Under a Siena Sun (Escape to Tuscany #1) - T.A. Williams Page 0,58

on David’s face. If asked to define it, she would have struggled. It was part friendly, part interested, but also part jealous. Could that be? For a moment their eyes met and she realised she was actually blushing. Turning away hastily, she thanked Armando once again and then shook everybody’s hand before seeing them back into David’s car. As they drove off, she kicked the dust at her feet and snorted.

‘Bugger!’

What was for sure was that David was probably now convinced that she and Tommy were an item and, even worse, there was a very real possibility that Tommy, the journalist, had recognised her reclusive neighbour.

As she stood there she felt a drop of rain on her face, then another and another. As the drops turned into a sudden torrential downpour, accompanied by a clap of thunder that rattled the window panes, she hurried back inside. This dampener on what had been a lovely evening might be welcomed by the plants in her garden, but it rather summed up the way she felt. If she had been responsible – albeit inadvertently – for revealing David’s identity to the media, she knew she would feel awful.

Chapter 17

She got a text from Daniela next morning that completely spoiled her day.

Ciao Lucy. Bad news. Tommy has found out that your neighbour is tennis star David Lorenzo and we’re running a full page spread in tomorrow’s morning edition and online. There’s every chance the news will go viral. I spoke to the editor and tried my hardest to put a stop on it, but he’s adamant. So sorry. Danni.

Lucy was sitting in the staff canteen with a cup of ginseng, taking a quick break in the middle of a long morning working alongside Dr Saeed, who was performing major leg reconstructive surgery. This complicated procedure – made necessary after the owner of the legs had crashed his million dollar supercar into the wall of a mosque – had been performed amid high security, as the patient was a prince from one of the Gulf States. It had been slightly unnerving to have to operate with two large men clad in long white robes standing impassively at the back of the room watching her every move. Still, she had told herself, compared to a black mamba they were small fry.

As soon as she read the text message, she knew she had to act fast – not least as she was due back in theatre in less than ten minutes. She immediately tried to get hold of Tommy, to see if she could persuade him to lay off. She dialled his number several times, but it came as no surprise to her when she heard it just ring and ring. Somehow she felt sure he wasn’t going to answer. She sent him a text, asking him to think twice before revealing the information, but she had little hope of a positive response.

The next thing she knew she had to do was to contact David and warn him that his whereabouts were about to be revealed. As she considered this, she realised that this might result in his packing his bags and leaving in a hurry for an undisclosed location and she might never see him again. Whatever her continuing uncertainty about his marital integrity and her concerns about his obvious wealth, she would be very sorry to lose him from her life. Although she could hardly say she knew him well, the little time they had spent together had already earned him a special place in her heart.

She didn’t have a phone number for him, so she called Armando but, frustratingly, his number also just rang and rang. She thought about sending a text, asking him to ask David to call her, but as she was about to disappear back into the operating theatre any minute, there was probably no point.

As she was still making up her mind about what else she could do, the door opened and Charles came in. Helping himself to an espresso, he came over to her table by the window, through which she noticed that the rain had finally stopped after bucketing down for twelve hours without halt.

‘Hi, Lucy. Mind if I sit down?’

She nodded and waved him to a seat opposite her. ‘Help yourself. I’m due back in theatre in five minutes anyway.’

Although relations between them never strayed beyond workplace matters nowadays, she and he had been managing to co-exist as colleagues without too much friction. As he sat down