By the time Honey came that night Rachel had long since controlled herself, and a fragrant squash casserole greeted Honey’s nose when she came in the door. “Umm, that smells good,” she breathed. “How’s our patient?”
Rachel shook her head. “Not much change. He’s moving around a little, fretting, when the fever gets high, but he hasn’t woken up yet.”
She had just twitched the sheet up over him again a few moments before, so he was covered when Honey went in to check on him. “He’s doing good,” Honey murmured after looking at his wounds and checking his eyes. “Let him sleep. It’s just what he needs.”
“It’s been so long,” Rachel murmured.
“He went through a lot. The body has a way of taking over and getting what it needs.”
It didn’t take much to get Honey to stay for dinner. The casserole, fresh peas and sliced tomatoes did a lot of convincing by themselves. “This is a lot better than the hamburger I’d planned on,” Honey said, waving her fork for emphasis. “I think our boy is out of danger, so I wasn’t going to come by tomorrow, but if you’re cooking again I can always change my mind.”
It felt good to laugh, after the tension of the past two days. Rachel’s eyes sparkled. “This is the first meal I’ve cooked since it got so hot. I’ve been living on fruit and cereal and salad, anything to keep from turning on the stove. But since I’ve been running the air conditioning to keep him comfortable, tonight cooking didn’t seem so bad.”
After they’d cleaned the kitchen Honey checked her watch. “It’s not too late. I think I’ll stop by Rafferty’s and check on one of his mares that’s due to foal. It may save a trip back out as soon as I get home. Thanks for feeding me.”
“Anytime. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
Honey regarded her for a moment, her freckled face serious. “You’d have managed, wouldn’t you? You’re one of those people who do what has to be done, without fussing about it. That guy in there owes you a lot.”
Rachel didn’t know if he would see it that way or not. When she came out of the bathroom after showering she watched him intently, willing him to open his eyes and speak to her, to give her some hint of the man behind those closed lids. Every hour that passed increased the mystery that surrounded him. Who was he? Who had shot him, and why? Why was there nothing being mentioned in the news media that could apply to him? An abandoned boat found floating in the Gulf or washed up on shore would have made the news. A missing person’s report would have been in the newspaper. A drug bust, a prison escape, anything, but there had been nothing that would explain why he had washed in with the tide.
She got into bed beside him, hoping for at least a few hours of sleep. He was resting better, she thought, the fever not climbing quite as high as it had at first. Her fingers closed over his arm, and she slept.
The shaking of the bed awoke her, startling her out of a sound sleep. She sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding. He was moving restlessly, trying to kick the cover away from him with only his right leg, and finally he succeeded in getting most of it off him. His skin was hot, and he was breathing too heavily. A glance at the clock told her that it was well past the time he should have had more aspirin.
She turned on the lamp beside the bed and went into the bathroom to get the aspirin and fresh water. He swallowed without fuss this time, and Rachel got him to drink almost a full glass of water. She eased his head down onto the pillow again, her fingers slow to move from his hair.
Daydreaming again! She jerked herself sharply away from the dangerous direction those daydreams were taking. He needed to be cooled down, and she was standing there fantasizing about him. Disgusted with herself, she wet a washcloth and bent over him, slowly wiping his torso with the cool cloth.
A hand touched her breast. She froze, her eyes widening. Her nightgown was loose and sleeveless, with a scooped neckline that had fallen well away from her body when she bent over him. His right hand moved slowly inside the neckline, and he brushed the backs of his lean, strong fingers insistently over her nipple, back and forth, until the small bud of flesh tightened and Rachel had to close her eyes at the sharp, unexpected pleasure. Then his hand moved lower, so slowly that her breath halted in her chest, stroking over the velvet underside of her breast. “Pretty,” he murmured, his voice deep, the single word slurred.
The word echoed sharply in Rachel’s mind, and her head jerked around, her eyes opening. He was awake! For a moment she stared into half-opened eyes that were so black it was as if light drowned in them; then his lashes slowly dropped and he was asleep again, his hand falling away from her breast.
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She was so shaken that she could barely move. Her flesh still burned from his touch, and that instant when she had stared into his eyes was a moment that was frozen in time, so imprinted on her memory that she felt branded by his glance. Black eyes, blacker than night, without any hint of brown. They had been hazy with fever and pain, but he had seen something he liked and reached out for it. Looking down, she saw that the gaping neckline of the loose, comfortable cotton shift left her breasts completely exposed to his view, and his touch; she had unwittingly invited both.
Her hands trembled as she automatically continued wiping him down with the cool cloth. Her senses were reeling, her mind scrambling to adjust to the fact that he had been awake, that he had spoken, even if it had been only one word. Somehow during the long two days when he had lain motionless, even though she had longed for him to wake, she had stopped expecting him to. She had taken care of him as totally as one would an infant, and now she was as startled as if an infant had suddenly spoken. But he was no infant; he was a man. All man, if the frank appreciation in that single slurred word was any measurement. “Pretty,” he’d said, and her cheeks heated.
Then the implications of that single word hit her, and she jerked upright. He was American! If he’d been anything else the first word he spoke, when he was only half-conscious and burning with fever, would have been in his native language. But that one word had been in English, and the accent, though slurred, had definitely been American. Part of the slur could have come from a natural accent, a southern or western drawl.
American. She wondered at the heritage that had given him his dark coloring, Italian or Arabic, Hungarian or American Indian, maybe even Black Irish? Spanish? Tartar? The high, chiseled cheekbones and thin, hawk-bridged nose could have come from any of those bloodlines, but he was definitely from the huge American melting pot.
Her heart was still hammering in her chest with excitement. Even after she had emptied the bowl of water, turned out the lamp and crawled into bed beside him, she was quivering and unable to sleep. He had opened his eyes and spoken to her, had moved voluntarily. He was recovering! A burden lifted from her shoulders with the knowledge.
She turned on her side and looked at him, barely able to see the outline of his profile in the darkness of the room, but every pore in her skin sensed his nearness. He was warm and alive, and an odd mixture of pain and ecstasy swelled inside her, because somehow he had become important to her, so important that the tenor of her existence had been irrevocably altered. Even when he left, as practicality told her he must, she would never be the same again. Diamond Bay had given him to her, a strange gift from the turquoise waters. She reached out and trailed her fingers lightly down his muscled arm, then withdrew her touch, because the feel of his skin made her heart lurch again. He had come from the sea, but it was she who had suffered the sea change.
CHAPTER FOUR
“HE’S DEAD, I’M telling you.”
A slim man, with graying brown hair and a narrow, intense face that belied the self-imposed calmness and control of his manner, gave the speaker a look of contemptuous amusement. “Do you think we can afford to assume that, Ellis? We have found nothing—I repeat, nothing—to assure us of his death.”
Tod Ellis narrowed his eyes. “There’s no way he could’ve survived. That boat went up like a fuel tank.”
An elegant red-haired woman had been silently listening to the two, and now she leaned forward to put out a cigarette. “And the report from one of the men that he saw something, or someone, go over the side?”
Ellis flushed angrily. These two had deferred to him when it came to setting up the ambush, but now they were treating him like a rank amateur. He didn’t like it; he was far from an amateur, and they had damned well needed him when they were after Sabin. The plan hadn’t worked out exactly as they’d wanted, but Sabin hadn’t escaped, and that was the most important thing. If they had thought it would be easy to capture him, then they were fools, at best. “Even if he got into the water,” he said patiently, “he was wounded. We saw him get hit. We were miles out. There’s no way he could have gotten to shore. He either drowned, or a shark got him. Why take the chance on drawing attention to ourselves by searching for him?”