by Tina Beckett
Elyse decided to tackle the elephant in the room. “So where do we go from here, Luca?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced at the crib, where the baby was currently sleeping. “Right now, I’m wishing I had more than a month with her.”
“I know. I wish you did too. But my maternity leave is going to end. I don’t see how I can extend it.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t been sure of his reaction.
The fact that he was sitting here saying he wanted more time with Anna created an entirely different problem.
She went on. “If you have any ideas—other than my leaving her behind—I’m open to suggestions.” She hadn’t meant it as a jab at the past, but the quick tightening of his lips said he’d taken it as one.
“I would never ask you to leave her.”
“I know that.”
His elbows landed on his knees, hands dangling between his strong thighs. Thighs that she’d once...
Nope. No going down that path, Elyse. That’s what had gotten her in trouble in the first place.
Luca had captured her attention from the moment he’d walked onto her floor at the hospital. Only she had just gotten out of a difficult relationship with Kyle a year earlier and hadn’t been anxious to repeat the experience. She’d resisted going out with him, feeling proud of herself, until he’d walked out of that surgical suite that day looking like a beaten man. He’d touched her heart, and the rest was history. She’d told herself the attraction would eventually burn itself out. It hadn’t.
Even now, she knew she still wanted him.
He looked up. “I think we’re overlooking the obvious solution.”
Her heart leaped in her chest. Was he saying he wanted to get back together?
And if he did?
She swallowed. He lived here, and she lived in Atlanta. Besides, the damage had been done. He’d never forgive her for firing him. He’d made that pretty clear when he’d left.
“I guess I’m still overlooking it, because I don’t see an obvious solution at all.”
“We could get married.”
Her mouth, which had been open to make a completely different suggestion, snapped shut again. Surely she hadn’t heard him correctly?
“I’m sorry?” Maybe he was saying he wanted to get back together. But marriage? Um, no. Not a possibility.
She hurried to send the conversation in a completely different direction. “Maybe you could just move back to the States? We could work out an agreement for visitation.”
Why had she said that? Maybe because that was the only obvious thing her brain could catch hold of. They could work at different hospitals and be aloofly friendly. Like those famous divorced couples who managed to get along for the sake of their kids.
“That’s not quite what I had in mind.”
“I can’t marry you. We don’t even like each other anymore.” She forced out the words, even though they were a lie. She did like him. A little too much, in fact.
“You can’t marry me? Or you won’t?” Luca got up from his chair and went over to stand by the crib. He leaned over, fingers sliding over the baby’s forehead, pushing back some dark locks of hair. Then he twirled the tiny ponytail in a way that made her stomach clench. Watching him with their baby girl set up an ache she couldn’t banish.
It wasn’t something she was likely to see every day as Annalisa grew up. But she couldn’t marry him. Aside from the fact that he didn’t love her—he’d as much as said so by not challenging her comment that they didn’t even like each other—she couldn’t have any more children. She had barely had time to grieve over that fact herself, much less tell anyone else.
Lord, she shouldn’t have come here.
“Both. Getting married just because of Anna would be wrong. And not fair to either of us.”
He turned to face her with a frown. “Is there someone else?”
“What? No, of course not.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I’ve just had a baby. There’s no time for romance.”
“But there would be if the timing were better?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Well, I can’t move back to the States right now. Not with my caseload.”
Disappointment winged through her even though she knew he was right. He couldn’t just pick up and leave at a moment’s notice. “It was just a suggestion.”
He looked up, his gaze holding hers in a way that made her swallow. “You’re currently on maternity leave. No patients or boyfriends waiting in the wings, right?”
Something began unfurling inside of her. Something she hadn’t thought about. Something she hadn’t even wanted to think about. Was he going to ask her to marry him again? If so, would she be able to resist?
“No, but the no-patients thing is only for a month, and then I have to be back.”
“What if you didn’t?”
“Sorry?”
“What if you didn’t go? Instead of me moving to the States, what if you stayed here—in Italy—instead?”
CHAPTER THREE
PEG ARRIVED BEFORE Elyse could give him an answer to the staying-in-Italy question.
But the look of horror on his ex’s face said that marriage was off the table. For good. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked that. It had just come to him as the easiest solution as he’d stood over his daughter’s crib. But Elyse had made it clear that the chances of a marriage between them working were just about nil: they didn’t even like each other. He could only assume she was speaking for herself.
Although he hadn’t liked her very much either when she’d kicked him and the others out of their jobs. But after arriving back in Italy, he’d been the one doing the kicking...and it was his own behind. He should have stayed and finished that last fateful conversation—even if it had only been to gain closure. But he’d been so hurt and utterly furious that he couldn’t have found the words in English to express any of it.
“Everything okay?” Peg looked from one to the other, a worried expression on her face.
Her niece gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Great.”
It wasn’t great. It was frustrating. He felt totally impotent to change things right now. But he was going to. Was going to fight, if necessary, to be involved in his daughter’s life. Elyse marrying him would have made sure that happened. Maybe she was right to refuse. Kids were pretty intuitive nowadays. Annalisa would have eventually seen right through the sham, setting them up for a messy divorce down the road.
So no tying the knot. But surely they could live in the same vicinity. Or at least the same country. If she could put off going back to work for three months or maybe even six, he might be able to swing moving back to the US. Even if that prospect didn’t thrill him like it once had.
Only with Elyse explaining to Peggy that they were going to be staying at his house, the chance to talk about things was gone. For now. He’d just have to pull her aside or sit them down when they didn’t have an audience and hash it out.
And afterward? If she agreed to stay in Italy? She would have to remain in his house for the duration, because she wouldn’t be able to afford a villa or even an apartment without working.
Luca wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that. Especially after the way he’d reacted to her a few minutes ago.
He scribbled down the address and handed it to Elyse. “Just ask a cab to take you to this address. I’ll let my housekeeper know to get a couple of rooms ready.”
“Housekeeper?”
The way she said the word made him uneasy. “Emilia. She doesn’t live there. Just comes during the week to clean the place up. Today happens to be one of those days. She won’t mind. And she normally fixes a couple of meals and puts them in the fridge for me. There’s a ton of food, so don’t worry about cooking.”
“That was part of the reason you wanted us to
stay at your place, though, because you had a kitchen we could use.”
He smiled. She’d caught him. “I said you could use it, but I didn’t say you had to cook in it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
But her voice said she was beginning to have some misgivings, so maybe it was time to make himself scarce before she changed her mind. She’d already turned down his proposal of marriage, he didn’t want her backing out of anything else. “I would go with you, but I have a patient scheduled in half an hour.”
Peg spoke up. “We’ll be fine. And thank you for letting us stay in your house. It will be a lot more comfortable for the baby than the hotel...won’t it, Elyse?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
The prodding and the reluctance of Elyse’s response made his smile widen. He had an odd ally in Peggy, but if it got him closer to his goal—having his daughter within reach—it was worth it.
“I should be home before dinner. Just rest. The recovery time for jet lag is one day per hour of time difference.”
“In that case, we’ll be well recovered by the time...”
She let the sentence trail away, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Was she thinking about staying longer than a month? Or warning him that she would soon be leaving?
He was sure she and Peggy were going to have quite a discussion once he walked out of that door. Going over to the crib one last time, he murmured to Annalisa, telling her he would see her in a few hours. And hopefully his time with her would be measured in years, rather than just a few short weeks.
* * *
“Mary Landers, aged forty-three, a tourist from the US who has been having seizures over the last two weeks. She’s in the MRI machine right now. The team could use a second look.”
The receptionist at the front desk had already alerted him of that fact when he’d arrived. But his favorite nurse always liked to chat for a minute. His scheduled patient had already been advised that he’d be a few minutes late.
“I’ll head up there now. Anything else I should know?”
With her silvery hair and friendly personality, he and Thirza had hit it off immediately. He could count on her to give him additional information on patients if he needed it, rather than having to look things up in the system. The fact that she had an eidetic memory was a great asset for the clinic.
“She got a workup at one of the neighboring hospitals and they suspected a brain tumor because of the cluster of symptoms that came with the seizures, but their scan didn’t turn up anything concrete. They’ve added contrast to the one done here, hoping to get a better view of the way the vessels are laid out.”
“Do you remember the cluster of symptoms?”
She brandished a slip of paper and a smile. “Of course. I wrote them down for you.”
“Grazie.”
He was glad of the work. It would take his mind off the fact that he would once again be living with Elyse. Only temporarily, though, and he’d decided that was a good thing. Elyse was right. Marriage would have been a mistake.
Going up the stairs, because waiting for the elevator had never been his style, he exited through the door on the third floor and went to the imaging section. Once there, he used his passkey to get into the observation area.
“Luca, glad to see you. We still have about ten minutes before the scan is finished.”
“Where’s Lorenzo?”
“He’s in surgery. He’ll be down as soon as he finishes up.”
The city of Florence was a tourist magnet, and they treated people of many nationalities. It helped that several of the doctors at the clinic spoke English with varying degrees of fluency. Faster communication meant faster treatment.
He glanced down at the paper in his hand: Seizures, double vision in the left eye, tremor on that same side, muscle weakness. He could see why the other clinic had initially thought she had a brain tumor. They did present with similar symptoms.
“Hey! Stop!” One of the techs was staring down at the patient. “She’s seizing!”
The whole room went into action. They retracted the sliding table from the imager, while multiple staff members rushed into the room. Thank God they didn’t allow family to observe the procedures.
A few minutes later, after administering an injection of lorazepam, they were able to stabilize her. She slowly regained consciousness, totally unaware of what had happened. She remembered a momentary sense of confusion just before the seizure hit.
Luca frowned. “How close were we to getting those scans finished?”
“About seven minutes.”
“Before putting her back in the tube, let me look at what you have. Maybe we won’t have to finish it.”
Going back into the control room, they scrolled through the scans, the contrast agent helping to visualize blood vessels.
Dannazione! Everything looked pretty normal.
Wait.
“Can we replay those last images?”
The tech backed the slides up and slowly went through them again.
“There.” He tapped a pen to the screen where a small, hyper-dense lesion nestled in the left ventricle. “See that?”
“I do. And I can understand how the other hospital missed it. Cavernoma?”
“It looks that way.”
A cavernous malformation wasn’t like an arteriovenous malformation, where the high pressure in the vessels put the patient at risk of a stroke or brain bleed. Cavernomas were normally asymptomatic, in fact. But since this patient had presented with both seizures and neurological deficits, the cavernoma was probably the cause and would have to be treated.
The problem was, the ventricles were deep in the brain and traditional microsurgery in those areas didn’t always go well.
Elyse would love to sit in on this case.
Maybe she could. And it might be a way to coax her into staying longer. There was no reason she couldn’t observe or weigh in with an opinion, was there? As long as she wasn’t actually treating the patient, it should be fine.
“What do you think Dr. Giorgino will want to do?”
“I think he’ll want to do a combined approach. Ventriculoscopy followed by microsurgery.”
“Tricky,” said the tech.
“Yes, but by getting an actual look at it, rather than just an MRI image, there’s a better chance of success. I saw one of them done when I was in the States.” It had actually been one of Elyse’s patients. She’d performed the surgery and successfully removed the cavernoma. As far as he knew, the patient’s symptoms had completely subsided afterward. “I actually know someone who’s done a resection of one of these. I’ll put her in contact with Lorenzo.”
Again.
Lorenzo Giorgino—the good-looking man who’d held Anna in his office—was one of the top neurosurgeons in Italy. And he actually welcomed outside advice, unlike some specialists. Hopefully Elyse would be willing to help. She could even consult over the phone if she didn’t want to actually come in to the clinic.
A little whisper at the back of his brain questioned whether that was a good idea. He’d had a visceral reaction when he’d found out the baby in Lorenzo’s arms was actually his own daughter.
But they were all grown-ups. He could handle it.
Luca let the team know they’d found the problem and didn’t need to put the patient through another round in the MRI machine. It would be up to Lorenzo and some other specialists to recommend treatment to control her symptoms until a surgery date could be set. The sooner the better.
As soon as that was resolved, he moved on to see the rest of his patients, putting Elyse, Lorenzo and everyone else out of his mind.
* * *
“Of course I’ll help. I’d love to look at the scans.”
Elyse was surprised that Luca had asked her to consult on a case after what had happened
in Atlanta.
But this was Italy, not Atlanta. She was no longer the one in charge of his department. She was on Luca’s turf now.
“I remembered the cavernoma case you had. The patient had a really good outcome, if I remember right.”
“Yes, she’s had no more problems since. It was in the right lateral ventricle rather than the left, but the procedure would be the same. You have a neurosurgeon who can perform it?”
She and Peg had moved into the house that afternoon. Her aunt loved it. She’d taken Annalisa into the garden to explore while Elyse had curled up on the couch with a magazine, which was where Luca had found her.
Even his housekeeper had left for the day. And meeting her had turned out to be a lot less awkward than Elyse had expected it to be. She wasn’t sure if the woman knew the exact circumstances surrounding her sudden arrival, but it had to be pretty obvious. A woman shows up at her boss’s door with a baby in tow...it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Emilia had eyed her daughter with interest, but the kindness behind the glance had prevented Elyse from bristling.
“We do. It’s actually the doctor who brought you up to my office yesterday. I don’t know how many, if any, of these he’s done, but he’s an excellent surgeon. One of the best.”
“If he’s careful and really pays attention to where he is at any given second, he should be fine.”
“Which is why I wondered if you’d speak with him and compare notes. He’s a good guy, I’m sure he’d be amenable.”
“He seemed nice. I’ll need to talk to Peg and see if she’s okay with me going, but it sounds fascinating. And much better than lying around your pool all day, nice though that is.”
He smiled, coming over to sit on one of the chairs flanking the couch. “You could always treat this like a vacation. Where’s Annalisa, anyway?”
“She’s in the garden with Peg. She should be in any moment. Whatever your housekeeper left in the oven smells divine, by the way. I could get a little too used to this.” Then realizing he could take that as agreement to his marriage proposal, she added, “At least for this month. I haven’t decided on moving to Italy, though, Luca. I’m not sure I’m ready to leave my job. I don’t even know what I would do here.”
