Kathleen Creighton - Undercover Mistress

I have to call Max, he thought. He’ll get me out of this crazy place. Probably get me some painkillers that work, too. I should have asked her for a phone.

Why hadn’t he, when he’d had the chance?

There’d been distractions, of course, other things going on, not the least of which was, he’d passed out cold on the bathroom floor. Lucky he hadn’t cracked his skull. Or maybe he had-from the size and tenderness of the mouse on his forehead and the way his head was pounding, it felt like a distinct possibility. But there was something else, too, something he hadn’t forgotten, but which had slipped to the back of his mind.

His name wouldn’t happen to be Max, would it?

How could she know about Max?

The question clamored in his brain like an alarm bell. He knew he needed to answer it, had to do something about it, but…he was too weak, too tired, and his head hurt too much. There was nothing he could do about Max right now-nothing he could do about anything, really.

Except…sleep.

“I’m worried about him,” Celia said. It was hard to tear her gaze away from the flushed face on the pillow in order to look at the man standing next to her, but she managed it. “I think he has a fever.”

“I think it’s safe to say he very likely does,” Doc agreed, frowning judiciously down at his patient. Together, they watched the man mutter and mumble, eyes glaring, fierce and unfocused, at nothing. After a moment, he lifted his eyebrows and drew a considering breath. “Although, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know. Fever is nature’s antibiotic, after all, and, under the circumstances, the only one we have at our disposal.” He glanced over at her, then quickly away, but not before she saw her own concern mirrored in his decidedly bloodshot eyes. “Keep a close watch on him, give him plenty of fluids, keep his head cool. If he’s still feverish in the morning, well…I guess we’ll have to think of something, won’t we.”

Celia listened to Doc’s footsteps cross the room and fade away. We both know what that “something” is, don’t we?

If the man didn’t get better soon…if infection set in…they’d have to take him to a hospital. There really would be no choice. But how would they ever explain the gunshot wound? Her whole body grew cold when she thought about the questions…the cops…the publicity…the reporters…the photographers…the rumors, the speculation. Not to mention that she and Doc were probably going to be facing criminal charges.

The man in the bed muttered something she couldn’t understand. His eyes were closed, now, and his skin had the unmistakable ruddy, velvety look of fever. Drawing a catching breath, Celia reached for the dish towel that was soaking in a panful of cold water on the floor near her feet. She squeezed out most of the water, folded the towel and laid it gently across her patient’s forehead. Nurse Suzanne couldn’t do it better, she thought, the irony of that almost making her smile.

Except, following a script, playing at being a nurse in a television daytime drama had never made her feel like this-the squeezing sensation in her chest…the tap-tapping pulse in her stomach. And she was quite sure real nurses would never allow themselves to feel this fierce protectiveness…this fervent sense that the man she was tending in some way belonged to her.

That she was responsible for him.

“I’m not going to let you die,” she whispered, as emotion filled her throat and speaking aloud became impossible. “No matter what it takes, I won’t let you die.”

The only response was more incoherent muttering. And then, suddenly and distinctly, “Don’…go…’way.”

“Don’t worry,” Celia said, her voice brusque and blurred. She brushed at her nose with the back of her hand and reached once more for the towel. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Roy woke with the sense of having escaped from the clutches of a nightmare, except he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it had been about. He knew he was lying on his side, and that he felt empty and damp. And chilly-he shivered in small pitiful fits.

But at the same time, he felt light. Almost…happy. Reluctant to open his eyes, for a time he drifted, battered but relieved, like the survivor of a raging flood washed up in quiet shallows, glad to have come safely through it, whatever it was.

Gradually, though, it came to him that he was going to have to do something about the various discomforts intruding on that strange, contradictory sense of well-being. Clammy sheets, for one thing. For another, the fact that he was so damn thirsty. Obviously, if he was going to do something about those things, he was going to have to open his eyes.

It took more effort than he thought he remembered from all the other times he’d done it, but he got the job done. Then for a minute or two, he thought he must still be dreaming-either that, or there was something seriously wrong with his vision. He blinked a couple of times and tried to focus, and when that didn’t make things clearer, closed one eye. Nope-still there.

It was a face-no doubt about it. About four inches from his. Probably the most beautiful face he’d ever seen in his life, and one he’d seen before. But not like this. No, not at all like this-eyes closed…lips apart, but only slightly…skin wearing the soft pink flush of sleep. One hand, loosely curled, pillowed her cheek, in the way of very small children.

He must have moved…or maybe she felt, somehow, the intensity of his gaze. Whatever the reason, her eyes opened so suddenly he gave a small involuntary jerk, and for a long moment she stared in silence at the center of his face-at his nose, to be precise-before her gaze flicked up and connected with his.

He found he was holding his breath, his mind flashing back to a time in his past too distant to register as real memories…fragmented impressions of himself trudging through knee-deep cool-moist leaves while holding tightly to a large warm hand…a gruff voice softly warning…and then-a vision in dappled sunlight so miraculous it had remained intact and pristine in the attic of his mind for all these years-a doe and her twin fawns…new-born, damp and spindle-legged still. His heart pounded now as it had then, and he didn’t breathe, lest even that stirring of air frighten her away.

The moment passed-they could hardly have stayed that way forever. Tiny muscles around her eyes and mouth…across her forehead and the bridge of her nose…quivered and stirred in a waking-up way. He began to breathe again…carefully…wondering whether she was about to smile at him or do what she’d done last time she’d awakened to find herself eyeball-to-eyeball with him.

Figuring he’d just as well get the suspense over with, he cleared his throat and gruffly murmured, “We’re gonna have to quit meeting like this.”

He could have counted to four…maybe five…while she stared at him without moving, as if he hadn’t spoken a word. Then her eyes widened, and he felt her breath swirl across his skin. The hand that had pillowed her cheek uncurled, her fingertips extended slowly and touched his lips, as if, he thought, she expected him to turn out to be a mirage after all. Evidently assured by her senses that he wasn’t, she lifted her head, then her shoulders, propping herself on one elbow while she brought her other hand to his face.

He felt her warm hand cuddle his cheek, then lie long and gentle across his forehead. He was certain nothing in his life’s experience thus far had ever felt so good-though it did occur to him there were possibilities that might grow from this moment that would feel even better yet. It felt so good he didn’t want that feeling to end, and only the cocoon of clammy bedding he was imprisoned in kept him from putting his hand over hers to hold it where it was.

“Your fever’s gone-I can’t believe it,” she said. The husky rasp of her voice sounded unbelievably sexy to him.

“That would explain why everything’s soaking wet,” he said with a smile to let her know he didn’t hold her responsible.

“It is?” She scrambled up onto her knees and began tugging at the blankets. “Oh God-you are. Here-let me…get those-”

“Hey-not so fast,” he protested in a desperate and feeble croak while trying to hold on to at least some of the blankets with his one good arm-that is to say, the one not folded like a broken wing against his bandaged side. “I’m naked, here.”

It occurred to him that she was fully clothed-unlike the last time he’d awakened to find her sharing his bed-in sweats and a tank top.

She sat back on her heels and regarded him with amusement, the hands that had felt so good on his cheek and forehead now folded in her lap. “You really are feeling better. Who do you think found you yesterday when you passed out on the floor? Who got you back to bed? You didn’t mind if I saw you naked then.”

“Yeah, well, I was pretty out of it then,” he muttered darkly, looking around him. “What the hell happened to my clothes?” Failing to spot anything that looked familiar, he pulled a clammy sheet around his shoulders. Dammit, he was shivering again. Like a little kid. He wondered if the cold was going to affect him like this from now on.

“What clothes? When I found you all you had on was a pair of shorts. Doc took them off of you. They were full of sand. He probably threw them away.”

She scrambled backward off the bed and stood for a moment looking down at him and combing her hair back from her face with her fingers. In spite of the tumbled hair and sleep-flushed cheeks, it was clear to him the sexy sweetness of her waking up was already history. Fully alert now, she had that odd awareness about her again-that indefinable edginess that made his jaws tense and his insides quiver with wordless warnings.

He didn’t know why, but in spite of the fact that she’d saved his life, he didn’t in any way trust her. Not, as they used to say in the part of the world he’d been raised in, any farther than he could throw a bull by the tail.

Frowning and nibbling ingenuously at her lower lip, she said, “I’ll see if I can find you something to put on, okay?” She moved to the door, where she turned and pointed at him like an empress issuing edicts. “Don’t go anywhere. If you need to…whatever, just hold it until I get back, okay? I don’t want you keeling over again. Promise.”

“Okay, okay, I promise.” He raised himself on one elbow to call after her, “No flowered bathrobes, you hear? And I’m not wearing ruffles, either.”

She looked at him over her shoulder, rolling her eyes in an as if kind of way. “That is so TV sitcom, don’t you think?”

She went out, leaving Roy with silent laughter bumping against the sore places that still lurked through his insides.

Sweet, sexy or siren, he thought, the woman did know how to stir a man’s juices and kindle fires where, by rights, there oughtn’t to have been any fuel left to burn. While he still felt that lightness, that sense of well-being he’d woken up with, now he wondered how much of it was due to the fact that he’d fought a bare-knuckle brawl with death and won, and how much to the predictable effect a sexy and beautiful woman had on him.

One thing he did know. He’d lost-and was continuing to lose-precious time.

I have to call Max.

He was combing the room with his eyes for some evidence of a phone and trying to assess the odds he’d keel over if he got up to look for one when Celia came back.

“I found some sweats,” she announced as she sailed into the room, trailing articles of clothing from both arms like a department store sales clerk. “They’re going to be short on you, I’m sure. I don’t care if you cut them off, so you don’t go around looking like Alice in Wonderland after she nibbled the wrong cookie.” She broke off, no doubt having noticed the fact that he was sitting upright and tense, with a frustrated light in his eyes. “What is it? Is something-”

Then, evidently sure she knew the answer: “Oh-duh. You need to use the bathroom-right. Do you need me to help you?”

Roy winced. “Lady, do you have any idea what it does to a grown man’s pride to be asked that kind of question by a beautiful woman? Makes me feel about two years old.”

“Sorry,” she said, unrepentant, this time letting the compliment slip by as if it were no more than her due. She handed him the sweats. They were baby blue, with UCLA embroidered across the shirt in yellow script. “Here you are, then. If you need me for anything, holler.” She turned on her heel and headed for the door.

Damn. “Wait-” So much for his masculine pride.