‘No, he was fast asleep—’
‘What did his doctor tell you?’
‘That he’s on the mend but that he needs to make the changes you mentioned.’ Rio swore under his breath in driven Italian. ‘I feel guilty now. I should’ve tried to talk to him too—’
‘At the end of the day, it’s his life and his decision,’ she said tiredly. ‘I think he’ll be practical, especially once he realises the next generation is on the way, although how he didn’t guess from the way you were talking I’ll never know!’
‘Dio mio…’ Rio growled out of patience. ‘We are talking about a man who had an adulterous affair with your mother! Beppe wasn’t perfect. Why would he expect us to be?’
Ellie sniffed, still reluctant to be exposed as the loose woman who had ended up on a sofa with Rio within days of her arrival in Italy. Not even in a bed, her censorious alter ego reminded her darkly. Rio made her reckless but he also made her happy…well, when he wasn’t annoying her or worrying her.
‘So was that the same Franca you once planned to marry?’ she simply shot at him, going straight for the jugular, in no mood to contrive a subtle approach.
Rio flexed his broad shoulders and sprawled back in his corner. ‘That was a surprise but I gather Beppe knew and never mentioned it.’
‘I didn’t know she worked in the medical field—’
‘How would you?’ Rio parried. ‘It’s not relevant in any way.’
Ellie pursed her lips. No, it might not be relevant on his terms, she was thinking grimly, but that one little fact of Franca’s nursing profession and her treatment of him could certainly shed some light on Rio’s reluctance to view medical staff as being ‘caring’ and the suspicious reception he had given Ellie.
‘How did you feel seeing her again?’ Ellie asked baldly, knowing it was intrusive but unable to kill the question before it leapt off her tongue. Because, in truth, the answer to that one little question was literally all she wanted to know.
Rio treated her to an incredulous appraisal. ‘I’m not going to answer that. It’s a stupid question.’
Ellie nodded, mouth compressing harder than ever.
And Rio thought quite spontaneously that Beppe would never have got the chance to stray from his marital vows with a wife like Ellie around. Ellie picked up on every nuance, dissected it, stressed about it and absolutely had to talk about it immediately. And sometimes it drove Rio crazy because his brain didn’t work like hers. Why would he even want to talk about Franca? Aside from the reality that that liaison had happened what felt like half a lifetime ago? Women discussed feelings but he had never felt that need, had he? He very shrewdly kept that kind of nonsense to himself. Why did Ellie always want something from him that he couldn’t deliver? Time and time again she showed him that he was failing to meet her expectations.
His jawline setting like granite, Rio brooded about yet another major flaw in his character. He didn’t know how to talk about feelings, where even to begin, never mind end. He had had lots and lots of feelings when he was a boy, but he had learned through hard experience that it was wiser and safer to suppress them. He was resolutely practical and always had been. There was no point wanting what you couldn’t have and even less point in wasting energy agonising over life’s misfortunes. That creed had served him faithfully for thirty years. So, how had he felt seeing Franca without warning? Surprise and curiosity. Nothing wrong with those reactions, was there?
‘You go to bed while I make you something to eat. What would you like?’
‘You can cook?’ Ellie gasped.
‘Proficiently,’ Rio assured her with satisfaction.
&n
bsp; ‘Could you manage an omelette? Omelettes are kind of complicated, aren’t they?’ Ellie said in the tone of a woman who lived off salads and ready meals.
‘Not that complicated,’ Rio told her.
He led Ellie up to the master bedroom in his house and her luggage was brought up. She studied her surroundings with tired interest. Luxury fabrics and pale oak furniture lent the bedroom a traditional, almost feminine opulence that disconcerted her because it was very far from what she had expected to find in a rampant womaniser’s intimate lair. Had she been less tired she might have noticed that Rio was scanning the bedroom, as well, in a manner that suggested he was equally unfamiliar with it.
And so he was, having hired a decorator to chuck out his man cave accoutrements and decor while they were in Venice. Everything was new, fresh and Ellie approved even though she didn’t know it because he had made note of her favourite colours and the style of furniture she liked. She didn’t like cutting-edge contemporary and she didn’t like flashy and his former bedroom decor would have qualified in both categories. There had also been the serious risk of inadvertently encouraging Ellie to think about how many other women could have visited his home and slept in that bed. No, Rio was convinced that keeping Ellie happy meant acting as if that past of his didn’t exist. He understood her passionate possessiveness, in fact, it warmed him as much as the hottest day, but he didn’t want any element of his libidinous past coming between them.
And that included Franca. If he talked about Franca, he would be clumsy and he might well say the wrong thing. For that reason it was much better not to discuss Franca at all. Thinking that that was the troublesome topic of Franca now as done and dusted as a gravestone in a cemetery, Rio went downstairs to make an omelette worthy of a cordon bleu chef because he never missed out on an opportunity to impress Ellie and he had just realised that she couldn’t cook.
As removed from the real world as a zombie, Ellie opened her case, extracted the necessities and went into the bathroom. She had a quick shower, discovered she had left her toothbrush behind in Venice and searched the drawers in the storage units. She found several new toothbrushes, a giant box of condoms, a choice of several different lipsticks and make-up containers and two unmatched earrings. All had clearly been left behind by previous visitors. Tomorrow she would dump them. Right at that moment, she was reminding herself that Rio was her husband, that, yes, he had had a past with other women, but that that was nothing to do with her, certainly not something she should be worrying about.
Rio presented her with a perfect golden omelette and she was undeniably as impressed as though he had owned up to being a rocket scientist. Washed and fed, she was taken over by exhaustion again and she slid down in the blissfully comfortable bed, quite unaware that Rio went for a shower and then slid in beside her.
When she wakened it was afternoon the next day and she was alone. She was shocked that she had slept so long and anxious to get to the hospital and see how her father was doing. When she came downstairs, Rio’s housekeeper appeared, introduced herself as Sofia and brought her lunch on the terrace. Marooned without transport, she went into the large garage off the rear courtyard and discovered a stable of vehicles. Rio liked sports cars, she thought with amusement. Boy, did Rio like sports cars. Sofia showed her where the keys were and she picked a car in fire-engine red that appealed to her mood.
Navigating the many turns in the sweeping road that led down to the main route was more of a challenge than she had expected because she had never driven such a powerful car before but she made it to the hospital in good time and went straight to the ICU. Beppe, however, had been moved out of intensive care to his own room, a sign that he was making good progress, and she greeted him with a smile when she found him sitting up in bed and much more able to talk than he had been in the early hours of the morning.
‘Rio’s gone for coffee in the canteen,’ he explained. ‘You’ve just missed him.’