‘Who …?’ Dervla turned and stopped, her eyes widening as she saw the cause of the tired charge nurse’s comments.
The cause was actually pretty hard to miss—definitely not the fade-into-a-crowd type! Several inches over six feet, the man who walked beside the trolley moved with a riveting fluid grace Dervla normally associated with athletes or dancers.
The dust and dirt coating his face and hair proclaimed him to be one of the walking wounded and though his clothing was filthy and bloodstained he wore it with such assurance that you only noticed this after you had noticed the man who wore it.
For a moment she stared, jaw ajar, and she wasn’t the only person present to forget her clinical objectivity! He was quite simply the most utterly incredible-looking man Dervla had ever seen. She had only ever read about men who looked like him—in actual fact she had read about this man, because her young patient turned out to be the son of none other than Gianfranco Bruni.
And pretty much everyone in the Western world had read about him!
Standing a few feet away, it wasn’t hard to see why he fascinated the media. There were probably any number of Italian aristocrats who could trace their lineage back for centuries, but very few had built a financial empire out of virtually nothing. Even fewer would have matched up to the average person’s image of what such a man should look like.
Gianfranco Bruni did.
He had the hauteur, the flashing eyes, chiselled photogenic cheekbones and sensual sexy mouth. He had the stunning body, muscular, tall and broad-shouldered.
Then he had the less definable qualities, namely raw, undiluted sex appeal. Unwilling to admit even to herself that it was this latter quality that had caused her brain to momentarily stall, Dervla put down to exhaustion the light-headed sensation she experienced as she looked at him.
‘Is that really Gianfranco Bruni?’ For once the media hadn’t exaggerated when they had extolled his looks.
The man beside her laughed. ‘Well, if he isn’t he’s his twin brother. Be sure you take care with phone enquiries, Dervla. Once the press get onto this they’ll be all over us like a damned rash. And if he gives you any problems refer him to me.’
‘Don’t worry, John, I can handle him.’ Laughably she actually believed it at the time!
But she wasn’t the first to make that fatal error, though she would have preferred to lose her shirt to him than her heart.
‘Just do your job, Dervla, and leave the politics to the men in suits. Talking of which … I’ll go and deal with those two,’ he said, nodding unenthusiastically in the direction of the two high-ranking hospital administrators who were shadowing the Italian.
‘They’re probably trying to hit him for a donation to the kidney unit.’ Dervla was only half joking.
‘Not while I’m in charge, they’re not.’ He stopped as the nurse who had escorted the boy approached, and demanded irritably, ‘Why didn’t you get the father to wait outside?’
‘I did,’ she protested, looking flustered. ‘Well, I tried,’ she corrected. ‘But he, well …’ she glanced towards the tall Italian and shrugged, rolling her eyes ‘ … what was I meant to do when he ignored me? Sit on him?’
Dervla’s eyes followed the direction of the theatre nurse’s gaze. She could imagine there were any number of females who lacked her professional objectivity who would jump at the chance to sit on him!
Her patient’s father was standing motionless beside the stationary trolley, surveying the room. You definitely got the sense that his present inactivity was not the norm for him. The high-powered financier had presumably not got his billions by being someone who did relaxed or passive on a regular basis.
Dervla flashed the other girl a look of sympathy. ‘She’s got a point, John.’ This was clearly not a man who responded to requests unless he wanted to.
You could tell just by looking at him that he was one of those individuals hard-wired to take control. The message couldn’t have been clearer had he walked in with ‘dominant male’ stamped on his broad, intelligent, bloodstained forehead.
Not that a forehead could be termed intelligent as such.
But eyes were another matter. And the diamond-hard eyes through which the Italian had surveyed the room as he paused there in the entrance made a cut-throat razor look dull-edged.
Pretty astounding, considering he had been through an experience that would have had most people lying sedated in a hospital bed!
As she stared curiously his sweeping scrutiny reached her.
Dervla’s body and mind reacted to the brush of those dark eyes set in the perfect symmetry of his chiselled golden skinned face in a similar way it might to a jolt of neat electricity.
A wave of scalding heat washed over her fair skin, then receded leaving her feeling shivery as she reacted helplessly to the predatory sexual magnetism this incredible-looking man exuded.
Was it her imagination or had his glance lingered longer than required …? But then a split second could seem longer when you were holding your breath, and she had been!
Once his glance moved on Dervla’s brain started functioning again and she was able to put her mortifying reaction in perspective.
Obviously it had had more to do with fatigue than anything hormonal. He wasn’t even the type of man she found attractive. She never had gone for arrogance or the whole smouldering Latin thing. If it had been otherwise she might have been more concerned about the little aftershocks she experienced as she approached him—shocks presented in the form of pulse racing and uncomfortable shivery sensations.
As she reached his side she realised that the theatre nurse hadn’t been the only person he’d ignored in the hospital, because she couldn’t believe nobody had suggested—pretty forcibly—that he have the gaping wound on his forehead sutured.
And goodness only knew what lay concealed, besides golden tautly muscled skin, beneath his torn and bloodstained clothes. Give that shirt a tug and she’d find out, Dervla thought, registering the one button stopping the garment being open to the waist. As it was it really left very little to the imagination!
If a person had been asked to judge from his body alone what the Italian billionaire did for a living she suspected a lot would have plumped for professional athlete.
He had the natural grace and the sleek muscle definition that few beyond those whose livelihood depended on it ever achieved.
A man who spent his life making money might be expected to carry a bit of excess weight around the middle. Staring at his she could see that it was washboard-flat.
Dragging her eyes upwards, her cheeks gently tinged with colour, she felt her tension level rise as her eyes connected with eyes that were startlingly dark, heavily fringed by a screen of jet lashes and hard as diamonds.
She wondered guiltily if he’d seen her ogling—not an ideal first impression.
‘Hello, I’m Dervla Smith.’ She flashed her practised soothing smile and had no response. ‘I’ll be the nurse looking after Alberto. Second cubicle,’ she said, nodding to the waiting porter. ‘If you’d like to wait outside someone will come and get you when Alberto is settled.’
‘No.’
Dervla blinked. ‘Pardon …?’
‘Are you hard of hearing?’ he wondered sardonically.
Her smile wobbled as she reminded herself that people reacted to shock and trauma in many ways. Some became aggressive, some became obnoxious—occasionally you came across one who combined the two. Then again maybe this was standard billionaire behaviour …?
Not