A Devilishly Dark Deal (15 page)

Grace’s blue eyes widened warily. ‘What for?’

‘I’d like to get an update from him about what your doctors have said. I’d also like to recommend one of my own doctors to look at you. I have access to the very best medical care in the world, Grace, and I’d like you to benefit from it—if you agree?’

She turned away, folding her arms across the thin white sweater that so starkly highlighted the fact she’d lost weight. ‘You don’t need to talk to my dad. I’ve already given you an update on my health. And nor do I need to see one of your doctors. I told you … I’ll be fine.’

There
was
something wrong. Marco sensed it the moment she dipped her head and turned away. His mouth went dry as a desert plain. ‘You’re keeping something from me … what is it?’

‘It’s nothing.’ All of a sudden she moved back to the rocking chair. Lowering herself down into the seat, she returned her hands to its polished wooden arms and started to rock herself slowly back and forth.

Outside, the rain thundered against the conservatory’s glass roof, with no sign of letting up any time soon. Staring at her, Marco curled his hands into anxious fists down by his sides. ‘If you won’t tell me then I’ll go and find your father and ask him.’

The chair stopped rocking, and the incandescent blue eyes couldn’t hide her apprehension and fear. ‘You don’t need to go and find my dad. It’s just that … when the doctors did all the usual tests on me in the hospital … something turned up that none of us expected.’

‘If you have any idea of how much agony of mind I’m going through right now, then for God’s sake
please
just come out with it and tell me!’ Marco implored.

Holding her hand to her middle, as if a debilitating pain had just shot through her, Grace suddenly turned as pale as new milk. He was already moving to her side when she slumped forward in the chair in a dead faint.

‘Grace, wake up!
Querido Deus!
’ Crouching down in front of her, he gently positioned her so that she was sitting more securely in the chair, with her head dropped onto her chest. Quickly he felt for her pulse. His own was probably just as out of kilter in fear and concern.

He was just about to leap up and call for Grace’s father to ring for an ambulance when she opened her eyes and stared at him in confused distress. ‘Marco,’ she murmured, ‘what happened?’

‘You fainted that’s what happened, Grace. I think you should be in bed rather than sitting in here. Your hands are freezing!’ Saying so, he took her pale, slender hands in his and vigorously rubbed them, as if to invigorate her blood once again and restore her to the land of the living.

His mind was running at a mile a minute in search of solutions that might help. No matter how much Grace pleaded with him not to, Marco fully intended to speak to her father about her condition, followed by consulting his own doctors. It was unbearable to imagine that she might be taken from him through illness when he’d so recently realised that he couldn’t possibly live without her …

‘I’m fine.’

‘Stop saying that when it is clearly not the truth!’ Breathing hard, Marco couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—take his eyes off her, in case she fainted again. ‘Just before you passed out you were holding your stomach as if you were in pain. Are you hurting, Grace? If you need medical help then you must tell me.’

A wan smile briefly touched her lips. ‘I wasn’t in pain. I just felt a little nauseous, that’s all. Can you pass me that glass of water on the table behind you? I’d like a sip.’

He did as she asked and quickly returned. As he watched her sip the water his mind careened in all directions, imagining all the dire reasons why she would be feeling nauseous.

Reaching forward, Grace put the glass carefully down on the white ledge beside the conservatory doors. ‘It’s perfectly natural for a woman to feel nauseous sometimes when she’s pregnant,’ she announced, her tone unbelievably matter-of-fact, ‘especially in the first three months.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I’m telling you that the reason I’m feeling nauseous is that I’m pregnant.’

Even the rain that thundered so powerfully against the roof couldn’t drown out the enormous sense of shock and disbelief that rolled through Marco.

If she hadn’t felt quite so weak just then Grace would have quickly reassured him that he needn’t worry … she wasn’t about to demand he marry her or anything crazy like that. There were plenty of women all around the world who raised their children on their own, and if he didn’t want to be with her then that was what she would do.

The way his arresting features had turned almost pale beneath his bronzed skin had already told her that it was hardly welcome news. Now she wished she’d kept quiet about the pregnancy—at least until she felt strong enough to deal with the emotional fall-out should Marco tell her he was sorry but he didn’t want to assume the responsibility of being a father, not on the kind of regular basis that a truly loving relationship required that he be …

But now, looking a little more recovered, he clasped her hands more tightly, his hooded dark eyes roving her face as if she was indeed the moon, the stars and the sun that he’d asserted that she was earlier.

‘The child—the child is …’ he started to say.

‘Don’t you
dare
ask me if it’s yours,’ Grace leapt in, feeling her cheeks flush with some much needed colour.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ His lips twisted with gentle mockery, then he stared at her in wonder, laying the flat of his palm gently against her abdomen. ‘I’m going to be a father.’

‘Yes, you are. Do you mind?’

‘Do I
mind
?’

‘You told me once that you didn’t know what it meant to be a father because you’d had no good example of a father yourself.’

‘That’s true. But I never said I was averse to learning if the right woman came along, did I?’

Grace’s heart skipped. ‘Am
I
the right woman, then?’

‘I thought you were clever … But if you still haven’t worked it out yet, then I guess I will have to enlighten you, won’t I?’

Staying silent, she minutely examined every curve and facet of his extraordinarily handsome face, wondering how she had lived for so long without the sight of it, yet still wary of having her longed-for treasure cruelly taken away if anything untoward should happen to either of them.

‘For once you’re lost for words.’ Chuckling, Marco touched his fingertips to her lips and tenderly traced them. ‘I love you, Grace. You have become the ground beneath my feet, the person by which I stand or fall, because I can’t … I
won’t
live without you. You’re the most courageous, loving and loyal woman I have ever met.’

Grace’s eyes had filled with tears the moment he’d said, ‘I love you’.
Was she allowed to be this happy?
she wondered. When there was so much pain and sadness in the world, it was incredible that she should be blessed with so much joy, she thought gratefully. ‘I love you too, Marco. I adore you more than you can ever know, and I promise to spend the rest of my life trying to show you just how much.’

‘Are you two sufficiently reacquainted to have that cup of tea now? Only you’re mum’s got her best china laid out in the dining room, and she’s wearing a hole in the kitchen floor waiting to get the go-ahead.’

Her dad put his head round the door just as they were about to embrace passionately. Grace met Marco’s melting brown eyes and giggled helplessly.

‘If we can have just five minutes more, then
yes
. A cup of tea would be most welcome,’ Marco murmured in her ear.

Before Grace had the chance to convey this to her dad, Marco moved his face closer. ‘Marry me,’ he whispered—just before his lips ardently claimed hers …

EPILOGUE

THE VIP lounge at Heathrow was surprisingly quiet that morning. Apart from Grace, Marco and their six month old baby boy, Henry, there was a smart elderly couple and a striking lady dressed in the colourful full regalia of the African region she came from.

Their beautiful little son was already a veteran when it came to travelling. Marco wouldn’t leave them at home whenever he had to travel abroad for work, and neither did Grace want him to. They’d been married for just over a year now, and she still couldn’t bear to be apart from him—not even for a day.

Just a couple of months after Henry was born they’d flown back to Portugal, where her entrepreneur husband had been developing a golfing academy specifically for disadvantaged young men and women. And now, after a fortnight staying in their lovely new home in Kensington, they were at the airport again—this time to fly out to Africa and visit not only the newly erected orphanage, but also the on-site medical centre, staffed by highly trained professionals. Marco had had it set up and, they’d named it after Azizi.

She was so proud of her wonderful husband. Not only had he confronted his fears surrounding his past, he had transcended them to give his unstinting help to children raised in an orphanage just like him.

Their little son was fretting, and Grace rocked him in her arms to try and soothe him. Behind them the loud roar of a jumbo jet taking off drowned out any other sounds.

‘I think his first tooth is coming through. He’s been dribbling a lot, and he keeps sucking his fist,’ she told her handsome husband anxiously. He was dressed as immaculately as ever, in an Italian tailored suit. Marco never failed to take her breath away with his striking appearance. But, expensive suit or not, he didn’t hesitate to reach for his son.

‘Give him to me. Why don’t you go and sit down and relax for a while? Pour yourself some juice.’

‘I wish I could have another cup of coffee. I didn’t sleep much last night.’

‘It’s not a good idea to have too much coffee when you’re breastfeeding, my angel. Remember what the paediatrician said?’

‘I know. She said not to have more than three cups a day. I suppose I ought to save my quota until we board the plane, at least. No doubt it’s going to be a long, tiring day.’ Grace handed over the baby with a hard-to-suppress yawn.

Marco carefully nestled the infant in the crook of his arm and began to mimic the rocking motion that his wife regularly used to calm him or get him off to sleep.

Henry’s still-blue eyes drifted closed immediately, and Grace shook her head in wonder. ‘And you were worried about being a good father? You’re a natural. You seem to have a magic touch where Henry’s concerned.’ She saw him flush a little beneath his tan, and he didn’t need to tell her how proud of his son he was.

Wanting to take care of their newborn herself, she’d declined his offer of hiring a full-time nurse to help her. Yet when Henry woke up for his feed during the night it was Marco who leapt out of bed to fetch him and bring him to her. Then, after he’d fallen asleep again, he’d hold him for a long time—‘father-and-son bonding time’ he called it—before taking him back to his cot.

‘Sometimes it’s hard to believe how fortunate I am,’ he said now. ‘You and Henry have given me everything I ever dreamed of and more. For the first time when I say I’m going home I
mean
it. I love you with all my heart, my beautiful, clever girl.’

Leaning towards him, Grace stole a gently lingering kiss. The three other passengers in the lounge glanced at each other in approval. ‘I love you too, my darling.’ She smiled seductively. ‘And I’ll show you how much tonight—after we put Henry to bed,’ she whispered.

His eyes gleamed with love and desire. ‘If I wasn’t holding our son, I wouldn’t hesitate to demonstrate what I think about that, you little temptress!’

‘Promises promises …’ Grinning, Grace sashayed over to a luxurious leather armchair and sat down, knowing without any conceit at all that her husband’s compelling dark eyes hungrily tracked her all the way …

Read on for a sneak preview of Carol Marinelli’s
PUTTING ALICE BACK TOGETHER!

Hugh hired bikes!

You know that saying: ‘It’s like riding a bike, you never forget’?

I’d never learnt in the first place.

I never got past training wheels.

‘You’ve got limited upper-body strength?’ He stopped and looked at me.

I had been explaining to him as I wobbled along and tried to stay up that I really had no centre of balance. I mean
really
had no centre of balance. And when we decided, fairly quickly, that a bike ride along the Yarra perhaps, after all, wasn’t the best activity (he’d kept insisting I’d be fine once I was on, that you never forget), I threw in too my other disability. I told him about my limited upper-body strength, just in case he took me to an indoor rock-climbing centre next. I’d honestly forgotten he was a doctor, and he seemed worried, like I’d had a mini-stroke in the past or had mild cerebral palsy or something.

‘God, Alice, I’m sorry—you should have said. What happened?’

And then I had had to tell him that it was a self-diagnosis. ‘Well, I could never get up the ropes at the gym at school.’ We were pushing our bikes back. ‘I can’t blow-dry the back of my hair …’ He started laughing.

Not like Lisa who was laughing at me—he was just laughing and so was I. We got a full refund because we’d only been on our bikes ten minutes, but I hadn’t failed. If anything, we were getting on better.

And better.

We went to St Kilda to the lovely bitty shops and I found these miniature Russian dolls. They were tiny, made of tin or something, the biggest no bigger than my thumbnail. Every time we opened them, there was another tiny one, and then another, all reds and yellows and greens.

They were divine.

We were facing each other, looking down at the palm of my hand, and our heads touched.

If I put my hand up now, I can feel where our heads touched.

I remember that moment.

I remember it a lot.

Our heads connected for a second and it was alchemic; it was as if our minds kissed hello.

I just have to touch my head, just there at the very spot and I can, whenever I want to, relive that moment.

So many times I do.

‘Get them.’ Hugh said, and I would have, except that little bit of tin cost more than a hundred dollars and, though that usually wouldn’t have stopped me, I wasn’t about to have my card declined in front of him.

I put them back.

‘Nope.’ I gave him a smile. ‘Gotta stop the impulse spending.’

We had lunch.

Out on the pavement and I can’t remember what we ate, I just remember being happy. Actually, I can remember: I had Caesar salad because it was the lowest carb thing I could find. We drank water and I
do
remember not giving it a thought.

I was just thirsty.

And happy.

He went to the loo and I chatted to a girl at the next table, just chatted away. Hugh was gone for ages and I was glad I hadn’t demanded Dan from the universe, because I would have been worried about how long he was taking.

Do I go on about the universe too much? I don’t know, but what I do know is that something
was
looking out for me, helping me to be my best, not to **** this up as I usually do. You see, we walked on the beach, we went for another coffee and by that time it was evening and we went home and he gave me a present.

Those Russian dolls.

I held them in my palm, and it was the nicest thing he could have done for me.

They are absolutely my favourite thing and I’ve just stopped to look at them now. I’ve just stopped to take them apart and then put them all back together again and I can still feel the wonder I felt on that day.

He was the only man who had bought something for me, I mean something truly special. Something beautiful, something thoughtful, something just for me.

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