Modern Romance September 2017 Books 1 - 4. Кэрол Мортимер
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the meantime they had to get Lia to hospital as quickly as possible. Her broken arm needed to be reset and immobilised.
And Gregorio knew her well enough to know she was going to be one seriously angry Lia when she regained consciousness.
* * *
The voices were fading in and out of Lia’s consciousness, and the pain in her arm was making it impossible for her to make any sense of what was being said.
But she did recognise the three voices speaking. Cathy. Rick. And Gregorio.
Memory came rushing back to her.
David waiting for her outside her apartment... His threats...
Gregorio’s unexpected and physically violent arrival...
The snapping sound in her arm as David had pushed her away from him.
The pain.
Blackness.
And then the pain again, when she’d woken up in what she presumed was the A&E department at the local hospital, having her arm X-rayed. Despite the painkillers she had been given, she had passed out again when they’d reset the broken bone.
And throughout all that Gregorio had been at her side. Not speaking. Just there. His face had been set in grimly austere lines. The only words he’d spoken had been to the doctor as the other man had reset her arm. Before she’d blacked out again.
She had no idea when Cathy and Rick had arrived, but she realised Gregorio must have called them. There was no other way they could have known she was at the hospital.
Talking of which...
She opened her eyes to look at the three people sitting beside the gurney she was lying on, obviously all waiting for her to wake up. She seemed to be in some sort of curtained-off area—probably still in A&E. The cast felt like a heavy weight on her left arm.
‘At last the lady awakens.’ Cathy beamed her pleasure.
‘Thank goodness.’ Rick heaved a sigh of relief. ‘You had us worried for a while there, Lia.’
Only Gregorio remained silent, and a quick glance in his direction showed her that his expression was as grim as it had been earlier, his eyes a glittering black.
Lia turned away to moisten her lips before speaking. ‘Can I go home now?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘No!’
She winced as all three of them answered her at once. ‘Conflicting answers there, guys.’
‘You can go home...’ Cathy shot Gregorio a puzzled glance—his had been the negative answer.
‘But you aren’t going to.’ He spoke up firmly. ‘Not to your own apartment, anyway.’ He stood up restlessly and began to pace the confined area behind the curtains. ‘I have arranged for the lock to be repaired, but Richardson is still out there somewhere,’ he added grimly.
A nerve pulsed in Lia cheek before she spoke quietly. ‘He was threatening to kill me and make it look like suicide before you arrived,’ she told Gregorio.
‘God, no...’ Cathy gasped.
‘Bastard!’ Rick muttered furiously.
Lia moistened the dryness of her lips. ‘I don’t think he would have done it—Okay, maybe he would,’ she conceded heavily when Cathy gave a sceptical snort.
The murderous rage Gregorio had been holding in check for the past two hours threatened to overflow like molten lava from the top of a volcano.
If he could have got hold of Richardson during the past two hours...!
He had debated long and hard as to whether or not to call the police immediately in regard to Richardson’s attack on Lia. He had finally decided not to do so—not this evening, at least. He would call the police once he had Lia safe. They would add assault to the rest of the charges he was going to ask the police to bring against David Richardson once they caught him.
Raphael and Silvio were out looking for the other man now, but they had already reported back that Richardson wasn’t at his apartment or his parents’ house. Considering the amount of money the other man had embezzled from Fairbanks Industries, there was every possibility he had decided to leave the country. Richardson had to know that, having hurt Lia in front of Gregorio, he would now be being hunted.
Gregorio had no intention of stopping that search until he had found the other man and eliminated any further danger to Lia.
‘You will stay at the hotel with me,’ he stated. He couldn’t concentrate his attention on the search for Richardson without knowing that Lia was completely safe.
‘Oh, I’m sure there’s no need—’
‘We’d be more than happy—’
‘There will be no discussion on the subject. Lia is coming back to the hotel with me.’ Gregorio spoke over the protests of both Lia and Cathy. ‘She will be safer there,’ he said more gently to Cathy.
Lia inwardly questioned whether she would be safer at the hotel.
With Gregorio.
Alone with him day and night in that sumptuous hotel suite.
Not that she was in any condition for a seduction, and nor had Gregorio shown any signs of wanting to seduce her, but even so...
She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of staying with him.
‘You and Rick both have jobs to go to.’ Gregorio continued to talk to Cathy in that soothing tone. ‘I can work from my hotel suite, and very often do. Lia will not be left alone at any time until Richardson has been apprehended.’
Oh, great—now she was going to have a babysitter—no doubt Silvio or Raphael—whenever Gregorio had to go out.
‘I’d really rather not—’
‘The matter is settled,’ Gregorio rasped, and those glittering black eyes were challenging as he looked at her.
When Gregorio announced that a matter was settled it was well and truly settled, Lia acknowledged a few minutes later as she sat beside him in the back of the SUV while Silvio drove them back to the hotel.
She couldn’t deny there was a certain logic to her staying with Gregorio. David was obviously more dangerous than she had realised, and she didn’t doubt his threat to kill her had been very real. The penthouse floor of the Exemplar Hotel was completely private to Gregorio, and he already had his own security team in place.
Besides, she accepted that going back to her apartment was a bad idea. Even though Gregorio had already had the lock and the door repaired, she didn’t trust David any more.
She certainly didn’t want to put Cathy and Rick in any danger by accepting their offer to stay with them.
Lia had never thought she would say it—even think it—but Gregorio’s hotel suite was the safest place for her to stay right now.
‘YOU ARE GOING to need help undressing, and I will put something waterproof over the cast on your arm before you have a shower,’ Gregorio informed her evenly as he unpacked the bag of Lia’s clothes and toiletries that Cathy and Rick had just collected and brought over from Lia’s apartment.
Lia gave a grimace as she sat on the side of the bed in what had turned out to be one of six spare bedrooms in Gregorio’s suite. Not that she had expected to be invited to share Gregorio’s bedroom, but this impersonal guest room told her exactly the place she occupied in his life.
She really hadn’t thought things through enough when she