I had a great night. You were perfect.He paused, knowing he needed to walk away, to force a clean break. It had been one night, there was nothing between them, no expectations, no promises. He’d been very careful there.
Nonetheless, he found himself adding:If you ever need anything…and placing his business card beside the note. It was simple and discreet – FIERO MONTEBELLO and his cell number. Nothing more, no mention of his job title or industry. Then again, the Montebello name really needed no introduction. They owned airlines, hotels, fashion chains, and pharmaceutical interests. The name was synonymous with being a titan of industry.
He left the card and then strode out of the apartment, pulling the door closed quietly behind himself, and mentally doing the same thing.
It had been one of the best nights of his life, but now it was morning, and he had to get back to his real life.
That didn’t include Elodie Gardiner.
1
IT HAD BEEN THREE years, almost to the day, but he could still see her perfectly in his mind, the mental snap-shot he’d taken of her before striding out of her flat in Earls Court embedded in his brain somehow, so nothing and no one seemed able to dislodge it.
But she wasn’t that woman anymore.
He stood rigid across the hospital room, his body completely still, his eyes taking in every detail of her appearance. Her face was badly bruised down one side, and blood was dry and clumped in the roots of her silky, dark hair. She wore a hospital gown. One arm was in a cast as was a leg, including an ankle. Her toenails were painted the palest pink, just like the night they’d slept together. Memories seared him, threatening to pull him out of the present, and he couldn’t let that happen.
“What is the prognosis?” He spoke with the command that came naturally to him, a command that wasn’t a by-product of his birth into one of the world’s wealthiest families, nor was it because he was responsible for one sixth of that company’s empire. No, his command was innate to him, a part of his character and soul, a marker of the Montebello arrogance that ran through each of their veins.
“Hard to say,” the nurse didn’t look up. “Her bones’ll mend, though she’ll be in a lot of pain for weeks, I’d say. She’ll likely need rehab to get back on her feet properly.”
He narrowed his eyes, acutely aware of the fact the nurse was carefully hedging, choosing her words with care. “But there’s something else - something you’re not saying?”
The nurse lifted her eyes to Fiero’s, her expression wary. “Who are you to Miss Gardiner?”
Nobody.The word rattled through him but he rejected it out of hand. They weren’t ‘nobody’ to one another. It had been three years but that night was alive in his mind, as though it had been only yesterday. Apparently, the reverse was true. Why else would she have asked for him to be called? Three years, and yet she’d been in an accident and his had been the name she’d given.
He closed his eyes for a moment, the last hour a blur. His meeting with the British Prime Minister, conveniently in Westminster, and then the call from the hospital.
It’s Ang from the Royal High and Free in Kensington. Elodie Gardiner’s been in an accident and she’s put you as her emergency contact.
The words had echoed through him, bringing to bear memories of a night he rarely let himself think about, of a woman who had been breathtakingly beautiful – all the more so for how forbidden she’d been to him.
He didn’t know why she’d listed him as an emergency contact. Something about that hurt him low in his ribs, because it spoke of an intense loneliness and vulnerability. Was he truly the only person she could think of in a time like this?
But then – that didn’t make sense. It had been three years, surely she hadn’t spent her life in a void of friendship and people? Not someone like Elodie who sparked from her every piece of her being.
“She’s unconscious,” he murmured, taking a step towards the bed and wincing at how battered she was, at the pain she would be in when the morphine eventually stopped easing it.
“Mmm.” The nurse was no longer drip-feeding information but that didn’t matter. Fiero was on his own path now.
“Was she unconscious when she came in?”
The nurse compressed her lips, clearly not keen to divulge anything to a man who might very well be a stranger.
“I’m her emergency contact,” he said with authority even as the question of ‘why’ hung over his head.
The nurse looked at him for several beats longer and then sighed impatiently. “Hang about. I’ll go see what I can find.”
It was Fiero’s turn for impatience. “Where is her doctor?”
The nurse reached for the clipboard at the foot of the bed. “We’re waiting on the neurologist consultant to arrive. She’s on call; we’ve paged her.”
He stifled a curse and swept his eyes shut. “Do you mean to tell me there might be neurological issues here and we arewaiting?”
The nurse flinched a little. “I can page her again.”
“Do that.” But Fiero was already reaching for his own phone, pulling it out of his pocket and dialling his personal assistant, ignoring the ‘no mobile phone’ sign near the door of the room. The nurse clearly thought better of pointing it out. She moved quickly from the room.