Miracle for the Girl Next Door

by Rebecca Winters

  She nodded before hurrying away across the piazza. Once she disappeared he rushed after her, realizing she’d taken the set of stairs where she’d come down that first day.

  When he reached it and mounted the narrow staircase to the next level of the town, she was nowhere in sight. There were more residences than shops in this area. He looked all around, noticing the local clinic on his left. He’d never known a dental office to be in there, but maybe things had changed.

  Give her a few more minutes before you burst in looking for her, Casali.

  If he did find her inside, he’d be risking her anger because it smacked of invading her privacy. She might never speak to him again.

  After the conversation they’d had the other day on the subject of maintaining one’s privacy, there was a certain irony to this kind of thinking—and danger. But that was what he thrived on. At this late date he couldn’t change his character if he tried and determined to take his chances.

  He watched the locals go in and come out the doors of the clinic. He waited another minute, then walked inside. Just as he’d thought, the wall plaque didn’t indicate any dentists in the building. Beyond the foyer was a waiting room full of patients. He couldn’t see Clara among them. She might not be here at all, but he had to check.

  Chagrined that he hadn’t followed her more closely, Valentino had no choice but to approach the receptionist at the desk. When she got off the phone he said, “Could you tell me if Clara Rossetti has already gone in for her appointment?”

  “I’m sorry. Even if she were a patient here, I can’t give you that information unless you’re the police or her next of kin.”

  For no good reason the hairs lifted on the back of his neck. The receptionist had given nothing away, yet for the first time since coming back to Monta Correnti a little frisson of alarm darted through him. It was that same feeling he got on the racetrack when he sensed something wasn’t right and braced himself for what was coming around the next curve.

  “I’m her fiancé,” he lied without compunction. “I’ve been at sea for a long time, but got shore leave specifically to see her. Her sister Bianca told me I’d find her here for her ten o’clock appointment.” If lightning struck him, he didn’t care.

  “In that case, go back to the foyer and down the hall to the dialysis clinic.”

  Dialysis—

  A shudder rocked his body. That meant kidney failure. People died from it.

  No. Not Clara. He’d just come from being with her. Though she’d looked tired, she’d seemed healthy to him.

  He shook his head, trying to make sense of it.

  She couldn’t be dying. That was preposterous! Valentino didn’t believe it. He must have misunderstood the receptionist.

  Bile rose in his throat. He couldn’t seem to swallow.

  “Signore? Are you all right?” The woman at the desk stared up at him anxiously.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “You didn’t know?”

  A groan escaped his throat. Her question made it all too real. It meant that the first day he’d seen her on the staircase between the buildings, she’d just come from the clinic.

  And the other morning when she’d said she had shopping to do, she’d been on her way here…

  He half staggered out to the foyer where he saw the sign for directions to the dialysis clinic.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AFTER having to tear herself away from Valentino, Clara had been plunged into a new low of despair. This time it was for him.

  Luca Casali wasn’t his birthfather?

  Though Valentino might have been living with that knowledge since childhood, a boy would still yearn to know his own flesh and blood father, or at least have some information about him. While Cristiano and Isabella had lived with the security of enjoying both parents’ love, Valentino couldn’t claim the same thing.

  If Clara’s life didn’t depend on this treatment, she wouldn’t have left him standing there in front of Bonelli’s looking tortured.

  Like a slot machine that went chink chink chink, little pieces of memory started fitting together in a mosaic that explained to some extent why he’d been drawn to Clara more than his own siblings during those early years. When he’d lost his mother, he’d needed a friend, no doubt because he didn’t feel as if he belonged to the Casali household in quite the same way as the other two.

  No one at school had had any comprehension of his struggles, including Clara. While she lay there, she wept for the boy inside the incredible man he’d become.

  It was impossible to settle down and concentrate on anything else right now. Normally after she was hooked up to the large hemodialysis machine and the clinician had left the room, she could absorb herself in a good mystery novel. She’d put a new one in her purse, but hadn’t opened it yet. She couldn’t.

  As weak as she’d felt after getting off the bus earlier today, the sight of Valentino wearing jeans that molded his powerful thighs had set off a burst of adrenalin, giving her an extra boost of energy.

  He was an impossibly handsome man. In that headscarf and sailor shirt revealing his well-defined physique, he looked like a cross between a dashing pirate and a Gypsy. It couldn’t be easy being so famous he had to go to such lengths to avoid the constant crush of the media.

  It took a remarkable man to rise above his pain. Valentino made every moment of life exciting. That was one of his many gifts. Who else would have ordered a decadent chocolate dessert they could share and make the moment seem like a fabulous party he’d created just for her?

  If Silvio knew the true Valentino the way she did, he wouldn’t have grilled her so mercilessly the other morning while she’d been running the fruit stand. He’d fired questions at her she couldn’t answer and wouldn’t anyway.

  When Valentino had come by the farm in the latest model Ferrari, it had reminded her brother of the differences between them, but that wasn’t the underlying reason for his bitterness. To her dismay, the girl her brother had been infatuated with in high school had wanted nothing to do with him because she’d been so crazy about Valentino and he had gone through girls like water.

  Even though Silvio had moved on to other women and had eventually married Maria, her brother’s pride had never got over the rejection. As Valentino’s fame grew, so did Silvio’s envy for the women—the money—everything that seemed to come to him with what looked like no effort at all. In truth he couldn’t forgive Valentino and didn’t want Clara to have anything to do with him. In this area, he’d become irrational.

  If he knew how hard it had been for Valentino growing up, even if Luca had been good to him, her brother would have a different perspective. Silvio basked in the love of both parents. All of the Rossettis did. How lucky they were!

  Depleted physically and emotionally by the distressing revelation, she let out a deep sigh and closed her eyes, aching for Valentino’s pain and wishing the treatments didn’t take so long. But she couldn’t complain, not when they were keeping her alive.

  While she lay there on top of the cot fully dressed, she heard the door open. The clinician checked on her every little while. With her eyes still closed she said, “I’m doing fine, Serena.”

  “That’s music to my ears,” sounded a deep, familiar male voice.

  Her eyelids flew open at the same time her heart clapped inside her chest. She discovered Valentino bigger than life, standing at the side of her bed opposite the machine. He removed his sunglasses and scarf, revealing disheveled dark brown hair. It only added to his potent male appeal.

  “You followed me!” she cried in a combination of anger and exasperation.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  No one had ever looked less penitent. “How did you get in here?”

  “They weren’t going to let me in, but I found your clinician. When I told her I was your fiancé she took pity on me.”

  Of course she did. Serena was a female. No woman was immune to Valentino’s charm.

  Clara shoul
d have been furious he’d found out her secret, but it was so like Valentino to go where angels feared to tread when he wanted answers to questions, she started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Maybe it was contagious because he laughed, too. Soon the tears actually trickled from the corners of both their eyes.

  They were still laughing when a smiling Serena poked her head inside the door. “I’ve never heard you laugh before. There’s nothing like a fiancé showing up to turn your world around, eh, Clara? I didn’t know you had such a gorgeous one. You’re a dark horse, you know that?”

  After giving Valentino another once-over, she grinned and shut the door again. It wouldn’t be long before Serena connected his looks with the legend that preceded him and would know it was all a lie. But right now Clara didn’t care.

  Those intelligent dark eyes of his searched hers for endless seconds. His expression grew solemn. “How long have you been undergoing these treatments, piccola?” he whispered in a shaky voice.

  “Three weeks.”

  He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her with his tanned hands clasped between strong legs. She saw him looking at the graft below the place where she’d rolled up her sleeve. The loop had been surgically inserted in her right arm where her blood was drained and bathed in solution to separate the impurities before returning to her bloodstream.

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. “Is this the reason you’ve lost so much weight?”

  “No. I was perfectly healthy until two months ago when I cut my leg on one of the thorny twigs of a lemon tree at the farm. It developed into a blood infection that led to hemolytic uremic syndrome. That caused an acute failure of my kidneys.”

  A pulse throbbed at the corner of his hard, male mouth. “They don’t function at all?”

  Clara shook her head. “I have what’s known as ESRD.”

  A bleak look entered his eyes. After a long pause, “Does this mean a kidney transplant is the only cure?” She felt his solemn tone in every sick atom of her body.

  “Yes, provided it’s the right match. My parents and siblings have tried to donate theirs, but because of weight problems or high blood pressure or pregnancy, they’ve been turned down.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face. “Tell me you’re on a waiting list—”

  “Of course.”

  “What kind of time are you talking here?” He fired comments and questions at her so fast she was dizzy. In fact she’d never known him to be this intense. The businessman in him had come out.

  “I don’t know. Waiting for a suitable match is a complicated process. You think there’s one available, but then, for one reason or another, it can’t or doesn’t happen.”

  “You have a big extended family. Surely there’s someone.”

  “Two of my relatives would be matches, but they have diabetes so that rules them out. One of my aunts was prepared to go through tests, but she has had cancer in the past and the risk is too high for her. My best chance is to receive a kidney from an altruistic donor, but they’re hard to come by when thousands of people ahead of me are waiting for one.”

  “Tell me what you mean by altruistic.”

  “A non-related person who wants to give a kidney to a loved one, but it’s not a match, so they still donate a kidney to someone who is. There are chains of groups of people who do this, but it’s a case of finding them and linking up so their serum can be tested against my PRA.”

  He frowned. “PRA?”

  “It means my serum has been mixed with a panel of sixty random donors to see the reaction to the antibodies. Mine is fairly low which is a plus. Kidney allocations are based on a mathematical formula. It awards points for factors that affect a successful transplant.”

  “What are the other factors?”

  “Age and good health. I have all those things going for me.”

  He reached out to grasp her free hand. “How often do you come here?”

  “Three times a week.”

  “That’s virtually every other day—” He sounded aghast.

  “It’s not so bad when you consider there’s no other way for my blood to get filtered.”

  “Why isn’t someone in your family driving you here and picking you up?”

  “I don’t want to be a burden to them.”

  He seemed to have trouble sitting there. “You’ve never been a burden to anyone in your whole life.”

  Unbidden tears filled her eyes. “I am now. Everyone works so hard at the farm. It’s bad enough that I can only do my part on the farm three days a week. There’s Nonna who needs taking care of now that she’s in a wheelchair and learning to talk again. Bianca has a baby and another one on the way, and Maria’s expecting for the fourth time.”

  Valentino squeezed her fingers gently. “I’ve upset you when I didn’t mean to. Every time we’ve been together, you’ve always had to leave. It has been so unlike the Clara I used to know, I’ve been at a loss. Because you didn’t explain your condition to me, I had to find out the truth for myself. Forgive me for bursting in on you like this?”

  His pained eyes were so imploring, she didn’t want him to feel bad. After the painful experience he’d had with his father the other morning, she didn’t want to add to it. “There’s nothing to forgive. I didn’t say anything because I’ve loved spending time with someone who didn’t know about my condition and treated me like a normal, healthy person. If anything, I’m the one who needs to ask your forgiveness.”

  “Clara…”

  She smiled at him. “You wouldn’t be Tino if you hadn’t made up your mind to do something no one else would think of doing to get inside this room.”

  “How did all this start?”

  “You don’t want to hear all this.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  She moved her head back and forth. “Are you sure?”

  Lines hardened his features. “You know me well enough to realize I never do anything I don’t want to do.”

  Perhaps that was true once. She had no way of knowing what he was like now, but, since he showed no signs of leaving her bedside, she decided to humor him.

  “After I got sick, I had to leave Lia’s to come home. The doctor sent me to a specialist, who diagnosed my condition. One thing led to another and I was forced to drop out of school.”

  A shadow crossed over his handsome features before he found her hand again and kissed the fingertips one by one. His touch melted her like a serving of gelato left in the hot sun. “I’m going to let you rest. Before I leave, is there anything I can do for you?”

  She knew it. Now that he’d learned about her condition, he was going to start treating her like all the others. In a matter of seconds she’d gone from being his fun-loving friend to invalid. He’d never held her hand and kissed it before. She couldn’t bear it now. Not from him.

  “Yes,” she said brightly, removing it. “Will you open my purse and bring me the book I brought to read? It’s on that table.”

  Within seconds the task was accomplished. He glanced at the title. “I’ve heard this is good.”

  “I hope so.” She took it from his hand. “Thank you.”

  Before he left, taking all the excitement with him, he put on his sunglasses and tied the scarf around his head. “Think I’ll still fool the paparazzi?” He flashed her a dazzling white smile, reminding her of the French fictional character Marius who went to sea in the story from Pagnol’s Fanny.

  At the time, she could see that Valentino totally related to the young man who dreamed of seeing the world. Clara, on the other hand, could totally relate to Fanny, who loved him, but knew she had to let him go in order for him to be happy. It was one of their favorite books in lit class. “But of course! Au revoir, Marius!”

  Marius?

  Valentino forced a grin, not having thought about that story or their involved discussions of the characters in a long time. Her humor in spite of her condition humbled him, but inside he was dying.

  She looked so damned beautiful
and helpless lying there, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. The urge to do many things for her was so great, he needed to get out of the room in order to hold onto his sanity.

  “A presto,” he whispered, kissing her forehead.

  Once he left her room, he saw Serena and headed in her direction. “Can we talk for a moment?”

  “By all means.”

  “I lied to you before.”

  She smiled. “I know. If I hadn’t recognized you as Valentino Casali, you would never have made it in to see Clara. The way you two were laughing in there, I knew I’d done the right thing. It’s the best medicine for her.”

  He nodded. “Thank you for allowing me in. Would you do me one more favor and give me the name and number of her specialist?”

  “Come over to the desk and I’ll write it down. Dr. Arno’s office is in Rome, but he’s overseeing Clara’s case.”

  Once Valentino had it in hand, he thanked her again. After leaving the clinic, he quickly found the secret alleyways through the upper region of the town, not stopping until he reached the villa.

  When he checked his watch, he realized Dr. Arno would be in his office for hours yet, that was if it were a normal day for him. No matter what, Valentino needed to talk to him.

  The receptionist at his office in Rome answered. When Valentino explained the nature of his emergency, she said the doctor was on vacation and wouldn’t be returning for a few more days. But she’d make certain he got back to Valentino ASAP.

  Wild with pain, he needed a lot of information pronto! After hanging up, he put in a call to Dr. Rimbaud, his own doctor in Monaco, asking him to phone him back. While he waited for the call, he showered and changed into chinos and a sport shirt. He was drinking some coffee when his phone rang. Valentino grabbed for it.

  “Dr. Rimbaud—thanks for getting back to me so fast.”

  “I thought I’d better in case you’ve been in another crash,” he kidded him.

  “Not this time.”

  “You sound serious, not like yourself. What’s wrong?”

  “Will you tell me what you can about kidney failure?”