The Italian Doctor's Mistress

“Do you not understand that, for all my fine, upstanding talk, I brought you to this secluded corner of my home, knowing full well what the probable outcome would be?”

“No,” she said baldly. “Quite frankly, I didn’t think you were the least bit interested in…”

She ground to a halt, unsure how to phrase her response. If doing it tonight sounded impossibly gauche, making love didn’t exactly fit the occasion, either. The way she saw it, you couldn’t make love, if you weren’t in love—and he’d made it abundantly clear that love didn’t enter the picture.

“Yes?” He regarded her quizzically. “Not the least bit interested in what?”

She coughed to hide her embarrassment. “That,” she said.

He took her brandy glass and placed it alongside his own on the edge of the hearth. “Then let me show you how wrong you were, la mia innamorata. Because that is exactly what I have in mind.”

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The Italian Doctor’s Mistress

Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

DANIELLE arrived at L’Ospedale di Karina Rossi just after five in the afternoon, and was taken immediately to the room where her father lay. Early May sunlight, bright and crisp as lemons, filtered through the slats of the window blinds and settled on the inert figure in the bed.

The nurse touched her elbow gently. “Si metta a sedere, signorina. Sit, please!”

“Thank you.” Without taking her eyes off her father, Danielle sank into the upholstered chair beside the bed. Leather, she noted absently, and comfortable enough to sleep in, which made sense. Visitors to this floor of the hospital didn’t drop in briefly with a cheerful card, a bouquet of flowers, or a basket of fruit. They came to keep vigil, all day and all night, if necessary.

“When will he wake up?” she asked.

The nurse, a pretty woman in her forties, raised her shoulders in wordless reply. Meaning what, Danielle wondered. That she didn’t know the answer? That she didn’t understand the question?

“I don’t speak much Italian,” Danielle told her. “Non parlo Italiano. Is there someone here who speaks English?”

The nurse nodded, pressed a comforting hand on Danielle’s shoulder, and glided out of the room. Left alone, Danielle became acutely aware of the sounds issuing from the apparatus to which her father was connected. The gentle, even sighs of the ventilator, punctuated by rhythmic blips and beeps from the computer screen above the bed tracking his heart and brain functions. But from the man himself, nothing.

“Father?” she whispered.

She might as well have been talking to the wall. Not by so much as the faintest flicker of an eyelid did he acknowledge her presence. His arms, incongruously tanned against the pristine white sheet, lay at his sides, pierced by intravenous catheters. But his face was the color of parchment, the jut of his nose and thrust of his jaw seeming more pronounced somehow, as though the well-toned flesh of which he was so proud had collapsed on itself and left his skin draped over his bones. If it hadn’t been for the steady rise and fall of his chest, he could have been dead.

“Signorina Blake?” Another nurse, older than the first, entered the room on soundless rubber soles. “Is there something you require?”

“The doctor who operated on my father,” Danielle said. “I need to speak to him.”

“Dr. Rossi is not in the hospital today.”

“Why not? I was told my father’s injuries are serious. Critical, in fact.”

“Si. But it is Dr. Rossi’s day to be at home.”

“I don’t care what day it is!” Danielle said, fatigue and guilt lending a sharp edge to her voice. News of her father’s accident had been waiting for her when she arrived home from vacation. Shocked to realize his accident had occurred almost a week earlier, she’d wasted no time flying to Italy to be with him. Now that she was here, she wanted answers. “Call him. Tell him I wish to speak to him.”

“I will page his resident.”

“I don’t want to speak to his resident. I want to speak to the man who performed the surgery. I’m not interested in a second-hand account from his assistant.”

“Dr. Brunelli is well qualified to address your concerns, signorina,” the nurse insisted. “We do not disturb Dr. Rossi when he is at home, except in cases of extreme emergency.”

The reverence in her tone suggested the almighty Dr. Rossi lay on a par with God. Curbing her irritation, Danielle said, “And my father doesn’t fit into that category?”

“Signor Blake is now stable, signorina, and closely monitored at all times,” the nurse replied, the hint of censure in her voice suggesting that a sincerely concerned daughter wouldn’t have waited this length of time before putting in an appearance at her father’s bedside. “Should there be any change in his condition, Dr. Rossi will be informed and can be here at a moment’s notice.” Her dark eyes softened in sympathy. “You are anxious, which is, of course, to be expected, but rest assured your father could not be in better hands. He is fortunate, if indeed such a word can be applied to his situation, that he was brought here, to such an excellent facility.”

Danielle had to admit there was some merit to the nurse’s claim. When she’d heard that her father had been taken to a small private hospital, in a small town on the northeast shore of Lake Como, her immediate impulse had been to have him transferred to a larger facility, in Milan, or even Rome; one better equipped and better staffed to deal with serious head injuries. But he was in no condition to be moved, she’d been informed, and certainly everything she’d so far seen of the Karina Rossi Hospital spoke state-of-the-art, from the sleek reception area to this room in the Intensive Care Unit.

“Is he related, this Dr. Rossi?” she asked the nurse. “To the woman the hospital’s named after, I mean?”

“Si,” the nurse replied. “She was his wife. They were a very devoted couple. Sfortunamente, Signora Rossi died some years ago.”

“What a lovely way to remember her.”

“She was a very lovely woman. Very warm, very…” She searched for the word. “Comprensiva…very kind.”

“And her husband?”

“Oh!” Her face illuminated with admiration, the nurse flung out her hands. “So skilled! So dedicated and compassionate! He could work anywhere. Would be welcomed with arms spread wide, in any hospital, anywhere in the world. He is the best!”

Somewhat reassured, Danielle glanced again at her father and said, “It helps to know that.”

Tipping her head to one side, the nurse observed her closely. “You are tired and need rest, signorina. Do you have a place to stay?”

“I thought I’d stay here—in case he wakes.”

“He is in a deep coma, my dear. It is unlikely that…” She shrugged and, obviously thinking better of what she’d been about to add, said simply, “You could be here many days, Signorina Blake. A comfortable bed at night, an occasional change of scene, a good meal—they will help you cope with what lies ahead.”

“Is my father going to die?”

The nurse backed away, perturbed at having such a question fired at her out of the blue. “As long as we have life, we continue to hope,” she said, choosing her words with the care of someone crossing a minefield. “But it is not my place to predict…when you meet with Dr. Rossi, you must ask him.”

“I intend to do just that,” Danielle told her. “And until I receive his answer, I will remain here.”

“As you wish. I’m sure, if your father senses your presence, it will comfort him to know that you’re at his side. I’ll have pillows and a blanket sent in, and a tray of something from the cafeteria.”

“I’m not hungry, but I could use a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll see to it at once.”

The hours crawled by, interrupted only by brief, efficient visits from the night nurse. Some time between three and four in the morning, Danielle fell into an uneasy sleep, and awoke at eight, just as the first light of day poked into the room. At her father’s bedside, another nurse, one she hadn’t seen before, adjusted one of the IV drips and smoothed the sheet over his chest.

“He remains unchanged, signorina,” she murmured, “but I’ll be here for a while longer, if you’d like to take a break. There’s a visitors’ lounge at the end of the hall. You’ll find a light breakfast set out there, and facilities where you can freshen up.”

Danielle supposed she needed both. Her eyes felt gritty, her mouth dry as sand. She hadn’t run a comb through her hair in more than twenty-four hours and couldn’t remember the last time she’d brushed her teeth. As for eating, the last meal had been the rubber chicken served on the aircraft, somewhere over the Atlantic, and she’d barely touched it.

“I won’t be gone long,” she said, retrieving her carry-on travel bag from the corner where she’d stashed her luggage the day before. “I want to be here when Dr. Rossi makes his rounds.”

But she hadn’t anticipated that the “facilities” the nurse mentioned would include changing rooms equipped with hair dryers, and showers stocked with towels, shampoo, soap, and body lotion. She hadn’t expected the platter of fresh fruit set out on a linen tablecloth in the lounge, or the basket of warm croissants and thermos of strong, aromatic Italian coffee.

She found them all too hard to resist, so when her planned fifteen-minute break stretched to an hour, and she returned to her father’s room to discover that his doctor had been and gone, she knew she had no one but herself to blame.

Still, she was disappointed, and seeing it, the nurse said, “Dr. Rossi is aware you have arrived and wish to speak to him, Signorina Blake. He asks that you meet him in his office at four o’clock.”

Seven more hours of pacing, and imagining the worst? It was too much! “I had hoped see him much sooner.”

“It cannot be helped,” the nurse said. “A tour bus went off the road in the mountain pass just north of here, with many serious injuries to the passengers. We expect the casualties to be arriving within the hour. Dr. Rossi will be supervising his team in surgery most of the day.”

There it was again, the awestruck tone; the unspoken implication that, without the revered Dr. Rossi in charge, his staff would be helpless to save lives. Frustrated, Danielle bit back the uncharitable retort begging to be aired.

As if reading her thoughts, the nurse went on, “When your father was brought here, late in the day well over a week ago, Dr. Rossi concentrated all his energy and skill on attending to him, without regard for the inconvenience to himself or others. Regardless of the day or hour, it is always his way to be available for those most in need of his help.”

The gentle reproof struck home. She was being unreasonable, unfair, Danielle acknowledged privately. Of course the man had other patients; of course he had to prioritize. And yet, to see her father lying there, stripped of dignity, of that indomitable will which was so much a part of him, devastated her.

Not that he’d thank her for her concern. They had never been close. He wasn’t the kind to lavish warmth and affection on anyone but himself. But her mother had died when she was eleven, and he was the only family Danielle had left. After everything else she’d lost in the last year, the thought of losing him also was more than she could bear.

Turning away from the bed, she went to stand at the window. A woman sat on a bench in the courtyard below, talking to a man in a wheelchair. Something she said made him laugh. He reached for her hand. Raised it to his lips and kissed it. The obvious affection between them had Danielle choking back a sob. To be needed like that…to be loved…!

The nurse must have heard. She joined her at the window, her eyes full of concern. “If you feel up to it, there’s a footpath leading from the hospital grounds to the main part of town,” she suggested kindly. “You’ll find a map in the reception area, and a sign posted outside the front entrance, showing the way. It’s only about a twenty-minute walk, and it might do you some good to get out for a few hours. There’s nothing you can do here, except wait.”

It seemed to Danielle that she’d been waiting a lifetime already. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. Anything was better than watching the big hand on the wall clock jerk from second to second, from minute to minute. Anything was better than listening to the apprehensive thud of her own heart racing ahead of the unhurried blip and beep of the computer measuring her father’s.

Already the first ambulances were racing up to the emergency doors on the left as she came out of the building. And more would soon follow. The wail of their sirens growing closer echoed clearly in the still morning air.

Turning to the right, she set off in the opposite direction, walking briskly toward the little town of Galanio. The footpath wove from the manicured hospital grounds through a sloping meadow where tiny blue flowers grew in the grass, and ended at a bridge which spanned a bubbling stream of water so clear that it must have tumbled straight down the mountain from the snow fields. Beyond the bridge, a paved lane led directly to the center of town.

Galanio huddled between the Alps and the shore of Lake Como in a fairy-tale maze of steep, cobbled streets that opened into unexpected little piazzas and quiet parks. Splashing fountains, chic boutiques, and elegant restaurants lined the broad promenade bordering the waterfront. Magnificent old villas, their terraced gardens overflowing with flowering camellias and other spring blossoms, perched on the hillside, and spread some distance along the shores of the lake beyond the town itself.

Under any other circumstances, Danielle would have found the place enchanting. It was a town for lovers, for romance; a place she and Tom might have come for their honeymoon, if he hadn’t decided at the last minute that he’d rather marry her best friend. Instead, she was here alone, waiting for her father to open his eyes, and terribly afraid his doctor would tell her it was never going to happen.

What then? She knew what her father would say. Pull the damned plug, Danielle! Don’t let me lie here a vegetable.

But to authorize this Dr. Rossi to disconnect the machines that kept Alan Blake alive? In effect, to sign his death warrant? How could she do that?

Somehow the morning passed. At noon she stopped for lunch at a sidewalk café on the promenade. Then, hoping that a miracle had occurred during her absence, she made her way back to the hospital and her father.

Nothing had changed except for the angle of the sun creeping across the floor and striping the pale blue cover on his bed with bars of golden light. Dropping into the easy chair, she resumed her vigil until, at long last, four o’clock arrived.

She found the doctor’s suite of offices at the end of a wing on the main floor, with his name, Carlo Rossi, engraved on a small brass plaque on the door.

“Signorina Blake?” The middle-aged woman in the small outer office smiled pleasantly. “Dr. Rossi is ready to see you.”

Danielle had thought she was ready, too. From the various awed references to him, and his seniority in the hospital chain of command, she’d expected him to be an older man. Kindly, gray-haired, distinguished, and slightly built—in other words similar in appearance to the impeccably tailored maître d’ of the five-star Italian restaurant she frequented at home in Seattle.

In fact, the man rising to greet her from behind a paper-strewn desk was none of those things. In his late thirties, he possessed the fit athletic build of a cross-country skier, although the shadows beneath his eyes suggested he relied on too much strong coffee and too little sleep to get him through his long hospital shifts. But even in hospital greens, with exhaustion painting his features and his dark hair falling in disarray over his forehead, he was still the most strikingly attractive man Danielle had ever seen.

“Signorina Blake, my apologies for not being here to meet you when you first arrived.”

He had a beautiful voice, deep and hypnotically soothing with its lilting Italian intonation. And beautiful hands. His long fingers closed around hers in a grip at once gentle and sure. Slightly dazed, Danielle allowed him to lead her to one of two club chairs situated at the other end of the room, next to a wall of windows looking out on a reflecting pool surrounded by rhododendrons already in full bloom.

“Thank you for seeing me now,” she said stiffly, horrified that, with her father so dreadfully ill, she could find herself drawn to this magnetic stranger. “I understand you’ve been busy.”

“Always, I’m afraid.” He took a seat in the other chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “No sooner is one emergency taken care of than another arises. But you are not here to listen to me complain.” His eyes, a deep velvety gray trimmed with indecently long lashes, surveyed her soberly. As for his mouth…! In terms of sheer sex appeal, nothing the latest Hollywood idol could offer came even close to it. “You wish to discuss your father’s condition, yes?”

She nodded, the gravity in his voice leaving her almost hyperventilating.

“You are familiar, of course, with what happened to him? How he came to be brought here?”

“No,” she said. “All I was told was that he’d had an accident and was badly hurt.”

“He was in the mountains, snow-boarding in an out-of-bounds area, and fell down a sheer rock face.”

Snow-boarding? She shook her head, stunned. How like her father to take up a sport better suited to someone a third his age, and to break the rules when he did so. But then, Alan Blake had always believed he was a law unto himself. “I had no idea he was in Italy, let alone that he had taken up snow-boarding.”

If Carlo Rossi was surprised that she knew so little of her father’s activities, he didn’t let it show. “I’m afraid he sustained a very serious head injury,” he said.

“How serious?”

“He fractured his skull.”

“Wasn’t he wearing a safety helmet?”

“I suspect not, although given the severity of his fall, I doubt a helmet would have helped very much. All skull fractures are cause for concern, signorina, but an occipital fracture such as your father suffered, is particularly critical.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of its location.” He reached for the pad of paper on the occasional table next to him, took a pen from the breast pocket of his tunic, and drew his chair closer to hers. “The skull is made up of several bones. The largest is the parietal bone here.” He sketched rapidly and with the fluid skill of one very familiar with his subject. “The occipital bone sits immediately below it, at the base of the skull. Fractures in this vulnerable area occur as the result of what we term a ‘high energy blunt trauma,’ and are divided into three types. The first two are classified as stable. A Type 111 fracture, however, is the most severe and potentially very unstable.”

“And that’s the kind my father has?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Is that why he’s unconscious.”

“Yes. With such an injury, coma is the rule rather than the exception.” He paused and spared her a very direct look. “That’s not to say he won’t eventually come out of it…”

“I hear a ‘but,’ Dr. Rossi,” she said coolly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He flexed his fingers and expelled a long breath. Regret intensified the fatigue in his eyes, and she knew in that moment that she had yet to hear the worst. “Because of the proximity of cranial nerves,” he said, “there’s a high incidence of associated injuries.”

With every carefully chosen word, he increased her level of fear. But she’d had a lifetime’s practice at keeping her emotions in check, and it stood her in good stead now. Projecting a calm she was far from feeling, she asked, “What kind of injuries?”

“Impaired swallowing, paralysis of the vocal cords with subsequent phonation difficulties. Hemiplegia, or even quadriplegia. In layman’s terms, Signorina Blake, if your father recovers consciousness, he may be paralyzed in much the same way that he would had he suffered a massive stroke. The paralysis could extend down one, or both sides of his body.”

Alan Blake, the man who prided himself on running a marathon at age fifty-five, paralyzed? Unable to dominate the conversation at his frequent, ultrasophisticated dinner parties? Incapable of controlling his bodily functions?

Horrified by the implications, and filled with pity for the father who’d have spared little for her had their situations been reversed, Danielle spoke without thought for how her words might be interpreted. “You should have let him die! He’d be better off!”

“By whose assessment, signorina?” Carlo Rossi asked, his gray eyes suddenly as glacial as his voice. “Yours, or his?”

He thought she was cold and unfeeling, that she spoke out of selfishness. But he didn’t know her father, and trying to explain Alan Blake to a stranger would merely sound as if she was making excuses for herself. “Let me put it this way, Dr. Rossi,” she said. “Would you want to be kept alive under such conditions, trapped in a body that refused to obey you?”

“My personal preferences are irrelevant. I am committed to saving lives, not ending them. In your father’s case, I am painting a very dark picture in order to prepare you for the worst possible outcome. But there remains the slender chance that he will make a full recovery.”

“How long before you’ll know?”

Carlo Rossi raised his beautiful hands, palms up. “That I cannot say.”

“Hazard a guess, Doctor. Another week? A month?”

“I don’t second-guess God. I deal only with what I know. He could open his eyes today, tomorrow, next week or …”

“Or never?”

“Or never.” He watched her in silence a moment, then said with thinly veiled contempt, “I recognize your impatience to be done with this, Signorina Blake. You cannot put your own life on hold indefinitely. You have obligations other than those of a daughter to her father—to a husband and children, perhaps.”

“No. I’m not married.”

He curled his lip in disgust. “A lover, then? A career?”

“A career, certainly. I own a travel agency.”

“Which clearly matters more to you than your father. Why else would you wait so long to come to his bedside?”

She sat up poker-straight in the chair, and returned his glance unflinchingly. “It just so happens, Dr. Rossi, that I was on a cruise to Antarctica when this tragedy struck my father.”

“Cruise ships do not have telephones, these days? No electronic means of keeping in touch with the rest of the world?”

“Of course they do, but in this instance your sarcasm is misplaced, Doctor,” she said sharply. “Had your hospital left a message with my office staff, they would have been in touch immediately, and I’d have been here as soon as it was humanly possible. But the message was left on my home answering machine, and since I live alone…” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.