Uncut Bundle
The first words she spoke were about Cam. “Is he alive?” she’d whispered.
The doctor’s shrug had been eloquent. He didn’t know anything about someone named Cam.
She’d begged for word of Cam, but nobody knew what she was talking about. She had no phone. “No stress,” the nurses told her, but finally she bribed an aide into smuggling in a cell phone. She called the embassy, fast-talked her way into being connected with the consul.
He was impatient. He was, he told her, leaving on vacation.
Leanna begged and pleaded and made such a pathetic case that he’d finally agreed to find out what he could about a man named Cameron Knight.
An hour later, he called back. Cameron Knight was alive. He’d been airlifted to the States. To a hospital in Dallas, Texas, and really, that was all he could tell her.
Leanna telephoned Dallas information, got the numbers of endless hospitals, called them all and finally found the right one. Yes, they had a patient nam
ed Cameron Knight. His condition was listed as stable. No, they couldn’t tell her anything more than that.
She phoned each day, heard Cam’s condition go from stable to satisfactory. She went on phoning after she was out of the hospital. She phoned from Paris, where she had a tearful reunion with the dance troupe. She phoned from London and from Seattle, after she began dancing again.
And then, one day, she phoned and got the operator who’d been taking most of her calls.
“Mr. Knight has been discharged,” the woman said. “He’s doing just fine.” Then she’d lowered her voice and said, “You know, dear, you could find out more if you contacted the Knight family directly.”
Contact the Knight family? And tell them what? That she’d slept with Cam? That she’d made a fool of herself, thinking she’d fallen in love with him? Because he was right, it hadn’t been love, it had only been infatuation.
The dressing room door burst open and the other girls crowded in, laughing and chattering.
“Lee, you missed it all!” Ginny bounced onto the stool beside Leanna’s. “The audience called us back three times!”
Leanna got up, stripped off her tutu and pulled on jeans and a sweater.
“I know. I could hear the cheers.”
“And the most amazing thing just happened!” Ginny swung toward her, eyes bright with excitement. “A reporter wants to meet me!”
“Gin, that’s wonderful.”
“Isn’t it? He says he’s doing a piece on unusual professions for the Sunday section. I don’t know how I got so lucky—I mean, to have him come up with my name—but I’m thrilled.”
“I’ll bet! But when’s the interview? If we leave tomorrow—”
“He’s taking me out for supper in—” Ginny looked at the big wall clock and gasped. “In ten minutes!”
“Then you’d better hurry,” Leanna said, pulling her hair back in a ponytail.
Ginny peered into the mirror as she dabbed cream on her face. “I’ll meet you at that wine bar later. Everybody’ll be there. You know, a last night in town kind of thing.”
“I’m going to pass.”
“Oh, Lee! Come on, honey. You’ve got to get out a little.” Ginny looked imploringly at Leanna in the mirror. “I know what you went through must have been awful, getting kidnapped and then that stay in the hospital, but you have to get back into things, you know?”
Leanna knew. She hadn’t gotten back into anything, except dancing. She just couldn’t seem to muster up the spirit for late-night gatherings or morning coffee, especially when everyone still had questions about what had happened to her.
The girls taken with her talked about how they’d been taken to a souk and almost immediately rescued by the local police. Leanna only said she’d been sold to a sultan and rescued by Americans who were in Baslaam on business.
All things considered, it wasn’t exactly a lie.
“You’re right, Gin, but I’m really beat tonight.”
“Your poor foot, huh?”