After the Music (16 page)

He got up, looming over her, with one hand in his pocket and the other holding the cigarette. The blue eyes that glittered down at her were impossible to read.

"What do I have to go home to?" he asked bluntly.

That threw her. She dropped her gaze to the sheet. She wanted to tug it up and wipe her wet eyes, but both hands were immobilized. "You've got your women, oil baron." She laughed coldly.

"I'm alone," he said. His eyes studied her up and down and returned to her face, where a stark white bandage was taped around her temple and her neck. "I have no one."

Unable to meet his gaze, she stared blankly at the needle in the back of her hand. "Join the club."

He drew in a slow breath. "You're going to be out of commission for a while."

The implications were just beginning to get through to her. She looked up at him in a daze. Yes, she'd need looking after, and a place to rest. Since Jessica wasn't around now, what would she do?

"There's no need to panic," Thorn said, lifting the cigarette to his mouth. "You're coming home with me. I'll take care of you until you're back on your feet."

"Like hell you will!" she burst out, horrified at the thought of being completely at his mercy for weeks.

He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. "I expected that," he said absently, studying her. "But what else can we do, tulip? God knows, you can't be left alone."

"Get me back to New Orleans," she said. "I can stay in my own apartment. Mr. Rafferty will look after me."

His face hardened. He turned away. "Rafferty thinks you're a cross between a saint and the good fairy."

She stared at him nervously. "How do you know?

His broad shoulders shifted as he stared out through the window blinds. "I wanted to see where you lived."

She shuddered. "Why?"

When he turned, his face was expressionless. "It's a hovel," he said coldly.

Her eyes blazed. "It is not! It's a decent, economical place to live, and I have good neighbors! They'll take care of me!"

He took a final draw from his cigarette and crushed it out angrily. "Mr. Rafferty is hardly able to take care of himself. How do you think he'd manage those stairs to your apartment several times a day?"

Tears threatened to come again, as she realized how right he was, how helpless she was.

"Yes, I know, you're proud and you hate being obligated to me in any way," he said quietly. "But you don't have much choice."

But being near him, living with him...how would she bear it? Especially knowing how he felt about her, how he hated her.

"You said that I was afraid to let anyone come close to me. That I was afraid of involvement. Aren't you the same way?"

She felt trapped. "Yes, but..."

He reached down, drawing his fingers softly against her cheek, her mouth, holding her eyes with his. "I've hurt you more than I ever meant to, Sabina," he said gently. "For God's sake, let me make amends in the only way I can."

"To salve your conscience?" she asked unsteadily.

He stared at her mouth, running his lean finger sensuously around its perfect bow shape. "If that's what you want to believe."

"It was only desire. You said so."

"I did, didn't I?" he murmured.

"Thorn-"

"I'll take care of you."

"But, the band-" she moaned.

"They can live without you for a few weeks," he said. "Once that video hits the market next week, you'll be a legend in your own time, anyway."

That hardly registered. Between her foggy mind and his devastating nearness, she wasn't thinking straight. "How did you know about the video?"

He tilted her chin up a little more. "Never mind how I knew." His voice sounded oddly strained. "Listen, I need to go back to my hotel and change. Will you be all right now?"

She blinked, suddenly realizing that if she'd been here for three days, he had, too. She knew because he was wearing the same clothes he had on when she was brought in.

"You've been here all this time?" she burst out, aghast.

He brushed the unruly hair away from her pale face. "Yes."

"But why?"

"I like hospitals," he growled. "I love sitting in emergency rooms and watching people in green uniforms pass by, and sitting in waiting rooms in the intensive-care unit begging to see you for five damned minutes three times a day! And there's nothing quite as comfortable as a straight chair in a waiting room."

"You didn't have to-" she began.

"How could I leave you, for God's sake?" he said, and his eyes wandered hungrily over her face. "You were in a coma when we got you here!"

"Coma?" she parroted.

"Until you opened your eyes and started grumbling at me early this morning, I wasn't sure you'd come out of it at all, despite what the doctor said."

"You can't pretend you cared whether I did or not," she said coldly.

"You can't imagine how I felt," he said in a rough undertone.

"That's right," she replied abruptly, giving him a burning look. "Remember me? The illegitimate kid from the wrong side of the-"

She suddenly stopped as a lean, hard finger settled over her mouth.

"Don't," he said, regret forming a mask of strain over his handsome face. "I tried to tell you at Al's wedding how deeply I regretted that. You might not believe it, but I hurt myself as much as I hurt you."

Her face turned into the pillow as it all came back, a bitterly vivid memory.

"I disgraced myself, you know," he said after a long pause, sounding ironic and self-mocking. Her eyes came up to meet his and he smiled. "That's right. None of the people who came to that dinner party will even speak to me now. And the matron who cried when you sang even went so far as to sell her stock in my company. How's that for revenge?"

She showed a hint of a smile. He seemed to be more amused than angered by the reaction. "You don't mind?"

"Of course I mind," he murmured. "I'm never invited to luncheons or formal dinners these days. I'm having to survive on old Juan's cooking, and he's mad at me, too. He burns everything he sets before me. Juan is another of your instant conquests," he added ruefully.

She flushed, lowering her eyes to his stained shirt. Odd where that stain was, just about where her bleeding head would have rested if he'd held her.

"If you'll come home with me," he said, "Juan will have to cook good meals, and I'll gain back some of the weight I've lost. So will you. You've lost a bit yourself."

"I've been working hard," she said.

"Yes. Dennis told me." He stuck both hands in his pockets. "Come on. I dare you."

Dare. The old word from her childhood brought her eyes up. She stared at him, taking in the mocking smile, the challenge in his blue eyes. "All right," she said. "I'll go with you."

He smiled slowly. "Think of it as a crash course in human relations. You can teach me to be human, and I'll teach you how to be a woman"

Her body tingled. "I don't want to become a..."

"Hush." He bent and kissed her mouth tenderly, barely touching her. "I won't seduce you, even if you beg. Okay?"

She could hardly catch her breath. "You could make me beg," she whispered with painful honesty.

"I know. Is that what frightens you?" he asked gently.

She nodded. Her eyes were so close to his that she could see their dark blue outline, the wrinkles beside his eyes.

After a pause, he said, "You aren't the only one who's vulnerable. I'd better let someone know you're awake." He said it as if the weakness irritated him. He pressed the call button and before she could get her mind together enough to question him, he was out the door and the nurse was inside making a condition check.

"How lucky you are," the young nurse said with a smile as she took Sabina's temperature. "The ICU staff bent the rules a little for Mr. Thorndon when they saw what his presence was doing for you. He sat and held your hand and talked to you all the time. You kept having seizures and he sat there like a man possessed, watching us work on you." She shook her head with a sigh. "We were all afraid you wouldn't come out of it. Comas are so unpredictable, and we're helpless to do anything about them in circumstances like these. We just have to sit and wait."

The thermometer came out and Sabina stared at the nurse. "Thorn stayed with me all that time?"

"He sure did," She sighed. "What a heavenly male. Lucky, lucky you." She grinned, finished her tasks, and breezed out again.

Thorn was back less than an hour later, still worn but a little more relaxed. He had an attaché case with him, and after sitting down in a chair beside the bed, he opened it and took out a sheaf of papers.

"Go to sleep," he told her. "I'll sit here and work."

From his pocket, he pulled out a pair of reading glasses, tinted ones that looked more like pilot's sunglasses. She smiled faintly at the way he looked in them as he bent over reams of paper. He was wearing a white turtleneck sweater with a blue blazer and dark blue slacks, highly polished boots and a cream-white Stetson. She looked at him with adoration.

He looked up, smiling warmly at her. "Go to sleep," he repeated gently.

"Aren't you tired?" she said drowsily. "You need some rest, too."

"I can't rest away from you," he said quietly.

If only she wasn't so sleepy. But her head had been throbbing and she'd asked for something to kill the pain. The injection of Demerol was just beginning to work.

"Don't...leave me," she whispered sleepily.

"Never again," came the soft reply, but she was past hearing.

A week from the day she'd entered the hospital, Thorn took her back to Texas. She was weak, and she'd suffered some vertigo and nausea those first days out of intensive care. But now she was on the way to recovery, and it felt wonderful to be outside again, even in the bitter cold.

Christmas was barely a week away. So was the band's new video. She smiled, remembering the brief visits the guys had made to her room, when they could get past Thorn. He was determined that she should rest, and ran interference like a professional. Ricky and Dennis managed a few minutes, long enough to tell her how well the club engagement was going, despite the fact that their stand-in vocalist was male. Anyway, they said, the video was going to be the big thing, and it would be on the music channel within days. She was to look for it. Thorn's ranch was beyond the limits of the cable company, but he had a satellite dish, so they'd be able to get it anyway.

She was surprised to find the ranch fully decorated for Christmas, all brightly lit and an enormous fir tree loaded with decorations, and a kitchen full of baked delights. Under the tree were dozens of presents. Sabina had a downstairs room, so that she wouldn't have to risk climbing stairs.

"Is your mother coming for Christmas?" she asked Thorn once she'd settled in. She was sitting in the living room with him during their first evening at home.

"No," he said quietly, filling a glass with whiskey. "Maybe after the New Year, though, when Al and Jessica get back."

"There are only the two of us for Christmas?" she asked hesitantly.

He turned, watching her in the blue velour robe he'd brought her. "Just the two of us," he agreed quietly.

"But, all those presents-!"

He looked uncomfortable. He sat down beside her, putting his glass to one side while he lit a cigarette. "I invited a few people over on Christmas day."

Her face went white, and his jaw tautened. "No," he said quickly. "Not anybody from that damned crowd!"

She swallowed, and clutched at her robe. She still felt vulnerable. "Sorry."

"You'll learn to trust me," he said putting the cigarette to his mouth. "I don't make promises that I don't keep. I'll never hurt you again."

She forced a smile. "Okay."

"I invited your Mr. Rafferty and a couple of twins and their mother, and that elderly woman who lives on the first floor in your building..." he began.

Her face froze in mid-smile. "You what?"

"They're your friends, aren't they?" he said.

"Yes! But, I never dreamed-"

"I told you I wasn't a snob," he reminded her. "I thought it was about time I proved it to you."

"But, what about your friends?" she asked, concerned.

He took the whiskey glass in his lean hand and sipped at it, laughing mirthlessly. "I don't have any," he said, and sounded so alone that she felt tears sting her eyes.

Chapter Nine

She stared at him hungrily. "You met my friends when you picked up my things at the apartment?" she asked, after a minute.

"That's right," he said, turning. His eyes swept over her thin body in the deep blue velour robe. The robe was one of hers, old and worn, and his face hardened as he saw the worn places. "I looked for nightclothes, but that robe and a couple of cotton gowns were all I could find," he added.

She lowered her eyes, embarrassed. "They're all I have," she confessed. "I had to spend most of my money on stage costumes."

"You mean 'what was left.' After all, you gave away most of what you had to your neighbors," he said.

She looked up and saw a surprising look on his face, which she was helpless to decipher. "You saw how they live," she faltered.

"Yes." He lifted the whiskey glass to his mouth and took a sip. His broad shoulders rose and fell with a heavy breath. "I suppose I've had money myself for so long that I'd forgotten what it was like to be without it." He dropped down beside her. "Not that I ever lived the way your neighbors do. My father always made good money."

She curled her feet up under her and leaned her head back against the sofa, watching him. He was good to look at, she mused. So handsome and big and vibrantly male. She smiled softly. All the bad memories faded as her heart fed on him.

He glanced at her and saw that searching look, and smiled back gently. "Feeling better?"

She nodded. "Will I have to go all the way to New York to have the stitches out?" she asked, voicing a question that had worried her for two days.

"Of course not," he said. "I've had my doctor call yours, and I've made an appointment for you on Friday. I'll drive you in to Beaumont."

"What will they do to me, do you know?" she asked, frowning.