The Doctor's Runaway Bride

by Sarah Morgan

  Luca didn’t smile. ‘You know the rule, Tia. You have pain relief before the pain comes back and then it’s easier to control it. You don’t wait until you’re in agony.’

  Tia looked at him curiously. ‘Why are you so worried about me being in pain? I’m fine, Luca, honestly.’

  Luca let out a sharp breath. ‘It was hell seeing you in so much pain when you were in labour,’ he confessed quietly, and then surprised her by scooping her up easily into his arms and plopping her in the wheelchair as if she weighed nothing. ‘I am very relieved that it is all over.’

  She stared up at him, surprised by the strength of his reaction. She hadn’t realised until now just how worried he’d obviously been. ‘Will she be all right, Luca?’

  ‘Tia, the girl has the entire paediatric department hovering over her,’ he said dryly. ‘Like you, I wish she was tucked up in here with us, but I’m not worried about her. Not at all.’

  Tia started to relax for the first time in days. If Luca wasn’t worried maybe there was no need for her to worry either.

  She expressed some colostrum in the little room on Special Care and would have spent all day with Lily had Luca not forced her back downstairs to her room for a sleep.

  ‘You will not help her if you collapse,’ he pointed out roughly as he helped her back onto the bed.

  Tia nodded and stifled a yawn, suddenly feeling more weary than she ever had in her life. She’d had a major operation, of course, so it was hardly surprising, and the strain of seeing their tiny daughter lying in an incubator connected to what seemed like hundreds of tubes was beginning to wear her down.

  Luca looked as immaculate as ever but she could see from the fine lines around his dark eyes that he, too, was feeling the pressure.

  She was all too aware that, despite his own personal worries, he’d concentrated all his attention on supporting her and overseeing the treatment their daughter was receiving. She loved him so much that it was a physical ache in her heart. Maybe it was time to tell him, she thought as sleep clouded her brain. Maybe it didn’t matter that he didn’t love her in the same way.

  Tia slept on and off throughout the rest of the day, aware that Luca was dividing his time between her room and the special care baby unit where their daughter was being cared for.

  Sharon helped her express more colostrum and then pushed her upstairs in the wheelchair so that she could feed it to Lily down the tube.

  ‘Weird sort of breastfeeding, I know, sweetheart,’ Tia murmured as she fiddled with the syringe and watched her tiny daughter smack her lips. ‘Hurry up and learn to suck and then we can stop all this messing around.’

  ‘We’ll still put her to the breast regularly,’ Sharon said, ‘but don’t forget that she’s only tiny and she’ll get tired easily.’

  Tia looked at the baby wistfully. ‘Do you think she’ll ever breastfeed properly?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Sharon was adamant. ‘If you really want to, I’m sure you’ll manage it.’

  Eventually Tia allowed herself to be wheeled back down to the ward for some more rest.

  The next day was frantic with activity and both Dan and Duncan visited her to check that she was doing well physically. Despite the pain nagging in her wound, she was determined to be as mobile as possible to limit the possibility of clots forming in her legs.

  Lily’s condition seemed to fluctuate although no one seemed to be concerned that her problems were anything other than something to be expected in a baby of her gestation.

  ‘When will I be able to take her home?’ Tia asked the paediatric registrar and Julie gave a noncommittal shrug.

  ‘You know better than anyone that I can’t really answer that. The official answer at this stage is that she could be in until she should have been born—in other words, another six weeks—but I hope it won’t be as long as that.’

  Tia sagged with disappointment.

  Six weeks?

  Six weeks until they could take Lily home and start to be a family?

  She spent most of the day with Lily, and Luca joined her periodically, dividing his time between his new family and his busy job.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Dan and he’s agreed that I can take two weeks off when Lily comes home,’ he told her in a husky voice as they both leaned over the incubator.

  Tia smiled up at him. Two weeks together? ‘That’s fantastic. How did you manage to persuade him to let you do that?’

  ‘Threats mostly,’ Luca admitted with a grin that melted her insides.

  ‘I can’t wait to go home,’ she said softly, and his eyes locked onto hers.

  ‘Me, too.’ He hesitated and his smile faded. ‘There is something I need to talk to you about. Something I should have said to you a long time ago.’

  Tia felt as though she’d been showered with cold water.

  Was he going to talk about Luisa? Now, after all this time?

  Now that the baby was here, was he going to decide that their relationship was over?

  Surely not. He adored Lily as much as she did.

  But maybe he just wanted to be with Lily and not with her…

  Hiding her panic, she concentrated her attention on the baby and barely noticed when Luca excused himself to answer his bleeper.

  She barely saw him for the rest of the day and when she finally went to bed her mind was still tormented by worry and she couldn’t settle.

  Finally giving up on sleep, she glanced at the clock by her bed and saw that it was still only two o’clock in the morning.

  Facing the fact that she wasn’t going to get to sleep when she was this worried about Luca, she decided to pay an impromptu visit to Lily. Tucking her feet into her slippers, she told the midwife in charge where she was going and walked gingerly to the lift.

  She was managing to get around very well, although her wound still nagged painfully at times.

  The lift moved silently upwards and the doors opened with a clatter that was magnified by the strange silence of the night.

  The lights in the SCBU had been dimmed and Tia stopped to wash her hands and then walked onto the unit.

  She stopped dead, surprised to see that Luca was there, his broad-shouldered figure bending over their daughter’s cot.

  And by his side was a tall, elegant, dark-haired woman whom she recognised in an instant. It was the same woman she’d seen talking to his mother on the day of the wedding.

  Luisa.

  Even as she watched in mute horror, he slipped an arm around the woman’s shoulders and bent to drop a tender kiss on her forehead.

  Dear God, no!

  With a whimper of denial, Tia turned and shuffled from the room as fast as she could, determined to get back to the sanctuary of the ward before she collapsed.

  Because collapse she would. She was only too painfully aware of that.

  How could she have been such a fool?

  She’d known all along that he had a secret, that he’d been involved with Luisa, but the truth was that she’d fallen so deeply in love with the man that she’d allowed herself to trust him.

  But now that the baby had been safely born, he clearly wanted to be with the woman he loved.

  And that woman was Luisa.

  She was lying on the bed, tears pouring down her face, when the door opened and Luca walked in.

  He gave a sharp exclamation when he saw that she was crying and was by her side in an instant.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ His Italian accent was suddenly very pronounced. ‘Are you in pain? Or is it hormones?’

  Hormones?

  Why was it that men were so quick to assume that when a woman was in tears it was caused by hormones?

  He put out a hand to touch her but she flinched away from him and he frowned, clearly puzzled.

  ‘Cara.’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’ Her eyes filled again as she glared up at him. ‘Our whole relationship is a total farce, Luca!’

  He stilled, his expression shocked. ‘Tia, you don’t—’

&
nbsp; ‘I am such a stupid fool,’ she muttered, interrupting him without thought, rubbing the tears away from her cheeks with the palm of her hand. ‘For a brief, totally deluded time, I really thought it could work between us.’

  He frowned. ‘Tia—’

  ‘I was waiting for you to tell me, Luca.’ She stared at him accusingly and reached for a tissue from the box by her bed. ‘I wanted to see whether you were the same sort of man as my father.’

  He was very still. ‘Your father?’

  ‘I told you that he had affairs,’ Tia said hoarsely, ‘but I never told you how my mother found out, did I? She fell down some stairs backstage and was unconscious in hospital for a week. My father really thought she was going to die so do you know what he did?’ Her eyes were bright with tears of outrage as she looked at him. ‘He chose that moment to confess everything. My mother was lying unconscious and he told her everything. All about the other women he’d been seeing—that their whole relationship had been a sham. He thought that she couldn’t hear him, but she could.’

  Luca’s expression was grim. ‘Tia, you don’t—’

  ‘She trusted him, you see,’ Tia went on, her heart beating so fast she thought it would burst. ‘And to find out that he had this secret life was just too much for her. When I heard your mother talking to Luisa the day of our wedding, it was like history repeating itself.’

  There was a long silence and when he spoke his voice was soft. ‘You heard my mother and Luisa talking?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Tia nodded miserably, the words etched in her memory. ‘Your mother said that it was a very sad day. That you were marrying the wrong woman for the wrong reasons and that you should have been marrying Luisa.’ The tears started to trickle down her cheeks again and this time she did nothing to stop them. ‘And then Luisa said that you’d told her that you would always love her. Which was all news to me, of course. Bad news. I was crazy about you, Luca. I really thought you were Mr Right.’

  Luca’s breathing was rapid and his face was dark with anger. ‘Wait there,’ he growled, turning on his heel and leaving the room, to return only minutes later, dragging Luisa by the arm.

  He pushed her none too gently into the room and spoke to her rapidly in Italian, his expression grim.

  Luisa listened and then glanced nervously at Tia. ‘This is all my fault. Luca wants me to explain.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Tia mumbled, reaching for another tissue and blowing her nose hard. ‘I really don’t want to hear it. I should have ended it the day of the wedding when I found out that that the pair of you were involved.’

  Luisa’s face blanched. ‘That was why you refused to marry him? Because you thought that I, that we—?’ She broke off and said something in Italian to Luca who shrugged, his eyes as hard as granite.

  Strange, Tia thought dully as she tucked the scrunched tissue up her sleeve. For a man in love, he didn’t look too happy.

  ‘Tia…’ Luisa’s voice was suddenly shaking with nerves and she looked pleadingly at Luca who was totally unsympathetic. The Italian girl took a deep breath. ‘I think… It seems as though you may have misunderstood—’

  Luca growled something and she flinched slightly.

  ‘I mean…’ She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘I was— I’m not involved with Luca. I never have been. Not in the way you imagined. But I wanted to be. I had a huge crush on him.’

  She hung her head and Tia stared at her, uncomprehending. A crush?

  ‘But I heard you and his mother talking. She said that he should be marrying you. You said that he’d promised to love you for ever.’

  Luisa nodded. ‘It’s true that Luca’s mother always wanted him to marry me, but it wasn’t a realistic wish and it wasn’t Luca’s wish.’ She bit her lip. ‘The truth is that Luca was kind to me, always, and I—I wished it would be something more.’

  ‘But it never was,’ Luca said, speaking in English for the first time since he’d strode into the room, dragging Luisa with him. ‘Luisa was a childhood friend of my sister’s. My mother, who doesn’t have enough to occupy her mind, weaved all sorts of plans for bringing us together. But they didn’t work.’

  Hope started to flicker in the back of Tia’s mind. ‘They didn’t?’

  ‘No.’ Luca looked at Luisa and gave her a crooked smile, the sort that a brother might have given to a sister. ‘Whenever Luisa and I went out, it was always with the family. We were never involved in a romantic sense.’

  Tia swallowed. ‘But you told her that you’d always love her.’

  Luca frowned. ‘I may have told her that, but—’

  ‘But he didn’t mean it in a romantic sense.’ Luisa spoke in a pathetically small voice. ‘When I found out he was marrying you I went to see him at the hospital and—well, he was kind to me but very blunt. He told me again that he would never want a relationship with me. I was dreadfully upset and he did tell me that he’d always love me, but of course he just meant as a friend. Deep down I knew there was no hope, but I had a terrible crush on him. I was still kidding myself that he loved me when I spoke to his mother the day of your wedding. I was so crazy about him it made me do stupid things—do you understand?’

  Tia thought she probably did understand. She knew just how powerful an effect Luca could have on women.

  ‘So you’re saying…’ Her voice cracked and she looked at Luca questioningly. ‘You’re saying that what I heard the day of the wedding was nonsense?’

  ‘Complete nonsense.’ Luca’s eyes gleamed. ‘Something I would have confirmed had you bothered to ask me. Next time you overhear something, it might be wise to discuss it with me, cara mia. It might save us all a great deal of anguish.’

  Tia glanced back at Luisa. ‘So why have you come here now?’

  Luisa blushed. ‘I’ve met someone,’ she confessed, ‘and we are on holiday in England. I wanted to bring him to meet Luca and apologise for my behaviour. I threw myself at him and behaved very badly.’

  Tia flopped back against her pillows and stared at Luca, the colour rising in her cheeks as she met his eyes.

  ‘Luisa, I believe your boyfriend is waiting downstairs.’ Luca barely gave her a glance but she took the hint immediately.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got to go.’ She hurried towards the door and cast a final apologetic look at Tia before leaving the room.

  Tia stared down at the bedcovers, not knowing what to say. She felt the bed dip and Luca’s solid thigh appeared in her line of vision.

  ‘Luca, I’m sorry,’ she whispered, hardly daring to look at him. ‘I ruined the wedding and…I really thought you were in love.’

  ‘I was in love,’ he said quietly, reaching for her hands and taking them in his. ‘With you. From the first moment I saw you in Venice.’

  She lifted her eyes to his and shook her head slightly. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said firmly.

  There was a long silence. A silence that seemed to stretch for ever.

  Finally Tia shifted. ‘But—’

  ‘It seems to me that we still aren’t talking enough, cara,’ he murmured, his voice rough as he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘So I’m going to talk now. It’s true that Luisa had a crush on me and maybe I should have told you, but to be honest it didn’t seem important. I was in love with you and spending all my time trying to find ways to make you love me back. I thought that when I told my family I was getting married the problem of Luisa would be solved.’

  Tia stared at him. ‘But I thought you were marrying me because I was pregnant.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘No. I was marrying you because I was in love with you. Madly in love with you.’

  ‘But when I told you that I was pregnant, you were horrified.’

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I know that it seemed that way, but it wasn’t true. I was very pleased, but also very afraid.’

  ‘Afraid?’ She was thoroughly confused and he gave a sigh.

  ‘Yes, afraid. You see, I kne
w how wary you were of men,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew that you were very confused about your feelings for me. I could see that what happened between us physically confused and overwhelmed you, and I was trying to give you space and time to adjust. And then we found out that you were pregnant.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want me any more. You spent more and more time at the hospital.’

  ‘That’s true.’ His voice was suddenly gruff and he walked slowly back to the bed and settled himself next to her. ‘And the reason I spent all that time at the hospital was because I was desperate to finish writing up my research work so that I could be released early and take a job in England. I wanted to take you home, Tia. I thought things might be easier between us if you were in your own country.’

  Her eyes met his, her heart thumping uncomfortably in her chest. What was he saying?

  ‘I loved you from the first moment I saw you. But before you had time to get used to the idea you were pregnant, and I was so angry with myself for that. You were so wary of marriage, I should have given you time to adjust to the idea, instead of which I moved so fast you barely had time to think. And then you panicked. You were suddenly terrified of what you’d done, totally overwhelmed by the enormity of it. And I knew that I’d made a mistake to rush you.’

  Tia nodded warily. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I could read your body language,’ he said softly. ‘Our sex life was as miraculous as ever but the rest of the time you were restless and unsettled. I was cursing myself for not being more restrained that first night together. I should have taken it slowly but at the time all I could think about was making you mine. I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were the only woman I wanted to spend my life with.’

  Tia could hardly believe what she was hearing. The only woman he wanted to spend his life with?

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ he said softly, a strange light in his dark eyes. ‘And I thought that you felt the same way, which was why I had no conscience about rushing you into marrying me. On the day of the wedding, when I discovered that you’d gone…’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘Well, let’s just say that it was the worst day of my life.’