he thought. Didn’t she get a long way from her feet? A very reckless thing for her to do…How could a person explain such a thing?
“A mosquito,” he said. The statement made perfect sense to him.
“Excuse me?” said the woman’s voice. It was low and soft, but it echoed. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
“A mosquito,” he repeated. “In Kuala Lumpur.”
“What?” said the woman, and her lovely voice echoed the word again and again, as if his mind had turned into a cave.
“A mosquito in Kuala Lumpur,” he said with great effort. “I picked up some sort of fever. Not contagious. You needn’t be concerned. It’s not catching. I—I’ll phone you.”
The bricks were doing an interesting sort of polka now, way down there in the distance, whirling around his feet.
“I haven’t given you my number yet,” she said in her multiple voices. “Here—take it. Then I think you’d better go.”
She opened the door. On rubbery legs, he stepped back to allow it. The edges of his vision darkened and kept darkening until only she was left at the center of his sight. She seemed to glow like a flame.
She held a card toward him. He reached for it.
“You’re very beautiful,” he said. She had become luminous, and the words seemed so truthful that they were mystical. They liberated him.
He tried to take the card, but it fell, fluttering to the bricks. She looked at it, then at him, her dark eyes widening.
He looked into those eyes and began falling. He felt he was falling down into something without end.
DARCY WATCHED IN HORROR as he took one step, then another, and began to collapse.
He would have pitched face forward onto the marble of the entryway if she hadn’t broken his fall. He was a big man, but she managed to catch him in her arms.
She stumbled backward with the awkward burden of him. For a few seconds they were caught in a frightening dance in which gravity led.
She staggered, still desperately embracing him, and tumbled to her knees. But she did not relinquish him, and she kept his head from striking the marble. Clumsily she managed to turn him as she let his body ease to the floor.
“My God,” she breathed. She had felt the heat of his body; it had been as if the man had a fire in him.
Now he lay at her knees like one dead. She put her hand on his forehead. It burned and was moist with fine sweat. His breath was shallow.
“What’s wrong with him?” Emerald asked in a tremulous voice. “Did he have a fit?”
“He’s got a fever,” Darcy said. “Get me something to put under his head—now—quick.”
With apprehension, she put her hand over his heart. Its beat beneath her fingers was strong and regular. But the white shirt was damp to the touch, and through it she could feel the hotness of his flesh.
She studied his face in bewilderment. The high cheekbones had hollows beneath them, and she saw that his tan was recent and not deep, as if he wore it as a mere illusion of health.
She wondered if he was having a fever dream, for there was a frown line between the dark brows. He had long lashes for a man, and they gave minute jerks as his eyelids twitched. The corner of his mouth twitched, too, as though some tormented impulse in him fought to speak.
She resisted the urge to touch that restless mouth, to try to sooth it. It was sensually shaped, yet the lines that bracketed it seemed to have been engraved by years of discipline.
He was handsome, but too thin. She remembered the feel of his ribs jutting beneath his shirt when she had held him for those few moments.
Almost guiltily, she smoothed his hair from his forehead.
Emerald, clanking, came to her side, dragging something. “Lift up his head,” she said.
Darcy gritted her teeth and slid her hand beneath the man’s neck and up to the back of his skull. His brown hair felt moist at the roots. She lowered his head to rest against the cushion Emerald had brought—before she realized it was the bookworm.
“Not that,” Darcy rebuked, and threw Emerald a sharp glance.
“You said to get something for his head,” Emerald said defensively.
Oh, what the hell, thought Darcy.
“Should I call an ambulance?” Emerald asked.
“Yes,” Darcy said. She touched his brow again. “He’s burning up.”
Emerald arose with the clinking of chain mail. Darcy bent over the man to loosen his tie and undo his top shirt buttons.
Rose Alice burst through the front door. “I saw the whole thing,” she thundered. “I called 9-1-1. Don’t touch him, Darcy. Get back. I’ve got him covered.”
With a shock, Darcy saw that Rose Alice had one of Gus’s golf clubs and was brandishing it at the fallen man.
“Rose Alice,” she cried. “Put that down. He’s unconscious. He’s ill—this is a sick man.”
“Probably drugged to the gills—” Rose Alice sneered “—I thought he had a funny gleam in his eyes. Never should have let him come over here. Get back, Darcy. I’ll teach him to mess with my girls.”
Emerald, halfway to the phone, had stopped dead and now stared fearfully at Rose Alice.
The man stirred. He gave a small groan, and a muscle played fitfully in his jaw. His head rolled back and forth against the bookworm.
“Stand back,” commanded Rose Alice, her grip tightening. “He’s coming to. If he tries anything, I’ll knock his butt to kingdom come.”
“Rose Alice,” Darcy said in her most menacing tone, “put that down, dammit. Right now.”
She put her arms around the man so that her body shielded his, and she glowered furiously at Rose Alice. “I mean it,” she said. “We’re fine. He’s the one in trouble. He’s got some sort of fever.”
Reluctantly, Rose Alice lowered the golf club. “I would have got a gun,” she said. “But I couldn’t find any bullets.”
“Thank God,” Darcy said. “Emerald—call. Make sure an ambulance is coming.”
Emerald went to the phone, dialed and began to talk excitedly.
The man moved again. The frown line between his brows deepened. The dark lashes flickered restlessly.
Suddenly, his hand rose and clamped hotly on her forearm. His grip was surprisingly strong, and she stifled a gasp of surprise. Instinctively she tried to pull away, but he held her fast.
She found herself staring into a pair of green eyes that were narrowed in pain.
