Rose said quickly, ‘Shh... Don’t be thinking about that now. I’ll tell you about him when you’re feeling stronger.’ She bent and pressed a kiss to his cheek, then pulled back. ‘Get some rest now—you need it.’
It was a sign of his weakness that he didn’t push the subject but just emitted a harumph and slipped back into sleep.
Rose stood up, her muscles aching from sitting by his bed for so long while she’d waited for him to come round from the anaesthetic. She sent him one last look and made sure all his monitors and wires seemed to be functioning okay, then slipped out of the room.
She was exhausted. Relieved, but exhausted. And, as much as she didn’t feel like it, she needed to eat. Ever since the other night her appetite had disappeared, but she resolutely turned her mind away from going back down that road.
She’d already set off down the corridor when she remembered she’d left her purse in her father’s room. She turned around to go back—and walked straight into a wall. A wall that had its hands on her arms, steadying her. A wall that had a very familiar scent. A wall that wasn’t really a wall.
She looked up and her head swam. The wall was Zac Valenti.
She blinked. He was still there. She was very afraid she was on the verge of fainting for the first time in her life and she sucked in a breath.
Zac gripped her tighter. ‘Rose? Are you okay?’
She pulled herself together, but she knew she was way too light-headed to deal with Zac right now—if she wasn’t, in fact, hallucinating. ‘I’m just hungry. I need to eat something.’
With typical Zac-like efficiency Rose found herself sitting at a table under the unforgiving fluorescent lighting of the clinic’s canteen within minutes. He had put a bowl of admittedly dubious-looking spaghetti bolognese in front of her and was looking at her.
Tightly he said, ‘It was the most edible-looking thing there. Eat some.’
Too exhausted to deal with the reality that he was there, she dutifully ate some of the rubbery pasta and washed it down with water. When she felt a little more fortified she said warily, ‘Why are you here, Zac?’
He sat back in the chair, his body huge against the functional furniture. ‘I wanted to make sure that your father was doing okay.’
Rose felt heat climb into her face and she said, ‘Thank you. The clinic told me that you’d taken over the bills from your grandmother. You really don’t know what this—’
‘Stop,’ he said, cutting her off and sitting up straight. He looked a little angry. ‘You don’t have to say thank you. My grandmother had no right to take such advantage of you. Your father had been her employee—the least he deserved was help in his time of need.’
Rose had to stop her jaw from dropping. She wanted to pinch herself. Because she had to be dreaming.
As if Zac could read her thoughts, he grimaced slightly. ‘Look, the other night...at that function...it was hard for me to trust that you were telling the truth.’
Rose’s heart thudded painfully. ‘And you do now?’
He nodded, and Rose’s insides swooped.
‘What happened?’
Zac sighed. ‘I was beginning to suspect I’d got it all wrong, and then my grandmother came to see me. She told me that you’d ripped up the contract in front of her and declared your intention to have this child be a Valenti. When I came back from Italy and you explained everything, I didn’t know that you’d already been to her. You’d burnt your bridges and I didn’t realise it. Why didn’t you tell me?’ He sounded almost accusing now.
Rose said weakly, ‘I went to see her first because I needed you to know that I’d put my trust in you even before I’d had a chance to put forward my case. But when you came back I was nervous...scared of how you’d react. It didn’t seem relevant to mention your grandmother once you’d agreed to help my father.’
Zac’s voice had a bleak tone to it. ‘No, your first thought wasn’t to maximise your own defence—it was for your father.’ Then he asked curiously, ‘What would you have done if I’d said no?’
Rose shrugged minutely, ashamed now of this evidence that she’d trusted him so implicitly. ‘I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.’
Zac just looked at her for an unnervingly long moment, and then he said, ‘When we first met...you blew me away. I’d never met anyone like you. I believed you were who you said you were. And then...I felt like a fool. It merely confirmed for me that nothing so pure could exist.’
Rose felt emotion rising. ‘But it did—I did—as messed up as it was. And I couldn’t say anything because I was terrified of what your grandmother could do to my father.’ Rose stopped when she said that, a familiar worry coming back to her. ‘Is she going to take me to court?’
Zac looked fierce. ‘No, of course not. The threat of my revealing the truth of my parentage was enough to make her contemplate emigration.’
Rose’s eyes widened. ‘You’d do that?’
Zac’s mouth compressed. ‘It’s time to tell my parents’ story. I’m not ashamed of it.’
She felt even more emotional now. ‘I think you’re right—their memories don’t deserve to be locked away forever, as if they did something wrong.’