masterful.
“Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now.” His accented English spoken in a commanding tone was so reassuring, her anxiety lessened and she slept.
When next she came awake, she discovered the same hand holding hers. This time when she opened her eyes, she saw only one figure seated at her bedside. A powerfully built male, probably mid-thirties. The nurse had disappeared.
A white shirt covered his broad shoulders and well-defined chest. A dusting of black hair showed above the opening. The color of the fabric brought out his beautiful olive skin tone. He had the blackest eyes and hair she’d ever seen at such close range. She noticed he wore it longer than some men, slicked it back from his forehead as though he’d been in a hurry.
His widow’s peak suited his aquiline features. There was a magnificence about him. She’d never met a truly gorgeous man before, and he was much more than that. Her heart thundered in her chest as though she’d suddenly been given a drug to bring her to life.
Though he studied her as she imagined an eagle would do before swooping to catch its prey unaware, she glimpsed banked fires in the recesses of those eyes. He was dark and dangerous. Her body gave off a shiver of excitement she couldn’t repress. Something was wrong with her to be this aware of a total stranger.
“What am I doing here?”
His eyelids lowered, exposing long black lashes that shielded part of his penetrating gaze from her. “You don’t remember what happened to you?” He asked the question in a low, silky tone, almost as if he didn’t trust what she’d just asked him.
Growing more nervous under his unrelenting scrutiny, she unconsciously moved her hand to her throat. Suddenly it occurred to her she couldn’t feel her grandmother’s medallion.
In a frantic gesture, she raised up and moved the pillow to see if it had fallen on to the mattress, but it wasn’t there. Neither was the chain.
“Did the nurse remove it?” she cried. By now she was sitting straight up, staring at the man beside her bed.
“Remove what?” he asked in such a calm tone, it got under her skin.
She fought not to let her panic show. Now that the sheet had fallen to her waist, the man’s eyes were appraising her. The white shift she wore her was modest enough, but still those black orbs burned like hot coals as he looked at her. But maybe she was being too paranoid because she’d awakened feeling as though she was in a strange dream.
“My medallion is missing. I have to find it.”
He clasped his bronzed hands beneath a chin so solid, a lesser-blessed male would sell his soul to have been created like this god in earthly form.
A god. That’s what her grandmother had called her lover. Lauren had smiled at Celia’s description, allowing her that flight of fantasy. But she wasn’t laughing now. Maybe Lauren had lost her mind. Fear crept over her once more. She closed her eyes and lay back.
“Perhaps if you gave me a description, mademoiselle.”
She bit her lip, discovering it was cracked and dry. Just how long had she been in this condition? Her eyes opened again. “It’s a gold circle about the size and thickness of an American quarter. Maybe a little thicker.”
She didn’t dare give the full details. Her relationship to her grandfather was a secret and had to remain one, even down to a piece of jewelry he’d given her grandmother. “Have you ever seen a quarter?” He nodded slowly. “I kept it on a gold chain. It has little monetary value, but it’s my most prized possession.” More hot tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes.
“Then I’ll ask my staff to look for it.”
“Thank you.” She dashed the moisture from her cheeks with her free hand. “How sick am I?”
His dark gaze flickered. “You’ve been taken off oxygen and your IV drip. That means you’ll be fed juice, in fact, anything you crave, and then you’ll be able to get up with help and walk around. By tomorrow you should feel much more recovered.”
“But what happened to me?”
He continued to look at her with the strangest expression. She had the impression he was trying to make up his mind what to tell her. The pit in her stomach enlarged, but her natural grit came to the fore. She took a deep breath. “Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
“Can you?” He’d asked the question almost seductively. Was he playing with her?
“I’m not a child.”
“No. That you are not.” A certain nuance in his deep voice sent a little shiver through her.
Don’t let him get to you, Lauren. He was a doctor after all and had examined her. Those black eyes had seen everything, so there was nothing he didn’t know. “If you won’t tell me because you think I’m the fainting kind, I’ll ask your nurse. I’m sure she’ll oblige me.”
“She’s gone back to the clinic.” The note of satisfaction in his voice set her off.
“I will admit you’re doing a good job of frightening me.”
He shrugged his shoulders with unconscious elegance. She watched his hands open, as if he were holding a bowl. She noticed inconsequently that those hands were used to hard work, yet his nails and cuticles were immaculate. “A thousand pardons, mademoiselle. My intent has been to save you from remembering too much at once.”
She sucked in her breath. “You mean I have amnesia?” More silence. “But that’s preposterous!”
The doctor cocked his head. “I’d prefer to call it a temporary lapse of memory. At the moment your mind is protecting you from having to deal with a traumatic experience.”
“Traumatic?”
“Very,” his voice grated. It seemed to underline the gravity of what he hadn’t yet told her. While she contemplated his unsettling response, he got up and reached for a white cloak placed over a satin loveseat. She hadn’t realized how tall he was—at least six foot three.
He moved with unconscious male grace. When he approached her again, he let the cape fall loose. “Do you recognize this?’
She tore her eyes from his striking features to look at what he was holding up to her. It was a kandura. Lauren had one like it. She’d purchased her desert gear after she’d arrived in El-Joktor, telling the merchant she wanted a man’s cloak for herself.
He hadn’t wanted to sell it to her because he said it wasn’t done in his country. But she had offered him more money than it was worth and he had finally conceded to her wishes and wrapped it up for her.
“Mustafa—”
The camel driver’s name came out on a sudden cry of remembrance.
The doctor’s eyes flickered. “You see? Your memory is returning. Too fast unfortunately.”
A kaleidoscope was filtering through her mind. Bits and pieces started falling together faster than she could keep up. “The mountains were alive. They engulfed everything—Mustafa told me it was a sandstorm. I couldn’t see him—I couldn’t breathe—what happened to him?”
The doctor’s silence puzzled her. She pushed the sheet aside and got out of the bed. Without conscious thought she grabbed his bronzed forearms. “Tell me—did he die because of me?”
His midnight eyes seemed to bore right down into her soul. “No, mademoiselle. Death didn’t come for him because it wasn’t his appointed hour. In fact, he was the one who saved your life,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Without his quick thinking, you would have been buried alive.”
She shuddered. “What about the others in the caravan?”
“They survived.”
When the words sank in,