Page 21 of Dangerous Passion

Slowly, she moved until her hand touched his, her palm covering the back of his hand. His skin was warm, almost preternaturally so. Her skin was chilled—like most operating theaters, this clinic was kept very cold and she’d been soaked by the rain. It felt like she was touching a small furnace. The heat crept up her arm.

Suddenly, Drake’s hand turned until his palm was clasping hers, the grip warm and tight but not painful.

Startled, Grace looked at Drake’s face. It was utterly expressionless, in the stillness of deep sleep. There was no sign of consciousness at all. And yet he was now holding her hand.

Ben was smiling slightly as he stitched Drake’s shoulder.

Grace chanced a look. The wound was looking much better as Ben closed it into a neat, stitched line.

Now that his shoulder wasn’t such a bloody mess she had to avert her eyes, she looked at the rest of Drake’s torso. She’d have had to be dead not to.

She’d never seen a body such as his. Dressed, you only noticed that he had unusually broad shoulders. But now that he was naked from the waist up, she could see what she’d only sensed before when he’d been lying on top of her on the sidewalk outside the gallery.

The man was raw, naked male power. He didn’t have the bulked-up muscles of gym rats or wrestlers. His muscles were lean, so stripped of fat she could actually see the striations of muscle tissue under the skin. She knew her anatomy and could see the muscles, one by one, how they fit over one another, worked together. He must put himself through incredible workouts to have muscles like this, deep and toned.

He was almost frighteningly powerful. She’d seen how fast he could move, how deadly he was in a fight, how proficient with a gun. This man would make a formidable enemy.

He wasn’therenemy, though. Certainly not now. Now he was a wounded man, holding her hand for whatever comfort she could provide.

Ben snipped the last thread and started applying gauze to cover the wound.

She squeezed Drake’s hand lightly. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured. “The wound looks so much better now that Ben’s stitched it up. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

She felt like a fool, talking to a man who couldn’t hear her. And yet…his grip tightened slightly on her hand, a warm pressure, so slight she might have imagined it, but she didn’t. She sat quietly, her hand in his, hoping she was providing some comfort.

By the time Ben straightened, Grace’s head was nodding. God, she was tired. She felt like resting her head on the cot and going to sleep, simply letting herself black out, but shecouldn’t afford to rest yet. There was still the trip home to negotiate. How could she get home? Her purse was gone. She had no money for either a bus or a taxi. Maybe she could convince someone here to drive her.

Home. She wanted to go home. To seek comfort in her familiar surroundings. Fix herself a cup of tea, step into a hot tub of water. Try to wipe out the sight of Harold’s head exploding.

Mourn him, in private. Nurse her wounds.

Her eyes hurt, her face hurt, her head hurt.

Her heart hurt.

It felt like some huge hole had been ripped in the universe and monsters had come rushing through it. Monsters who could attack a woman, use her to get to a man and, above all, blow a man’s head off.

Every time she closed her eyes she could see Harold’s death, as graphically as when it happened. And every time, her heart gave a huge kick in her chest. She’d been conditioned from childhood to understand that there was no justice in the world. The fact that Harold was kind-hearted and had a wonderful eye for art was no shield in this world, none at all. But his violent passing was hard to grasp. It was so difficult to contemplate a world without Harold in it.

Grace had so few things in her life, really. They could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Her art, Harold, her few other friends, her apartment. Her life revolved around these few elements and now one of them—hugely important to her in every way—was gone, wiped out in a blood bath.

Her eyes stung but she refused to let any tears fall. They would be saved for later, for when she got home. Allthrough her childhood, she’d learned to control her tears, learned the hard way that they were for private moments only.

She yearned for the safety of her home. It wasn’t luxurious, certainly nothing like the few glimpses she’d had of this penthouse apartment, with its high ceilings and plush carpets and antiques and artwork. Her home was modest, the most extravagant thing about it the skylight in her studio which let in as much light as Manhattan ever offered. It was simply, even sparely decorated, filled with works in progress.

She yearned for it the way a thirsty man yearns for water.

She felt exposed, naked here. Though she tried to control it, her hands were shaking, even the one in Drake’s warm clasp. She was shaking all over.

Ben administered a syringe of what she assumed was an antibiotic. It was done. She was patched up, Drake was stitched up, she could go.

She stood. “Ahm, Ben?”

He had pulled off the gloves with a snap and was putting his surgical instruments in an autoclave. “Yeah?”

“I wonder if—if it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”

He turned, bright blue eyes direct. “Do you need something?”

---