The Italian Doctor's Mistress

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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