The Veranchetti Marriage. LYNNE GRAHAM

The hedge and the sky hurtled in a fast blur through the windscreen towards her. Something struck her head and the blackness folded in.

      * * *

      “NICKY!” Kerry surfaced with the scream still in her throat, the cry she had never got to make, except in her own mind. Firm hands pressed her back into the bed and her wild, unbound torrent of curly Titian hair flamed out across the pillow, highlighting the stark pallor of her features. “Nicky?” she croaked fearfully again.

      “Your son is quite safe, Mrs Veranchetti.” The voice was quiet, attached to a calm face beneath a nurse’s cap.

      The breath rattled in her clogged throat. She raised a hand to cover her aching head, and came in contact with the plaster on her temples. “He’s really all right…?”

      The nurse deftly straightened the bed. “He has a few bruises and he did get a fright.”

      “Oh, no!” Tears gritted her eyes in a shocked surge. “I must go to him. Where is he?”

      “You must stay in bed, Mrs Veranchetti.”

      “My name’s Taylor, not Veranchetti,” she countered shakily. “And I want to be with my son.”

      The door opened. A tall, spare man in a white coat entered. “So, you’re back with us again, Mrs Veranchetti,” he pronounced with a jovial smile. “You’ve been unconscious for a few hours. You had a lucky escape.”

      “Mrs Taylor,” the nurse stressed rather drily, making Kerry redden, “wishes to see her son.”

      “Your son’s father is with him,” the doctor announced. “You have nothing to worry about. Everything’s under control.”

      “F*****-father…Alex?” Kerry gasped incredulously. “He’s here?”

      “He arrived two hours ago and your little boy is fine, Mrs…er…Mrs Taylor.” He quirked a brow at the nurse, as if he was humouring some feminist display, and lifted Kerry’s wrist.

      Alex was here. Hell, where was here? She couldn’t be that far from home. How could Alex be here? What time of day was it? Spock would have had a problem beaming up this fast! She sighed. Alex would have been informed immediately of the accident, with his own staff on the scene.

      “Calm down, Mrs Taylor. I’ve told you there’s nothing whatsoever to worry about. We intend to keep you in overnight purely for observation.”

      “I can’t stay in…does that mean Nicky’s ready to go home?”

      “His father said he would take responsibility.”

      Something akin to panic assailed Kerry. Would Alex blame her for the accident? No, how could he do that? It wasn’t her fault that she had been faced with a straying cow. Or her fault his wretched henchmen had been crawling up her bumper! But Alex, here in the same building…her blood ran cold.

      “I think a sedative would be a good idea,” the doctor murmured, as if she had suddenly gone deaf.

      “I don’t want a sedative.” She started to sit up again. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ill.”

      “You’re still in shock, Mrs Taylor.”

      Ignoring him, she wrenched back the covers. Her head was swimming. She ought to be with Nicky. She stilled. Not if Alex was there, too. She wasn’t up to that. After four years, she would sooner face an oncoming train than Alex. Oddly enough, their last meeting had been in a hospital, too, staged hours after Nicky’s birth. Her temples pounded with driven tension. Absently, she righted the bedding again in cowardice.

      “Please lie down.” The nurse’s tone was softly soothing, implying that she was some kind of trying hysteric.

      “You won’t let him in?” She collapsed back heavily again, the fight drained from her.

      “Who?”

      “My ex-husband.” She shut her eyes. She was both embarrassed and wretched. It wasn’t adult. It wasn’t normal to be this afraid of a mere meeting. But, nevertheless, fear was a wild creature within her. Nebulous, instinctive, illogical.

      “If that’s your wish.” The older man met the nurse’s eyes. Neither of them saw the point of telling the patient that her ex-husband had already been in for a considerable length of time while she still lay unconscious.

      Kerry breathed again, although she was still trembling, wrenched by the knowledge of Nicky’s distress and her own absence from his side. A needle pricked her arm and she shuddered in reflex reaction before her lashes slowly dipped.

      “She’s terrified of him,” the nurse said in an avid undertone. “Did you notice that? I wonder what…?”

      “Ours not to reason why, nurse,” he parried drily. “And Mrs Veranchetti is obviously a very emotional woman.”

      The blonde staff nurse continued to study Kerry with overt curiosity. Her narrow-boned and slight body barely made a decent impression on the bed. She looked too youthful to be a divorcee, but the masses of flamboyant and beautiful hair and the delicately pointed face were undeniably stunning. Though Alex Veranchetti was equally worthy of remark, the nurse allowed with a reflective smile.

      She had never met a more staggeringly attractive man. Those eyes, she recalled, that delicious growling accent. But she hadn’t fancied him quite so much when he stood silently staring down at his ex-wife, not a muscle moving on his face, just staring in a set, uncommonly intent yet unemotional fashion, as if she was nothing whatsoever to do with him. Only when he had enquired if a specialist had been called had she noticed his pallor. But while he had consulted with the doctor he had studiously removed his eyes from the bed, and he had not looked back there again.

      It was early evening when Kerry awoke. Light was fading beyond the uncurtained window high up in the wall. Memory came flooding back. Nicky. Alex. She glanced at her watch and found it missing, a patient’s plastic identity tag clasped to her wrist in its place. This time she registered that she was in a private room, and she wondered how she would settle the bill.

      Steven would be worrying about her, too. Her partner in Antiques Fayre was a furniture restorer. He used the workshop at the rear of the showroom, and by now, although time frequently had no meaning for him, he would be wondering where she was. She had promised to call in on the way home. A drone of voices could be heard beyond the door. She resolved to ask for her clothes. She had to get home, find out about Nicky…oh, a dozen things!

      As the door opened she sat up, wincing at the renewed throb behind her temples. A light came on, momentarily blinding her before she froze in astonishment, the colour draining from her cheeks.

      “I see you are awake,” Alex commented, glossing over her incoherent gasp of shock at his appearance. He shut the door, and for several unbearably tense seconds he simply remained at the foot of the bed, studying her.

      Dull-eyed and trembling, she dropped her head. He was etched in her mind’s eyes with the utmost clarity. He looked so damnably beautiful. It wasn’t the usual word to describe the male of the species, but it was particularly relevant to Alex. He had the dark, perfect features of a fallen angel, and the lean, honed-to-sleekness elegance of a graceful leopard. He was unchanged. He hadn’t dropped the remorseless, glittering stare which looked right through her, either.

      She could not help but relive their last meeting. “I have made arrangements for you to return to England with our son,” he had delivered coldly then before leaving her again, impervious to the tears and the agony he must have seen in her face as he destroyed her last hopes of a reconciliation. Her hands clutched together convulsively. Pull yourself together, a little voice warned. He had pulled her apart. She was still a heap of jittery and torn pieces, unlikely ever to achieve wholeness again. To do that, you had to forgive yourself first. You had to like yourself. You had to put the past in its proper place. And Kerry hadn’t managed any of that.

      The gleaming, amber-gold challenge of his gaze imparted one undeniable message. He hadn’t forgotten. She