Chapter Seven
FLEUR sat in an alcove off the waiting room feeling invisible. They had told her that the painkillers the doctor had insisted on prescribing would be up from the pharmacy directly. She glanced at the clock on the wall and saw she had been there for almost thirty minutes. Maybe they were taking the scenic route.
She looked around at the steady stream of humanity bustling past her all with a purpose, but none of their purposes involved helping her get out of here. Had they forgotten she was there?
Almost immediately she felt guilty for being so impatient. It wasn’t that she resented having to wait her turn, and the treatment she had received had been excellent, it was just the place made her want to crawl out of her skin.
Somehow she couldn’t imagine anyone forgetting Antonio Rochas was here. Her brow furrowed as she gave an exasperated sigh. For someone who had decided that she was going to blank him, his convoluted family problems and his wretched kiss from her mind totally, she had been thinking about him a lot.
Still, at least it stopped her thinking about the hospital smell. She picked up a newspaper someone had left on the seat beside her and began to skim through the pages, although she wasn’t actually able to concentrate on the stories.
The elderly woman opposite waved her stick to get Fleur’s attention. ‘What does my horoscope say, dear?’
Fleur smiled and turned to the appropriate page. ‘What star sign are you?’
‘Virgo.’
‘Me too,’ Fleur said. ‘Let’s see,’ she said, stabbing the appropriate column with a finger. ‘It says here that “an unexpected meeting will have life-changing consequences.”’ She stopped reading and heaved a sigh. Even the stars were conspiring against her, it would seem! Not that she believed that sort of stuff. A person made their own destiny irrespective of whether Jupiter was rising in Capricorn or whatever. All the same, that was spooky. ‘I don’t have my reading glasses with me—would you like the paper?’
At this rate, next I’ll be seeing him in the tea leaves!
The grey-haired figure smiled her gratitude as Fleur limped across. ‘So young to have problems with your eyesight,’ she said, accepting the folded newspaper.
‘It runs in the family,’ Fleur improvised shamelessly.
‘And such pretty eyes too.’
Did Antonio think her eyes were pretty?
‘Stop that, Fleur!’ she told herself severely.
‘Pardon, dear?’ the old lady said.
Fleur shook her head and limped back to her place and, with nothing much else to do, her thoughts drifted. Inevitably they drifted in the direction of a tall dark Spaniard. She had no doubt that the fact she had walked, or rather limped, into the place at his side had a lot to do with her being attended to so swiftly.
Just as she was considering the shallowness in human nature that made people respond to a famous face that way the nurse who had attended to her while her leg was sutured walked past.
‘Still here?’ she said looking sympathetic.
Fleur nodded.
‘I was wondering,’ she began tentatively, ‘do you know how Tamara Rochas…’ She stopped and gave a rueful grimace. ‘Sorry, I expect you can’t discuss patients with nonrelatives.’ And as a completely disinterested party I ought not to be asking.
‘Well, you’re not exactly a stranger, are you?’ The girl smiled.
Fleur, not quite sure how to respond, shrugged and said cautiously, ‘Not exactly.’
‘If you like,’ offered the cheerful nurse, ‘I’ll show you to her room. It’s on my way to the canteen.’
‘I’m supposed to wait here for my painkillers,’ Fleur said, thinking, This is not something I should even be considering.
‘And wait you will. The computers were down for two hours this morning and they’re still catching up on the backlog. And to make matters worse Pharmacy has half its staff off with the flu thing. It’ll probably take them another half-hour at least to get your prescription sorted.’
Having been part, albeit an incidental part, of the rescue it would be nice to see for herself that the victim was all right.
Rationalisation, said the snide voice in her head.
Fleur tilted her chin and said, ‘You’re really kind.’ If Antonio was there…well, that had nothing whatever to do with her decision.
‘Family friend, are you?’ the inquisitive nurse asked as she pressed the lift button for the third floor.
The query brought home to Fleur just how inappropriate her actions were. She might know a little more concerning the details of Antonios’ Rochas’s strained relationship with his daughter, but the bottom line was she was a stranger.
A stranger the patient’s father had kissed.
Fleur chose her words with care, extremely aware that this was the perfect opportunity to smother any foolish rumours before they started circulating.
‘Just a neighbour. I hardly know him.’ What, she wondered, would be the consequences if she were to claim a closer relationship? Mention the fact that her lips were still tingling from his kiss.
‘Sure you are.’
Fleur didn’t respond to the girl’s conspiratorial wink.
‘No, really,’ she said firmly.
The nurse’s face dropped. ‘Really? We thought maybe you and he were…?’
Fleur adopted a droll expression. ‘Yes, that’s really likely, isn’t it?’
The girl’s glance slid over Fleur in her borrowed clothes. ‘We can dream, can’t we?’ The other girl sighed.
Feeling rather deflated that it had been so depressingly easy to convince the nurse that the notion of her and Antonio being an item was ludicrous, she leaned against the wall of the lift and thought, Dream about being Antonio’s lover? Not a good idea.
‘Fifth door on the left—3B,’ supplied her guide with a smile before the lift door closed.
Fleur counted the doors off and then knocked twice. When there was no response, she tentatively pushed the door open and found herself inside a small hallway.
Fleur was relieved the nurses’ station to her left was unoccupied. The moment she opened the door she had realised that this was not a good idea. The man was going to think she was stalking him.
And I’m not…?
She hesitated a fatal moment too long. If she hadn’t she would not have heard the voices. One was high and young, one deep. One more backwards step and she’d have been free.
You still are free, she told herself.
So why then was she walking towards that voice as though someone had tugged the other end of a string and was reeling her in?
Of the four rooms that opened off the area, two appeared unoccupied. One door was open.
From where she stood to one side of the doorway she could see the hospital bed, but its occupant could not see her. As she hesitated a tall figure who had been out of view came to stand beside the bed. He put his hands flat on the edge and bent towards the figure who held an oxygen mask in her hand.
‘You should not upset yourself.’ Antonio took the mask from her fingers and placed it to her face.
His daughter looked almost as pale as the pillows she was propped up against.
Tamara snatched the mask away. ‘Don’t try and pretend you care about me, or that my mother meant anything to you,’ she sneered.