The Italian Doctor’s Mistress Read online

  “Couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing!” one of them said breathlessly. “I mean, I know the boss is famous for keeping his cool in the face of just about anything anyone throws at him, but to be so unmoved when it’s his own daughter lying there! I feel sorry for her, poor little thing. My God, can you imagine having a father like that?”

  “Are you kidding? He intimidates the living daylights out of me at the best of times, but I’ve always respected him. Put him on a pedestal, the way everybody else around here does. What we witnessed just now, though—that business about the socks being dirty—well, it was creepy! I bet if he were cut open, we’d find ice water in his veins! I feel…I don’t know…betrayed, somehow.”

  “Most people do when the people they idolize turn out to have feet of clay,” Carlo said, stepping forward just as the elevator doors swished open. “That’s why it’s a mistake to turn ordinary men into gods. Enjoy your coffee break, ladies.”

  He didn’t wait for their stammered apologies, or pay attention to their horrified, red-faced embarrassment. He had enough to contend with. His professional demeanor rigidly in place once more, he swept past them and back into the Emergency Unit just as Anita was wheeled in from Radiology.

  “Good news,” Gino said, handing him the CT printout. “She’s been given a clean bill of health, exactly as you predicted. Your little girl can go home whenever you give the word. And if you don’t mind my saying so, Doctor, it wouldn’t hurt you to take the remainder of the day off, too.”

  “And leave you shorthanded? I don’t think so.”

  His resident put a restraining hand on his arm. “You’re shaken up, Carlo, whether or not you’re willing to admit it. Do yourself a favor and go home. We’ll cover for you here, and if something out of the ordinary turns up, you’ll be the first to hear about it.”

  The advice was well-meant, the kind he’d have dished out himself had the situation been reversed, and he knew he’d be wise to heed it. “You’re right. I’ll leave, as soon as I’ve looked in on the woman Anita was with.”

  “Don’t take too long. I know delayed shock when I see it.”

  Carlo did, too, and thought he had a pretty good handle on his. Until he yanked aside the curtain to the cubicle next to Anita’s, and found himself staring down at Danielle Blake.

  For some time, she’d been aware of unfamiliar voices fading in and out. Of being tended to by caring, expert hands. She struggled to push them aside, to articulate the question so desperately begging to be heard. But movement of any kind, even breathing, caused excruciating pain.

  Then, suddenly, other hands touched her. Pressed and probed with cool fingers over her naked, aching ribs, down her leg to her throbbing ankle. Took her bare foot and flexed it. And despite the unremitting hurt, she recognized with an instinct that defied all reason that they were his hands; that it was his voice that spoke. Somehow, that made the agony easier to bear.

  “So, Danielle,” he murmured soothingly. “You decided it was not enough that I worry about your father, and thought you’d add yourself to the list? That was not kind.”

  She tried to speak, to ask him about the child, but managed only a slurred moan which he misunderstood. “I’ve looked at your X rays,” he said. “You have badly bruised ribs, a sprained ankle, and an assortment of very colorful bruises and scrapes. Now that we know precisely what we’re dealing with, we’re giving you something to alleviate your discomfort.”

  Her mind was clouded enough, without that. Desperate to convey her message, she forced open her eyes and regarded him blearily. Tried to shake her head.

  No painkillers or sedatives, please! Not until I know…

  A nurse entered the cubicle, a syringe in her hand. Danielle felt a stinging prick in her arm and an almost immediate slow-creeping numbness. Tears filled her eyes, ran down her face.

  Carlo Rossi wiped them away with his fingertips. “Be calm, Danielle, and trust me when I tell you, you’re going to be fine.”

  And Anita? Was she going to going to be fine, too?

  Mutely Danielle implored him with her eyes and to her horror thought that his gleamed with unshed tears, too. Oh, God! Oh, God!

  “We’ll talk again tomorrow,” he said, but his words came from a great distance and his face swam out of focus. She tried to grope for his hand, but the clouds thickened and hid him…

  “Are you very angry with me, Papà?” Anita inquired timidly. They were the first words she’d spoken since he’d bundled her into the car and driven home.

  “Very.” He pulled to a stop in the forecourt and fixed her in a stern glance. “What you did was wrong and very dangerous. Do you want to tell me why you behaved so foolishly? Did Signorina Blake call out to you, or invite you to join her?”

  “No, Papà. I saw her first and just wanted to say hello.”

  “You don’t even know her, Anita. You were wrong to disturb her, and very wrong to cross that busy road. By breaking the rules, you put yourself and her in great danger.”

  “Is that why you look so sad, Papà?” she whispered, her eyes huge. “Is the signorina going to die?”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. Certainly, on first acquaintance, he’d condemned her as being already dead inside, so incapable had she seemed of human feeling. Now, he hardly knew what to believe.

  Before he’d known who it was who’d put her own life on the line in order to save his child’s, he’d found himself responding to Danielle Blake at a primitive sexual level that infuriated him. But when he’d flung back the cubicle curtain and found her lying bruised and battered on the bed, the second shock, coming so soon after the first, had nearly undone him.

  For one dreadful moment, he’d almost broken down. She’d looked so alone, so devastated, that he’d wanted to send everyone else packing and devote himself entirely to her care. Had known a fierce need to gather her delicate body in his arms and kiss away her tears and hurting—he, the man some members of his staff perceived to have ice water in his veins!

  Dio, but he owed her everything. Everything! He’d give her the moon, if he could.

  “Is she very badly hurt, then?”

  “I think she might be,” he told his daughter. “I suspect that, inside, she hurts very badly indeed, but she’s learned not to let it show.”

  “Can you make her better?”

  “I can try,” he said, “but I think you’ll have to help me.”

  “Oh, I will, Papà! She’s so pretty, and so kind. She wanted to walk home with me, you know, because she was worried about me, but I told her I was old enough to do it by myself.”

  “A big mistake, Anita.”

  “I know.” She stared at her tightly laced fingers. “I’m very sorry, Papà. I won’t do that again.”

  “No, you won’t,” he declared. “From now on, Calandria will take you all the way to and from school.”

  “My friends will laugh.”

  “Better they laugh than I cry. Don’t ask me to take chances with your life, Anita. I won’t do it.” He leaned over and dropped a kiss on her head. “I’m your father, sweetheart. It’s my job to take care of you.”

  “I know.” She gave him the sweet smile so much like her mother’s that his heart ached. “But what about Signorina Blake, Papà? She’s been hurt, as well, and her father’s in the hospital. Who’s going to take care of her?”

  He’d wrestled with the same question himself a dozen times since he’d left the hospital. “I have a feeling we are,” he said, even as the voice of sanity in his head told him he was inviting a load of complications he could well manage without. “We don’t really have much choice, do we?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE next morning, an aide had just finished helping her into a wheelchair when Carlo Rossi marched into her room. He wore pale gray linen trousers and a short-sleeved white medical jacket against which his bronzed skin glowed with vitality, and he looked good enough to eat.

  For once, though, her heart didn’t leap with excitement
at the sight of him. Instead, it slowed to a painful apprehensive thud as she tried to read the expression on his face—and this despite the pleasant buzz caused by the injection she’d received an hour earlier.

  He shooed the aide out the door and approached the wheelchair. “My nurses tell me you’re being a difficult patient, Signorina Blake,” he said severely. “Ignoring orders to remain in bed, insisting on being released, expecting them to reveal privileged information—”

  “For heaven’s sake, all I asked for is an update on your daughter’s condition! I lay awake half the night worrying about her. But your staff are so tight-lipped on the subject, anyone would think I was asking them to breach national security.”

  “Hospital policy. Patient confidentiality, and all that.” Ever so casually, he lifted her hand and pressed his fingers to her inner wrist. A distinct gleam of amusement shot silver lights through his deep gray eyes. “My, but you really are in a state, aren’t you? Racing pulse, rapid shallow breathing. If I tell you that, except for a few bruises which aren’t nearly as dramatic as yours, Anita is perfectly fine, will you promise to relax?”

  With his voice suddenly drizzling over her like sun-warmed maple syrup, and him touching her as if he were her lover, rather than her doctor? Not a chance! “I’ll try,” she wheezed, deciding it must be the medication that was clouding her normally sound mind.

  “Try harder,” he said, positively caressing her skin with his long fingers.

  Trying to rein in her overactive imagination, she focused on his remarks about Anita. “Exactly how was your daughter hurt?”

  “She has a spectacular bruise on her forehead, another on her elbow, and her knees look as if she ran a cheese grater over them. All in all, she got off lightly. You weren’t quite as lucky. How are the ribs this morning?”

  Before she could answer, he bent close enough that she could almost name the brand of toothpaste he’d used, and placed the flat of his hand just above, and to the right of, her waist. Let it rest there a second or two, then shifted it slightly upward so that his thumb grazed the underslope of her breast—which would have been unsettling enough, even if she’d been fully dressed. But Don’t bother with a bra for now, the aide had suggested. You’ll find putting it on and taking it off too uncomfortable.

  Uncomfortable? Danielle gave an involuntary gasp. How about unprotected and overly susceptible to tactile pleasure?

  “That hurts?” Carlo Rossi inquired, pulling a stethoscope out of his pocket.

  “It’s…uncomfortable,” she managed, latching on to the aide’s word like a drowning woman clinging to flotsam. “But if it’s my heart you’re looking for, it’s on the other side.”

  His mouth twitched. “I believe they taught us that in first year medical school.” He lifted her blouse and camisole as if he had every right to rearrange her clothing, and placed the stethoscope diaphragm against her ribs. Cool air washed over her bared flesh. Oh please! she prayed. Don’t let my nipples act up!

  “Take as deep a breath as you can, please.”

  If distraction was what she wanted, deep breaths provided it. “Ow!”

  “Pretty sore, hmm?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s to be expected. Bruised ribs don’t heal overnight. The good news is, they didn’t fracture. If they had, you could have wound up with a collapsed lung.” He let her clothing fall into place again and slung the stethoscope around his neck. “How about the ankle?”

  “Perhaps you should take a look at it,” she said. The farther removed his hands were from her breasts, the less chance she’d make an utter fool of herself.

  He knelt at her feet and probed her right ankle gently. “Well, we know there are no broken bones, but sprains such as this also take time to heal. You’ll be dependent on a cane for a while.”

  “A cane?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She thought of the steep lane leading to her hotel, and the stairs to her bedroom; of other, even steeper inclines around town. “That should be a lot of fun!”

  “We’ll make it as easy for you as possible.”

  “We?”

  “Did I forget to mention that you have a visitor? How remiss of me.” He straightened, went to the door, and beckoned to whoever waited outside.

  She expected it would be another nurse or doctor, and was thrilled when, instead, Anita came into the room—not skipping as she had been the first time they met, but not exactly hobbling, either.

  Eyes downcast, she said solemnly, “Good morning, signorina.”

  “What a lovely surprise!” Relief had Danielle smiling—the one thing she could manage without wincing. “Good morning to you, too! I’m so happy to see you.”

  “I have come to tell you I am sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For making you be hurt.”

  The little thing looked positively ill with remorse.

  “Oh, honey, it wasn’t your fault! Come here and give me a hug!” Wanting to reassure her, Danielle flung open her arms in invitation. At once, red-hot fire up her right side.

  “Papà!” Anita wailed, wide-eyed with horror at hearing Danielle’s smothered gasp, and seeing the grimace she couldn’t contain.

  “Be gentle with yourself, signorina,” Carlo Rossi reminded her.

  “Never mind me,” she said. “Comfort your daughter. Tell her she’s not to blame for what happened to me.”

  “But, yes, I am,” the child insisted tearfully. “Papà says so.”

  And Papà was never wrong! “Actually,” Danielle informed him stonily, “if anyone’s at fault, I am. If I’d walked Anita across the street myself, the whole nasty incident could have been avoided.”

  “She was not your responsibility,” he replied. “But because of her actions, you most assuredly have become ours.”

  “What? How so?”

  He glanced at his daughter who’d shrunk into his shadow. “Would you like to tell Signorina Blake what we have decided, Anita?”

  She inched away from him and faced Danielle. The tears had stopped, and there was even a hint of dimple showing on her cheeks. “You are coming to live with us, signorina!”

  Danielle’s jaw dropped. “I most certainly am not!”

  “Oh, but yes! Papà and Calandria and I are going to look after you until you feel well again.”

  “That’s very kind of you and Papà and Calandria, but I already have a place to stay.”

  “I understand now why my nurses were complaining,” Carlo Rossi said, rolling his gorgeous gray eyes. “You are indeed a difficult patient.”

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer, Doctor, but I’m hardly helpless. I can manage quite well on my own.”

  He shook his head slowly and emphatically. “No, Danielle, you cannot. You might feel comfortable enough at the moment, but only because the strong pain medication you’ve been given is taking effect. It is not, however, a miracle cure. As you just discovered, any kind of sudden jarring movement—coughing, sneezing, twisting—and your rib cage will remind you quite savagely that it does not care to be treated that way. And I don’t even want to think about the damage you’d do if you should fall again.”

  “How long before my ribs heal?”

  “Anywhere from a few days to a week or more. If you’re very careful, you’ll have limited mobility with the cane during that time, provided you stay on flat, even surfaces. And that’s why you’ll be staying in my home, which happens to sit on a gentle slope only. In case you haven’t noticed, most other houses in Galanio are built on the side of a cliff.”

  “And if I refuse to go along with your plan?”

  “Then you remain here, under twenty-four hour surveillance, until such time as I’m convinced all danger is passed and you’re able to manage on your own.” He paused just long enough to let his next words sink in. “I readily admit I am responsible for your injuries, Danielle, but I have no intention of finding myself at the wrong end of a lawsuit because of secondary comp
lications you might cause.”

  “We have a very nice house, signorina,” Anita added earnestly, “and a big garden. And Calandria is a very good cook.”

  “I’m sure you do, and I’m sure she is.”

  “Buono! Then it is arranged.” Carlo Rossi grasped the handles of the wheelchair and spun it around to face the door.

  “Not so fast,” Danielle exclaimed. “What about my father?”

  “I’ll keep you well informed, and should there be any change in his condition, I will personally bring you to his bedside. But for the next couple of days, Danielle, you do him more good by attending to your own recovery.”

  Arguing with such sane reasoning was pointless, especially when, simply by turning her head to look back at him, she felt as if someone had jabbed a knife between her ribs.

  “You see?” he said, not missing her contained flinch of discomfort. “I do know what’s best.”

  “But my things are all at the hotel,” she protested weakly.

  “Not so. I arranged for them to be sent to my home. You’ll find everything waiting in the room we have prepared for you.”

  She ought to object. Strenuously. He’d taken unpardonable liberties; was doing so still, treating her as if she’d lost possession of her mental faculties. At the same time, though, his actions struck a profoundly seductive chord. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had cared enough about her welfare to put himself out like this.

  “You appear to have thought of everything,” she murmured, doing her level best to quell the stirring excitement fluttering through her at the thought of sitting across from him at the dinner table every evening, sleeping under the same roof every night. He was, after all, acting only out of a sense of obligation.

  “Then it’s safe to assume you agree to my suggestion?”