The Italian Surgeon's Christmas Miracle (10 page)

But that crumpled, messy box didn’t belong in this pristine office any more than she did.

Amy picked it up.

And left.

T
HOSE
brave enough to be out in temperatures well below zero, beneath a sky heavy with snow that wasn’t ready to fall, turned their heads to watch the young woman, with long dark hair and an angry expression, stalking through the outskirts of Regent’s Park with a large cardboard box in her arms.

Amy was oblivious to the stares.

And, yes, she was angry.

Confused.

Horrified, even.

The strength of the feelings she had for Luke were providing the confusion. How could she feel like this about a man who was prepared to destroy the house his own father had lived in? The only remaining link to the life he had built? To break up the only family Giovanni Moretti had retained and to pose a threat to the children who had become his father’s life?

You’d have to really hate someone to be that vengeful.

Had he always hated his father? Why? Had Uncle Vanni known all along that it was hatred he had to get past? Had he stayed in London waiting until Luke was old enough to choose for himself whether he had anything to do with his father? Maybe Uncle Vanni had lived with the hope that something would change for all those years.

Lived with the background misery that he was being denied a relationship with his son. His only child. The thought made Amy angry. Very angry. And maybe Uncle Vanni
had
intended to give Luke his house and another will didn’t exist. A final plea for forgiveness? With the largest token he could have presented to tell his son how much it had mattered?

Luke was prepared to take that token and hurl it into oblivion.

How on earth could she have fallen in love with someone capable of doing that?

‘Zietta Amy!’ The twins had been watching for her return from the drawing-room window and they flung the front door open. ‘Is that a present? For
us
?’

‘It’s for all of you. Where’s Zoe? And Robert and Andrew and the girls?’

They were all in the kitchen, which seemed overly warm as she’d come in from the outside. Amy peeled off her coat and draped it over a chair and tried not to think about Luke’s coat hanging in exactly the same place. The children gathered to stare, wide-eyed, at the box, except for Robert, who stared at Amy.

‘How’s Summer doing?’ he asked gruffly.

‘She’s much better. She’s getting tired very quickly but she was awake and playing with her doll for a while. She’s excited about Christmas.’

‘Will she be coming home?’ Chantelle asked. ‘In time for Christmas?’

Amy had to shake her head. ‘I don’t think so, honey. She needs to be watched very carefully. We’re all hoping she might get a new heart very soon but until then she might have to stay in the hospital.’

‘
He’s
supposed to fix her,’ Robert muttered loudly.

‘Who?’ Chantelle and Kyra were edging closer to the mysterious box and the twins were climbing on chairs to see what was happening.

‘G Squared,’ Zoe supplied. ‘Amy, I’m making baked beans on toast for tea. Is that OK?’

‘Sounds good to me.’ Beans were vegetables, weren’t they?

‘What’s G Squared?’ Chantelle queried.

‘Gru—’

‘She means Mr Harrington,’ Amy interrupted hurriedly. ‘Summer’s doctor. Let’s do some eggs to go on top of the beans,’ she added to Zoe. ‘Have we got eggs?’

‘I’ll have a look.’ Zoe moved to the fridge and Monty sat up on his blanket, watching her hopefully.

Chantelle touched the box. ‘Is that a puppy in there?’

Amy caught Zoe’s gaze as her babysitter emerged from the fridge with a carton of eggs. Zoe grinned. ‘You’ve got a puppy already. You might hurt Monty’s feelings if you ask for another one.’

Monty obligingly pricked up his ears on hearing his name and did his best to look as appealing as a giant, scruffy dog could look. Marco and Angelo climbed down from their chairs to go and hug him.

Chantelle sighed philosophically and Robert and Kyra took advantage of everybody’s attention being on their new pet to move in and fold back the flaps of the box.

‘Oh!’ Kyra gasped.
‘Look!’

‘What? What?’ Monty was forgotten as the younger children crowded close.

Kyra reached out to lift a loop of tinsel. ‘It’s decorations,’ she said reverently. ‘For our tree.’

‘There’s a heap of stuff.’ Robert sounded impressed. ‘Where’s it come from?’

‘They’re old ones from the hospital.’ Amy watched as the first of dozens of coloured balls and stars were lifted from the box. Nobody seemed to notice that the balls were a little dull and that some were chipped. Or that the shiny cardboard stars had bent corners. ‘Actually, it was Mr Harrington that rescued them from being thrown out.’

Amy had no idea how difficult it might have been for Luke to find time in his busy schedule to do that but the fact that he had gone out of his way at all was amazing. And the way he had offered them to her with that oddly hopeful expression that begged for acceptance had been what had tipped the balance.

A moment that had been a pinpoint in time but one that Amy would always remember because that had been the moment she had fallen in love with Luke Harrington.

Head-over-heels stuff. A love as big as Africa. Bigger.

It didn’t make any difference that it might be inappropriate. Or unwise. It had happened, it was as simple as that.

‘Oh!’ Chantelle was teetering on the edge of a chair to reach further into the box. ‘Kyra! Look what I found!’

‘I’ll get it.’ Kyra’s arm was longer. ‘You’ll fall off in a minute.’ She lifted something out of the box.

‘It’s an angel.’ Chantelle’s eyes were shining. ‘For the top of our tree. Oh…it’s just what I
always
wanted.’

He should be here, Amy thought suddenly. Luke should be here to see this. A magic moment. A child’s pure joy. He should be seeing it because then he would understand how something so small and ordinary to most people could be so important to someone else.

To see the way the two girls hugged each other and how the older boys gathered up the decorations and led the way to their tree, with the twins babbling happily in Italian, the girls holding hands, Robert leading the way carrying the box, and Andrew keeping pace as his right-hand man. A disparate bunch of siblings, certainly, but right now—and for as long as they could remain living together—they were a family.

Amy was torn between wanting to help the children decorate the tree and needing to help Zoe get a meal on the table. She was saved having to make the choice by the telephone ringing and the relief of being able to connect with the missing members of this family.

‘Rosa! How are you?’

‘Totally exhausted but I’ve done it, Amy!’

‘What?’

‘I’ve managed to get tickets home. In time for Christmas. Almost.’

‘Almost?’

‘We fly in on Christmas morning. The plane lands at Heathrow really early…6:30 a.m. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it’s been and it’s cost an absolute fortune. I don’t know how much more the credit card will stand but we’ll try and get presents for all the kids on our way home.’

‘They’ll be thrilled to see you. How’s Nonna?’

‘Getting stroppy. I think the doctors were only too pleased to sign a form to say she’s fit to travel. Between her and Mamma, the staff have been pulling their hair out. How’s Summer?’

‘Holding her own, thank goodness.’

Amy told her sister about the faint possibility of a heart becoming available very soon. Inevitably, Luke’s name was mentioned, more than once, but Amy resisted asking the question on the tip of her tongue.

‘Where are my boys?’ Rosa asked. ‘Are they behaving?’

‘They’re wonderful. They’re all decorating the tree in the drawing room right now. I’ll get them for you in a tick.’

‘What are they decorating the tree with?’

‘There was a box of things that weren’t needed in the ward. Shiny balls and stars and tinsel. Usual sort of stuff but there’s an angel, too, for the top. You should have seen Chantelle’s face. She’s so happy!’

‘I wish I was there. How did you score treasure like that?’

‘They’re old.’

‘Doesn’t sound as if the kids mind.’

‘No. To tell the truth, Rosa, I didn’t even know they were being thrown out. It was Mr Harrington that got them for us.’

‘Mr Harrington? Summer’s surgeon?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How amazing! He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d do something like that when I met him last time Summer was in hospital.’

‘No.’

‘He must be nicer than he looks.’ Rosa laughed. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with the way he
looks
, from what I remember.’ There was a heartbeat’s silence. ‘Ah! Is there something going on I should know about?’

Amy couldn’t deny it, but she could change the subject and ask the question that was still hovering. The one that might allow a window of hope that she was wrong about Luke.

‘Do you remember anything about Uncle Vanni’s son?’

‘Luca? Not really. He was only three when he was killed and our birthdays were on the same day so I was only three, too. Bit young to remember much.’

‘You had the same birthday? I never knew that.’

‘That was how they knew each other. Mamma and Caroline were in the hospital together and Luca and I were like twins for a year or two. There’s lots of photos somewhere.’

There was only one Amy could think of. The one on Uncle Vanni’s mirror with that chubby, laughing baby. She carried the cordless phone with her as she walked towards the room on impulse.

‘So we weren’t actually related to Uncle Vanni?’ Why did the prospect of that being true make her feel better?

‘No. But we adopted Uncle Vanni when we found him in London. He was so miserable. He needed a family and the rest, as they say, is history.’

Amy was in the room now. In front of the dresser. Staring at the gap at the top left-hand corner where that photograph had been. Remembering that flash of guilt she’d seen on Luke’s face when he’d appeared in the kitchen, having been snooping around the house.

‘Rosa?’

‘Sì?’

‘Did Uncle Vanni ever talk about Caroline’s mother?’

‘The Prude? Once. He swore me to secrecy and showed me a scrapbook Caroline had started making for Luca. It had her family history and pictures of the house and all sorts of things. It was like a cross between a photo album and a diary. She wrote in it. Mostly about how happy she was but there was a bit about how sad it would be to never see her mother again.’

‘What happened to the scrapbook?’

‘I have no idea. It was years and years ago and I’d forgotten all about it. Maybe it’s still in the same place.’

‘Which was?’

‘Tucked under all the stuff in his bottom drawer.’

Amy opened the drawer while Rosa was still talking. ‘You know, all Uncle Vanni had wanted for years was to visit the graves and put some flowers on them, but they were both buried in some private cemetery beside the family chapel. Mamma persuaded him to try again and Dad even went with him in his policeman’s uniform, but she wouldn’t let them into the house and the butler or whoever he was said they would be prosecuted for trespass if they ever set foot on the property again. How horrible was that?’

‘Pretty horrible.’ Amy had found the leather-bound scrapbook exactly where Rosa had thought it might be. She carried it back to the kitchen. She had been five when they had moved to London, which made her older sister ten at the time. Luke had been the same age. Maybe Luke couldn’t be held responsible for what had been said when he’d been five, but ten had been more than old enough to know about his father. To choose whether to have contact or not.

The hope that she might have been wrong died with a painful quiver.

Maybe Prudence had simply done what her grandson had wanted. It was easy enough to imagine a smaller version of Luke with his privileged life so precisely ordered. Had he been ashamed of the fact that his father was Italian? That he had been merely a vineyard worker? Even as an adult, he’d never come looking. Never given Giovanni a single chance.

Should she tell Rosa that her almost twin wasn’t dead after all? That he now owned the house they were coming back to just in time for a Christmas celebration?

No. There would be time enough to say what had to be said later.

And Amy had a few things she wanted to say to Luke first. She also had something she intended to show him. She slipped the scrapbook into her red tote bag.

Six o’clock, but it seemed much later.

From the neon-lit interior of St Elizabeth’s, it looked pitch-black outside. Luke could see the Christmas lights decorating the lampposts on the main road beyond the car park. He’d just come from the intensive care unit where baby Liam and his other surgical cases for the day were all doing as well as he could hope for. He’d checked on Summer, as well, and she was stable, but who knew how long that would last? Something could tip the balance at any time and send her into heart failure they had no hope of reversing. Or her heart might simply give up the struggle and stop.

Luke paused momentarily. He should put a call through to the Eastern Infirmary in Glasgow and find out what the results had been of the EEG they’d been planning to repeat on that child in the coma. Checking his answering-machine for a message first would be polite, however, so he changed direction to head for his office before going back up to the theatre suite’s changing rooms to get out of his scrubs.

He was almost there. Just outside the on-call bedroom he’d used last night, in fact, when he saw a slight figure turn from his office door and stride towards him.

‘There you are!’

Luke halted, taken aback by the anger he could hear in Amy’s voice. What had he done? The last contact he’d had with this woman had been in his office earlier that afternoon. Rather close physical contact, and he hadn’t been aware of any undercurrent of antagonism at the time.

Far from it!

Had Amy been as embarrassed as he had been when his grandmother had interrupted them? Was that what was upsetting her?

No. The commanding tone of the single word she spoke next put paid to that theory.