Italian Doctor, Full-time Father

“We don’t do well together, do we?”

They should, because they had. But this time it was so different. Her stomach was in knots all the time now, over the prospect of a chance encounter in the hall, or a spur-of-the-moment meeting in the therapy room.

“I’m sorry about that too, Dante. It’s my fault. You’re my patient, and as your physician I should be doing better by you, but…”

“Then you’re fired,” he said, his voice totally void of emotion. In spite of his flat words, his eyes sparkled. That dark glint gave him away. Always had.

“Just why would you do that now?” she asked.

“Because it’s not professional.” He moved forward, causing her to step back enough so that her back was pressed firmly to the door.

“What’s not professional? My treating you now, with the relationship we’ve had in the past? Because that’s what I’ve been saying all along, and…”

“What’s not professional is what I’m about to do, Catherine. Unless you open that door and run away, what’s going to happen between us should never happen between doctor and patient…”

Now that her children have left home, Dianne Drake is finally finding the time to do some of the things she adores—gardening, cooking, reading, shopping for antiques. Her absolute passion in life, however, is adopting abandoned and abused animals. Right now Dianne and her husband Joel have a little menagerie of three dogs and two cats, but that’s always subject to change. A former symphony orchestra member, Dianne now attends the symphony as a spectator several times a month and, when time permits, takes in an occasional football, basketball or hockey game.

Recent titles by the same author:

A FAMILY FOR THE CHILDREN’S DOCTOR

THEIR VERY SPECIAL CHILD

THE RESCUE DOCTOR’S BABY MIRACLE

A CHILD TO CARE FOR

EMERGENCY IN ALASKA

ITALIAN DOCTOR, FULL-TIME FATHER

BY

DIANNE DRAKE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

For Bobby M, an amazing race-car driver and the love of a very young life. You’re still sadly missed, Bobby.

CHAPTER ONE

CATHERINE stared at the admission slip, not sure what to do. Or say. A new patient was routine. But one with the name Dante Baldassare was not and, right now, her heart was doing more than skipping a beat or two. Of all the places in the world where he could have gone, why here? Did he know this is where she was working? Was he coming here to torment her, to remind her of things best left forgotten?

She’d read that he’d been injured several weeks ago. But hadn’t he gone to the clinic in London? That’s what the newspaper had said. They’d flown him there for his rehabilitation after his surgery. So how had he ended up here, in Bern, Switzerland? How had he ended up in the clinic where she was medical director?

Catherine took another look at the admission slip, in case her eyes were playing tricks on her. Dante Baldassare. There it was, his name scrawled on the papers. After all these years, she still recognized the signature. Dante Baldassare—a new admission by Dr Max Aeberhard. Even though Max was no longer administrator of the medical side of operations here, as owner of the clinic he did still have the right to approve admissions. According to what she was seeing, this was a rush admission. Max had been on call, she had not. His decision, and she wasn’t going to question it. After all, Max didn’t know their history.

But her decision, had she been the one on call, would have been to send Dante somewhere else.

There was no changing what was already done, though. Unfortunately. Dante was already here and in the process of being checked in as a patient. She’d have to have an awfully good reason to send him somewhere else and a love affair gone bad wasn’t good enough.

Catherine slumped down in her chair, trying to blot out the image of Dante already trying to creep into her deepest thoughts, the place to which he no longer had a right to be. She’d seen his photo in magazines or newspapers several times over the past five years, so she knew what he looked like. Better now than then, if that were possible. Rugged, chiseled, darkly Italian-handsome and, according to the photos, improving with age.

That was one thing she’d never deny about Dante—he had the good looks that made female knees go wobbly and turned the heads of both genders. That day in the hospital at their first meeting, when he’d come to her for a consultation on one of his patients, it had taken her heart a full two minutes to calm down, had taken the rush of blood to her face just as long to become normal, before she’d even got down to medical business with him. Then she’d slept with him that night and every night they’d had the chance after that for the next six months. Then…well, she didn’t want to think about that now. Not when she should be figuring out a way to avoid the man who was, at this very moment, settling into the Geneva Suite. The reason—rehab after a second repair to a shattered ankle.

A second repair? Had something gone wrong with the first? The medical side of her took over for a moment. She hadn’t read anything about that in the newspapers, hadn’t heard a word on any of the sports reports she tried so hard not to listen to. So, what was going on?

Quickly, Catherine scanned the medical notes sent in from Dante’s previous clinic, but there was nothing noted that indicated what had happened. Naturally, the first thing that came to mind was that surgical complications he might have had could lead to an extended stay here. Which she certainly didn’t want. A two- or three-week therapy course was long enough if all went well, but if something else was going on…

“Why are you doing this to me, Dante?” she whispered, as she shut the manila folder and laid it down on her desk.

Because he was Dante, that’s why. If ever there was a man who knew how to get to her, it was the one she was bound, by clinic protocol, to go greet in the next few minutes.

Sighing, Catherine placed two fingers to her left wrist to see if her heart was beating as fast as it felt. It wasn’t, of course. And the tightness overtaking her throat wasn’t really a physical symptom of anything either, unless a reaction coming from seeing an ex-fiancé after so many years had a medical name attached to it.

“Just being silly,” she whispered. “That was another life. He’s over you, you’re over him.” Empty words. They didn’t make the panic rising in her go away. If anything, her symptoms increased. Face flushed. Chest tightened. “It was a relationship that shouldn’t have been. Twenty-four weeks on the calendar that made me a wiser woman.” She’d lived two hundred and seventy-two weeks since the last time she’d laid eyes on Dante and had done quite nicely during all that time, thank you very much.

So why was she reacting to him this way now? Since they’d parted she’d been married, he’d been…well, she’d read what he’d been, which was very busy with the ladies. All over the world!

Trying not to conjure up that image, Catherine picked up her phone and dialed her secretary. “Is Dante Baldassare settled in?”

“Yes, doctor,” Marianne Hesse answered. “According to the floor supervisor, he’s settled in, and grumpy about being here.”

Dante grumpy? Now, that was something she’d never seen. “Page Dr Rilke to go greet him. He’s been assigned as Mr Baldassare’s doctor, so he can have the honor of welcoming him to Aeberhard.” While she made up more excuses to keep herself away for as long as possible.

“You’re not going?” Marianne asked, sounding surprised. If there was one thing that could be counted on at Aeberhard Clinic, it was that protocol didn’t change. They stood on tradition, and while the clinical concept was casual, the overall clinic tradition was rigid. Except this once. But she couldn’t help it. She just plain didn’t want to see the man, not until she’d girded herself a little better for it.

“In a while,” Catherine responded, hedging. “I have a few other patients I need to see first.” And supplies to order, and staff review reports to be filled out, and phone calls to return, and patient discharge recommendations to finalize. There were any number of excuses not to go, all of them quite legitimate. Not good, but definitely legitimate.

To be honest, though, she was curious. That annoying little part of her that knew she was about to do something she’d regret was pushing her into it regardless of what she wanted, positively fighting to burst through. Admittedly, she did want to know if Dante would be impressed by her achievement. After all, she’d gone from junior hospital staff to clinic medical director in five years—an accomplishment of which she was proud. But what would Dante think of it? Or would he even care? He was so long out of medicine now, maybe none of this world would matter to him any more.

Actually, she still wasn’t sure how he’d walked away from medicine and been so indifferent about it—a man with his passion and skill. Of course, she knew how he’d walked away from her. That was probably the easy part for him, considering how he’d walked straight into the arms of another woman, then another, and another after that. A whole string of others, to be frank.

But she’d done well for herself in spite of all that mess. Gotten on with her life, albeit with a little glitch on the marriage front a couple years ago. Three years after Dante and she’d finally connected with another man, so they’d had a brief try together. No children as a result, however, and no particularly lingering impact from one year spent with a man who, one week after their wedding, had declared it was time for his wife to stay home, cook dinner, do laundry and bear him lots and lots of children. Somehow Robert Wilder had missed the fact the she was a career-woman, and somehow she’d missed that fact that her husband’s views on the perfect marriage were anything but what she considered perfect. It hadn’t worked out, and there really wasn’t much to say about it. She’d made a mistake. Robert deserved a woman who could be everything he wanted and she deserved her freedom from a man who wasn’t anything she wanted. Which was what she’d got.

Still, the impact of being left out of the important decisions in her marriage, of having someone else make them and not include her in them…she cringed even now, thinking about it.

But the timing of that little detour in her life had worked out as one month after their divorce she’d found herself in a major career change, going from being a lower-end staff doctor in a rehab hospital in Boston to medical director of a rehab clinic in Bern. A sensible move that had made her divorce seem all the better. The only thing that had bothered her some had been keeping Robert Wilder’s name. She’d intended to go back to Dr Catherine Brannon, but the whole Aeberhard Clinic offer had come so quickly, and her move to Switzerland almost in a whirlwind, then the ensuing months had been so busy she’d barely had time to breathe. So all her legal papers were still in her married name, but getting everything changed back to her maiden name was definitely on her to-do list when she had time. Right above taking that long, uncomfortable walk to the Geneva Suite to greet their new patient.

The phone buzzed, and Catherine jumped like a skittish cat.

“Dr Rilke isn’t here yet,” Marianne informed her.

“Where is he?”

“He’s on his way. Says he’ll be here in fifteen minutes. And we don’t have another doctor in the building at the moment.”

A long, quiet pause on Marianne’s end spoke the words the woman did not say. It was Catherine’s responsibility to go greet Dante. Catherine knew that, and her secretary knew that. Of course, Marianne wouldn’t say it, but she didn’t need to. “If he’s not here in fifteen minutes, I’ll go and see to Mr Baldassare.”

“Very good, doctor,” Marianne said, clicking off.

Catherine leaned forward, studying the outside of Dante’s folder. She was drawn to read more about him, and her fingers even skittered their way across the desk, latched onto the folder and pulled it back towards her, inch by inch, across the glossy mahogany top. She’d already read the routine information—height just over six feet, weight one hundred and ninety pounds. “You haven’t changed much,” she whispered, still refusing to take another look, specifically at the line indicating spouse. The truth was, she didn’t know. The bigger truth was, she didn’t want to know. She’d seen that he still lived in Tuscany. She’d also seen that he listed his occupation as race-car driver. Not medical doctor. But she hadn’t looked at anything filled in under family.

Her fingers played across the top of the file and just as she’d decided on pushing it away so she wouldn’t be so tempted, Marianne buzzed.

“Dr Rilke just called in.”

“And?”

“He’s stranded. Car trouble. He said he’ll call for a mechanic and be in as soon as he can, but that it won’t be for quite a while.”

Catherine balled her fist and gave a little slam to Dante’s medical folder. Now she’d have to go and see Dante. No getting around it. “Ask him if we could send the clinic car to fetch him.” A suggestion made from sheer desperation, and a rather pathetic one at that. But desperate times called for desperate measures… Catherine knew all about that.

Something else she knew was how silly she was being about taking a look in the folder. She was the medical director here, for heaven’s sake. It was her duty to know her patient. Her duty to know every patient in Aeberhard Clinic. After all, she could practically recite Mr Newlyn’s family tree by heart, and call off the last four surgeries performed on Mrs Rakeen. She knew the names of Mr Gaynor’s three grandchildren and had intimate details of how to contact each of Mr Salamon’s four ex-wives. All from studying the charts. So this was ridiculous, thinking of Dante as anything but a patient.

Opening her balled fist, Catherine flipped back the cover of the folder and began reading. The first page was chock full of all the routine information she’d read before. The second page was about Dante’s medical history, which she’d also read earlier. Most of it sketchy, though. At the very bottom her eyes caught on the section where Dante had listed past surgeries. Appendectomy ten years previously. Damn, she didn’t want to remember that. Not the surgery itself, but the scar. How many times had she kissed that scar?

Fighting back that image, she kept on reading. More routine facts, financial information connected to how he could cover his bill, that kind of thing. Then, on the last page, she came to what she hadn’t wanted to read—family contact information. Not that she cared if Dante was married, because she didn’t. Yet it felt funny. An intrusion to which she wasn’t entitled. Or one that would dredge up some of the plans they’d made that would have put her name there on that page as his spouse.

“Stop it,” she whispered, drawing in a steadying breath. “One ex-fiancé pops up and look how you’re acting.” Her heart hadn’t even skipped a beat six months ago when Robert had called to ask her to sign a property settlement document she’d overlooked during the divorce. Yet look what she was doing over Dante. Going positively crazy! And she didn’t know why. That’s what troubled her. Dante was just another patient…granted, he was one she’d slept with and almost married, but he was still just another patient. She wasn’t in love with him. Hadn’t been for a good long time. So maybe this was simply an overreaction to the very hard life she was living right now. All work, no play. And no meant absolutely no, none, nada, not a drop of play not even for a minute. At least, not in the past year…or past two years, if she counted her marriage.

So, in an effort to prove to herself this silliness wasn’t as much about Dante as it was about herself, Catherine forced herself to finish reading the admission papers. The next few lines were all routine information. Same with the next few after that. Then she came to the next-of-kin section, and that’s where she stopped. There, in Dante’s own handwriting, was the name Gianni Baldassare. Age eight. Listed as Dante’s son.

“His son?” she whispered, shaking her head, then going back for a second look to make sure she’d read it correctly. Which she had, and that didn’t make any sense at all. If Dante had an eight-year-old son, that meant Gianni would have been three when she and Dante had been engaged.

She’d been engaged to marry a man who had a son, and he hadn’t mentioned it? Just like Robert hadn’t mentioned his plan for a stay-at-home wife?

“How could he have…?” she whispered, still stunned by the fact that Dante had asked her to share his life but had failed to include her in a very important part of it. She would have been a mother after some fashion yet he’d never bothered to tell her?

Of course, that proved solidly that she hadn’t known him, didn’t it? The evidence of that was in the photo—one she’d seen published in a sporting magazine a month after he’d gone home to be with his family. Dante in the arms of another woman, while Catherine had still been wearing his engagement ring. Full color, full page, that full Dante smile she’d thought had been only for her while that blonde in his arms looked on adoringly.

Catherine shut the folder, too dazed by what she’d just read to think, and buzzed Marianne. “Any word on Dr Rilke’s arrival?”

“Sorry, doctor. I offered to send a car, but he doesn’t want to abandon his car on the road. He asked me to tell you that he’d be in once he got his car towed to the garage.”

Catherine was seeing the handwriting on the wall now. No Rilke meant she had to go. Had to get Dante settled in herself. No more putting it off. “I don’t suppose he knows how long that will be.”

“He’s hoping within the next hour or two.”

Clinic policy was nagging at her now. This was an expensive facility, very small, very exclusive, with the best physicians and the best accommodations in the world. More like a resort than a medical treatment facility. People who paid to be here expected their doctor in attendance immediately. Dante wouldn’t be an exception. “Call the floor nurse and tell her I’ll be down to see Mr Baldassare in five minutes.” Five minutes, five hours, five years…it really didn’t matter. She had to do it. That’s all there was to it. Once, five years ago, she’d donned sturdy armor when she’d kicked Dante out of her life. Now she only hoped she had some of that armor left over, because one thing was certain. Dante Baldassare did know how to get to her. That was evidenced in the half-moons her fingernails had just dug into the palms of her hands when she thought about him.

“No, I don’t want to be here. Why the hell couldn’t I have just gone home, put my foot up and healed there?” Spent the mornings looking out the window and afternoons listening to Gianni learn to read. Not a bad way to pass the time during this imposed holiday, as he preferred to think of it.

“You know why, Dante,” Cristofor Baldassare said, tucking his brother’s suitcase into the closet. “Because you won’t heal there. You’ll find a way to do everything your doctors told you not to do, and injure yourself again. Again! Like you did last time you came home to recover. You’ve got a good chance to fully recuperate for the start of the next racing season if we let someone else take charge of you.”

He gave his older brother a toothy grin. Separated by fifteen years, with Dante the older at thirty-five, the two of them bore no family resemblance to each other. Dante’s classically handsome Italian looks, as well as his dark and brooding attitude, were in stark contrast to Cristofor’s sunny disposition, fair-skinned complexion and blond hair, a remnant of his great-grandmother’s Scandinavian blood. “And I’m not going to be the one to go against Papa on this, Dante. If you want to argue with him about checking out of here and going home, that’s fine, you can argue. But I’m staying out of it.” He threw his hands into the air in mock surrender. “Your decision entirely.”

Dante ran an irritated hand through his hair. Papa’s expectations and demands were a force to be reckoned with in the family, especially as his father wasn’t allowed to be as physically active since his heart attack, and right now he didn’t feel like reckoning with the man. Besides, he understood his father’s concern over his condition. One son already dead, and now another one seriously injured. As a father himself, he knew what his own parents were feeling. So, out of respect, he’d go along with this inconvenience for a while, stay here, take a rest, submit to physical therapy.

“OK, so I’ll let it go for now. You don’t have to go against Papa. But I’m not staying long. A week or two at the most, until I know what I need to do to get full movement back and build up my muscles. Then I’m coming home.” Two weeks without Gianni—it was already killing him.

Who’d have ever thought he could get so attached to another person? But Gianni was his heart and soul and the separation was pure torture.

“Let’s wait for a week or two before we make any decisions, OK?” Cristofor said.

“We? Since when is this a we decision? Have I ever let my baby brother make decisions for me?” Laughing, Dante picked up a spare pillow and lobbed it across the room at Cristofor.

“It became my decision when Papa told me to make sure you do what you’re told.” He caught the pillow and threw it back. “And I’m not about to cross him, Dante. He’s under too much stress already. He doesn’t need more.”

The pillow hit Dante square in the face, and he threw it right back, but Cristofor deflected it and it went sailing at the door just as the door opened and someone stepped in. A woman…a woman who wasn’t quick enough to avert the flying pillow. She took the hit square in the chest, then stepped back, shocked, not injured, clutching the pillow to herself.

Cristofor turned red-faced, while Dante wiped his eyes and forced himself to stop laughing. Then he turned to her to apologize. “I’m…” His voice broke, and he stopped. Swallowed. Drew in a deep breath. “Catherine?”

“Dante,” she said, without inflection.

Her voice was the same, yet different. Fuller. A little throatier. “What…? Um…I didn’t know you were here.” Her fixed stare on him was cool. Not friendly, not unfriendly. Not affected in any way, which surprised him because he remembered her eyes as warm, and the stare she’d always given him provocative. But not now. He stared for a moment, trying to find a bit of the old Catherine, but none of it was there. “I didn’t see your name on the literature.”

“My name is at the top of the literature, actually,” she said, dropping the pillow onto the plush easy chair by the door.

As if to prove her wrong, Dante grabbed up the packet of information he’d been given pre-admission, and took a look at the staff roster. But what he saw wasn’t Catherine Brannon. It was Dr Catherine Wilder. Which meant she’d gotten married. He hadn’t expected that. Of course, he didn’t have the right to that expectation, did he? Didn’t have the right to anything where Catherine was concerned. Not even to think of her.

Dante looked up at Catherine again. “I didn’t know.” And that was the truth. Sure, the fact that he’d be under the care of a rehab doctor by the name of Catherine had possibly persuaded him to choose this clinic over several others, for no particular reason other than a little sentimentality. Yet he’d had no reason to suspect that his Catherine would be the Catherine in the brochure. But, damn, if that hadn’t turned out to be, well, he wouldn’t go so far as to say good. Maybe interesting?