Her Last Night of Innocence (11 page)

L
IFE
in the hospital had a completely unreal quality. Kate felt as if she’d been abducted by aliens and taken to a different planet—a parallel universe of hushed voices and sympathetic smiles, of squeaking linoleum and rustling uniforms.

Another day was beginning. Through a gap in the geometric print curtains the light was pearly grey. Distantly she could hear the sounds of the city outside waking up, but she felt a million miles from it. It was amazing how quickly this had become her world, Kate thought dully, flexing her stiff back as her gaze moved automatically to her son. A world which had at its centre the bed in which Alexander lay, and which extended only as far as the strip-lit corridor outside, the nurses’ station, and the parents’ kitchen and bathroom.

She ventured to those outposts as little as possible, preferring to spend every moment at Alexander’s bedside, even when he was asleep. The nurses, her mother, Lizzie and Dominic had all tried to persuade her to go home and catch up on her own sleep, or at least shower and change her clothes, but there was no way she was going to leave him.

Not again.

She blinked, fighting exhaustion as she gazed down on the small body in the bed, and a crushing weight of love and anxiety descended on her like a landslide, so that she had to catch her breath. He was so precious. So beautiful. And, with his dark hair falling back from his forehead and his sweet face serious and remote in sleep, so like Cristiano…

A steel door inside her mind clanged shut, blocking off that forbidden area—but not before a convulsion of pure, hot longing had gripped her, making her insides tighten and her skin tingle. She dropped her head into her hands, pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. God, what kind of mother was she? To be feeling such things when her child lay in a hospital bed? It was bad enough that she hadn’t been here when Alexander was taken ill, but to be still thinking—still longing for Cristiano now…

It was unforgivable, and it had to stop.

All that mattered now was Alexander.

She opened her eyes, suddenly aware that the sandpapery rasp of his breathing with which she had measured the hours of the night was quieter now. Panic quickened inside her. His chest, which had previously had to suck and labour for each hard-won breath, was almost still. Getting to her feet, she bent over him, her heart racing as she laid her hand on his cheek. His skin felt cool and the hectic flush was gone. In the grey light of early morning he looked milky-pale…

‘Please…’

It was a harsh, dry whisper. Stumbling away from the bed, Kate rushed out into the corridor, terror burning like acid in her veins. ‘Nurse…Oh,
please
!’

Her voice echoed baldly off the walls of the starkly lit corridor, and the Little Mermaid stared at her with wide eyes—as if Kate had just shouted a rude word. There was the sound of a chair being scraped back and hurried footsteps. Kate threw herself back into Alexander’s room and picked up his limp hand, squeezing it tightly.

‘Mrs Edwards, what is it?’

It was Nurse Parks—the one with the dyed platinum-blonde hair and the uniform that looked a size too small. The one who always made Kate feel like an over-anxious geriatric from Planet Weird.

‘He’s so quiet—he’s hardly breathing at all.’ Kate’s voice broke. ‘And he f-feels icy cold…’

Calmly the nurse checked the trace on the machine beside
the bed, and then picked up Alexander’s other hand, gazing nonchalantly through the gap in the curtains as she took his pulse. After a minute she turned to Kate with a slightly patronising smile.

‘He’s breathing fine, Mrs Edwards, and he feels cold because his temperature has come down.’

Kate’s pent-up breath escaped her in a gasping sob. ‘You mean he’s OK?’

‘Absolutely—and he’s sleeping peacefully.’ Picking up the clipboard from the foot of the bed, she scribbled some notes. ‘I suggest you do the same. Why don’t you go and use the relatives’ room?’

Kate was shaking her head before the nurse had even finished speaking.

‘No, thank you. I want to stay here.’

Nurse Parks shrugged, tucking the pen back into the breast pocket of her uniform and going to the door. ‘Suit yourself, but there’s no need. I’ll let you know if he wakes up, or if there’s any change, but by the look of him I’d say he’s definitely on the mend now. He just needs some rest—and so do you. He’ll be up and about in no time, and you’ll need all your energy to keep up with him.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Kate whispered. Her throat ached with sudden emotion so her voice came out as a strangled croak.

‘Uh-huh. I’d get some sleep while you can.’

Walking back to the nurses’ station, Nurse Parks smiled to herself. Mrs Edwards was sweet, but she really needed to get a grip. Sitting down behind the desk, she picked up the cup of tea she’d just made and the romance novel she’d been reading, leafing through the pages and trying to find her place. She’d just reached a really good bit, where the heroine had vowed that she’d rather die than let the gorgeous Italian hero know about the child she was carrying.

That was all very well in books, Nurse Parks thought, stifling a yawn. There was nothing fun about single parenthood in real life—just look at Mrs Edwards. No—if a gorgeous
Italian walked into her own life she’d definitely think twice about sending him packing…

The entry buzzer on the door to the ward made her jump. Spilling her tea, she swore crossly.

‘Yes?’ she snapped, glancing irritably at the CCTV screen.

‘I’ve come to see Alexander Edwards.’

Her jaw dropped. There, in grainy black and white, stood every female fantasy made flesh. Tall, broad-shouldered, with untidy dark hair falling forward over a face that she would have expected to see on the silver screen rather than a small security monitor in the Children’s Ward of Leeds City Hospital. Even over the crackly intercom there was no denying the sexiness of the husky Italian voice

‘I’m sorry, but visiting hours don’t start until ten,’ Nurse Parks stammered, aware that she had circles under her eyes from a long shift, and wasn’t wearing lipstick. ‘I’m afraid I can only make exceptions for next of kin.’

‘I am. Alexander is my son.’

Cristiano had been preparing himself for this moment for the last twelve hours or so—since he had seen the words written on that torn piece of paper. But it was the first time he had said them out loud, and they felt strange on his lips.

My son. Mio figlio.

Head down, he walked towards the desk at the end of the corridor. The antiseptic smell transported him instantly back to the months he’d spent in hospital after his accident, and he felt sweat break out on his forehead. The blonde nurse who had let him in appeared from the office behind it, hastily pressing her lips together as if she had just put on lipstick. Smiling like an air hostess, she directed him to a room along the corridor to the right.

‘
Grazie
,’ Cristiano said curtly, and began to walk in the direction she indicated. Then he stopped and turned back. His throat felt raw.

‘How is he?’

The blonde nurse’s pink lips spread into a smile. ‘He’s been pretty poorly, but he’s definitely over the worst now. He’s a real fighter.’

Cristiano had a curious feeling in his chest—as if someone had reached in and taken hold of his heart. Wordlessly he nodded, and carried on down the corridor.

Throughout the last twelve sleepless hours, as he had driven through an Alpine blizzard and waited interminably for the runways at Lyon to be cleared enough for take-off, anger had burned and pulsed inside him like a fever. But now, as he approached the room where his son lay, he realised it had deserted him. As he opened the door he just felt…

Dio. Dio mio…

It was Kate he saw first, and once he’d seen her he found he couldn’t tear his eyes from her. She was sitting beside the bed, her arms folded on its edge and her head resting on them, like a very tired Botticelli angel. Her eyes were closed, but in the dead grey light of the early morning the violet circles of exhaustion beneath them stood out starkly against her bleached skin.

She looked so very weary and anxious and defeated that for a moment he had to grip the doorframe to stop himself from rushing around the bed and gathering her up into his arms. And then he looked at the little boy on the bed.

His chest felt as if it was imploding.

Automatically he felt himself moving forward, so he could see past the forest of wires and tubes to the sleeping child. He was aware of the blood rushing downwards from his head, a roaring noise in his ears as he looked at his son’s face for the first time.

It was like looking at himself. Like turning back the clock and seeing himself as a small boy.

Until that moment the strongest emotions he had ever felt—apart from sexual desire—had been anger, frustration, humiliation. Those were the things that had fuelled him as a teenager and driven him to do the things he’d done. Bad things. Dangerous things.

But this…

This blew all of them out of the water.

His fingers burned with the need to touch that smooth skin. It was slightly paler than his, Cristiano observed as a boulder of emotion hardened in his throat, but there was still absolutely no mistaking the boy’s Italian heritage. Gently, almost reverently, he reached out his hand and touched Alexander’s cheek.

His skin was the softest most miraculous thing Cristiano had ever touched. Like his mother’s, he thought with a thud. The child stirred a little, his mouth opening as he gave a gusting sigh.

Cristiano moved his hand away, not wanting to wake him. At the other side of the bed Kate jerked awake. Her maternal senses, on high alert, had set some internal alarm bell ringing, and her gaze instinctively flew to Alexander’s face. His head had rolled to one side, so he would have been looking at her if his eyes had been open, but he slept on, his expression utterly peaceful.

Her heart swelled, and for a moment she was so groggy with sleep and poleaxed with love that she didn’t notice the dark, imposing figure standing on the other side of bed.

And then he spoke.

‘He’s beautiful.’

Shock jolted through her like forked lightning. Instantly she stumbled to her feet, her heart pounding.

‘Cristiano…what are you doing here?’

Her mind was racing frantically. She could almost feel the adrenaline pumping through her, hot and stinging. It shimmered in front of her eyes like a heat haze as she watched him take a step forward towards the bed.

In the sterile, utilitarian setting of the hospital his beauty had a terrifying and dangerous edge. His dark hair was dishevelled, curling over the upturned collar of a long black overcoat, and at least two days of stubble shadowed his jaw, but all of that faded into insignificance compared to the white-hot burn of emotion in his eyes.

‘I came to meet my son.’

His voice was as cold and brittle as ground glass. Kate felt faint. A primitive drum-beat of panic shook her whole body, while her overwrought, sleep-deprived brain struggled not to give in to the terror that was closing in on her like icy water. Some automatic almost animal instinct to protect her child made her wrench her head up and look him in the eye.

‘You have no right to just walk in here…’

‘
Don’t
talk to me about rights.’ His voice was low, but it pulsed with tightly restrained emotion. His lips were pale, tightly compressed, his whole body rigid as though he was desperately fighting to maintain control. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Kate?’

‘I was going to.’

She was too tired, too shell-shocked by the events of the past couple of days to think of anything beyond the immediate need to defend her corner. Her son. Cristiano’s arrival threatened to shatter the fragile shell that was containing her raw emotions and she was horrified by the strength of her longing to throw herself into his arms and let him kiss her into oblivion. She backed against the wall, putting as much distance between them as was possible in the small room and clenching her hands into fists.

‘When? He’s
three
, for God’s sake.’

‘
I tried…
’

In the bed, Alexander gave another breathy sigh as he shifted position. As usual when he was waking up his small hand went to the drip in the crook of his elbow and tried to tug it out. Watching him, Cristiano remembered doing exactly the same thing after his accident.

The arrow of agony that shot through his own arm now was far harder to bear than the pain had been then. Because it was his son’s pain and he could do nothing about it.

Gritting his teeth, he looked away. Kate had moved forward, murmuring soothingly as she bent to brush the dark hair off the little boy’s forehead. The thin, metallic light emphasised the pallor of her unmade-up face, and the lines of
anguish etched into it, but in that moment there was something so profoundly, exquisitely beautiful about her that Cristiano’s breath caught, and he felt a sensation like hot needles pricking the backs of his eyes.

And then she looked up at him and her expression changed to one of wariness, like a cornered animal.

‘Please Cristiano, I—’

‘Mummy…’

The soft whimper from the bed made her stop mid-sentence, but the way her eyes widened in panic told him all he needed to know. She didn’t want him there. So much for gathering her up in his arms, protecting her, he thought with savage bitterness. The only thing she seemed to want protection from was
him
.

‘I’ll go,’ he said roughly, stepping backwards towards the door. ‘But on the condition that you’ll meet me later to talk.’

He thought for a moment that she was going to argue. He could tell that she wanted to. But in the end she said quietly, reluctantly, ‘My friend Lizzie is coming in this morning. She can stay with him for a little while. But not long.’

‘Mummy…’

Alexander’s voice was stronger now, more insistent. He was struggling to sit up. Cristiano felt a visceral pull inside him.

‘An hour.’

She nodded quickly, keeping her eyes downcast. ‘OK. An hour.’

At the nurses’ station on the way out, the blonde who’d let him in was talking to another nurse. They stopped their conversation as he walked towards them.