twisted to look at him, saw those black eyes on her. She was sitting on the floor by Ethan Grace, in a guest house and trying to figure out how to get him into bed.
ETHAN WASN’T SURE what the hell was going on. It seemed that there was a woman with him, a stranger, almost sitting on top of him and calling him Mr. Grace. This small redhead wasn’t Natalie. No, Natalie was in L.A. on a case. Or maybe she was in Europe. He couldn’t remember. And Natalie never would have worn a sweatshirt and jeans and certainly wouldn’t have called him Mr. Grace. His mind was so damn foggy from the pain. Then the woman was pulling him, making pain shoot up his leg, making him almost nauseated.
She was suddenly gone as if she’d fallen off the edge of his world, and he was back on the floor surrounded by the throb of bone-deep pain. No, she was still there, close by, talking in a breathless voice. “I’d say that didn’t go well.”
What hadn’t gone well? He frowned, then she was in front of him again, crouching over him, her hand on his forehead, her fingers pressed to the hollow of his throat. “You have to get into the bed,” she was saying. “And you have to help me.”
Forget the bed. “Who are you?” he muttered, each word causing him more agony.
“I’m a doctor,” she said.
He closed his eyes tightly, trying to control his pain, as well as blot out the weirdness of what was going on in front of him. He had to be hallucinating. A doctor? With flaming-red hair? A doctor in some sort of sweat outfit? A doctor who’d been trying to sit in his lap? Ethan forced himself to open his eyes again and focus. “How?” he said, intending to ask her how she got here.
But she said, “Tons of medical school and hard work.” He couldn’t have smiled to save his life. “Now, you have to help me get you into bed.”
Sure, and he could fly if he jumped off the deck, he thought. He couldn’t move, let alone get onto the bed. If he even tried to sit straight, the pain increased. “No, I…”
She was standing over him again, and he tried to focus on her, but his vision was blurry and the world had a halo of gray around everything. “I’ll help you, but you have to help me,” she said, and her hands were on him again, at his chest, slipping under his arms. “Push as much as you can and try to lean toward me.” He realized her cheek was against his, and her mouth was by his ear. “All right?”
Before he could agree or disagree, she was actually lifting him up. He was amazed that this tiny person who was supposed to be a doctor managed to get him into the cool linens of the bed. Pain burned through him when he hit the sheets, but the next instant, it eased and he found he could actually breathe. Was he doing it all himself, or imagining the doctor was doing it for him? Had he hallucinated the whole thing? Catching his cast on the plant, the fall, then trying to get inside, another fall, then this woman sitting in his lap?
“It’s okay,” she whispered from somewhere above him, but he couldn’t even muster the strength to open his eyes for a moment. “It’s okay.”
His good leg was being raised onto the bed, then his broken leg was miraculously positioned on the bed, too. The pain was circling him now but no longer cutting in to him. He kept breathing as evenly as he possibly could. He didn’t move until he felt a hand on his forehead, a soft touch that was gone quickly. “Where’s your medication?” she asked him.
Without opening his eyes, he muttered, “Bathroom.”
He could sense the emptiness where she’d been or where he’d imagined she’d been when she left. Just when he thought he’d lost it, that there was no one here but him, the red-haired doctor was back. She slipped a hand under his neck and shoulders, helped him up a bit, then said, “Open your mouth, Mr. Grace.”
“Ethan,” he mumbled right before he did as he was told and felt two pills fall onto his tongue. Then the coolness of a glass rim was against his lips and cold water slipped down his throat.
She lowered him gently onto the bed, and in a moment, she was speaking to him. “Put your arms around my neck. Hold on and let me maneuver you up and back so I can adjust your leg.”
When he opened his eyes, the blurred image was breathtaking. Brilliant hair, blue eyes, hands on his shoulder, her breath brushing his clammy skin. Put his arms around her? He didn’t hesitate. He slipped his hands onto her shoulders and behind her neck. He felt her hair brush his bare skin as she shifted, practically hugging him to her with one arm.
He heard her whispering over and over again, “Just a bit farther, just a bit, just a bit.” He felt his hands start to slip, and he tried to get a new grip on her, but it didn’t work. His hands balled up her sweatshirt, and she was falling toward him, the way he’d thought she had on the floor. But this time she didn’t just disappear to one side; she landed on his stomach and chest. The scent of flowers seemed to be everywhere, and the weight of her on him wasn’t painful at all.
If it all was a hallucination, it was one hell of a hallucination, he thought. She slipped away from him again. He didn’t have the strength to reach out for her this time. It was all he could do to open his eyes and look up to find her bending over him. “The pills should work quickly,” she said in a soft voice that seemed to drift around him.
“Where…” He licked his lips. “Where did you come from?”
“The beach. I was walking.” The words echoed in the room as if bouncing back off the fog that was creeping into his line of vision. “I heard the crashes and thought you needed help.”
Help? That fog was creeping closer and closer, the way it had off the sound so many times. But he was in the guest house. And there was a woman with him. Not Natalie. Standing over him, with the gentlest voice and touch.
He closed his eyes again when it became too hard to keep them open. “I fell,” was all he could get past his lips.
“I heard,” she murmured as her hand touched his forehead, smoothed back his hair. “Can I call someone?” Her voice seemed farther away and muffled now.
“No,” he said. “No.” He settled deeper into the grayness. “Just need sleep.”
There was no voice now, and he had that same feeling that he’d had before, that empty sensation when he knew he really was alone. Whatever had happened, it was done. Whatever he’d dreamed or hallucinated was gone. The woman, whoever she was or hadn’t been, wasn’t there, and he fell into a sleep that came in a rush of relief from the pain.
Chapter Two
Ethan woke slowly and did what he had done every morning since his accident—he kept his eyes closed, measuring the pain to test the levels of discomfort he’d be facing that day. This time he felt a dull throb that ran the length of his injured leg, from his foot to his hip, but it was bearable. Then he remembered the fall and the aftermath. He opened his eyes to glance around the bedroom in the guest house, where he’d moved to from his suite in the main building basically to avoid the confusion of the preparations for Joey’s wedding reception.
He’d been tired of the chaos everywhere, and had yet to understand why so many people were needed to pull off a party that would last for two or three hours tops, two weeks from now. He’d do anything for Joe, but enduring the insanity all around him while he was healing and trying to work hadn’t been possible. So he’d taken over the guest house on the bluffs.
And regretted
