The Sicilian's Proposition (13 page)

Joanne let out a breath, a shot of guilt running through her veins because she had suspected Dante of killing the man. It had only been a brief moment, but how could she have doubted him? Yet, hadn’t he doubted her too?

It was her hope now that if he came out of the coma, he would remember her.

Carla turned and glared at her, making her feel she shouldn’t be on her territory. Joanne shifted around, uncomfortable in her seat. Leaving wasn’t an option. Giovanni patted her shoulder. “Do not worry about her, Joanne. She has done a lot of damage to this family. The reason we still talk to her is out of respect for her father. He has done no wrong. Papa has been friends with him for years, and there was talk of a merger with his vineyard and ours.”

“Yes, Dante mentioned that. Will it go ahead, do you think?”

“No, Papa has said in light of what has happened it would be better not to.”

A sliver of relief coursed through her veins; at least if Dante recovered, he wouldn’t be involved in a business merger with the woman.

They watched as the priest went to the lectern and announced the mass would be offered for Dante. Joanne couldn’t understand most of it but was comforted to hear Dante’s name mentioned.

Afterward they walked out into the bright sunlight. Carla, sporting sunshades, walked off toward a black limousine without a backward glance. Joanne wondered if she was headed for the hospital.

“I need to see Dante…” Joanne said.

“Yes, I know. I will take care of it. We shall go later. He’s not on his own. Papa is there, he’s been there all night. We can go for a couple of hours to give him a break.”

When they got back to the hotel, Joanne took a shower and changed into a red and white cotton dress, the one she’d worn on the boat to Lipari. Dante had liked it on her, and even though he might not be able to see it, she was wearing it for him.

She phoned her mother and explained the situation with Dante. Her mother sounded concerned, but she said she would get the prayer group at the chapel to pray for him too. There wasn’t a lot else anyone could do.

Giovanni invited her for a light lunch at a local restaurant, and then they made the twenty-minute drive to the hospital, through narrow streets and pavements lined with scooters and cars.

She took a deep breath of composure as they walked into the hospital and neared his cubicle. She heard a flurry of activity, there were doctors and nurses everywhere, and somewhere a machine was bleeping.

“Oh no, Giovanni,” her knees buckled, and she collapsed into his arms.

***

“Stand clear, everyone!” Dante heard a man’s voice say.

Then he felt a huge shock hit him. Was that a thunderbolt of lightning? Something was happening.

“Stand clear again.” It was happening again. “Yes, we’ve got him. He’s in sinus rhythm…”

What did that mean?

A woman’s voice said, “Shall I inform the family?”

“No. Let me speak with them,” the man said.

The light was coming nearer and nearer until the full beam hit him.

“Yes. It’s a good sign he’s moving. Can you see that, he’s moving on his own,” the man said.

“Yes, his eyes are flickering.”

“Nice work, team.”

They were right. He could blink and he could see colors too. A swirl of colors, and now someone’s face was drawing near. Someone wearing glasses. A man in a white coat.

“
Signor
Alphonso. Welcome back.”

His head was sore and his thoughts muggy. Who were these people and why was he here? The room was painted white and was very sparse, and he seemed to be lying on some sort of bed surrounded with tubing and machines. It looked like a clinic or hospital.

The man in the white coat had a long pen in his hand. “Let me take another look in your eyes,
Signor
Alphonso.”

He flinched. The man shined the flashlight in his eyes. Of course, now he understood, when he’d been out of it and seen the light, it was this man looking in his eyes.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a hospital,
Signor
Alphonso.” Turning to the nurse beside him, he said, “Pupil reactions in both eyes are normal.”

“How long have I been here?”

The man cleared his throat. “Just a few days.”

Dante tried to move his head but didn’t have the strength. “But I don’t understand. What happened to me?”

“You don’t remember? You hit your head on your boat and some fishermen rescued you.”

That was odd. He didn’t have a boat. “I don’t understand. I don’t have a boat.”

The man sat beside him. “Let me explain to you. I’m Doctor Pacelli. I’m a brain specialist. Please don’t worry too much at this point,
Signor
Alphonso. It’s normal to have a slight memory loss with a concussion. Do you remember anything at all?”

“Only that I’ve been in London recently.”

The doctor looked at the nurse and nodded, and she wrote something on the chart. “Get some rest,
Signor
Alphonso, we’ll speak more later. Would you like something to eat? If you can manage to eat something, I can remove your intravenous infusions.”

He nodded slowly, his head still throbbing. “I could manage something, I suppose.”

The doctor smiled. “Then later we will run some tests.”

“I need to see my family; they’ll be worried.”

“No problem. Your family has been informed.”

Informed? What must they have thought? One minute he was off to London and the next he was back in Sicily. The thing was, he couldn’t remember what he was doing in London in the first place. He’d been there several times before on business, but he sensed this was for something different.

He heard a commotion by the door and saw his brother Giovanni with a young woman beside him. Perhaps he had a new girlfriend. He didn’t recognize her, though. She didn’t look Italian. She had chestnut brown hair that fell onto her shoulders and wore a red and white dress. That dress reminded him of someone or something, but who or what?

“Oh Dante.” The woman rushed over to his side to take his hand. She knew him?

The doctor and nurse moved away from his bedside. The nurse turned to his brother and said, “I’ll give you just a couple of minutes as he needs to be fed and the doctor wants to carry out some tests.”

Giovanni nodded, but the woman was now sitting beside his bed, shuddering with emotion as tears ran down her cheeks. Why was she so upset?

“It’s nice to see you come back to life,” Giovanni joked. “How are you feeling?” He took a seat at the opposite side of the bed to the woman. “I thought I might have caused this with our fight before you went out on the boat.”

“I don’t remember that, but what I do recall is you’d never deliberately hurt me. My head aches and I feel sleepy. I just don’t understand it.”

The woman was looking at him now, gazing with intent into his eyes. “You don’t recognize me do you, Dante?”

He shook his head as he struggled for an answer. She was beautiful, but she meant nothing to him, and why was she speaking in English?

“I’m a journalist, Joanne Smith. You came over to London and I interviewed you for our magazine.”

He looked at her through lowered lids. Could he trust her if she was a journalist? “I cannot imagine allowing one of your sort to interview me!”

“No, you don’t understand.
Life Today
is not that type of publication. We like to showcase people who have given something back to the community.”

“Oh? And you interviewed me, I take it?”

She nodded. He had no recollection. All he remembered was getting off his private plane and staying at the hotel and…and…Carla! Yes, she had been there, they had met with one another, but he couldn’t remember why.

“I’m sorry, I can’t remember it or you.” He turned his head away and heard Giovanni whisper something to her.

He glanced back to see Giovanni there, standing, ready to leave. The woman had already retreated into the corridor. “Joanne is a lovely lady, Dante. You have nothing to fear.”

He furrowed his brow. “I need to speak with Carla.”

“Then I shall contact her for you, Dante. Maybe it will help your memory return.”

***

Joanne stood outside Dante’s room as huge wracking sobs took over her body. Giovanni rushed to her side and draped his arm around her shoulder. “He’s not himself. Please forgive my brother. I know he doesn’t seem to recognize you right now, but I am sure, given time, his memory will return. Do not give up on him.”

She looked at him through glassy eyes. “It’s just so hard, Giovanni. I would prefer he was angry with me like he was before the accident rather than indifferent to me like this. He doesn’t know me. It’s as if I’m a stranger to him. After all we meant to one another, now it’s just one-sided.”

He hugged her closer to him and whispered in her ear. “Please, I don’t like to see you like this. You’ve had a nasty shock, we both have today.”

Joanne guessed he was referring to when they both turned up at the hospital thinking Dante had died. Not just the fact he didn’t seem to know who she was.

She nodded. “I suppose. My emotions are all over the place.”

“I have work today, but later we shall eat together and return to see my brother,
si
?”

“Yes. I have work to do for my editor, so that suits me fine.” It would keep her mind occupied as she had a deadline to adhere to, and after all, she had promised Polly she would keep working while away.

When they got back to the hotel, an e-mail from Polly informed her the feature article about Dante was ready to go to press and she needed confirmation first that it was appropriate given the present circumstances.

Polly was thinking he might die and to hold off in case that snippet of information needed to be added. She rang the London office and told her to go ahead as he was now fully conscious. Dante couldn’t remember her or the article anyhow, so what did it matter? Before the accident, he had already tarred her with the same brush as the other bloodhound journalists. She was confident the article portrayed him in a positive light, though—she had put her all into that article.

In the afternoon, after eating together, Giovanni dropped her off at the hospital, promising to return after visiting his father. The old man had spent a long time at his son’s bedside, and Giovanni was concerned.

When she arrived in the room, she was amazed to see Dante sitting up in bed picking at a fruit salad. All the intravenous tubing, machines, and other medical equipment were gone. The only evidence of his accident was some cuts and bruising to his right temple. His eyes looked clearer and his skin had a healthy glow, its previous pallor faded away.

He looked up when he saw her approach, his eyes narrowing to slits. He recognized her but not in the manner she wished for. “Hello?” he said in a brusque manner; there was an edge to his voice as if asking a question.

“Hello, Dante. Do you mind if I sit down?”

If things had been right between them, she would have hugged and kissed him and told him how she feared he might have been taken away from her and how her life would never be the same again. But instead, she had to act like who he thought she was and hope one day his memory would return.

“If you wish. But I have no story to tell you as I don’t remember the accident.”

She drew in a breath of composure. “I’m not here to hear your story.”

He raised his brows and looked at her with a piercing gaze that almost floored her. “Then what are you here for?”

“To see how you are.”

“But why would you do that?”

“Because before your accident we were friends.” She was about to add, very good friends, but thought better of it.

“We were? I have no memory of anything like that.”

No doubt he thought she had an ulterior motive and was lying to him.

“Yes, we were friends. We spent a lot of time together.”

He shook his head as if he didn’t believe what she was saying to him. “Why would I do something like that, have a female friend? Carla wouldn’t allow it.”

Dread seeped into every pore in her body. He thought he and Carla were still together somehow. If she explained to him she was now his lover and not Carla, would it make things worse? Had he forgotten he and Carla were finished?

He slowly shook his head. “We were together a long time and then we split up, but she came to see me in London.”

So he remembered the split, but why did he think they were back together?

The best thing might be to play along. “I see.”

“Yes, something else I remembered this morning is before the accident, how we sailed on my boat and spent the night in Lipari.” He closed his eyes as if recalling a very special moment.

She wanted to shout: “It’s not Carla you were with but me!”

She bit her lip and swallowed her disappointment. Tears began to form, and she looked away. She needed to be strong.

Then he looked at her with some compassion in his eyes. “I’m sorry, I do not remember you, though. What did you say your name is?”

“Joanne. Joanne Smith.”

“The name sounds familiar to me. But from where, I don’t know.”

A nurse entered and lifted his chart from the end of the bed and scribbled something on it. She smiled at Joanne and left the room.

“I interviewed you for an article, you came to my apartment in London. I had lunch with you at your hotel. Another time I went to your hotel suite and you played music and we danced on the balcony.”

He smiled. “Yes, that would be true. I like dancing.”

“You told me all about your mamma and papa and how much they loved one another.”

He gazed into her eyes as if for the first time realizing she was telling the truth and nodded.

“Yes that was probably so. So what are you doing in Sicily, Joanne?”

She longed to say, to see you of course! But instead said, “I am here on business and staying at your brother’s hotel. He’s been so kind to me.”

“Yes, Giovanni is a good man. Any friend of his is a friend of mine.”

So he thought she was Giovanni’s friend and not his. Still this was a start. She was about to say something else when the door opened, and Carla breezed in still dressed in black and said something to him in Italian. He smiled at her and she stooped to kiss his cheek. The moment looked so intimate she wanted to retreat from the room. Carla turned, noticing her for the first time, and glared.

“What are you doing here? Are you writing another article about Dante?”

She hoped the woman hadn’t read the exposé article the photographer had written, but then Carla said no more and turned her attention back to Dante, blocking Joanne.

Taking it as her cue to leave, Joanne headed toward the door.

“Good-bye, Joanne!” Dante shouted. So he had noticed her leaving. That was promising.

“
Ciao
, Dante. I’ll be back to see you soon.”

When she got outside, Giovanni was propped up against the car, smoking a cigarette. “I thought you were going in to see your brother?”

He nodded. “I was about to. I wanted to give you enough time with him. Didn’t you want to stay a bit longer?”

“I would have, but Carla has just arrived. He still doesn’t recognize me. He knows I’m a journalist but thinks I am more a friend of yours than his.”

Giovanni took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke. “Well you are my friend now, Joanne. That much is true.” He snuffed out his cigarette with the heel of his shoe and headed toward the hospital door. Turning, he said, “Please wait in the car, it’s open. I won’t be stopping long as Carla is there. I just want to see if my brother needs anything.”

She nodded, and opening the door, sat inside. It worried her that with Ponti out of the way Carla would make a play for Dante. After all, she had shown up at his hotel in London, and she wouldn’t have done that if she weren’t still interested.

***

“I’m going to have to get back to London soon, Giovanni,” Joanne explained a couple of days later. “I’ve taken too much time off from work as it is, and Dante doesn’t seem to even know who I am anymore. He doesn’t trust me now that he realizes I’m a journalist.”

Giovanni nodded with a sorrowful look in his eyes. “Yes, there were so many bad stories written about his lifestyle, it detracted from his charity work. There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you, Joanne. He gets his test results back today.”