Tempestuous Reunion

‘Can’t you see that she’s in pain?’ Luc demanded in biting exasperation. ‘Let her rest.’

‘Catherine.’ It was the doctor’s voice, irritatingly persistent, forcing her to lift her heavy eyelids again. ‘Do you remember how you sustained your injury?’

‘I’ve already told you that she fell!’ Luc intercepted him a second time. ‘Is this interrogation really necessary?’

‘I fell,’ Catherine whispered gratefully, wishing the doctor would go away and stop bothering her. He was annoying Luc.

‘How did you fall?’ As he came up with a third question, Luc expelled his breath in an audible hiss and simultaneously the sound of a beeper went off. With a thwarted glance at Luc, the consultant said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to complete my examination in the morning. Miss Parrish will be transferred to her room. Perhaps you’d like to go home, Mr Santini?’

‘I’ll stay.’ It was unequivocal.

Catherine angled a sleepy smile over him, happily basking in the concern he was showing for her well-being. Letting her lashes lower again, she felt the bed she was lying on move. Nurses chattered above her head, complaining about what a wet evening it was, and one of them described some dress she had seen in Marks. It was all refreshingly normal, even if it did make Catherine feel as though she were invisible. Without meaning to, she drifted into a doze.

Waking again, she found herself in a dimly lit, very pleasantly furnished room that didn’t mesh with her idea of a hospital. Luc was standing staring out of the window at darkness.

‘Luc?’ she whispered.

He wheeled round abruptly.

‘This may seem an awfully stupid question,’ she muttered hesitantly. ‘But where am I?’

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‘This is a private clinic.’ He approached the bed. ‘How do you feel?’

‘As though someone slugged me with a sandbag, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was.’ She moved her head experimentally on the pillow and winced.

‘Lie still,’ Luc instructed unnecessarily.

She frowned. ‘I don’t remember falling,’ she acknowledged in a dazed undertone. ‘Not at all.’

Luc moved closer, looking less sartorially splendid than was his wont. His black hair was tousled, his tie crumpled, the top two buttons of his silk shirt undone at his brown throat. ‘It was my fault,’ he said tautly.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ Catherine soothed in some surprise.

‘It was.’ Dark eyes gleamed down at her almost suspiciously. ‘If I hadn’t tried to pull you into my arms when you were trying to get away from me, it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘I was trying to get away from you?’ Nothing in her memory-banks could come to terms with that startling concept.

‘You tripped over a rug and went down. You struck your head on the side of a table. Madre de Dio, cara…I thought you’d broken your neck!’ Luc relived with unfamiliar emotionalism, a tiny muscle pulling tight at the corner of his compressed mouth. ‘I thought you were dead…I really thought you were dead.’ The repetition was harsh, not quite steady.

‘I’m sorry.’ A vaguely panicky sensation was beginning to nudge at her nerve-endings. If Luc hadn’t been there, it would have swallowed her up completely. Yet his intent stare, his whole demeanour was somehow far from reassuring. Other little oddities, beyond her inability to recall her fall, were springing to mind. ‘The nurses…that doctor…they were English. Are we in England?’ she demanded shakily.

‘Are we—?’ He put a strange stress on her choice of pronoun, his strong features shuttered, uncommunicative. ‘We’re in London. Don’t you know that?’ he probed very quietly.

‘I don’t remember coming to London with you!’ Catherine admitted in a stricken rush. ‘Why don’t I remember?’

Luc appraised her for a count of ten seconds before he abandoned his stance at a distance and dropped down gracefully on to the side of the bed. ‘You’ve got concussion and you’re feeling confused. That’s all,’ he murmured calmly. ‘Absolutely nothing to worry about.’

‘I can’t help being worried—it’s scary!’ she confided.

‘You have nothing to be scared of.’ Luc had the aspect of someone carefully de-programming a potential hysteric.

Her fingers crept into contact with the hand he had braced on the mattress and feathered across his palm in silent apology. ‘How long have we been in London?’

Luc tensed. ‘Is that important?’ As he caught her invasive fingers between his and carried them to his mouth, it suddenly became a matter of complete irrelevance.

Watching her from beneath a luxuriant fringe of ebony lashes, he ran the tip of his tongue slowly along each individual finger before burying his lips hotly in the centre of her palm. A quiver of weakening pleasure lanced through her and an ache stirred in her pelvis. It was incredibly erotic.