The Italian Doctor’s Mistress Read online

  To the main concourse, and outside the building to where the taxis waited. To Galanio and L’Ospedale di Karina Rossi. To Carlo, before he changed his mind.

  “You are too late, signorina,” the attendant warned. “If you leave now, you will miss your flight. Your baggage has already been loaded on the aircraft.”

  “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.” She flapped an impatient hand and started to run. “Non importa.”

  Her carry-on bag slapped against her leg. Her purse swung wildly from her shoulder. The corridor was endless. Jammed with too many people coming the other way and impeding her progress. The customs officials detained her, agreed to let her cross back into the main area of the terminal only after inspecting her passport, and when she agreed to relinquish her boarding pass.

  Heart beating a frantic tattoo, she reached the escalator leading to the main-floor exit. Was halfway down when she heard the one voice she would recognize in a crowd of thousands.

  “Danielle!”

  She looked to the side and saw Carlo passing her, on his way to the upper level. He still wore his white tunic. His stethoscope still hung around his neck.

  “I’m not letting you go,” he shouted, reaching the top of his escalator and starting down hers.

  “You don’t have to,” she cried, over the heads of the people separating them. “I’m not leaving.”

  He finally caught up with her near the foot of the escalator and began to speak, but she pressed her fingers to his mouth and stopped him. “Me first,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  She caught his hand. Held on tight. “I’ll make it brief. If the offer still stands, I’ll marry you.”

  She’d taken the wind right out of his sails. He stared at her, speechless.

  “I understand why you proposed,” she said, “and I know you don’t love me. And I know I’ll never be able to take Karina’s place—”

  “Danielle,” he cut in. “Before you say another—”

  “It’s quite all right, Carlo. I can live with that. I understand—”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “But you don’t understand!”

  She peered up at him, suddenly uncertain. “Are you saying you don’t want to marry me, after all?”

  “No, never that!”

  “Then where’s the problem? We live together in perfect respectability. We share the same bed. We make love—we do that rather well, don’t we?”

  “Better than well!” he almost sputtered. “But there’s more—”

  “Of course there’s more, for most people. But our situation’s different. You were right the first time: we both love Anita and want what’s best for her. She needs a mother and a father. If I marry you, we can give her that. I know what your rules are and I’m willing to abide by them.”

  “Danielle, stop all this foolish nonsense and listen to me,” he said sternly. “The rules have changed. I don’t want to marry you for Anita’s sake, but for mine. Not until you’d gone did I know you’d taken my heart with you. I am empty without you, my Danielle. I want you as my wife because without you, my life is nothing. Dio, woman, I love you.”

  “No, you don’t, Carlo, and that’s okay.”

  He shook her again, more urgently this time. “Sta zitto! Do not presume to tell me what I feel. If my words are not enough to convince you I speak the truth, perhaps this is.”

  Unmindful of the crowd he attracted, not caring that he caused a bottleneck at the bottom of the escalator, he dropped down on one knee and took her hand. “Danielle Blake, from the fullness of my heart I ask you to become my wife. I ask you to let me love you for the rest of my life, and give you babies—brothers and sisters for Anita. I ask you to forgive me for being fool enough to wait until now to come to my senses.”

  “Well,” she quavered, not even trying to hold back her tears, “when you put it like that, how can I refuse?”

  He rose to his feet and in Italian addressed the rapt crowd of onlookers. They broke into applause.

  “What did you just tell them?” she whispered, blushing.

  He wrapped his arms around her. “That you accepted my proposal, and they are my witnesses in the event that you try to get away from me.”

  “Oh, Carlo,” she said, lifting her face for his kiss. “I don’t have the slightest intention of ever letting you go.”

  His slow smile was like the sun breaking through a bank of cloud. Like morning, after a long dark night. “Buono,” he crooned, and to more applause, lifted her off her feet. “So let us drive home and give the good news to our daughter.”

  His love, warm and strong, rushed in like the tide, filling every nook and cranny of her being. “Let’s,” she said.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5780-5

  THE ITALIAN DOCTOR’S MISTRESS

  First North American Publication 2005.

  Copyright © 2005 by Spencer Books Limited.

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