Chapter

Three

Eight years. Alana Vaughn hasn’t seen him in over eight years. He has changed so little. True, the cheeks are a bit fuller, ruddier, too. But his smile—“all melty blue eyes and endless dimples,” as a smitten English nurse once described it—is the same.

“Ah, Alana. Ciao bella . . . Even more beautiful than memory serves!” Dr. Nico Oliva says.

His familiar voice, deep and rich with that perpetually amused timbre, ignites long-forgotten butterflies. “And you, Nico, are even more Italian than I remember.”

Nico shrugs in a can’t-be-helped way, and she’s reminded again why she fell for him in the first place.

His office is predictably minimalist in terms of furnishings and with just a few framed medical degrees and three black-and-white photos of African landscapes, one of which she recognizes from their mission together in Angola. He steps out from behind his desk and kisses her on each cheek, leaving behind a trace of citrus. “You didn’t have to come in person.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” His text was so unexpected, and so welcome.

“Did you have trouble finding my office?”

“Not really.” But she actually did.

Alana has wandered the halls of some of the most formidable hospitals, from Johns Hopkins to the Mayo Clinic, but the Ospedale San Martino is among the most sprawling, seemingly constructed in fits and starts over decades. The signage didn’t help. Alana speaks passable German, having lived in Heidelberg as a teen when her parents were stationed there for a year, but her Italian is almost nonexistent. Navigating the curved hallways and hidden staircases of the labyrinthine hospital to reach Nico’s office in the Department of Infectious Diseases was no easy feat.

Nico studies her unabashedly. “So much catching up to do. Dinner, soon. I insist.” He smiles again. “But you must be anxious to see the patient, no?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Come. I will take you.” He reaches for her arm and interlocks his elbow with hers, the contact familiar, comfortable. Maybe too much so.

The hallway is lit by fluorescent tubes and smells of bleach. It’s crowded with staff and patients, who are lost in conversations, hands as busy as their mouths. No one seems to pay any attention to the sight of two people, one of whom wears a lab coat, walking arm in arm. Alana smiles to herself. Only in Italy.

“Where are you staying?” Nico asks.

“The Grand Hotel Savoia.”

“Ah, by the station.” Nico glances away. “I would’ve loved to have you stay with us, but Isabella . . . and the children . . . there would be no rest for you.”

Of course there’s an Isabella. Alana expected nothing less, but she still slips her arm free of his. “Kids, Nico? As in plural? I had no idea.”

“Yes. Enzo is three now, and Simona just four months. Can you imagine? Me?” He laughs and looks away momentarily. “A boring family man.”

“No. I really can’t.”

Nico finds her gaze again. “And you? Have you . . .”