Alessandro and the Cheery Nanny

by Amy Andrews

  ‘But I guess that was only a day after our flight from London,’ Nina continued. ‘Boy was that an awful flight. I was stuck in my seat the whole time with Benji needing to be fed constantly because of the cold playing havoc with his ears. He drank practically all through the flight. It’s times like those I wished I’d chosen the bottle over the breast all those months ago. At least his father could have helped out.’

  Alessandro’s antennae started twitching crazily. Firstly, without even laying hands on her, he could see the swollen red area of Nina’s calf. That didn’t bode well. But secondly, and perhaps the most importantly, as far as the big picture went, was Benji’s cough. It may have seemed quite innocent when Nina had walked in—just another childhood cold. But teamed with the word ‘London’ it was potentially much more.

  Swamp flu was prevalent now in the UK as well as the Americas. The cases they’d had in Victoria had all been carried into the country through international air travel, although not yet from the UK. It was certainly causing all kinds of consternation and hot on the heels of several deaths worldwide some schools with infected students in Melbourne had been shut down as a precaution.

  There’d been nothing in Queensland yet but due to the worldwide level six pandemic status there were procedures he had to follow. He didn’t think for a minute that Benji had swamp flu but he knew he couldn’t let them leave without making sure.

  But first things first. Alessandro gently examined Nina’s calf, the concentrated area of heat obvious beneath his palm. He felt for a pulse at the back of her knee and also felt for her foot pulses. ‘Can you draw you toes back towards your knee?’ he asked.

  Nina complied, wincing as a hot arrow streaked straight to the centre of her sore calf. ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Alessandro urged her back against the pillow. ‘I’m just going to feel for a pulse in your groin,’ he said. He located the full bound easily. ‘Any chest pain?’ he asked, taking his stethoscope out of his ears and placing the bell on her chest.

  ‘Nope.’

  Satisfied her lung fields sounded clear, he helped Nina up into a sitting position. ‘I think you may have something called DVT. Have you heard of it?’

  Nina screwed up her face. ‘That clot thingy? The one they do the talk about on planes?’

  Alessandro nodded. ‘Yes. You have the classic symptoms and your forced immobility on the long-haul flight definitely put you at a higher risk. We’ll get an ultrasound to confirm the diagnosis.’

  Nina looked at him, a worry line between her brows. ‘I’m not going to die, am I?’

  ‘They are potentially very dangerous but we’ve caught this in time and we can treat it.’

  Nina looked relieved. ‘So…what happens now? Do I have to go into hospital? I have three other kids as well as Benji.’

  ‘I’m afraid it will mean a short hospital stay. We need to start you on a special intravenous drug that helps to thin your blood. And once you have therapeutic levels you go onto an oral form of the drug and you’ll need to be on it for several months.’

  Nina looked at Nat. ‘Holy cow.’

  ‘Can your husband get time off work?’ Nat asked. ‘Or do you have family to look after the kids?’

  Nina nodded. ‘My husband is still on holidays till next week. Luckily I have plenty of expressed breast milk in the freezer.’

  Nat smiled. ‘I’ll refer you to our welfare worker as well. She can help with any of the logistics.’

  Nina shot her a grateful smile. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘There’s another thing,’ Alessandro added.

  Nina raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m going to have to test Benji for swamp flu, I’m afraid.’

  Nina’s eyebrows practically hit her hairline. ‘Swamp flu? You think my Benji’s got swamp flu?’ She held her arms out for her baby and Nat handed him over.

  ‘No. I don’t think he has it. I think in all likelihood he has a common cold but I’m afraid there are certain protocols I’m governed by now because of his symptoms and the fact that he’s just come from another country where the infection is prevalent.’

  Benji, who was squirming and protesting his mother’s tight hold, stopped as soon as Nina relaxed. ‘Oh.’ She kissed her son’s head. ‘But what if he does have it?’

  ‘We’ll start him on some special antiviral medication, which will help lessen the duration and vigour of the symptoms. We’ll have to get the infectious disease team involved who’ll track all contacts. The rest of your family will need to go into home quarantine immediately—just in case.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Seven days. But we should have the test results back by tomorrow afternoon so hopefully only a day until they come back negative. You’ll have to be nursed in isolation too until we know the results.’

  ‘Hell. What a mess.’

  ‘Yes.’ Alessandro nodded. That was putting it mildly. ‘But, as I say, I really don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. Okay?’ He patted her hand and smiled. ‘Let’s just take this one step at a time.’

  Nina’s worried expression dissipated beneath Alessandro’s comforting gesture and calm authority. She nodded. ‘One step at a time.’

  Nat and Alessandro left the cubicle a few minutes later. ‘I’ll call ID and X-Ray. We’ll have to get a mobile ultrasound,’ he said. ‘Get an urgent NPA on both of them and move them to an iso cube. Limit numbers in there and make sure anyone going in wears a gown and mask.’

  Nat nodded as she prioritised his rapid requests, feeling the thrill of medicine in action. She loved working with him almost as much as she loved sleeping with him.

  The next afternoon Nat was smiling to herself as she opened one of the few remaining boxes stacked in Alessandro’s formal lounge area. She could hear father and son chattering away as they cooked tea together and she was looking forward to the weekend.

  This time with Alessandro and Juliano had been satisfying on levels she hadn’t thought possible as she’d watched their journey back to each other. And she was going to miss them when she left.

  But, in the meantime, there were still boxes to get through. The progress had been slow as Nat had given priority to activities that kept Juliano and Alessandro together and focused on the future. Going to the beach, heading to the movies, taking a ferry trip on the river, playing soccer in the park.

  Sure, going through the boxes was also something they did together and helped them connect. They talked about the things inside and it was interesting learning about their lives before they’d entered hers. But she was more than aware that it wasn’t a task Alessandro relished—the memories, she guessed—so she found it was better in small doses.

  Still, as she looked around the house she couldn’t deny the sense of accomplishment. Emptying the boxes, decorating Alessandro’s house, seeing it turn from an igloo into a warm, welcoming home, also helped by the flowering of the father/son relationship, had been immensely satisfying.

  Something that had started out as a way to help, a thank-you to Alessandro for his generosity, had become much more. And seeing the dividends it was paying in every aspect of their lives was very special.

  She settled on her haunches next to the nearest box and opened a lid, finding yet another stash of linen. Whoever the mysterious Camilla had been, she’d had impeccable taste. Egyptian cotton sheets and the very best quality hundred per cent duck-down quilts—a bit unnecessary in Brisbane but too beautiful to shove in a cupboard and ignore.

  As she reached in to pull out the next sheet her hand knocked against something hard and she peered in. Something was wrapped in the sheet. She felt it—it was about the size of a large book but not as bulky. Was it the elusive photos Alessandro had assured her were in one of the boxes? She’d almost forgotten about them over the intervening weeks and all their distractions.

  Nat’s heart tripped in her chest as she gingerly unfolded the fabric to find the back of a photo frame staring at her. She felt nervous as her fingers advance
d tentatively towards the object. Was she ready to come face to face with Camilla? Her hand shook a little as she turned it over.

  She needn’t have worried. It was a photo of Juliano as a baby. He was sitting like a little chubby Buddha in a sailor suit with a little sailor hat plonked artfully on his head. He was grinning at the camera, one hand stroking a sleek black cat.

  She smiled. She couldn’t help it. Juliano looked so happy. Loved, content, secure. Not a worry in the world—as it should be. So different to the boy she’d first met. How unfair was it that in only a few short years after this candid snap his whole world would be turned upside down?

  The resemblance to his father also struck her. Looking at Juliano, she had a glimpse at what a young Alessandro must have looked like. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and cherubic lips. She traced Juliano’s mouth with her finger, so like his father’s. And that sparkle in his eyes. One that she was seeing more and more of in Alessandro’s gaze these days.

  He must have been a beautiful baby.

  She dipped into the box, eager to see more, her hands finding the tell-tale signs of more frames wrapped in sheets. She pulled them out one by one, unwrapping them like Christmas presents, each one a moment captured in time, a window, an insight into Alessandro’s life.

  Most of the frames held pictures of a solo Juliano at various stages of his life, chronicling his four years. Crawling. Walking. His first birthday party. But there were two with other people. One with an older Italian-looking woman holding Juliano in what appeared to be a christening gown. Alessandro’s mother? Or maybe his aunt? Valentino’s mother?

  And the other with Alessandro on the London Eye, the magnificent Houses of Parliament forming an imposing backdrop. Juliano looked about two and both he and Alessandro were pointing at something outside the glass bubble and beyond the view of the camera. It was obviously a candid shot. Father and son had been caught in fierce concentration, not smiling, their brows wrinkled, their faces frozen in serious contemplation.

  It was strikingly similar to how they’d both looked when she’d first met them. Unsmiling, serious. But there was an ease in the older photograph that hadn’t been evident then. Their heads were almost touching, Alessandro’s hold was loose and comfortable and Juliano’s little arm around his father’s neck spoke volumes about his innate trust.

  Nat dragged her gaze away from the photo and put it aside, delving for more. The next several frames were academic qualifications of Alessandro’s. She spent a few moments trying to decipher the formal Italian, practise her rusty command of the language. But it was too academic for her and she put them aside with a mental note to make sure this weekend they tackled Alessandro’s office.

  The box was almost empty now, with just two folded sheets sitting on top of some plump cushions. Without even having to look further, Nat knew these were the frames she’d been looking for. Finally she’d get to see the woman who had won Alessandro’s heart and for whom he still grieved.

  Oddly, she hesitated. After weeks of internal speculation about Alessandro’s wife she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. What if she was simply the most gorgeous creature she’d ever seen? Could her ego stand that? And yet there was a part of her that needed to know and she cursed it. Cursed her innate female curiosity. Her vanity.

  What had Camilla Lombardi looked like? Beautiful, no doubt. Glamorous too, she’d bet. She couldn’t see Alessandro, a breathtakingly handsome man who must have had his pick of women, marrying anyone less than stunning. Had she been dark and exotic like Alessandro or maybe a glamorous redhead with milky skin and green eyes?

  She stared down at the sheets. Was she ready to come face to face with Alessandro’s dead wife? The woman who’d claimed his heart. She drew in a ragged breath at how much it hurt to think of him being loved by another woman. How much it hurt to acknowledge that even when he was buried deep inside her, pounding away, his heart belonged to someone else.

  Goose-bumps marched across her skin and she rubbed her arms. This was stupid! They were no more than convenient lovers and she had no right to such thoughts. And his wife was dead. Did it matter what she looked like?

  She reached for the sheets and pulled them out of the box, unwrapping the first one and refusing to pay any heed to the knot in her gut. She flipped the frame over briskly, businesslike, mentally chastising her hesitancy. Her eyes instantly connected with an eerily familiar pair of blue ones.

  And everything in that moment crashed to a halt. Her heart stopped in her chest. Her breath stilled in her lungs. The synapses in her brain ceased to function. The frame fell from suddenly nerveless fingers and slid off her lap. A loud rushing noise echoed in her head and she couldn’t hear anything above the roar. It sounded like she was in a wind tunnel or in the centre of a tornado.

  A terrible dreadful sense of déjà vu swept through her, paralysing her with its ferociousness.

  It wasn’t until her lungs were burning, bursting for breath, and her vision started to blacken at the edges that her body kicked into survival mode and took over. Her jaw fell open, her lips, completely independent of her will, pursed into a tight pucker, sucking in a desperate breath.

  Nat coughed and spluttered as it rushed in, abrading her oxygen-starved membranes. She fell forward, extending her arms to stop herself collapsing altogether. She hung her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut as the coarse white carpet pricked at her palms. She gripped it hard as she gasped for breath, for sanity.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, fighting for stability in a world that had suddenly tilted on its axis. She panted and rocked on her haunches like a woman in labour waiting for the contractions to stop, for the pain to ease.

  It felt like hours could have passed when she finally opened her eyes and the world slowly came back into focus. Camilla’s clear blue eyes looked calmly back at her from the frame on the floor. A small smile hovered on the other woman’s perfectly made-up lips, like she’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted in life and she knew it.

  A splash of moisture fell on the frame and Nat blinked. She felt her cheeks, surprised to find tears running down her face. The same sort of face that looked back at her from the glass. Same blue wide-set eyes, same blonde ponytail, same high cheekbones, generous mouth and pointed chin with the cutesy-pie cleft.

  Nat shook her head as her earlier thoughts came back to haunt her. Did it matter what she looked like? She couldn’t believe it had only been mere minutes ago that she’d been that innocent. That she’d ever been that innocent.

  She picked up the frame and stared at the familiar contours of the other woman’s face. They could have been sisters. Her and Alessandro’s dead wife. Their resemblance was uncanny.

  The knowledge punched her in the gut.

  Nat climbed awkwardly to her feet, clutching the photo, her legs rubbery, numb from sitting too long in her cramped position. She stood motionless staring at the dead woman’s face, feeling like her heart had been ripped out of her chest and stomped on. Feeling rage and impotence and desperation in equal measure as the awful, awful truth sank in.

  She was in love with Alessandro.

  In love with a man who was still so in love with his dead wife he’d chosen a look-alike replacement with no thought to the consequences.

  Her sense of loss was so profound not even the sobs that were choking her chest, threatening to strangle her, could find an outlet. She could hear a low kind of keening and knew it was coming from her, but didn’t seem to be able to stop.

  It was like Rob and her father all over again. Worse. Way worse. She’d had to compete with two women in her life for the affections of men she’d loved deeply. But at least those women had been alive. Tangible. How did she compete with a perfect memory? A ghost?

  And, goddamn it, why was she always the bridesmaid and never the bride with the men in her life? Why was she always second choice? Wasn’t she good enough? Lovable enough? Her father had left her for a new family. Rob had left her for an old one. And Alessandro?r />
  Nat heard a little voice inside her ask the question she’d never allowed herself to ask. Had always felt selfish even thinking it. What about me?

  ‘Nat! Nat!’

  Nat jerked as Juliano came haring into the room, jumping up and down. She hugged the frame to her chest automatically as Juliano babbled on.

  ‘Daddy and I have cooked the tea. It’s his nonna’s recipe from Roma and it’s so delicious.’ He paused, bunched his fingertips together and kissed them for dramatic effect, like Nat had seen Alessandro do the other night in the kitchen. Normally she would have laughed but she was barely taking any of it in.

  ‘He says as long as it’s okay by you I can go and play with Flo in the back yard but I have to make sure I wash my hands afterwards before I eat dinner because that just good hygiene.’

  Nat blinked, her sluggish brain catching up with Juliano’s rapid chatter several seconds later. She noticed some movement in her peripheral vision and glanced up to see Alessandro lounging in the doorway in the half-light like a big lazy cat. She looked at him helplessly. Even now, even knowing what she did, even mad as hell, her body still responded to the blatant sexuality of his.

  ‘Nat!’

  Her attention returned to the excited little boy in front of her hopping from one foot to the other. ‘That’s fine.’ She nodded.

  ‘Yippee-ee!’ Juliano took off, heading for the lounge room and calling for Flo.

  Alessandro pushed off the doorframe and prowled towards her. With Juliano occupied outside he had a hankering to kiss her. Last night seemed forever ago. ‘How many boxes to go now?’

  Nat’s heart boomed in her chest as she read the intent in his black eyes. A part of her wept inside as she realised she’d never kiss him again. She took a step back as he advanced.

  Alessandro frowned as he entered the arc of light spilling across her. She looked pale and shocked, her blue eyes red-rimmed and flashing with pain. ‘Nathalie!’ He took two quick steps towards her. ‘What’s wrong?’