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      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