Lia’s eyes migrated down to her naked legs and she blushed. When she caught sight of Dr. Delph’s exposed flesh, she turned an even darker shade. “So are you.”
Dr. Delph grinned as he felt his cheeks warm. “Lay back,” he said, nodding at the salt platform. “I’m going to put some water on the rocks and then massage a few of your pressure points.”
Lia looked like she wanted to protest, but then her brows knit together again, her eyes closing tightly. She lay back against the salt and folded her knees up, resting one hand on her stomach and the other on her chest. Dr. Delph had to wonder if she was complying or just held that captive by her pain. He really hoped the sauna worked its magic on her.
After ladling a bit of water onto the stones in one corner, he scooped a small amount of coconut oil into his hands and rubbed his palms together until it melted. Then he stood at the end of the center platform behind Lia’s head. He pressed his thumbs down over her third eye and rubbed in slow circles while massaging his index and middle fingers along her temples and down to her jawline.
Lia sighed and the lines creasing her face softened. After a few minutes longer, her legs stretched out, relaxing against the salt platform. Dr. Delph moved his hands down behind her neck and pulled her blond curls out of the way before massaging her heaven’s pillar, the corded muscles on either side of her spine just below the base of her skull. Her chest rose and fell slowly and then trembled as she took a shuddering breath. Moisture sparkled at the corners of her closed eyes, coating her thick lashes.
“How’s that?” Dr. Delph asked softly, working his hands up the sides of her neck and then outward to her shoulder wells. Lia hummed a content noise.
The sauna was one of the few luxuries Dr. Delph allowed himself. During his European quest, he had meditated in all the sacred places—the vaporous caverns of the Delphic ruins, Stonehenge, the Stone Rings of Ireland. It wasn’t until he visited the salty Well of Mary in Ephesus that he found some sliver of peace in his visions. From there, he ventured to the healing salt caves of Poland and Germany. The discovery had played a large role in the preservation of his health.
His memories of Europe and his ancient Greek studies shuffled through his mind, pausing on something familiar that he had nearly forgotten.
“Lia, Greek for bearer of good news,” he said, a small smile tugging at his mouth. Perhaps the Fates had sent her to him after all.
“Well, no one’s ever accused me of that before,” Lia said, her voice heavy with sorrow.
Her chest shuddered again, and a stream of tears ran down her cheeks, dripping onto Dr. Delph’s hands as he massaged the lymph nodes above her collarbone. Her skin grew damp and shiny, responding to the lavender-infused steam filling the small room. It relaxed him too, despite the racing of his heart at every audible breath Lia took.
He moved his fingers up the column of her throat and spread them out just behind her ears, massaging her scalp through her golden curls. Lia’s hands coiled around his wrists, stopping the motion as her emerald eyes opened and latched onto his.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.
“It’s my job.” He felt his cheeks flush as the words escaped him. He didn’t do anything like this for his other patients. “I like you,” he tried again, hoping the honesty would defuse his discomfort. It didn’t. “A lot,” he added, deciding if he was going to put himself out there, it might as well be all the way.
Lia’s breath rushed in and out with more intensity, and Dr. Delph was afraid he had said too much. Until she sat up and slid her legs off the side of the salt platform, bestriding them on either side of his. Her close proximity was all the invitation he needed.
His hands cradled her face, fingers slipping through her hair as he pulled her mouth to his. Her lips parted with ease, and her cool breath rushed into his mouth as she sighed blissfully into the kiss.
He thought of all the reasons he could give her to stay. How he could protect her from Saunders. Ease the pain of her visions. Help her build a more pleasant existence. Take care of her every need, day and night.
When she broke away from him with a gasp, he kissed his way down her jaw and the side of her neck, letting his hands roam across her back. His mind felt like it was melting, and all he could summon was the simplest of requests.
“Don’t leave. Please, don’t leave,” he whispered against her throat, feeling her swallow beneath his lips.
Lia’s next breath sounded more like a sob. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, wedging him back. “I have to.” She put her hands on his chest and pushed away, looking up into his eyes as if willing him to read her mind.
Instead, he kissed her again, long and deep, until the sauna steam threatened to steal his consciousness. He wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her from the salt ledge, carrying her out into the cool air of the dressing room and through the door that led into his bedroom.
He laid her on his bed and kissed his way down the center of her chest before peeling off the rest of their clothes. Lia shivered in the fading daylight that slipped through the bedroom curtains, but he soon remedied that, warming her skin with his own.
Chapter Seventeen
Lia knew she should leave, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Dr. Delph’s hips rocked into her own, satisfying a primal urge she hadn’t felt for some time. She ran her fingers through his hair, brushing it away from his face so she could kiss more of his warm skin, letting herself get lost in his gray eyes.
It wasn’t until they were both spent and she lay tucked in against his cooling body under the sheets that she noticed the fading daylight through his curtained window. The sun was setting.
Her heart fluttered with panic. She had seen a night sky through the office window in her vision, but beyond that, there were no telling details to predict a more specific time. Saunders could arrive at any moment.
Dr. Delph distracted her from the overwhelming thought by squeezing his arm around her back and pressing a kiss to her temple which, surprisingly, was no longer throbbing. She couldn’t decide if that had to do more with the head massage in his sauna or the full body massage in his bed. Either way, the doctor had delivered her from her suffering with his magical touch.
She wished for the thousandth time that she could stay, but the image of him being thrown back as the gun expelled a deafening shot surfaced, breaking her heart all over again.
Dr. Delph tensed against her body, and she knew he’d been watching her thoughts this time. Guilt and shame tore through her, more painful than any migraine she’d ever had. He pulled away from her and sat up, horror filling his expression as he looked down to meet her gaze.
“I tried to tell you in the sauna,” she said softly, her voice on the verge of breaking as fresh tears filled her eyes. “I should have left. It might have changed things. I’m so sorry.” She inhaled in a labored breath as she sat upright, pressing her back against the headboard and pulling the bedsheet up over her breasts. It was bad enough having the darkest truths of her mind exposed to him.
Dr. Delph’s gaze slid away from her and he opened his mouth as if to impart some of his sacred wisdom, but nothing came out. He closed and opened his mouth several more times without saying anything, until he finally found his voice. “I wish you had told me sooner—”
Lia’s stomach knotted as she mentally finished his sentence a dozen times before he could himself—so I could have kicked you out. So I could have transferred you to another clinic. So I could have called Saunders myself and traded your life for my own…
“—then we could have come up with a more practical plan,” he finished instead. His eyes met hers again, their original warmth slowly returning. Then he took her hand and pressed her palm over his drumming heart, though it was hard to say if it was beating for her now or just out of terror.
“Let’s leave,” she whispered, moving in closer to him as if the plan might be overheard and thwarted by the powers that be. “Let’s get out of here befo
re he shows up. We can go anywhere.”
Dr. Delph’s brow scrunched. “I can’t leave Spero Heights defenseless. I didn’t help cultivate a community this unique and necessary just to subject it to a monster of that magnitude. He has to be stopped.”
Lia’s shoulders trembled as a shiver raced up her spine. He was right about one thing. Saunders was a monster. But if he could be stopped was a question she’d already spent a decade asking herself. She still didn’t have an acceptable answer.
Dr. Delph’s death replayed in her mind, and he broke their gaze again, as if withdrawing from her head. He opened his mouth, but the shrill ring from the telephone on the nightstand cut him off. The machine picked up after the second ring, and then Dr. Delph’s smooth voice spilled through the crackling speaker.
“You’ve reached Dr. Christian Delph of Orpheus House in Spero Heights, Missouri. Please leave a detailed message and a phone number, and I will return your call as soon as humanly possible.”
Lia wanted to comment on the clever pun, but her heart jumped into her throat as the machine beeped and another familiar voice invaded the room.
“This is Officer Greg Smith,” Saunders lied in his commanding voice. “I’m following up on called in tip regarding a Lia James, an escapee from Aldini’s Research Hospital.”
The mention of Aldini’s felt like a sucker punch to Lia’s stomach. She let out a small gasp, quickly covering her mouth before she remembered that Saunders couldn’t hear her on the other side of the machine.
Saunders went on. “A truck driver claims she was checked into your clinic this morning. Miss James is a dangerous, manipulative felon. For your safety, do not approach her. Please keep her detained in a locked room until I arrive to arrest her—”
“He’s coming,” Lia hissed, grabbing Dr. Delph’s arm. He placed a finger over his lips to quiet her, and then he grabbed the phone off the cradle before Saunders could hang up.
“This is Dr. Delph. Sorry I didn’t reach the phone in time. How can I help you?”
Lia leaned closer to him so she could hear Saunders on the other end of the line.
“I’m on my way to arrest a woman you admitted this morning, Lia James.”
“I’m very sorry,” Dr. Delph said, his voice oozing with false regret, “but I released her early this afternoon.”
“You did what?” Saunders barked through the phone.
“She wouldn’t give me her full name, so I was unable to look up her insurance details. She seemed to be feeling much better as the morning progressed though, so I didn’t have any reason to keep her.”
“Great.” Saunders let out a disgruntled sigh. “I can already tell this trip is going to be a bust.”
“Trip?” Dr. Delph asked.
“Yeah,” Saunders said. “I still have to conduct a proper investigation, talk to eye witnesses and such. Plus, I’ll need a copy of your medical report for our case file.”
“I can fax that to your station right now if you’d like—”
“No,” Saunders snapped. “I’m thirty minutes out. I’ll just pick it up when I get there. No need risking it to the whims of outdated office equipment.”
“Very well,” Dr. Delph said. “I’ll see you shortly.”
When he hung up, Lia lost it. “You can’t meet with him! Are you crazy? He’s going to shoot you. You saw it!”
Dr. Delph pulled her in against his chest, holding her tightly until her rampage dissolved into quiet sobs. “I’ll meet him at the front door and pass off a fake exam file. The vision takes place in my office. If I don’t let him in there, then it cannot come to pass.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” she cried. “There are no guarantees that a different setting will change the outcome. Please, let’s just leave,” she begged.
“Shhh.” Dr. Delph combed his fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her tear-streaked face. “Have a little faith. Everything will turn out as it should.”
Lia wanted to believe that, but she just couldn’t. How Dr. Delph could, after seeing his own death played out in the living color of her mind, baffled her.
“Stay in here,” he told her. “Keep the door locked. Get some rest. Everything will be fine when you wake up in the morning. You’ll see.”
He’s lost his mind, Lia thought. When she woke up the next morning—if she survived the night—she would be all alone again. With nothing more than a head full of excruciating visions to double the burden of her grief.
“I’m going to take a quick shower,” Dr. Delph said before laying another kiss against her crown. “Please try to get some rest.”
Lia nestled down into the sheets as he left the bed and headed for the attached bath, but there was no way she’d be able to sleep. Not until he was safe and sound beside her again, legs tangled with hers beneath the sheets.
It had been a simple reality just a few moments before, but now it seemed like a hopeless daydream, dangerously toeing the edges of a nightmare.
She had waited too long for something good to come into her life. It couldn’t just be snatched away so soon. Was fate really so cruel?
Chapter Eighteen
Dr. Delph pressed his forehead against the tiled wall of his shower, letting the icy water pelt his back. He felt like he’d been in a daze ever since witnessing his death through Lia’s eyes, and he needed to snap out of it. Fast.
His thoughts suddenly landed on the Fates. So it is death then. And just when he’d wrapped his mind around the idea that they’d delivered a companion to his doorstep. He felt foolish for surrendering to his desires, and even more foolish for dragging Lia into this mess, for allowing her to depend on him when he wouldn’t be around for much longer.
The comforting words he’d offered her were automatic, undoubtedly inspired by the post-coitus high that was quickly wearing off. But he would’ve tried to give her a brave face regardless. Lia was distraught enough without his anguish lending extra fuel. She didn’t need to know that the Fates had abandoned him, that he had little hope of changing the visions they bequeathed her.
He thought to call Selena, but she would charge in and do what she did best: Kill first and hope no one asked questions later. He couldn’t have that. A dead officer was not what Spero Heights needed. And Selena wouldn’t fare well in prison—not that she’d make it that far. She’d die first, and she’d told him as much, numerous times. The pups would be orphaned yet again, something Dr. Delph’s conscience couldn’t endure.
It’s better this way, he tried to convince himself. He’d leave a note for Selena on his desk, letting her know that the town’s secret was safe and that Lia could stay as long as she wanted. Maybe she would build a new life here after all, even if it wasn’t with him by her side.
He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, quickly drying off. There was little time to spare, and he still needed to fabricate a medical exam. He was so distracted by his gloomy fate that he didn’t notice Daisy sitting on the edge of the counter until he glanced up at the mirror.
“Good grief,” he rasped as he stumbled back a step. “The bathroom is off limits, Daisy.”
“I see the newcomer has disrobed in your bedchamber,” she said disapprovingly. “Is she a lady of the night?”
“No,” he snapped. “And keep your voice down. She needs her rest.”
“I need rest,” she pouted. “But you never invite me to lie unclothed in your bed.”
“You’re a child, Daisy. It would be unethical,” he said, pulling a second towel from a cabinet to dry his hair, now that he couldn’t use the one tucked around his waist.
“I’m at least a hundred years older than she is,” Daisy said, her black-filled eyes watching him intently.
“Spirits do not mature after death. We’ve discussed this in great detail.”
“It’s because I’m dead, isn’t it?”
This particular conversation was so familiar that Dr. Delph could have read it from a script. But he wasn’t in the mood for it tonight.
Anger flared up through his chest, but when he realized this would likely be the last time he conversed with the poltergeist, it fizzled out.
He sighed. “Please be kind to Lia. Consider it my last request of you.”
Daisy’s transparent brow crinkled, but then she gasped softly. “Are you ill, dear doctor? Does death approach?”
Dr. Delph grimaced. “Indeed it does.”
“Should you be left behind, once your earthly form is shed, we will have grand, ethereal adventures together.”
“I won’t be left behind, Daisy,” Dr. Delph said, turning to give himself a long, hard look in the mirror. “I am a vessel of the Fates, so they would not allow me to depart if their business with me was unfinished.”
“But your family line will perish,” Daisy said, a sad note in her voice. It hardened again as she added, “Unless you’ve seeded the harlot sullying your bed.” Then she harrumphed and disappeared, leaving a ringing silence behind.
Dr. Delph blanched. The ghost had a point. There was no way of knowing for certain. Not this soon anyway. But it seemed too cruel, even for the Fates, to take him if he had a child on the way.
The troubling thought renewed his determination. Whether or not the Fates intended to take him tonight, he would not go quietly. He had relied on their direction for too long. It was time to take matters into his own hands.
He ran a comb through his hair and pulled it back into a low ponytail before quickly brushing his teeth. Then he slipped back into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of charcoal slacks and a white dress shirt. He added a tie and vest. If he was going to die, he could at least rest assured that he would look good doing so.
Lia watched him with watery eyes and then reached out, grasping his arm when he sat down on the edge of the bed to put on a pair of black loafers.
“If I go now and wait for him outside, maybe he’ll leave you alone,” she said. Guilt and remorse weighed heavy in her eyes, and it was all Dr. Delph could do not to read her thoughts. He had hardly quenched his own doubts, and he was sure hers would undo him completely.
Death at First Sight (Spero Heights Book 2) Page 9