‘You sound like you talk from experience. Are your parents divorced too? Is that why you haven’t ever married?’
Nat shut her eyes as he firmly changed the subject. She’d obviously pushed him far enough for one night and he’d revealed all he was going to – which was a hell of a lot more than she’d known to date. They didn’t do this – talk. They had sex until they fell into exhausted slumber. Talking had never been high on their list of priorities. But suddenly she wanted to know everything there was to know.
She sighed and turned on her side again, draping her arm across his chest, her leg over his thigh as she pondered his question, his fingers still trailing a lazy path on her arm. She didn’t want to talk about herself but maybe if she did, he might open up some more about himself.
‘My father left when I was eight.’ Her words fell into the silence and Alessandro’s finger faltered temporarily before starting up again. ‘No warning. He’d been having an affair for a year and the other woman, Roxanne, was pregnant. So, he just… left.’
His finger stroke turned into a soothing rub of his palm. ‘I’m sorry.’
Nat shut her eyes. Why after all this time was the devastation still so potent sometimes? ‘It was never the same after that. I spent time with him and Roxy and the kids over the years, Mum made sure of it. I have two wonderful half-brothers. But it was like he’d moved on from me. Sure, he still loved me in his own way, I knew that, but he just stopped being a father to me, like I stopped being his responsibility.’
Nat swallowed the lump that had lodged in her throat. It had been a long time since she’d thought about this stuff. ‘He had his new wife and hisboysand I was just always… an afterthought. The old love and affection we had was gone. He became withdrawn from me, emotionally distant, and I always felt – still do, I guess – that I had to prove I was worthy of his love.’
He didn’t say anything for a beat or two. When he did, he’d obviously joined some dots. ‘It must have been hard for you to watch Julian…’ Alessandro tsked impatiently and corrected himself. ‘Juliano. And me. In the beginning.’
Nat nodded. ‘I could see the way he looked at you with such longing and it reminded me of the way I used to look at my dad after he’d left. I know the situation was different with you two, that grief was involved, but…’
‘I don’t think it matters the reason,’ he murmured. ‘The fact is, we were in trouble and I just didn’t know how to fix it. And then you came along.’
Nat smiled and snuggled closer. ‘Super-Nat to the rescue.’ He chuckled and her heart filled with the sound of it. ‘Pity I wasn’t so good at fixing my own problems.’
‘Are you talking about the man you mentioned that day in the lift? You said it had become… untenable? I think that was the word you used?’
‘Yup.’ Nat still couldn’t believe she’d let herself get so deep sometimes. ‘He was newly divorced when I met him and that was probably my first mistake. But he was so sad, so knocked around by life and so kind and caring and he was so happy to be happy again, with me, I fell in love with him. He was endearing.’
Which was exactly why being here with Alessandro was stupidity. Alessandro and Juliano were just history repeating itself. Except it was worse. Rob and his wife had chosen to separate. Alessandro hadn’t chosen. His wife had been taken.
‘So, what happened?’
‘His ex-wife was in his life,ourlives, a lot.’
‘You didn’t like her?’
‘I liked her fine. But I don’t think either of them ever really let go. He spent more and more time with her, making excuses to see her. A leaky tap. A family wedding. A Valentine’sDay meltdown. And after years of coming second to her I just couldn’t do it any more.’
‘That does sound untenable.’
Nat shut her eyes, the skin on her arms turning to goosebumps as Alessandro drew circular patterns with his fingers. It had been awful. A long slow death, hanging on, hoping things would change.
‘C’est la vie.’ She shrugged. ‘By the end there wasn’t really any love left. Just hurt. I’m over it now.’ She didn’t want to talk about Rob any more. Or her father. It was his turn. ‘What about your wife? Camilla? How did she die?’
His fingers stopped again and his body tightened and she knew, even before he moved, rolling on top of her to settle himself in the cradle of her pelvis, that he wasn’t going there. ‘I think we’ve talked enough for one night, don’t you?’
Lowering his head, Alessandro dropped a string of tiny kisses up her neck and across her jaw. She should have protested. God knew, she wanted to know everything about him but her treacherous body was already responding to the weight of him, the hardness of him as his mouth found all her sensitive places.
And did shereallywant to know about the perfect Camilla and their perfect love? Hadn’t she had enough of that in her last relationship?
So, she didn’t push him away and insist on talking. She didn’t get huffy. She didn’t get up and leave his bed. Instead, she shut her eyes and let him sweep her away to that place where only she and him existed.
15
The following Thursday afternoon Alessandro drew back the curtains of cubicle fifteen to find Nat chatting with his next patient, a thirty-eight-year-old woman complaining of a sore leg. A crying, irritable baby that looked about nine months old accompanied the woman, who was valiantly trying to soothe the babe with a hip jiggle.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘He’s picked up a bit of a cold so he’s not exactly a happy camper at the moment.’
Alessandro smiled at the harried-looking woman. ‘No need to apologise…’ He searched for the patient’s name on her chart label ‘…Nina. What seems to be the problem?’
‘I’ve got this really sore leg.’
