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The smile spread across her face. ‘Now, if Mary had mentioned that, I would have cancelled your flat with the letting agent myself.’ She licked her lips, put down the spoon, a hunger in her eyes. ‘Does your fancy machine make enough for two cups?’
He decided that if it guaranteed him one of her smiles, he’d stand over the machine all morning. ‘A decent cup of coffee to start your day will be part of my fee for invading your space,’ he offered. Along with the cooking, but he decided to wait a while before breaking that to her in case she was offended. ‘So tell me about Rita and Mary.’ He wanted to know about their relationship with her. Why they felt the need to set her up.
He wanted to know everything there was to know about Alice Anderson.
‘They’ve worked in the practice for ever. Twenty-five years at least. Can you imagine that?’ She shook her head. ‘It helps, of course, because they know everything about everyone. History is important, don’t you think, Dr Moretti?’
He wondered about her history. He wondered what had made a beautiful woman like her choose to bury herself in her work and live apart from others. It felt wrong. Not the setting, he mused as he glanced out of the window. The setting was perfect. But in his opinion it was a setting designed to be shared with someone special.
Realising that she was waiting for an answer, he smiled, amused by her earnest expression. She was delightfully serious. ‘I can see that history is important in general practice.’
‘It gives you clues. Not knowing a patient’s history is often like trying to solve a murder with no access to clues.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I suppose as a surgeon, it’s different. It’s more task orientated. You get the patient on the operating table and you solve the problem.’
‘Not necessarily that simple.’ He sat back in his chair, comfortable in her kitchen. In her company. The problems of the past year faded. ‘In plastic surgery the patient’s wishes, hopes, dreams are all an important part of the picture. Appearance can affect people’s lives. As a society, we’re shallow. We see and we judge. As a surgeon you have to take that into account. You need to understand what’s needed and decided whether you can deliver.’
‘You did face lifts? Nose jobs?’
He smiled. It was a common misconception and it didn’t offend him. ‘That wasn’t my field of speciality,’ he said quietly. ‘I did paediatrics. Cleft palates, hare lips. In between running my clinic in Milan, I did volunteer work in developing countries. Children with unrepaired clefts lead very isolated lives. Often they can’t go to school—they’re ostracised from the community, no chance of employment…’
She was staring at him, a frown in her blue eyes as if she was reassessing him. ‘I had no idea.’ She picked up her coffee, but her focus was on him, not the mug in her hand. ‘That’s so interesting. And tough.’
‘Tough, rewarding, frustrating.’ He gave a shrug. ‘All those things. Like every branch of medicine, I suppose. I also did a lot of training. Showing local doctors new techniques.’ He waited for the dull ache of disappointment that always came when he was talking about the past, but there was nothing. Instead he felt more relaxed than he could ever recall feeling.
‘It must have been hard for you to give it up.’
He shrugged and felt a twinge in his shoulder. ‘Life sometimes forces change on us but sometimes it’s a change we should have made ourselves if we only had the courage. I was ready for a change.’
He sensed that she was going to ask him more, delve deeper, and then she seemed to withdraw.
‘Well, there’s certainly variety in our practice. If you’re good with babies, you can run the baby clinic. David used to do it.’
She was talking about work again, he mused. ‘Immunisations, I assume?’ Always, she avoided the personal. Was she afraid of intimacy?
‘That and other things.’ She sipped at her coffee. ‘It’s a really busy clinic. We expanded its remit a few months ago to encourage mothers to see us with their problems during the clinic rather than making appointments during normal surgery hours. It means that they don’t have to make separate appointments for themselves and we reduce the number of toddlers running around the waiting room.’ Her fingers tightened on the mug. ‘I have to confess it isn’t my forte.’
‘I’ve seen enough of your work to know that you’re an excellent doctor.’ He watched as the colour touched her cheekbones.
‘Oh, I can do the practical stuff.’ She gave a shrug and turned her back on him, dumping her mug in the sink. ‘It’s everything that goes with it that I can’t handle. All the emotional stuff. I’m terrible at that. How are you with worried mothers, Dr Moretti?’ She turned and her blonde hair swung gently round her head.
Was she afraid of other people’s emotions or her own? Pondering the question, he flashed her a wicked smile. ‘Worried women are my speciality, Dr Anderson.’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘I’ll just bet they are, Dr Moretti. I’ll just bet they are.’
Alice woke to the delicious smells of freshly ground coffee, rolled over and then remembered Gio Moretti. Living here. In her house.
She sat upright, pushed the heavy cloud of sleep away and checked the clock. 6 a.m. He was obviously an early riser, like her.
Tempted by the smell and the prospect of a good cup of coffee to start her day, she padded into the shower, dressed quickly and followed her nose.
She pushed open the kitchen door, her mind automatically turning to work, and then stopped dead, taken aback by the sight of Gio half-naked in her kitchen.
‘Oh!’ She’d assumed he was up and dressed, instead of which he was wearing jeans again. This time with nothing else. His chest was bare and the muscles of his shoulders flexed as he reached for the coffee.
He was gorgeous.
The thought stopped her dead and she frowned, surprised at herself for noticing and more than a little irritated. And then she gave a dismissive shrug. So what? Despite what Rita and Mary obviously thought, she was neither blind nor brain dead. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t experienced sexual attraction before. She had. The important thing was not to mistake it for ‘love’.
He turned to reach for a cup and she saw the harsh, jagged scars running down his back. ‘That looks painful.’
