by Diana Palmer
“It’s down!” she said, delighted.
“Of course it’s down, it was only a virus,” he muttered.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Damned if I know. I’m not a vet,” he said, drawling out the word.
“I still know more about medicine than you do,” she said curtly, reaching for the soup.
“The hell you do. I’ve had more operations and been in more emergency rooms than you’ll ever see over the years.”
With all sorts of football injuries, no doubt, she thought, but she didn’t argue. He was obviously feeling better and spoiling for a fight.
“Eat,” she demanded, holding a spoon of chicken noodle soup to his firm lips.
“I hate chicken soup.”
“It’s made with real chickens,” she said coaxingly.
“Prove it.”
She put the spoonful back into the bowl and searched until she found a tiny cube and produced it for him to see. “There!”
“Right. A square chicken. A microscopic square chicken.”
“You really must feel better,” she said pointedly. “You’re being very unpleasant.”
“I have a reputation for being very unpleasant,” he informed her. “Ask the group.”
“You’re one of them. They wouldn’t admit it. They’d lie for you. They wouldn’t want your adoring public to know what a bad man you really were.”
“Point taken.” He laid back against the propped pillows with a sigh. “Okay. Go ahead. Feed me.”
She did, liking the power it gave her. She smiled, enjoying herself. She’d never had anyone to take care of, because her father had never been sick. She took care of animals but it really wasn’t the same.
He was enjoying her tender ministrations, too, and hating to admit it. “I’ll be back on my feet by tomorrow,” he said. “So don’t get too fond of this routine.”
“God forbid,” she agreed.
But he let her feed him the entire bowl of soup, and the warm feeling it gave him wasn’t just from the temperature of the liquid. Afterward, he stretched and then relaxed with a long sigh. “God, I’m weak. I feel as if I don’t have enough strength to get up.” He smiled grimly. “But I’ve got to, for a minute.” He threw back the cover, ignoring her flush, and got to his feet. He staggered a little, and she forgot her discomfort in the rush of concern she felt.
She got under his powerful arm and helped support him.
“Thanks,” he said, starting toward the bathroom. “I feel like I’ve been clotheslined.”
“I guess you do. I’m sorry you’re sick.”
His arm tightened. “You’d better be glad of it,” he said grimly as he noticed her shyly appreciative eyes on his body. “I like having you look at me like this. I like it too damn much.”
She felt pulsing heat run through her body, and quickly averted her eyes. “I’m not looking,” she said at once.
“Of course you’re looking. You can’t help it. I fascinate you, don’t I?”
She glared up at him. “I’ll find you some shorts.”
“I won’t wear them,” he returned with a cool smile. “I’m not changing the habit of a lifetime to satisfy some prudish animal doctor.”
“I am not a prude!”
“Right.”
She refused to notice his amused expression. She helped him to the bathroom door, waited until he called her and then helped him back to bed, averting her eyes while she tugged the sheet up to his waist.
He sighed, his chest rattling a little. He propped himself up on the pillows and coughed, reaching for a tissue.
“It’s a productive cough, at least,” she said to herself. “That’s a blessing. And if the fever’s dropping, hopefully, it’s a viral bronchitis and not pneumonia.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Well, you sound professional enough.”
“Medicine is medicine,” she said pointedly. “Of course, the anatomical structure is a bit different and the pharmacology certainly is, but ways to treat illnesses are basically the same.”
He didn’t feel like arguing. He yawned widely. “I’m so tired,” he said softly. “So tired. I feel as if I haven’t had any rest in years.”
“From what you’ve said, I wonder if you’ve had any rest at all,” she remarked. “Perhaps being stuck up here is a godsend.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he murmured. “The only good thing about it is that reporter doesn’t know about Amanda. God forbid that she should cause trouble. Most of that magazine’s reporters are top-notch.”
“She doesn’t work for a magazine,” she recalled. “She said she was trying to sell a story that would get her foot in the door. But she was also on the trail of some sports star who was supposed to be hiding out in the Tetons up in Wyoming.”
“A hopeful,” he said, relieved.
“She was pretty optimistic. And very ambitious.”
He fingered the sheet. “Something you should know about.”
“I only want to work in a partnership and not have to do all the rough jobs and odd hours,” she said wistfully. “I was lucky to get the partnership at all. There are four of us in the practice, but I’m the junior one. So until I prove myself, I can’t really expect much free time.”
“It sounds to me as if they’re the lucky ones,” he muttered. “Are they all men?”
She nodded. “All older than me, too. I’m just out of college and full of new ideas, new theories and treatments and they think I’m a hotshot so they won’t listen.”
“You probably make them feel threatened,” he said pointedly. “And as to who’s the lucky one, I think it’s the other partners, not you. They’re getting all the benefits and none of the unpleasant work.”
“I could hardly open my own practice fresh out of school,” she began.
“Why not? Plenty of people do!”
“I’m not rich,” she said. She went to the window and looked out. The snow was still coming down without a break in sight in the sky. “I barely had enough money in the bank to finish school, and part of it was done on government student loans. I have a lot to pay back. That doesn’t leave much over for furnishing an office.”
“I see.”
She shrugged and turned back with a smile. “I don’t mind working my way up from the bottom. Everybody has to start somewhere. You did.”
It was a nicely disguised question. He adjusted the pillows and leaned back again. “I started as a second guitarist for a group that got lost at the bottom of the pop charts. Eventually I worked up to helping do backup work for some of the better musicians. That’s how I met Amanda Sutton—she was Amanda Corrie Callaway back then,” he added with a smile. “She and I started working together on a project, along with another guy in the band, and we discovered that Amanda had a voice like an angel. It didn’t take us long to put an act together, add a drummer and a second guitarist, and audition for a record company.” He shook his head remembering. “We made it on the first try. Amazing, that, when some people take years just to get a record company executive to listen to them.”
“Didn’t it help that you’d been a football star?”
“Not in music,” he replied with a rueful smile. “I was a nobody like the rest of the group until our first hit.”
“Why the name Desperado?” she asked.
“You’ve never seen a group shot of us, I gather?”
She smiled apologetically. “Sorry.”
“Look in the top drawer of the desk over there against the wall.” He pointed toward it.
She opened it and there was a photograph of four men and a woman.
“Now do you need to ask why?” He chuckled.
“Not really.” They were a frightening bunch, the men, all heavily bearded and mustached with unruly hair and they looked really tough. Amanda was a striking contrast, with her long blond hair and dark eyes and beautiful face.
“We’ve been lucky. Now, of course, we may really have to stop performing. It all depends on how Amanda is d
oing.” He looked briefly worried. “I hope she’s all right. I can’t even telephone to ask how she is. At least I know Quinn won’t let anything happen to her. He’s a wild man where Amanda is concerned.”
She thought about having someone that concerned for her welfare and wondered how it would feel. Her father had cared about her, but no one else had since he died. She’d been very much alone in the world.
She picked up the soup bowl, but her mind not at all on what she was doing.
He didn’t understand the sadness in her face. He reached out and caught her wrist. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly.
She shrugged. “I was wondering what it would be like to have someone worry that much about me,” she said, and then laughed.
He let go of her wrist. He’d been wondering the same thing. His lean hand smoothed over the bedcover. “I want a bath. Do you suppose you could run some water for me?”
“You’re very weak,” she cautioned. “And what if you get chilled?”
“It’s warm in here. Come on. I can’t stand being grungy.”
“Grungy?”
He chuckled. “Maybe there’s a better word for it somewhere.”
“If you get stuck in the tub, how will I ever get you out?” she asked worriedly, measuring him with her eyes. “Heavens, I couldn’t begin to lift you!”
“That’s a fact. But I wouldn’t risk it if I didn’t think I could cope. Humor me.”
“All right. But if you drown,” she advised, “I’m not taking the rap for it.”
She went into the bathroom and filled the tub with warm water. It was a Jacuzzi, luxurious and spotless, and she envied him. Her guest bedroom had a nice shower, which she’d used the night before, but nothing like this. She put soap and lotions and towels close to hand and went to help him out of bed and across the tub.
“It’s big,” he declared as he lowered himself into it. “Why don’t you strip off and come in with me?”
She chuckled, trying not to let her faint, remaining embarrassment show. She’d grown used to the sight of his body, although it still intimidated her a bit. “I might fall and break my leg. Where would we be then?”
He stretched his big arms over the sides. “Just as well, I suppose.” He sighed, letting his gaze wash over her like warm water. “You aren’t the type, are you?”
“What type?”
“For brief interludes,” he said seriously. “You’re a forever-after girl, despite the fact that forever-after doesn’t exist anymore.”
“It could, if two people loved each other enough,” she said.
“My wife and I loved each other, when we married,” he said. “We thought it would last forever.” He smiled cynically. “It lasted for a while, then we burned out.”
She chewed on her lower lip and frowned a little. “Oh.”
“I learned one thing from it. Marriage requires more than a mutual fever. You need common interests, backgrounds, and you need to be friends as well as lovers. That’s trite, but it’s true.”
“It’s a hard combination to find,” she said.
“People don’t have time to look for it anymore.” He picked up the cloth and soap and lathered his arms and chest slowly.
“I’d better go…”
“Don’t be silly. Sit down.”
She perched herself on a chair by the bench that contained a hair blower and electric razor, along with a rack of lotions and powders. She folded her hands together on her jean-clad legs and tried not to look uncomfortable.
“In the old days, people lived in small communities and everyone knew everyone,” he said while he bathed. “Now we’re all so busy trying to support ourselves that we move around like migrating birds. We don’t stay in one place long enough to get to know people.”
“Your singer, Amanda. How did she meet her husband?”
He chuckled. “They got snowbound together up in Wyoming,” he said. “And he was the ultimate misogynist. He hated Amanda on sight. But she’s feisty and she has a kind heart. It was only a matter of time until they fell in love. Unfortunately that happened before he found out who she really was. He went all noble, because he was poor and she was famous. So for her own good, he threw her out. She left and her plane crashed on the way to L.A.”
She caught her breath. “He must have been devastated.”
“Half out of his mind,” Hank replied, remembering the band’s nightmare trip back to Wyoming. They’d all left on the bus because Hank and the boys didn’t like airplanes. But Amanda had insisted on flying. Hank had felt responsible because he hadn’t pushed harder to get her to come with them. “Quinn skied down an unpatrolled ridge into the valley to get her—only a handful of men in the country could have made that run, but he was an Olympic contender in downhill in his younger days. Hell of a trip it was. He found her badly concussed, damn near dead, and he had to have another man ski down to help tow her out of the valley on a litter to a waiting helicopter. There was too much wind for the chopper to land where the crash occurred. As it was, they barely made it in time. Three days after the doctor pronounced her on the mend, they got married, right there in the hospital.”
“My goodness!”
“They’d been married for two years when she got pregnant,” he recalled. “They were both over the moon about it, but she’s a lot more fragile than she looks. It’s been a rough pregnancy and she’s had to have constant medical care. We’d more or less given up touring when she first married, but we had one commitment we couldn’t break, for a charity in New York. She barely got through it and Quinn put his foot down, hard. He’s kept her home since then. He won’t even let her do recording sessions now. The rumor is that we’re breaking up the group.”
“Are you?”
He finished bathing his legs. “I don’t know.” He looked at her. “The band wouldn’t be the same without Amanda. No singer could replace her.”
“I don’t suppose so,” she agreed gently. “But I’m sure the baby is the most important thing to her right now.”
He nodded. There was a bitter look on his face that she didn’t miss.
“Why didn’t your wife want a child?”
He glared at her. “That’s none of your business.”
He sounded fierce, but she overlooked the bad temper because of the sadness in his blue eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
He paused long enough to wash his hair and rinse it before he said anything else. “She said that I wasn’t cut out to be a parent,” he said shortly. “That I wasn’t home enough or patient enough. And besides that, she didn’t want a child who might grow up to look like me.”
Her eyes lingered on his broad shoulders and chest, on the power and strength of his tanned, hair-roughed skin. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked dreamily.
He caught his breath as the surge of desire shot through him like a bolt of lightning.
She saw the tautness of his face and grimaced. “I keep putting my foot in it, don’t I?” she said miserably. “Honestly, you make me feel like a babbling adolescent!”
“That isn’t how you make me feel,” he said with grim humor. “What she meant,” he explained, “was that I’ve got a thick neck and an oversize body and a face that only a mother could love. She said with her luck, she’d have a little girl with a big nose and feet like a duck.”
“What a cruel thing to say,” she replied, wounded for him. “I expect you’d have a very pretty little girl with blue eyes and brown hair. Except that if you have four brothers, it’s a lot more likely that you’d have a little boy.”
“So I’ve heard.” He let his narrowed eyes sweep over her. “You’re very delicately built,” he said quietly. “Slender hips, small breasts, almost a foot shorter than I am. We’d have a hard time just making love, much less having a child together.”
She couldn’t believe he’d said that. She just looked at him, flustered.
“You know everything there is to know about me, physically.” He continued in that same
quiet, gentle voice. “But it’s one thing to look, and another to consider the problem of intimacy.” His eyes narrowed more. “I’ll bet you’re as small as I am big,” he said insinuatingly.
She jumped up from the chair, red faced and shocked. “How dare you!”
“Tell me you haven’t thought about how we’d fit together in my bed,” he challenged, and he wasn’t smiling.
Her fists clenched at her sides. “You can’t talk to me like this!”
He searched her outraged eyes with curiosity and faint tenderness. “Another first, hmm?” he mused. “And you’re a vet. How did you survive labs?”
“Half the people in my class were women,” she informed him. “We forced the men to respect us enough not to make sexist remarks.”
“I’m not making sexist remarks,” he argued. “I’m indulging in a little sexual logic.” He pursed his lips and held her eyes relentlessly. “If I’m very careful, we might try,” he said gently.
“Try what?”
“And I can use something. There won’t be any risk.”
She clenched both fists tighter. “You can stop right there. I’m not sleeping with you!”
He smiled without malice. “You will,” he replied. “Eventually.”
“I won’t be here eventually. The minute the snow lets up and the snowplow clears the roads, I’m getting out of here!”
“I’ve never been to Sioux City,” he remarked conversationally. “But you’re an old-fashioned girl, so I guess I’ll have to chase you for a while, won’t I?”
“You don’t need to start thinking that you’ll wear me down. You won’t. I have no inclination whatsoever, at all, to…to…”
He stood up slowly in the middle of her tirade, turned off the Jacuzzi and stepped out onto the mat. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. It must be some deep-seated weakness, she decided, some character flaw that made her into a blatant Peeping Tom.
And it was worse than ever when he reacted to her appreciative eyes and laughed about it.
She groaned as she pulled a huge bath sheet from the heated towel bar and handed it to him.
He ignored the bath sheet. His hand shot around her wrist and jerked, pulling her completely against his wet body. Even in his weakened condition, he was alarmingly strong.