Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

She had to get out of the hospital.

She knew that, even if she didn’t know her own name, and Matteo Bellini seemed a safe bet. At least, she hoped he was.

“Hey,” he said gently. “I know this is rough. You just hang in there and I’ll get us to someplace warm as soon as I can. Okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.” She slicked the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. “Where?”

“Where, what?”

“You said we were going someplace, and I was just wondering where that would be.”

Matteo’s hands tightened on the wheel.

It was an excellent question.

Where, exactly, was he taking her? And how come he hadn’t thought about that until now?

Where, he thought, where.

It was simpler to decide on where he wouldn’t take her.

Not to the airport. No point in that. They’d never take off in snow this heavy—the stuff was coming harder by the minute.

Not to Manhattan by car. Even if Ariel could take the long hours on the road, and she sure as hell didn’t look as if she could, the car couldn’t. Sleek sports cars were great for dry roads. Right now, he was in the same situation he’d been in Saturday, when he left El Sueño. The difference was that nobody was around to offer him a truck with four wheel drive, and going to the rental place and trading the car for something else was out of the question at this hour.

As if to signal assent, the car took a delicate skid toward oncoming traffic. Matteo easily controlled it, but the decision on what to do next, where to go, had been made for him.

“A hotel,” he said, hoping he sounded as if he’d intended that all along. “In fact…”

He reached for the GPS embedded in the dashboard, punched a few keys, hoped the thing worked the same as the one he normally used—and it did. A list of hotels appeared onscreen. Marriotts, Hiltons, Sheratons.

If Tony were looking for his wife, wouldn’t those be the first places he’d check?

She’d been smart enough to travel by bus. He had to be smart enough to bypass the bigger hotels for smaller ones.

He hit another button, watched as motel names scrolled by. Forget the major chains. He wanted some generic listing, a name that a middle-class traveler wouldn’t notice…

The STAY-A-NITE Motel. Fifth and Benson, four miles ahead.

That, Matteo decided, would do it.

* * *

The STAY-A-NITE did it, all right.

Maybe the only question was what, precisely, did it do.

The sign was barely visible in the heavy snowfall. S-AY-A-N-TE it said, in blinking red neon.

Matteo pulled onto the gravel driveway and hesitated.

The motel was old. It probably qualified as an antique. There was an office ahead and beyond it stretched a line of a dozen attached units, all of them accessible from a sagging communal porch. He recalled seeing places like it as he’d driven through dying small towns in the Catskills that time years ago when he’d first gone hang gliding.

Could he really take Ariel into a place so old and ugly?

He glanced at her.

She was lying as far back as the seat would permit, the hospital blanket drawn to her chin. Her eyes were closed. Her face was almost as white as the snow except for two blobs of unnaturally bright color in her cheeks.

Was he nuts? Of course he could. She was exhausted, frightened, cold and almost certainly in pain. She needed a place where she could rest and get warm; he needed one that would offer anonymity.

He put the car in gear, drove up to the office and stopped.

She hadn’t moved.

“Ariel?”

Did she hear him? Was she asleep or was she pretending to be asleep? Worse still, had she slipped into unconsciousness?

He undid his seat belt, leaned over and put his hand lightly on her shoulder.

“Ariel.”

She came awake with a gasp.

“No,” she said, and what he saw in her eyes wrenched at his gut.

“It’s okay,” he said quickly. “You’re fine. We’re at the motel. You stay put while I check us in. Understand?”

She nodded.

He nodded, too. He wanted to say something more, something reassuring. What he really wanted to do was pull her into his arms as he had done in the hospital.

Only to reassure her.

Only for that.

Instead, he offered what he hoped was a smile, set the engine in neutral to keep the heat going, and trudged through what was already several inches of snow to the office.

He came out a minute later with a key to unit eight, or what the gum-chewing clerk had euphemistically called bungalow eight.

The man had given Matteo his choice of accommodations. Except for a beat-up pickup parked outside the first unit, they seemed to be the only customers. He’d chosen eight because the clerk, when asked which unit had the best heating system, had scratched his head, pinched his nose, poked a finger into his ear and finally told him, well, the heater in eight had been fixed just a couple of weeks ago.

“Others ain’t been touched in a while,” he’d added, and Matteo had said eight would do fine.

Ariel was awake, clutching the blanket to her and shivering.

“Got the best room in the house,” he said briskly, hoping for a smile.

All he got was another nod, but he figured that was better than nothing.

He parked outside their unit. Stepped out into the snow and went around to her side of the car. She was trying to undo her seatbelt. Not easy, one-handed.

“I’ll do that,” he said, and he opened the latch, then reached for her.

“I can walk.”

The blanket had slipped open, enough for him to see that she was wearing blue hospital scrubs and paper slippers. No wonder she was cold, and hospital footgear wasn’t going to stand up to snow.

“I’m sure you can,” Matteo said as he scooped her into his arms, “but let’s not risk a fall.”

She stiffened as he lifted her from the car.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a low voice. “And I’m not going to let anyone else hurt you.”

She looked into his eyes. Then she gave another of those quick little nods and he carried her up two rickety steps to the porch, held her to him in the curve of one arm as he fitted the key into the lock.

The door swung open.

And, man oh man, had he picked the right place. Nobody would ever look for her here.

The room was small, maybe 10 feet by 12 feet. It held a double bed—he hadn’t thought to ask for twins—along with a dresser, a night table and an armchair that looked as if it had lived a hundred lives. The floor was linoleum, the color indecipherable under layers of time and grime. A door against the far wall stood open, revealing a sink, commode, and a tub hung with a sagging shower curtain.

“What’d I tell you?” he said. “Only the best.”

“The Ritz,” she said, with what was almost a laugh.

A good sign, because that thing she’d turned into a laugh a little while ago had made the hair rise on the back of his neck.

“And we’re in luck. The guy at the desk says there’s a Michelin four-star restaurant right across the road.”

“A four-star restaurant? Here?”

“Yup. Some bistro called McDonald’s.”

He gave the name a drawn-out French pronunciation. She laughed. This time, it was definitely a real laugh.

“Mac-Dohn-ahlz,” she said, imitating him. “Very nice, monsieur.” Her smiled tilted. “See? I recognize the important things. The name of a fast-food joint. The name of a fancy hotel. I’m only clueless when it comes to remembering me.”

She spoke with a lightness he knew she didn’t feel. Her courage in the face of what had to be a terrifying situation made him want to pump his fist in the air.

Or kiss her.

Are you nuts, Bellini?

The last thing she needed was him, coming on to her. The l

ast thing he should be thinking about was him, coming on to her.

He had to concentrate on keeping her safe—and on coming up with a plan. Staying in a broken-down motel for a night was only a stopgap.

He carried her to the sagging armchair and deposited her in it.

“Okay,” he said briskly. “Let me just turn up the heat and—”

“Matteo?” He looked over his shoulder. Her face wore a serious, almost solemn expression. “Why are you helping me?”

He’d asked himself the same question. Now, for the first time, the answer came easily.

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“I don’t even know who you are. You realized that, didn’t you?”

He smiled. “Yeah. I kind of figured it out.”

“The nurses told me about the card in my pocket. They said it belonged to a man named Bellini. They said Dr. Stafford would get in touch with you. So when you walked into my room and spoke to me the way you did, you know, not threateningly…”

“Had someone spoken to you in a way that seemed threatening?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember—but I have this feeling that someone did. Not since the accident. Before.”

“Can you remember anything else? Who the person was? What he looked like?”

“It was a man. That’s all I know.” She hesitated. “I wish I had recognized you. I mean, I wish I could remember you. And I’m sorry if you came all this distance because you thought that I did.”

Matteo squatted before her and clasped her hand in both of his.