CHAPTER NINE

      ‘I’M HUGGING YOU,’ Ellie said witheringly.

      ‘I don’t do hugs.’

      ‘I do a lot of hugging. You’ll have to get used to it.’ She sighed, blissfully unconcerned by his objection. She loved the hot, damp heaviness of him against her and smoothed her fingers gently down the long line of his spine. ‘If I’m pregnant, you’ll have a child to hug.’

      She felt the charge of tension that stiffened him in her arms.

      ‘That day...you went pale at the prospect too,’ she pointed out sleepily, exhaustion weighing heavily on her.

      ‘Of course I did. I haven’t a clue how to be a parent,’ Rio pointed out feelingly. ‘How could I? I never had one—’

      ‘Just like me. You’ll learn as you go along,’ Ellie told him drowsily, the words slurring slightly.

      Rio lifted his tousled dark head. ‘You can’t go to sleep yet... It’s our wedding night.’

      But Ellie was already sound asleep. He went for a shower and eventually climbed back into bed.

      Ellie wakened while it was still dark and suppressed a sigh. Her sleeping pattern had been disrupted by ever-changing shifts and a regular shortage of sufficient rest while she worked. Knowing that she was unlikely to drift off again, she got up and put on a comfy dress while scrutinising Rio as he lay sprawled in bed. He was taking up more than his share of the space, she noted without surprise. It was as well for him that he could look so good doing it, she acknowledged with tender amusement, noting the black hair curling against the pillow, the angular bone structure shaded in by stubble, the relaxed line of his mouth. Asleep he looked younger than his thirty years.

      Dragging her attention from him, she went downstairs and the first thing she noticed in the sink of the elegant little kitchen was the bouquet of flowers, and guilt shot through her. A trawl through the cupboards produced a vase and she settled the blooms into water and put them on display in the sitting room. A search of the fridge revealed bottled water and savoury pastries and she ate standing up, watching the dawn light rise over the building on the other side of the canal and slowly illuminate the little garden.

      ‘What are you thinking about?’ Rio asked from behind her.

      Ellie turned her head to take in Rio clad only in a pair of ripped blue jeans, his feet bare. ‘Violet,’ she mused wryly. ‘The old lady who died in the hospice. She loved to see the dawn. If I was on duty I’d open the curtains early for her. I was thinking of how much she would have loved Venice but she never got to travel because her husband liked home best and in her day husbands ruled the roost—’

      Rio grinned. ‘Dare I hope it’ll be the same for us?’

      ‘Wouldn’t hold my breath on that one,’ Ellie advised.

      ‘Why are you out of bed so early?’

      ‘I’ve always been an early riser,’ she confided. ‘But then I’m not used to having the freedom to sleep in. If I wasn’t working the past few years, I was studying for exams. The pressure is constant.’

      Rio groaned out loud. ‘Tell me about Violet while I order breakfast.’

      ‘She was lonely. She’d outlived everyone who mattered to her,’ Ellie told him. ‘She had no visitors. Her nephew came once when she first entered the facility but he didn’t come back. Some relatives can’t handle the last stages of a terminal illness. You can’t judge them for it. We’re supposed to stay detached...and I never thought I’d have a problem with that.’

      ‘Sometimes you get involved whether you want to or not.’

      Ellie squared her slight shoulders. ‘When I had a few minutes free I kept Violet company. That was all. She reminisced about her past and I would listen and it made her happy. Once she was asleep I would tiptoe out again. I knew nothing about her changing her will until her solicitor contacted me after her death,’ she admitted. ‘I couldn’t have accepted anything from her anyway because it’s against the rules of the trust that employed me for medical staff to make a financial gain from patients. Even though I’d turned it down, the nephew made an official complaint against me and the whole business dragged on for months before it got to the enquiry stage and I was officially cleared. Why would I have wanted her money anyway?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Rashad and Polly insisted on paying off my student loans but they also tried to persuade me to accept a large lump sum off them to buy a property. It was very generous of them but I turned it down because, while I can deal with the extravagant gifts they insist on giving me, I don’t want to be the family charity case,’ Ellie admitted ruefully. ‘Polly buys all my clothes as it is, but she’s married to Rashad and I’m not. That’s her life, not mine.’

      ‘And now you’ve got a life with me,’ Rio murmured, tugging her backwards into the circle of his arms.

      ‘I’m not sure how much of a life I can have with a man who thinks I’m after his money.’ Ellie sighed just as a loud knock sounded on the front door.

      Without responding to that leading comment, Rio went to answer it.

      It was a waiter with a covered trolley and at Ellie’s instigation it was wheeled out to the small patio, which was now bathed in early morning sunshine. The screening shrubs in the garden gave it all the charm of a forest glade.

      Ellie poured the coffee. ‘So now you know about Violet. It was a storm in a teacup but it had long-lasting repercussions. Mud sticks. People I trusted made nasty comments. I was worried it would damage my career and I got very stressed.’

      ‘Naturally,’ Rio conceded, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to him that, had she been mercenary, Ellie could have chosen to rely on her seriously rich brother-in-law for financial support. Rashad was very generous and very family-orientated. Had she so desired, Ellie could have given up work and lived the life of a rich socialite. Why had that very obvious fact never crossed his mind at any stage? Had he preferred to think of Ellie as a gold-digger? And if so, why was that?

      ‘That’s why this break in Italy was so important to me. I needed a holiday—’

      ‘And instead you got me—’

      A natural smile tilted Ellie’s lips as she looked at him, lounging back shirtless in his seat, a beautiful, self-assured and ruthless work of art, who continually surprised her. ‘Yes, I got you.’

      ‘When do we find out whether or not you’re pregnant?’ he prompted without warning.

      ‘I was planning to do a test now,’ she confided.

      ‘For