child with an active, enquiring mind, but too many people had muttered ‘hyperactive’ to Debbie, and the young single mother now feared a diagnosis of ADD—the attention deficit disorder—which was the popular label for behavioural problems used among parents and school teachers at the moment.
Debbie was ambivalent about the drugs used to treat the disorder—some days determined to keep Josie off medication, while on others wanting the relief she imagined they might bring. Paige had come down on the side of a drug-free life for the child and pressed this point of view whenever possible, although at times she wondered how she would feel in a similar situation.
‘I’ve arranged for a paediatrician to see Josie next month,’ she said. ‘It’s a Dr Kerr, and he’s agreed to meet you here so she’s in familiar territory. But as I’ve said before, Deb, there’s no guarantee he’ll come up with anything. It’s very difficult to pin a label on so young a child.’
Debbie looked at her without answering, then she shrugged and grinned.
‘Seems a little unfair, doesn’t it? You get a prince and I get a paediatrician!’
‘I can’t imagine he’s really a prince,’ Paige retorted. ‘And, even if he is, what would I want with one?’
‘Well, he’s decorative for a start,’ Debbie pointed out. ‘And he oozes that magnetic kind of sex appeal only some men have, in case you’re too old to remember what sex appeal is.’
Paige chuckled in spite of the worry Debbie’s conversation had regenerated.
‘Am I walking around looking jaded and depressed? Or like someone gnawing at her bones with frustration?’ she said. ‘Mabel’s just told me I need a man and now you’re here offering me good-looking sex.’
‘Oh, he’s beyond good-looking,’ Debbie argued, taking the top from her daughter before it could be hurled across the room. She leaned forward and demonstrated its action once more, then smiled as she watched the little figure squat down on the floor and try again.
Paige watched the interaction of mother and child, saw Debbie’s smile, so full of love for this difficult little mortal she’d conceived by accident, and felt the tug of envious longing which told her Mabel was right.
But the prince, if prince he was and her assumptions were correct, had come to reclaim his wife, not carry a tired community nurse off into some fabled distance on his shining white charger.
She sighed.
‘Sighing’s usually my line, not yours,’ Debbie told her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘A bit tired,’ Paige explained, not untruthfully. The problem of what to do with her uninvited house guest had been keeping her awake at night for the last month.
‘That’s why you need a change—a holiday,’ Debbie reminded her. ‘You’ve been working for what…four years without a break. You deserve a bit of time to yourself.’
To do what? Paige thought, but she didn’t say it. She did need a break, needed to get right away somewhere so she wouldn’t be tempted to step in if things went wrong at the service, answer calls at night which someone else should take.
But with Lucia?
She sighed again.
‘OK, OK, I get the message,’ Debbie said. ‘I won’t keep you. I brought back the library toys and Sue chose some new ones for Josie, so all I need is a time for Dr Kerr’s appointment and I’m out of here.’ She grinned cheekily at Paige. ‘Leaving you with only one patient to go before the prince!’
‘Lucky me! Who is it? Do you know?’
‘I think it’s Mrs Epstein. I noticed her in the corner, huddling into that black wool coat of hers and trying to look invisible.’
‘Poor thing. She’s not at all well, and hasn’t had a proper medical check since Sally Carruthers left town. She refuses to see a male doctor. I guess eventually someone will have to drive her down to Tamworth to see one of the women in practice down there. Would you send her in, to save me going to the door? Just lift her file out of the slot and give it to her to bring in.’
Paige gave Josie a hug and said goodbye to Debbie, then sat down at her desk and buried her head in her hands. One more patient then the prince to confront. He had to have come about Lucia, so what did she tell him? She could hardly reveal Lucia’s presence in the house without at least consulting her—explaining about the phone call and why she’d made it.
And she couldn’t leave this room to go upstairs and talk to Lucia without being seen by her two unwelcome visitors.
Unless…
She glanced towards the windows, stood up and walked across to open the one closer to her desk. To poke her head out and look up. As a child she’d climbed both up and down the Virginia creeper innumerable times, but would it hold an adult’s weight?
And was she seriously considering climbing up there?
‘Seeking an escape route?’
The deep voice made her spin around, and she knew from the flash of heat in her cheeks that her stupid pale skin was flushing guiltily.
‘The room was warm,’ she sputtered, compounding her stupidity with the lie. She took control. ‘Anyway, I’ve another patient to see before you.’
‘Your patient has departed,’ he responded coolly.
‘Or been intimidated into leaving by your presence,’ Paige retorted, curbing an urge to add a scorching remark about princely arrogance. ‘What’s happened to your sidekick?’
‘Sidekick?’ The man looked bemused.
‘Mr Benelli. The guy who bowed you in.’
‘Ah, you took offence at his behaviour. I can understand that reaction, but to check him, tell him this ceremony was not what I wanted or desired, would have been to humiliate him in front of your patients.’
Paige stared at him, though why his compassion for a fellow man should startle her she didn’t know. Unless she’d assumed princes were above such things! Which reminded her—
‘Are you really a prince?’
He shrugged, moved further into the room and smiled.
Bad move, that—making him smile. The rearrangement of his features made him even more devastatingly attractive—and, coming closer, it had brought his eyes into view. Not black but darkest blue, almost navy.
‘I am Francesco Alberici. The title “prince” is a hangover from bygone days—something I do not use myself. Benelli is an official at our consulate in Sydney. It is he who sees honour in a useless appellation, not myself.’
He’d held out his hand as he’d said his name, and politeness had decreed she take it. But to let it rest in his as he finished speaking? Another mistake.
She took control, stuck her still-warm but nonetheless offending hand into the pocket of her blazer and looked—confidently, she hoped—into his eyes.
‘So, now we’ve cleared up the prince business, how can I help you?’
As if I don’t know, an inner voice quailed, and she regretted not escaping through the window, even if she hadn’t climbed the creeper.
‘You phoned me—left a message.’
Marco watched the colour fluctuate beneath her cheeks—no doubt she was considering what lie to tell him—and wondered about her background. With that pale skin, cornsilk-coloured hair falling in a straight drop to chin level and the smatter of freckles across her nose, she certainly didn’t fit his image of a bronzed Australian. But, then, this New England city in the northern tableland area of New South Wales had the feel of an English market town, in spite of the lush sheep country which surrounded it.
‘You’re Marco?’
Her