The Italian Doctor’s Mistress Read online

  “What have I taught you, cara?” he murmured, his pulse beating in an odd, unsteady rhythm.

  She bit her lip and for a moment reminded him of a deer caught in a hunter’s crosshairs. “You’ve set me free,” she finally said. “When I first arrived in Galanio, I was wounded and hurting, inside here.” Briefly, she touched her left breast. “Because of you, I shall go home…cured.”

  Whatever he’d expected her to say, it hadn’t been that, and he was dismayed by how unreasonably let down he felt. Medicine was his vocation, and he could not imagine his life without it, but sometimes—and this was one of them—he tired of being always perceived as the doctor who cured all ills.

  Unwilling to probe any deeper into the reason for his sudden dissatisfaction, he said, “Are you very anxious to return home, Danielle?”

  “No,” she answered, and edging closer, curved her hand around his neck. “But I am very anxious to make love with you.”

  “Show me,” he commanded huskily.

  With slow, sultry grace, she rose to her feet and proceeded to strip off her clothes, dropping them carelessly, one item at a time, on the rug. When at last she stood before him naked, she took his finger and drew it between her legs. She was so slick and swollen already that, at his touch, a mottled flush rode over her chest.

  He rose to meet her, reveling in his power to make her come almost at will, but she planted her hand flat against his chest and held him at arm’s length. “Not yet,” she purred, as she unfastened the buttons on his shirt.

  One by one, she removed each piece of his clothing and dumped it with hers on the floor. Her satin chemise peeped out from beneath his Armani jacket. His tie fell drunkenly atop the dainty cups of her bra. His shirt sprawled indecently over her panties. And with each addition to the heap, he grew harder and heavier.

  “Now?” he said, forcing the question past the constriction in his throat, as he stepped out of his briefs.

  She shook her head and smiled a smile so utterly female that he broke out in a sweat. Then, without missing a beat, she sank to her knees and took him in her mouth.

  The blood thundered through his veins, misting his vision. “Danielle, cara,” he groaned, clutching at her hair, “you don’t have to—!”

  But she did, and if she was a little tentative, a little inexpert, he took it as an honor. Regardless of who’d gone before or followed after him, in this one respect he would always be the first she loved like that.

  Indescribably moved, he closed his eyes and gave himself up to the pleasure she inflicted. Only when he teetered on the brink of orgasm did he pull her down beside him on the couch, and return in full measure the gift she’d so unstintingly bestowed on him.

  Never had she tasted so sweet, never felt so silky to touch, so hot and wet and willing. To bury himself inside her so completely that their two separate bodies became fused into one; to be sheathed so tightly in her sleek flesh that he felt the encroaching tremors long before they overcame her; and then, with the tension running fast through his blood, to race toward the pleasure of possession and finally lose himself in her even as she contracted around him time and time again—these were memories that would remain with him to his dying day. This night would never grow dim with time.

  “Are you happy?” he murmured, afterward.

  “Yes,” she replied, rubbing her face against his chest. “Are you?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Nothing can tarnish what we shared tonight.”

  He was wrong. The next afternoon, when he arrived in his office after a morning spent in surgery, he found a letter had been delivered from the headmistress of Anita’s school. Because of its disturbing contents, the Mother Superior requested that he present himself in her office after classes were over for the day.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I’LL BE home in time to take you and Anita sailing before dinner,” Carlo had promised at breakfast the next morning.

  But it was after five before he showed up, and one look at his expression when he stormed into the house told Danielle that this was one promise he wouldn’t be keeping. “You seem very upset, Carlo,” she remarked, an absurd understatement, all things considered. “Did something go wrong with a patient?”

  “Something certainly went wrong, but not at the hospital.”

  Exhaling an exasperated breath, he strode past her to the windows and scanned the rear garden. “Where’s Anita?”

  “In the music room, practicing her piano. Why?”

  He wheeled around to face her. “As the result of a letter I received at the hospital today, I’ve just come from a most disconcerting interview with the headmistress at her school. It seems that this morning, during Le Notizie Quotidiane—”

  “What’s that?”

  Scowling at the interruption, he said curtly, “The time when pupils share with each other any interesting news pertaining to their lives.”

  “I see. And?”

  He pulled an envelope from his pocket and withdrew a single sheet of paper. “I’d let you read this for yourself, but since your understanding of Italian is limited, allow me to translate the gist of it.”

  “All right,” she said cautiously, taking a seat on the couch.

  He remained standing, cleared his throat, and began. 166

  “‘Dear Dr. Rossi, this morning, your daughter announced to her entire class that she has a new mother who meets her every day after school.”’ He looked up. “She’s referring to you, of course.”

  Oh, if only! Danielle would have given the world to be in such a fortunate situation, but she’d have had to be blind not to see Carlo didn’t share the sentiment. He looked scandalized.

  Burying her disappointment, she said mildly, “Well, setting the record straight shouldn’t have been too difficult.”

  “There’s more,” he said, cutting her off, and returned to the letter. “‘Her teacher chastised Anita and reminded her that lying is a sin, but the child insisted she told the truth. She claims to have seen you embracing this mother who, although not your wife, sleeps in your bed.”’

  He flung down the sheet of paper. “Not exactly the kind of story the nuns at Santa Elisabetta want impressionable eight-year-old girls taking home to their fee-paying parents, wouldn’t you say?”

  Danielle stared at him in growing horror. “But it’s not true, Carlo—at least, the part about my sleeping in your bed isn’t!”

  “Yes, it is,” he said flatly. “Technically you are sleeping in my bed, even if I use it only occasionally and have never shared it with you. Furthermore, it would seem that we weren’t as alone as we thought we were, when I kissed you in the foyer last night. Short of lying in my own defense, I could say nothing to refute Anita’s story. And let me tell you, one does not lie easily with the Mother Superior looking one straight in the eye, particularly not when, either by accident or an astuteness I never suspected in a child her age, my daughter has interpreted, albeit inexactly, the nature of the relationship I have entered into with you.”

  He wore such an expression of bitter distaste that Danielle cringed. He blamed her for this unfortunate situation, and in one way, he was right to do so. She’d overstepped her limits, played more of a role in Anita’s life than she should have, when she knew all too well how a child—any child, but particularly a little girl—craved having a mother to love her.

  Well, there was only one course of action open to her now. She had to put an end to the charade. “I’ll move to a hotel, tomorrow,” she said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “It’s a bit late for that, no?” he practically snarled, turning the full force of his anger on her. “The damage is done—the horse has already bolted from the stable, as you’d say in America.”

  “Well, don’t take your frustration out on me! It was your idea for me to stay here in the first place,” she reminded him.

  “Si. When you were temporarily impaired by your injuries, and you required care.”

  “Care?” she repeated, outrage at
the unfair implications in his reply dissolving her initial sympathy for his predicament. “Is that why you had sex with me—because I needed care?”

  “Lower your voice, Danielle!” he snapped. “There’s no need to broadcast it to the entire neighborhood.”

  “Why not?” she shot back. “You’re the one who insisted the only way to stop gossip was to be open about our affair. If you really thought it too cheap and tawdry for Anita to know about, you never should have started it to begin with, because if she hadn’t figured out for herself what was really going on between us, sooner or later she’d have heard about it from someone else.”

  His eyes turned glacial, and so did his voice. “Shall I assume from that outburst that all your professed affection for my daughter has been nothing but an act, put on for my benefit?”

  “There’s nothing feigned about my feelings for Anita, Carlo. I’d sooner die than hurt her in any way, that I can assure you.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Yes, indeed!” She swallowed, already regretting having allowed anger to push her into speaking so rashly. “For me even to suggest we should have been indiscreet in front of her was inexcusable, and I apologize.”

  Mouth tight, he rocked moodily on his heels a moment, but when he spoke again, his tone had softened. “This has come as much of a shock to you as it has to me. We can both be forgiven for not being entirely rational.”

  For Danielle, “rational” didn’t begin to describe it. She was devastated for Anita, for the disappointment awaiting her, and the inevitable humiliation that would follow. And she was heartsick for herself.

  The true state of affairs between her and Carlo—and oh, how she was coming to hate that word “affair!”—could not have been laid out more clearly. Despite the intimacy they’d shared, when all was said and done, it counted for nothing. She counted for nothing. And the only person she could blame was herself, because Carlo had never made any secret of how the game was to be played.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked miserably.

  “Speak to my daughter. Try…” He flung out his hand, blew out another frustrated breath. “Try to make her understand…put her world back to rights again.”

  Even engulfed as she was in her own private hell, Danielle could feel sorry for him. He faced a difficult, if not impossible task. “I shouldn’t have agreed to move in here. It was a mistake.”

  “I never said that, Danielle.”

  “You didn’t have to. My body might have suffered temporary impairment, as you put it, but there’s never been anything wrong with my brain. I can read between the lines, just as well as the next person. In retrospect, your act of charity has misfired badly, and hurt the one person you love most in the world. I’ll be out of your hair first thing in the morning.”

  He rolled his eyes impatiently. “Don’t be so melodramatic. It accomplishes nothing.”

  Stung, she said coldly, “Don’t give me orders, Dr. Rossi. I’m not one of your underlings.”

  “And I don’t have time to debate the issue right now. We’ll discuss the matter later, after I’ve spoken to my daughter.”

  Like hell we will, she thought, watching him take the stairs two at a time. We have nothing left to say to one another. I’m not sure we ever did.

  When she’d flown to Italy, she’d traveled light, with room to spare in her suitcase. It took no time at all for her to pack up her belongings again, including the new clothes she’d bought. Within twenty minutes, she was ready to leave the villa, with no sign that she’d ever spent a minute under its roof.

  She phoned for a taxi, then slipped quietly across the foyer and down the back hall to the kitchen. Her first inclination had been to sneak away without a word to anyone, but Calandria had looked after her with great kindness and become much more than a servant. She had become a friend, and she deserved some sort of explanation for Danielle’s sudden departure.

  “But where you go?” the woman exclaimed, when she heard. “You not have family here, Signorina Danielle. Just us.”

  At that, a lump formed in Danielle’s throat that almost choked her. “I have my father, Calandria, and he’ll soon be leaving the hospital. Until then, I’ll stay in a hotel. It’s better that I do.”

  Calandria raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Il Medico, he is up there, si? I hear him go galoppo on the scale.”

  “Yes. He’s upstairs with Anita.”

  “You leave because of him?”

  Danielle shrugged. “There are a number of reasons. He’s only one of them.”

  “He know what you do?”

  “No, but he’ll find out soon enough.”

  The housekeeper scowled and muttered direly in Italian.

  “You’ve been wonderful to me,” Danielle said, giving her a hug. “Thank you so much, Calandria. Grazie!”

  Calandria’s arms came around and held on tight. “You still nothing but un passero piccolo,” she grumbled.

  “But sparrows are survivors, and so am I,” she said, and picked up her suitcase. “I’d better go. My taxi will be here any minute. Arrivederci, Calandria. Kiss Anita for me, please.”

  As soon as she was settled in her hotel, she took a long bath, then phoned Carlo.

  “Where the devil are you?” he demanded, the minute he heard her voice.

  “I’ve taken a room at L’Albergo di Palma.”

  “Stay put. I’m coming over.”

  “Please don’t, Carlo,” she said. “It’s better this way. I just wanted to let you know not to be concerned about me. I’ve found a place to stay.”

  “You had a place here, with us.”

  “Which turned out to be a very bad idea.”

  “Danielle,” he said, and the weariness in his voice almost undid her, “I deeply regret the way we left things. At least let us talk.”

  “That’s what we’re doing. There’s no reason we can’t be civil to one another.” She took a moment to marshal her composure which was dangerously close to falling apart, then continued, “How is Anita?”

  “We are not going to discuss my daughter, or us, over the phone. I’ll be with you shortly.”

  She pressed two fingers to the spot between her eyes where a headache threatened. “No. I’m not dressed for company.”

  “I’m not company, I’m your lover,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  She had just enough time to run a brush through her hair and cover her flimsy nightgown with the terry-cloth bathrobe supplied by the hotel. Not that she needed to bother, because she had no intention at all of allowing him inside the room. But he looked so wretched when she opened the door to him that she simply couldn’t turn him away.

  “Oh!” she murmured, taking both his hands and drawing him to her. “Was it very bad with Anita?”

  He held on to her as if he were drowning. “Yes,” he said, a world of despair in his voice. “She is completely crushed. It seems the little fantasy she spun for her classmates was very real to her. It cost me greatly to have to destroy it.”

  “You should have stayed with her, Carlo. She needs you more than I do.”

  He pulled away from her and dropped into a nearby armchair. “No, she wants you, and when I told her you’d left, the person she ran to was Calandria. She shut me out, Danielle. I could not help her. I could not take away her pain.”

  Danielle had seen him in a number of roles: the skilled surgeon, the considerate employer, the loving, loyal father, the passionate lover. But his most enduring quality, one that remained constant throughout, was his unshakeable self-confidence in his abilities; his extraordinary will to be the best at what he did.

  She’d never thought to see him as he was now. At a loss, unable to understand how he’d gone wrong, his sense of self in ruins. “When they’re hurting, people—especially children—often lash out at those they love the most,” she said gently, perching on the arm of the chair and stroking his hair. “That’s why she turned to Calandria.”

  “I am her father. She should have t
urned to me. I am the one who is always there for her. I have never let her down.”

  “And you never will. In her heart, Anita knows that.”

  “I’m not so sure. Her teachers have seen a change in her lately, and they’re concerned. The Mother Superior believes she is acting out, in an effort to fulfill some deep-seated need within herself that I am unable to satisfy.”

  “That’s nonsense, Carlo! Eight years of unconditional love and security carry more weight than that. Now that I’ve moved out of the house, she’ll soon be herself again, and this business at the school will blow over, you’ll see.”

  “Do you really believe that, Danielle?”

  There it was again in his voice, in the bruised hurt of his gray eyes when he looked up at her. The uncertainty. The fear.

  They broke her heart. “Oh, Carlo, darling, of course I do!” she said, hugging his head to her breast. “That child worships the ground you walk on.”

  “Will you talk to her, cara? Make her understand?”

  “Yes,” she promised. If he’d asked her to teach pigs to sing, at that moment she could not have denied him.

  “Grazie! Grazie tante!”

  His muffled thanks vibrated through her robe and nightgown, and left their warm imprint on her skin. Aware of the danger closing in, she moved away. There could be no more intimacy between her and Carlo. The highs might be unsurpassed by anything she’d known before she met him, but the inevitable low when it all came to an end would be correspondingly more agonizing.

  “I’ll see Anita tomorrow,” she said, and signaled the end of the meeting by walking briskly to the door and holding it open. “Obviously it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to meet her after school, but perhaps Calandria can bring her to the hotel when classes are over. We’ll have tea in my room, then she can see for herself that I’m living here now.”