Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

The silence after that was like a razor blade slicing through every second they had left to travel. They landed under clear, dark Italian skies but it was cold enough for Shannon to be glad of her warm coat.

Luca had left his car in the airport car park. Shannon climbed into the passenger seat leaving Luca to stow her things. They drove towards Florence in total silence; their only exchange of words since the kiss in the cabin had been his terse information that he’d rung the hospital and there was still no change.

Familiar landmarks began to flash by her window. They were nearing Florence and the closer they got to the city, the more anxious Shannon became. Eventually the car slowed and turned in through an entrance in a high stuccoed wall. Shannon saw a building which, despite the gardens neatly surrounding it, still had the look that all hospitals had, even if this one was obviously a very exclusive place to be ill.

As Luca brought the car to a halt her skin began to prickle. Taking a deep breath in an effort to brace herself, she unlocked her seat belt and got out. Her legs began to shake as she walked towards the hospital entrance. Luca came to walk alongside her but made no attempt to touch.

She didn’t want him to touch her, she told herself. But the moment she stepped into the hushed hospital foyer she was having second thoughts about that. Luca indicated towards the lifts. As they stepped into one Shannon began to feel strange—alien to herself almost.

Maybe he sensed it because as the lift doors closed them both inside, he questioned, ‘OK?’

She nodded, swallowing on the build-up of tension that had begun to collect in her throat. Her body was tense, her flesh creeping with feelings no one, unless they were about to face a similar situation, could begin to understand. And she was pale; she knew she was pale because her face felt so cold and washed out.

‘Don’t be alarmed by the amount of equipment you will find surrounding her,’ Luca seemed compelled to warn. ‘It is standard practice in cases like these to monitor just about everything they can …’

He was trying to prepare her. It was all she could do to give a jerky nod of her head in response. The lift stopped. Her heart began to pump so oddly that it made it difficult to draw breath.

The doors slid open on a foyer similar to the one they’d walked through downstairs—and Shannon’s courage seemed to drop like a stone to her feet, stopping her from moving another inch.

She closed her eyes, tried to swallow again, felt her breasts lifting and falling on small tight gasps for air as a stark sense of dread closed her in. Then the lift pinged, giving notice that it was about to close its doors again. Her eyes flickered upwards at the same time that Luca shot out an arm—not towards her but to hold back those impatient doors.

His eyes were fixed on her, narrowed slightly and shadowed by concern. His face was pale, lips slightly parted on tense white teeth as if he was struggling to control an urge to make a grab for her.

‘I’m all right,’ she breathed in whispered assurance. ‘Just give me a second to—’

‘Take your time,’ he said gruffly. ‘There is no rush.’

No? Shannon fretfully contradicted that assertion. She might already be too late!

Too late … She groaned in silent agony. Too late belonged to the years she had avoided coming anywhere near Florence. Too late belonged to the way she had cut Keira right out of her life for months and even after they’d made up—in a fashion—she’d kept her strictly at an arm’s length by being cool, being remote, piling on the guilt and the—

The lift gave another ping and kept on pinging, trying to close its doors against Luca’s blocking arm. On a mammoth dragging-together of her courage Shannon made herself move. The first person she saw was Luca’s mother. She looked dreadful, her beautifully defined face withered by anxiety and grief.

The ever-ready tears rushed into Shannon’s eyes again, her voice wobbling on the words that had to be said. ‘I’m so sorry about Angelo, Mrs Salvatore,’ she murmured in unsteady Italian as she moved on instinct, reaching out with her arms to draw the poor woman in an embrace.

It took a few seconds to realise that the embrace was not welcome. Stiff and unbending, Mrs Salvatore was accepting of her touch out of politeness—but that was all. As Shannon drew away, shaken by the cold reminder of how Luca’s family felt about her, she saw the other faces bearing witness to her rejection.

Then Luca stepped up behind her, bringing his hands up to curve her shoulders in what Shannon could only describe as a declaration of some kind. He didn’t say a single word, but all eyes lifted to his face, then dropped away uncomfortably.

‘To your left,’ he quietly instructed her.

Dry-mouthed, inwardly struck to her core, Shannon forced herself to start walking again. With Luca’s hand still curving her slender nape and with a new kind of silence thickening the air, they entered a corridor that put the rest of his family out of view—thankfully, because she didn’t need any cold witnesses when she faced what was to come.

And it came quickly—too quickly. Through the very first door they encountered, in fact. Luca paused, so did she, watching as he pushed the door open then gently urged her to move again. Her body felt heavy, that sense of dark dread placing a drag on her limbs as she made herself step through the opening into a well-lit room with white walls and staffed by a white-uniformed nurse who stood by a white-sheeted bed.

And then there was the white-faced creature lying in the bed.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS the point when her control split wide open. Shannon had thought she was prepared, she’d truly believed she was ready to deal with whatever she had to face in this room. But she found she couldn’t cope with the sight of her sister lying there so pale and still as if life’s essence itself was slowly seeping out of her.

The choked sob that attempted to escape had to be rammed back into her mouth by a shaking fist at the same moment that she took a staggering step backwards, pressing herself against the full muscle-packed length of Luca, who acted like a wall to halt her cowardly retreat. Eyes blurred, throat thick, mouth trembling, she fought to get a hold on herself.

It was awful. It took a fierce effort to force herself forward on legs that didn’t feel supportive. Arriving at the side of the bed, she reached for one of her sister’s limp hands. It felt warm and that was comforting. Warmth meant life.

‘Keira?’ she called out unsteadily. ‘Keira—it’s Shannon. Can she hear me?’ she demanded of the nurse. Then, before the woman could answer, her attention honed right back on the white face lying against white pillows. ‘Oh, Keira,’ she burst out painfully. ‘Wake up and talk to me!’

‘Here …’ a deep voice prompted. A pair of hands carefully eased the overcoat from her shoulders, then a chair arrived at the back of her knees, giving her no choice but to sit.

The diversion stopped her from falling apart as, she realised, she had been about to do. ‘H-how deeply unconscious is she?’ she asked huskily.

‘Some of it is drug induced,’ Luca offered with what she supposed was meant to be a comfort. The nurse seemed to have slipped away, making her exit without Shannon noticing.

‘Has she woken up at all since the accident?’

‘No,’ Luca answered gruffly.

‘Does that mean she doesn’t even know she’s had her baby?’

‘No,’ he said again.

Shannon felt her insides begin to burn as a whole new set of emotions went raging through her blood. How many failed pregnancies had poor Keira endured through the years before she’d managed to carry this baby to almost full term? Five or six, Shannon was sure, since she’d married Angelo.

Would a girl child be enough for her? With her own life hanging in the balance here, would her sister now give up on her obsession to give Angelo a male heir?

Angelo—what was she thinking? There was no more Angelo. ‘Oh, Keira,’ she whispered painfully. How was she going to cope without her beloved Angelo?

Then began long hours of torment. Nothing around her felt real. She sat by the bed and talked to Keira. When she was gently removed from the room by medical staff who needed to check Keira, she sat outside in the corridor and lost herself in grief for Angelo. Occasionally Luca would appear, or his mother or one of the sisters. It didn’t occur to her that she was never left entirely on her own or that the family attitude towards her had taken a complete about turn. Perhaps, if she had noticed, she would have started to realise that their sharing of her vigil was a bad sign. But she didn’t notice and she rarely spoke, unless it was to Keira—then she talked and talked and talked without remembering a single word.

At one point someone gently asked her if she would like to see the baby. She thought she should do, for Keira’s sake, but that was all. So she agreed and was utterly blown away by the tiny scrap of human life lying in her clear plastic cocoon fighting her own little battle.

Keira’s daughter—Angelo and Keira’s.

She burst into a flood of tears and wept for everyone, her emotions like a driverless vehicle wildly out of control. When she went back to sit with Keira her voice was as calm as a slow-running stream as she talked and talked and talked.

‘You’ve had enough—’

The light touch on her shoulder brought Shannon’s limp head lifting from the crisp white sheet that she had not been aware of resting against. Sleep-starved eyes blinked uncomprehendingly up into a determined gaze that was brown flecked with gold.

‘You can do no more here tonight, Shannon,’ Luca said quietly. ‘It is time for us to leave and get some rest now.’

‘I …’ can be here, she was about to insist, but Luca silenced her with a shake of his head.

‘Keira is stable,’ he stated firmly. ‘The people here know where to contact us if they need to. It is time for us to leave.’

The voice of authority, she recognised. Luca was not going to take no for an answer and if she was honest she knew he was right. She was so utterly used up she was barely functioning on any sensible level.

But it felt like desertion when she made herself get up from the chair and she lifted up one of Keira’s hands and pressed a soft kiss to it before leaning over to leave another kiss on her cheek.