Page 32 of Sexy as Sin
A broad passage, shadowed and dim, beyond the kitchen. She headed across acres of shining rose-gum flooring, skirting a pale-green wool carpet in muted Oriental pattern on which sat a cream-colored leather sectional, a heavy, round-legged stone coffee table, and an Eames leather chair and ottoman, also in cream, because you had to match, she guessed, and found closed doors to left and right.
All right, then. She might as well take her housebreaking career to the next level. The first door, to the left, was a queen bedroom with an ensuite bath beyond. Empty. The second, to the right, was set up as an office. A laptop computer sat, looking small in the middle of an ocean of desk made of blackbutt, its waving stripes of cream and brown striking a decorative note, while black-and-white framed photos of Byron scenes shouted, “masculine!” and white plantation shutters kept the afternoon sun at bay. That was Brett’s laptop, surely. Hehadto be here.
No sound, though. Nothing but the ticking over of more ceiling fans. It was getting a bit hard to breathe.
Not another emergency. Please. I can’t take it.
Of course you can. Get moving.
More doors. Another bedroom, and then a nursery. Butter-colored walls, a white crib and dressing table fit for royalty, a white wicker ceiling fan this time, an upholstered-wicker swivel rocker and footstool printed with nursery-rhyme images, a matching band of wallpaper border around the whole room, and best of all, a border around each white-shuttered window made up of jewel-colored rectangles of stained glass, wavy with age.
The house was set up for a family. A verywealthyfamily.
Focus. Find him.
Finally, she was outside the last door at the end of the passage, and the door was ajar. More prickles at the back of her neck, because after this, she’d be searching outside.Please, Brett,she begged him silently,don’t have gone outside alone on your first day. Don’t be hurt again.
She opened the door.
The largest room so far, stretching across the width of the house. A sitting area to the right, all cream-upholstered comfort, and a door that had to lead to a spectacular bath, but she wasn’t looking at that. She also wasn’t looking at the accordion doors taking up the entire back wall, letting you open the room to the outside. Or at the terraces of pool, spa tub, patio, and flower garden out there, exactly as she’d supposed. She was looking at the bed.
Dramatically striped blackbutt night tables, king-sized mattress, padded leather headboard in the palest, softest gray, like it had come from a very special steer. White duvet cover, soft gray-and-cream throw at the bottom. And across the whole thing, a man on his face. Dressed in a gray T-shirt and blue PJ bottoms, his arms flung out to either side.
He matched thebed, she thought in one heartbeat.Exactly how perfect is he?And then, on the next,is he even breathing? How did he not hear me?Oh, Brett. Please. No.
Oh, my God.
He was in the water.Not again,he thought, fighting the panic that was swamping him faster than the rolling black waves.No. It’s not true.But it was. She was floating upright beside him like a mermaid, but... not. Pale skin, streamers of red hair, white face, green eyes. She was naked, but he wasn’t feeling good about it. Her body was perfect, as pale and firm as ice. Too cold. Too pale. And her legs weren’t kicking.
“Brett,” she said. He could hear her voice, even though there were no bubbles coming out of her mouth. She was alive. Or was she a mermaid after all? “Are you all right? Please wake up. Please, Brett.”
Her face had changed, and her arms stretched out towards him. If he answered, if he let her take him, he’d be pulled down, too, and he couldn’t breathe down here. His chest burned with the effort of holding his breath. He had to leave her or he’d die, but how could he leave her? He had to take her with him.
He had his hands around her wrists to pull her up, and then she had her own hands around his instead, was turning him in the water.“Brett.Come back. Please come back to me.” She pressed her soft lips to his. They were warm, somehow. She was giving him air, because he could breathe again. Maybehewas a mermaid. Merman. Maybe he belonged here with her after all.
He opened his eyes. Blackness.Wait.He turned his head and tried again. Yeah, there she was. Her face close to his, her eyes as beseeching as they’d looked before, when she’d been underwater.
She wasn’t naked. Her hand was on his back, warm and solid as life, and she was wearing a pale-green T-shirt with see-through lacy cutouts around the top and down the sides so her skin showed through, which looked just fine, and some kind of... He squinted. Cotton shorts in an orange-and-green swirly pattern, their cuffs turned up to show plenty of slim white thigh. That was nice. Pretty. She was completely, absolutely warm and Willow-alive, and that was good. That wasgood.
He could see her shorts because she was kneeling beside him. On a bed, because that was where he was. Her hair wasn’t floating around her, either. It was in its usual soft knot at the back of her head, and also as usual, some of it was coming down in ringlets that he wanted to wrap around his finger.
Right. They were alive. Both of them. He knewhewas, because he hurt. A lot.
“Hi,” he said. If it came out as a croak, he couldn’t help it.
She exhaled. Loudly. She’d stopped looking entreating and was looking upset instead. “You scared the life out of me. Are you all right, or should I ring for the ambos?”
“I was a little... tired.” He tried to get up and cried out before he could stop himself.“Ow.Ouch. Sorry.”Log roll onto your side.He tried it, then gave it up and lay back down again. “Ah... would you bring me the plastic bag? By the... front door? I think I... let the pain get ahead of me.”
She was up on the words, back with the white bag and a glass of water, finding the right bottle and shaking out a caplet, then holding the glass for him. He hated that he needed the help. He was glad for the help.
“The other one, too,” he said. “The one that says... for nausea.”
She handed it to him without a word, and he swallowed it and closed his eyes. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, and tried not to make it a gasp. “Just give me a... sec.”
He could hear theclick-click-clickas she lined pill bottles up on the bedside table, and opened his eyes to see her picking up his crutches from the floor and propping them against the wall where he could grab them. “Right,” she said. “I’ll pop these clothes into the machine for you so you’ll have something to wear tomorrow that’s easy to put on. You need shorts, though. Easier to get on, and cooler.” Talking, working, brisk as one of the nurses in the hospital, except that none of them had ever looked at him like that, or had sounded like she just had, and he’d never wanted them to.
“I don’t... wear shorts.” She shouldn’t be doing his laundry. That was just weird.
