The Italian Doctor's Mistress

“Not at all. However, I think it would be unwise for you to do the same thing again tonight.”

“Why is that?”

“You need rest—proper rest, in a bed,” he added firmly, anticipating the objection she was about to voice.

She allowed herself the merest shake of her head. “No point. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

“I will prescribe something to ensure that you do. Which hotel are you staying at?”

“Hotel?” Blankly she repeated the word as if he’d spoken it in foreign tongues far beyond her understanding. “I came straight here from the airport.”

“I suspected as much.” He closed his hand over her shoulder. She felt fragile as spun glass under the fine wool of her jacket. “We must do something about that.”

“We?” She spared him a brief, indignant look. “Since when have you been part of the equation?”

“Since I came to see you’re utterly worn out and running on emotional overload. It’s to my shame that I didn’t realize it sooner but now that I have, I consider it my responsibility to remedy the situation. After all, signorina, it would serve no useful purpose for you to be hospitalized, along with your father.”

Wearily, she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “I feel as if I’ve been here for days, yet it’s been barely twenty-four hours.”

“Time drags when one is waiting for a miracle.” He took her hand and drew her out of the chair. “Come. I’ll show you a quiet guest house not too far away from the hospital, and little known to the tourists. You’ll be able to rest comfortably there.”

She swayed on her feet and he reached for her, afraid she might fall. She sagged against him and for a second or two he held her, intoxicated by the fragrance of her hair, and unaccountably moved by her frailty. “I don’t need a guest house,” she muttered. “I prefer to remain here.”

Reminding himself that his interest in her was purely professional, he said, “I’m not giving you a choice. Is that all that you brought with you?”

She glanced at the small suitcase and carry-on bag heaped in the corner with her purse, and nodded dully. “Yes.”

He steadied her with an arm around her waist, and slung the bag over the raised towing handle of the suitcase. “You travel light, for a woman,” he remarked, steering her down the hall to the side entrance that gave onto the staff parking area. “Most women I know require twice as much luggage when they make a journey.”

“I left home in a hurry. There wasn’t time to pack anything more than a few essentials.”

“No, of course not.”

The sun lay warm on his car, leaving the interior cosy as a nest. She sank into the passenger seat, let out a sigh, and was asleep before he’d driven a hundred meters. In repose, her face was tranquil, her mouth softly vulnerable. Her lashes were long and fine, her brows delicately arched.

She looked nothing like her father. Even though he was comatose, Alan Blake’s face betrayed a tough strength not found in his daughter’s, and once again Carlo found himself wondering what really lay beneath that cool facade she presented to the world.

Situated in its own well-kept gardens, L’Albergo di Camellia stood at the end of a quiet road bordered on one side by the lake, and on the other by one of the town’s many parks. The proprietors, Luigi and Stella Colombo, knew him well. Several years before, he’d successfully operated on Stella’s mother for a brain aneurysm, thereby saving her life and earning their lasting gratitude.

“We have just the room,” Stella said, when he explained the situation. “Upstairs, at the back of the house, with a view to the mountains and the water. Very peaceful, Dr. Rossi. Just what your lady needs at such a time. Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of her.”

It was what he wanted to hear. His patients were his primary concern, and for them he needed a clear head, a steady hand. Becoming overly involved with their relatives at any level was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

Returning to the car, he opened the passenger door and shook Danielle Blake gently. “We have arrived, signorina.”

Her head lolled to one side, exposing the creamy skin of her neck. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, murmured something indistinguishable, and lapsed into sleep again. He wondered how she would taste, were he to touch his tongue to her mouth, and recoiled in disgust at the impropriety of such a notion.

“Wake up, Danielle!” he said sharply, shaking her more forcefully this time.

Her lashes fluttered and he found himself gazing into the depths of eyes so green and limpid, he could have drowned in them. Another outlandish and irrelevant observation, he decided—not to mention entirely inappropriate.

Her mouth curved in the beginning of a smile. “Hi,” she whispered, exhaling the greeting on a sigh.

The way she looked at him, the way she spoke, just so might a woman greet her lover, the morning after a long night of passion. With soft, dreamy pleasure. Understandable enough, he supposed, since she was clearly disoriented.

But his response—the tightening in his groin, the sudden heat licking low in his belly? That he found both inexplicable and intolerable. “Get out of the car,” he said brusquely. “You have a bed waiting, if you need more sleep.”

She blinked, and he knew from the way her cool, impenetrable mask slipped faultlessly into place, that she was all at once fully aware of where she was, and why, and with whom. She shot up straight in the seat, stuck her elegant little nose in the air, and fought to unbuckle her safety belt.

Impatient with her fumbling, he pushed her hand aside, unsnapped the belt himself, and all but hauled her out of the seat. He wanted rid of her. Now. He’d wasted enough time on a woman who’d yet to shed a tear for her dying father. “I don’t have all day, signorina. I suggest that, in future, you pay closer attention to the task at hand, instead of staring imperiously into space.”

“If this is any example of your bedside manner, it’s small wonder my father prefers to remain comatose,” she returned smartly. “Let me remind you it was your idea that I should stay in a hotel, your idea to decide which one, and your idea to drive me here. If I’ve inconvenienced you, stick the blame where it belongs. On you.”

It took considerable willpower for him to ignore the silken rustle of hidden underthings, and even greater self-command to drag his fascinated gaze away from the flash of sleek thigh as she swung her legs out of the car. But nothing could prevent the crackling awareness when, her feet having found the ground, she slithered past him, close enough for her body heat to reach out and touch him.

The resulting charge bolted the length of him, sharp and so intense that his scalp tingled. Static electricity, he told himself, but knew it was no such thing. Not once in the five years since Karina died had he experienced so volatile a reaction to a woman. That it should happen now, with one so much the antithesis of all she’d been, was an insult to the memory of the wife he’d adored.

Forcing himself to return in full measure the indifference emanating from Danielle Blake, he lifted her luggage from the trunk and carried it into the small lobby of the hotel, where the Colombos waited to greet their guest.

“Signorina, these are your hosts, Stella and Luigi Colombo,” he told her. “I will leave you in their very capable hands.”

All cool, unflappable reserve, she said, “Thank you. I’m sure I’ll do very well with them.”

She didn’t need to add, Unlike with you! Her body language said it for her, and he forcibly suppressed another urge to grab her by her slender shoulders and shake her. What was it about her, he wondered, that brought about such unreasonableness in him? How, on such short, unfavorable acquaintance, had she managed to get so thoroughly under his skin?

Furious with her and even more so with himself, he climbed into his car and drove away. Initially, he’d planned to go straight home, but a restlessness coursed through him, so instead of turning left at the main shoreline road, he took a right and headed toward the Alps. The Lamborghini responded to his mood, taking the hairpin bends with contemptuous ease. Half an hour later when he pulled over and stepped out of the vehicle at a lookout point, snow curled around his ankles and the crisp mountain air stung his eyes.

Far below, the lake lay shadowed with dusk. In town, street lamps sprang alive along the promenade. Lights shone at the windows of the houses as people gathered for the evening meal.

At his own villa, his daughter waited for him to come home, eager to show him the new kittens, to share other news of her day. Calandria would be putting the finishing touches to dinner.

What was he thinking of, to squander precious family time in such a fashion, and all because Danielle Blake, a complete stranger, happened to come briefly into his life? Why was he allowing her to invade his thoughts, to tempt him beyond all reason? It wasn’t as if he was short of female companionship. He didn’t live like a priest. His sexual needs were very well taken care of.

Despising his weakness, he filled his lungs with a blast of pure, bracing air, and held it a punishing length of time. When, finally, he released it, he let go of the turmoil, too. The aberration, or whatever it was that had possessed him, had passed. He was himself again.

Or so he liked to believe.

Burrowed under a cloud-soft duvet, Danielle slept for fifteen hours straight. But not dreamlessly. His voice flowed through the warm, comforting blackness, imprinting itself so thoroughly that its deep, exotic lilt still echoed in her mind when she awoke the next morning. And nothing—not the brilliant sun streaming in the window, nor the bright colors of the flowers in the garden below, nor the sharp, clear outline of the snowcapped Alps—could erase his dark, beautiful face from the picture screen of her memory. He had remained with her all night long, and was with her still.

He did not like her, and she knew she should not care, yet she yearned for his approval. Yesterday, when she’d opened her eyes in his car and seen him looming over her, she’d thought he was going to kiss her. If he’d tried, she’d have let him. He made her aware that she was a woman, with all the needs and wants that implied, even though she’d sworn off men, lost faith in love, and decided sex was an overrated waste of time.

Now, how delusional was all that?

Amused by such contrariness, she threw back the covers, marched into the adjoining bathroom, and stepped under the hot shower where she proceeded to scrub away the last remnants of sleep, and the nonsense that went with it. She was in Italy for one reason only: to act as advocate for her father until such time as he was able to act for himself. Her falling victim to a pointless infatuation with his doctor simply wasn’t an option.

She’d just finished drying her hair when Stella arrived at her door with a loaded tray. “Buon giorno, signorina! I heard you were awake and thought you might enjoy some coffee and a little fruit. The sun is warm on the balcony outside your French doors, if you’d like to sit there, and I will be pleased to serve you an early lunch a little later, if you wish.”

“Grazie, Stella,” Danielle said, standing back to let her enter the room. “I certainly do appreciate the coffee, but I’ll probably eat lunch in town. I packed in a hurry and have a little shopping to do.”