An Enticing Proposal. Meredith Webber
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he said in accusatory tones. ‘This woman tries to tell me you are not available. I am Benelli and this is Prince Alessandro Francesco Marcus Alberici.’
To the astonishment of Paige, and all the occupants of the waiting room, the younger man came to attention and all but clicked his heels together as he indicated the second man with a wild flourish of one hand and a movement of his body that suggested obeisance.
‘Ah, at last my prince has come.’ Paige clasped her hands theatrically in front of her chest and raised her eyes to the ceiling. Then she grinned at Carole. ‘Wouldn’t you know he’d arrive on a Tuesday when I’m too busy for a coronation.’
Inside, she wasn’t quite so light-hearted as bits of her fizzed and squished in a most unseemly manner—the result of another quick appraisal of the second man’s bone structure.
Lust at first sight?
With a determined effort, she turned away, concentrating on the underling, hoping to surprise a smile in his eyes, some confirmation he wasn’t serious.
‘Am I supposed to guess something—or answer a question and get a prize?’ she hazarded. ‘Is it a joke of some kind, or a new form of fund-raising? I’m afraid my sense of humour’s a bit dulled this morning and, as for money, this place takes every penny I can scrounge up.’
Mr Benelli turned an unattractive shade of puce—now she had two bad-complexioned strangers in her waiting room! He jumped up and down—or rose on his toes to give that impression—and began waggling his forefinger at her.
‘This is no joke! He is a prince, a real prince, and he does not want money.’
‘Well, that’s a change,’ Paige replied, risking a swift glance towards the ‘real prince’ and catching what appeared to be a glint of humour in his black eyes. Black eyes? Did eyes come in black? Not that she could see them closely enough to judge eye colour accurately. ‘What does he want?’
She shook her head as she heard her own question. Why the hell was she carrying on this conversation through an intermediary?
‘He wishes to speak with you on a matter of extreme urgency,’ Mr Benelli informed her, and for the first time Paige caught the hint of a foreign accent in his properly worded and pronounced English and realised that he, too, had the dark hair and olive complexion of his companion, a colouring she associated with Mediterranean origins.
Surely it couldn’t be…Her heart skittered at the half-formed thought.
‘I’ll be free at twelve,’ she said crisply, hoping her rising anxiety wasn’t apparent in the words. ‘Perhaps you could both come back then.’ She glanced again towards the second man, realised the grey colour was probably fatigue and added, ‘Or you could wait here if you prefer.’
The offer failed to please Benelli, who all but exploded on the spot as he poured out his indignation.
‘This is urgent, he must see you now. The car waits outside to drive him back to Sydney. He is busy man. Important. Not to be—’
Paige missed the end of the sentence, too intent on trying to settle the new upheaval within her—one that had nothing to do with lust. Perhaps it was a joke, she hoped desperately. Hadn’t she glimpsed a gleam of humour in the dark eyes? And why didn’t the second man speak if it was his errand—his urgency?
He answered the second question almost as she thought it.
‘We will wait, Benelli,’ he said, in a voice that vibrated across Paige’s skin like a bow drawn across violin strings.
Shivering at the effect, she pulled a file from the holder on her office door and called the name of the next patient, seeing Benelli offer the newly vacated chair to the ‘prince’, the man refusing it and propping himself on the window-ledge as her father had done during her childhood when this had been their living room, not a place for those who could not afford other services to wait—and hope.
Her father had been a tall man—a little over six feet—and the window-ledge had been comfortable for him. But she’d never found it anything but awkward to perch there, although at five feet eight she wasn’t a short woman.
And why you’re thinking about how tall you are is beyond me, she admonished herself silently, leading Mabel Kruger into the room, then closing the door firmly on the unwelcome visitors.
‘’Andsome enough to be a prince,’ Mabel remarked, settling into the visitor’s chair and lifting her leg onto the stool Paige had pulled towards her.
‘Why should we expect princes to be handsomer than ordinary mortals?’ she asked crossly, peeling dressings off Mabel’s ulcer as gently and carefully as she could.
‘They are in books,’ Mabel pointed out. ‘And, apart from that Charles, the Queen’s lads are good-looking.’
‘Well, I’m sure she’d be pleased to hear you say so,’ Paige responded, talking to distract Mabel’s attention as she debrided dead tissue, cleaning out the gaping hole and wondering if a skin graft might eventually be necessary or if they were winning the battle against infection. ‘Though I think I prefer blond men. Why are princes always depicted as dark?’
They chatted on, and she knew she was diverting herself as well as Mabel. Not wanting to think about the phone call she’d made, about betrayal—and being caught out. No, the two couldn’t be connected. A simple phone call in return was all she’d expected—wanted.
So why did she feel sick with apprehension? Why was she harbouring a grim foreknowledge that the strangers in her waiting room were connected with Lucia?
She set aside unanswerable questions. Mabel was explaining, with minimal use of the letter ‘h’, about the beauty of the princes she’d encountered in the fairytale books of her youth. She then moved on to wonder about the reliability or otherwise of princes, given the unreliability of men in general. Paige let her talk and concentrated all her attention on her task, peeling the protective backing off the new dressing, then pressing it firmly in place.
‘Now, leave it there all week unless your leg swells or you notice any unusual redness or feel extra pain,’ she told her patient. ‘And rest with your leg up whenever you can—’
‘So I don’t ’ave to go to ’ospital and get a graft!’
Mabel repeated the usual ending to this warning, then she patted Paige—who was still kneeling on the floor, pulling Mabel’s sock up over the dressing—on the head and said, ‘Not that you don’t deserve a prince, girl.’
Paige looked up at her and smiled.
‘Don’t wish that on me. I don’t want any man—let alone a princely one,’ she teased, using the back of Mabel’s chair to lever herself up to her feet.
‘You mightn’t want one,’ Mabel argued, ‘but you’re the kind of girl as needs a man about the place—well, not needs, maybe, but should ’ave. I see your eyes when you look at those kids sometimes, and the babies. That fancy doctor did you no favour, getting you all interested in things like marriage then taking off with that floozy.’
Well, that’s a different take on my break-up with James, Paige thought as she helped Mabel to her feet. Was that how all her patients viewed the nine-day wonder of it all? How her friends saw it?
‘Not all men are the same,’ Mabel declared with as much authority as if she’d made that notable discovery herself.
Paige grinned at the pronouncement. She walked the elderly woman to the door and saw her out, her eyes going immediately to the man framed in the window embrasure. No, all men were not the same, she admitted silently, then trembled as if a draught had brushed across her neck.
Calling for the next patient, she turned back inside so she didn’t have to look at the stranger in their midst.
Well, you mightn’t have to look at him, but you’ll have to think about him some time soon, she reminded herself, grabbing the chubby two-year-old