Reunited with Her Italian Ex (15 page)

‘I'm not sure what happened. She just seemed to lose her balance. She went down hard and hit her head on the pavement. The last I saw, she was being taken to the hospital.'

Barely able to speak, he forced himself to say, ‘You said she was a young woman. What did she look like?'

‘Pretty, blue eyes, blonde hair.'

‘And how did she seem?'

‘Not sure, really. She wasn't moving. I suppose she might actually have been dead.'

He swallowed. ‘Thank you for telling me,' he said hoarsely.

It took him ten minutes to get to the nearest hospital. There, he tore inside and up to the desk.

‘A young woman was brought in this morning,' he gasped. ‘She had a fall in the Via Capello. I must see her.'

The receptionist made a phone call and a nurse appeared.

He followed her into a small side ward and held his breath at the sight of Natasha lying on the bed. Her eyes were closed and it seemed to him that she was frighteningly still.

‘Is this the person you are looking for?' the nurse asked.

‘Yes, this is the person I was looking for.'

‘Please tell me who she is.'

‘Her name is Natasha Bates.'

‘And who is her next of kin?'

‘I am. I'm her husband. At least, I will be in a few days. If she lives.'

He had to force himself to say the last few words, but the fear was more than he could endure.

‘We don't yet know how seriously she's hurt,' the nurse said. ‘She's still unconscious, but hopefully she'll soon come round.'

He moved to the bed, looking down at Natasha lying there. She seemed different to the strong, determined young woman he remembered: smaller, more frail and vulnerable.

A sudden fearsome echo haunted him: Romeo coming to Juliet in the tomb, seeing her lying there, silent and motionless, believing her dead. He tried to fight the thought away but he had a terrified feeling that she would leave him unless he could prevent her.

‘Natasha,' he said, taking a chair beside the bed. ‘It's me, darling. Can you hear me?'

She neither moved nor spoke.

‘Are you there?' he begged. ‘Please tell me that you're there.'

His heart sank. Her breathing told him that she was still alive, but in another sense she wasn't there. She was living in another universe, one where she might be trapped for ever.

‘You went away from me once,' he whispered. ‘I thought I would go mad at your rejection, but you came back and we found each other. Then today I thought you'd abandoned me again, and losing you was even worse than before.

‘What happened was my fault. I couldn't bear discovering that I'd been living in a fantasy, that you loved me less than I'd thought. But if that's true—' he hesitated ‘—if the love is mainly on my side, then...then I'll live with that as long as I can have you. Do you understand? I'll accept any conditions as long as I don't lose you again. Even if—' he shuddered ‘—even if you never really wake up, but stay like this always, I won't leave you. I'll care for you and love you for years and years, until the day we can be finally together for ever.'

He leaned closer to murmur into her ear, ‘Don't leave me. I'm yours in every way and I always will be. Natasha? Can you hear me?'

‘Yes,' she whispered.

‘I followed you all the way to Juliet's house. You went to ask her help, didn't you?'

‘Yes.' She whispered the word so softly that he wasn't sure he'd heard properly.

‘What?' he asked eagerly, leaning closer.

‘She was very kind to me.'

He was suddenly sure that they understood each other. He must seize this moment, lest there should never be another.

‘I tried too,' he said. ‘But she stayed silent. I reckon she was telling me to see the truth for myself.' Inspiration came to him. ‘And the truth we have to understand is that we love each other more than we can say in mere words. We've always known that, but we've never managed to face it before. But now the time has come and if I do nothing else in the world I have to make sure that you know.'

He kissed her again softly before murmuring, ‘You are my lady. You are my love. Oh, that you knew you are.'

‘Am I?' she whispered. ‘Am I truly?'

‘You know you are. And you will always know that you are.'

‘How can I believe it? It's too good to be true.'

‘Then I'll have to spend my life convincing you. I was so afraid you wouldn't wake up.'

‘I was in such a strange place. I couldn't tell which way to turn, but suddenly you were there, beckoning me.'

‘I always will be. I'll never let you go.'

The nurse appeared. She checked Natasha's pulse, read the machines and smiled at the result.

‘This is what we hoped for,' she said. ‘It's not serious. A few days' rest and you'll be back on your feet.'

When she had left they hugged, looking deep into each other's eyes, reading the depths for the first time. But now no words were spoken. No words were needed. Soon Natasha's eyes closed and Mario held her while she slept, thinking blissfully of the years ahead when he would hold her many times in his arms and always in his heart.

* * *

The wedding had to be delayed for two weeks, but at last the time came when they entered Juliet's house and made the vows of lifelong love and fidelity. Once, many years before, another couple had vowed the same, only to see their happiness cut short. But Natasha and Mario had no fear.

After the ceremony they went out onto the balcony, where Giorgio had arranged for a photographer to be clicking his camera madly. But the bride and groom were barely aware of him. They saw only each other.

‘Just us,' he said as they held each other later that night.

‘Not quite just us,' she murmured. ‘There were two other people there. Couldn't you sense them?'

‘Yes, they were there, watching over us as they've always done. And perhaps they always will.'

‘No need,' she said. ‘From now on we'll watch over each other.'

‘Do you really think we can?'

‘Yes, we can.' She turned in the bed, taking him in a fervent embrace.

‘Come here,' she said. ‘Come here
now
.'

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from HER KNIGHT IN THE OUTBACK by Nikki Logan.

We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Romance.

You adore a feel-good story!
Harlequin Romance
offers uplifting escapes featuring real, relatable women and strong, deeply desirable men. Experience the intensity, anticipation and sheer rush of falling in love.

Enjoy four new stories from Harlequin Romance every month!

Connect with us on
Harlequin.com
for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

Other ways to keep in touch:

Harlequin.com/newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
HarlequinBlog.com

http://www.harlequin.com/harlequinexperience

CHAPTER ONE

I
T
WAS
MOMENTS
like this that Evelyn Read hated. Life-defining moments. Moments when her fears and prejudices reared up before her eyes and confronted her—just like a King Brown snake, surprised while basking on the hot Australian highway.

She squinted at the distant biker limping carefully towards her out of the shimmering heat mirage and curled her fingers more tightly around the steering wheel.

A moment like this one might have taken her brother. Maybe Trav stopped for the wrong stranger; maybe that was where he went when he disappeared all those months ago. Her instincts screamed that she should press down on her accelerator until the man—the danger—was an hour behind her. But a moment like this might have
saved
her brother, too. If a stranger had only been kind enough or brave enough to stop for him. Then maybe Travis would be back with them right now. Safe. Loved.

Instead of alone, scared...or worse.

The fear of never knowing what happened to him tightened her gut the way it always did when she thought too long about this crazy thing she was doing.

The biker limped closer.

Should she listen to her basest instincts and flee, or respond to twenty-four years of social conditioning and help a fellow human being in trouble? There was probably some kind of outback code to be observed, too, but she'd heard too many stories from too many grieving people to be particularly bothered by niceties.

Eve's eyes flicked to the distant motorbike listing on the side of the long, empty road. And then, closer, to the scruffy man now nearing the restored 1956 Bedford bus that was getting her around Australia.

She glanced at her door's lock to make sure it was secure.

The man limped to a halt next to the bus's bifold doors and looked at her expectantly over his full beard. A dagger tattoo poked out from under his dark T-shirt and impenetrable sunglasses hid his eyes—and his intent—from her.

No.
This was her home. She'd never open her front door to a total stranger. Especially not hours from the nearest other people.

She signalled him around to the driver's window instead.

He didn't look too impressed, but he limped his way around to her side and she slid the antique window open and forced her voice to be light.

Sociopaths make a decision on whether you're predator or prey in the first few seconds
, she remembered from one of the endless missing-person fact sheets she'd read. She was not about to have ‘prey' stamped on her forehead.

‘Morning,' she breezed, as if this wasn't potentially a very big deal indeed. ‘Looks like you're having a bad day.'

‘Emu,' he grunted and she got a glimpse of straight teeth and healthy gums.

Stupidly, that reassured her. As if evil wouldn't floss. She twisted around for evidence of a big damaged bird flailing in the scrub after hitting his motorbike. To validate his claim. ‘Was it okay?'

‘Yeah, I'm fine, thanks.'

That brought her eyes back to his glasses. ‘I can see that. But emus don't always come off the best after a road impact.'

As if she'd know...

‘Going that fast, it practically went over the top of me as it ran with its flock. It's probably twenty miles from here now, trying to work out how and when it got black paint on its claws.'

He held up his scratched helmet, which had clearly taken an impact. More evidence. She just nodded, not wanting to give an inch more than necessary. He'd probably already summed her up as a bleeding heart over the emu.

One for the prey column.

‘Where are you headed?' he asked.

Her radar flashed again at his interest. ‘West.'

Duh, since the Bedford was pointing straight at the sun heading for the horizon and there was nothing else out this way
but
west.

‘Can I catch a lift to the closest town?'

Was that tetchiness in his voice because she kept foiling him or because hers was the first vehicle to come along in hours and she was stonewalling him on a ride?

She glanced at his crippled bike.

‘That'll have to stay until I can get back here with a truck,' he said, following her glance.

There was something in the sag of his shoulders and the way he spared his injured leg that reassured her even as the beard and tattoo and leather did not. He'd clearly come off his bike hard. Maybe he was more injured than she could see?

But the stark reality was that her converted bus only had the one seat up front—hers. ‘That's my home back there,' she started.

‘So...?'

‘So, I don't know you.'

Yep. That was absolutely the insult his hardened lips said it was. But she was not letting a stranger back there. Into her world.

‘It's only an hour to the border.' He sighed. ‘I'll stand on your steps until Eucla.'

Right next to her. Where he could do anything and she couldn't do a thing to avoid it.

‘An hour by motorbike, maybe. We take things a little more easy in this old girl. It'll take at least twice that.'

‘Fine. I'll stand for two hours, then.'

Or she could just leave him here and send help back. But the image of Trav, lost and in need of help while someone drove off and left him injured and alone, flitted through her mind.

If someone had just been brave...

‘I don't know you,' she wavered.

‘Look, I get it. A woman travelling alone, big scary biker. You're smart to be cautious but the reality is help might not be able to get to me today so if you leave me here I could be here all night. Freezing my ass off.'

She fumbled for her phone.

His shaggy head shook slightly. ‘If we had signal don't you think I'd have used it?'

Sure enough, her phone had diminished to
SOS only.
And as bad as that motorbike looked, it wasn't exactly an emergency.

‘Just until we get signal, then?' he pressed, clearly annoyed at having to beg. ‘Come on, please?'

How far could that be? They were mostly through the desert now, coming out on the western side of Australia. Where towns and people and telecommunications surely had to exist.

‘Have you got some ID?'

He blinked at her and then reached back into his jeans for his wallet.

‘No. Not a licence. That could be fake. Got any photos of you?'

He moved slowly, burdened by his incredulity, but pulled his phone out and flicked through a few screens. Then he pressed it up against Eve's window glass.

A serious face looked back at her. Well groomed and in a business shirt. Pretty respectable, really. Almost cute.

Pffff.
‘That's not you.'

‘Yeah, it is.'

She peered at him again. ‘No, it's not.'

It might have been a stock photo off the Internet for all she knew. The sort of search result she used to get when she googled ‘corporate guy' for some design job.

‘Oh, for pity's sake...'

He flicked through a few more and found another one, this time more bearded. But nothing like the hairy beast in front of her. Her hesitation obviously spoke volumes so he pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, simultaneously revealing grey eyes and slightly taming his rusty blond hair.

Huh. Okay, maybe it was him.

‘Licence?'

A breathed bad word clearly tangled in the long hairs of his moustache but he complied— eventually—and slapped that against the window, too.

Marshall Sullivan
.

She held up her phone and took a photo of him through the glass, with his licence in the shot.

‘What's that for?'

‘Insurance.'

‘I just need a lift. That's it. I have no interest in you beyond that.'

‘Easy for you to say.'

Her thumbs got busy texting it to both her closest friend and her father in Melbourne. Just to cover bases. Hard to know if the photo would make them more or less confident in this dusty odyssey she was on, but she had to send it to someone.

The grey eyes she could now see rolled. ‘We have no signal.'

‘The moment we do it will go.'

She hit Send and let the phone slip back down into its little spot on her dash console.

‘You have some pretty serious trust issues, lady, you know that?'

‘And this is potentially the oldest con in the book. Broken-down vehicle on remote outback road.' She glanced at his helmet and the marks that could be emu claws. ‘I'll admit your story has some pretty convincing details—'

‘Because it's the truth.'

‘—but I'm travelling alone and I'm not going to take any chances. And I'm not letting you in here with me, sorry.' The cab was just too small and risky. ‘You'll have to ride in the back.'

‘What about all the biker germs I'm going to get all over your stuff?' he grumbled.

‘You want a lift or not?'

Those steady eyes glared out at her. ‘Yeah. I do.'

And then, as though he couldn't help himself, he grudgingly rattled off a thankyou.

Okay, so it had to be safer to let him loose in the back than have him squished here in the front with her. Her mind whizzed through all the things he might get up to back there but none of them struck her as bad as what he could do up front if he wasn't really who he said he was.

Or even if he was.

Biker boy and his helmet limped back towards the belongings piled on the side of the road next to his disabled bike. Leather jacket, pair of satchels, a box of mystery equipment.

She ground the gears starting the Bedford back up, but rolled up behind him and, as soon as his arms were otherwise occupied with his own stuff, she unlocked the bus and mouthed through the glass of her window. ‘Back doors.'

Sullivan limped to the back of the Bedford, lurched it as he climbed in and then slammed himself in there with all her worldly possessions.

Two hours...

‘Come on, old chook,' she murmured to the decades-old bus. ‘Let's push it a bit, eh?'

* * *

Marshall groped around for a light switch but only found a thick fabric curtain. He pulled it back with a swish and light flooded into the darkened interior of the bus. Something extraordinary unfolded in front of him.

He'd seen converted buses before but they were usually pretty daggy. Kind of worn and soulless and vinyl. But this... This was rich, warm and natural; nothing at all like the hostile lady up front.

It was like a little cottage in some forest. All timber and plush rugs in dark colours. Small, but fully appointed with kitchenette and living space, flat-screen TV, fridge and a sofa. Even potted palms. Compact and long but all there, like one of those twenty-square-metre, fold-down and pull-out apartments they sold in flat packs. At the far end—the driving end—a closed door that must lead to the only absent feature of the vehicle, the bed.

And suddenly he got a sense of Little Miss Hostile's reluctance to let him back here. It was like inviting a total stranger right into your bedroom. Smack bang in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

The bus lurched as she tortured it back up to speed and Marshall stumbled down onto the sofa built into the left side of the vehicle. Not as comfortable as his big eight-seater in the home theatre of his city apartment, but infinitely better than the hard gravel he'd been polishing with his butt for the couple of hours since the bird strike.

Stupid freaking emu. It could have killed them both.

It wasn't as if a KTM 1190 was a stealth unit but maybe, at the speed the emu had been going, the air rushing past its ears was just as noisy as an approaching motorbike. And then their fates had collided. Literally.

He sagged down against the sofa back and resisted the inclination to examine his left foot. Sometimes boots were the only things that kept fractured bones together after bike accidents so he wasn't keen to take it off unless he was bleeding to death. In fact, particularly if he was bleeding to death because something told him the hostess-with-the-leastest would not be pleased if he bled out all over her timber floor. But he could at least elevate it. That was generally good for what ailed you. He dragged one of his satchels up onto the sofa, turned and stacked a couple of the bouncy, full pillows down the opposite end and then swung his abused limb up onto it, lying out the full length of the sofa.

‘Oh, yeah...' Half words, half groan. All good.

He loved his bike. He loved the speed. He loved that direct relationship with the country you had when there was no car between you and it. And he loved the freedom from everything he'd found touring that country.

But he really didn't love how fragile he'd turned out to be when something went wrong at high speed.

As stacks went, it had been pretty controlled. Especially considering the fishtail he'd gone into as the mob of emu shot past and around him. But even a controlled slide hurt—him and the bike—and once the adrenaline wore off and the birds disappeared over the dusty horizon, all he'd been left with was the desert silence and the pain.

And no phone signal.

Normally that wouldn't bother him. There really couldn't be enough alone time in this massive country, as far as he was concerned. If you travelled at the right time of year—and that would be the
wrong
time of year for tourists—you could pretty much have most outback roads to yourself. He was free to do whatever he wanted, wear whatever he wanted, be as hairy as he wanted, shower whenever he wanted. Or not. He'd given up caring what people thought of him right about the time he'd stopped caring about people.

Ancient history.

And life was just simpler that way.

The stoic old Bedford finally shifted into top gear and the rattle of its reconditioned engine evened out to a steady hum, vibrating under his skin as steadily as his bike did. He took the rare opportunity to do what he could never do when at the controls: he closed his eyes and let the hum take him.