HiddenDepths (8 page)

Living in virtual isolation brought a number of perks, but
expert medical attention wasn’t one of them. Evan had learned the basics for
emergencies and he was healthy. But he knew the time would come when he would
regret not having a hospital within traveling distance. If not for the storm,
he might have chanced trying to get Andrea off the island and to the nearest
hospital, but on a night like this that was out of the question. He hoped like
hell she didn’t have any internal injuries.

Turning the bedside lamp up brighter, he used the towel to
rub the sticky blood from her skin to clean the wound so he could get a better
look. She had been lying quietly, but at his touch she roused herself with a
moan. And not the good kind.

“No,” she muttered sharply, suddenly opening her eyes, the
blue of them startling him.

“This is going to need stitches.” He held the bottle of
whiskey up to her lips. “Drink. It’s the best I can do.”

Her head fell back and her eyes closed again. He half hoped
she had fainted since he had nothing but the hard liquor to dull the pain for
her and she hadn’t drunk any.

Quickly taking what he needed out of the first-aid kit, he
doused the wound with disinfectant, earning not a single sound from her—she
had
fainted, thank God—and got down to it. The wound was just a slash of red
against the white of her skin and he stitched quickly as she lay without
moving.

After he finished, he removed the rest of her clothes, her
limp body malleable, and bundled her in blankets, then switched the light off,
listening for a minute to the sound of her troubled breathing in the dark.

He’d take a hot shower now and try to shake off this heavy
sense of disorientation and incredulity and…shit…unadulterated joy at having
Andrea Prentiss here.

But when she came to, he wanted answers.

* * * * *

She came awake slowly to the feeling of pain. It was a
familiar sensation, but a distant one, like a long-ago dream or a faint memory.
She did not welcome it back. But she could stand it if she had to. She always
could. If she had to.

“Good. You’re awake.”

He was familiar too. Hauntingly, tantalizingly familiar. And
he
was welcome. But she wasn’t dreaming him this time. It really was
him. Evan Reynolds. He was standing by the bed, with that same relaxed stance
she remembered, hands in the pockets of his khaki pants, intense green eyes
focused in on her as if there was no one else in the room. Of course this time
there was no one else in the room.

She struggled to sit up, breathing through the pain, one
hand going automatically to the bandage she had felt before she even knew it
was there.

“Here, drink this.”

He handed her a glass of amber-colored liquid and she took
it from him, sipping slowly. A lifelong teetotaler, she felt the whiskey burn
her throat, but she would take any sedative she could get at this point.

Oh God. She had come here. She had actually come here. Care
of a stolen boat and the expert seamanship she had garnered from her childhood
and had needed that night to steer through near-hurricane conditions. She had
come
here
. Like some kind of demented salmon, she had traveled over the
waters back to where she instinctively longed to be. Back to him.

She glanced up at Evan Reynolds as he watched her.

She was certifiably wacko. Wacko
and
embarrassed.

But the survivalist in her knew deep down it was a good
plan. They wouldn’t find her here. She could recuperate.

If he didn’t throw her out, that is.

She placed the empty glass down on the nightstand. “Thank
you,” she croaked, trying to stay sitting upright until he leaned over her and
gently pressed her bare shoulders down. When he pulled the covers up over her,
she realized she was naked.

Not that it was anything he hadn’t seen before.

“It’s cleared up this morning. We can cross back to the
mainland. I’d like to get you checked out in a hospital.”

“No. No hospital.” Her voice didn’t even sound as if it was
hers.

“Look, I stitched up your wound, but I’m no doctor. I have
no way of knowing whether you might have internal injuries or something might
be broken.”

Two conditions with which she unfortunately had plenty of
experience and she knew she didn’t have either right now. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not a doctor either.” He paused. “Or are you?” he
added sardonically.

She said nothing.

“Is Andrea Prentiss really even your name?”

She closed her eyes, feeling the dull magic of the whiskey.
She felt so warm and safe, with only the manageable pain of the knife wound,
stitched up and bandaged. Life was good right now and that was all she had ever
really asked for.

She drifted off to sleep again, at the last hearing his soft
voice. “We
will
talk, Andrea.”

The second time she awoke a hand was at her shoulder nudging
her, and the pain was sharper. Evan Reynolds was seated on the bed beside her,
holding out some tablets and a glass of water. “You were moaning in your sleep
and going for your bandage. I was worried you’d hurt yourself. Here take
these.”

She did, automatically, as he added, “They’re codeine. I
found them in a knapsack I’d forgotten about. They should help.”

Instead of the khaki pants, he was in gray sweats this time
and a Yale T-shirt. The room was dark too, just the illumination from the
moonlight through the windows.

She drank the whole glass of water.

“Are you hungry? I can make some soup.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m fine.”

“When was the last time you’ve eaten?”

She felt her head clear a bit despite the codeine, which
probably wouldn’t have kicked in yet anyway. Now would come the questions. And
she had never wanted those. She really just wanted to go back to sleep.

As if he heard her thoughts, he warned, “You’re not going
back to sleep this time. You’ve been out for almost a full day.”

That caused her to sit up a little. “I have?” The croak she
remembered in her voice from the last time she had tried to talk was gone.

“Yes, and I have to change your bandage. I still worry about
internal damage.”

“Don’t. I know what that feels like. I don’t have it.”

He frowned at her, but let it go. The implements to change
her bandage were ready on the night table and he pulled the bed covers down to
her hips and pulled up the shirt she just noticed she was wearing so it bared
her wound. As he bent over her, she registered a number of sensations
simultaneously. The soft cotton of the shirt, which must have been his, the
fact that her hair was tied back in some version of a long braid so it was not
all wild around her as she last remembered it, and the warmth of his breath on
her abdomen as he carefully peeled back the bandage, washed the wound with a
warm white washcloth, reapplying some salve, and then applied a clean bandage.
All these things overwhelmed her at once. She felt…taken care of.

It made her want to burst out in tears. But hell, she’d put
him through enough.

As he got up to discard the used bandage, she pulled her
shirt down and her covers up. But before she could snuggle up to drift off
again, he was back beside her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Really, Andrea. You have to stay awake. You need to eat
something. Or at the very least don’t you need to use the bathroom?”

The observation embarrassed her and she mumbled, “Of
course,” starting to will her languid limbs into motion again, trying to get
out of bed. God, she was so very tired.

His arm came around her waist. “Here, let me help you.”

He walked—well, half carried her—to the adjoining bathroom,
but she managed to do her business while he waited outside. When she was done,
he led her to an armchair by the windows and urged her gently down.

“Sit here for a second while I change the sheets. Does it
still hurt much?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m just tired.” Her head fell back
against the cushion of the chair, but she forced it up again. “I’ll get out of
your hair soon. I promise.”

He was ripping the sheets off the bed, throwing them into a
corner, and efficiently putting on another set. “And how would you do that?” he
muttered. When he was done, he turned to look squarely at her. “This island
isn’t that big. I went around it at least twice while you were out trying to
see if there was any trace of a boat. But I didn’t find one.”

She said nothing.

“How the hell did you get here, Andrea?”

She shook her head.

“More to the point, where have you been? Where did you get
that knife wound?”

Talking was only slightly less palatable to her right now
than moving was, but she forced herself to do a little. “You have a boat. You
can take me back now.”

Explaining had never been on the table.

“And how should I do that? Bundle you up like a hurt kitten
and deposit you back on the mainland? Hope you can catch a ride or what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s easier said than done. Especially when I’ve just
spent a day nursing you back to health. I don’t go for having my work undone.”

“A hurt kitten.
Work.
You’re full of compliments for
me.”

“I’m not in a complimenting mood, Andrea.” He stopped
abruptly. “Is it even Andrea?”

Well, that was no surprise. Once she left Michael Reynolds’
employ, she knew they would quickly discover her résumé, her whole background,
had been fabricated. The only reason they hadn’t before that was that Michael’s
previous assistant had been so harried and eager to get on to her next position
away from such a demanding boss that she had barely glanced into her successor’s
credentials. Then
Andrea
herself was supremely in charge of such matters
once she had assumed the role as Michael Reynolds’ executive assistant.

Mr.
Reynolds. An ogre according to most of his prior
assistants, he had been the perfect boss for Andrea Prentiss. So aloof he
insisted on the formality of not even using first names between them, he had no
more interest in her or looking into her background than he did in most people
if they were competent and appropriate to their purpose. And although most men
would see a young woman’s purpose as sexual—she had no illusions about that—Mr.
Reynolds had more than he needed on that score and he had never wanted sex from
an executive assistant. Too messy for him and consequently perfect for her. He
wanted intelligence, capability and above all else, unflappability. Emotionless
unflappability. And for that, she was ideal. Speaking so many languages didn’t
hurt either.

She didn’t regret her years with Michael Reynolds.
Underneath that hard exterior, he was a good man and she had been happy for him
when he fell in love with Vanny Donald. She was only sorry she couldn’t stay to
arrange the wedding—assuming he had ever gotten around to asking Vanny—but by
then it had proven too risky to stay, for a number of reasons. One of which was
standing in front of her now, grilling her.

“Andrea will do,” she said.

“So what’s the deal, then,
Andrea
? Why the big
charade, with Michael I’m talking about. Eight years and you’re not even who
you said you were and then you disappear without a word?”

“Thank you for the recap. I’d quite forgotten.” She was
trying for her frostiest Stepford secretary voice, but it was rusty and further
undercut by the fact that he scooped her up as if she really did weigh no more
than a kitten and carried her to the newly made bed, depositing her in the
middle, sitting up. He then fluffed the pillows behind her. She wanted to be
mad, but it felt so fresh and warm and comfy in his bed. All those years of
living as Andrea Prentiss had softened her too much and the last six months had
not whipped that need for softness out of her. Sadly. From the way he was
glaring at her, she probably wasn’t in for too much more of it. Once she was
fully healed—forget about even taking her back in his boat—he’d probably rather
toss her into the ocean and make her swim back.

She had a horrible thought. Worse than being tossed into the
ocean. “You didn’t tell Michael I was here, did you?”

“
Michael
, is it now? Not into the character of prim
and prissy executive assistant anymore?”

“Did you?”

He watched her carefully, then sat on the edge of the bed.
“What if I did? Why does that scare you so much?”

Panicked, she tried to get out of bed and with no more than
one hand, he prevented her. “Settle down. My communications systems aren’t
exactly state of the art. They were down for the storm and calling big brother
wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind when they got restored.”

“So no one knows I’m here.”

He paused.

“I have to leave if they do.”

“No. No one knows you’re here. Hell, I’m not even sure
you’re really here. I’d watch you sleeping and think that maybe I was just
dreaming this whole bizarre episode.” He swiped his slight five-o’clock shadow.
“The only reason I know it’s not is if I dreamed you showing up here, it sure
as well wouldn’t have been with a knife wound and half unconscious.”

The way he said it and the way his eyes quickly swept her
face and then skittered away again made her think that he meant he would have
dreamed her showing up for sex. That was all he wanted from her originally
anyway, wasn’t it? What had possessed her to show up here as if he would care
that she was hurt and in trouble?

The thought made her angry even though she had no right to
be, especially after the way he had taken her in. “I’m sorry I wasn’t up to one
of our little rendezvous. Is that why you patched me up? Hoping to get some
recompense in our usual fashion of exchange?”

“Fuck you!”

She swallowed, ashamed of herself. God, she was so out to
sea on this one. She should have never gotten involved with Evan Reynolds and
she sure as hell should have never come here.