The Consultant's Italian Knight. Maggie Kingsley
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Название: The Consultant's Italian Knight
Автор: Maggie Kingsley
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
Серия: Mills & Boon Medical
isbn: 9781474066389
isbn:
‘Shouldn’t you be going?’ she said sweetly. ‘You don’t want to be late for your over forties reunion.’
‘Oh, nice one,’ Mario said, his face lighting up with genuine amusement. ‘She’s just kidding,’ he continued, flashing a smile across at Terri. ‘She knows very well that I’m only thirty-eight, but she’s right about me having to go.’
‘Must you?’ Terri protested, and he nodded.
‘Afraid so. See you around, Kate,’ he added, and before she could reply he’d gone.
‘Wow, and double wow!’ Terri exclaimed. ‘Where have you been hiding him?’
‘He’s a friend of mine from…from med school,’ Kate replied, improvising wildly. ‘I haven’t seen him for years.’
‘So, you two aren’t an item, then?’
‘No, we’re not,’ Kate said firmly, and Terri looked disappointed.
‘Pity,’ she murmured.
Not from where I’m standing, it isn’t, Kate thought as her pager went off, and she reached into her white coat to answer it. OK, so she couldn’t deny that every time Mario Volante had smiled that particular smile she’d felt odd, and hot, and totally unlike herself, but he was also rude, opinionated and arrogant, and any one of those three traits was a complete turn-off. Plus, he was also probably married, which made him a complete louse for chatting up strange women in cupboards.
‘You’ll never see him again, Kate,’ she murmured as she walked down the treatment room, ‘and you should thank your lucky stars you won’t.’
‘Did you manage to get anything out of the receptionist?’ Mario asked, pulling the parking ticket off his car windscreen, and tossing it indifferently onto the road.
‘Just the standard you’re-not-next-of-kin garbage,’ Ralph replied as he got into the car. ‘The one thing I did find out, though, was that your auburn-haired doctor is the consultant.’
‘Kate Kennedy’s head of A and E?’ Mario frowned. ‘Bright lady.’
‘Pretty, too,’ Ralph declared, shooting Mario a meaningful glance, but Mario ignored him.
‘Take a look at this,’ he said instead, extracting his notebook from his pocket and throwing it into Ralph’s lap. ‘Hamilton died before I could speak to him, but he told Dr Kennedy some very interesting things.’
‘Interesting?’ Ralph repeated as he read through the pages. ‘Mario, this is dynamite. Did you tell Dr Kennedy that what she heard could send down three of the biggest drug dealers in Aberdeen for a very long stretch, plus identify possible drug outlets?’
‘It’s better she doesn’t know,’ Mario said. ‘It’s better nobody knows for the moment.’
‘You think she’ll keep her mouth shut?’
‘I told her to, so we can but hope.’
‘Then, if your conversation with her was private—and I’m sure it was,’ Ralph declared, ‘we should be OK.’
Mario had a flashback recollection of himself crushed up against Kate Kennedy in the store cupboard, of her hair smelling of flowers and hot summer evenings, and her full breasts gently rising and falling against his arm, and stamped on the image immediately.
‘The trouble is, her conversation with Hamilton wasn’t private,’ he observed. ‘Hospital cubicle curtains are notoriously thin, and you know as well as I do that the fixers have their spies everywhere which means I’m going to have to keep an eye on Dr Kennedy.’
‘Purely professionally, of course,’ Ralph said slyly, and Mario gave him a hard stare.
For sure, it had been fun to keep wrong-footing Kate Kennedy, and to watch her large grey eyes grow more and more flustered by the minute, but it had just been a bit of fun at the end of a long and tiring day. He had no intention of taking it further. Not personally at any rate.
‘Ralph, all I want from Kate Kennedy is facts, and I want them while she’s still alive to give them to me.’
‘You think our lady doctor could be in trouble?’ Ralph asked as they pulled away from the kerb.
Mario executed a fast U-turn in front of the hospital, completely ignoring the angry cacophony of car horns that greeted his manoeuvre, and nodded.
‘Yup, I do.’
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