A Taste Of Italy: Midwife, Mother...Italian's Wife

Jack snuggled down in his seat. ‘I thought so,’ he said, and yawned loudly.

Tammy was glad to get to work the next morning. The night had been a sheet-crunching wrestle for peace that she’d only snatched moments of and this morning a rush to get a tired and cross Jack through the fence to Misty’s house.

Leon Bonmarito had a lot to answer for. She’d walked straight into a birth and thankfully hadn’t given the man a thought for the past three hours.

Tammy wrapped the squirming newborn infant in a fluffy white towel and tucked him under her arm like a football. Little dark eyes blinked up at her out of the swathe and one starfish hand escaped to wave at her. She tucked the tiny fingers in again and ran the water over his head as she brushed the matted curls clean. She grinned at his mother. ‘I haven’t seen such thick hair for a long time.’

Jennifer Ross watched with adoration as the little face squinted and frowned at the sensation in his scalp. ‘He’s gorgeous.’ She sighed and rubbed her stomach and her son turned his head in her direction.

‘Thanks for rinsing his hair for me, Tammy. I’m just not up to it.’ Even in the dimly lit corner of the room where the sink nestled Tammy could see him try to focus on the familiar sound of his mother’s voice.

‘We’ll just use water today. We’ll bath Felix properly tomorrow so we don’t overload his poor nose with baby bath perfume.’ Tammy combed a little curl onto his forehead and smiled. ‘He needs to feel secure, with your skin and his smelling the same as he remembers from inside you. It all helps with establishing breastfeeding. Like the way you waited for him to find the breast and didn’t push him on for that first feed.’

‘I can’t believe he moved there himself.’ Jen’s face was soft with wonder.

‘He’ll do it again too. That’s why it’s better not to wash your own hair with shampoo the first twenty-four hours. A strong scent like shampoo has can confuse and even upset his nose during that time.’

‘I’ll let Ken’s mum know when I ring her. She likes a heavy perfume but she’s a sweetie. She’ll give it a miss if I ask.’ Jen reached out and touched his little hand that had escaped again. ‘I remember when you told my sister only Mum and Dad should snuggle babies for the first twenty-four hours. She swears her second baby is much more settled.’

‘Best practice. But sometimes it’s hard to manage when everyone wants a hold.’

Jen rubbed her stomach again. ‘Better to do it right. If the after pains get much worse I might not have a third one,’ Jen said with a rueful smile.

‘Have a lie-down. You’ve had a big day and there’s a warm wheat pack on your bed. I’ll bring Felix in when I’ve dressed him and check your tummy.’ She cast her eye over the mum and decided she looked okay. ‘Let me know if you start to bleed more heavily.’

‘Thanks, I’ll do that.’ Jen smiled and turned gingerly with her hand holding her stomach. ‘I’m looking forward to that wheat pack. Ken’s so disappointed he wasn’t home for the birth. And I have to ring his mother and sister as well.’

‘Since when do babies wait for truck-driving daddies? Ken will just be glad you’re both well. Off you go. I’ll be in soon.’ She narrowed her gaze as the other woman hobbled out. Tammy wished Ken could have made it too. She wanted every mother’s birth to be perfect for them but sometimes babies just didn’t wait.

When Ben brought Leon in to see the unit Tammy had just towelled Felix’s hair dry. She was laughing down at him as she tried to capture the wriggling limbs and they’d moved to the sunny side of the room as she began to dress him. The early-afternoon sunlight dusted her dark hair with shafts of dancing light and her skin glowed.

For Leon, suddenly the day was brighter and even more interesting, although his tour of the facilities had captured his attention until now. Strangely all thoughts of bed numbers, ward structure and layout seemed lower in his priorities than watching the expressions cross this woman’s face. And brought back the delightful memory of a kiss that had haunted him long into the night in his lonely bed.

‘Hi, there, Tam,’ Ben said as he crossed the room. Tammy looked up at her father and smiled. Then she looked at Leon and the smile fell away. He watched it fall and inexplicably the room dimmed.

‘Hi, Dad. Leon.’ She looked at her father. Or perhaps she was avoiding looking at him, Leon surmised, and began another mind waltz of piqued interest that this woman seemed to kick off in him. ‘What are you men up to?’

‘I’m showing Leon the facilities. His board’s been thinking of adding maternity wards to their children’s hospitals and I thought you might like to hint him towards a more woman-friendly concept.’

Leon watched the ignition of sharper concentration and the flare of captured interest. She couldn’t hide the blue intensity in her eyes and silently he thanked Ben for knowing his daughter so well. So, Leon mulled to himself, he’d suddenly become a much more interesting person?

‘Really?’ She tossed it over her shoulder, as if only a little involved, but she couldn’t fool him—he was learning to read her like a conspiracy plot in a movie, one fragmented clue at a time.

She dressed the baby with an absentminded deft-ness that reassured the infant so much he lay compliant under her hands. Mentally Leon nodded with approval. To handle infants a rapport was essential and he was pleased she had the knack, though it was ridiculous that such a thing should matter to him.

When the newborn was fully clothed she nestled him across her breasts and Leon had a sudden unbidden picture of her with her own child, a Madonnalike expression on her face, and a soft smile that quickened his heart. More foolishness and he shook his head at the distraction the fleeting vision had caused.

Tammy tilted her determined chin his way and Madonna faded away with a pop. ‘I’ll just take this little bundle into his mother and come back.’

He watched her leave the room, the boyish yet confident walk of an athletic woman, not a hint of the shrinking violet or diffident underling, and he was still watching the door when she returned. That confidence he’d first seen was there in spades. She owned the room. It seemed he activated her assertiveness mechanism. He couldn’t help the smile when she returned.

She saw it and blushed. Just a little but enough to give him the satisfaction of discomfiting her and he felt a tinge of his awareness that he’d felt the need to do so.

She looked away to her father and then back at him. ‘What sort of unit were you looking at?’

Enough games. ‘Small. One floor of the building. Midwife run and similar to what your father has explained happens here, though with an obstetrician and paediatrician on call because we have that luxury in the city.’

He went on when her interest continued. ‘It would be situated in a wing of the private children’s hospital we run now. The medical personnel cover is available already, as are consulting rooms and theatres.’

She nodded as if satisfied with his motives and he felt ridiculously pleased. ‘We promote natural birth here and caseload midwifery. Do the women in your demographic want that sort of service? What’s your caesarean rate, because ours is the lowest in Australia.’ She was defiant this morning. Raising barriers that hardened the delicate planes of her face and kept her eyes from his. He began to wonder why she, too, felt the need. Molto curioso.

‘I’m not sure of the caesarean rate—obstetrics is not my area—but in my country most of our maternity units are more in the medical model and busy. Often so understaffed and underfinanced that the families provide most of the care for the women after birth.’

Tammy nodded and spoke to her father. ‘I’d heard that. One of my friends had a baby in Rome. She said the nurses were lovely but very busy.’

He wanted her to look back at him. ‘That is true of a lot of hospitals. This model would be more midwifery led for low-risk women.’ He paused, deliberately, before he went on, and she did bring her gaze back his way. Satisfied, he continued. ‘Of course, my new sister-in-law, Emma, is also interested and I believe there is a small chance you and your son could come to Italy in a few weeks?’ He lifted the end of the sentence in a question. ‘Perhaps the two of you could discuss what is needed and what would work in my country that is similar to what you have here.’

Tammy intercepted the sudden interest from her father and she shook her head at Ben. ‘I haven’t even thought much about the chance of travelling in Italy.’ Liar. The idea had circled in her head for most of the night. ‘I won’t say your idea of setting up midwife-led units isn’t exciting.’ But that’s all that’s exciting and you’re the main drawback. She repeated the last part of the sentence to herself. ‘But thanks for thinking of me.’

He shrugged those amazing shoulders of his, the memory of which she’d felt under her hands more than once through the night despite her attempts to banish the weakness, and she frowned at him more heavily.

‘It is for my own benefit after all,’ he said.

She remembered Jack’s disclosure, and the idea she’d had to apologise if she saw him, but it wasn’t that easy. All the time they talked, at the back of her mind, she wanted to ask about Paulo, about the truth in Jack’s revelation, and to admit she hadn’t understood his reserve and his protectiveness. But it didn’t seem right with her father there just in case Leon didn’t wish to discuss it. Or she could just let it go.

She owed him an apology. ‘Maybe we could meet for lunch and talk more about your idea,’ she offered, though so reluctantly it seemed as if the words were teased out of her like chewing gum stuck on a shoe. He must have thought so because there was amusement in his voice as he declined.

‘Lunch, no. I’m away with your father for the rest of the day but perhaps tonight, for dinner?’ His amusement was clearer. ‘If I pick you up? My brother and I share a taste in fast cars and we could go for a drive somewhere to eat out.’

She did not want to drive somewhere with this guy. A car. Close confines. Him in control. ‘No, thank you.’ Besides. It was her invitation and her place to say where they met. ‘You could come to my house, it’s easier. Bring Paulo if he’d like to come and he can play with Jack.’

She had a sudden vision of her empty pantry and mentally shrugged. ‘At six-thirty? I’m afraid Jack and I eat early or I can’t get him to bed before nine.’

He shook his head. ‘That does not suit.’

Tammy opened her eyes slow and wide at his arrogance and his inability to accept she wanted to set the pace and choose a place that would be safe.

But he went on either oblivious or determined to have his own way. ‘I will come after nine. When Paulo, too, is in bed. I am away all day tomorrow and we will be able to discuss things without small ears around us.’

Tammy caught the raised eyebrows and stifled smile on her father’s face and frowned. She’d never been good at taking orders. She bit back the temptation to say nine didn’t suit her, but apart from being different to what she usually did, she never slept till midnight anyway.

It would be churlish to stick to her guns. This once she’d let him get away with organising but he wouldn’t be making a habit of it.

She conceded, grudgingly. ‘I don’t normally stay up late but a leisurely after-dinner coffee could be pleasant.’

‘I’ll see you tonight, then.’ He inclined his head and Tammy did the same while Ben looked on with a twinkle in his eye. Tammy glared at her father for good measure which only made his eyes twinkle more as they left.

Tammy could hear the suddenly vociferous new arrival in with his mother and, glad of the diversion, she hastened to the ward to help Jen snuggle Felix up to her breast. She couldn’t help the glance out the ward window as the two men crossed the path to the old doctor’s residence.

She’d always thought her father a big man but against Leon he seemed suddenly less invincible. It was a strange feeling and she didn’t like it. Or maybe she didn’t like being so aware of the leashed power of Leonardo Bonmarito.

CHAPTER THREE

LEON arrived at nine.

‘So, tell me about your private hospitals. What made you choose paediatrics as a main focus?’

Be cool, be calm, say something. Leon made her roomy den look tiny and cramped. Not something she’d thought possible before. Tammy had run around madly when Jack had gone to bed and hidden all the school fundraising newsletters and flyers in a big basket and tossed all evidence of her weekly ironing into the cupboard behind the door.

She’d even put the dog basket out on the back verandah. Stinky didn’t like men. Then she’d put the Jack Russell out in the backyard and spent ten minutes changing her clothes and tidying her hair. Something else she hadn’t thought of before at this time of night.

But now she sat relaxed and serene, externally anyway, and watched Leon’s passion for his work flare in his eyes. She could understand passion for a vocation; she had it herself, for midwifery and her clients in Lyrebird Lake.

‘It’s the same in a lot of hospitals in the public system. The lack of staff, age of buildings and equipment and overcrowding means the convalescing patient is often cared for with less attention than necessary. With children that is doubly tragic.’

She couldn’t help but admire his mastery of English. Her understanding of Italian was more than adequate but her conversational ability was nowhere near as fluent and his occasional roll of the r’s made his underlying accent compellingly attractive. It did something to her insides. She obviously had a dangerous fetish for Italians.

‘This has concerned me,’ he went on, ‘and especially in paediatrics because children are vulnerable, more so when they are sick.’

That brought her back to earth. Children were vulnerable. He had great reason to believe that after Paulo’s incident but she’d get around to that. Get around to the fact she’d thought him overprotective. ‘I can see what you’re getting at. It’s hard because of priorities with those more ill. But I agree a lonely and convalescing child needs special care.’

He sat forward in his chair and his shirt tightened impressively across his chest. She didn’t want to notice that. ‘Sì.’ He was obviously pleased with her. ‘There is a shortage of empathetic time for those children on the mend but not yet well enough to go home. I had hoped to prevent their stay from becoming a more traumatic experience than necessary.’ He glanced up to see if she agreed and she nodded.

He was determined to ensure his goals were realised. ‘This is especially important if these children are dealing with other issues, such as grief from loss of loved ones, or difficult family circumstances.’

There was an added nuance in his voice that spoke of history and vast experience. An aversion to children suffering, perhaps more personal than children he’d seen in wards. The reason teased at her mind. ‘Was there something in particular that made you so aware?’

His answer seemed to come from another direction. ‘In our family all sons have entered the medical profession, though disciplines were left to our personal preferences. My grandfather was intrigued by surgery, my father ophthalmology. My passion lies with paediatrics and Gianni’s with emergency medicine. Paolo’s area is yet to be discerned.’

That made her smile. ‘Paulo’s a bit young to be worrying about disciplines, don’t you think? I doubt Jack would have a thought in his head about what he’ll do when he grows up.’

Leon shook his head. ‘In Italy a man learns at an early age that he will be responsible for others.’

‘Like dancing,’ she suggested. ‘A man must be able to lead?’

He returned her smile. ‘Sì.’

She couldn’t resist teasing him again. ‘So you turned your father’s eye hospitals into paediatric wards?’

He raised one stern eyebrow but something made her wonder if he was secretly smiling. ‘You do not really think that I would?’

There was a lot going on below the surface here. From both of them. She shook her head. ‘No.’ He wouldn’t do that. She knew little of him but already she could tell he would hold his father’s wish to provide service to the blind sacrosanct. ‘So the eye hospitals are thriving.’

There it was. A warm and wicked grin that wrapped around her like a cloak dropping over her shoulders. A cloak that enveloped her in all the unusually erotic thoughts that had chased around her head for far too long last night in bed. She was in trouble.

‘Sì. I built more hospitals. Designed especially for children and staffed with nurses who have much to offer an ailing or grieving child.’

He leaned back in the chair and the fine fabric of his handmade shirt again stretched tight across his chest. He picked up the tiny espresso coffee she’d made for him, black and freshly ground from the machine she couldn’t live without, and sniffed it appreciatively. He took a sip, and those large hands looked incongruous around the tiny cup. ‘Perfetto.’

She’d learned to make good coffee years ago and it was her one indulgence. She dragged her eyes away from his hands because down that road lay danger.

She remembered he and Gianni were orphans and the pieces fell into place. ‘How did your parents die, Leon?’

She had connected with his previous statement and why she could sense and understand meanings so easily from a man she barely knew was a puzzle she didn’t want to fathom. She wondered if it worried him as much as it worried her.

To her relief he didn’t try to avoid her question. ‘My parents drowned off the Amalfi Coast from our yacht in a storm.’

Drowned. Poor little boys. ‘Storms at sea.’ She sighed. ‘Mother Nature’s temper can be wild and indiscriminate,’ she said softly. His eyes gazed off into the distance and she was with him. She could almost feel the spray in her face and hear the scream of the wind and she nodded. ‘I’ve lived by the sea. The weather can be unexpected and fierce. My father still has a house on a fabulous beach, but even he nearly drowned one day when he was washed off the rocks.’

He was watching her, listening to her voice, but she could tell half of him was in another place. ‘What happened with you and Gianni?’

He looked through her and his voice dropped. ‘Gianni almost died, and I, too, had pneumonia.’ She glanced at his face and couldn’t help but be touched by his effort to remain expressionless.

‘And you were both in hospital afterwards?’ Spoken gently, because she didn’t want to break the spell.

He nodded and now she understood where his empathy for those in similar circumstances had grown from because she could see the suppressed emotion, even in the careful blankness. That concept hit her hard, in mutual empathy from her early teens and the scars she still bore. ‘How old were you when they died?’

Leon shrugged the pain away. ‘Fourteen.’ Grieving, convalescing, in a hospital that was rushed and old and unintentionally uncaring. With a ten-year-old brother he’d nearly lost as well.

She could see he knew she’d connected the dots. And wasn’t happy. ‘It is better in my hospitals now.’ He changed the subject. ‘To see what you do here, in your maternity section, is good too.’

She allowed the change of subject, aware instinctively how privileged she’d been to glimpse into the private man and sensitive to his need to close the subject. ‘The maternity hospital concept is an exciting idea. I’ll certainly talk to Emma about it.’

No doubt he would also be happy because it would mean his brother’s new wife would be interested in staying more often in Italy. She didn’t fully trust his superior motives without a thought for his ulterior ones.

He was watching her again and she wondered what he’d seen of her thoughts. Not much, she hoped.

‘So you, too, have suffered the loss of a parent?’ His turn to pry. ‘You said you lost your mother young, also?’

Not going there. Fifteen hadn’t been a good age to be allowed to run free. ‘Yes.’ The less said there, the better.

‘And that you lived with your grandmother?’ So he remembered. Deep creases marred his forehead. ‘Why did you not go with your father when your mother died?’

‘It’s a long story and maybe another day.’ She and her father would have preferred that and maybe her life would have been different. She shrugged her shoulders for something she’d no control over. Fifteen had also been a bad age to be told Ben wasn’t her real father.

Rebellion saw Tammy spend many hours loitering at that Italian coffee shop. Months had passed without her father’s knowledge of how little supervision her grandmother had exercised.

Rides in fast cars she later found out were stolen. Dark and dangerous men that even her boyfriend was wary of. Secret meetings she’d had to stay silent in.

The day Ben, her father in all that counted if not legally, had arrived to rescue her.

He’d picked her up from the coffee shop when she’d rung him to say she was pregnant and whisked her to Lyrebird Lake. He’d told her then they were petty criminals. Not long later she’d read that her baby’s father had been sent to jail for a long time.

No wonder she’d found it all so dreadfully, horribly exciting. That risk-taking and foolish time in her life was something she’d buried when she’d become a responsible mother.

Until Gianni had arrived in Lyrebird Lake and wooed her best friend, she’d covered the Italian episode in her life. Hadn’t even tried her language skills out on Gianni so she doubted there was anyone except her father, and maybe his wife, Misty, in Lyrebird Lake who knew her secret.

Emma’s betrothal had been such a whirlwind affair she hadn’t even mentioned it when her friend had fallen for Gianni.

But she had Jack. The light in her life. And she’d change nothing now. Except maybe the subject again.

She had other motives for asking him here and he’d stayed a while already. ‘There’s something I want to ask you, though you may not want to discuss it. Something that means I should apologise for my presumption without knowing the facts.’

He frowned and inclined his head.

She hesitated, because she didn’t really know him or how he’d react, and then typically, she dived in anyway. ‘Was Paulo almost abducted before you came here?’

His brows snapped together. ‘Who told you this?’

She straightened in her seat, refusing to be cowed. ‘Paulo mentioned it to Emma’s daughter, Grace.’ She didn’t say Grace had told Jack and Jack had told her.

His hand tightened on the cup he held and for a fleeting moment she had the ridiculous thought he might crush it without realising. Surely a man’s hand couldn’t really do that? In the silence she imagined she could hear the porcelain creak in protest.

‘This is true.’ He glanced at his white fingers and carefully put the cup down, then ran his other hand through thick black curls. She glimpsed the flicker of white-hot fury in his eyes and it was a warning of what he would be capable of. Strangely she had no problem with that. She’d almost pity the men who tried to harm his son if he caught them.

‘I was stupidly distracted by my wish to arrive well before the wedding and took too little care. We are not the first family to be targeted by those who wish to benefit financially from people they see as too wealthy.’

So it was true. The thought made her want to clutch at her throat but she kept her hands together in her lap as if to hold onto the pictures that wanted to rise up and fill her mind. ‘Good grief. What about the police?’

He inclined his head but the movement was noncommittal. ‘The police do their best to capture these criminals but by then it is often too late for the one abducted. This will not happen to my son or anyone in my family. I have a private investigator and bodyguards working with me full-time now. Experienced operatives whose records are impeccable and that I trust with my and my family’s lives.’