Ким Лоренс – Pregnant with His Baby!: Secret Baby, Convenient Wife / Innocent Wife, Baby of Shame / The Surgeon's Secret Baby Wish (страница 7)

‘I did,’ she protested, looking flustered. ‘Well, I tried,’ she corrected. ‘But he, well …’ she glanced towards the tall Italian and shrugged, rolling her eyes ‘ … what was I meant to do when he ignored me? Sit on him?’

Dervla’s eyes followed the direction of the theatre nurse’s gaze. She could imagine there were any number of females who lacked her professional objectivity who would jump at the chance to sit on him!

Her patient’s father was standing motionless beside the stationary trolley, surveying the room. You definitely got the sense that his present inactivity was not the norm for him. The high-powered financier had presumably not got his billions by being someone who did relaxed or passive on a regular basis.

Dervla flashed the other girl a look of sympathy. ‘She’s got a point, John.’ This was clearly not a man who responded to requests unless he wanted to.

You could tell just by looking at him that he was one of those individuals hard-wired to take control. The message couldn’t have been clearer had he walked in with ‘dominant male’ stamped on his broad, intelligent, bloodstained forehead.

Not that a forehead could be termed intelligent as such.

But eyes were another matter. And the diamond-hard eyes through which the Italian had surveyed the room as he paused there in the entrance made a cut-throat razor look dull-edged.

Pretty astounding, considering he had been through an experience that would have had most people lying sedated in a hospital bed!

As she stared curiously his sweeping scrutiny reached her.

Dervla’s body and mind reacted to the brush of those dark eyes set in the perfect symmetry of his chiselled golden skinned face in a similar way it might to a jolt of neat electricity.

A wave of scalding heat washed over her fair skin, then receded leaving her feeling shivery as she reacted helplessly to the predatory sexual magnetism this incredible-looking man exuded.

Was it her imagination or had his glance lingered longer than required …? But then a split second could seem longer when you were holding your breath, and she had been!

Once his glance moved on Dervla’s brain started functioning again and she was able to put her mortifying reaction in perspective.

Obviously it had had more to do with fatigue than anything hormonal. He wasn’t even the type of man she found attractive. She never had gone for arrogance or the whole smouldering Latin thing. If it had been otherwise she might have been more concerned about the little aftershocks she experienced as she approached him—shocks presented in the form of pulse racing and uncomfortable shivery sensations.

As she reached his side she realised that the theatre nurse hadn’t been the only person he’d ignored in the hospital, because she couldn’t believe nobody had suggested—pretty forcibly—that he have the gaping wound on his forehead sutured.

And goodness only knew what lay concealed, besides golden tautly muscled skin, beneath his torn and bloodstained clothes. Give that shirt a tug and she’d find out, Dervla thought, registering the one button stopping the garment being open to the waist. As it was it really left very little to the imagination!

If a person had been asked to judge from his body alone what the Italian billionaire did for a living she suspected a lot would have plumped for professional athlete.

He had the natural grace and the sleek muscle definition that few beyond those whose livelihood depended on it ever achieved.

A man who spent his life making money might be expected to carry a bit of excess weight around the middle. Staring at his she could see that it was washboard-flat.

Dragging her eyes upwards, her cheeks gently tinged with colour, she felt her tension level rise as her eyes connected with eyes that were startlingly dark, heavily fringed by a screen of jet lashes and hard as diamonds.

She wondered guiltily if he’d seen her ogling—not an ideal first impression.

‘Hello, I’m Dervla Smith.’ She flashed her practised soothing smile and had no response. ‘I’ll be the nurse looking after Alberto. Second cubicle,’ she said, nodding to the waiting porter. ‘If you’d like to wait outside someone will come and get you when Alberto is settled.’

‘No.’

Dervla blinked. ‘Pardon …?’

‘Are you hard of hearing?’ he wondered sardonically.

Her smile wobbled as she reminded herself that people reacted to shock and trauma in many ways. Some became aggressive, some became obnoxious—occasionally you came across one who combined the two. Then again maybe this was standard billionaire behaviour …?

Not that it made any difference to the way she’d treat him. As far as she was concerned he was her patient’s father. His bank balance was no more relevant than the preposterous length of his eyelashes—and actually far less distracting.

‘I said no, I would not like to wait outside.’ Leaving her standing there, he began to follow the porters.

Mouth twisted into a rueful grimace, she watched his broad back retreat. Well, you really established your authority there, Dervla. He definitely knows who is boss.

John, having ejected the men in suits, walked by and raised an enquiring brow. ‘All right, Dervla?’

‘Absolutely.’

Her annoyance with the Italian drained away as she approached the bed and saw his expression in profile as he looked down at the unconscious figure of his child. She had seen gut-wrenching fear before and watched people struggle to contain it.

A wave of empathy washed over her—Gianfranco Bruni was living his nightmare.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE dark eyes swivelled briefly in Dervla’s direction as she untangled an IV line before Gianfranco’s attention returned to the boy in the bed.

‘I understand it will be some time before he regains consciousness …?’ His low, slightly accented voice had a tactile quality that sent an illicit shiver along Dervla’s susceptible nerve endings.

She was accustomed to dealing with tearful, distraught relatives, but this man did not fit neatly into that category—or, she suspected, any other!

Superficially at least he appeared utterly composed.

She might have called him cold if she hadn’t been given that brief glimpse behind the mask of clinical composure. She couldn’t see his face as he leant forward and brushed a strand of dark hair from his son’s waxy brow, but she could see the tell-tale tremor in his long tapering brown fingers.

‘These things are hard to predict.’

‘Try,’ he recommended tersely. ‘And please take that expression off your face,’ he said without actually looking at her.

Dervla started guiltily and wondered if eyes in the back of his head were the secret to his success?

‘I do not need sympathy. I need answers.’ His clinical detachment slipped another notch as he added angrily, ‘Neither do I need you to dumb down for my benefit. I may not have a medical degree but I am not an imbecile!’

Dervla was not offended by his manner. She had dealt with anxious parents before, though admittedly not one who looked like a fallen angel.

She was pretty sure that if she had met him outside the precincts of the hospital in a non-professional capacity—a pretty unlikely scenario as they inhabited different worlds—she might have found Gianfranco Bruni overwhelming.

But that was not the case now.

And even if it had been she could hide any inappropriate feelings behind her professional mask, because here it didn’t matter how much money he had or how many politicians or film stars he classed as close personal friends. Here and now he was a father worried out of his skull about his son and it was her job to make sure the son got well and the father stopped worrying.

Dervla was good at her job.

‘I’m sure the doctors have already explained the situation.’

Her soothing tone that calmed so many patients had no visible effect on this man. He silenced her with an imperious movement of his head. ‘The doctors talk and say nothing!’ He sounded disgusted.

‘And you thought I’d be easier to bully. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.’

He raised an astonished ebony brow and muttered something under his breath in Italian. Dervla struggled to maintain her serene smile as that heavy-lidded gaze moved across her face as though he was seeing her for the first time.

She got the distinct impression he wasn’t overly impressed by what he saw.

‘You think I’m a bully?’

It was pretty obvious that he didn’t actually give a damn what she thought of him. She was starting to doubt he cared what anyone thought about him. But he did sound genuinely curious.

‘I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know that you’re a worried father.’ Her eyes softened as they swept across the face of the unconscious youngster. ‘He really is in the right place, you know.’

She turned her head in time to see emotion flicker in the back of those spectacular obsidian eyes, but a moment later as they fixed on her there was no residual softness reflected in the dark surface.

‘Pity, Nurse, he were not in the right place at two this afternoon.’ He inhaled, turned his head and passed a hand across his eyes as though to banish nightmare images that were playing in his head.