Claiming His Pregnant Princess. Annie O'Neil

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       CHAPTER TWO

      HE SAW HER across the piazza. Jamie wondered now, having adjusted to the platinum blond hair, how he hadn’t noticed her instantly. He certainly had when she’d walked into Northern General. How could he not have when he’d entered the clinica?

      Fathomless chocolate-brown eyes straight out of the Italian-nymph guidebook. Slender. The darkest chestnut hair he’d ever seen. Short, but thick enough to lose his hands in when he wanted to put his fingers against the nape of her soft, swan-like neck. Perfect raspberry-red lips. Olive skin. Carrying herself like royalty.

      She was royalty.

      He shook his head again.

      Little wonder he hadn’t recognized her straight off. He hadn’t wanted to.

      A bit of shock.

      A splash of denial.

      Hope, pain, love, despair... All those things and more made up the roiling ball of conflict burning in his heart. Most of all he just wanted to understand why.

      He hitched his trousers onto his hips. She wasn’t the only one who’d lost weight in the past couple of years.

      Stop apportioning blame.

      The closer he got, the more he wondered what the hell he was doing.

      No. That wasn’t true. Ripping off the bandage had become his modus operandi since she’d left. He might as well stick true to his course. Life wasn’t sweet. Might as well get used to it.

      “Mind if I join you?”

      Beatrice started, as if her thoughts had been a thousand miles away. When she’d pulled him into focus he watched as she searched his face for signs of enmity. He couldn’t say he blamed her. After his performance in the supplies room earlier in the day he’d hardly made a good show of the manners his mother had drilled into him.

      “Please...” Beatrice pushed aside a small plate of antipasti and indicated the chair beside her. One from which he could enjoy the stunning lakeside view. One that would seat them side by side, where they wouldn’t have to look into the other’s eyes.

      He sank into the chair, grateful for this reprieve from animosity. Perhaps a few hours apart had been what they’d each needed. Time to process.

      “Is that a spritzer you’re having?” He pointed at the bright orange drink on the table, the glass beaded with condensation as the final rays of sunlight disappeared behind the mountain peaks beyond the lake.

      “No.” She shook her head. “I never liked spritzers. Too...” Her nose crinkled as she sought the right word. “Aftertasty,” she said finally, her lips tipping up into the first suggestion of a smile he’d seen. “Orange soda is my new guilty pleasure. I don’t seem to be able to drink enough of it.”

      He was about to launch into the lecture he gave all his patients—too many fizzy drinks were bad for the bones, bad for the brain, bad for the body—but just seeing the tension release from the corners of her eyes as she lifted the glass, put her lips around the red and white stripes of the straw and drew in a cool draught made him swallow it.

      He hadn’t come here to deliver a lecture. He had questions. Thousands of questions.

      A waiter swooped in, as they all did at this time of day, keen to get as many people as possible their drinks before the early-dining Americans began infiltrating the wide square in advance of the Europeans.

      He and Beatrice both bit back smiles at the waiter’s terse “Is that all for signor?” after he’d settled on a sparkling water.

      “Going back to the clinic?” Beatrice asked.

      “That obvious?”

      “Mmm, ’fraid so.” Beatrice looked out toward the square as she spoke. “It would be a glass of Gavi di Gavi if you were finished, wouldn’t it? If...” She hesitated. “If memory serves me right.”

      He nodded. Surprised she’d remembered such a silly detail. Then again, there wasn’t a single detail he’d forgotten about her. Maybe...

      He rammed his knuckles into his thigh.

      Maybe was for other people. He was all about sure things. And Beatrice wasn’t one of them.

      Jamie scrubbed a hand along his chin, then scraped his chair around on the stone cobbles until he faced her head-on.

      “What are you doing here, Beatrice?”

      “Well, that’s a nice way to—” She stopped herself and lifted a hand so that he would give her a moment to think. Say what she really meant to.

      Despite himself, he smiled. She’d always been that way. A thinker. Just like him. The more they’d learned about each other, the stronger the pull had been. Interns hadn’t been meant to date residents—but try telling that to two people drawn to each other as magnetically as iron and nitrogen. Weighted and weightless. He’d felt both of those things when he’d been with her. Secure in himself as he’d never been before, and so damn happy he would have sworn his feet hadn’t touched the ground after the first time he’d tasted those raspberry-ripe lips of hers.

      “You have read the papers lately, haven’t you?” Beatrice asked eventually.

      “I have a hunch that world peace is a long way off, so I tend to steer clear of them.” Jamie leant forward in his chair, elbows pressed to his knees. “C’mon, Beatrice. Quit throwing questions back at me. Why are you in Torpisi?”

      She shook her head in disbelief. “You are the one person in the world I wish had read the tabloids and you haven’t!” She threw her hands up in the air and gave a small isn’t-the-world-ridiculous? laugh.

      When their eyes met again there was kindness in hers. A tenderness reserved just for him that he might have lived on in a different time and place.

      “I never got married.”

      She took another sip of her soft СКАЧАТЬ