The large room was painted a cheerful lemon yellow, and Adam had hung Myles’s favorite pictures on the walls. The wide window overlooked the flower beds and caught the morning sun. Books, magazines and a large collection of videos were stacked on an antique wooden desk, and a complex entertainment unit almost covered one whole wall.
The tall, emaciated figure slouched in the worn leather armchair seemed oblivious to both the pleasant surroundings and the fact that Sameh and Adam had arrived. He was dressed in cotton slacks and a sweatshirt. His pale blue eyes, misty and unfocused, darted from one thing to the next, never settling on any object for more than an instant. He was flipping through a magazine, his long fingers trembling as they restlessly turned the pages.
“What you reading there, Myles?” Adam made his way over to his friend. The magazine Myles held was upside down, and Adam’s heart sank. He’d made a grave mistake bringing Sameh here.
Adam cleared his throat and tried to make the best of it. “Myles, I’d like you to meet a friend, Sameh Smith. Sameh, Myles Fontaine.”
There was no indication that Myles had even heard him make the introduction, but Sameh reached out and clasped one of the restless hands in hers. With her other hand, she gently cradled Myles’s sunken cheek. “I’m very glad to meet you, Myles Fontaine,” she said in her soothing, musical voice. “Adam has told me you’re a special friend of his.”
Myles’s gaze darted away as she crouched down to his level, and he began to rock back and forth in an agitated manner. Adam moved closer, worried that Myles might lash out at Sameh unknowingly, as he’d done many times over the past few months, hitting with a strength that belied his fragile appearance.
“Sameh, it might be better to…” Adam’s voice trailed off as Sameh released Myles’s hand and began to make a curious motion with her cupped palms a few inches away from Myles’s head, as if she were scooping the air down and away from his skull. She did this several times and then moved her hands slowly up and down, palms out, all around his head.
Myles became absolutely still. His hands relaxed in his lap and the magazine fell to the floor. Slowly, inch by inch, he raised his head and looked, really looked, at Adam. Recognition shone in the eyes that a moment before had been filled with confusion. A sweet smile curved his mouth.
“Hawk, my boy. How are you? It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you. Where’ve you been?”
CHAPTER NINE
THERE WAS BOTH COHERENCE and genuine pleasure in Myles’s weak voice, and for a moment, Adam couldn’t answer him. He was dumbfounded at the dramatic change in Myles’s condition. In all the months he’d been coming here, he’d never seen the older man go from a state of such utter disorientation to absolute awareness in a matter of seconds, even though the nurses had told him it was possible with this particular disease.
“And who’s this lovely creature?”
Adam looked at Sameh. Her eyes sparkled and she was smiling her wide smile. He introduced her all over again, and she grasped the trembling hand that Myles extended. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fontaine.”
“The pleasure’s all mine.” His head dipped in a courteous little bow, and he held her hand much longer than necessary. “Please call me Myles, and then I’ll feel free to call you Sameh.”
Damned if the old fox wasn’t being outright flirtatious.
Adam felt like letting loose with a whoop of pure happiness, but he subdued the urge. His dearest friend was back from somewhere far away, and the pure joy of it damn near brought tears to his eyes.
For the next hour they talked, and Adam had to forcibly remind himself that the creeping darkness might steal over Myles’s mind again at any time. He had to guard against too much hope. To let himself believe this sudden respite was anything but temporary would be devastating when the disease reasserted its hold on his friend, and he understood all too well that it would.
But a quarter hour became a half, half a whole, and still the miracle held.
Myles asked Adam to locate an old photo album in the drawer of his desk, and he and Sameh were now sitting close together on the sofa, poring over the snapshots. Adam sat on a chair nearby, watching the elegant silver head bent so close to the gleaming golden one. A bond had formed between the old man and the young woman, and Adam couldn’t have been more pleased.
“How did you two meet?” Sameh tapped a finger on a snap of a very young Adam in military uniform, standing at attention in front of a parade ground, with Myles, also in uniform, beside him. “It looks as if you were both in the military.”
Myles nodded. “Indeed we were. I was an instructor at Robert E. Lee Military Academy near Richmond, Virginia. Adam was enrolled as a student. Despite the difference in our ages, we eventually became friends.”
Myles’s explanation left so much out. Adam remembered all too well the angry, incorrigible boy he’d been when he arrived at the academy. It had taken Myles almost a year to penetrate the shell Adam had constructed around himself. It was thanks to Myles that he hadn’t been expelled during that year; he’d run away several times, and Myles had bent rules and out-and-out lied to keep him enrolled. Adam had been booted out of numerous other expensive boarding schools before he got to the academy. And he knew that without Myles’s intervention, he’d have been drummed out of R.E.L. the first month he was there.
“How old were you when you attended this academy, Adam? You look so young in these pictures.” Sameh was looking over at him, interest alive in her beautiful face.
“Fifteen.”
She shook her head and frowned. “So very young to be away from your home. Where I come from, we’re still very much children at fifteen.” She turned the page and giggled at some new snapshot as Adam thought about her comment.
He’d been fifteen, but he wasn’t a child anymore when he was enrolled at R.E.L., and certainly not innocent. For one thing, he’d already had more instruction in how to make love to a woman than most men received in their entire lives. His mother’s best friend, Morgan, had seen to that the summer he turned fourteen.
His mouth twisted in an ironic grimace. Nowadays there’d be a song and dance about sexual abuse if it became known that a prostitute in her twenties gave a fourteen-year-old boy intricate and extensive lessons in lovemaking. Morgan had been thorough, no question about it. She’d paved the way for the years he’d spent seducing one woman after another. Sameh was the first woman he’d become friendly with before they’d gone to bed together.
He forced his attention back to the present.
“This was Adam’s graduation,” Myles was saying.
“What did you do after you graduated, Adam?” Again those intense blue eyes were trained on him.
“Vietnam,” he said shortly. “I was lucky. I only hit the tail end of the whole fiasco.”
“And then you came back here?”
He was about to agree when Myles interrupted. “No, he didn’t come home, not for several years. He stayed on in Southeast Asia, searching for prisoners of war.” The naked pride in the old man’s voice made Adam’s chest ache, although it also embarrassed him to have Myles brag about him to Sameh. “Hawk was something of a legend, rescuing men who’d given up all hope of freedom,” Myles related, and Adam’s face burned.
“Sameh’s not interested in all that ancient history, Myles,” he protested, his voice gruff. “Why don’t we go out for a walk, or—”
“Yes, I am so interested, Adam,” Sameh interjected, frowning at Adam and focusing her attention on Myles. “When did Adam come back to the United States? How did you two get together again?”
Damn. Adam got up and stalked over to the window. The two of them were talking about him as if he weren’t even in the room.
“He didn’t come back until after he nearly got himself killed over there,” Myles told her, and there was a tremor in his voice. “It was touch and go for a while. It took him almost a year to recover. I’d retired by that time—I’d never married, you see, and I was living here in L
.A. I can tell you I was damned lonely. Hawk was good enough to come out and keep me company for a time.”
Adam shook his head in disbelief and rolled his eyes heavenward at that version of the story. The truth was that Myles had located the veterans’ hospital where Adam was a patient and had him transported out to his own house in the Valley. He’d hired the best rehab team he could find. He’d knocked out a wall and turned what had been his living room into a gym, filling it with the equipment Adam needed to regain the strength he was certain he’d lost forever.
Even all these years later, Adam shuddered at the memory.
It was humiliating to recall it now, but he’d sure as hell lost his guts at that stage. Worn down with pain and the dismal surroundings at the V.A. hospital in which he’d felt trapped, he was ready to give up and settle for a six-foot patch of earth until Myles got hold of him. The stubborn, wonderful old bugger had nagged and bullied and shamed him into taking the painful, tedious route back to living. Adam owed him more than he could ever say.
In a roundabout way, it was also through Myles that Blue Knights came to be. Through a friend of Myles’s, Adam had eventually met Bernie, who’d just quit his job as a detective on the LAPD.
Bernie was disillusioned and bitter over a case he’d been working for over a year, one his superiors had dropped because of political pressure. Bernie was newly married and needed to find another job fast. Opposites in many ways, the two men liked and complemented each other. They found they worked well together, and Blue Knights was born.
Myles had been friend and mentor to him, the nearest thing Adam had ever had to a father. The thought of losing him again to the creeping horror that stole his wits away and made him a caricature of himself made tears sting behind Adam’s eyes, and he suddenly had to turn away from Sameh and Myles until he got control of himself.
News of Myles’s amazing remission had quickly spread, and the nurses had been discreetly checking in all afternoon, as delighted and astonished with their patient’s sudden improvement as Adam was.
The afternoon shadows lengthened, and a nurse wheeled in a cart with dinner. There were servings for Adam and Sameh, as well, and Sameh set up the small table under the window, putting one of the roses in a water glass as a centerpiece, laughing at Adam’s good-natured teasing when she dropped the cutlery on the floor for the third time.
When the table was ready, Adam helped his friend over to the armchair he’d drawn up, but it was obvious that the older man’s strength was fading with shocking rapidity. Exhausted, Myles made a pretense of eating at first, but finally his head lolled and he lurched forward, falling asleep long before the simple meal was finished. Adam called an orderly to help prepare Myles for bed, and when the cheerful young man arrived, Adam and Sameh said a reluctant good-night.
“You come visit again soon, my dear,” Myles whispered tiredly as Sameh bent to press a kiss on his cheek. “You can even bring this reprobate along if you want,” he added, making an unsuccessful effort to clasp Adam’s hand in his own. His faded blue eyes met Adam’s, and a slow tear traced its way down his wrinkled cheek. “Goodbye, my boy,” he murmured. There was a finality to the farewell that sent shivers down Adam’s spine.
Vinnie met them in the lobby, her broad face wreathed in smiles. “Now wasn’t that something?” she crowed. “He’s been going downhill all week long. I’d never have imagined in a million years that he’d come out of it like this. Goes to show you miracles can happen. This old town isn’t called the City of Angels for nothing.”
Adam took Sameh’s hand in his as they left the building, but he didn’t speak even after they were in the car and back on the freeway. In his mind, he was going over and over the afternoon’s events, and he still could hardly believe what had occurred.
“I like your friend very much,” Sameh commented. “He’s an old soul, a most unusual person.”
Adam was remembering something. “Sameh, what was that thing you did with your hands when we first got there today? Around Myles’s head?”
“Oh, that. I was smoothing him, trying to fix the breaks in his energy field.” She turned to look at Adam, and her voice was filled with sadness. “I couldn’t really mend it, you know. I could only patch it together for a short time. The electromagnetic currents that surround him are short-circuiting and growing increasingly weaker. What I did was only temporary. It worked for today, but the disease he has is escalating. I’m afraid by tomorrow morning he won’t even remember us being there. The field is so weak that what I did today won’t work again.” There was pain in her voice now. “I wish with all my heart that I was better at healing, Adam.”
The uncomfortable and all-too-familiar gut reaction to her flights of fancy rolled over him, but this time it lacked conviction. He’d seen Myles both before and after she’d made those strange motions with her hands. There’d been a dramatic—an unbelievable—change after Sameh did whatever it was she’d done.
Adam had heard rumors of people who were able to use their hands to cure illness; he’d even seen a tongue-in-cheek report about them on “20/20.” The investigative reporters were skeptical, although they hadn’t been able to totally discount some of the episodes. Some people really believed that such healers existed.
Frances did. She insisted they were effective, although she’d never been able to locate one with the ability to cure Corey.
Adam was almost ready to believe that Sameh had some kind of talent along those lines, although he didn’t begin to understand what it was or how it worked. He thought about how Corey had relaxed when she’d held him, and hadn’t Bernie said yesterday that Sameh was teaching Frances some meditation stuff that might be good for the baby? By her own admission, Sameh couldn’t completely cure either Corey or Myles, but she sure as hell had helped them both.
Today she’d given him back his friend, if only for an afternoon. A wave of gratitude and overwhelming tenderness washed over him. Never mind how she did it. The fact was that she managed to make people around her feel better. She was so damned…sweet. Caring. Generous.
Loving. She was the most loving woman he’d ever met, which was richly ironic, considering that he’d never even gotten close to undressing her, much less taking her to bed. He’d never been around a beautiful woman this long without taking her to bed. That in itself was a miracle of sorts.
He grimaced. What was he thinking—miracle? It was a colossal bloody disaster. He spent his days and nights in a perpetual state of arousal, like a teenager. He’d probably start getting zits and having wet dreams if his frustration lasted much longer.
He glanced over at her as he pulled to a stop at a red light. Since they’d left the nursing home, he’d been preoccupied, thinking about Myles. He realized now that Sameh was playing with the controls on the radio, flicking from one station to another. The station changed yet again as he looked at her, but she wasn’t touching the controls. The small buttons on the console were moving in and out as if by remote control.
A chill wriggled up his spine, and his hands clenched the wheel.
Sameh was relaxing against the seat, head back, eyes closed, humming a little tune under her breath, her hands folded primly in her lap. Her dark eyelashes, indecently long and lush, curled against her cheekbones. He loved the way her nose tilted up just the smallest bit.
A news broadcast began and she frowned. Suddenly he heard the voice of Leonard Cohen, singing about Suzanne and the river, and Sameh, eyes still closed, smiled a lazy, contented smile and hummed along. “This is the singer you like, isn’t it, Adam?” The set button depressed and released, locking Cohen in.
The light had changed, and cars behind him were honking. Adam stepped on the gas and the car lurched ahead. “Sameh.” He did his best to keep his voice level, to sound only casually interested. “Mind telling me how you do that?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Do what?”
He nodded toward the radio. “Change stations without touching the controls.”
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br /> She looked surprised, and then she smiled, pleased with herself. “I didn’t realize I was doing it. Goodness, it’s just like the tutors said. It’s simple when I don’t try, isn’t it? It’s called telekinesis—all you do is visualize the object and see the changes occurring. But I’ve always gotten tense and nervous, and then it doesn’t work.”
“I see.” He nodded as if all this gibberish made perfect sense.
She’d taken her sandals off in the car, as she always did, and now she pulled one bare leg up and encircled it with her arms, resting her chin on her knee. Her skirt hiked up so that part of her thigh was exposed. Her skin was golden, sleek and soft and inviting. He longed to reach across, place his hand on that smooth, slender leg, slide it up under her skirt— His body reacted energetically, and the loose cotton pants he wore were suddenly constricting.
“You know, Adam, this assignment is proving much more difficult than I expected it to be.” Sameh’s voice was pensive.
He stole another glance at the expanse of thigh. Trying to stop himself from pulling the car over to the curb and climbing all over her was proving more difficult than he’d expected. He cleared his throat and tried to pay attention to traffic. “How so?”
“Well, I studied this era before I came, of course, but living in a primitive society is lots different than viewing it on simucam.” She sighed, and from the corner of his eye he saw her breasts rise and fall under the sleeveless silk top she wore.
Damn it, what was it about her? She was fully clothed and yet she had him hot and breathless with wanting her. This stuff about only being friends was just making him more determined by the second that he was going to win her over in the end.
“I was mentally prepared for—” she ticked the list off on her fingers “—for the AIDS epidemic, drug addiction, social unrest, homelessness, wars, environmental disasters and archaic diseases like Alzheimer’s.” She wound her arms around her legs again and let her chin drop.
Not Quite an Angel (Harlequin Superromance No. 595) Page 12