tons of steel and flammable fuel slammed to earth then skidded across the desert floor without benefit of landing gear. The noise was shattering. The jolt, bone-rattling. And the fear—the fear was paralyzing as the flames that had been confined to the left jet suddenly engulfed the cabin and a blinding, screaming pain consumed her.
One
“Justin—hey, Justin, wait up.” Matt Walker was striding wearily toward the burn-unit nurses’ station when he spotted Justin Webb, dressed in green scrubs, heading for the elevator.
Justin turned, sipping from a paper cup that Matt knew held the world’s worst coffee. After a long, critical once-over he scowled, showing Matt his doctor’s face. “I’ve done admits on patients who look better than you.”
Matt knew exactly what his friend saw: a five-o’clock shadow, badly rumpled shirt and bloodshot eyes. He scrubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw, rolled the stiffness out of his shoulders. “I’m fine. Just a long night.”
Justin snorted. “More like a lot of long nights.”
When he extended the coffee Matt grimaced and made a warding sign. “How do you drink that sludge?”
“Cast-iron stomach.” Justin flashed a grin. “Besides— I like it. But we were talking about you. You knock your-self out from sleep deprivation and you’re not going to be any good to her, Matt.”
Both men knew exactly who Justin was talking about. It had been almost two months since the plane crash that had resulted in Lady Helena Reichard’s emergency admission to the burn unit at Royal Memorial Hospital. She had been among a group of Asterland dignitaries and a few locals—Matt’s friends Pamela Black and Jamie Morris among them—who were en route to Asterland after a posh diplomatic reception at the Texas Cattleman’s Club. Close to a full month had passed since Matt had been assigned by his fellow club members to stand guard outside Helena’s door.
It didn’t much matter that he was beat. His welfare wasn’t at stake here. Helena’s was. He just wished he knew who, or what, he was protecting her from.
Besides Matt and Justin, only three other club members knew the mysterious details surrounding the charter jet’s emergency landing that had sent Helena to the hospital. Though luckily no one had been killed, even now, two months later, it was still tough to absorb. The crash had been bad enough. But there’d also been a murder. A jewel theft. The hint of an attempted political coup involving the European country of Asterland.
Helena Reichard, it seemed, was stuck smack in the middle of it all; Matt understood exactly how vulnerable she was. He also understood that nothing, absolutely nothing more was going to happen to her under his watch.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, as Justin drained the cup then tossed it into a trash bin.
“Well, to hear her tell it, she’s doing just fine.”
Matt studied his friend’s face. “I think I’d rather hear you tell it. How is she, really?”
Justin crossed his arms over his chest, gave Matt a considering look. “We’ve covered this ground before.”
“Humor me. Cover it again.”
“Look, I’m not the primary here—I’m just consulting until she’s ready for the cosmetic repairs. Harding’s on the burns. Chambers is her bone man. But the charts pretty much speak for themselves.”
“Not to me they don’t.” Matt shifted his weight to one hip. “Suppose you fill me in.”
“You’re not family, Matt.”
“Oh, for the—”
“Wait. Wait.” Justin held up a hand. “Cool down. You’re not family but, since you’re all she’s got standing between her and Lord knows what might be a threat to her, you have a need to know. And that gives me license to tell you.”
After a glance toward the charge nurse who was busy on the phone, he steered Matt toward the sofa at the end of the hall on the pretense of privacy. Matt suspected what Justin really wanted was to get him off his feet. Too tired to make an issue of it, he sat.
“As you already know, most of her burns are second degree and restricted to her left arm and upper leg.” Justin eased down beside him. “It’s that nasty patch of third degree on the back of her left hand that’s giving her trouble. The extensor tendons are heavily involved—the ones that control finger movement. We had to graft. Unfortunately, the site’s been problematic.”
Matt slumped back, rubbed an index finger over his brow. “Infection, right?”
Justin nodded. “We’d hoped to avoid it—we always hope to avoid it—but with a burn that deep and so much debris ground into it, it was pretty much a given. It’s cleared up now but it set her recovery back. Only time will tell what kind of mobility she’ll regain.”
Matt thought of the lovely hand he’d held in his at the Cattleman’s Club reception and dance. The petal-soft skin. The slim, graceful fingers. “And her ankle?”
Justin shook his head. “That’s still up for grabs, too. It’s a bad fracture. Real bad. Even with the surgery and the pins in place, Chambers can’t guarantee that she won’t have a permanent limp.”
Matt stared past Justin’s shoulder to the partially open door of Helena’s room. He thought of the beautiful, vivacious woman he’d waltzed around the dance floor. The woman whose cornflower-blue eyes had smiled into his with unguarded interest. The woman who had said his name in her perfect, practiced English yet made it sound exotic and made him feel extraordinary. That woman had been beyond perfection.
He didn’t have to be inside her head to understand that the woman in the hospital room, though still beautiful, was now badly scarred, potentially disabled—and that there would be much more to her recovery process than knitting bones and healing flesh. And he couldn’t throw the helpless notion that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to help her.
“You need sleep, bud.” Justin’s voice broke into Matt’s thoughts. “Call someone to relieve you.”
“Not an option. Not tonight anyway. My men are tied up, so I’m it.”
After a long look, Justin rose. “Okay. Here’s the plan. I’ve got a patient on the floor spiking a temp so I’ll be here for a while. I can cover for you for a few hours.”
“Thanks, but she’s my assignment, not yours.”
Justin’s long, measuring look asked the same question Matt had been asking himself lately. Are you sure this is just an assignment?
Matt wasn’t sure of anything except that he wasn’t ready to admit, even to himself, that it might be more. Yeah, he recognized that his commitment to her safety was running a tad toward territorial. He also knew that he found himself thinking about her more than he should. Helena was, after all, an intriguing woman. Not his type of woman, but intriguing, nonetheless.
Regardless, it all came down to one thing. The five club members who were in the know on this incident agreed that Lady Helena Reichard was his responsibility. It was a charge he took seriously. Even more so after what had happened last week. He’d ducked out for a moment and come back to find a strange man standing just outside
