She had to touch him? Right now? “Of course.”

As before, he straddled one of the bar stools. Moving behind him, she parted his wet hair. Wet? His hair was wet? He must have dunked his head in the bucket of water, but to her mortifying shame, she realized she hadn’t noticed anything above his neck.

“No fresh bleeding,” she said, “but I probably should replace the Band-Aid strips.”

She cleaned the wound with one of the antiseptic pads, then they went through the same painstaking ritual as the night before, cutting the adhesive part of the bandage into strips with her manicure scissors, then placing them crosswise over the wound. She tried to perform the task with as much detachment as possible, but her motions were clumsy. Several times she felt him flinch and had to apologize for hurting him.

They heated the pan of soup in the fireplace and ate it sitting cross-legged on the mattress. Discovering they were ravenous, they heated another can.

Midway through the second helping, he said, “Lilly, are you all right?”

She raised her head, startled. “Why?”

“You’re being awfully quiet.”

“I’m just tired,” she lied, then went back to eating her soup.

They prolonged the meal for as long as possible, but after they had finished, they still faced hours of nighttime with nothing to do.

After several minutes of silence, broken only by the crackle of the fire, he said, “Feel free to go to sleep whenever you want.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“You said you were tired.”

“Tired but not sleepy.”

“That’s how I feel, too. Weary, but wide awake.”

“That long nap . . .”

“Hmm.”

Another silence ensued. Finally she looked over at him. “Why were you reared by your grandparents?”

“My mom and dad were killed in a car wreck. The driver of a semi was going too fast, didn’t heed the warning signs of road construction, couldn’t slow down in time, literally ran up over them. Pancaked their car. It was hours before they could cut all the body parts out of the wreckage.”

His matter-of-fact tone didn’t fool her. He couldn’t conceal the bitterness underlying it.

“The details were kept from me when it happened,” he said. “But years later, when I was old enough to ask about it, my granddad let me read the newspaper write-up about the accident. My grandparents lost their daughter. I was orphaned. The careless truck driver walked away without a scratch.”

“How old were you?”

“When it happened? Eight. Mom and Dad had gone away for a long weekend to celebrate their tenth anniversary and left me with my grandparents.” He reached for the poker and stirred the fire.

“After their funerals, when I realized that it wasn’t a bad dream, that they really were dead, I refused to go back into our house. My grandparents took me home to pack up my things, but I pitched a billy fit in the yard and wouldn’t go inside. I just couldn’t go into those rooms again, knowing that Mom and Dad weren’t there, and never would be.”

“You loved them,” she said quietly.

He gave a self-conscious shrug. “I was a kid. Took everything they did for me for granted, but . . . yeah, I loved them. My grandparents were all right, too. Even though I must have been a huge inconvenience thrust upon them, they never made me feel that way. In fact, I never doubted they loved me.”

“Did you ever return to your house?”

“No.”

She propped her chin on her raised knees and pondered his profile. “You stay away from home now, too. You have a career which keeps you away for long periods of time.”

He shot her a wry grin. “Bet the shrinks would have a field day with that.”

Tags: Sandra Brown Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net