Secret Baby, Convenient Wife

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And to save you the bother, it’s not a juicy titbit that the papers will shell out for. Old news, I’m afraid. The media have already done the story to death.’

It took a few seconds for the implication to sink in. When it did the angry colour flew to her cheeks.

With a forced smile she levelled her glittering gaze on his face. ‘I can assure you, Mr Bruni, that like myself all the hospital staff here take patient confidentiality very seriously.’

‘I made you angry.’

He sounded surprised…Good God, how did the wretched man expect her to feel? He’d just virtually said she’d sell her soul if the price was right! She compressed her generous lips into a tight smile. ‘I’m not angry,’ she lied.

Her denial appeared to amuse him, if the cynical curve of his sensual mouth could be termed a smile. ‘The voice was good but the eyes need some work…they are very expressive.’ His glance lingered briefly on her wide emerald-green eyes. ‘No insult was intended, Nurse…’ his heavy lidded eyes swerved to the name badge on her heaving bosom before he inserted ‘…Smith.’

His cynical drawl got so far under Dervla’s skin that she really struggled to remember that he was a man in an emotionally vulnerable position in need of sensitive handling.

‘It’s nothing personal,’ he added. ‘Everyone has their price.’

‘If I believed that, I’d be too depressed to get up in the morning, Mr Bruni. There’s a coffee machine in the relatives’ sitting room,’ she added, hoping that coffee was an impersonal enough subject to suit this cynical man with the obvious allergy to sympathy. ‘If you’d like to go there while I make Alberto comfortable…?’

‘I would have thought that making my son comfortable with half a dozen tubes sticking out of him is well nigh impossible.’