Not that it mattered. No body that ached as much as his could be dead. He was still among the living. But where?
Rafe forced his leaden eyelids to open.
The first thing he saw was sunlight streaming through a tall, cane-shuttered window. It was so bright that he had to close his eyes again. The hospital, he thought. That’s where he was. And running up the bloody bill, most likely. When they found out he wasn’t rich, he’d be out on the street.
He turned his head to one side, even that small motion hurting. Lord, what had he done to himself?
Concentrating, he willed his eyes to open again. This time he could see more of the room—a large teakwood armoire with oriental hardware; a richly woven Turkish carpet on the floor; a four-foot brass vase trailing the fronds of a huge, lacy fern. On the wall above the vase—Rafe gasped when he saw it—was the snarling, mounted head of a Bengal tiger.
A hospital? “Not bloody likely,” Rafe muttered out loud.
Burning with curiosity, he raised himself on one elbow and tried to sit up. Pain shot a searing path up his right leg as he twisted it. Broken, Rafe concluded dourly even before he felt the heavy splint. Broken nastily. It would be many weeks mending.
Blast! Rafe cursed his luck. Next week’s big air show, with $100,000 in prizes, was to have been the turning point of his life. He was gambling everything on the chance that he would find a backer to invest in the aeroplane he’d designed and built. He’d had a chance. A good chance. Now his aeroplane, his leg and his dreams all lay shattered.
Slowly Rafe sank back onto the pillow. He would rebuild the aeroplane, of course. And he would fly again. But he’d lost the season. He had missed his big chance. Damn! He glanced around the strangely exotic room again. Where in hell’s name was he, anyway? And where was his aeroplane?
The sound of approaching footsteps outside the half-open door broke into his thoughts. Instinctively Rafe froze. Life had taught him to be cautious. Even in a place like this, you could never tell who might be slinking around the halls. Once, in a perfectly respectable New Orleans hotel, he had gone to sleep and almost lost his life to a wallet-snatching bellhop with a stiletto in his boot. This place looked too ritzy for such shenanigans, but all the same…
Hinges creaked softly as the door swung all the way open. Rafe lay still, his eyes closed, as the footsteps padded across the carpet toward him. They were light and swift—a woman’s, Rafe guessed, relaxing a bit. Though a woman could be just as dangerous as a man. What would she look like? he caught himself wondering. Would she be young? Pretty? And what would she be doing in this room? He let her come closer, playing the game as long as he dared.
Now he sensed the light press of her body against the side of the bed. She was looking down at him. Rafe could feel her eyes, like sunlight on his face. His heart drummed against the wall of his chest, so loudly that he wondered if she could hear it.
She leaned closer. Rafe could hear the soft, feminine whisper of her breathing. He smelled no perfume, though. That was a bad sign. A perfumed woman approaching a man in bed usually had just one thing on her mind. That would be easy enough to manage, even with a broken leg—with a little cooperation from the lady, of course. But this female didn’t seem bent on seduction. She was too quiet.
Whatever her game, it was time to end it. Rafe opened his eyes. At the same instant, he moved, striking with the speed of a diamondback. Before the girl could even gasp, he had seized her arms in his two hands. He jerked her down and forward, bringing her face to a level with his own.
Startled eyes stared into his—violet-blue eyes, as cool and translucent as sapphires, and strangely familiar. Maybe he hadn’t been hallucinating after all. Or maybe he still was.
“Let me go!” she gasped.
“Not until you tell me where I am,” Rafe said.
She tried to pull away, twisting hard against the grip of his hands, but he was too strong for her. When she saw that she couldn’t escape, she stopped struggling. Her eyes glared at him through the tumble of her loose, tawny hair.
“Why, you stupid, addle-brained son of a baboon!” she said in a low voice. “If you want to know where you are, all you have to do is ask! There’s no reason for you to behave like an animal! Now let go of me, Mr. Garrick, before I scream bloody murder!”
Half amused, half embarrassed, Rafe let her go. The little spitfire was right about his behavior, he admitted grudgingly. If anyone in this place had meant to harm him, they could easily have done it while he was still unconscious from the crash. He had acted out of instinct. Acted rashly.
“How did you know my name?”
“It’s written on the lining of your jacket.” She had taken a couple of steps backward, giving Rafe his first real chance to study her. She was taller than he’d first realized. Prettier, too, with a windblown mane of hair and a face that could have been stamped on an ancient Greek coin, or used to launch a thousand ships. But she was dressed like a child, in a white middy blouse and a rumpled pongee skirt. Grains of sand clung to her bare feet. Innocence was written all over her. Rafe sighed. He liked his women experienced and eager.
“I’ve been down on the beach watching our groundskeepers dig your aeroplane out,” she said, keeping her distance. “They were almost finished when I left to check on you.” She ran a sun-browned hand through her hair, the motion pulling her blouse tight against one perfect, pear-shaped breast. Rafe felt the familiar surge of heat in his loins. Innocent or not, this female was no child.
“Not that I need have bothered,” she continued in a low, breathy voice. “You seem to have your strength back, Mr. Garrick.” Her straight, dark brows almost touched as she scowled at him. “What in heaven’s name did you think I was trying to do to you?”
Rafe tried to laugh and winced when it hurt. Maybe a rib or two had been cracked along with the leg. “You’ve got me there,” he said. “I’d just awakened, you see, and I didn’t quite have my bearings. I still don’t have them, for that matter, so if you’d care to explain—”
“You’re English, aren’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“The way you speak—you sound English,” she persisted.
“All right. My parents came over on a boat from Liverpool when I was twelve,” Rafe said a bit impatiently. And they both died of typhoid eleven months later in a filthy Brooklyn tenement, he kept himself from adding. He never made a habit of telling people his life story. People had enough troubles of their own.
“I thought so,” she said. “I’m good with accents.”
“Look,” Rafe said, wondering if the female was stalling on purpose or if she was just naturally exasperating, “I need to know some things, like where I am and how long I’ve been here. And I need to know about my aeroplane. How bad is the damage? If you can’t tell me, for Pete’s sake, stop babbling and go get somebody who can!”
He saw at once that he had pushed her too far. Her chin went up and her nostrils flared like a blooded filly’s. “You look, Mr. Garrick,” she said coldly. “When your aeroplane crashed I was the first to reach it. I found you hanging halfway out of the machine with your head in the water. I held you up and kept you from drowning while the men got your
