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A life he hadn’t even known was at risk.
A love she didn’t believe in.
Trying to clear his head, Cristiano lurched into the shower and turned the jets on full force and the temperature to cold.
Minutes later he was shivering, but his brain still wasn’t functioning.
He kept thinking of her alone in a hospital room, her fears dismissed by those closest to her.
Her accusation that he was the one who had pushed her to confide in him and trust him rang loud in his brain. He remembered that single phone call with uncomfortable clarity, including the part where he’d placed all his trust in the doctor’s opinion and dismissed her anxieties.
Phone call. He had to make a phone call.
Cristiano turned off the shower, knotted a towel around his hips and sleepwalked back into the bedroom, trying to remember where he’d put his phone. He stared blankly at his suit, strewn carelessly on the floor in the hot burn of passion.
She’d almost died.
Picking up his trousers, he fumbled blindly in the pockets. No phone. Surely he’d had it with him last night?
Why hadn’t the hospital called him when she was admitted?
Distracted by that question, he picked up his jacket and his phone slid out of the pocket and fell onto the tiled floor with an ominous crack.
Broken, he thought. Like everything else around him. And all through his own carelessness.
Trying not to compare that livid line now dividing the screen with the state of his marriage, Cristiano punched in the number of the hospital, relieved to find that the phone still worked.
His reputation meant that he was instantly put through to the relevant person.
Unsettled to find that the hand holding the phone was shaking, he sank onto the sofa.
When the consultant at the hospital refused to divulge any information on Laurel’s case without her permission, Cristiano tried asserting his authority but in truth he had none and the man wouldn’t betray patient confidentiality.
Feeling uncomfortably as if he was losing his grip, Cristiano pulled on his clothes from the night before and dropped his shattered phone into the pocket of his trousers.
Nothing the doctor told him would have changed the way he was feeling anyway.
The details about what had happened at the hospital were irrelevant now. Wasn’t he the one who always said that you had to keep moving forward? And here he was, rooted to the spot, beating himself up about the past while she was currently boarding a plane, intent on getting as far away from him as possible.
He had to stop her.
Still in the process of buttoning his shirt, Cristiano grabbed his car keys and sprinted from the villa, leaving the door wide open. He sprang into his sports car and accelerated away, exploiting his skill and knowledge to push the car to the limits of its capability. Dust rose behind him, smothering his stunned security team in a choking white cloud.
Part of him was aware that he was behaving like a madman but he didn’t even care.
She did this to him, he thought, finally finding focus as he shifted gears. She drove him to behave in ways he had never behaved before. Take marriage—he braked sharply and swerved to avoid an oncoming car—he’d been perfectly happy with his single status until he’d met Laurel.
Santo had employed her to train him for the New York City Marathon and had suggested she advise on the hotel development.
Right from the first moment he’d seen her, Cristiano had been lost.
She’d walked into his office, that chocolate-brown ponytail swinging, and calmly pointed out all the flaws in the plans for the new state-of-the-art fitness centre.
Other people tiptoed around him, intimidated by the power he wielded. Most of them were too protective of their own futures to challenge him.
Laurel had shown no such reservations. She had absolute faith in her own expertise, a confidence that came from a lifetime of making decisions alone. He’d learned quickly that the only person she trusted in life was herself.
In his head he heard her voice on that day she’d come to his office to give him her recommendations.
