like a sleek black animal, still muttering foreign imprecations under his breath and moving his hands as if to conduct his voice. But watching him perform, that wasn’t getting them anywhere, and no matter how magnificent and full of sex appeal he was, he’d be out of her life by tomorrow so the sooner she got rid of him now, the sooner she could tackle Lucia.
And the thought of her reaction to this latest development wasn’t all that appealing! Paige stood, drew herself up to her full height and assumed her most businesslike expression. The one she used when asking for government funding from petty officials put on earth to frustrate her plans for the community centre.
‘If you rant and rave at her like that, I can understand why she ran off,’ she said crisply. ‘Now, if you tell me where you’re staying, I’ll have a talk to her and get back to you.’
‘Staying?’ He sounded as shocked as if she’d suggested he strip naked in the main street. ‘I am not staying! I have work to do. I must get back to Italy. I am—in fact, we, Lucia and I, are booked on a flight out of Sydney tomorrow morning.’
Paige stared at him in astonishment.
‘You flew out from Italy to Australia for a day? You thought you could arrive here, drive up, wrest Lucia forcibly into the car, then career back down the highway and be out of the country within twenty-four hours?’
Maybe her amazement caught his attention for he stopped his pacing and faced her.
‘I did not know where this town was—how far away from the capital,’ he said stiffly. ‘I gave the telephone number to a person at the embassy. He found the address—this address—and arranged to bring me here. It was not until I was in the car I learned she was at a far-off place—a regional centre I think Benelli called it.’ He paused, then added, ‘He said it was still possible to be back in Sydney late this evening and make the flight tomorrow.’
As that pause was the first hint of weakness she’d seen in the man—apart from the fatigue—she took it as an opening and pounced.
‘Well, I suggest you see Mr Benelli again and ask him to arrange accommodation for you, and rearrange your flight home. Apart from anything else, I doubt Lucia is well enough to travel.’
She watched the colour drain from his face.
‘What is wrong with her?’ he demanded, and a hoarseness in his voice told her of his love for Lucia.
CHAPTER TWO
HOW to answer? Tell a man his wife had gestational diabetes mellitus when he didn’t know she was pregnant? And Marco wouldn’t know because Lucia hadn’t known herself—hadn’t even guessed what might be wrong with her. The diabetes was an added complication, one not usually occurring until late into the second trimester of pregnancy when the foetus was extracting more nutrients from the maternal source, but the trauma of leaving home could have triggered a possible predisposition to it, bringing it on earlier than usual.
The thoughts rushed through Paige’s head and she studied him as she decided what to say. He didn’t look like a man who’d give in easily and telling him Lucia was carrying his child, that would hand him an added incentive to force her to return to him. It would also betray Lucia’s trust. Again!
Hide behind professional discretion?
She didn’t think this man would take too kindly to this ethical solution to her dilemma but what the hell.
‘I need to speak to her before I can give you any information about her health or where she’s staying,’ Paige replied, already feeling the waves of his anger as it built again. ‘Give me an hour—or maybe two—and I’ll contact you, or, better still, you could phone me here.’
She opened a desk drawer to get a card for him then realised it would show this building as her home address as well as that of the health service. Bring him closer than she wanted at the moment. Pulling out a scrap of paper instead, she jotted down her number and pushed it across the desk.
He was standing opposite her, staring at her with an unnerving intensity.
‘I already have your phone number, Miss Morgan,’ he said softly. ‘What I don’t know is Lucia’s whereabouts. Now, are you going to tell me where she is or do I call in your police force?’
She did her straightening-up thing again, hoping to look more in control.
‘Lucia is an adult—able to make her own decisions. No police force in the world can compel a woman to return to a situation from which she’s fled.’
She wasn’t absolutely certain about the truth of this statement but he wasn’t to know that. Not that he seemed to be taking much notice. In fact he was laughing at her.
