“Your father showered you with things,” Alex said. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat, then leaned against the doorjamb.
“Like what?”
“Oh, God, Marla, cars, stocks, bonds, a building. You name it, he gave it to you.”
“That’s the problem, Alex, I can’t name anything. Except the ring.” She rubbed her neck and rotated her head. God, she was tired. “As I said before, I want to see my father,” she said.
“I know, I know,” he snapped. “You don’t have to nag me. I’ll arrange for you to meet the old man in a couple of days, okay, but let’s not make any plans tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll sort things out.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
“I imagine you will,” he said without a trace of humor, then went into his room. Marla was too exhausted to come up with a response. She waited until she heard his door close, then tore off the rest of her clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Despite the horror of the night, despite her conflicted feelings about Nick, despite the feeling that there was something very, very wrong here, she was asleep the second her head hit the pillow.
Nick finished his drink, stripped to his boxers and flopped onto the bed. Closing his eyes, he willed himself to sleep, but images of Marla, some of the younger woman he’d known so intimately, others of this new woman, older, but warmer, a woman without a memory, without a past, a woman who still responded to him, haunted him.
Had someone tried to kill her? But who? Why? And why did Alex want him living here in the house so badly? This all felt wrong, as if he were stepping into a carefully laid trap.
Why did Marla look so much like Pam Delacroix—the mystery woman. Friend? Acquaintance? Who the hell was she?
He heard the door to the suite shutting and then footsteps retreat down the hallway. Probably nothing more than Alex needing a drink just as he had. But he sat up in bed, instantly wary. Hadn’t Marla claimed she’d felt someone near her bed? Hovering over her? Someone threatening to kill her?
Quietly Nick rolled to his feet, crossed the room and opened the door to the hall just as the elevator door closed. Heart pounding, he walked into the unlocked suite and to Marla’s room where she, exhausted, lay sleeping as if dead to the world. Clenching his jaw so tightly it ached, he resisted the urge to touch her cheek. Gritting his teeth, he checked on the baby and even cracked the door to Cissy’s room when he heard the soft purr of an engine and the clunk of the garage door opener being activated.
Someone was leaving? At this hour of the night?
Nick walked to the window of Cissy’s room and saw the taillights of Alex’s Jaguar flash brilliantly as he paused until the electronic gates opened. The Jag shot through and disappeared down the hill. Nick checked his watch. It was after one-thirty in the morning.
Where the hell was his brother off to?
To meet someone.
But who? And why?
It has something to do with Marla.
The next few days passed in a fog of pills and pain as Marla’s atrophied muscles began to work. Tom, as Alex had told her, was quick with the medication, or a tray of pulverized food that she could barely swallow and every time her mind began to clear, she would become drowsy again. The shades were drawn, one dim lamp set on low, the room, she thought dazedly, seeming more like a death chamber than a bedroom.
She didn’t know night from day, had no strength, could barely move.
But she sensed this wasn’t right. Every time she began to think clearly, to gain some strength, the mental fog rolled in again and she was lost. Asea. Rolling in and out of consciousness and feeling a bleak, heavy despair.
“No more pills,” she’d insisted groggily on the second, or was it the third day? “I’m . . . I’m too out of it.”
“But you’re healing.” Tom was helping her eat some kind of pea soup.
“No . . . there’s something wrong . . .” But he insisted and when she complained to Alex, he’d stroked her head and told her she was getting so much better. Nonetheless she was dazed, drugged, and aside from getting up to use the toilet, she’d been nearly confined to her bed.
“I’m worried about her,” Eugenia had said when she’d come in to visit with the baby. Marla’s arms ached to hold little James, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as sit up. “Shouldn’t we call Dr. Robertson?”
“I’ve already talked to Phil,” Alex said. “This is normal.”
“I don’t think so.” Eugenia shook her coiffed head and Marla tried to say something only to nearly fall asleep again.
“Marla’s exhausted, needs rest, so Phil prescribed pain pills and a mild sedative, just to make sure that she’s strong again.”
“But—”
“Shh. Let her sleep.” Alex had shepherded his mother out of the room, but Marla heard him say, “I’ve talked to Phil. Her reaction is fairly normal, but he’s changing Marla’s pain medication to something that won’t make her quite as groggy.”