Italian Doctor, No Strings Attached. Kate Hardy

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      He took out his mobile phone and pulled the local cinema’s details onto the screen. ‘Drama or comedy?’

      Given what she was going to tell him tonight, she could do with some light relief first. ‘Comedy—if that’s OK with you.’

      ‘It’s fine.’ He consulted the screen. ‘It starts at eight. Pick you up at half seven?’

      ‘I’ve got a few things to sort out at home. Can I meet you there at quarter to?’

      He smiled. ‘Sure. I’ll buy the tickets and you buy the popcorn.’

      She smiled back. ‘Deal.’

      Even though the film was one she’d wanted to see and starred one of her favourite actors, Sydney found it hard to concentrate. Firstly because she still hadn’t worked out a gentle way of telling him about the neurofibromatosis, and secondly because they’d finished the popcorn and Marco was holding her hand.

      Just holding her hand.

      How could such a light, gentle contact set all her nerve endings tingling? How could it make her whole body feel liquid with desire? How?

      By the time they got back to her flat, Sydney was almost quivering with need.

      She had to tell him. Now. Before things went any further. It wasn’t fair to let him think there could be any possibility of a future between them, when she knew she had nothing to offer him.

      ‘Marco—’ she began as she opened her front door.

      ‘I know,’ he said softly.

      He knew? What? How could he possibly know? The only people at work who knew about her condition were Ellen and the consultants, and there was no way they would’ve broken her confidence.

      And then she stopped thinking as Marco cupped her face with his hands and brought his mouth down on hers. His kiss was soft, sweet and coaxing; every movement of his lips against hers made the blood feel as if it were fizzing through her veins. All thoughts of telling him were gone—until he untucked her shirt from her jeans and slid his hands underneath the hem, his fingertips moving in tiny circles across her back.

      The second he touched scar tissue, he stopped. Pulled back. Looked at her, his eyes full of questions.

      ‘Sydney?’

      She blew out a breath and pulled away from him, wrapping her arms round herself like a shield. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should’ve told you. I meant to tell you, but … ‘ Her voice faded. How stupid she was to have wanted something she couldn’t have. Hadn’t she learned from the mess of her marriage to Craig? Her husband hadn’t been able to cope with her condition; even though Marco was a doctor, would understand it more, it was still a big ask.

      She closed her eyes, not wanting to see pity on Marco’s face when she told him. And opened them again when he picked her up, carried her into the living room and sat on the sofa, settling her on his lap. ‘Marco?’ she asked, not understanding why he was still there. Shouldn’t he be backing away as fast as he could?

      ‘That feels like scar tissue,’ he said softly. ‘And, no, you don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to. I just wanted to be sure that I hadn’t hurt you.’

      It was the last thing she’d expected to hear, and it took her breath away.

      ‘Sydney?’ His voice was so gentle that it brought tears to her eyes—tears she quickly blinked away. She wasn’t this weak, pathetic, needy creature. She was a strong woman. A damn good doctor. She’d just made the mistake of forgetting who she was for a little while and wanting something normal. ‘No, you didn’t hurt me. But thank you for—’ The words caught in her throat for a moment. ‘For being kind.’

      ‘Kind isn’t quite the way I feel,’ he said.

      ‘I meant to tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. It was unfair of me to agree to date you.’

      ‘Unfair?’ He looked puzzled. ‘How?’

      ‘Because we can’t really see where this thing takes us. I owe it to you to tell the truth—but I’d appreciate it if it didn’t go any further than you.’

      ‘Of course.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Sydney. But if you want to talk, I’m listening.’

      She took a deep breath. ‘I have neurofibromatosis type two. NF2 for short.’

      He stroked her face. ‘I’m an emergency specialist. I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about NF2. What is it?’

      ‘It’s a genetic problem with chromosome 22,’ she explained. ‘It causes benign tumours to grow on nerve cells and the skin. And although it does run in families, it can also just happen out of nowhere, a mutation in the genes that takes years to show up.’

      ‘One of your parents has it?’ he guessed.

      She shook her head. ‘Neither of them are carriers, and my brother and sister had the tests—they’re both fine. It’s just me.’ And how she’d raged about the unfairness of it, when she’d learned about her condition. One in forty thousand people had it. Why her? What had she done to deserve it?

      Then the practical side of her had taken over, kicking out the pointless self-pity. Whining about it wasn’t going to change anything. The best thing she could do was make herself informed, to understand what the condition was and how she could work round it to live as normal a life as possible.

      ‘That’s pretty tough on you,’ he said.

      ‘I’m fine,’ she said, knowing it wasn’t strictly true.

      ‘So how did you find out?’

      ‘I had back pain and nothing helped. Eventually I had an MRI scan to see if there were any lesions, and that’s when they discovered the tumours pressing on my spine.’ One of them had been the size of a grapefruit; and the operation had meant that she’d had to take some of her finals papers from her hospital bed. Not that she was going to tell Marco about that; she didn’t want his pity.

      ‘Which is why I felt the scar tissue on your back just now,’ he said softly.

      ‘Yes. The surgeon operated to remove the tumours, and they haven’t grown back yet.’ She dug her nails into her palm, reminding herself not to get emotional about it. OK, so the condition was incurable, but it wasn’t terminal. It could be much, much worse; it just made her life a bit awkward, from time to time.

      And it had blown her marriage apart.

      ‘Are the tumours likely to grow back or cause you problems again?’

      ‘Maybe; maybe not. I get a check-up every year to see how things are. I have a small schwannoma—what they used to call an acoustic neuroma—on both vestibular nerves, but the schwannomas are growing really slowly and they’re not causing me tinnitus or anything, so my specialist says we’ll keep on with a conservative approach.’ She shrugged. ‘So I’m fine.’

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