Wilderness of Mirrors (6 page)

“Before or after I began hallucinating?”

She drizzled costly olive oil and crushed garlic over the mixture. “You think I’m a delusion.” There was an exquisitely sardonic edge to her tone. He’d have fallen in love if he hadn’t done so a decade before.

“Aren’t you? I’ve had two whiskies, two surgeries, and too much of London. Hallucination would appear the proper term.”

She licked her thumb.

Her tongue, like her mouth, was a beautiful apparition, and white-hot lust assaulted him. Most inconvenient when he couldn’t do much about it.

“I see.” Her eyes hadn’t left his until now. She held up a flat palm. “Wait a moment.” She twisted and rummaged through Brad’s refrigerator. When she turned again, her hands held the makings of shrimp scampi. “Hungry? I’ve bought enough to feed an army.” Her gaze followed his hands to the shirttails he’d only just managed to yank over the front of his jeans. No point in Brad thinking he’d reverted to wet dreams.

“What? No. Thank you all the same, though.”

Her cheeks stained with a pretty blush. “Where were you hurt?” Those dark eyes of hers were locked on his face once more.

“Not down there.”

Her full mouth tipped at the corner. A dimple popped out from under her high cheekbones. “No. I can see
that’s
in perfect working order.”

A cheeky phantom.

“Is it your leg? The left one?” Her teeth worked through a slice of cheese.

He nodded.

“Your ribs as well?”

He hoped his grunt sounded affirmative.

She swallowed before speaking again, and he stared in fascination at her long, creamy white neck.

“That must be a nightmare. Does it hurt when you breathe?”

Of course it hurt.

Brad’s voice, still distant, rose a notch. He was cursing Spanish-style, yet she didn’t seem to notice.

“Do you speak Spanish?” Nigel wondered.

She shrugged and brushed her hands on the jeans that hugged her mile-long legs. “Un poco. Por que?”

His answer was a cough.

She frowned. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? I mean, perhaps Brad should call your physician. He’ll be right back – had to take a call on his cell. I think he went topside.”

Nigel closed his eyes. She was a spirit; best to ignore her. “I’m fine,” he lied. “And thank you for the offer, but I’ll pass on the shrimp. It’s almost certainly tasteless and probably has wings.”

Samantha contemplated Nigel. The poor bastard was hallucinating, not drunk or rude as first she’d thought. She doubted Brad had given him aspirin or bothered to check his temperature. He might have had an empathetic soul, but he was a man. After placing a pot of water on the gas range, she crossed the room and switched off the light. She dropped an Alpaca throw over Nigel’s torso and legs.

His face had relaxed a few degrees, and she studied him. Faint lines fanned out from his eyelids and there were similarly muted indentations around his mouth and across his forehead. She guessed he was in his mid-thirties, maybe forty; though, he’d have looked quite a bit younger if the gloomy smudges beneath his eyes weren’t so prominent.

His nose was a strong straight one – almost Gallic – and his jaw was square, with a slight groove in its center. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t taken to him right off. Marc’s chin had been similarly made. The memory made her shudder, so she shoved it under the bed and continued her assessment.

There was a thick coat of golden stubble along Nigel’s face. She wondered momentarily what it would feel like beneath her touch. Soft like her grandfather’s had been or rough like Brad’s?

Damn.
It had been far too long. Invalids weren’t beneath her.

Though this one appeared capable of quite a bit, injured or not. She wondered what he did for a living. His body was bereft of fat, and muscle padded each bone and line of his straight limbs and fine-looking face. It gave him an air of gravitas.

Her former agency may well have taken him on. Tom Ford would have found a use for this face.

She put the back of her hand to his forehead. He didn’t flinch, and she decided he’d passed out. He was warm but not fever-hot. Maybe Brad had given him something. She left her hand there for a moment longer than necessary, quite surprised by the effect their contact had on her pulse.

“You’re cooler than I imagined.” The vibration of his voice worked its way through her skin and she jerked away.

Carefully, she watched his lips shift. It was hard when he muttered to catch all the words, but she had been quick to pick up the Oxford-schooled clip to his speech and guess the rest. “Sorry…I mean…I don’t think you’ve got a fever, unless… Did Brad give you aspirin? Advil? Paracetemol?”

He shifted as he shrugged and she was struck by the grace of the flesh around his collarbone. Absently, she touched a single finger to the taut side of his corded neck. It pulsed against the beat of his heart, rising and falling with slow measured movements.
What the hell are you doing, Sam?

His low voice preempted her mind’s answer. “Not sure. You’ll have to ask him, if, in fact, you can hear him…”

She straightened, appalled. “What did you say?”

But his face had gone slack.
What a complete jackass.

Sam swept angrily back to the kitchen, stooping to pat Tamar along the way. “I might just let you eat him,” she whispered.

Then movement caught her attention. Brad stood in the kitchen, a stack of tomatoes and cheese vise-gripped between his blunt fingertips. “Have I told you how much I’ve missed you, my dearest Sammy?”

“Not in some time.” She crossed her arms and did her best to appear aggravated.

He smiled and held up an opened bottle of 1989 Fernand Coffinet Batard Montrachet and a set of Riedel goblets. If only all apologies were so well-crafted.

“Dios mio.”

Brad’s hands stilled. “What?”

“I said, ‘Dios mio’.” She worked her way over Tam into the kitchen. “That bottle is overkill for scampi.”

“No,” he interrupted. “I mean why in Spanish?”

Samantha slipped a glass from his fingers. “Something Nigel said. Asked me if I understood it.” She poked her elbow into Brad’s taut abdomen. “I think he’s got a fever. Should probably go to the hospital. He was hallucinating, you know.”

“Ah.” The tautness through his wide shoulders lessened. “That’d be the painkiller I chucked in his whisky. Bloody idiot wouldn’t take anything voluntarily.”

“What happened to him?”

He poured her a measure of wine. “We were in Morocco motorcycling. He was shot and robbed.”

“Where were you while all this was going on?” Samantha raised a brow as Brad started to chuckle. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

Brad’s grin remained. “Don’t worry. The doctor said he’ll be fine. Nigel’s just grumpy because he hates London.”

“If you say so.” Samantha took in the wine’s bouquet, then a sip. “God, that’s really good.”

Brad sampled his own. “It is nice, isn’t it?”

By then the water had boiled. She put her glass on the counter and grabbed the handmade pasta from beside him. “Shove over.”

He backed up, his eyes on Nigel’s sleeping countenance. “He looks fine to me.”

Steam mushroomed around the dumped linguine. Samantha gave it a stir. “He’s not. He was delirious - thought
I
was an angel.” She had another sip from her glass. Marvelous what a grape could do.

Brad laughed and she punched his shoulder. “Stop making fun of me. He asked if I spoke Spanish and finished by refusing to eat in case the shrimp had grown wings.”

Brad contemplated her words more seriously.

“Oh and… ” She shook her head at the memory. What did it matter, she wasn’t likely to see the man again. “When I asked if you’d given him aspirin, he told me to ask you myself.”

“What of it?”

“He joked about me not being able to
hear
your answer.” She ran a finger around her goblet. Okay, so maybe it mattered a bit - every once in a while - when her guard was down.

Brad lifted her chin, his fingers gentle enough to bite her heart. “And you thought he was taking the piss?”

“Wasn’t he?” She studied Brad’s expression of regret.

“Not likely, luv. I never told him you were deaf.”

W
ellington Turner picked yellow ones. Always yellow, whether they were roses or tulips. Carnations or daisies.

Because he liked yellow.

Never once had he noticed there wasn’t a speck of it in Samantha’s flat.

Never once did he recall that her late mother, Kirstin, had loathed the color.

“Same address, sir?” The plain-faced girl stared at the computer screen, her already gray skin ghostly in the electric light.

“Yes.” Same address. Same date. Always the 12
th
day of the month.

She glanced up, a frown knotting the only bit of nice skin around her dreary eyes. “And you’re certain you don’t want them for Valentine’s Day?”

“Quite certain,” he breathed irritably.

“Right then.” She swiped the money he’d laid on the counter and, after some long moments, passed him the change. “They should arrive in the next hour or so.”

Forgoing further pleasantries, he exited the florist and made for his car. Once inside, he pressed the sound system’s auxiliary button and waited until the strains of ‘
A Well Respected Man’
filled the lush space.

The parking ticket, found slipped beneath the wipers, was folded discretely into his wallet beside the horribly crumpled pound notes he’d just been given. He’d get rid of both as soon as possible.

It took a moment, but when the music finally tempered his annoyance, he turned out onto the wide boulevard, drumming his fingers on the wheel as he headed along the familiar route.

It would take him twenty-six minutes and cost a small fortune in fines for driving through congested areas during commuting hours. But he would make it before the delivery van, and that was what mattered.

After all, things worth doing, were worth doing no matter the cost.

And when it came to Kirsten’s daughter that was especially true.

“Because,” he sang to the handsome reflection in the pristine surface of his navigation system, “ –he’s oh, so good, and he’s oh, so kind –”

A
s Sam approached Barkley Manor’s massive gates, she hoped the dark blurs beneath her eyes would be camouflaged by the day’s growing brightness. Unable to sleep after returning from Brad’s, she had huddled beneath a duvet and flipped through her mother’s old books. Twain. Tolstoy. Dickens. Austen. Notes. Everywhere underlining. Questions and more questions, always written in Russian.

In years past, she had run her fingers over them wondering why Kirsten had tipped her Cyrillic to the left when her English favored the right. Sometimes Sam would write in the same manner herself just to see if it gave her any insight. It had merely made her hand tired.

Recently though, she had come to look on them as little works of art. Clever bits of her mother’s brilliance and wit. And it had become a more soothing way to spend their anniversary, even if it did guarantee exhaustion.

Now Sam squinted as the light of early morning crept through the entrance slightly ahead of her Audi. The gravel drive steamed with winter’s soft heat, leaving the estate itself – an enormous, Victorian cube of towers and turrets – to blur behind the mist. She slowed, watching as the crowns of ancient trees surrounding Barkley escaped the fog’s hold.

She could have stayed for hours, unlike her mother who would have had little use for such landscapes, but trucks would be arriving soon and Sam needed time to plan her attack. She yawned as the imposing edifice swung by on her way to the lot behind the adjoining stables. The crisp air, tinged with hay and manure, filtered up from Tam’s opened window. A few stable hands were out, intent on their work, dressed in layers of wool and canvas. Sam lifted her right forefinger from the steering wheel and was gifted a slight chin dip in response.

God she loved the English. Not an overdone action in their repertoire. Ten years as a child and another ten now. She’d spent most of her life in London. Had a British grandfather. And yet, to them, she was and always would be, a Yank.

A cloud of dust lifted and she saw Tam sneeze in her side view mirror.

“Bless you. And don’t get any ideas.” Her warning came as she spied the Duchess heading in from the enormous wood flanking the western side of the 1,000-acre property. Two labs, sticks jammed in their drooling mouths, rolled along beside their mistress.

Sam reached over her right shoulder and grabbed Tam’s ear. It was soft and bent easily beneath her caress. “Keep quiet and I’ll let you play with them.” Her hand didn’t pick up the usual vibrations associated with his yodeling bark, so she let go and waved.

Lady Kate, dressed in her husband’s Mackintosh and mud splattered Wellies, lifted her hand. Her dark hair was spilling out of its untidy bun, and she had a long swipe of dirt across her cheek and forehead. Sam put down the window and called, “Would you like more four-footed company?”

Kate’s hand switched to a beckoning gesture.

After stopping, Sam slid out of her seat, her feet denting the pea stone as she worked her way to Tam’s door. The labs were already bearing down on them, faces wide and happy, tongues lolling. “Good morning, boys.”

Tam’s reluctance to show enthusiasm didn’t quite make it to his eyes; dancing and impish, they flashed excitement. “Go on then.” She watched, eyes hooded against the glint of sun off her car windows, as the trio milled and played.

When Kate approached, Sam said, “Pretty day, isn’t it?”

Kate nodded. Then, as if suddenly conscious of her state of attire, her face grew tight and serious. “I hope the rain holds off. Your crew only has until noon to get everything ready. The tea’s at two. You don’t think you’ve waited too long…”

Sam shook her head. “Not at all. The curtains are pressed and gorgeous. Jane will be here to oversee their installation, and all the catering and floral arrangements will be beyond fresh.” Reaching down, she snatched away one of the lab’s gooey sticks. She chucked the piece over a low hedge and all three dogs went barreling through the sizeable gap.