Diamond Bay by Linda Howard Page B

Plain, old-fashioned
lust. I'm a normal woman, and he's a good-looking man. It's normal to admire
his body, so I've got to stop acting like a giggly teenager!
    She pulled the sheet up to his chest, then coaxed him into taking
more aspirin. Why hadn't he awoken by now? Was the concussion more severe than
Honey had thought? Yet his condition didn't seem to be getting worse, and in
fact he was a little more responsive than he had been; it was easier to get him
to take the aspirin and liquids now, but she wanted him to open his eyes, to
talk to her. Until then she couldn't be assured that she hadn't harmed him by
making the decision to keep him hidden.
    Hidden from whom? her subconscious jeered. No one had been looking for him. The jitters she
had been suffering from seemed foolish on this bright, cloudless morning.
    While he was quiet she fed the animals and worked in the garden,
gathering the green beans and the few tomatoes that had ripened overnight.
There were a few yellow squash ready to be picked, and she decided to make a
squash casserole for dinner. She weeded the garden and around the shrubs, and
by that time the heat had become stifling. Even the usual breeze from the Gulf
was missing, and the air lay hot and heavy. She thought longingly of a swim, but
didn't dare leave her patient unattended for that long.
    When she checked on him again she found the sheet once again
kicked down, and he was moving a little, his head turning fretfully. It wasn't
time for more aspirin, but he was hot; she got a bowl of cold water and sat on
the bed beside him, slowly sponging him with the cold water until he was cool
and resting again. When she eased off the bed she glanced down at him and
wondered if she would be wasting her time to cover him up. It was simply too
hot for him, as feverish as he was, even though she'd left the air conditioning
on and the house felt cool to her. Carefully she untangled the sheet from
around his feet, her touch light and fleeting; then she paused and her hands
returned to his feet. He had nice feet, lean and tanned, masculine and well
tended, like his hands. He also had the same tough calluses on the outside
ridges of his feet that he had on his hands. He was a trained warrior.
    Tears burned her eyes as she pulled the sheet up to his waist and
left it there, deciding to compromise. She had no reason to cry; he'd chosen
his life and wouldn't appreciate her sympathy. The people who lived on the edge
of danger did so because that was what they wanted; she had lived there
herself, and she knew that she had freely chosen to accept the perils that came
her way. B.B. had
accepted the danger of his job, counting it as the
price to be paid for something he thought was worth doing. What neither of them had counted on was that it would be her job
that would cost him his life.
    By the time Honey came that night Rachel had long since controlled
herself, and a fragrant squash casserole greeted Honey's nose when she came in
the door. "Umm, that smells good," she breathed. "How's our
patient?"
    Rachel shook her head. "Not much change. He's moving around a
little, fretting, when the fever gets high, but he hasn't woken up yet."
    She had just twitched the sheet up over him again a few moments
before, so he was covered when Honey went in to check on him. "He's doing
good," Honey murmured after looking at his wounds and checking his eyes.
"Let him sleep. It's just what he needs."
    "It's been so long," Rachel murmured.
    "He went through a lot. The body has a way of taking over and
getting what it needs."
    It didn't take much to get Honey to stay for dinner. The
casserole, fresh peas and sliced tomatoes did a lot of convincing by
themselves. "This is
a lot better than the hamburger I'd planned on," Honey said, waving her
fork for emphasis. "I think our boy is out
of danger, so I wasn't going to come by tomorrow, but if you're cooking again I
can always change my mind."
    It felt good to laugh, after the tension of the past two