Undercover Mistress

Chapter 5

Babbling, “Oh God, oh God,” Celia pressed shaking fingers to the side of the man’s neck.

Then, remembering how little success she’d had finding a pulse the last time she’d tried that, she clutched his shoulders and shook him instead. And all the while she was shaking him, her mind was screaming: Damn you-Roy Rogers, or Blackbeard, whatever your name is-wake up! Don’t you dare die on me now-don’t you dare!

She heard a groan and went limp with relief. She even allowed herself to feel a bit silly, now, for thinking the worst. He wasn’t dead-of course he wasn’t. It was obvious what had happened-he’d tried to get up to go to the bathroom and had fainted. The idiot.

The man on the floor stirred. He lifted his head, then one hand. Touched a spot in the center of his forehead and uttered a puzzled but distinct, “Ow.”

“You fainted,” Celia said flatly, relief making her cranky.

His eyes jerked toward her, as if he’d only just realized she was there-which was about the same moment it occurred to her that he was stark naked.

With studied unconcern, concentrating on keeping her eyes focused on his face, she ploughed on. “What were you trying to do, kill yourself? After all I went through to save your life?”

His brow furrowed. In a slurred voice, barely audible, he mumbled, “Had to…needed…the bathroom.”

She made a scolding sound. “You couldn’t wait for me to get back? What were you thinking? You could have hurt yourself.”

Teeth flashed white in his beard-shadowed face, and her heart gave a queer little bump. It was unexpected, the first time she’d seen him smile. “Imagine that,” he said in his soft, sandy whisper, and her skin shivered as if a breeze had brushed over it, but in places no breeze could have touched.

“Yeah, well.” She coughed and shifted around so that her eyes wouldn’t be so tempted to stray along the lean, dusky length of him. “Anyway, now I have to get you back into bed somehow, don’t I? Can you get up? I suppose I can get Doc…”

This is déjà vu all over again, she thought, envisioning herself thumping up the stairs to Doc’s deck and pounding on his sliding glass door. She really hated to have to do that-Doc was almost certainly asleep, now, making up for the night he’d lost.

“Naw…I can make it. Gimme a hand…” The man was struggling to sit up, one leg flexing, his body bowing and abdominal muscles tightening, one hand going to his ribs to support his injury as his lips drew back from his teeth in an unconscious grimace of pain.

Celia gave up trying not to look at his body. As she scrambled to her feet and moved around behind him to give him what help and support she could, she was thinking he reminded her of classical statues and Renaissance paintings of tortured saints-lean, sinewy and battered, but with an elegance of line and proportion more often found in those old masters’ works than in life. He seemed completely unselfconscious about his nakedness, too, which could have meant either that the man had no natural modesty at all or else had forgotten all about the fact that he wasn’t wearing clothes. Or maybe, Celia thought, he was just too sick to care.

It was a sobering thought, and it helped to cool the heat in her face and dampen, though not completely banish, the drumlike pulse that had begun to throb in her belly.

She was sweating by the time she got him up on his feet and across the few yards of carpeted floor to the bed. He was shivering, noisily and violently, like a small child who’d played too long in the snow. The old-library-paste look of his complexion alarmed her. What will I do, she wondered, if he faints again?

She stood beside the bed gazing down at him, huddled with his eyes closed under the comforters she’d tucked tightly around him. She thought he looked worse now than he had when she’d first carried him in from the beach. He definitely seemed more pitiful than piratical, the swashbuckling thrust of beard-stubbled jaw and chin overshadowed by waving locks of dark hair plastered to his sweat-beaded forehead, where a mouse-sized lump was already blossoming. His eyes were blackened-from the injury to his nose, probably-and the skin below his lashes had a bruised and delicate look. Seeing that, she felt something twinge deep inside and drew a quick, startled breath.

I should get him something to eat, she thought, remembering Doc’s last orders. Food-that would be good.

She cleared her throat and watched the eyelashes flutter with the struggle to lift. Dark eyes, frowning vaguely, focused on her face. “Um,” she said, folding her arms across her front to contain the odd little current that had begun to vibrate in her chest, “do you think you can…I mean, can I get you something to eat? Doc said you need to eat. And fluids.” She added accusingly, as if it had been his fault entirely, “You lost a lot of blood, you know.”

Roy found he wanted to smile, if only he had the strength; she said it as if she were mad at him, glaring at him as fiercely as a woman who looked as angelic as this one possibly could. Meekly, he muttered, “S’more of that broth would be good.”

“Huh,” she said, in a lifting, surprised kind of way, “I’m amazed you even remember that. Okay-be right back.” She pointed at him as she turned, fierce again. “Don’t go to sleep, you hear me? I’ll be right…back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Roy said in his best, well-raised Southern. Then he must have dozed off anyway, because it seemed only a moment before she was back with a tray, nudging him with her hip to make a place for herself on the edge of the mattress.

He batted at the quilts and tried to hitch himself up on the pillows, annoyed with himself for not having done that while he was alone and she wasn’t there to see him struggle. When she set the tray on the floor and leaned over him to help him sit up, her nearness, her fragrance made his heart bang with a force that seemed too much for the frail shell that contained it.

He’d never felt like this before, and it dismayed him. His hunger, thirst and weakness seemed to have combined into a vulnerability so unknown to him and so appalling he had to try to deny it. He glared at her with hot eyes and barked, “I can do it,” in a voice that was plainly fraught with pain and nausea.

“Fine,” she said with a coolness that shamed him, and placed the tray across his quilt-draped lap.

Then, what could he do but sit and stare at the steaming mug while the hunger and thirst pooled at the back of his throat, feeling like a grounded eagle gazing at a mouse just beyond reach of his talons. Shaking in waves, he remembered the mess he’d made with the tea.

“Guess maybe you’d better do it,” he mumbled, grudging and chastened. “I’d most likely spill half of it.”

She picked up the mug and spoon without saying a word, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her face to see if there was a smile of triumph on her lips or lurking in her eyes. He focused instead on the spoon, watching as she lifted it first to her own mouth to test its temperature before offering it to him. She did that so casually, so naturally it didn’t occur to him until later what an intimate act it was.

The broth was the best thing he’d ever tasted. It both warmed him and made him feel stronger, and when, after several spoonfuls, the worst of the shivering seemed to have stopped, he said in a humble tone, “You’re pretty good at this. You sure you’re not a nurse?”

Concentrating on her task, she replied absently, “No, I only play one on TV.”

“No kidding?” His eyes flicked to her face, making him jerk just enough to dislodge a few drips of broth from the brimful spoon. Before when that had happened he’d felt embarrassed and ashamed; now he barely noticed. “What,” he asked as he lifted a hand to swipe at his chin, “are you on some kind of series?”

“Sort of,” She was leaning over to reach for something-a napkin-on the nightstand, and he couldn’t see her face. He gazed instead at her ear, the back side of it, the curve of the hair-line, the random wisps of blond hair that had escaped from her ponytail. It struck him how very young and innocent, even sweet, that part of her seemed.

Distracted, he asked, more bluntly than he’d intended, “So…who are you?” Then, because he thought that might sound a little rude, tried to amend it. “I mean…what’s your name? Should I-”

“Celia Cross.”

“Celia…” Celia, love… He tested the name on his tongue, and thought, I remember that. Not that it meant any more to him now than it had when he’d first heard Doc say it. “Are you somebody I should…recognize?” Because he didn’t.

She threw him an amused look, not quite a smile. “Probably not. The show I’m on is a soap.”

“Pardon me?”

“A soap opera-or, as we in the business prefer to say, daytime drama. It’s called Doctors and Lovers.” The amused look twitched into irony. “I play one of the latter. Who also happens to be a nurse-Suzanne Sullivan, in case you’re interested. Head surgical nurse at Rosewood Medical Center, Rosewood, Ohio.” Something-a shadow-took the light from her eyes as she lifted the mug of broth once more.

Intrigued by that unfathomable look, he shook his head, ignoring the proffered spoon. His hunger for answers, for knowledge was more compelling. “Aren’t those daytime soaps pretty much a year-round, everyday thing? So what are you, on vacation or something?”

“Something like that.”

She drew a catching breath, the way people do when they want to start on a fresh tack. Her lips smiled, though her eyes still avoided his. “Hey-I’ve been grocery shopping. Let me know when you feel ready for something besides broth, because I got so much good stuff.” The center of her forehead furrowed charmingly. “At least, it looks like it would be good. I’ve never tried the pot roast-I’m sort of a semivegetarian…”

“Sort of…a semivegetarian. That like being semipregnant?”

“Yeah, well…” She hitched up one shoulder and her smile deepened, producing an unexpected dimple as her gaze doggedly followed the spoon’s path. “Meaning, I almost never eat red meat but I’m not a fanatic about it.”

He accepted the spoonful of broth, then lifted his hand and caught hers before she could lower it again. She made a soft breath sound and the smile vanished. Her startled gaze lifted and slammed into his.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked in a harsh and garbled voice. It was something he’d asked her before, though the urgent need to know the answer seemed to have come upon him only now, in a devastating rush, like a rogue wave.

“You were on the beach,” she said with a shrug, edgy and evasive, veiling her eyes once more. “I found you. What was I supposed to do, leave you there?”

“No-no, don’t give me that. Anybody else would have called somebody. Cops…paramedics…”

She was ready for him now; her face had composed itself into the cool perfection of porcelain. “Then it’s a good thing anybody else didn’t find you, isn’t it?”

His hand tightened over hers, and it felt small within his grasp-small, but unexpectedly substantial. Not soft, not helpless, but strong, the way small female creatures are strong in defense of their offspring. “Why didn’t you?”

Her gaze lifted…locked with his. “You begged me not to.”

“You said that before. Doesn’t explain it. Not even a little bit.” He couldn’t explain the tension, or how he knew the battle being waged between them had little to do with the questions asked or answers given. But as the struggle went on in unblinking silence, he had a strange feeling the way she answered him now was going to be important to him down the road in ways he couldn’t begin to understand.

After what felt like a very long time, she seemed to deflate, not in a defeated way, just a softening. She eased her hand from his grasp and he let it go, but with an odd sense of having relinquished some long-sought-after treasure.

She sat back and returned the mug and spoon to the tray in her lap, reestablishing subtle barriers between them. “I’m not sure I can explain it. Not…in a way you’d understand.”

“Try me.”

Her glance flicked at him-a brief flare-up of defiance. Then, letting go of a breath, she shifted the tray onto the mattress beside her and reached up to pull the fastening from her hair, giving her head a little shake as the sun-shot masses slithered and tumbled onto her shoulders. His throat tightened as a cloud of scent enveloped him…a delicately sweet fragrance that made him think, incomprehensibly, of weddings.

“I suppose I have to, or you’ll just think I’m a nutcase,” she said as she combed her hair back from her face with her fingers. She gave an airy laugh, though it seemed to him it was mostly pretense, lacking in ease and confidence. “I guess…well, part of it is-and I guess this won’t come as a great shock to you, given my profession-but I have a pretty vivid imagination.”

He gave a snort of surprise. “Imagination!” He didn’t know why it surprised him. Maybe because it sounded like the truth when he’d expected all the build up to be the prelude to a lie.

“So, when I came upon this…body-you-lying on the beach, in the middle of the night, in the fog, and you’d obviously been hurt and then washed up there, like…like so much driftwood…that’s what I thought, at first. I almost ran on by, but then…you moved. At least, I thought…but as I said, I have an imagination. What if I hadn’t stopped? Can you imagine-”

“Just get on with it,” Roy muttered, impatient with her tangents, which began again to seem to him like pretense. A distraction, nothing more.

“You obviously have no sense of drama,” she scolded, in a tone more teasing than grumpy. But he noticed her eyes weren’t laughing when she continued, “Well, anyway…there you were, unconscious, and so cold…and when I put my shirt over you-”

“Your shirt?”

The watermark frown appeared in the center of her forehead. “Well…yeah, it was all I had. I was out jogging. A jacket would have been too warm. So, I took off my shirt-”

“Thank you,” he said huskily, remembering the terribleness of the cold. The pain of it. “For that.”

“You’re welcome.” Was it his imagination, or had the color on her cheeks deepened? She hesitated, then glared at him in an annoyed sort of way. “Anyway, you said, ‘Don’t call police. Don’t tell anyone. Nobody can know.’”

“Oh, come on.” The way she’d imitated his voice-pitch, inflection, accent and all-unnerved him. It hit him then-really hit him-that she was, after all, an actress. And judging from those statuettes on the bookshelves, a damn good one.

“Those were your exact words. Believe me, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s memorizing dialogue.” She sniffed and looked away. “You made me promise. What was I supposed to do?”

Roy didn’t know how to answer that and didn’t try.

After a moment, she gave a little shrug and her eyes, when they came back to him, seemed to have grown darker. The rippled watermark frown gave them a confused look as she murmured, “I know, I know. Most people would have thought you were just being incoherent and called 911 anyway. But like I said, I have this imagination-maybe it’s the business I’m in-but at the time, under those circumstances, I could think of all sorts of reasons why somebody might ask such a thing. And then…”

“And then…?” Roy prompted when she looked away again, and his heart beat faster with the thought that she might not give him the answers he wanted.

But, she did turn back to him, and this time there was no mistaking the darkness in her eyes. He was no psychologist, but he was pretty sure he knew genuine pain when he saw it. She drew a quick, shallow breath and said softly, “I sort of know what it’s like, wanting to keep things…private.”

Again made impatient by the fear she might not continue, he waited only a moment before he prompted, “I thought actors-”

“I haven’t worked in over a year.” She said it in a quiet, bitter voice. And then the words came at him in a rush, as if she’d taken the lid off one of those joke cans with the coiled-up springs disguised as snakes inside them. “I had an accident on the Pacific Coast Highway. I’d been shooting a guest appearance on another show, which was a great opportunity for me, and I didn’t want to pass it up, even though I knew it would be hard, keeping up with my obligations on Doctors… Anyway, I was on my way home-it was Friday, after a long week of shooting, and I…I guess I must have fallen asleep. I don’t remember it, but they tell me my car crossed the center line and hit another car head-on. I got two broken legs and a ruptured spleen out of it, so I guess you could say I was lucky. There was only one person in the other car-a forty-year-old woman. She was killed.”

This time when she fell silent, Roy didn’t urge her on. After a moment she gave another of those falsely airy laughs and fingered the hair back behind her ears-a self-conscious gesture that seemed uncharacteristic of her. “Naturally, the first thing everybody thought was that I was drunk or strung out on drugs. I wasn’t,” she said with stiff-lipped, angry emphasis, “but that didn’t keep the story-the speculation, the rumors, or whatever you want to call it-from making the rounds of the media. It was everywhere-the newspapers, and not just the tabloids, I’m talking the L.A. Times, TV news, magazine shows, talk shows-even the Internet. There were reporters, photographers, paparazzi-even in the hospital. It was…awful. I don’t know if you can imagine…” She looked away, her throat working.

“Anyway,” she concluded dryly, “I’ve had enough sensational publicity to last me a lifetime, so when you said, ‘No cops,’ that sounded fine with me.”

She swiveled to pick up the tray, then rose, and irrational twinges of impending loss flashed through him at the thought of her going. He was groping for something to say that would keep her there longer without making him sound too infantile and pathetic, clearing his throat and trying to hitch himself higher on the pillows, when a red-hot poker buried itself in his chest. As air gusted from his lungs, as he was falling backward into a whirling vortex of pain and dizziness, he heard her voice asking if he was all right. He heard the rattle of crockery, felt the mattress beside him dip as she sat on it. Felt her hand touch his forehead with surprising gentleness. The thought flashed through his mind: That’s one sure way to keep her from leaving. He almost wanted to laugh, but it would have hurt too much.

“Damn,” he said without unclenching his teeth. “Hurts.”

“Doc left you some painkillers. Do you want-”

“Yeah…that’d help.”

“How many? Doc said-”

“About…eight.”

“Yeah, right. How ’bout two?”

He heard the rattle of pills in a plastic bottle. A moment later, he felt her hand slide under his neck, and that felt so good to him he wished he could think of a reason for her to leave it right there.

Something brushed his lips. “Here-open up.”

He opened his eyes as he took the pills she gave him and found that her face was so close to his he could have counted her lashes-if he could have focused his eyes, that is. He could smell that sweet fragrance, feel the swirl of her breath on his skin. His lips tingled where her fingers touched them. Then the smooth coolness of china was there instead, and he was swallowing pills and tepid, bitter tea, his eyes were closing again, weakness and weariness flowing through him along with a regret as acute as pain.

“Where’re you going?” Could that pitiful sound have come from him?

Her voice seemed to come from far away, so maybe he imagined the odd little catch in it. “I have to put the groceries away. But I’ll be right back. Is there, um, something else you need?”

Answers! That’s what I need…more answers. Against his better judgment, he lifted his head off the pillow so he could look at her. “One…thing…”

“Yes?” She took a step toward him, her image blurring and shimmery in his unreliable vision.

“Doc. What’s his story? You told me why you did what you did. Doesn’t explain him.”

She folded her arms across herself in a quick, defensive motion. Even with the shimmer he could see her shrug. “Doc’s my next-door neighbor. And my friend. I needed help-I couldn’t very well move you all alone.” She paused, and when he didn’t say anything, abruptly unwrapped herself and went on with an air of surrender, “I went to him because I knew he’d probably do what I asked. Because I knew he has an even better reason than I do for not wanting to involve the authorities. Okay?”

Roy felt a chill go down his spine; once again, he was wondering what the hell kind of people he’d fallen in with. There was a deadly stillness inside him as he calmly said, “Oh, yeah? What reasons are those?”

Again, and for a longer time, she hesitated. Then she said flatly, “He lost his license to practice medicine. How and why is his story to tell. Let’s just say that these days, like me, he likes to keep a low profile. Lucky for you-that’s why you’re here, instead of in a hospital trying to explain that gunshot wound to a bunch of police officers.”

A smile flickered like a faulty lightbulb. “Also, unfortunately for you, maybe, it’s why you only get ibuprofen for your pain instead of something stronger.” She turned to go, then checked and looked back. Her smile was softer now and maybe sadder, too. “He was a good doctor, once,” she said, and left him.

Alone, Roy slowly lowered his aching head to the pillows and closed his eyes. He was thinking, What have I gotten myself into? Wounded soap stars and defrocked-was that the word?-doctors… On the other hand, this was California, which everybody knew was the nut capital of the world. What did he expect?

I have to call Max, he thought. He’ll get me out of this crazy place. Probably get me some painkillers that work, too. I should have asked her for a phone.

Why hadn’t he, when he’d had the chance?

There’d been distractions, of course, other things going on, not the least of which was, he’d passed out cold on the bathroom floor. Lucky he hadn’t cracked his skull. Or maybe he had-from the size and tenderness of the mouse on his forehead and the way his head was pounding, it felt like a distinct possibility. But there was something else, too, something he hadn’t forgotten, but which had slipped to the back of his mind.

His name wouldn’t happen to be Max, would it?

How could she know about Max?

The question clamored in his brain like an alarm bell. He knew he needed to answer it, had to do something about it, but…he was too weak, too tired, and his head hurt too much. There was nothing he could do about Max right now-nothing he could do about anything, really.

Except…sleep.

“I’m worried about him,” Celia said. It was hard to tear her gaze away from the flushed face on the pillow in order to look at the man standing next to her, but she managed it. “I think he has a fever.”

“I think it’s safe to say he very likely does,” Doc agreed, frowning judiciously down at his patient. Together, they watched the man mutter and mumble, eyes glaring, fierce and unfocused, at nothing. After a moment, he lifted his eyebrows and drew a considering breath. “Although, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know. Fever is nature’s antibiotic, after all, and, under the circumstances, the only one we have at our disposal.” He glanced over at her, then quickly away, but not before she saw her own concern mirrored in his decidedly bloodshot eyes. “Keep a close watch on him, give him plenty of fluids, keep his head cool. If he’s still feverish in the morning, well…I guess we’ll have to think of something, won’t we.”

Celia listened to Doc’s footsteps cross the room and fade away. We both know what that “something” is, don’t we?

If the man didn’t get better soon…if infection set in…they’d have to take him to a hospital. There really would be no choice. But how would they ever explain the gunshot wound? Her whole body grew cold when she thought about the questions…the cops…the publicity…the reporters…the photographers…the rumors, the speculation. Not to mention that she and Doc were probably going to be facing criminal charges.

The man in the bed muttered something she couldn’t understand. His eyes were closed, now, and his skin had the unmistakable ruddy, velvety look of fever. Drawing a catching breath, Celia reached for the dish towel that was soaking in a panful of cold water on the floor near her feet. She squeezed out most of the water, folded the towel and laid it gently across her patient’s forehead. Nurse Suzanne couldn’t do it better, she thought, the irony of that almost making her smile.

Except, following a script, playing at being a nurse in a television daytime drama had never made her feel like this-the squeezing sensation in her chest…the tap-tapping pulse in her stomach. And she was quite sure real nurses would never allow themselves to feel this fierce protectiveness…this fervent sense that the man she was tending in some way belonged to her.

That she was responsible for him.

“I’m not going to let you die,” she whispered, as emotion filled her throat and speaking aloud became impossible. “No matter what it takes, I won’t let you die.”

The only response was more incoherent muttering. And then, suddenly and distinctly, “Don’…go…’way.”

“Don’t worry,” Celia said, her voice brusque and blurred. She brushed at her nose with the back of her hand and reached once more for the towel. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Roy woke with the sense of having escaped from the clutches of a nightmare, except he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it had been about. He knew he was lying on his side, and that he felt empty and damp. And chilly-he shivered in small pitiful fits.

But at the same time, he felt light. Almost…happy. Reluctant to open his eyes, for a time he drifted, battered but relieved, like the survivor of a raging flood washed up in quiet shallows, glad to have come safely through it, whatever it was.

Gradually, though, it came to him that he was going to have to do something about the various discomforts intruding on that strange, contradictory sense of well-being. Clammy sheets, for one thing. For another, the fact that he was so damn thirsty. Obviously, if he was going to do something about those things, he was going to have to open his eyes.

It took more effort than he thought he remembered from all the other times he’d done it, but he got the job done. Then for a minute or two, he thought he must still be dreaming-either that, or there was something seriously wrong with his vision. He blinked a couple of times and tried to focus, and when that didn’t make things clearer, closed one eye. Nope-still there.

It was a face-no doubt about it. About four inches from his. Probably the most beautiful face he’d ever seen in his life, and one he’d seen before. But not like this. No, not at all like this-eyes closed…lips apart, but only slightly…skin wearing the soft pink flush of sleep. One hand, loosely curled, pillowed her cheek, in the way of very small children.

He must have moved…or maybe she felt, somehow, the intensity of his gaze. Whatever the reason, her eyes opened so suddenly he gave a small involuntary jerk, and for a long moment she stared in silence at the center of his face-at his nose, to be precise-before her gaze flicked up and connected with his.

He found he was holding his breath, his mind flashing back to a time in his past too distant to register as real memories…fragmented impressions of himself trudging through knee-deep cool-moist leaves while holding tightly to a large warm hand…a gruff voice softly warning…and then-a vision in dappled sunlight so miraculous it had remained intact and pristine in the attic of his mind for all these years-a doe and her twin fawns…new-born, damp and spindle-legged still. His heart pounded now as it had then, and he didn’t breathe, lest even that stirring of air frighten her away.

The moment passed-they could hardly have stayed that way forever. Tiny muscles around her eyes and mouth…across her forehead and the bridge of her nose…quivered and stirred in a waking-up way. He began to breathe again…carefully…wondering whether she was about to smile at him or do what she’d done last time she’d awakened to find herself eyeball-to-eyeball with him.

Figuring he’d just as well get the suspense over with, he cleared his throat and gruffly murmured, “We’re gonna have to quit meeting like this.”