“You’re supposed to kill them before they shoot you.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied his wounds. “Hold still now.”
He sucked in a breath as she probed the wound in his shoulder, let it out in a hiss when she withdrew a misshapen silver slug and tossed it into the sink. After cutting off a length of gauze, she folded it into a square, and taped it over the wound.
Mara looked up when Logan entered the room. “Is everything taken care of?”
“Not to worry, my sweet. They’ll never be found.” He jerked his head at Derek. “Stings like hell, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he rasped, flinching.
“I said hold still,” Mara admonished as she slid the probe into the ragged hole in her son’s chest.
“This girl seems like a lot of trouble,” Logan remarked.
“Tell me about it. Dammit, woman,” Derek hissed, “be careful!”
“Got it!” She tossed the second slug into the sink, and after wiping the blood from Derek’s chest, she wrapped several layers of gauze around his torso, then tied off the ends. “Two down, one to go,” she said cheerfully. “Take off your pants.”
Propping one shoulder against the doorjamb, Logan admired the sight of his wife lounging in a tub filled with frothy, scented bubbles. “So, what now?”
“You could wash my back.” She lifted one slender leg and rested it on the edge of the tub. “Or massage my foot.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“A massage still sounds like a good idea.”
Logan pushed away from the door, then knelt beside the tub and began to rub her foot. She had pretty feet, small, well formed. But then, she was pretty all over, and no one knew it better than he did.
She closed her eyes, a sigh of pleasure escaping her lips.
His hand moved up her calf, his fingers gliding over her silky skin. “What are you going to do about the girl?”
“Wipe the incident from her mind and let her go.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“What do you want to do? Make her disappear?”
“There’s something going on.” Logan’s hand tightened on her thigh. “I don’t like it that four hunters showed up here in the last week.”
“So, what should we do? Run away and hide?”
He released his hold on her leg and stood up. “You know me better than that.”
“What do you want, then?”
Heat flared in his eyes, the hunters forgotten as the scent of her desire reached him. “Don’t you know?” he growled.
She smiled as he stripped off his shirt, stepped out of his trousers and briefs, and slipped into the tub behind her. She leaned back as his arms went around her waist, his big hands caressing her. Thoughts of hunters fled her mind when he rose in one fluid motion, water splashing over the edge of the tub as he carried her, soaking wet, into the bedroom.
Lowering her onto the mattress, he covered her body with his.
“I know,” she said, her voice a low purr. “I’ve always known.”
Derek’s nostrils flared as the scent of musk filled the air. Sitting on the edge of the mattress in the bedroom down the hall from his mother’s, he ran his knuckles lightly over Sheree’s cheek, wondering if he would ever find the kind of love his parents shared. What would Sheree’s reaction be if he told her the truth? What would his reaction be if she looked at him with revulsion? Was she strong enough, brave enough, to share her life with him? It was, he admitted, a moot point at the moment. He knew his mother intended to wipe the night’s events from Sheree’s mind, wondered if the smart thing would be to wipe his memory from her mind, as well.
And even as he considered it, he rejected the idea. He’d told Sheree the truth when he said he needed her. He didn’t understand why he felt such a strong connection with her. Truth be told, he no longer cared. But one thing he knew for certain. He would never willingly let her go again.
She was dreaming, but her dreams were like none she’d ever had before. She heard voices—familiar voices—coming from far away. She was aware of fingers caressing her, of someone sitting beside her. She tried to wake up, wanted to wake up, and couldn’t.
Filled with a sudden, inexplicable panic, she tried to scream, hoping the sound would wake her, but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. She was aware of sunlight falling across her face. Knew that it was day, knew, somehow, that she had been asleep for hours, and yet she still couldn’t move. Her eyelids were heavy, so heavy.
The light faded, leaving her in darkness.
She would have wept, had she been able.
This was death, she thought, and surrendered to the darkness.
Chapter Fifteen
“All right,” Mara said, glancing from Logan to Derek. “We need to get our story straight before we wake her up.”
“I already told her some men broke into her house and I scared them away, and then I brought her here because she was afraid to stay home alone.”
“Why didn’t you just erase the whole thing from her mind?” Mara asked. “That would have been infinitely easier.”
“I didn’t want to leave her unprotected. Besides, I wasn’t sure the suggestion I planted was strong enough.”
“And how are you going to explain the day she lost?” Logan asked.
Mara shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to plant some memories. I’ll tell her we all went to lunch at Spago and then we came back here and spent the day by the pool. When she wakes up, she’ll ask to go home, and Derek can take her. Agreed?”
“Sounds all right to me,” Derek said.
“Or you could just take her home and erase the last two days,” Logan suggested.
“We could,” Mara agreed. “But, like Derek, I’d like to keep an eye on her, just in case she remembers something she shouldn’t.”
Logan frowned at his wife. What wasn’t she telling them?
“All right,” Mara said. “I’m going to wake her up.”
Feeling as though she had missed something, Sheree glanced around, momentarily confused by her surroundings. The room was large, with plush white carpeting and dark red velvet draperies. A pair of black sofas faced each other across a rosewood coffee table. In one corner, a round black table polished to a high shine sat between a pair of overstuffed red velvet chairs. Several expensive-looking paintings of landscapes decorated the walls. A sword in a silver sheath hung over the mantel.