“You’ll be sure to let me know when you have it all figured out, won’t you? Speaking for myself and several others, we’d sure like to see the finished product.”
I stood and walked over to where he was half-leaning, half-sitting on the edge of the hospital bed. It looked like he was positioned to make a dash for it and I suppose he was, if he’d been in any shape to dash anywhere.
I put my hands on his amazing shoulders and stroked their strong contours. I remembered the power in them as I watched him wrestle the beast and the strength in them when he held himself naked above my waiting body. It made me almost crazy with desire. I wanted to push him back against that awful bed until all the spaces between us were occupied.
He raised his hands to my face and pulled my mouth firmly toward his waiting lips. When he kissed me, I knew that he had returned. There was nothing tentative in his kiss, the damaged boy had slipped deep back into the recesses of the man whose mouth crushed mine and claimed me.
“Delicious.” He whispered against my lips, “I want you again and again, Rene.”
He reached for me and I cried out not so much for what he was doing but for the memory of what he had already done. There’d be no consummation at that moment. Stephen would soon return with the chair and we’d make our ‘escape’. But the interlude was a much needed affirmation. I needed the man of Dylan to return and ignite me with his desire. I wanted to know that when the time was right he would own me once again, not with tenderness (though that had its place) but with the kind of consecrating passion only he had ever been able to bring me.
Our embrace lasted until we heard the creak of the door on its thankfully not silent hinges. Stephen backed himself through the door with the wheelchair that would roll Dylan away from the room, the hospital and the father he wanted to avoid.
We were both breathless, but Stephen filled the gap.
“Here you go, sport. We’re all set to roll.” He brought the chair around beside the bed. Dylan started to hoist himself up on the crutches.
“Make sure the wheels are locked or it could slip out from under him,” I told Stephen.
“Good eye,” Stephen said as he reached down and secured the brakes on the chair.
Dylan hobbled the couple of steps it took to position himself in the chair and I knelt down to adjust the foot supports. I tried very hard not to jostle his injured leg as I put his foot in place on the metal platform. When I looked up at him, beads of sweat had gathered on his forehead but he gave me a ‘thumbs-up” and told Stephen to “shove off”. I held the door open for the men and we were off.
I guess I half expected someone to try to stop us—Nurse Collins, one of the doctors or even Jackson Cruz—but no one tried. Stephen wheeled Dylan down the hall and we wordlessly made our way to the main elevator that would take us to the lobby of the sprawling medical center complex. Dylan was singularly focused on getting out of there and Stephen, whatever his opinion might have been, was doing as Dylan asked.
My thoughts were all over the place. I was trying to process the incredible little interlude that had just left me breathless. I was questioning the wisdom of abandoning the hospital and my part in the whole scheme going forward. I was apprehensive about the demons Dylan had promised to reveal to me and wondering if perhaps he was simply too complicated for me to handle.
Stephen helped Dylan maneuver into the back of one of London’s famous black cabs and I crawled in beside him. Stephen flipped down the jump seat across from us.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked after we were settled in.
“Canary Wharf. Hill’s Hotel.”
“Right.” The cabbie turned into the city traffic and we were off.
Chapter 26—Dylan
“Canary Wharf? Seriously? I mean, I told you I’m no billionaire but I think I can do better than staying at a dockside hotel!”
“Boss, your snob is showing. Except for the Marriot, the hotels near to the marina aren’t swank, they’re for conventioneers and Olympic fans.”
Rene looked a little hurt. “I’m sorry, Dylan, you didn’t specify that it had to be the Ritz. I thought having a clean room convenient to the boat was the most important requirement. I got you a suite with a small kitchen so I can do a bit more for you than bring leftovers from the galley. I tried the Marriot, but they were booked solid. There’s a convention going on.”
I instantly felt lousy. I was being a snob. There was nothing wrong with a nice little local place.
She continued. “I also got a handicapped room. That way you’ll have handrails and such to make it easier for you to get around.”
I felt my hackles raise at the word ‘handicapped’. I was not handicapped, at least not permanently. I had an instant moment of sympathetic solidarity with folks who have to wear that label their entire lives.
“Thanks, babe. I’m sure it will be perfectly fine.”
And it turned out that it was perfectly fine. The room was larger than I expected and sparkling clean. It looked like everything was brand new. The bedroom was separated from a small living area that had a kitchenette with a full size refrigerator and a microwave. Rene sniffed around the kitchen and announced that the best she was going to manage was to reheat meals she brought over from El Loco.
“I don’t intend to stay here long. We’ll make do.” I hated to admit that I was utterly exhausted. I had plopped down on the couch as soon as we got into the room. Part of it was certainly the lingering after effects of all the medication, but the other part was simple weakness. My watch told me it was mid afternoon. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Stephen, I need you to go back to the hospital and sweet talk Dr. Brody into prescribing the rest of a course of antibiotics. Tell her I don’t need painkillers but like the good boy I am, I want to make sure the infection doesn’t return. If she won’t write a scrip, at least get her to tell you what I need and in what dose. We’ll figure out whom to bribe to get it if she won’t cooperate.”
“Right, Boss.”
“Rene, I need you to provision me as best you can. I’ll need lots of red meat—grass fed, organic—and plenty of orange juice and tomato juice. I’m weak as hell and I suspect that’s due to not only the infection, but the amount of blood I lost. I need the iron in the meat and the Vitamin C in the juices to help me absorb it.”
“Do you like liver? It’s very high in iron.”
“I’ll choke it down if I have to.”
“I’ll try to make something palatable—maybe a nice pate—so it isn’t so ‘liver-y’.”
“Thanks. I want a high calorie, high protein diet. Do a bit of a search and see if I’ve missed anything. ‘Diet and Healing’, ‘Post injury diet’—that kind of thing.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“I want both of you to get a keycard for the room. I don’t want to have to struggle every time one of you comes here. Not that I intend to be lazy. I just want to use every bit of energy to get my strength and mobility back.” Rene and Stephen both nodded at me in agreement. “Stephen, get me some more clothes and bring my sneakers from the boat. Much as I hate them, I need better support than these flips are going to give.”
I glanced over at the bedroom door and wondered how I was going to get all the way to the bed after I sent them away. They were both staring at me, waiting for whatever else I had to say, but I was out of words.
“So, that’s all,” I managed. “I need some rest now so . . .” I kind of waved my hand in dismissal. They both started toward the door hesitantly. “I’ll be okay here, you guys. I need rest, that’s all. Really. And, thanks, both of you.”
I was grateful when the door closed behind them and I was alone. My mind had been a beehive of activity before, but the din in my head had quieted. The only thoughts milling around that usually busy space were those devoted to putting one foot in front of the other with the goal of the waiting bed ahead of me.
It was both harder and easier than I thought it would be. The pain from the wound, which I
had feared the most, wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Just as I suspected, the hospital staff had kept me medicated more for their convenience than because I was in some terrible agony. It hurt, of course, but it was supposed to. I knew enough about healing to know that the pain was actually part of the process of knitting tissues back together.
What freaked me out was the weakness. I blamed my kitten-like state as much on the drugs as the infection and the injury. I’d been doped up for more than a week. No wonder I couldn’t hold myself upright!
I used the last of my energy to pull back the covers, flip off my flops and guide myself in between the sheets. I would have liked to undress, even shower perhaps, but that was just out of the question. My eyes gratefully closed and I slept a dreamless, drugless sleep.
When I awoke, I didn’t immediately recognize where I was. It took a moment to bring myself and my surroundings into focus. The light from the other room illuminated my watch just enough for me to see the time. It was now early evening. I’d been asleep for over five hours and the late summer sun was making its slow descent in the western sky.
Something smelled unbelievably good. Something smelled earthy and homey and not the least bit ‘hospital-y’. There was heaven going on in the other room. The aroma itself energized me. My optimistic nose helped me out of bed far easier than I had gone in. Even the crutches seemed friendlier under my arms.
She was standing over an electric frying pan stirring away. She hadn’t heard me get up. I treated myself to the sight of her face in repose as the fading light dimpled the room with shadows. She had her hair pulled back, barely. I think all she’d done was twist it into a knot at the base of her neck. I had a movie moment picturing her shaking that umber mane loose—slow motion and naked, of course.
I wanted to burn her image onto my mind. I wanted to take a snapshot of her sweet perfection and keep it, like a screensaver in my head, so that every time I started a thought, she was there. This was an entirely new feeling for me. I’d always allowed the women I knew to form an abstractly beautiful blur. They were a warm palette of formless color; nothing more. I was content to leave the memories of their pleasures vague and disconnected from the story of my life. But not with Rene.
I was still reeling from the brief time I spent fogged by the fever and the drugs when I couldn’t remember precisely what we had done together. The emotional connection came back to me almost immediately, but the actual events did not. It was maddening. I had awakened knowing I wanted to drown in her amber eyes, but didn’t know why. And it had made me utterly miserable; as if I’d been robbed of something precious.
It shocked me to admit to myself that Rene might be—no that Rene was—the first woman who ever mattered to me as an adult. This brought a new wave of exhilaration and terror into the mix. I had no trouble conjuring up the cruel end to a young boy’s first crush. All the rational thought in the world couldn’t banish a pain that still had the power to weaken my knees.
I reminded myself that I wasn’t eleven and Rene, no matter how uncanny the resemblance, was not Nurse Kelly. Perhaps most importantly, there was no one who had the power to simply remove Rene from my life. I wasn’t a helpless kid anymore.
She looked up at me and smiled. “You’ve got the silent entry down pat. Even on crutches. I didn’t hear you come into the room.”
“I’ve been standing here for a few moments just feasting my eyes . . . and my nose.” That sounded a lot more normal than I felt. “What’s cooking?”
“A not extremely original pasta sauce. But it’s got the requisite ton of lean meat and loads of tomatoes. With the whole wheat pasta you’ll have some good complex carbs.” She stirred the pot as she talked. “I found this pan on El Loco so I brought it over so that we’d have something better to cook with.”
“I can feel myself getting stronger just by smelling it.”
“Stephen dropped off the antibiotic. Turns out Dr. Brody wasn’t all that upset about you checking yourself out. She did offer to write you a prescription for a strong painkiller, but Stephen declined.”
“As I would have.” I was happier every hour brought more poison out of my system and lifted the fog.
“I made a liver pate this afternoon that’s chilling on the boat. I think you’ll be able to get it down. I also bought you quite a bit of pro-biotic yogurt.”
“Because?”
“Because of the antibiotics. They can wreak havoc with the balance of your gut and believe it or not, I read that men can get yeast infections just like women.”
I looked down at my crotch in mock horror. “Good lord, I’d hate to have that happen to the Major.”
She crooked one eyebrow up. “The Major?”
“Yes. Major Johnson. You’ve met,” I smiled and pointed at my groin.
Rene giggled like a kid as I hobbled over to her side in the kitchen. “I’ve been told that men name their . . . Johnsons . . . but you’re the first one who has ever told me an actual name.”
“I think it’s a pretty good one. I considered ‘General Johnson’ but ‘Major’ had a much better ring to it. ‘General’ sounds too, I don’t know, non-specific. Major actually describes it.”
“You’re awfully confident.”
I leaned against the counter so I could free my arms from the crutches and pull her body into mine. “I think I have good reason to be. Don’t you?”
“Are you referring to your history of conquests?”
“Not at all. I am referring to my brief, but utterly amazing history with you. I have not gotten enough of you. Not even close.”
God, she turned me on. She was soft. She was strong. She was timid and bold all at the same time. She wanted me as no woman had ever wanted me because she knew me as no woman had ever known me.
Before Rene, I was a two-dimensional image. She had pried back the flat picture of who Dylan Cruz wanted the world to see and brought me to exhilarating, exciting, three dimensional life. All things were starting to feel possible. But first, a shower.
Chapter 27—Rene
I watched him as he headed toward the bathroom. It amazed me to see how strong he had become in so short a time. The hospital sapped his strength. The very environment acted on him as if he were Samson getting a haircut. Once he was free of its confines, he rested and was made new.
When I saw him standing at the bedroom door, I immediately noticed how the color had returned to his face. He still looked a little tired, but the defeat of helplessness that had sallowed his skin was gone.
Dylan had returned; sassy, sexy and strong. I was aching to have him again and reaffirm what we’d shared.
I was also ready to face the damage that caused him to behave so strangely the night after we had shared that astounding intimacy. The hurt I felt at the time was fading but it had been replaced with a need to know and understand what made him tick. I accepted the challenge. It was frightening because I wondered if I would be able to handle the complications of his hunted soul. This was not an easy man to know.
The door shut behind him and I imagined him stripping off his clothes and standing naked under the steaming water. The body. The beautiful, delicious, biteable ass. The powerful pecs that I remembered working so hard against that fish and the six-pack of rippling muscles below. My mouth watered at the memory of his sweat slicked torso and the way his shorts slipped down to reveal the line of dark hair pointing downward. I could never forget the utter manliness of that fight. To me it was an epic and powerful demonstration of what made him so desirable. His will as strong as his body, he embodied all the man that the woman in me craved.
I turned the heat on the pan to simmer even as I felt myself coming to a full rolling boil. I wanted to leave my clothes in a heap outside the bathroom door and quietly slip into the shower behind him, but I knew he needed to save his strength. I zapped a bowl of hot water in the microwave and dunked my precooked pasta in it. By the time Dylan came out of the bathroom dinner was served. We sat down at the little di
ning table and I watched him attack his plate with the gusto of a starving hound dog.
“So good. So, so, so good.” He managed to say between huge bites. “Did I even eat in the hospital? I don’t remember.”
“I think you escaped before you gave them the chance to poison you with their swill.”
“Glad we pulled that off. Considering the zeal of Narco Nurse I think I escaped a bullet.”
“Do you think that Dr. Brody had an idea that maybe you’d heal better without all those drugs? From what Stephen told me, she seemed almost pleased that you’d left.”
“Well, I was pretty woozy when she examined me so I’m not sure what her opinion was, one way or the other.”
“It was scary seeing you like that. It was scary on the boat and nearly as bad in the hospital. You were like someone else.”
“I wish you hadn’t . . . seen me like that.”
I didn’t agree with him out loud but inside I said ‘me too’. The small petulant boy was not the image of Dylan I wanted to keep. It was now the elephant in the room and I wondered when we were going to acknowledge it. As much as I dreaded facing Dylan’s devils, I knew I had to if I was ever going to really know the man.
I’d met one of the demons in the flesh. Jackson Cruz was a cold man. The way he looked through me was chilling. He had the ability to make a person feel utterly invisible. The worst part of meeting him was recognizing that Dylan had at least a small measure of that ability himself. I’d seen the way he could run frigid in a terrible instant. He had left me confused more than once.
A second healthy helping of dinner went down as quickly as the first.
“That was excellent. Just what I needed.” He leaned heavily on the table to help himself get to his feet. Somehow I knew better than to offer my assistance. As it was, I pushed down on my side so he wouldn’t topple the flimsy piece of furniture over with his weight. “I know it isn’t a great idea to lie down after a big meal, but I’m afraid if I sit on the couch I won’t be able to get up again. Join me in bed?”
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