English Doctor, Italian Bride

by Carol Marinelli

  The Azettis were his first glimpse at a real family in action. The strange dynamics that had at first intrigued him. The shifts of power that, to Hugh, had seemed like a science experiment. An objective observer, he’d watched with wry amusement. He’d smothered a smile as a fiery little girl had challenged what, in this house, was considered the norm. Then there had been no smiles to smother, just the genuine pull of seeing a problem from all sides—and adoring them all.

  ‘Can I trust you?’

  ‘Meaning?’ He watched as her eyes narrowed.

  ‘I just don’t want you to repeat what’s said….’

  ‘I never have to date!’

  He gave a grim smile at her inference.

  ‘Paul’s struggling.’

  ‘We’re all struggling!’

  ‘He’s a surgeon, Bonny—’ those dark green eyes held hers ‘—and this isn’t a “you’re merely a nurse” lecture. I need you to listen.’

  And for the first time she was, watching him swallow, registering the hesitation in his voice, the careful choice of his words as he tried to reveal something without breaking his friend’s confidence.

  Without possibly pulling a family apart.

  ‘He feels…’ Hugh closed his eyes.

  ‘That he should have known?’ She knew there was more when he nodded, knew he didn’t want to say it.

  So she thought about it.

  Sat on the bed and thought how it must be for a surgeon—a surgeon who operated on bowel-cancer patients every week, a surgeon whose own father’s cancer had been too advanced by the time it had been discovered.

  ‘Dad had symptoms for everything,’ Bonita whispered. ‘If Mum put too much butter on his toast, he thought he was having a heart attack. If we took every complaint seriously, he’d have spent his life undergoing investigations. And the one time he did have symptoms, the one time he did have something really wrong—well, he was too scared to say anything.’ Bonita gulped. ‘Too scared to do anything about it. It’s not Paul’s fault.’

  ‘That’s what he needs to hear.’

  ‘He will.’ Bonita nodded. ‘I know how difficult Mum and Dad can be…’

  ‘Which brings me to you.’

  He stared at her questioning face and could almost feel the axe in his hand as he prepared to wield it.

  ‘You ought to stay at home.’

  ‘I can’t, Hugh.’ Tears plopped down her cheeks. ‘I’m not going to storm downstairs with a suitcase, but I do have to go. I can’t stay indefinitely. Dad could have months left…’ She hated the tiny shake of his head. ‘And I can’t just walk out on Mum straight afterwards.’

  ‘Stay, Bonny.’

  ‘How? You said yourself I shouldn’t go out, just stay home to keep the peace. For how long, though? Mum and I…’

  ‘It isn’t your mum.’ He almost braced himself for the impact of his words, watched her frown as she tried to understand. ‘Your mum’s on your side here, Bonny, she’s always been on your side. It’s your dad that’s the problem—your dad who gets upset if you go out.’

  ‘You’ve got it wrong! Dad was asleep when I got home last night.’

  ‘Because she told him you were fine—the same way you told him your mum was fine when she was five minutes late back from church the other week.’

  ‘You’ve got it wrong!’ Bonny insisted, only with less conviction this time.

  ‘Bonny, do you remember that party you went to, the time we…’ She screwed her eyes closed, couldn’t believe he could bring that up now. It was a no-go area, something never to be discussed, the most raw painful part of her, yet here he was, bringing it up, on today of all days. ‘You remember how desperate you were to go…’ Her heart was hammering in her chest, the murky past suddenly being uncovered, and she was scared to go there, especially with Hugh, but he spoke on. ‘Your dad wasn’t going to let you go.’

  ‘It was Mum!’ Like a scared kitten she struggled to escape, didn’t want to hear this, only somehow she knew she had to, knew that there was no escape. Six feet two of Hugh bloody Armstrong was on her bed and blocking all exits!

  ‘Your dad refused point blank to let you go. I know because I heard the row. She begged him, pleaded with him to just let you be, to trust you.’

  ‘And then I was late home.’

  ‘I heard that row, too,’ Hugh said. ‘Your dad wanted the address, he was all set to go and get you and bring you home. Your mum refused to give it, insisted that you’d be home soon. He went to bed furious, told her that it was on her head if anything happened to you.

  ‘She knew,’ Hugh continued, ‘how mortified you’d be if your parents showed up. Bonny, she spent all those years trying to let you be you, while somehow reeling you in so as not to upset your dad. You and your mother are far more alike than you realize—’

  ‘Alike!’ Bonny shot out the incredulous word. ‘She’s nothing like me.’

  ‘But she was,’ Hugh said softly. ‘When your dad met her, by all accounts, she was this young, impetuous thing…’

  ‘Well we’re not alike now!’

  ‘Your mum would no doubt love a break, would love to stay on at the church for coffee and cake, but she knows it would upset your dad. It would have been the same last night when you went out.’

  ‘So I shouldn’t go out?’

  ‘No,’ he said simply. And it was so unfair, except now she was starting to see why. ‘You’re not going to change your dad now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whether he’s right or wrong, that’s how he is. And if you want to make these last few days…’

  ‘Days!’

  ‘Weeks perhaps…’ Hugh shook his head helplessly. ‘But he doesn’t have long—I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.’

  Oh, but he had.

  Hugh had told her so much that she hadn’t known, and she was very glad that he had because, somehow, hearing the truth shifted everything. Took the wind right out of her angry sails as she relaxed back on the bed. Somehow hearing the truth, seeing the truth, didn’t make her love her father less, it just let her love her mother more.

  ‘Just go easy on her now. Don’t try and change things.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘It’s her way with you,’ Hugh continued. ‘She doesn’t want fuss and drama. She needs your dad to see that you’re OK. And it’s not about being the youngest or immature, it’s about being you…and trying to let you be you with an old-fashioned Italian dad.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know.’ He smiled down at her. ‘I love your dad, Bonny, he’s been more of a father to me than my own ever was. There’s no man I admire more, but he is a supremely difficult man.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Dad?’ she asked again, and he confirmed it with a nod.

  ‘And your mum’s doing what she always has—trying to let you be and somehow keep the peace. She gets you, Bonny.’

  Which made even less sense! And Bonita pulled away, resumed her usual sulky position these days of lying on the pillow, staring at the ceiling, only she lay back a touch too heavily and winced as she did so.

  ‘How’s your shoulder?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘Sore,’ Bonita admitted, ‘but only because I had physio yesterday—light duties at work are going to be a picnic after the army drills she puts me through.’ He was still smiling down at her but she just wanted him to go, wanted to think about what he had said, without the distraction of him in her room. ‘Thanks for the pep talk. You can go now—tell them I’m fine…’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I will be.’

  ‘You’re a tough little thing really…’ he smiled ‘…underneath it all.’

  ‘Underneath what?’

  ‘The tears and the drama!’

  ‘I am half-Italian!’

  And so rarely was Hugh nice that when he was, well, it was easy to forget just how mean he could be at times. Very, very easy to forget when his fingers were on her sore shoulder, gen
tly soothing her hurt.

  He caught her by surprise.

  He was doing nothing except idly stroking her shoulder, yet he caught her by surprise. He wasn’t a doctor in her room and he wasn’t a brother either—he was Hugh, staring down at her, still stroking her shoulder and making it suddenly impossible to breathe.

  ‘You’ll come out and talk to them?’ Hugh asked, as if the conversation was continuing normally, as if the crackling charge in the air wasn’t present. Only his voice was just a touch gruffer now, and Bonita’s, when it came, was a teensy bit breathless.

  ‘Soon!’

  ‘OK,’ Hugh nodded. ‘I’m going to go soon—I’m working tonight.’

  ‘OK.’

  It was just a normal conversation, except he was kissing her.

  Oh, he didn’t kiss her, and she didn’t kiss him, but they were kissing, each tracing the memory as they stared, remembering again that morning when last he’d comforted her—forgetting just how badly it had ended.

  ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow after I wake up…’ His fingers worked in deep, firm strokes, and it was like the electricity returning after a power cut, her whole body thrumming back into sudden life. She felt the flood of energy in her body, awareness drenching her as still he stared down at her, still his fingers worked their gentle magic. ‘And see if things are better.’

  His blond hair was dark from riding, the mingled scent of man and beast and cologne made her feel faint. She wanted him to lie down beside her, could almost see the frantic knot of denim-clad legs on the bed, could taste him on her mouth, wanted his hand to move lower. She wanted to burrow into him for refuge so badly, only she didn’t dare.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said instead.

  ‘Then I’ll go.’

  And then came his arms, and it was bliss, not the antidote to her pain but a comfort. The still, strong silence that he wrapped her in stopped the panic for a little while, halted the frantic running of her mind, and she did burrow into him, dragged in his scent as he held her, listened to the lovely thud of his heart in the shell of her ear.

  Hugh, the man who could soothe her.

  His arms, the ones that could do it.

  And there, in his arms, there was an unspoken, unfathomable, confirmation taking place, that whatever was between them, there was something. That beneath the jibes, the banter and the teasing, somehow they remained, until he pulled back.

  Until he stood up and did the right thing.

  ‘You’re doing great.’ He ruffled her hair in a sort of brotherly way, normal services resuming. Bonita blinked as if she’d woken from a dream. ‘You’ll get through this.’

  And she did.

  She went downstairs after she heard his car leave and apologised to her parents for upsetting them.

  ‘We’re sorry, too!’ Carmel’s eyes darted to Luigi, who sat with a face like thunder. ‘We’ll keep our opinions of Bill to ourselves.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Bonita said, looking at her mother through different eyes now.

  The rose-coloured glasses she’d worn for her father lifted a touch, only it didn’t hurt to see, to witness the very real love that was between her parents. The give and take that actually came from both sides.

  And Bonita stopped trying to make things easier for her mother by suggesting she go out, because now she realised that it only made things harder for her.

  That as much as her mother might need a break and a rest, here at home was where her father wanted Carmel to be.

  And that it was actually Luigi who worried if the sauce wasn’t perfect or there were lumps in the gravy—worried that if Bonny couldn’t get that right then, heaven forbid, she might end up a sad old spinster like Zia Lucia!

  Somehow, Hugh’s wise words had defused the impending explosion. A calm descending on the family, a gentle, womb-like calm as they battened down the hatches and huddled together to greet the storm. And Bonita tried not to examine her feelings too much, refused to dwell on what had, but hadn’t, taken place with Hugh. She just couldn’t bring herself to look ahead because if she looked to the future it was without her dad and she truly wasn’t ready to go there, so she just dealt with the present, dealt with what she could.

  Held it together as one life slowly neared its end.

  Bonita held back the tears as day by day her father faded. She crawled into bed at night and breathed in Hugh’s scent on her pillow, imagined his arms around her and drew from his strength. She woke every morning and opened the curtains brave and scared and wondering if this day was her dad’s last.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE Azetti family barbeque was so much more than a barbeque.

  A lamb spit would hold centre stage, but Carmel had been cooking for days. Vast tomato and ham lasagnes, hand-made gnocchi that would be offered with carbonara or meat sauce, cannolli and tiramisu for dessert—and to her father’s delight there was absolutely no excuse for Bonita not to learn how to make a million Azetti arancini balls—a vital rite of passage that Bonita had, till now, managed to avoid!

  And though she didn’t exactly squeal in delight at the prospect of a day in the kitchen, being scolded by her mother, it was surprisingly nice—rolling balls of rice with bacon and basil and adding a knob of mozzarella cheese, then dipping little balls in breadcrumbs—and, most importantly, her father was delighted, even coming into the kitchen at one point to watch his women at work.

  ‘This needs more basil!’ Luigi said, tasting the rice. ‘But very good.’ And there was something in his expression Bonita couldn’t read at first…pride…? Satisfaction?

  It was actually relief, Bonita realised as he shuffled out and Carmel gave her a small eye-roll.

  ‘Now you know how to feed a man you won’t end up like poor Zia Lucia—jetting around the world and staying in five-star hotels!’

  ‘Lucky me, then!’ Bonita said, smiling at her mother. Inexplicable tears trickled at the back of her nose as Carmel smiled back, in this moment they both seemed to say without saying anything, that they understood the other.

  Yes, lucky me, Bonita thought, when two hundred little balls that had been painstakingly deep-fried and drained on layers of kitchen paper were being carried out to the trestle tables the next day, because it so nearly hadn’t happened. Without Hugh’s intervention, these gentle days spent with her family could have been mired in pointless bickering.

  Hugh’s candour had actually given her a glimpse of her real parents, while there was still time to witness them, and for that at least she was grateful to him.

  ‘Hope there’s enough food!’

  He had to be joking! Looking disgustingly handsome and utterly at ease on Ramone, who was a beast of a horse by anyone’s standards, Hugh left the pack that were preparing to set off and towered over her as she carried trays over to the already laden tables. He’d clearly managed to juggle his shifts to accommodate Carmel’s request that he attend, and, given Luigi’s increasing frailty, Bonita wasn’t surprised, but she was also more than a little relieved that Amber wasn’t there.

  She wasn’t sure she could handle Amber’s usually cool greeting, or meet her eye after what had taken place. The fact Amber appeared off Hugh’s list spared Bonita more than a few blushes.

  Oh, nothing had happened technically. In fact, the more Bonita thought about it—and, boy, had she thought about it—the more she had convinced herself that she was imagining things, that Hugh had been patting her shoulder, just as her mother would, that the thick sizzle of sex in the air had been but a product of her over-active imagination. Especially because he’d bounced straight back to his usual scathing self. In fact, as he eyed the arancini rather than her, Bonita realized with a thud of disappointment that he’d only come over looking for a quick feed!

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Arancini,’ Bonita said. ‘But lunch isn’t till after the ride!’

  It was a loose family tradition at the barbeque that the guys all galloped off at breakneck speed as the women set up and, in t
ruth, it was the one time Bonita didn’t mind the blatant sexism that existed in her family—she far preferred her feet on solid ground. And as this year her dad wasn’t going riding she was only too happy to stay behind and spend a couple more precious hours with him.

  ‘So you’re not joining us?’ Hugh asked, tongue firmly in cheek—Bonita would do anything to avoid saddling up!

  ‘You know I’d love to.’ Bonita smiled sweetly. ‘But, given my shoulder and everything…’

  ‘You’re not still using that as an excuse!’ He grinned, because since the sling had come off there were no excuses, according to her mother, and Bonita was seriously wondering if going back to work early might be easier than resting at home. ‘Come on, Bonny,’ Hugh said, eyeing the little arancini balls in the bowl she was carrying. ‘Give me a handful…I’m starving.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait, like anyone else!” Bonita’s smile stayed in place.

  ‘Give Hugh something to eat!’ Carmel snapped, catching Bonita by surprise as she wheeled Luigi across the grass.

  ‘Thanks, Carmel,’ Hugh said, grabbing a handful and taking a greedy bite. ‘You’ve excelled yourself, as always!’

  ‘Bonny made them!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She can cook and she is beautiful,’ Luigi said, as Carmel wheeled him off, leaving Bonita blushing to her roots.

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then!’ Hugh grinned.

  ‘I feel like he’s auctioning me off!’ Bonita sighed. ‘He fails to mention that I’m intelligent and that I have a career.’

  ‘Ah, but can you keep a clean house?’ Hugh laughed, turning Ramone with thigh power alone. ‘Anyway…’ he winked over his shoulder ‘…with a body like that, you’ll soon be sold off.’

  She almost swallowed a fly!

  Open-mouthed, Bonita stood there as he kicked Ramone into an impressive trot, and went to join the gang. And even though she chatted and laughed easily with friends and relatives as she helped set up, her heart was banging in her rib cage at the impossibility of what had just taken place.

  Oh, it was tiny!

  Maybe it shouldn’t merit a thought, given it had come from the lips of a guy like Hugh and that her parents weren’t actually that far off, but he’d definitely been flirting. Which meant, Bonita realised, striding towards the tables, that she hadn’t imagined the other day after all!