didn’t relax his hold on her, but she hardly noticed. With her free hand, she smoothed back his hair. “No,” she objected. “You’ve got a fever, a bad one. We’ve called an ambulance.”
He groaned. “I don’t want an ambulance. I’ll be fine. Just let me rest a minute.” His eyes squeezed shut, and he grimaced.
“You need to take it easy,” she cautioned.
He opened his eyes and studied her face with perplexity. “You’re the Parker woman, right?”
She nodded. She had a strange, swooping sensation in the pit of her stomach. “Right.”
He put his free hand to his forehead. “And I showed up on your doorstep demanding we talk about our parents, right?”
“Right,” she breathed. His hair had fallen over his brow again, but this time she fought down the impulse to stroke it back into place.
He made a sound of disgust. “I shouldn’t have come. This thing—it sneaked back up on me. I wasn’t in my right mind. I’m probably not in my right mind now.”
He swore and pressed her hand against his chest, and once again she felt the surging beat of his heart.
“Take your mitts off her,” ordered Rose Alice.
He raised his head and looked at her in pained disbelief. Rose Alice was a large, stocky woman with peroxided blond hair. She wore ragged shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves torn off. She did not pull the golf club back in a threat to swing, but she gripped it more tightly, and her arm muscles tensed. The movement made the tattoos on her biceps ripple.
“Who’s that?” he demanded.
“My mother’s housekeeper,” Darcy said. “Please—lie back down.”
Rose Alice said, “He shouldn’t be hanging on you that way. It’s too damn familiar.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, but he kept her hand pressed against his heart. “You keep the room from spinning round.”
“I don’t mind it,” Darcy told Rose Alice. “Please,” she said, turning back to Sloan English, “don’t exert yourself.”
“I think I hear sirens,” said Emerald. “Hark.” She stalked to the door with a jingle and metallic clatter.
Sloan gave her a puzzled scowl. “And who’s that?”
“My sister,” she said, trying to coax him to lean back again. “You said something about Kuala Lumpur. Is that where you caught this fever?”
“Yes,” he said, sinking back. “And it’s a devil. But you won’t catch it. Humans don’t pass it to humans.”
Rose Alice curled her lip. “Says you. How do we know you’re not running around spreading your cooties?”
“It’s only transmitted by mosquitoes,” he said.
“Girls,” said Rose Alice combatively, “when he’s gone, spray. Darcy, I wouldn’t touch him.”
“Rose Alice!” Darcy said, offended. “He just said it wasn’t contagious.”
“What’s he know?” Rose Alice sniffed. “Him staggerin’ around like Typhoid Mary, flingin’ his germs this way and that.”
“It’s sirens, all right,” said Emerald, staring out the door with interest. “It sounds like a lot of them.”
Sloan English let go of Darcy’s wrist. He struggled to rise. “I don’t need an ambulance. I’ll leave. I’m just causing trouble here—”
He heaved himself up enough to prop his weight on his elbows. Even that exertion made him gasp, and his chest rose and fell alarmingly. Darcy saw a vein in his temple banging like a small blue hammer.
“Please,” she begged, grasping his shoulder to restrain him, “don’t…Please.”
His flesh was hard beneath her hand, the muscles lively. But his skin was still unnaturally hot and his shirt damp with perspiration. He struggled to a sitting position, and she could not stop him; for a sick man, he showed an astonishing amount of strength.
But then his strength failed him. He tried to pull himself to his feet, but instead toppled like a marionette whose strings have betrayed it. He would have struck the marble, but once again Darcy caught him.
He fell back, his head in her lap, his eyes clenched shut in frustration and pain. “Sorry,” he rasped, “sorry.”
The vein in his temple beat more violently. Darcy cradled his head helplessly. The sirens’ whine grew higher, louder. “Help’s coming,” she whispered. “Just stay still.”
His eyes opened tiredly. His head turned, and he stared into the grinning face of the bookworm. “My God,” he breathed hoarsely. “What’s that?”
“It’s only a bookworm,” she soothed, pushing it away.
“Shouldn’t I be protecting you from it?” he asked, and tried to smile. Instead he shuddered, as if racked by a chill.
“It’s harmless,” she said. He squeezed shut his eyes, frowning, and shuddered again. She used the hem of her T-shirt to wipe the mist of sweat from his forehead, his upper lip. “Shh. Easy.”
Sloan’s hand fumbled to find hers again, then closed over it.
“Room’s spinning again,” he said through his teeth. “Anchor me.”
She laced her fingers through his, held on tight.
The skirling of the sirens became unbearable, overwhelming. They filled the air, they beat on Darcy’s eardrums, they sounded like all the hounds of hell about to close in.
Then came a moment of miraculous silence, so absolute she thought she’d gone deaf.
“They’re here,” Emerald said with excitement.
A flurry of sounds—metallic doors slamming, people’s voices, hurried footsteps. Darcy thought she could hear a police radio in the background.
“Here!” yelled Rose Alice, opening the screen door. “He’s in here! He’s declared germ warfare on us! Hurry!”
Dammit, Rose Alice, lighten up. Anger flashed through Darcy, but vanished almost instantly, swallowed up by the chaos spilling into the house.
Paramedics swarmed inside. They pushed her away, they hovered over Sloan English, poking and prodding him. They barked terse, incomprehensible orders to one another. Darcy rose to her feet to watch them, but she felt limp and spent. Rose Alice and Emerald stood on the porch, talking animatedly to a tall policeman.
Attendants were strapping Sloan to a gurney and unfolding a blanket to cover him. “What’d he say he had?” asked a boyish paramedic with a shock of blond hair.
“Malay fever,” said a stocky Hispanic woman, stowing a blood pressure cuff in a black bag. “It’s an ugly
