LITMIR.BIZ

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exactly a party girl, then, the redhead?’

      ‘She is English, though?’ The person who asked the question glanced at the closed door before he spoke. Being caught gossiping about the boss would do his promotion prospects no good at all.

      ‘I’m not sure. Her name doesn’t sound English … Der something …?’

      ‘Dervla.’ It was the sole female who supplied the bride’s name.

      ‘Wasn’t she a model?’

      ‘Doubt it. She’s not tall enough,’ one person who had met her said.

      ‘Well, from what I’ve heard …’

      The men leaned forward to catch the woman’s words as her voice dropped to a confidential hiss. ‘I don’t know how true it is, you understand, but my friend’s cousin—he works at the hospital in London where she was apparently working when they met.’

      ‘She’s a doctor?’

      ‘No, a nurse … she looked after his son when they were caught up in that terrorist thing.’

      There were murmurs as the people present recalled the horrific incident she spoke of.

      ‘I think it’s so romantic,’ she added dreamily.

      One of the men, the youngest there, who had been struggling to defend a business decision earlier to his critical boss, laughed and said scornfully, ‘Gianfranco Bruni doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body. A couple of years’ time and he’ll probably trade her in for a new model.’

      When Gianfranco had reached for his phone and not seen Dervla’s name he had needed to dig deep into his seriously depleted reserves of self-control to maintain a semblance of composure.

      At least until he was out of the room.

      In the corridor he gritted his teeth and ground one clenched fist into the other. It had been forty-eight hours and not a word—not one word!

      For all he knew she could be lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Fighting against the swell of crushing anxiety in his chest, he pushed his fingers deep into the ebony hair that sprang from his temples and inhaled deeply, forcing the air into his lungs before expelling it in a gusty sigh.

      Get a grip, man, he counselled himself as he smoothed back the tousled hair from his brow and adjusted his tie.

       Damn the woman!

      ‘Gianfranco!’

      Gianfranco turned his head at the sound of the familiar voice and forced his lips into a semblance of a smile. Normally he would have been genuinely pleased to see Angelo Martinos, who had been his closest friend since the days when they both shared the distinction of being the only ‘foreigners’ at the English prep school they had been sent to at the ages of nine and ten respectively.

      ‘Angelo, what brings you here?’ he asked without enthusiasm.

      ‘Called on the off chance. They told me you were in a meeting.’ He raised an interrogative brow as he scanned his friend’s face. ‘Not a good one, apparently …?’

      Now this was one of the reasons why Angelo was the last person to see right now. It wasn’t easy to pull the wool over his eyes, and he thought being his best friend gave him the right to pry.

      ‘You know how it is,’ he returned, doubting that his happily married friend knew the first thing about being put through an emotional meat-grinder by his wife.

      Angelo’s wife apparently thought that his every word was a pearl of wisdom, whereas Gianfranco’s own bride never lost an opportunity to challenge him.

      ‘Feel like a coffee?’ Angelo wondered, his glance lingering briefly on the razor cut on Gianfranco’s angular jaw. When a moment later he noticed the mismatched socks his eyebrows hit his hairline—impeccable and effortless elegance were descriptions frequently ascribed to his friend.

      Gathering his straying attention and wishing his friend would take the hint and go, Gianfranco shook his head and said, ‘Not really,’ in a discouraging way that would have made ninety-nine people out of a hundred back off, but not Angelo.

      ‘I’m at a loose end. Kate and her mum are baby shopping. I was getting in the way.’

      ‘Sorry, I’m pretty snowed under today. I just ducked out to take a call from Alberto. I should ring back.’

      ‘I hardly recognised Alberto when I saw him. Thirteen and he must be nearly six feet. At this rate you’ll be looking up at him before long.’

      ‘Maybe,’ said Gianfranco, who at six five rarely had to look up at anyone.

      ‘I don’t envy him puberty. It was hell.’

      Gianfranco choked off a bitter laugh. ‘For you? I don’t think so, unless adolescent hell involved every girl you wanted and—’

      ‘I only got them because you knocked them back, Gianfranco,’ Angelo, ever the pragmatist, cut in. ‘Your problem, my friend, was you put women on a pedestal.’

      Gianfranco had been approaching his twentieth birthday when he thought he had found one who belonged on that pedestal. By the time he realised that beyond the perfect face the innocent-eyed woman he had woven his romantic fantasies around—a barmaid who worked in the local hotel—had actually been not so innocent and rather more interested in his sexual stamina than his philosophical reflections and pathetic poetry, it had been too late.

      She had been pregnant and to his family’s horror he had married her and become a father at twenty.

      ‘I was intense.’ Gianfranco cringed now to think of the boy he had been. ‘And an idiot.’

      ‘You were a romantic,’ Angelo retorted indulgently. ‘And I was shallow, but now we are both older and wiser, not to mention happily married, men. It was a great weekend, which is what brings me here. We’d love to return your hospitality. Kate wants to know if you’re both free on the eighteenth, always supposing nothing has happened on the baby front …?’

      ‘Eighteenth … I probably, yes … no … I’m not sure.’

      Angelo’s scrutiny sharpened as he stared at his friend. In the twenty-five years he had known him, Gianfranco had never to his knowledge been not sure about anything.

      ‘Well, when you are just get Dervla to give Kate a ring. And how is Dervla?’ Angelo asked casually.

      Gianfranco met his friend’s eyes and lied unblinkingly. ‘She’s fine.’

      Well, it wasn’t actually a lie. She might well be fine. She might be totally fine after walking out on her husband. Gianfranco’s sense of outrage and the throbbing in his temple swelled in unison as an image of her standing at the front door of their home flashed into his head.

      ‘You’re being ridiculous, Dervla.’

      She stuck out her chin and glared at him through tear-misted eyes, emerald eyes, so intensely green when they’d first met he had assumed she was wearing contact lenses, shimmering.

      ‘There’s no need to work yourself up, Gianfranco. After all, it doesn’t really matter what I do.’

      ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘Well, I’m not important. I’m just a temporary someone who’s passing through, someone who isn’t good enough to take responsibility for your son … and don’t give me that guff about our ready-made family because you shut me out totally. Bottom line is I’m good enough to have sex with but not good enough to be the mother of your child!’

      ‘That’s totally ludicrous. There’s nothing temporary about our marriage.’

      Eyes narrowed, she lifted her chin in challenge. ‘So you want a baby?’

      He ground his teeth and reminded her, ‘You were

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