"When this is done, you must promise you will let me repay you for your great kindness, Saint Molly. Okay?"
"Okay." She grinned. "Now let me wash your hair."
Shedippered water into a cup and poured it over his head. "Close your eyes."
He did. And finally, he took her advice, too. He gave himself up to letting her take care of him. He let the tension and grief andworry drain from his neck as her fingers worked over his scalp. As if the water washed away his negative emotions along with the grime of two days from his skin, he felt peace invade him. Her fingers were strong, working in the shampoo, then conditioner that smelled of musk. She rinsed it out, pushing his long hair back from his face, and he heard a soft sound come from her. He opened his eyes.
She ducked her head, hiding her expression, and reached for the soap. "I"m going to do your back, then leave you to the rest."
Was that breathlessness for him? He turned to look at her, suddenly feeling the intimacy of the moment, ofhimself wet and nearly naked, with a woman he had never seen forty-eight hours ago. Steam came off his limbs and the water, making her skin damp and flushed. The T-shirt clung to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and waist, outlining a very female figure that Alejandro suddenly wanted to touch. He was suddenly aware of his body, not the pain in it, but the shape of his shoulders and chest, of his legs sticking out of the water, of his back. He wondered if she found him pleasing, and looked for that knowledge on her face.
But she did not allow it. She ducked behind him, rubbing his back in circles with the soapy cloth,then efficiently rinsing it off. Then, abruptly, she stood. "Finish up,"
she said, pushing a tendril of hair off her face with a wet hand. "I"ll be back in a few minutes."
Perplexed, he nodded, and stared after her as she bolted.
Then he leaned back in the water, gently so as not to jar the faraway state of his a.s.sorted aches, and let the heat seep into him, all the way to his bones.
In the hallway, Molly halted and fell against the wall. Air cooled her sweaty, humid skin, but her heart still raced and her hands were definitely trembling. She took a breath, blew it out slowly, feeling a tingle in her ears, all the way around the edge, making them hot. She lifted her hands to them, and found her hands were still wet. She hadn"t even bothered to dry them.
In her years as a nurse, she had bathed hundreds probably thousands of patients.
Old and young, male and female. There was a trick to keeping the mind distant, apart, not only for the nurse, but to preserve the privacy and dignity of the patient.
And she"d been in control with Alejandro until he raised his head, and all at once she"d seen the entirety of his revealed, wet skin, with rivulets of water pooling in the hollow of his collarbone, coursing along the geography of his arm muscles. She"d seen his perfectly shaped ear and the blade of his nose and the high forehead and his wet hair, slicked away from his face by her own hands. In one turn of a second she was not a nurse bathing a patient, but a woman bewitched by an utterly stunning man.
She moved her hands from her ears to her face. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s felt thick and heavy, and her hips were soft. All too clearly, she could see herself returning to that room and putting her mouth to the round place where his arm and shoulder met. She could see her hand spreading open on that chest, scattered with dark hair.
Stop. For the second time in one day, she told herself to just quit it. Get ahold ofherself .
This time, she tried a more realistic approach. Taking her hands away from her face, she marched to her bedroom and the bureau, yanking open a drawer with more force than necessary, and delivered a lecture to herself as she tossed through the clothes.
One: she wasoverstimulated . This interlude had been more exciting than anything that had happened to her in years. A mysterious stranger with a heartbreaking quest had landed in her lap and required care. Needed her.
Two: he was absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous. Any woman who didn"t respond to that much virile heat in one package was comatose or dead. She was neither; in fact, she was a widow, a healthy woman in her prime.
Three: she had not had s.e.x in four years. Four years. It was a long time. A really long time. A really,really long time.
She caught her wry, amused expression in the mirror over the dresser and it made her grin. The reflection smiled back. Molly noticed that her hair was springing out of its braid and the front of her shirt was wet had he noticed? He certainly had not seemed to. He was, in fact, singularly unmoved by his nurse. Often men in his situation would think they were attracted to a woman, simply because she"d saved his life. Alejandro appeared to have no such illusions.
She chuckled and stripped off the wet T-shirt.
From the drawer she took a fresh blouse. Again she caught sight of herself in the mirror, and stopped.Ordinary was a good word. Slim shoulders, a good stomach that showed no signs yet ofpooching out. Good thing, she thought, touching the expanse of belly over her jeans. Wouldn"t take much pooch to overshadow her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She touched them, too, and remembered, for one blinding second, what it had felt like to have her husband"s hands on her. How much he"d liked coming up behind her at moments like this.
She would lean back, into his broad, strong chest, and lift her hands to his neck, letting him admire the look of his hands on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the mirror.
The memory was vivid and in seconds, sharply painful. She dropped her hands, half ashamed, half yearning. With a sigh, she pulled on her shirt. Tim was gone. Gone.
Someday maybe she"d get that through her head.
Taking a fresh shirt and sweats, she returned to the bathroom and knocked. "Are you finished?"
No answer.
"Alejandro?" Still nothing. Worried, she knocked once more for the sake of warning and opened the door.
Inside, she stopped and smiled. He had fallen asleep. His hands draped over the edges of the tub and his head was cradled on the little pillow she"d glued to the back, and his knees were akimbo. A glaze of moisture covered the beautiful face, and she felt a p.r.i.c.k of something besides desire. He pushed so hard, this man, pushed out of pride and honor. The least she could do was serve that honor as well as she could. Get him well and send him on his way.
She bent over him. Reached out to touch his face. "Come on,viejo ," she said gently.
"Let"s get you back to bed."
Chapter 5.
Josh stopped by the pharmacy at Judson"s to pick up some medicine for the kids. "Hey, George," he said to the thin, graying man behind the counter. "Lynette told me you had some cough syrup for my rug-rats. Is it ready?"
"Sure is." He looked over his reading gla.s.ses to measure something. "d.a.m.n near everybody"s down with this crud, you notice?"
"It"s been pretty hairy, all right." Josh leaned on the counter and glanced toward the toy section, eyeing a baby doll with red skirts. Both kids had been miserable for days
maybe he could pick up a toy for each of them. Raise their spirits.
He counted the money from his front pocket. A five, three ones and a twenty. Maybe.
"How much is that medicine gonna run?" he asked.
"Well, let"s see. Your co-payment is ten, isn"t it?" He punched something into the computer. "Yep. Just ten."
Josh paid for the cough syrup. "I guess I should count my blessings. At least my job has benefits."
"That"s right." George opened the register. "How"s your sister doing, by the way? Saw her last night, and she had to refill her prescription for antibiotics. Nasty sore throat."
"Last night?" Josh frowned. Last night, she"d bought him a steak and chattered his ear off. If she"d been sick, she sure hadn"t looked it. "I don"t know. I"ll have to give her a call."
The man gave Josh his change, a crisp ten-dollar bill, and he tucked it in his pocket, frowning as he wandered over to check the price on the doll. Molly sick? He didn"t think so. Why had she lied?
He picked up the doll and looked for the price. Thirty-two dollars. He put it back, and wandered down another aisle of pink stuff. In the end, he picked out a doctor kit for Roch.e.l.le and a sticker book for Danny both together didn"t burn the whole ten-dollar bill he used to pay, and it made him feel better.
Until, on his way out, he saw a Mexican national you could always tell,they were so much smaller, so much darker than the Hispanic population here buying that thirty- two-dollar doll.
He tried. On the way to the parking lot, he combated the rising burn in his gut by telling himself the guy probably just got paid and was sending a special treat back home. Maybe it was his daughter"s birthday.
But it didn"t help. The fact remained: the other guy"s kid got the doll. Roch.e.l.le got a lousy doctor kit. It wasn"t fair.
As he started the truck, he wondered again what was going on with his sister. She was acting weird. Maybe he"d stop by the hospital on the way home and see what he could find out.
Late in the day, Alejandro stirred again. And this time, he did not feel as if he were swimming through a murky density of pain and confusion. He was aware immediately of the cautionary band of pain around his chest, but it was subdued.
His head was clear. He blinked, testing it, and realized that the latest nap had restored something he"d barely noticed was missing his sense of himself and his place in the world. He felt as if he"d really slept, instead of simply sliding into unconsciousness.
Carefully, he stood up and found new strength in his limbs, found he could limp gently on his gun-shot leg without too much agony, and his ribs did not jolt unless he moved too quickly.
Progress.
The long gla.s.s door in the kitchen stood open, the drapes pulled aside to reveal the small plots of land carefully planted with flowers and what he thought might be herbs.