The Italian Doctor’s Mistress Read online

  “It is every child’s birthright to be loved unconditionally, surely?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t always turn out like that. Some children grow up never feeling secure in their parents’ affections.”

  He put his demitasse on the inlaid coffee table and leaned toward her. “Were you one of those children, cara?”

  The endearment undid her; unloosed things she’d never thought to share with another living soul. “Not with my mother,” she said, staring at his long, tanned fingers so close to her knee that they were almost touching it. “She was the most loving person on earth. But my father…” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug that spoke volumes.

  “You are not close to him?”

  “No.”

  “Were you ever?”

  “No, never. One of my earliest memories is of him telling me that when I was born, he told the doctor to send me back to where I’d come from, because he’d ordered a son, not a daughter. Even my name is a derivation of a boy’s.”

  “He was surely joking, and you were just too young to understand his brand of humor which, I admit, left something to be desired.”

  “No. He meant every word, and if I hadn’t known it before, he made it crystal clear when my mother died. I was eleven at the time, and the afternoon of the funeral, he sat me down and said that we’d have to put up with one another for at least a few more years, because my mother had made him promise he’d take care of me until I was old enough to look after myself.”

  “I do not understood why one parent should have to exact such a commitment of the other.”

  “In my own eleven-year-old way, I said much the same thing, although my actual words ran along the lines of, ‘But I thought fathers always loved their children and wanted to look after them.”’

  “And how did he respond?”

  “He said that he’d fulfill his responsibilities, just as he always had, but that I’d always been my mother’s child, and if it had been up to him, he’d have been just as happy to leave me behind in the hospital after I was born.”

  She knew from the way Carlo recoiled that she’d shocked him. “He spoke this to you, on the day that you buried your mother? Dio, that a man could be so brutal to his only child! How did you deal with such cruelty?”

  “I groveled,” she said bleakly. “Tried every way I knew how, to make him love me. Brought home straight A’s on my report cards, made the honor roll, learned to cook his favorite foods, ironed his shirts and folded them just the way he liked.”

  “Ironed his shirts? You had no housekeeper?”

  “We had several, but none of them stayed very long. My father was too difficult and demanding. By the time I turned fourteen, I pretty much took care of the house by myself.”

  “When did you decide you’d had enough?”

  “I didn’t. He made the decision for me. The summer I graduated from high school, he sold our home and moved into a penthouse apartment. He claimed he did it for me, that I’d be happier in a place of my own because no eighteen-year-old needed her father hanging around when she brought her boyfriends over.”

  “And you had many boyfriends,” Carlo said, a half-smile curving his beautiful mouth. “A girl such as you would have been fending them away with a branch.”

  She frowned, puzzled, then held one hand to her ribs and burst out laughing. “Oh, you mean, beating them off with a stick!”

  “Do I?” he said, taking her other hand between both of his. “When your face lights up like that and your eyes fill with sudden stars, and the laughter pours out of your mouth like music, I confess I’m left so dazzled that I don’t know what I mean.”

  Her laughter died, scorched into oblivion by the rush of sizzling heat his touch induced. Unused to such a bizarre reaction from a body which had remained stubbornly unmoved by Tom’s attempts to arouse it, she tried to pull away.

  But Carlo wouldn’t release her. Instead, he slid one hand up to cup her jaw and stroked his thumb over her mouth. Her throat ran dry. Her pulse throbbed erratically against his fingertips. She thought her heart would stop; would free-fall into a tailspin from which it would never recover.

  “We’ve known each other a matter of days only, yet do you know how often, during that time, I’ve thought about kissing you?” he murmured.

  She swallowed, and said baldly, “Why?”

  “Because of this.” He lifted the hand he still held and brought her palm to rest flat against his chest. “You make my heart beat a little faster than it should, and I find that very pleasurable.”

  He left her dizzy with delight; bewitched past all reason. By comparison, “pleasurable” struck enough of a lukewarm note to remind her that she’d never had much success when it came to captivating the opposite sex. The day he’d dumped her, Tom had summed up her shortcomings very succinctly. Getting it on with you is an exercise in frustration, and about as stimulating as reading a bus schedule, Dani.

  The memory left her so flooded with embarrassment that she looked away from Carlo and mumbled, “Well, it probably isn’t a good idea—to kiss me, I mean.”

  “Why not? Would it offend you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He turned her face to his; brought her so close that she could practically taste him. “What are you saying, then?”

  Flustered, she dropped her gaze to his mouth. His lips simmered with a promise of passion beyond anything she’d ever known. She wished he’d stop talking about kissing her, and just do it, and put her out of her misery. Because all that churning heat invading her pelvic area and leaving her most private flesh tingling with anticipation, was an illusion.

  It took a lot more than a kiss to reduce her to quivering acquiescence. It took a miracle—and where Danielle and sex were concerned, miracles just didn’t happen. The sooner he learned she was incapable of responding, the better for both of them. That way, he’d retreat into the professional she’d first met, and she’d shelve any idiotic notion she harbored that this time, and this man, might be different.

  “Until six months ago, I was engaged,” she said, deciding it was best to lay all her cards on the table and have done with, “but my fiancé ended the relationship because I couldn’t live up to his…expectations. I’m afraid I won’t live up to yours, either.”

  Carlo closed the small distance remaining between them, and once again cradled her face in his hands. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” he said, against her mouth.

  “Because I already know wh…”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence, not only because his mouth took complete possession of hers but because, at the touch of his lips, coherent thought fled her mind. As swiftly as if they’d been dipped in warm honey, all the raw, ragged edges of her confidence grew smooth and compliant. Colors swirled behind her closed eyes, bright, brilliant, dazzling. Her blood sang. An exquisite, unfamiliar sensation swam through her womb and left a startling dampness on her underwear.

  And all he did was kiss her. Not savagely, as Tom so often had done, as though to force the right response from her. Not hurriedly, as if he couldn’t wait for the whole business to be over. But with a lingering finesse that took her breath away and turned her molten with desire.

  Completely perplexed by such new and strange reactions from a body she thought she knew all too well, she stopped trying to understand and simply let instinct take over. The hands she’d folded primly in her lap stole up to clutch the front of his shirt. She leaned into him. Let her breasts brush against him in a way that electrified her flesh.

  Emboldened by his low murmur of encouragement, she took his hand and guided it down her throat, to the scarf draped around her shoulders. With a single swift tug, he sent it skimming to the floor. A moment later, the touch of his cool, expert fingers sliding inside the low-cut neck of her blouse and searching out the upper slope of her bare breast inflamed her past all caution.

  When he cupped her in his palm, and gently squeezed her nipple between his fingers, she let
out a gasp of pure, visceral delight. When the tip of his tongue swept over the seam of her lips, she yielded to him. Opened her mouth to him in submission. Welcomed him.

  The firm thrust of his tongue probing the soft inner flesh of her mouth sparked a hunger she couldn’t—wouldn’t—control. Because suddenly, she didn’t just want more, she wanted it all. She welcomed being caught up in a passion too headstrong to be contained. Unconditionally accepted the coil of physical tension winding ever tighter deep in her body, fraught with the promise of sublime release. But most of all, she embraced the freedom to be a woman in love with the wonder of her own sexuality, and enthralled by that of the man who’d awakened it.

  Every pore in her body responded to the chill left behind as Carlo traced his tongue in a lazy path from her mouth to the base of her throat. When his mouth slipped even lower, to cover the fabric of her blouse where it lay in disarray over her breast, and drew on the nipple beneath, she choked back a small scream, not of shock or dismay, but because even so slight a barrier between him and her was a penance she couldn’t bear.

  Sounds came from a distance, the sleepy chirp of a bird harmonizing with the hushed slur of silk sliding against skin, and breaths snatched from lungs fit to burst. Her heart slammed wildly against her ribs, and if they hurt because of it, she neither knew nor cared. The here and now was all that mattered. No pain could erase the bliss; no injury silence the relentless hum of desire.

  Yet she must have winced, or gasped, or given some other sign which he interpreted as distress because, as quickly as it had all begun, it was over. He drew away and imprisoned her hands in his. Dazed, she stared at him, and could have wept for the lost promise so briefly hers to savor.

  But then he spoke, and his words filled her with hope again. “It is as well I remembered in time that you have bruised ribs and an injured ankle, cara mia. That alone is all that spared you having to censure me for taking unpardonable liberties. Forgive me. In truth, I could not help myself.”

  She debated replying along the lines of, Don’t give the matter another thought. But she’d been allowed a glimpse of something beyond her range of experience; something so wondrous, she wasn’t willing to let it go without a fight. So gathering her courage, she whispered, “What would you say if I told you I’m glad you could not?”

  “I’d say that you’re kinder than I deserve.”

  “Kindness has nothing to do with it, Carlo. I’m not afraid to say ‘no’ to a man if I don’t find him attractive.” She took a long, quivering breath and dared to look him straight in the eye. “But that wasn’t the case, just now. The fact is, I’ve never been kissed like that before and I…liked it very much.”

  “Never?” he echoed, seeming less interested in the compliment than the revelation accompanying it. “What, was your former fiancé such an inept lover?”

  “I suppose he must have been.”

  “Then why did you stay with him?”

  “Because I didn’t know any better—until now.” She lifted one shoulder in a tiny shrug. “You probably guessed I’m not very experienced.”

  “No, I did not. And I find such an admission from a woman as beautiful as you hard to believe.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s the truth.”

  “Then this man who let you go, he was a fool in more ways than one.”

  “He did me a favor. We were wrong for each other.” Not wanting to dwell on Tom and his shortcomings—beside Carlo, he faded into a pale gray nothingness so opaque, she could barely recall his face—she searched to change the subject.

  Before dinner, she’d noticed the oil painting hanging above the marble fireplace, of a woman with black hair swirling around her shoulders. Her full, sensuous mouth curved in the beginning of a smile, and so skillfully had the artist depicted his subject that it seemed as though her sultry eyes followed a person’s every movement.

  Danielle had thought at the time that the portrait dominated the elegant salon but, not surprisingly, hadn’t spared it a second glance since she and Carlo had returned to the room for coffee. Now, though, that dark gaze caught her attention again, striking her so forcibly with silent reproach that there was no turning away from it.

  Very much against her better judgment, Danielle voiced the question begging to be aired. “Is that a picture of your late wife?”

  “Si.”

  “She was very beautiful. You must miss her very much.”

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her.”

  Danielle winced inside at the shaft of irrational pain his admission invoked. Yet what else had she expected him to say? The late Mrs. Rossi looked exactly the type to inspire eternal devotion in a man. Hot-blooded, passionate, unashamedly sexual.

  Had she been born that way, or had Carlo taught her? Had she climaxed effortlessly, and often, when they made love, unlike Danielle who, according to Tom, had been ‘too damned uptight to give in and let it rip?’

  She wished she could get up from the couch and go to the window, or to the curio cabinet in the corner, or the little writing desk on the far wall—anywhere but where she was, sitting much too close to Carlo and painfully aware that if he now wore the introspective air of a man lost in precious memories, she had only herself to thank for it.

  At length, he turned to her again, a puzzled frown knitting his brow. “Why are you here, Danielle?”

  Immediately on the defensive, she replied, “Because you insisted on it. But if you’ve changed your mind—?”

  He shook his head. “No, you misunderstand me. Or perhaps I do not express myself clearly. I’m asking what it is that Alan Blake ever has done to deserve having you travel halfway around the world to sit by his bedside?”

  “He is my father,” she said simply. “I like to think I’ve outgrown the need to win his approval, but the bottom line is, I continue to hope it’s not too late for things to change between us.”

  “And if he should never regain consciousness, if he should die, what then?”

  “I’ll go on as before.” She lifted her shoulders in a fatalistic shrug. “You can’t miss what you’ve never had, Carlo.”

  His glance flicked to the oil painting above the fireplace. “I envy such a practical outlook.”

  “As a man of science, I’d have thought you’d understand it.”

  He looked again at the portrait. “Being a doctor does not render me incapable of wishful thinking. It does not make it easier for me to accept failure.”

  His wife might as well have stepped down from the painting and once again become a living, breathing entity, so strongly did Danielle feel her presence. “You’re referring to Karina?”

  “Yes.” His dark, level brows rose in surprise. “How did you know her name?”

  “One of the nurses told me you’d named the hospital after her. How did she die?”

  “By accident, in a situation somewhat similar to your father’s. She was climbing in the mountains, and fell.”

  “I gather her death is what motivated you to build the hospital.”

  “Yes.” Suddenly restless, he got up and went to one of the long windows overlooking the front courtyard. Twilight left the corners of the room draped in soft mauve shadows and cloaked his silhouette in smoky black. “Before she died, we lived in Rome because my work was there. But Karina hated the city. She was born here, and missed her beloved Alps.”

  “I’m rather surprised. From the look of her, I’d have expected her to be more at home in the glittering world of high society.”

  “Do not assume, because she was from a small town and loved the outdoor life, that she lacked sophistication,” he said. “Karina was a complex woman. Like Galanio itself, she personified cultured elegance.”

  From his distant tone, Danielle knew she’d overstepped the mark. He might have kissed her, and intimated he found her attractive, but that clearly didn’t entitle her to comment on his wife. “I never said the two are mutually exclusive, Carlo,” she replied coolly. “Nor was I criticizing. I was m
erely making an observation. I’m sorry if it offended you.”

  He didn’t acknowledge her apology, but continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “She was a chameleon. No matter the circumstances, she adapted. People flocked to her. Friends and strangers alike vied to be part of her circle. They thought she led a charmed life. I knew better, but I turned a blind eye. I put my work first, and in doing so, I lost her.”

  “Your marriage failed?”

  “Dio, no!” He uttered the denial in vehement Italian. “We loved one another more than life! But in the end, I failed her. She died needlessly.”

  “You’re surely not saying you could have prevented her accident?”

  “The answer to that question is a matter of conjecture. Karina was strong-willed, and not easily dissuaded, once she’d made up her mind. What I know, however, is that if I had been here when the accident occurred, I might have been able to save her. But I was not here. When she needed me the most, I was in Rome, immersed in my work, and the nearest hospital equipped to treat her injuries was in Milan. She died before they were able to get her there.”

  The desolation in his words spurred Danielle to such a flood of sympathy that she forgot about her ankle, and swinging her foot to the floor, lurched to her feet. Pain blazed through her so viciously that black spots danced before her eyes. Reaching out blindly, she stumbled, and half-fell against the back of a chair. Sweat broke out along her hairline and upper lip.

  “What the devil—!” Hearing the commotion, Carlo wheeled around. When he saw her, he let fly with a string of words which even she, unfamiliar as she was with Italian, recognized were enough to turn the air blue. “Are you mad, or just stupid?” he snapped, striding forward and hauling her off her feet. “Did I not make it clear that you must keep off that ankle? What does it take, woman, for you to listen?”

  “Put me down,” she retorted, every bit as ticked off by his tone as he appeared to be by her actions. “And don’t speak to me as if I’m a backward child.”

  “Then stop acting like one! I’ve got enough on my mind, without having to worry about what you decide to get up to, the very second my back’s turned.”