the room. And caught her breath as a set of stern brown eyes zeroed in on her face. She knew what he looked like—of course she knew. Handsome as sin, with a face carved in granite, and chocolate-brown eyes that could be warm as fudge or cold as a frozen Eskimo Pie...which they were now. Six-foot-two with broad shoulders tapering to a waist and hips that hadn’t an ounce of flab anywhere. Long, long legs—of course, you idiot, he’s six-two!—that seemed to dwarf the hospital bed on which he lay in a semireclining position.
The mesh cap covering his head—and the electrodes she could see attached to his skull beneath it—should have made him look ridiculous, but somehow they didn’t. Not when his bare, muscular legs, clad only in a pair of running shorts, were right beneath her eyes—legs that were perfectly visible because the sheet that might have been covering them had been restlessly tossed to one side. Not when his impressively muscled chest, covered only by a short-sleeved button-down shirt, rose and fell with his steady breathing, drawing her attention there. She didn’t know why he wasn’t clad in traditional hospital garb, but he wasn’t, and she couldn’t help the way her gaze was riveted on his impressive physical attributes. Then the legs, the chest and the rest of his perfect body faded into obscurity as her eyes met his again, and she floundered helplessly beneath those dark orbs.
“Do you know who I am?” Carly blurted out, then felt foolish.
The gravelly voice she recognized from hearing him on the Senate floor giving impassioned speeches spoke. “Oh yeah. You’re my fiancée. I didn’t quite catch the name, but...” He looked her over from head to toe...twice. His eyes lingered—obviously—on her breasts. Both times. “I have good taste.”
It was crazy. Stupid. She wasn’t the kind to get flustered by a man. Any man. Even one as blatantly masculine, sexy and irresistible as the senator was. Carly didn’t have a shy bone in her body, unlike her younger sister, Tahra. But...she blushed under his pointed stare. The kind of thing Tahra did a lot, but Carly never did. Until now.
She resisted the urge to cross her arms across her chest, and instead moved farther into the room, closing the door behind her with a little snick as the latch clicked shut. When she looked at the senator again, she realized with a tiny shock that he was strapped into the bed. And if she didn’t miss her guess, that was a lock on the strap.
Electro-shock therapy. Mental illness. Violent mental illness? she wondered. She couldn’t keep the question out of the eyes she raised to his.
To her surprise, he laughed suddenly, a booming sound that reverberated around the room. “No,” he told her, humor lightening the rather severe expression he usually wore. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?” she asked quickly, her hand reaching for the door latch.
“The strap is for my protection,” he told her. “To make sure I don’t get out of bed without a nurse in attendance. To make sure I don’t fall.” He hooked a thumb over his right shoulder, and for the first time Carly saw the harness hooked to an inverted T bar. She followed the strap upward, to the mechanical device that seemed to run on tracks throughout the room, and into what she figured was a private bathroom.
“What in the world?” Carly had never seen anything like it.
“It’s actually quite ingenious. And if I really needed it, it’d be a lifesaver. But since I don’t—I never fall when I have an episode, never lose consciousness—it’s a damned nuisance. But it’s hospital policy.”
“Episode? Fall? Lose consciousness?” Carly felt stupid for repeating his words, but she had no idea what he was talking about. Her first supposition—that he was mentally ill—seemed to be all wrong. He certainly came across as being all there. Except for accepting her as his fiancée...which he knew she wasn’t. So why had he let her in his room? Never shy, she asked, “Why did you allow me in here?”
“Because I was sick of my own company and looking for a diversion.”
“That’s the only reason?”
“Well...” He drew the word out. “Anyone with the nerve to claim she was my fiancée—”
“I never actually said I was,” Carly quickly pointed out. “I just didn’t correct the nurse’s erroneous assumption.”
His smile was cynical. “As I started to say, I figured you had to be a reporter, Ms. Edwards.” She jumped when he said her name. “And if you tracked me down at the Mayo Clinic, the only thing to do—the only smart thing to do—would be to tell you the truth and ask you to keep it to yourself. For now.”
“How did you know who I was? I thought you said—”
“I didn’t know. Not until I got a good look at you. You used to cover the Hill.” His eyes conveyed it wasn’t just her face he recognized, but Carly appreciated he was enough of a gentleman not to actually say her figure had betrayed her. She couldn’t help the way she looked, and she’d learned early to dress to downplay it as best she could professionally. Her private life was a different story, but she’d taken enough grief in her career over her curves, which tended to make men think of her as nothing but a pretty face with a bombshell body. Good in some ways, she admitted to herself, because men sometimes grew careless of what they said to her. And that had led to her breaking more than one explosive story.
“But when I let you in,” the senator continued, interrupting her thoughts, “I was praying you were a legitimate member of the Fourth Estate.”
“The Fourth Estate? I haven’t heard anyone refer to the news media by that title in forever.”
One corner of his mouth curved upward in a rueful grin. “I’d rather refer to the members of the media by that term than a few others I could think of, including ambush journalists and sleazy paparazzi.”
“Ouch.”
“I didn’t say you were, I just said some are.” He indicated the chair set against the far wall. “Would you like to sit down? You’ll pardon me if I don’t rise.” He touched the strap belting him into the bed. “I’d have to call the nurse, and she’d have to strap me into the harness, and frankly, I’d just as soon avoid looking any more ridiculous than I already do.” He touched the mesh cap on his head.
“You don’t,” Carly said. “Look ridiculous, that is.”
“Yeah, right.” Disbelief was evident in his tone.
She laughed. “Really,” she assured him before she sat in the chair, crossed her legs, reached into her capacious purse and pulled out her notebook. This was followed by her mini recorder, which she switched on. She glanced up at the senator and asked, “May I? I like to have a record of what people say. That way they can’t claim I made something up.”
His expression turned serious again. “No, I don’t mind. But I want you to understand up front that what I’m going to tell you isn’t something I want to publicize to the world. I can’t prevent you from broadcasting it. I can only state this is off-the-record for now, and rely on your journalistic discretion after you hear what I have to say. Deal?”
Carly considered this for a moment. “I can’t agree not to report what I uncover, not without knowing more. If it’s something that impacts your ability to carry out the duties of your office—you have to see how that would be news, Senator Jones, and I’d have no choice. It would be my responsibility to report it.”
“Agreed.
