The Colors of Love (5 page)

He stared at her as if she'd lost her mind.

"I'm okay. I'm fine. You can let the cat down now. There's nothing he can hurt here, and he can't get out."

Released, Squiggles leapt to the floor and prowled his way to the straight-backed chair beside the telephone table.

"Get into the bathroom," ordered the doctor. "I'll clean that scratch, then you're going to have a hot bath. Is that your bathroom?"

She grabbed for his shirt as he stepped toward the door halfway down the hall. She knew she had to stop him before he walked right in and took over her life. Insane though it was, she felt that way, as if this man could just walk in and nothing would ever be the same again.

He jerked around when she touched him, then suddenly they were only inches apart, her fist clenched in his shirt. Jamie felt a shiver of cold sweep over her skin. When she felt his heartbeat, wild purple panic welled up in her veins.

"I'll look after the scratch." She meant the words to sound cool, but they came out of her throat breathless. "Thank you."

"What for?"

"For the ride, for helping me with Squiggles. You—it's—you'd better go."

Her heart pounded in her ears so that she could hardly hear her own voice telling him to leave. His eyes were dark, fixed on hers, and the air was all hot swirls of red. She saw his lips move, couldn't take meaning from his words.

"Yes," he said. "Good night."

But he didn't move, and she couldn't. She was frozen, staring up into his eyes. She could drown, she thought, with echoes of his voice in her ears, his magnetic eyes holding her. No wonder Sara had calmed with only a few words, a tender look from those deep brown eyes.

It wasn't tenderness in his eyes now.

"I can't go," he said. "You're holding on."

She swallowed hard, staring at her own fist, at the trapped folds of his shirt. One of his buttons had come undone.

What kind of madness was this? She needed to let go. She wanted...

"Damn," he breathed, a low curse that left his midnight black eyes fixed on hers.

Held in his gaze, she felt like a deer in the glare of headlights. She felt his hand brush her throat, her jaw... and she knew...

His lips were cool, slightly parted as they covered hers. She breathed him in, surrendering to dizziness at the touch of his palm against her cheek, then falling slowly into his kiss.

Cool, she thought, ice blue cool, warming even as the image formed. Under her flattened palm, his heart beat strongly. His pulse throbbed in their joined lips, in his hand as it slid to her neck, fingers angling her head back... dizzy, spinning red swirls in her eyes as she drowned in the rhythm of his heart.

Fire licked along her veins, burning as his tongue probed. His lips scorched need into her bloodstream, his hand blazing against the naked flesh of her throat. Heat drew a silent moan from her, and the overwhelming desire to sink down, to draw him deep inside.

"I..." Her voice caressed his lips and she fought to anchor herself. "I can't..."

The world stilled, even the rain outside held its breath. Then, abruptly, her hand that had pressed to his chest clenched empty air and she stared up into his unreadable eyes, residual madness pounding in her bloodstream.

"I didn't intend to do that," he said grimly. "I apologize."

When he turned and opened the door, she didn't protest, not a whisper. The last thing she saw was his hand, his fingers on the door as he shoved it closed, trapping her inside. Alone. She stared at the door, her mind spinning with his scent, her lips tingling with the memory of his mouth.

When he knocked on the door, only seconds later, she gasped.

"Jamila? I've got your I—the cat's litter."

Jamie opened the door and found no trace of the kiss they'd shared in his eyes. She held out her hand and took the plastic bag.

"And your keys. You left them in the door." He dropped them into her hand without touching flesh. "Good night. Be sure to have a hot bath."

His words brought the uncomfortable dampness of her clothes shivering to the surface of her skin. She wanted to say his name, but she wasn't going to call him
Dr. Kent
when she could still feel the imprint of his lips
on hers
,
the memory of his tongue drawing her deep into seductive need.

"Good night," she said with remarkable steadiness. "Please tell Sara I'll be in to see her."

Chapter 3

Jamie fought her way out of a deep, tangled sleep that clung to her eyes as she pushed jumbled covers aside.

At the foot of the bed, the fluffy cat intently licked streaked orange fur. Last night Squiggles had been a bedraggled waif. This morning he appeared soft, fluffy, and angelic.

She'd stumbled to bed at three-thirty after setting up a cardboard litter box and filling two cereal dishes with cat food and water. She'd tried to dry Squiggles with a towel, but he'd struggled and escaped under her bed.

She'd left him there, deciding it was best to give him time to adjust. Then she'd slept, a heavy sleep that left her mind tangled with dream echoes... staring out the window of Liz's gallery, eyes breathlessly locked with a man from Seattle's rainy streets... his fingers touching despite the window between them... caressing her dream-naked shoulder.

Dr. Kent.

She pushed the blanket aside and scooped up the cat. Ridiculous that a man she knew only as
Dr. Kent
had kissed her mindless last night, then done heaven-knew-what to her in dreamland?

Squiggles curled against her shoulder, apparently content to ride there as Jamie padded barefoot through the living room she'd converted into a studio.

The phone book wasn't on the small table that held her telephone and an assortment of bills and receipts. Where the devil had she left it?

Later. No time now.

She carried Squiggles to the kitchen, checked to be sure he had food and water. The kitchen clock said six, which meant she had four hours until ten, when she imagined hospital visiting hours might begin.

She finally located her phone book on the kitchen table, set Squiggles down at the food dish, and flipped through the book until she found him in the yellow pages: KENT, A.M.

He was a pediatrician with offices on Madison Street and no first name, only initials.

A... Andrew? Alistair? Allan?

She hurried into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, then grabbed a paint-spattered blue shirt hanging on the back of the bathroom door. In her studio, she pulled open the drapes on a brightly overcast Seattle day. The skylight above her easel allowed the heavens to pour light directly onto her canvas.

She lifted the white canvas off her easel and sorted through a stack of prepared canvases against one wall, found the one she'd prepped with a pale gray wash. She placed it on the easel and, using light strokes with charcoal, sketched in the outlines of buildings, a rainy street, and the form of a man hurrying through the rain.

Last night she'd imagined that anonymous man hurrying home to an imagined wife and child. This morning, on her canvas, his eyes were the color of warm, dark mahogany as he hurried to meet her—Jamie.

* * *

The frenzy drained abruptly, leaving Jamie holding a brush loaded with acrylic paint the color of rain.

Something... something about the rain-swept street... the way the parked car—

She stepped back, forcing her eyes to refocus, letting the details blur into areas of color. The man was perfect, hunched against the weather, sheltering from the rain yet a part of it, hurrying home.

The car was wrong. At least—ah, the license plate! Too real, too distinct. She picked up another brush and approached the canvas. Here, and here. Yes.

Enough now.

She loved the way the colors of rain blended with the colors of man, car, and pavement. Now, with the discipline she'd learned over the last six years, she knew it was time to stop, to let go until she could return, her eyes cold and critical.

She turned away, forcing her eyes to break contact with the canvas. As she carried her tin of solvent and brushes into the kitchen, she heard a soft thud, turned, and remembered Squiggles with a sense of pleasure.

How amazing that she'd forgotten the cat entirely while she painted, that Squiggles had allowed her to forget. Now, as she washed her brushes carefully, he prowled back and forth between her legs and the kitchen cupboards.

"You already have food."

"Meow."

She laughed and picked him up, cradling him in her arm as she carried the brushes back to the cart beside the easel. Almost ten o'clock. She'd intended to be at the hospital by now. She carried him into the bedroom, put him on the bed, and then shed her blue painting smock and nightgown.

Squiggles jumped off the bed and followed her into the bathroom, purring as she started the shower. Five minutes, she thought, in and out. She grabbed a hair clip from the vanity, caught her hair back, and stepped into the shower. Soaping her body under the beating water, a memory caught her, a dream memory... his fingers trailing across her naked flesh, evoking a trembling wave of hunger.

She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, but he wouldn't leave her mind, and she wondered if he would be there, in the hospital, when she arrived. He might be somewhere in the multistoried building, and she'd never know; or he could be standing beside the little girl's bed when Jamie arrived, his eyes watching as she walked into the room, narrowing with—

With criticism, she decided, rubbing herself briskly with the towel, remembering the wariness in his eyes every time he'd looked at her. She didn't think either one of them had meant that kiss to happen, explosive enough to blow the top off Liz's pressure cooker even though he didn't really like her.

Of course he didn't
dislike
her. He didn't know her, any more than she knew him. She'd painted a fantasy of Dr. Kent on her canvas, but the real man remained a mystery.

She put on jeans and a loose, colorful shirt, then used a hair pick to untangle her curls before she clipped them back with a fastener.

She dug in her closet for the small, patchwork leather backpack she'd bought for her trip into the redwood forest last year. She put a hand towel in the bottom, and a few pieces of dry food from the kitten's food dish. When Squiggles sniffed at the pack curiously, she opened the top wide and left him there, exploring, while she put on her shoes. When she was ready to go, she put him into the pack, relieved that he seemed happy enough to burrow inside.

Two steps from the door, she reached to grab her purse from the telephone table, but there was no purse, only her keys lying sprawled over the small table.

Of course there was no purse, and no car outside waiting for her either. Her car was parked on Magnolia Bluff, outside the old house where Sara lived.

She slipped her keys into her jeans pocket, put the pack on properly with straps over both shoulders, then reached back to free her hair from the straps. Squiggles shifted in the pack, thrusting his body against her spine. She couldn't feel his warmth, but thought it would seep through the pack by the time she got to the hospital.

Outside, the overcast was high and bright, a sign that the sun might break through later today. She walked quickly, saw the bus waiting at the traffic light a block away as she reached the corner. The light turned green, and as the bus began to move, Jamie started to run, racing Metro for the bus stop in the middle of the block.

As she ran, she felt a wild exhilaration pumping in her veins. She loved the way the sun threatened brilliance through the thin overcast, the way the street wore the fading scars of last night's rainstorm. The way the kitten, live and mischievous, shifted against her back with the movements of her body. The way her lips felt full, almost swollen, unwilling to release the memory of his lips.

His initials were A. M. Was he Andrew Martin? Allan Michael?

Before this day was over, she was determined to learn Dr. A. M. Kent's first name. Even if she never saw him again, she could hardly go on remembering that kiss, attributing her wild heartbeat and tingling lips to someone her mind labeled
Dr. Kent.

The bus doors slid open as she reached them. She leapt on and dropped her money in for full fare.

* * *

Jamie found Sara Miller sitting cross-legged on a braided rug by the window of room 312 at the hospital. The child was playing with a stuffed doll. In the bed to her right, a sleeping boy lay with his leg in a complicated traction device.

"Hello, Sara."

The girl scrambled to her feet. "Did you find Squiggles? The nurse told me somebody found Squiggles! Is he 'kay?"

"He's fine. Do you want to see?"

"Have you got him
here?
Really here?"

Jamie slipped the pack off her shoulders. "We have to be careful. I brought him in my backpack, but we can't let him get away."

" 'Kay," agreed Sara soberly.

Jamie unzipped the closure six inches and opened it for Sara to peek in. When the girl reached in, Jamie heard a
mewing
sound.