Italian Doctor, No Strings Attached

And then she stopped thinking as Marco cupped her face with his hands and brought his mouth down on hers. His kiss was soft, sweet and coaxing; every movement of his lips against hers made the blood feel as if it were fizzing through her veins. All thoughts of telling him were gone—until he untucked her shirt from her jeans and slid his hands underneath the hem, his fingertips moving in tiny circles across her back.

The second he touched scar tissue, he stopped. Pulled back. Looked at her, his eyes full of questions.

‘Sydney?’

She blew out a breath and pulled away from him, wrapping her arms round herself like a shield. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should’ve told you. I meant to tell you, but … ‘ Her voice faded. How stupid she was to have wanted something she couldn’t have. Hadn’t she learned from the mess of her marriage to Craig? Her husband hadn’t been able to cope with her condition; even though Marco was a doctor, would understand it more, it was still a big ask.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see pity on Marco’s face when she told him. And opened them again when he picked her up, carried her into the living room and sat on the sofa, settling her on his lap. ‘Marco?’ she asked, not understanding why he was still there. Shouldn’t he be backing away as fast as he could?

‘That feels like scar tissue,’ he said softly. ‘And, no, you don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to. I just wanted to be sure that I hadn’t hurt you.’

It was the last thing she’d expected to hear, and it took her breath away.

‘Sydney?’ His voice was so gentle that it brought tears to her eyes—tears she quickly blinked away. She wasn’t this weak, pathetic, needy creature. She was a strong woman. A damn good doctor. She’d just made the mistake of forgetting who she was for a little while and wanting something normal. ‘No, you didn’t hurt me. But thank you for—’ The words caught in her throat for a moment. ‘For being kind.’

‘Kind isn’t quite the way I feel,’ he said.

‘I meant to tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. It was unfair of me to agree to date you.’

‘Unfair?’ He looked puzzled. ‘How?’

‘Because we can’t really see where this thing takes us. I owe it to you to tell the truth—but I’d appreciate it if it didn’t go any further than you.’

‘Of course.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Sydney. But if you want to talk, I’m listening.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I have neurofibromatosis type two. NF2 for short.’

He stroked her face. ‘I’m an emergency specialist. I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about NF2. What is it?’

‘It’s a genetic problem with chromosome 22,’ she explained. ‘It causes benign tumours to grow on nerve cells and the skin. And although it does run in families, it can also just happen out of nowhere, a mutation in the genes that takes years to show up.’

‘One of your parents has it?’ he guessed.

She shook her head. ‘Neither of them are carriers, and my brother and sister had the tests—they’re both fine. It’s just me.’ And how she’d raged about the unfairness of it, when she’d learned about her condition. One in forty thousand people had it. Why her? What had she done to deserve it?

Then the practical side of her had taken over, kicking out the pointless self-pity. Whining about it wasn’t going to change anything. The best thing she could do was make herself informed, to understand what the condition was and how she could work round it to live as normal a life as possible.

‘That’s pretty tough on you,’ he said.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, knowing it wasn’t strictly true.

‘So how did you find out?’

‘I had back pain and nothing helped. Eventually I had an MRI scan to see if there were any lesions, and that’s when they discovered the tumours pressing on my spine.’ One of them had been the size of a grapefruit; and the operation had meant that she’d had to take some of her finals papers from her hospital bed. Not that she was going to tell Marco about that; she didn’t want his pity.

‘Which is why I felt the scar tissue on your back just now,’ he said softly.

‘Yes. The surgeon operated to remove the tumours, and they haven’t grown back yet.’ She dug her nails into her palm, reminding herself not to get emotional about it. OK, so the condition was incurable, but it wasn’t terminal. It could be much, much worse; it just made her life a bit awkward, from time to time.

And it had blown her marriage apart.

‘Are the tumours likely to grow back or cause you problems again?’

‘Maybe; maybe not. I get a check-up every year to see how things are. I have a small schwannoma—what they used to call an acoustic neuroma—on both vestibular nerves, but the schwannomas are growing really slowly and they’re not causing me tinnitus or anything, so my specialist says we’ll keep on with a conservative approach.’ She shrugged. ‘So I’m fine.’

To her shock, he brushed his mouth against hers.

‘What was that for?’

‘For being brave,’ he said simply. ‘For telling me. And it won’t go any further.’

And neither would their relationship.

She would’ve climbed off his lap, except his arms were still wrapped tightly round her. She frowned. ‘Marco?’ Wasn’t this the bit where he was supposed to walk out?

He kissed her lightly again. ‘This doesn’t change anything between us, Sydney.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘No.’

She couldn’t quite take it in. It had changed everything between her and Craig. Changed all their plans. Especially when they’d seen the genetic counsellor. Craig had panicked that the baby would inherit her condition; the counsellor had said that they could go for IVF and screen the embryo before implantation to make sure the baby hadn’t inherited the chromosomal problem. Or there were other options: adoption, fostering. They could still have a family.

But Craig had stopped touching her after that day. Not just because of the risk of an accidental pregnancy: he’d called Sydney selfish for wanting a baby at all, because the chances were that her condition would worsen during pregnancy. The way he saw it, he’d be left carrying the burden of childcare and looking after her, too.

His voice echoed in her head. You’re so selfish. You haven’t thought how it would affect me—how it would affect our baby. All you can think about is your need for a child.

A child they’d both wanted. Or so she’d thought at the time.

She’d tried talking to him about adoption, but by then he’d looked things up on the internet, seen the worst-case scenarios and panicked. How do you know the tumours won’t turn malignant and you’ll die? And then how am I going to be able to work and look after a child?

He’d countered every argument she had. And then he’d moved into the spare bedroom, saying that he couldn’t bear the sight of her arm. It had taken Sydney a long, long time to realise that it wasn’t just because her skin was ugly enough to disgust him: for Craig, too, it was a physical reminder of their situation, and he simply hadn’t been able to cope with it. And although she hadn’t been too surprised when he’d moved out, she’d been shocked to hear his news only a matter of weeks later. News that felt as if someone had reached inside her, gripped her heart in an iron fist and ripped it out of her.

And she would never put herself in a position where someone could hurt her like that again.

‘Sydney.’ Marco’s voice was soft. ‘I take it that it did make a difference to someone else?’

She didn’t want to talk about Craig. Not now. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because the sparkle’s gone from your eyes. As if you’re remembering something painful. Something someone said to you, something someone did, maybe. I’m not going to pry.’ He kissed her lightly. ‘But I’d like to see that sparkle back. The sparkle that was there last night when I kissed you, and tonight when we walked out of the cinema.’

A sparkle that had been there because, for those brief moments, she’d forgotten who and what she was.

Marco was being kind. But she was going to have to face the truth, and there was only one way to do that. Head on. She unbuttoned her shirt and slipped it down over her arm to reveal the large patch of skin covered with tiny nodules.

This was the bit where he’d walk away.

Marco could see it in her face: she was expecting him to be disgusted. To walk away. To fail the challenge.

So his guess had been right. Someone had hurt her badly. And Marco guessed that it went deeper than just that patch of skin. The man had clearly made her feel worthless as well as ugly.

‘That’s it?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

Her eyes were a little over-bright, and he guessed that she was reliving past memories. And yet it was only a small part of her. Something that didn’t bother him.

Gently, he reached out and stroked her skin. ‘Does it hurt if I do this?’

‘No.’ Though her lower lip wobbled slightly, as if she was biting back the tears.

‘Good. What about this?’ He touched his mouth to the area where the nodules were.

‘No.’ Her voice was shaky, and he glanced up to discover that a single tear had spilled over her lashes and was rolling down her face.

‘Ah, tesoro. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just wanted to show you that …’ He shook his head. ‘That this doesn’t matter. It’s surface. Moles, skin tags, birth marks, port wine stains—they’re all common enough.’

She said nothing, but he’d seen the flicker of past pain in her expression. Whatever the guy had said to her, it had really hurt her. And it was about more than just her appearance, he’d guess. He would’ve liked to shake the guy, break his nose—except that wouldn’t solve anything or make Sydney feel better.

He tried again. ‘Nobody’s perfect. Even a newborn baby often has milk spots or stork marks.’

‘But not like this. It’s ugly.’

That definitely didn’t sound like the confident, bright doctor he knew from work; those were someone else’s words. Her ex had clearly chipped away at her self-belief. ‘Actually, no—it’s just part of you. Just like a port wine stain would be.’ And anyone who cared about her would accept it, not make a big deal out of it the way her ex obviously had.

He brushed his mouth against hers, and gently helped her back into her shirt. ‘Just so you know, I’m not covering your arm up because I don’t want to look at you or touch you—because I do want to look at you, Sydney. I do want to touch you. I’m covering you up for one reason only, and that’s because right now I can see that you’re uncomfortable with your skin being bared. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. I want you to be relaxed with me.’

She swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being wet.’

‘No. I’ve clearly brought some bad memories back to you, and I’m sorry for that.’ He stroked her face. ‘I’d guess that the person you should’ve been able to rely on let you down—and I’d guess it was when you were at your most vulnerable, say when you first found out that you had NF2.’

‘Something like that,’ she admitted. ‘Though not when I first found out. Later.’

‘I’m sorry he wasn’t the man you deserved. But it’s his loss, not yours.’ Marco felt his lip curl in disgust. ‘There’s more to you than just your skin and your NF2, and beauty’s much more than skin-deep.’ He tightened his arms round her. ‘Non tutti i mali vengono per nuocere.’

‘I don’t speak Italian,’ she said, ‘so you’ve lost me there.’

‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ he translated. ‘We’re both free. So there’s no reason why we can’t see where this takes us.’

‘And this …’ she gestured to her arm, though he guessed that really she meant the whole condition ‘… really doesn’t matter?’

‘It really doesn’t matter,’ he confirmed. Though there was one thing he needed to know. ‘You said the tumours are benign. So it’s not terminal.’

‘Incurable, but not terminal,’ she confirmed. ‘And not contagious, either.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Though there’s a fifty per cent chance of passing it on to a child. Just as well I don’t ever want children.’

Her voice was light, but he’d seen something briefly in her eyes before she’d masked it—something that told him that it was a little more complicated than that. Just as it was for him; if things had gone to plan, he would’ve been a father now. Sienna would’ve been on maternity leave with their first baby.

It wasn’t going to happen now, so there was no point in dwelling on just how much he’d lost. ‘Noted,’ he said softly. ‘So if this thing between us takes us where I think it’s going—where I’d like it to go—we’ll be careful. Very, very careful.’

She looked completely taken aback. ‘You want to …’ she paused, as if searching for the right words ‘… go to bed with me?’

He could tell her in words, but he had a feeling that the way her ex had undermined her would mean she’d find it difficult to believe him. So maybe there was a better way of explaining. He shifted her slightly on his lap, so she could feel his arousal for herself. ‘Does that answer your question?’ he asked.

Colour bloomed in her face. ‘Oh.’

‘Good.’ He caught her lower lip briefly between his. ‘But I’m not going to rush you into anything tonight. Let’s have fun getting to know each other.’

For a moment, he thought she was going to back away. But then she stroked his face, a look of wonder in her eyes. ‘Yes.’

He stole a kiss. ‘You won’t regret this, tesoro,’ he promised. He’d make sure of that. ‘And now, I’m going home. While I still have a smidgen of self-control left. Because, even though I’d really like to take you to bed right now, I think you need a little more time to get used to the idea.’

She nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise. It’s not a problem.’ He kissed her again. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Buona notte.’

CHAPTER FOUR

THE next day, Sydney was smiling all the way in to work; butterflies were doing a happy dance in her stomach at the thought of seeing Marco. She still couldn’t quite believe that someone as gorgeous as Marco had even given her a second glance, let alone wanted a relationship with her. Especially now he knew the truth about her. Yet there had been no pity in his eyes when he’d looked at her, no disgust or abhorrence about how ugly her arm was. Not like the way it had been with Craig.

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