The Italian Doctor’s Mistress by Catherine Spencer

Author:Catherine Spencer
Format: mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2005-05-06T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

IF THEY hadn’t happened to arrive at the hospital to find various medical personnel in her father’s room, Carlo wouldn’t have left Danielle to wait in the visitors’ lounge. And if, having done that, he’d not left the lounge door ajar, she’d never have overheard the conversation taking place in the corridor outside. But both incidents did occur, and as a result, a day that had begun quietly, then brimmed with unexpected sweetness, turned sour.

At first, Danielle didn’t pay much mind, partly because the men in question were speaking Italian, and also because they kept their voices reasonably low. But the repeated mention of Carlo’s name eventually caught her attention, especially when it was mentioned in conjunction with la donna americana, and Il Ristorante Lorenzo.

Perturbed, she hobbled across the room and popped her head around the door. Not ten feet away, three interns stood at a water cooler, and one of them she instantly recognized as the young man she’d noticed sitting behind her and Carlo at lunch.

Now wearing hospital greens like his colleagues, he was regaling them with an account that left them sniggering, and once again, Danielle didn’t need an interpreter to tell her why. What she and Carlo had fondly believed to be a discreet rendezvous, had been witnessed down to the last detail, and was already being planted on the hospital grapevine.

How many people would hear the story by evening, and how much it would be embellished in the telling, made her shudder. She’d had enough of being made to look a fool, but more than that, she cared a great deal that Carlo should be made a laughingstock also.

That that would happen, Danielle had little doubt. Zarah Brunelli had made specific reference to just such a development, during her Saturday night tirade.

You have no right, she’d declared, to prey upon Dr. Rossi’s sensibilities. He cannot afford the complications you bring to his life. By staying here, you compromise his integrity. It is a well-established rule in our hospital that, under no circumstances, do staff members engage in personal relationships with patients.

Offended by the woman’s presumption, Danielle had replied, Carlo’s a grown man. I hardly think he needs you or anyone else to intercede on his behalf.

But, You know nothing about him, Zarah had snapped. If you did, you’d be well aware that he serves his own interests last. You take advantage of his generosity and care nothing for what it might cost him.

The truth of her words now came home to roost with a disturbing vengeance. Utterly mortified, Danielle’s first reaction was to slink back into the lounge and ignore the unpleasant scene being played out in the hall. Hers, though, was not the name others would remember a month from now. Carlo was the one who’d pay the price.

She might not be able to reverse the damage already done, she realized, but at the very least, she had an obligation to try to contain it. Bolstered by a surge of righteous indignation, she

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