Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  Despite the nasty bruise on the right side of his jaw and inky smudges beneath his slate-gray eyes, Gage’s face looked dreadfully pale and drawn. He didn’t say anything, he just stared at Eslin as if he’d never seen her before or thought that he never would again. She wished Doc were here to see him like this and that Gage would say something. Anything.

  “All things considered, not too bad.”

  His voice was so low, so raw with pain, and his lips moved so imperceptibly, that for a moment Eslin wasn’t even sure he’d spoken. She thought she’d heard it inside her head until the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

  “How are you?”

  “Oh—fine,” she answered, not at all surprised that her voice shook a little. “I just thought I’d come up and say hello before you left.”

  “Come up?” he echoed.

  “I work here—downstairs in the library.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re a medical librarian.”

  Just the barest hint of sarcasm tinged his reply, but it was enough to make her wish she’d taken her regular coffee break instead of coming up here. He was still staring at her, but now he was smiling.

  “Could you give me a hand?” he asked.

  “Of course.” Eslin came forward, her maroon print skirt rustling around her knees. “What do you need?”

  You—desperately, he wanted to tell her, but instead raised his left arm and winced again as he shifted himself around on the bed to face her. “Literally another hand. My ever-thoughtful brother brought me a button-down shirt.”

  “Ohhh—” Eslin’s breath caught at the sight of the thick strips of tape wrapped around his rib cage.

  The bruise on his jaw paled in comparison to the ugly purple contusions on his dark-haired torso. Sympathetic tears sprang to her eyes—oh, God, was it going to hurt to take that tape off. She wondered if they’d shaved his chest beneath it, then realized, as she felt herself blush, that she was staring at his well-muscled body and the gold neck-chain lying between his collarbones.

  Watching Eslin’s eyes widen and her face turn scarlet, Gage wished he’d remembered how disgusted he’d felt earlier when he’d viewed his battered body in the bathroom mirror. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I’ll buzz the nurse.”

  “No, it’s all right,” she said as she walked over to him and tried to smile. “I’ve just never seen so many bruises on one person.”

  It was probably the truth, but it didn’t account for the flush still pinking her cheeks or the fact that she didn’t know what to do with her eyes. He wondered, as he glanced down at her slim yet shapely legs, why he’d ever thought tall women were sexy.

  The quick once-over he gave her told Eslin she hadn’t fooled him. Was she that transparent, or had he read her thoughts?

  Find out, she urged herself, that’s the reason you came.

  She decided to test him by concentrating on a question that she had no intention of asking him out loud—with only one arm, how had he managed to zip himself into his jeans? Steadfastly, she refused to think about his muscular chest. She would have preferred not to look at it, either, but that was impossible. She had to as she raised her hands to his misbuttoned windowpane check shirt. It was pale-blue and mauve with a thin, pale charcoal line through it that nearly matched the color of his eyes.

  Don’t think about his eyes, and pretend that you don’t know he’s looking at your breasts, she told herself. In all fairness, where else could he look, but the thought didn’t help much. She was breathing rapidly, her heart was pounding, and she could feel the warmth radiating from his body. Think about the question, she reminded herself, concentrate on the question.

  “You’ve fastened these wrong,” Eslin told him, amazed at the steadiness of her voice as she undid the top three buttons.

  “I’m not surprised,” he murmured, as she took a step closer to get a better grip on the buttons.

  He could smell her perfume now. It was the same scent she’d worn Saturday night, the same spicy, flowery mix that made him feel lightheaded and stirred the ache deep inside him. Oh, God, how he wanted her.

  Come closer, his eyes begged, but Eslin stayed put. Sometime yesterday afternoon while all she’d been able to think about was how good it had felt despite the rain and the cold to be in his arms, she’d also realized that Gage’s unchanneled psychic powers, his anger and his grief, made him a walking keg of emotional dynamite with a quickly burning fuse. She realized, too, as she gazed into his eyes and felt her heart quail in her chest, that he wanted her—but she suspected that beyond wanting her to find Ganymede, his desire for her was psychical rather than emotional or physical.

  “Help me,” he’d begged her, and she knew now what he’d meant—show me how to handle this, tell me I’m not crazy. She could do that for him, she knew she could, but what then? What if he no longer needed or wanted her? She’d die, that’s what, and she just couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  “Do your ribs hurt?” she asked, pulling her eyes away from his and fixing them on the front of his shirt and the buttons in her trembling fingers.

  He lowered his gaze to her hands. Her nails were lacquered a soft shade of pink. Her fingers were very white and they were shaking. “Like hell.”

  His voice sounded very deep. And none too steady either.

  “Your shoulder too? Ethan told me it was sprained.”

  “I don’t know. My ribs hurt so much I can’t tell.”

  “How long will you be trussed up like this?”

  Oh, God, don’t remind me, Gage groaned silently. He wished he could use both his hands because he wanted to cup them around her small, firm bottom, pull her against him, and press his mouth against the pulse he could see throbbing in the hollow of her throat.

  “Ten days, they tell me.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t last a week.”

  Gage raised his eyes again. Her fingers were still working their way down the front of his shirt, but she’d glanced up to smile at him. A cheerful, nothing-but-friendly smile.

  “I’ll bet I don’t either.”

  They weren’t talking about the same thing and they both knew it. Eslin noticed the neck chain, which was shimmering now against his chest, and Gage noticed the sudden freeze of her smile and her fingers near the bottom of his shirt. They both looked down and saw the lopsided hem and two empty buttonholes.

  “You’re doing about as good a job as I did on my pants,” he said with a grin. “You should have seen me—”

  “Oh, no.” she moaned, remembering her question as she started to back away. He could read her mind.

  “Eslin.” He caught her right arm in his left hand and lightly pressed his thumb against the inside of her wrist where he felt her pulse beating wildly. “Don’t go, please.”

  In the hollow of his throat the gold horseshoe nail winked at her. She tried to look away from it and pull her wrist free, but he wouldn’t let her go.

  “Please,” Eslin whispered, panic swelling in her chest. “I have to go back to work now.”

  “When can I see you again?” His voice was urgent, deep and smoky.

  She tried to twist out of his grasp, but his fingers tightened around her wrist.

  “Gage, please.”

  “Eslin, I have to talk to you.”

  She stopped struggling and stared at him.

  “About what you saw Saturday night?”

  He wanted to say yes, intended to say yes, but the word suddenly stuck in his throat. Thirty-six hours had passed since he’d shot Ganylad, since he’d slumped sick with shock and revulsion against the old oak and begged Eslin to help him because he’d seen the tree and the lightning. She’d seen the same thing, or something similar, and though he once again felt the ache and the compulsion to confess, Gage just couldn’t say yes. He didn’t know what Eslin’s reaction would be or how the admission would change things between them—he only knew that it would, irrevocably, and he wasn’t ready to face that.

  “I don’t know what you’re t
alking about,” he said stubbornly, letting go of her wrist.

  His denial didn’t surprise Eslin, it only saddened her. She’d seen it in his eyes before he’d said it, along with a brief, dark flicker of something else, the something that had hurt and nearly killed him. It wasn’t just Ganymede. Losing the stallion was only part of what had caused his pain, but there was more.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she answered quietly. “You always do.”

  “I what?” Gage tried to laugh but couldn’t.

  Laughing hurt his ribs, and there was suddenly something very unfunny about the knowing expression in her eyes. She knew.

  “You said,” she reminded him, “ ‘I saw the lightning and the barn.’ “

  “Did I? I don’t remember.”

  “You asked me to hold you,” she continued. “Then you said, ‘Please, Eslin, help me, I saw it.’“

  “I could barely stand up,” Gage replied. “How do you expect me to remember what I said?”

  “I remember.”

  And she wasn’t going to forget it. He realized it was the reason she’d come here.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what I meant. You’re the mind reader, not me.”

  “If you say so.” She smiled and turned toward the door.

  “Eslin, wait.” He made a grab for her that missed and left him gasping against the foot of the bed, his shoulder and his ribs on fire.

  “Yes?” She turned and looked at him.

  “You can walk out on me, but you can’t walk out on Ganymede. You told Ethan you’d take the case.”

  “You don’t need me to find him.” She smiled again. “You never did.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Ask Doc.”

  Her smile widened. She was taunting him. Deliberately. He glared back at her.

  “I wouldn’t mind talking to him with a Louisville Slugger in my hands.”

  “What’s wrong between you two?”

  Surprise flickered momentarily in his eyes, then disappeared beneath his shuttered, defensive look. In the split second it took his expression to change an image welled out of his thoughts into Eslin’s mind—a blurred, stricken memory of Japanese lanterns gaily strung around the walled garden at Roundtree and two clinging, half-robed figures in the shadows under the trees. A cold, dark bitterness swelled with it, an anguish so old yet still so fresh that Eslin shivered and pushed it out of her mind.

  “He wouldn’t tell me either,” she told him stiffly, “so it’s probably none of my business. But Doc is, I love him very much, and if you take a swipe at him with a baseball bat you can kiss seeing Ganymede again good-bye.”

  Eslin pushed through the door and nearly smacked into Doc and Ethan, who stepped back guiltily.

  “We didn’t want to interrupt,” Ethan said lamely, as he tucked his hands self-consciously into the pockets of his dark-green tweed blazer.

  “Oh, of course not,” she said, frowning at him and then at Doc. “It would’ve made eavesdropping impossible.”

  “We weren’t listening, Eslin. We couldn’t hear a thing—not clearly, anyway.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. He’d meant it as a joke, but Eslin didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile, either, and Doc soberly pursed his mouth.

  “Excuse me,” she said coolly, cutting around them toward the elevator at the end of the hall. “My coffee break ended five minutes ago.”

  Chapter 10

  On her way back to her office, Eslin did take a coffee break. The strong cup of tea she drank didn’t do a thing to calm her jangled nerves, but wrapping her hands around the foam cup did restore some warmth to her cold, shaky fingers.

  When she pushed past the swinging doors into the second-floor library, she saw Doc through the half-glass wall enclosing her office. He stood looking out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. Thank God he wasn’t in Gage’s room picking another fight. Better here picking one with me, she thought, at least I have use of both my hands.

  As she opened the door, he turned around to face her. He smiled at her as he took off his glasses and tucked them into the pocket of his pale-green lab coat.

  “I came to apologize,” he said.

  “For what?” she asked, closing the door behind her. “Abandoning Gage or eavesdropping?”

  “Both. And to explain. Since Gage apologized to me, it seemed the least I could do.”

  Surprised as she was, Eslin was pleased, too, but she didn’t kid herself. As flattering as it would be to think Gage had apologized to Doc for her sake, she knew better—he’d done it for Ganymede.

  “You might want to sit down,” Doc suggested, as he lowered himself into the chair behind her desk. “This may take a while.”

  Eslin had a feeling she knew what was coming, so she shifted a stack of AMA Journals off the brown vinyl couch near the door and sat down.

  “I should have told you this a long time ago, I suppose, but it’s not the kind of thing a man likes to admit.” Doc took a deep breath, looked down at the desk blotter, and worried his right thumb back and forth on the bottom corner. “Mimi and I were happy enough, we got along all right….” He glanced up at her and frowned. “But she didn’t love me, Eslin. She did once, but she hadn’t for a long time before you came to Acacia. She and Edward Roundtree were lovers. I knew it and so did Rachel.”

  The possibility that Doc and/or Rachel had known had never occurred to Eslin. “I understand,” she murmured, “you don’t have to go on.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.” He spun her chair around, pushed himself out of it and walked over to the window again. “Maybe you’ll be able to forgive me then—even though Rachel won’t.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “No. She won’t come to the telephone. I don’t blame her. Not really.”

  Watching him gaze blankly at the courtyard beneath her window, Eslin decided against telling him that she’d always suspected something. It would only make him feel worse, although she wondered if that were possible.

  “I’m sorry I was so hard on you yesterday,” she told him gently.

  He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You never guessed?”

  “No.” She put her heart and soul in the lie.

  “I hated Edward,” he said without any emotion. “I hated him because he took Mimi, and because he made fools out of Rachel and me. She offered Edward a divorce but he refused because Mimi had told him she didn’t want to hurt me.” He paused and shook his head. “Mimi had her first heart attack the day after Siddons—he was head of oncology then—told Edward he had cirrhosis of the liver.”

  And her last one, Eslin knew, two weeks after Edward Roundtree’s funeral. Tears slowly filled her eyes.

  “I wish you wouldn’t tell me this,” she said thickly, blinking as Doc’s face blurred out of focus. “I don’t think it’s any of my business.”

  “Yes, it is, because Gage is very much like his father. He’s the spitting image of Edward, he has his charm—”

  “His what?”

  “Oh, Gage was a delightful human being before Ganymede was stolen. Thoughtful—believe it or not—devoted to his mother. Even though I lay awake nights plotting his murder, I enjoyed Edward’s company immensely. And he mine. The only problem we had was that we both loved Mimi.”

  All of a sudden the memory from Gage’s mind flashed through Eslin’s brain. Her breath caught and gooseflesh sprang on her arms.

  “So that,” she breathed, “is what’s wrong between you and Gage.”

  “It most certainly is not.” Doc corrected her firmly. “Rachel and I made sure the boys never found out.”

  “Sorry, but you weren’t sure enough,” Eslin told him, “When I asked him what the problem was between the two of you he wouldn’t answer, but he shot me a picture of—uh …”

  “Of what?” Doc prodded.

  “Well …” Eslin faltered again. “I saw the garden at Roundtree decorated with lanterns, and a
man and a woman under the trees.”

  Doc turned away from the window. “What do you mean saw?”

  “I mean saw—as clearly as if he’d shown me a snapshot.”

  “I knew it,” Doc said, chuckling as a wide, immensely pleased smile spread across his face. “I knew he was telepathic.”

  “What put you onto him?”

  “Little things,” he said. “He finishes sentences for people, he hands things to Rachel or Ethan before they’ve asked for them, and there isn’t a high-strung thoroughbred anywhere that that man can’t handle.”

  Eslin wasn’t surprised. Envious, yes, but not surprised.

  “I’m pretty sure he knows,” she said, “or at least suspects, that he’s telepathic even though he denies it. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t try to help him.”

  “If you’d known Edward you wouldn’t ask that question.” Doc stopped smiling and looked at her steadily. “I kept telling myself that Saturday night—this is Gage, not Edward, but when I saw him looking at you on the gallery in a—well, in a particular way—the only thing I could think of was the only line of Shakespeare that I can ever remember: ‘The sins of the fathers are to be laid Upon the children.’ We had a few words on the gallery, nothing serious, but once we were in the study, I told him that if he hurt you I’d take him apart joint by joint.”

  “Oh, Doc.” Eslin groaned.

  “I know, I know. I’m a psychiatrist and I’m supposed to have better-than-average control of my baser impulses.” He sat down in Eslin’s chair again, tipped it back, and pursed his lips. “Maybe if I send Rachel flowers …”

  It wasn’t a question, he was thinking out loud and gazing blankly past the top of her head. Eslin doubted there were enough flowers in the world to appease Rachel but didn’t say so.