Page 6 of For the Love of Lilah
Frowning, he put a hand on hers before she could lift the tray. “Vibes?”
“Absolutely.” With a laugh, she tossed back her hair. “Now, I’m going to take Mr. X some breakfast. Why don’t you get back to knocking down walls in the west wing?”
“We’re putting a few up today.” And because he did trust her, he relaxed a little. “Aren’t you going to be late for work?”
“I took the day off to play Florence Nightingale.” She slapped his hand away from the saucer of toast. “Go be an architect.”
Balancing the tray, she left Sloan to start down the hallway. The main floor of The Towers was a hodgepodge of rooms with towering ceilings and cracked plaster. In its heyday, it had been a showplace, an elaborate summer home built by Fergus Calhoun in 1904. It had been his symbol of status with gleaming paneling, crystal doorknobs, intricate murals.
Now the roof leaked in too many places to count, the plumbing rattled and the plaster flaked. Like her sisters, Lilah adored every inch of chipped molding. It had been her home, her only home, and held memories of the parents she had lost fifteen years before.
At the top of the curving stairs, she paused. Muffled with distance came the energetic sound of hammering. The west wing was getting a much needed face-lift. Between Sloan and Trent, The Towers would recapture at least part of its former glory. Lilah liked the idea and, as a woman who considered napping a favored pastime, enjoyed the sound of busy hands.
He was still sleeping when she walked into the room. She knew he had barely stirred through the night because she had stretched out on the foot of the bed, reluctant to leave him, and had slept there, patchily, until morning.
Quietly Lilah set the tray on the bureau and moved over to open the terrace doors. Warm and fragrant air glided in. Unable to resist, she stepped out to let it revitalize her. The sunlight sparkled on the wet grass, glittered on the petals of shell-pink peonies still heavy-headed from rain. Clematis, their saucer-sized blossoms royally blue, spiraled on one of the white trellises in a race with the climbing roses.
From the waist-high terrace wall, she could see the glint of the deep blue water of the bay and the greener, less serene surface of the Atlantic. It hardly seemed possible that she had been in the water just last night, grasping a stranger and fighting for life. But muscles, unaccustomed to the exercise, ached enough to bring the moment, and the terror, back.
She preferred concentrating on the morning, the generous laziness of it. Made tiny as a toy by the distance, one of the tourist boats streamed by, filled with people clutching cameras and children, hoping to see a whale.
It was June, and the summer people poured into Bar Harbor to sail, to shop, to sun. They would gobble up lobster rolls, haunt the ice cream and T-shirt shops and pack the streets, searching for the perfect souvenir. To them it was a resort. To Lilah, it was home.
She watched a three-masted schooner head out to sea and allowed herself to dream a little before going back inside.
He was dreaming. Part of his mind recognized it as a dream, but his stomach muscles still fisted, and his pulse rate increased. He was alone in an angry black sea, fighting to make his arms and legs swim through the rising waves. They dragged at him, pulling him under into that blind, airless world. His lungs strained. His own heartbeat roared in his head. His disorientation was complete—black sea below, black sky above. There was a hideous throbbing in his temple, a terrifying numbness in his limbs. He sank, floating down, fathoms deep. Then she was there, her red hair flowing around her, twining around lovely white breasts, down a slender torso. Her eyes were a soft, mystical green. She spoke his name, and there was a laugh in her voice—and an invitation in the laugh. Slowly, gracefully as a dancer, she held out her arms to him, folding him in. He tasted salt and sex on her lips as she closed them over his.
With a groan, he came regretfully awake. There was pain now, ripe and throbbing in his shoulder, sharp and horrible in his head. His thought patterns skidded away from him. Concentrating, he worked his way above the pain, focusing first on a high, coffered ceiling laced with cracks. He shifted a little, acutely aware that every muscle in his body hurt.
The room was enormous—or perhaps it seemed so because it was so scantily furnished. But what furnishings. There was a huge antique armoire with intricately carved doors. The single chair was undoubtedly Louis Quinze, and the dusty nightstand Hepplewhite. The mattress he lay on sagged, but the footboard was Georgian.
Struggling up to brace on his elbows, he saw Lilah standing in the open terrace doors. The breeze was fluttering those long cables of hair. He swallowed. At least he knew she wasn’t a mermaid. She had legs. Lord, she had legs—right up to her eyes. She wore flowered shorts, a plain blue T-shirt and a smile.
“So, you’re awake.” She came to him and, competent as a mother, laid a hand on his brow. His tongue dried up. “No fever. You’re lucky.”
“Yeah.”
Her smile widened. “Hungry?”
There was definitely a hole in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah.” He wondered if he’d ever be able to get more than one word out around her. At the moment he was lecturing himself for having imagined her naked when she’d risked her life to save his. “Your name’s Lilah.”
“That’s right.” She walked over to fetch the tray. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember anything from last night.”
Pain capered through him so that he gritted his teeth against it and struggled to keep his voice even. “I remember five beautiful women. I thought I was in heaven.”
She laughed and, setting the tray at the foot of the bed, came to rearrange his pillows. “My three sisters and my aunt. Here, can you sit up a little?”
When her hand slid down his back to brace him, he realized he was naked. Completely. “Ah...”
“Don’t worry, I won’t peek. Yet.” She laughed again, leaving him flustered. “Your clothes were drenched—I think the shirt’s a lost cause. Relax,” she told him as she set the tray on his lap. “My brother-in-law and future brother-in-law got you into bed.”
“Oh.” It looked as though he was back to single syllables.
“Try the tea,” she suggested. “You probably swallowed a gallon of seawater, so I’ll bet your throat’s raw.” She saw the intense concentration in his eyes and the nagging pain behind it. “Headache?”
“Vicious.”
“I’ll be back.” She left him, trailing some potently exotic scent in her wake.
