“Do you not understand that, for all my fine, upstanding talk, I brought you to this secluded corner of my home, knowing full well what the probable outcome would be?”

“No,” she said baldly. “Quite frankly, I didn’t think you were the least bit interested in…”

She ground to a halt, unsure how to phrase her response. If doing it tonight sounded impossibly gauche, making love didn’t exactly fit the occasion, either. The way she saw it, you couldn’t make love, if you weren’t in love—and he’d made it abundantly clear that love didn’t enter the picture.

“Yes?” He regarded her quizzically. “Not the least bit interested in what?”

She coughed to hide her embarrassment. “That,” she said.

He took her brandy glass and placed it alongside his own on the edge of the hearth. “Then let me show you how wrong you were, la mia innamorata. Because that is exactly what I have in mind.”

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The Italian Doctor’s Mistress
Catherine Spencer

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

DANIELLE arrived at L’Ospedale di Karina Rossi just after five in the afternoon, and was taken immediately to the room where her father lay. Early May sunlight, bright and crisp as lemons, filtered through the slats of the window blinds and settled on the inert figure in the bed.

The nurse touched her elbow gently. “Si metta a sedere, signorina. Sit, please!”

“Thank you.” Without taking her eyes off her father, Danielle sank into the upholstered chair beside the bed. Leather, she noted absently, and comfortable enough to sleep in, which made sense. Visitors to this floor of the hospital didn’t drop in briefly with a cheerful card, a bouquet of flowers, or a basket of fruit. They came to keep vigil, all day and all night, if necessary.

“When will he wake up?” she asked.

The nurse, a pretty woman in her forties, raised her shoulders in wordless reply. Meaning what, Danielle wondered. That she didn’t know the answer? That she didn’t understand the question?

“I don’t speak much Italian,” Danielle told her. “Non parlo Italiano. Is there someone here who speaks English?”

The nurse nodded, pressed a comforting hand on Danielle’s shoulder, and glided out of the room. Left alone, Danielle became acutely aware of the sounds issuing from the apparatus to which her father was connected. The gentle, even sighs of the ventilator, punctuated by rhythmic blips and beeps from the computer screen above the bed tracking his heart and brain functions. But from the man himself, nothing.

“Father?” she whispered.

She might as well have been talking to the wall. Not by so much as the faintest flicker of an eyelid did he acknowledge her presence. His arms, incongruously tanned against the pristine white sheet, lay at his sides, pierced by intravenous catheters. But his face was the color of parchment, the jut of his nose and thrust of his jaw seeming more pronounced somehow, as though the well-toned flesh of which he was so proud had collapsed on itself and left his skin draped over his bones. If it hadn’t been for the steady rise and fall of his chest, he could have been dead.

“Signorina Blake?” Another nurse, older than the first, entered the room on soundless rubber soles. “Is there something you require?”

“The doctor who operated on my father,” Danielle said. “I need to speak to him.”

“Dr. Rossi is not in the hospital today.”

“Why not? I was told my father’s injuries are serious. Critical, in fact.”

“Si. But it is Dr. Rossi’s day to be at home.”

“I don’t care what day it is!” Danielle said, fatigue and guilt lending a sharp edge to her voice. News of her father’s accident had been waiting for her when she arrived home from vacation. Shocked to realize his accident had occurred almost a week earlier, she’d wasted no time flying to Italy to be with him. Now that she was here, she wanted answers. “Call him. Tell him I wish to speak to him.”

“I will page his resident.”

“I don’t want to speak to his resident. I want to speak to the man who performed the surgery. I’m not interested in a second-hand account from his assistant.”

“Dr. Brunelli is well qualified to address your concerns, signorina,” the nurse insisted. “We do not disturb Dr. Rossi when he is at home, except in cases of extreme emergency.”

The reverence in her tone suggested the almighty Dr. Rossi lay on a par with God. Curbing her irritation, Danielle said, “And my father doesn’t fit into that category?”

“Signor Blake is now stable, signorina, and closely monitored at all times,” the nurse replied, the hint of censure in her voice suggesting that a sincerely concerned daughter wouldn’t have waited this length of time before putting in an appearance at her father’s bedside. “Should there be any change in his condition, Dr. Rossi will be informed and can be here at a moment’s notice.” Her dark eyes softened in sympathy. “You are anxious, which is, of course, to be expected, but rest assured your father could not be in better hands. He is fortunate, if indeed such a word can be applied to his situation, that he was brought here, to such an excellent facility.”

Danielle had to admit there was some merit to the nurse’s claim. When she’d heard that her father had been taken to a small private hospital, in a small town on the northeast shore of Lake Como, her immediate impulse had been to have him transferred to a larger facility, in Milan, or even Rome; one better equipped and better staffed to deal with serious head injuries. But he was in no condition to be moved, she’d been informed, and certainly everything she’d so far seen of the Karina Rossi Hospital spoke state-of-the-art, from the sleek reception area to this room in the Intensive Care Unit.

“Is he related, this Dr. Rossi?” she asked the nurse. “To the woman the hospital’s named after, I mean?”

“Si,” the nurse replied. “She was his wife. They were a very devoted couple. Sfortunamente, Signora Rossi died some years ago.”

“What a lovely way to remember her.”

“She was a very lovely woman. Very warm, very…” She searched for the word. “Comprensiva…very kind.”

“And her husband?”

“Oh!” Her face illuminated with admiration, the nurse flung out her hands. “So skilled! So dedicated and compassionate! He could work anywhere. Would be welcomed with arms spread wide, in any hospital, anywhere in the world. He is the best!”

Somewhat reassured, Danielle glanced again at her father and said, “It helps to know that.”

Tipping her head to one side, the nurse observed her closely. “You are tired and need rest, signorina. Do you have a place to stay?”

“I thought I’d stay here—in case he wakes.”

“He is in a deep coma, my dear. It is unlikely that…” She shrugged and, obviously thinking better of what she’d been about to add, said simply, “You could be here many days, Signorina Blake. A comfortable bed at night, an occasional change of scene, a good meal—they will help you cope with what lies ahead.”

“Is my father going to die?”

The nurse backed away, perturbed at having such a question fired at her out of the blue. “As long as we have life, we continue to hope,” she said, choosing her words with the care of someone crossing a minefield. “But it is not my place to predict…when you meet with Dr. Rossi, you must ask him.”

“I intend to do just that,” Danielle told her. “And until I receive his answer, I will remain here.”

“As you wish. I’m sure, if your father senses your presence, it will comfort him to know that you’re at his side. I’ll have pillows and a blanket sent in, and a tray of something from the cafeteria.”

“I’m not hungry, but I could use a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll see to it at once.”

The hours crawled by, interrupted only by brief, efficient visits from the night nurse. Some time between three and four in the morning, Danielle fell into an uneasy sleep, and awoke at eight, just as the first light of day poked into the room. At her father’s bedside, another nurse, one she hadn’t seen before, adjusted one of the IV drips and smoothed the sheet over his chest.

“He remains unchanged, signorina,” she murmured, “but I’ll be here for a while longer, if you’d like to take a break. There’s a visitors’ lounge at the end of the hall. You’ll find a light breakfast set out there, and facilities where you can freshen up.”

Danielle supposed she needed both. Her eyes felt gritty, her mouth dry as sand. She hadn’t run a comb through her hair in more than twenty-four hours and couldn’t remember the last time she’d brushed her teeth. As for eating, the last meal had been the rubber chicken served on the aircraft, somewhere over the Atlantic, and she’d barely touched it.

“I won’t be gone long,” she said, retrieving her carry-on travel bag from the corner where she’d stashed her luggage the day before. “I want to be here when Dr. Rossi makes his rounds.”

But she hadn’t anticipated that the “facilities” the nurse mentioned would include changing rooms equipped with hair dryers, and showers stocked with towels, shampoo, soap, and body lotion. She hadn’t expected the platter of fresh fruit set out on a linen tablecloth in the lounge, or the basket of warm croissants and thermos of strong, aromatic Italian coffee.

She found them all too hard to resist, so when her planned fifteen-minute break stretched to an hour, and she returned to her father’s room to discover that his doctor had been and gone, she knew she had no one but herself to blame.

Still, she was disappointed, and seeing it, the nurse said, “Dr. Rossi is aware you have arrived and wish to speak to him, Signorina Blake. He asks that you meet him in his office at four o’clock.”

Seven more hours of pacing, and imagining the worst? It was too much! “I had hoped see him much sooner.”

“It cannot be helped,” the nurse said. “A tour bus went off the road in the mountain pass just north of here, with many serious injuries to the passengers. We expect the casualties to be arriving within the hour. Dr. Rossi will be supervising his team in surgery most of the day.”

There it was again, the awestruck tone; the unspoken implication that, without the revered Dr. Rossi in charge, his staff would be helpless to save lives. Frustrated, Danielle bit back the uncharitable retort begging to be aired.

As if reading her thoughts, the nurse went on, “When your father was brought here, late in the day well over a week ago, Dr. Rossi concentrated all his energy and skill on attending to him, without regard for the inconvenience to himself or others. Regardless of the day or hour, it is always his way to be available for those most in need of his help.”

The gentle reproof struck home. She was being unreasonable, unfair, Danielle acknowledged privately. Of course the man had other patients; of course he had to prioritize. And yet, to see her father lying there, stripped of dignity, of that indomitable will which was so much a part of him, devastated her.

Not that he’d thank her for her concern. They had never been close. He wasn’t the kind to lavish warmth and affection on anyone but himself. But her mother had died when she was eleven, and he was the only family Danielle had left. After everything else she’d lost in the last year, the thought of losing him also was more than she could bear.

Turning away from the bed, she went to stand at the window. A woman sat on a bench in the courtyard below, talking to a man in a wheelchair. Something she said made him laugh. He reached for her hand. Raised it to his lips and kissed it. The obvious affection between them had Danielle choking back a sob. To be needed like that…to be loved…!

The nurse must have heard. She joined her at the window, her eyes full of concern. “If you feel up to it, there’s a footpath leading from the hospital grounds to the main part of town,” she suggested kindly. “You’ll find a map in the reception area, and a sign posted outside the front entrance, showing the way. It’s only about a twenty-minute walk, and it might do you some good to get out for a few hours. There’s nothing you can do here, except wait.”

It seemed to Danielle that she’d been waiting a lifetime already. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. Anything was better than watching the big hand on the wall clock jerk from second to second, from minute to minute. Anything was better than listening to the apprehensive thud of her own heart racing ahead of the unhurried blip and beep of the computer measuring her father’s.

Already the first ambulances were racing up to the emergency doors on the left as she came out of the building. And more would soon follow. The wail of their sirens growing closer echoed clearly in the still morning air.

Turning to the right, she set off in the opposite direction, walking briskly toward the little town of Galanio. The footpath wove from the manicured hospital grounds through a sloping meadow where tiny blue flowers grew in the grass, and ended at a bridge which spanned a bubbling stream of water so clear that it must have tumbled straight down the mountain from the snow fields. Beyond the bridge, a paved lane led directly to the center of town.

Galanio huddled between the Alps and the shore of Lake Como in a fairy-tale maze of steep, cobbled streets that opened into unexpected little piazzas and quiet parks. Splashing fountains, chic boutiques, and elegant restaurants lined the broad promenade bordering the waterfront. Magnificent old villas, their terraced gardens overflowing with flowering camellias and other spring blossoms, perched on the hillside, and spread some distance along the shores of the lake beyond the town itself.

Under any other circumstances, Danielle would have found the place enchanting. It was a town for lovers, for romance; a place she and Tom might have come for their honeymoon, if he hadn’t decided at the last minute that he’d rather marry her best friend. Instead, she was here alone, waiting for her father to open his eyes, and terribly afraid his doctor would tell her it was never going to happen.

What then? She knew what her father would say. Pull the damned plug, Danielle! Don’t let me lie here a vegetable.

But to authorize this Dr. Rossi to disconnect the machines that kept Alan Blake alive? In effect, to sign his death warrant? How could she do that?

Somehow the morning passed. At noon she stopped for lunch at a sidewalk café on the promenade. Then, hoping that a miracle had occurred during her absence, she made her way back to the hospital and her father.

Nothing had changed except for the angle of the sun creeping across the floor and striping the pale blue cover on his bed with bars of golden light. Dropping into the easy chair, she resumed her vigil until, at long last, four o’clock arrived.

She found the doctor’s suite of offices at the end of a wing on the main floor, with his name, Carlo Rossi, engraved on a small brass plaque on the door.

“Signorina Blake?” The middle-aged woman in the small outer office smiled pleasantly. “Dr. Rossi is ready to see you.”

Danielle had thought she was ready, too. From the various awed references to him, and his seniority in the hospital chain of command, she’d expected him to be an older man. Kindly, gray-haired, distinguished, and slightly built—in other words similar in appearance to the impeccably tailored maître d’ of the five-star Italian restaurant she frequented at home in Seattle.

In fact, the man rising to greet her from behind a paper-strewn desk was none of those things. In his late thirties, he possessed the fit athletic build of a cross-country skier, although the shadows beneath his eyes suggested he relied on too much strong coffee and too little sleep to get him through his long hospital shifts. But even in hospital greens, with exhaustion painting his features and his dark hair falling in disarray over his forehead, he was still the most strikingly attractive man Danielle had ever seen.

“Signorina Blake, my apologies for not being here to meet you when you first arrived.”

He had a beautiful voice, deep and hypnotically soothing with its lilting Italian intonation. And beautiful hands. His long fingers closed around hers in a grip at once gentle and sure. Slightly dazed, Danielle allowed him to lead her to one of two club chairs situated at the other end of the room, next to a wall of windows looking out on a reflecting pool surrounded by rhododendrons already in full bloom.

“Thank you for seeing me now,” she said stiffly, horrified that, with her father so dreadfully ill, she could find herself drawn to this magnetic stranger. “I understand you’ve been busy.”

“Always, I’m afraid.” He took a seat in the other chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “No sooner is one emergency taken care of than another arises. But you are not here to listen to me complain.” His eyes, a deep velvety gray trimmed with indecently long lashes, surveyed her soberly. As for his mouth…! In terms of sheer sex appeal, nothing the latest Hollywood idol could offer came even close to it. “You wish to discuss your father’s condition, yes?”

She nodded, the gravity in his voice leaving her almost hyperventilating.

“You are familiar, of course, with what happened to him? How he came to be brought here?”

“No,” she said. “All I was told was that he’d had an accident and was badly hurt.”

“He was in the mountains, snow-boarding in an out-of-bounds area, and fell down a sheer rock face.”

Snow-boarding? She shook her head, stunned. How like her father to take up a sport better suited to someone a third his age, and to break the rules when he did so. But then, Alan Blake had always believed he was a law unto himself. “I had no idea he was in Italy, let alone that he had taken up snow-boarding.”

If Carlo Rossi was surprised that she knew so little of her father’s activities, he didn’t let it show. “I’m afraid he sustained a very serious head injury,” he said.

“How serious?”

“He fractured his skull.”

“Wasn’t he wearing a safety helmet?”

“I suspect not, although given the severity of his fall, I doubt a helmet would have helped very much. All skull fractures are cause for concern, signorina, but an occipital fracture such as your father suffered, is particularly critical.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of its location.” He reached for the pad of paper on the occasional table next to him, took a pen from the breast pocket of his tunic, and drew his chair closer to hers. “The skull is made up of several bones. The largest is the parietal bone here.” He sketched rapidly and with the fluid skill of one very familiar with his subject. “The occipital bone sits immediately below it, at the base of the skull. Fractures in this vulnerable area occur as the result of what we term a ‘high energy blunt trauma,’ and are divided into three types. The first two are classified as stable. A Type 111 fracture, however, is the most severe and potentially very unstable.”

“And that’s the kind my father has?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Is that why he’s unconscious.”

“Yes. With such an injury, coma is the rule rather than the exception.” He paused and spared her a very direct look. “That’s not to say he won’t eventually come out of it…”

“I hear a ‘but,’ Dr. Rossi,” she said coolly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He flexed his fingers and expelled a long breath. Regret intensified the fatigue in his eyes, and she knew in that moment that she had yet to hear the worst. “Because of the proximity of cranial nerves,” he said, “there’s a high incidence of associated injuries.”

With every carefully chosen word, he increased her level of fear. But she’d had a lifetime’s practice at keeping her emotions in check, and it stood her in good stead now. Projecting a calm she was far from feeling, she asked, “What kind of injuries?”

“Impaired swallowing, paralysis of the vocal cords with subsequent phonation difficulties. Hemiplegia, or even quadriplegia. In layman’s terms, Signorina Blake, if your father recovers consciousness, he may be paralyzed in much the same way that he would had he suffered a massive stroke. The paralysis could extend down one, or both sides of his body.”

Alan Blake, the man who prided himself on running a marathon at age fifty-five, paralyzed? Unable to dominate the conversation at his frequent, ultrasophisticated dinner parties? Incapable of controlling his bodily functions?

Horrified by the implications, and filled with pity for the father who’d have spared little for her had their situations been reversed, Danielle spoke without thought for how her words might be interpreted. “You should have let him die! He’d be better off!”

“By whose assessment, signorina?” Carlo Rossi asked, his gray eyes suddenly as glacial as his voice. “Yours, or his?”

He thought she was cold and unfeeling, that she spoke out of selfishness. But he didn’t know her father, and trying to explain Alan Blake to a stranger would merely sound as if she was making excuses for herself. “Let me put it this way, Dr. Rossi,” she said. “Would you want to be kept alive under such conditions, trapped in a body that refused to obey you?”

“My personal preferences are irrelevant. I am committed to saving lives, not ending them. In your father’s case, I am painting a very dark picture in order to prepare you for the worst possible outcome. But there remains the slender chance that he will make a full recovery.”

“How long before you’ll know?”

Carlo Rossi raised his beautiful hands, palms up. “That I cannot say.”

“Hazard a guess, Doctor. Another week? A month?”

“I don’t second-guess God. I deal only with what I know. He could open his eyes today, tomorrow, next week or …”

“Or never?”

“Or never.” He watched her in silence a moment, then said with thinly veiled contempt, “I recognize your impatience to be done with this, Signorina Blake. You cannot put your own life on hold indefinitely. You have obligations other than those of a daughter to her father—to a husband and children, perhaps.”

“No. I’m not married.”

He curled his lip in disgust. “A lover, then? A career?”

“A career, certainly. I own a travel agency.”

“Which clearly matters more to you than your father. Why else would you wait so long to come to his bedside?”

She sat up poker-straight in the chair, and returned his glance unflinchingly. “It just so happens, Dr. Rossi, that I was on a cruise to Antarctica when this tragedy struck my father.”

“Cruise ships do not have telephones, these days? No electronic means of keeping in touch with the rest of the world?”

“Of course they do, but in this instance your sarcasm is misplaced, Doctor,” she said sharply. “Had your hospital left a message with my office staff, they would have been in touch immediately, and I’d have been here as soon as it was humanly possible. But the message was left on my home answering machine, and since I live alone…” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

“We had no other recourse,” he replied. “That was the only telephone number listed on your father’s passport, in the event the next of kin needed to be contacted.”

He steepled his fingers and observed her silently for a second or two. Eventually, he said, “Signorina, I regret that we have—”

Before he could continue, the door burst open and a young girl, a beautiful child with long dark braids hanging down her back, came flying into the room. “Papà!” she cried. Then, seeing he was not alone, she skidded to a stop and clapped a hand to her mouth. “Mi scusi! La disturbo, Papà?”

“Yes,” he said severely in English. “And you know better than to come in here without knocking first.”

“Ma Beatrice non e—”

“Remember your manners, Anita. My visitor does not speak Italian.” He spared Danielle a brief glance. “I am right, yes? You do not?”

“A very little only, but don’t worry about that.” Danielle collected her purse and stood up. “We’re pretty much finished anyway, aren’t we?”

“No, signora, we are not quite done,” he said evenly. “Please allow me a moment to attend to the reason for this interruption, then you and I will resume our discussion.”

Obediently she sat down again, and he turned to the child. “So, Anita, explain yourself.”

His words might have been forbidding, but the smile that accompanied them took away their sting, and the girl knew it. Big brown eyes dancing with excitement, she said, “I did not knock, Papà, because Beatrice has gone home already, so I thought you also had finished working for today. I wanted to tell you that Bianca has had her babies. She has four, Papà! I found them when I came home from school.”

“That is certainly earth-shaking news.” Laughing, he pulled the child into the curve of his arm and turned to Danielle. “In case you’re wondering, Bianca is our cat, and as I’m sure you’ve gathered, this is my daughter, Anita.”

Despite her annoyance with the father, Danielle smiled warmly at his lovely daughter. “Hello, Anita.”

Tucking her hands against the navy pleated skirt of her school uniform, the girl dipped her head and replied, “How do you do? I am pleased to meet you.”

“Very good,” her father said. “At this rate, your English will soon be better than mine.”

“Si?” She gazed at him adoringly and wound her arms around his neck. “How much better?”

He touched the tip of her nose with his forefinger. “Not so much that I let you forget the rules. I hope you didn’t come here by yourself today?”

“No, Papà.” She shook her head so exuberantly that her braids swung back and forth like long, shining ropes. “Calandria walked with me. She is waiting downstairs. We are going to the market to buy fish for Bianca. Calandria says we must take extra care of her now that she is a mother.”

“Calandria is quite right.” He gave her little bottom a pat. “Don’t keep her waiting. Say goodbye to Signorina Blake, and be off.”

She peeped at Danielle from beneath her lashes and offered a shy, dimpled smile. “Arrivederci, signorina. Goodbye.” Then turning back to her father, she threw her arms around his neck again and gave him a smacking kiss on both cheeks. “Ciao, Papà!”

The entire scene left Danielle frozen with envy. She had never flung herself at her father like that. He’d have been horrified. He wasn’t a demonstrative man. She couldn’t recall his ever pulling her into his arms or onto his lap. Never teasing or complimenting her. He was much better at finding fault.

Carlo Rossi’s voice broke into the unwelcome memories of a childhood she’d been glad to leave behind. “I apologize for the interruption, signorina.”

“No need. I didn’t mind. In fact, I don’t know why you insisted I stay. I can’t see that there’s anything left to say.”

“Not so, signorina. You were explaining the reason for your delay in coming here and—”

“I don’t know why I bothered,” she said stiffly. “You’ve already judged me and found me wanting.”

“If I’ve jumped to hasty conclusions, I apologize. You were in Antarctica, you say? Not exactly a pleasant homecoming, then.”

“No, but I’ll cope. You explained my father’s condition very succinctly. I’m quite prepared for what might happen.”

“I beg to differ. You are in shock, signorina, and not quite as in control as you might like to think.”

“If you’re afraid I’m going to collapse in a soggy heap at your feet, please don’t be.”

“It would be healthier if you did. Fear, anger, sorrow, tears—they would be a more normal response. Anything but this cool, unnatural calm.”

“That might be the way things are done in Italy, Doctor, but I wasn’t brought up to give in to outpourings of emotion.”

“But you are human underneath that composed facade, yes? And I have seen this same reaction many times in people trying to come to terms with devastating news. At first, they turn away from the truth, but sooner or later, the dam bursts and reality hits them. When that happens, they need the comfort and support of family and friends. You, however, are in a foreign land, and very far away from those with whom you are close.”

Oh, yes! Much farther than he could begin to guess! In one cruel stroke of fate, she’d lost her fiancé and her best friend.

“But you’re not alone,” Carlo Rossi said. “When the pain becomes too much, I am here. You can turn to me.”

He was smashing away her protective outer shell with his kindness, and exposing that secret inner self still too bruised and tender to bear the harsh light of day. Determined not to let him see her vulnerability, she said bluntly, “You’re my father’s doctor, not mine.”

“Nevertheless, my offer remains.”

“As you wish.” She shrugged and stood up again, set on leaving this time, with or without his permission. “Thank you for your time, and goodbye.”

He inclined his head, his gaze watchful. “Arrivederci, signorina. Until the next time.”

There’d be no next time, she resolved. She found him too unsettling. Too attractive. And if that wasn’t downright immoral, given the circumstances, then it was surely utter folly. Because any fool knew it took at least a year to recover from being dumped practically at the altar, and that to allow oneself to be drawn to another man in the interim was courting nothing but trouble.

No. The less she saw of Dr. Carlo Rossi, the better.

CHAPTER TWO

HE HELD open the door to the outer office and watched as she walked past him and away down the hall. His first impression had been that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen; his second, that she was also the coldest. Antarctica was a fitting destination for such an ice queen.

She’d listened impassively as he described her father’s condition, and might have rehearsed her questions, so succinctly did she deliver them. She’d accepted without argument answers which other people would have refused to countenance.

He’d conveyed bad news before, more often than he cared to remember. And the responses he received fell into pretty much the same broad categories.

Please, Doctor, there must be something more you can do!

Money’s no object—we can pay any amount.

We’re praying for a miracle. We won’t give up hope!

But Danielle Blake? You should have let him die! He’d be better off!

And spoken with such vehemence that even he was shocked. Who could conjure up sympathy for such a woman?

The only other time her composure had slipped had been when Anita had greeted her. Then, for one brief and brilliant moment, she had smiled. Her chilly beauty had become suffused with radiant warmth, and he’d thought to himself, I was mistaken. There is a heart under that porcelain skin, after all.

Too soon, though, the mask came down again, and no amount of subtle probing on his part had succeeded in moving it. Immersed in her own needs, her own self-involved world, she had resisted his every effort.

Trained to observe the most minute detail, he’d picked up on the revealing way she’d clenched her clasped hands when he’d asked if she had a lover waiting at home. So that was it, he’d deduced. She was too caught up with some other man to spare any emotion for the one who’d given her life.

Usually he vented his rare anger at himself; at his inability to right all wrongs, to cure all ills. At that moment, though, it had been directed entirely at her. He’d wanted to shake her. Violently enough to shatter her brittle detachment and leave it lying in pieces at her feet.

Of course, he’d done no such thing. And noting now the rigid set of her spine, the proud tilt of her chin, the almost glassy determination in her eyes, he wondered if he’d misjudged her, after all. Was it just that she was exhausted? So stressed out that what he’d perceived to be indifference was really a fiercely self-protective barrier, erected to keep herself in check and everyone else at a distance?

Whatever the reason, she was so tense that it would take little for her control to snap. Like a marionette whose strings were being jerked unevenly, she walked away from him so rapidly that, at times, she almost broke into a run. Intrigued, he locked the outer office door and followed her, curious to discover why she was so anxious to escape. He was surprised when, instead of leaving the hospital as he’d expected, she turned into the ICU wing and made for Alan Blake’s room.

She didn’t hear him step in behind her. All her attention was focused on her father. She perched on the edge of the chair, and clutched the raised metal guardrails of the bed as if they were all that prevented her from losing her grip on sanity.

Not wishing to startle her, Carlo cleared his throat softly, but the way her entire body shuddered from the impact, he might as well have fired a cannon down the hall. She was too thin, too frail, and again he thought, I have judged her unfairly. She is close to collapse.

He came and stood next to her. “I understand you spent all last night here at your father’s bedside, signorina.”

“Yes,” she said bleakly, her gaze never wavering from her father’s face. “Did I break some unwritten law by doing so?”

“Not at all. However, I think it would be unwise for you to do the same thing again tonight.”

“Why is that?”

“You need rest—proper rest, in a bed,” he added firmly, anticipating the objection she was about to voice.

She allowed herself the merest shake of her head. “No point. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

“I will prescribe something to ensure that you do. Which hotel are you staying at?”

“Hotel?” Blankly she repeated the word as if he’d spoken it in foreign tongues far beyond her understanding. “I came straight here from the airport.”

“I suspected as much.” He closed his hand over her shoulder. She felt fragile as spun glass under the fine wool of her jacket. “We must do something about that.”

“We?” She spared him a brief, indignant look. “Since when have you been part of the equation?”

“Since I came to see you’re utterly worn out and running on emotional overload. It’s to my shame that I didn’t realize it sooner but now that I have, I consider it my responsibility to remedy the situation. After all, signorina, it would serve no useful purpose for you to be hospitalized, along with your father.”

Wearily, she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “I feel as if I’ve been here for days, yet it’s been barely twenty-four hours.”

“Time drags when one is waiting for a miracle.” He took her hand and drew her out of the chair. “Come. I’ll show you a quiet guest house not too far away from the hospital, and little known to the tourists. You’ll be able to rest comfortably there.”

She swayed on her feet and he reached for her, afraid she might fall. She sagged against him and for a second or two he held her, intoxicated by the fragrance of her hair, and unaccountably moved by her frailty. “I don’t need a guest house,” she muttered. “I prefer to remain here.”

Reminding himself that his interest in her was purely professional, he said, “I’m not giving you a choice. Is that all that you brought with you?”

She glanced at the small suitcase and carry-on bag heaped in the corner with her purse, and nodded dully. “Yes.”

He steadied her with an arm around her waist, and slung the bag over the raised towing handle of the suitcase. “You travel light, for a woman,” he remarked, steering her down the hall to the side entrance that gave onto the staff parking area. “Most women I know require twice as much luggage when they make a journey.”

“I left home in a hurry. There wasn’t time to pack anything more than a few essentials.”

“No, of course not.”

The sun lay warm on his car, leaving the interior cosy as a nest. She sank into the passenger seat, let out a sigh, and was asleep before he’d driven a hundred meters. In repose, her face was tranquil, her mouth softly vulnerable. Her lashes were long and fine, her brows delicately arched.

She looked nothing like her father. Even though he was comatose, Alan Blake’s face betrayed a tough strength not found in his daughter’s, and once again Carlo found himself wondering what really lay beneath that cool facade she presented to the world.

Situated in its own well-kept gardens, L’Albergo di Camellia stood at the end of a quiet road bordered on one side by the lake, and on the other by one of the town’s many parks. The proprietors, Luigi and Stella Colombo, knew him well. Several years before, he’d successfully operated on Stella’s mother for a brain aneurysm, thereby saving her life and earning their lasting gratitude.

“We have just the room,” Stella said, when he explained the situation. “Upstairs, at the back of the house, with a view to the mountains and the water. Very peaceful, Dr. Rossi. Just what your lady needs at such a time. Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of her.”

It was what he wanted to hear. His patients were his primary concern, and for them he needed a clear head, a steady hand. Becoming overly involved with their relatives at any level was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

Returning to the car, he opened the passenger door and shook Danielle Blake gently. “We have arrived, signorina.”

Her head lolled to one side, exposing the creamy skin of her neck. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, murmured something indistinguishable, and lapsed into sleep again. He wondered how she would taste, were he to touch his tongue to her mouth, and recoiled in disgust at the impropriety of such a notion.

“Wake up, Danielle!” he said sharply, shaking her more forcefully this time.

Her lashes fluttered and he found himself gazing into the depths of eyes so green and limpid, he could have drowned in them. Another outlandish and irrelevant observation, he decided—not to mention entirely inappropriate.

Her mouth curved in the beginning of a smile. “Hi,” she whispered, exhaling the greeting on a sigh.

The way she looked at him, the way she spoke, just so might a woman greet her lover, the morning after a long night of passion. With soft, dreamy pleasure. Understandable enough, he supposed, since she was clearly disoriented.

But his response—the tightening in his groin, the sudden heat licking low in his belly? That he found both inexplicable and intolerable. “Get out of the car,” he said brusquely. “You have a bed waiting, if you need more sleep.”

She blinked, and he knew from the way her cool, impenetrable mask slipped faultlessly into place, that she was all at once fully aware of where she was, and why, and with whom. She shot up straight in the seat, stuck her elegant little nose in the air, and fought to unbuckle her safety belt.

Impatient with her fumbling, he pushed her hand aside, unsnapped the belt himself, and all but hauled her out of the seat. He wanted rid of her. Now. He’d wasted enough time on a woman who’d yet to shed a tear for her dying father. “I don’t have all day, signorina. I suggest that, in future, you pay closer attention to the task at hand, instead of staring imperiously into space.”

“If this is any example of your bedside manner, it’s small wonder my father prefers to remain comatose,” she returned smartly. “Let me remind you it was your idea that I should stay in a hotel, your idea to decide which one, and your idea to drive me here. If I’ve inconvenienced you, stick the blame where it belongs. On you.”

It took considerable willpower for him to ignore the silken rustle of hidden underthings, and even greater self-command to drag his fascinated gaze away from the flash of sleek thigh as she swung her legs out of the car. But nothing could prevent the crackling awareness when, her feet having found the ground, she slithered past him, close enough for her body heat to reach out and touch him.

The resulting charge bolted the length of him, sharp and so intense that his scalp tingled. Static electricity, he told himself, but knew it was no such thing. Not once in the five years since Karina died had he experienced so volatile a reaction to a woman. That it should happen now, with one so much the antithesis of all she’d been, was an insult to the memory of the wife he’d adored.

Forcing himself to return in full measure the indifference emanating from Danielle Blake, he lifted her luggage from the trunk and carried it into the small lobby of the hotel, where the Colombos waited to greet their guest.

“Signorina, these are your hosts, Stella and Luigi Colombo,” he told her. “I will leave you in their very capable hands.”

All cool, unflappable reserve, she said, “Thank you. I’m sure I’ll do very well with them.”

She didn’t need to add, Unlike with you! Her body language said it for her, and he forcibly suppressed another urge to grab her by her slender shoulders and shake her. What was it about her, he wondered, that brought about such unreasonableness in him? How, on such short, unfavorable acquaintance, had she managed to get so thoroughly under his skin?

Furious with her and even more so with himself, he climbed into his car and drove away. Initially, he’d planned to go straight home, but a restlessness coursed through him, so instead of turning left at the main shoreline road, he took a right and headed toward the Alps. The Lamborghini responded to his mood, taking the hairpin bends with contemptuous ease. Half an hour later when he pulled over and stepped out of the vehicle at a lookout point, snow curled around his ankles and the crisp mountain air stung his eyes.

Far below, the lake lay shadowed with dusk. In town, street lamps sprang alive along the promenade. Lights shone at the windows of the houses as people gathered for the evening meal.

At his own villa, his daughter waited for him to come home, eager to show him the new kittens, to share other news of her day. Calandria would be putting the finishing touches to dinner.

What was he thinking of, to squander precious family time in such a fashion, and all because Danielle Blake, a complete stranger, happened to come briefly into his life? Why was he allowing her to invade his thoughts, to tempt him beyond all reason? It wasn’t as if he was short of female companionship. He didn’t live like a priest. His sexual needs were very well taken care of.

Despising his weakness, he filled his lungs with a blast of pure, bracing air, and held it a punishing length of time. When, finally, he released it, he let go of the turmoil, too. The aberration, or whatever it was that had possessed him, had passed. He was himself again.

Or so he liked to believe.

Burrowed under a cloud-soft duvet, Danielle slept for fifteen hours straight. But not dreamlessly. His voice flowed through the warm, comforting blackness, imprinting itself so thoroughly that its deep, exotic lilt still echoed in her mind when she awoke the next morning. And nothing—not the brilliant sun streaming in the window, nor the bright colors of the flowers in the garden below, nor the sharp, clear outline of the snowcapped Alps—could erase his dark, beautiful face from the picture screen of her memory. He had remained with her all night long, and was with her still.

He did not like her, and she knew she should not care, yet she yearned for his approval. Yesterday, when she’d opened her eyes in his car and seen him looming over her, she’d thought he was going to kiss her. If he’d tried, she’d have let him. He made her aware that she was a woman, with all the needs and wants that implied, even though she’d sworn off men, lost faith in love, and decided sex was an overrated waste of time.

Now, how delusional was all that?

Amused by such contrariness, she threw back the covers, marched into the adjoining bathroom, and stepped under the hot shower where she proceeded to scrub away the last remnants of sleep, and the nonsense that went with it. She was in Italy for one reason only: to act as advocate for her father until such time as he was able to act for himself. Her falling victim to a pointless infatuation with his doctor simply wasn’t an option.

She’d just finished drying her hair when Stella arrived at her door with a loaded tray. “Buon giorno, signorina! I heard you were awake and thought you might enjoy some coffee and a little fruit. The sun is warm on the balcony outside your French doors, if you’d like to sit there, and I will be pleased to serve you an early lunch a little later, if you wish.”

“Grazie, Stella,” Danielle said, standing back to let her enter the room. “I certainly do appreciate the coffee, but I’ll probably eat lunch in town. I packed in a hurry and have a little shopping to do.”

Stella pushed open the French doors with her free hand. “You must allow us to spoil you a little, signorina. We promised Dr. Rossi that we’d take good care of you, and it is our pleasure to accommodate him.”

Danielle knew she’d be better off not pursuing the all-too-fascinating subject of Carlo Rossi, but following through on the idea was another matter entirely. “Dr. Rossi seems to wield a great deal of influence over people,” she said lightly. “Do they always do as he tells them?”

Stella laughed. “If it appears to be that way, perhaps it’s because he’s the best neurosurgeon for many miles around. The best in all of Italy, according to many. We are honored to have such a man living in our community.”

“Do you consider him a friend?”

“We move in different circles, of course, but Galanio is a small town. Among the permanent residents, everyone knows everyone else, and the clinic sits always at the very center of things. Before he came here, the nearest hospital of any consequence was in Milano.” She set the tray on a small wrought-iron table and shook out a linen napkin. “Shall I pour your coffee now, signorina?”

“Please.” Danielle drew up a chair. “I find it interesting that Dr. Rossi chooses to practice in a town as small as this.”

“Why would he not? It is a beautiful place to live.”

“Well, yes, I agree, it is quite lovely. But for a man with his level of skill…” She let her shrug speak for itself.

“Ah, but his life is here, signorina. His daughter attends school close by. He is dedicated to his work in the clinic which he ordered built with his own money. His beloved wife lies in the church graveyard.” Stella spread her hands and raised her shoulders expressively. “How can the prestige of a bigger city, a more famous hospital, compete with all that?”

How, indeed? Danielle thought dryly. If she was determined to wallow in a bout of romantic hero worship, she’d be better off setting her sights on a more lowly object than the saintly Carlo Rossi. The brilliant shine of his halo might blind her!

Maybe his second-in-command…Dr. Brunelli, wasn’t it?…maybe he was a more suitable candidate.

But she hurriedly abandoned that notion when, a couple of hours later, she bumped into the good doctor outside the ICU station. Zarah Brunelli, a woman who, given her medical background, had to be well into her thirties, looked not a day over twenty.

Petite and gorgeous, with big liquid brown eyes, smooth olive skin and a gamine haircut, she could have been strutting the fashion runways in Milan had she been taller. But instead of a designer outfit, she wore a starched white coat whose only adornments were the name tag pinned to its left breast pocket, and the stethoscope looped around her neck.

“I was just in to see your father, Signorina Blake,” she announced, flipping closed a chart. “There is no change. He remains stable but unresponsive.”

“You assisted at his surgery, I understand?”

“Si.”

“How do you rate his chances of recovery?”

Zarah Brunelli afforded her a cool, professional smile. “Exactly as my colleague reported them to you, signorina. My assessment coincides completely with Dr. Rossi’s.”

Well, what else had she expected? That a mere mortal might dare disagree with him? Not likely!

“You face a difficult time, signorina,” the doctor continued. “For your own sake, I suggest you make frequent short visits with your father, and take time for yourself. You need to conserve your strength.”

“Dr. Rossi said pretty much the same thing, yesterday. He insisted I not spend another night here.”

“He was quite right. Did you book into a hotel?”

“He did it for me, actually. Drove me to L’Albergo di Camellia and introduced me to the owners.”

Somewhat reserved to begin with, Zarah Brunelli’s manner grew noticeably more distant. “That was very good of him.”

“Yes.”

“He is a very busy man, signorina.”

Her implicit reproach was unmistakable. Carlo Rossi had more important things to do than look after women able-bodied enough to take care of themselves. “I’ll remember that, the next time he suggests helping me out.”

“Allow me to offer you a little advice,” his chief assistant responded stiffly. “Avoid the possibility of there being a next time. We have professionals on staff whose job it is to assist out-of-town patient relatives. For a referral, you have only to ask at the information desk in the foyer.”

Adopting an equally clipped tone, Danielle said, “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind, too. Just for the record, though, you should know that I didn’t coerce Dr. Rossi into helping me. He volunteered—rather emphatically, I might add. So I’d appreciate it if you’d direct your disapproval at him, the next time you feel driven to express it. And now that we’ve got that straight, I’m sure you’ll excuse me. The person I really came here to see is my father.”

She was glad to escape to his room and let the door thud softly shut behind her. Glad of the near silence, the sterile tranquility. Her heart was thudding, her breathing unnaturally fast, and she was fighting angry tears.

In the past, she’d wept buckets over things she couldn’t change. Her mother’s untimely death. Her father’s rejection—he’d made no secret of his disappointment at being saddled with a daughter instead of a son. Her broken engagement to Tom. Her supposed best friend’s betrayal. But she’d be damned if she’d let Zarah Brunelli make her cry.

Sniffing furiously, she went to the window. If her father were to open his eyes now and see the state she was in, she knew exactly what he’d say. The same thing he’d said, over and over again, when he’d made her cry as a child by poking unkind fun at her, laughing at her fears, forgetting her birthday, breaking promises…the list was endless.

What the hell kind of ninny are you, Danielle?

The answer? The kind who hurt deeply and scarred easily. But she’d learned to hide it. Learned to keep her feelings so well bottled up that even Tom, who’d once found her fascinating and desirable, had in the end decided she was incapable of real passion—or pain.

You’re frigid, Dani. That’s why I turned to Maureen, he’d said, the night he’d told her it was over between them. Sure, you’re a bit upset right now, but I’m not worried you’ll throw yourself under a bus, or anything. You’re not the type.

If she could survive that kind of crippling revelation, why was she becoming unglued over the remarks of a woman she’d only just met and whose personal opinion of her carried no weight at all? Carlo Rossi must be right: she was running on emotional overload. There was no other possible explanation.

For the next week and a half, Danielle went to the hospital two, sometimes three times a day, but the only thing that changed was the simmering awareness between her and Carlo Rossi. While her father remained to all intents and purposes dead to the world, she grew more alive inside with a bubbling vitality that shamed her.

Her father didn’t know that the tree blooming outside his window filled his room with the scent of lemons, or that the sun fell warmly on his face in the afternoon. But she had never been more conscious of the world around her; never more moved by morning birdsong, or the chattering rush of a waterfall spilling from a cleft in the hillside.

And she owed it all to Carlo Rossi. Because of the way his eyes followed her, when she came into the ICU wing. Because of the way he made her blood sing through her veins when he smiled and spoke to her in that melting, sexy voice of his. Because of the way he sometimes ran his finger inside the collar of his shirt and turned away from her, as if the heat created when their glances collided left him drenched in a sudden sweat.

Ironically, what Carlo Rossi couldn’t do for Alan Blake, he accomplished magnificently with her. Throughout it all, her father remained as before. Unmoving, unaware. Sexual magnetism might be thriving indecently between his doctor and his daughter, but medical science appeared to have ground to a halt.

For however long that might continue, Danielle remained as much a prisoner as he was, trapped in circumstances beyond her control, something she found completely unacceptable. The day Tom walked out on her, she’d promised herself she’d never again relinquish control of her life to someone else.

The trouble was, she was no more programmed to abandon her father than he’d been to foster a close and loving relationship with her. He was her parent, and much though he probably resented the fact, she was his only family. Duty obligated her to stand by him now, even if affection didn’t. So if there was the slightest chance he might make a recovery, it was up to her to find it. Because only then could they do what they’d always done best: go their separate ways.

Oddly enough, Zarah Brunelli was the one who triggered an idea, the day she happened to bump into Danielle outside the observation window overlooking Alan Blake’s room.

“It does not go well,” she remarked. “We do not see the progress we hoped for.”

Discouraged, Danielle said, “No. I might as well have stayed at home, for all the good I’m accomplishing here.”

“Not necessarily.” Zarah Brunelli regarded her coolly. “Hearing a familiar voice speaking a language he understands might be the only thing to stimulate a response in your father.”

Danielle knew it would take more than that. Alan Blake had never found his daughter stimulating company; they shared too little in common. His passions were arguing politics and discussing the justice system with his cronies at his club, or attending the opera with his latest mistress on his arm—often a woman younger than Danielle; someone who, in return for an expensive trinket or two and her photograph on the society page of the newspaper, was prepared to bat her eyelashes and prop up his middle-aged ego with flattery.

Unfortunately he didn’t confide his romantic entanglements to Danielle. She had no idea who his current lover might be, and consequently no way of bringing the woman to his bedside. The opera, however, was another matter, one she could do something about.

We have professionals to assist out-of-town relatives. You have only to ask at the desk, Zarah Brunelli had once informed her disapprovingly, and for that and her latest advice, Danielle owed her a smidgeon of gratitude now. Within the hour, she was once more headed into town, armed with a map and very specific directions for finding what she needed.

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