‘This potent effect we have on each other is one hell of an aphrodisiac, cara,’ he murmured delicately. ‘Do you want to know what you are doing to me?’
Lexi slowly lowered her eyes in an effort to break free from his scintillating spell. She felt dizzy, and tiny muscles all over her were contracting so tightly they pulsed.
‘Y-you have no reason to run.’ Valiantly, she locked the single brain cell she seemed to have left on what he’d said before.
‘But you did?’
Pinning her lips together, and realising that they felt plumped up and tingly, Lexi nodded her head, finding she had to part her lips again so that she could speak. ‘And I will do it again if you don’t turn off the sexual pressure.’
His mouth broke into a wolfishly amused grin. ‘Good to know I’ve still got it, amore.’
‘You and how many others?’ Lexi derided his insufferable self-belief, at the same time deriding all the other good-looking men with truckloads of sexual charisma she met on a day-to-day basis—not one of whom came anywhere near making her feel what Franco made her feel.
That he’d completely misunderstood her meaning hit her as she watched his eyes cool. Even his cheeks suddenly looked carved, as if someone had scooped any hint of softness out of them. Lexi felt the sudden need to redistribute her weight equally between her two booted feet, and she unfolded her arms to drop them down to her sides, her fingers curling into fists.
‘You mis—’
‘Spare me the numbers.’
Turning abruptly away from her, he pushed the stuffed rabbit into one of her bags. The moment she lost his attention Lexi reached out and snatched up the bell press; gave it a long and urgent push. He caught the movement and swung back. Lexi dropped the bell push as if it was hot. As his eyes narrowed on her like stinging lasers she pushed her chin up and fed him back a wide-eyed look of sparking defiance.
To her total astonishment Franco threw back his dark head and laughed. ‘So even you think I’ve gone crazy!’
There was no ‘even you’ about it. Lexi had considered him crazy ever since she’d arrived here. He might be reading her every thought and feeling, but she found she couldn’t keep up with his thought patterns or the fast changes in his mood.
‘You’re not leaving here without someone’s say-so.’ She struck a stubborn pose.
‘Pietro will be here in five minutes,’ was all he commented, as if that was enough to relay his intentions. ‘I sent him to your hotel to settle the bill and collect your things.’
The door swung open before Lexi could respond to that piece of smooth forward planning. Dr Cavelli walked in, then stopped when he saw his patient was dressed and standing.
As cool and casual as a long drink of water, Franco turned and strode across the room, a smile on his face and his hand outstretched. ‘Thank you,’ he murmured in smooth as balm Italian, ‘for the wonderful care and attention I have received from you and your staff. However, it is time for me leave.’
The doctor had been staring at the limp free way Franco had been moving, but he jerked his eyes up to the outstretched hand, then even further, staring dubiously at Franco’s beautifully polite mask of a face. ‘I am not sure …’
‘I am drug free and feeling much better,’ Franco pointed out in a dulcet tone, then waited as if he had the patience of a saint while the doctor glanced questioningly at Lexi and she sent a helplessly bewildered shrug in return.
‘There is no medical reason why you cannot be discharged, signor,’ Dr Cavelli murmured cautiously. ‘However, you will need to keep a watchful eye on your bruising for the next week or two. The risk of blood clots has not diminished, and you will need the dressings changed on your thigh wound.’
‘Alexia and I will promise to keep a watchful eye out for blood clots,’ Franco assured him, refusing to look at Lexi even though he was holding his breath in case she told him she was not prepared to do anything of the kind. ‘And I am capable of changing my own dressings.’
The doctor looked at Lexi again as though he was waiting for her to confirm that she would be there to take care of his patient. Parting her lips with the intention of refusing to have any part in Franco’s plans to walk out of there, she happened to glance at him—saw the evidence of strain showing in his proud profile and the grim tension in his elegant stance. She remembered Marco, experienced a swooping sensation deep down inside that felt as if something was twisting her organs together painfully, and she closed her mouth again, then gave a silent nod of her head.
The tension holding Franco together sprang free, almost toppling him from his increasingly painful stance. Whatever Dayton had said to her on the phone, he had not yanked on her chains hard enough—but Franco had. Shee
r grim satisfaction helped to keep him upright through the ordeal of receiving the doctor’s detailed advice on maintaining his present rate of recovery. By then Pietro had arrived and, ignoring the older man’s shocked consternation when he realised what was going on, Franco quietly instructed him to collect his bag from the adjoining bathroom.
He almost collapsed into the rear of his father’s limo. He was that exhausted by keeping up the appearance that he was magically returned to robust health.
Lexi sat beside him, flitting from concern to annoyance and back again as she studied the way he was sitting there, deathly pale with his eyes closed, one long-fingered hand pressed against his chest inside his jacket, the other lying limp on the seat between them. She could see the punch holes from the shunt on the back of his hand and the bruising circling them. But what really bothered her was the shallowness of his breathing.
‘It would serve you right if you had a relapse now, Franco, what with your wicked, lying stupidity!’ she launched at him, anxiety feeding her hot temper.
‘I left that particularly drastic kind of wicked, lying stupidity to Marco,’ Franco relayed flatly in response.
CHAPTER FIVE
LEXI swivelled around to stare at him. ‘M-Marco?’ she prompted, watching warily for a sign of that awful grey pallor to sink down across Franco’s face. The trouble was that he was already that greyish colour.