Outsider (17 page)

She started to lift her head, and Colby's fever bright eyes were above her.

“If you have plans to ravish me, I'd enjoy it more if you'd wait until the worst of the chills and fever pass,” he said in a husky tone, studying her with dark intensity.

She pursed her lips. “I guess you're wondering what I'm doing here,” she began.

“In the apartment, or in my bed?” he asked with a feeble attempt at humor.

“Well, both, I guess.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “I got chilled,” he recalled. “Do I have malaria again?”

“Yes,” she said. “Hunter and I are taking turns nursing you. I took his place early this morning with your treatment.”

He lifted an eyebrow and looked down their bodies, locked together under the sheet. “Has he been sleeping with me, too?” he mused.

“Stop that,” she muttered.

He smiled slowly. “I never liked mosquitos before,” he murmured, tracing a path down her cheek to her full mouth. “But malaria seems to have at least one unexpected benefit.”

“You were cold,” she began quickly.

He cocked an eyebrow, glancing toward the covers rolled down to the end of the bed.

“Don't look at me,” she protested. “You jerked me down here and refused to let go!”

“Am I complaining?” He bent and kissed her nose. But the aching misery came back with a vengeance when he moved. He groaned, shuddering. “For a minute, I felt better,” he said roughly.

She pulled out of his arms and got up. “Could you eat something?”

“I don't know,” he confessed. “The fever seems to be better, but the aching and nausea is back.” He closed his eyes, shivering.

“Maybe some milk?”

“I can't drink milk,” he replied. “I'm lactose intolerant.”

“So is Bernadette,” she said without thinking.

“Bernadette. My child. My little girl.” He groaned again as the emotional pain came back full force.

She grimaced, not certain what to say.

His eyes opened, bloodshot but penetrating. “Why do you live in the projects? And don't hand me any bull about discrimination.”

“Bernadette has asthma,” she said bluntly. “Until just recently, any upset has involved trips to the emergency room. They have her on a new medicine that seems to prevent attacks. At least, so far. Medical bills have crippled my budget.”

He studied her quietly. “I had asthma as a boy. I grew out of it. Perhaps she will, too.” He searched her eyes. “Upsets. Like the ones she had with me, when I first went to work at Ritter's company?”

She flushed.

He groaned again. “My God, the sins just keep piling up, don't they?”

She sat down on the bed beside him, her eyes quiet and soft. “You've had too many shocks. You have to stop looking back. Bernadette cares for you a great deal. She's looking forward to having a father of her very own. You have to look ahead.”

His chest rose and fell heavily. “Coals of fire, Sarina.”

She smiled gently. “You're not as bad as you make yourself out to be. You didn't know what was going on. I did try to tell you,” she added.

“I should have gone looking for you, just to make sure you were really all right,” he said. “But Africa changed me. Afterward, I drank so much…”

“But not anymore,” she pointed out. “If any man ever had a valid excuse to look for a bottle after last night…”

“I'm tired of crutches,” he interrupted. “I have responsibilities now.”

Her eyebrows arched.

He glowered up at her. “The first order of business is to get you out of that hellhole you live in. Then we go shopping, for both of you.”

She put her fingers across his mouth. “First you get well,” she corrected. “Then we can argue about whether or not you'll take over my life and Bernadette's.”

His eyes twinkled. “Look out,” he mused. “I like arguing with you.”

“You think you know me, dear man,” she teased. “But you don't.”

“Think so?” He swallowed another burst of nausea and shivered again. “Damned disease. I picked it up about the time you were carrying my daughter. There are several different kinds of malaria, but I got landed with the one type they can't cure. I'll always have recurrences if I do stupid things like standing in the cold rain without a coat.”

“You won't do it again,” she promised him.

He liked that assertiveness. He smiled through the misery. “I would have walked all over you seven years ago, Sarina,” he said softly. “Do you realize it now?”

He was strong-willed, and she'd been submissive and worshiping in her youth. She nodded. “Yes. I think I do.”

He frowned. “How did you know I was sick?” he asked suddenly.

“Bernadette woke me out of a sound sleep at three in the morning,” she replied solemnly. “She said that you were very sick and we had to come see about you. She charmed the security guard into letting us through the gate, and then she came like a homing pigeon to your front door. He let us in and I called Hunter. Bernadette's with Jennifer and Nikki for the foreseeable future.”

“I would have let me lie here and die,” he pointed out, “if I were you.”

She touched his tanned, muscular shoulder. “Not with Bernadette crying her eyes out, you wouldn't. She sat here and sang to you while Hunter and I got the doctor.”

“Chanted?”

“Have you forgotten? Her grandfather was a shaman,” she pointed out. “He taught her healing skills. Or do you really think that quinine alone got you through the night?”

He chuckled. “Did you ever know where she got that beautiful singing voice from?” he murmured. “My mother sang like an angel. She used to sit beside me when I was sick and chant healing words. She died when I was six,” he recalled huskily. “My father drank to excess and didn't realize that she had pneumonia. She died while he slept off a three-day bender. I helped my cousins gather her possessions and burn them, after she was buried. My father crawled back into the bottle and I went to live with a cousin. We were enemies my whole life after that.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “He told us all about it. He knew why you never contacted him. He said,” she added huskily, “that he deserved it, for letting her die and deserting you. He also said that maybe what he did for Bernadette would make up for it, a little.”

C
OLBY DIDN
'
T SPEAK
. His eyes closed. He was fighting chills again, and trying not to show how Sarina's explanation hurt him. He'd never made time to make peace with his father. Now, he wished he could change that. But it was far too late.

Sarina let him drift off to sleep, and when Hunter came back later that morning, she went back to her apartment long enough to take a bath and get a change of clothes to carry back with her.

Colby's seeming recovery was a false start. By afternoon, his fever was up again and he was having chills and aches again. Sarina and Hunter kept the vigil between them. He went to work briefly, to make sure the man he'd left in charge at work was doing what he was supposed to. He gave in to Sarina's refusal to leave Colby. She took catnaps at the foot of his bed, and ladled medicine and orange juice into him, bathed him when the fever went up, and worried incessantly. He moaned and talked in his sleep. There was a lot about Africa and some firefight he'd been in. There was more about Bernadette. He raged and cursed as he lived through some sort of interrogation with what sounded like a terrorist. None of it made sense, unless he was remembering his government work.

Sarina talked to Bernadette on the phone, reassuring her that everything was going to be all right. She only wished she could believe it. She'd never seen a major attack of malaria in her life. She knew she'd never forget it.

But on the fourth day, Colby suddenly rallied and the fever went down. He was past the crisis, Hunter said with relief. Now, it was just a matter of rest and food.

Colby became aware of the grunginess of his hair and body and he groaned. He had to have a shower. It reminded him too much of the way he'd been when alcohol had taken its toll on him, when he didn't care if he lived or died, or stank. Now things were different. He had a family that he was responsible for.

He dragged himself to the side of the bed and stood up, wobbling. He hadn't realized how weak he was until his long, powerful legs started shaking.

He made it to the bathroom and turned on the shower, leaning against the tiles to stabilize himself while he took deep breaths and cursed his own weakness.

“What in the world do you think you're doing?” Sarina exclaimed, pausing at the open door with a cup of coffee and a plate of buttered toast in her hands. “I was bringing you coffee and toast!”

“It can wait,” he said huskily. “I have to have a bath. Can you change the bed linen for me?” he added. “Sheets are in the linen closet.”

She went past him and turned off the shower, put the seat on the toilet down, and coaxed him to sit on it. “You stay right there while I do it.” She turned off the shower and went to work.

Colby sat quietly, amused at her assertiveness. When she came back, his dark eyes were gleaming with craftiness, although he didn't let her see it.

“I'll wait outside the door,” she began, “in case you're not as strong as you think you are…”

“I can't stand up in the shower alone, much less prop and bathe with only one hand,” he added, indicating the stump of his left forearm. Actually he could, but he had ulterior motives.

She blinked. “Well,” she hesitated.

“You'll have to climb in with me. If it's not too much trouble,” he added with downcast eyes. “I realize that a man in this condition might be repulsive to you.”

Her heart twisted. “Of course you're not!” she protested at once.

He felt lighter than air. “Well?”

She cleared her throat, hesitating.

He got up from the toilet seat and moved toward her. “Tell me.”

She swallowed hard. “I haven't taken off my clothes in front of anybody except my doctor in my whole life. Not even with you, that time. It was in the dark.”

His face softened magically. “I haven't, either,” he confessed. “Perhaps you don't remember that Apaches are inherently modest. I swam in trunks even as a boy, when I played in the river with other boys during the monsoon season.” He smiled, recalling how rarely the rivers actually contained water, on the reservation.

Her strained expression lightened a little. But she was still hesitant.

He moved closer, his dark eyes quiet as they looked down into hers. “I hate feeling grungy,” he coaxed. “Besides, I've got nice clean sheets. Wouldn't it be a pity to climb back into them like this?”

She managed a smile. “I guess so.” Her heart was beating double-time. She wondered if he knew.

He traced a path down her cheek. “We were married,” he reminded her. “You gave me a child.”

She drew in a fatalistic sigh. “Okay. Try not to notice how red I get.”

He chuckled, reaching inside the shower stall to turn on the flow and check the temperature. He unsnapped the boxers and let them drop, climbing in under the water, with his hand propped on the tiles and his back to her. “Don't take long,” he said. “I'm pretty wobbly.” Which was true.

She took off her blouse and slacks and shoes, hesitating. But he swayed and cursed huskily, and she became more concerned than embarrassed. She dropped her lingerie along with her clothes on the vanity. She pulled two dark blue washcloths from the towel holder and climbed in with him.

He glanced down at her, his dark eyes fascinated with the pink perfection of her body, from her high, taut breasts with their dusky crowns to the indentation of her small waist and the flatness of her stomach. Dark color flooded along his high cheekbones and he hoped that he was too weak to let his upsurge of desire for her show.

It was a forlorn hope. He'd been too long without a woman.

Sarina's gaze dropped shyly from the heat of his eyes and encountered the major physical difference between them. Color flooded her face as she averted her eyes to the muscular wall of his hair-roughened chest.

“You must have seen a centerfold from time to time,” he chided gently.

She swallowed as she handed him the washcloth. “Not like you, I haven't.”

He chuckled, delighted. He laid the washcloth over one broad shoulder while he popped open the lid on the bottled body wash. “It's a more masculine scent than you're used to, I'm afraid,” he indicated. “But we'll manage. Can you soap my cloth for me and do my back?”

“Of…of course.” She took the body wash and the cloth and got to work. His back was broad and heavily scarred. She winced as she drew the soapy washcloth over the taut muscles. “You carry the story of your life on your back,” she said sadly.

He'd forgotten the scars. His body tautened. “Are the scars distasteful?” he asked.

“Don't be silly, Colby,” she said quietly. “You know they're not.”

He relaxed. The lacerations made him self-conscious. “That's something, I guess,” he said heavily.

His insecurity made her feel funny. It was such an odd quirk, in such a very self-confident and masculine man. She smiled as she drew the cloth down to the taut line of his buttocks. Her hand hesitated.

“Chicken,” he teased.

She sighed. “Anatomy was never one of my best subjects.”

“This is a perfect opportunity to pick it up,” he mused.

She laughed. She drew the cloth down the backs of his legs. It was like touching wood, the muscles were so hard. “You must still work out every day,” she commented.

“I have to. Even if I'm in a different line of work, much of what I do is still physical. When I worked for Hutton, I had to go after thieves and even terrorists a time or two. We had a firefight with a group of would-be assassins barely three years ago, right outside Washington, D.C.”

She gnawed her lower lip. “I didn't realize it was that risky.”

“It's only risky if you let down your guard,” he commented. “I drank heavily in the old days. I forgot several doses of quinine when I was in Africa, which is why I got malaria there. It's also how I lost my arm.”

“But you didn't take a drink at all after you found out about Bernadette.”

His chest expanded on a long breath. “I couldn't do that to her,” he said huskily. “I'm not much of a father, Sarina, but I'm never going to take another drink and put her at risk in any way at all. Her, or you.” He turned around, his eyes dark and somber as they met hers with the shower spray all around them. He took the cloth from her. “My turn,” he said huskily, and went to work on her own body.

Her breasts tautened instantly, from the brush of his hand and the abrasion of the cloth against her skin. She flushed as well.

“You aren't used to being touched,” he said softly.

“I'm not,” she agreed in an unsteady tone.

He smiled slowly. “The poor liaison officer. No wonder he has such a lean and hungry look.”

The flush worsened as he worked his way down her flat belly. “I don't…feel like that with Rodrigo.”

The cloth hesitated. He met her eyes. “Ever?”

“Ever.”

“You feel like that with me,” he added quietly.

“You're sure about that, are you?” she mused, trying to make light of it.

His hand moved again, spreading soap and scattering nerves as he watched her face. “Yes. I'm sure.”

He turned her gently to do her back. The feel of him behind her, the spray of the water, the intimacy of what they were doing made her feel swollen all over. She wanted so badly to turn around and press her body hard against his. The desire was almost painful.

He was experienced enough to know it, but he wasn't going to risk rushing her. He handed her the washcloth, so that she could rinse and hang it, and he reached for the bottle of shampoo.

He eased her back into the shower spray and, holding the bottle cap in his teeth, squeezed shampoo directly into her hair. He replaced the bottle cap and began to work the shampoo into her long, wet blond hair with his fingers.

“You manage that very nicely,” she commented.

He chuckled. “You learn how to cut corners with a disability.”

“Of course.”

He guided her back into the spray to rinse her hair. Then he exchanged places with her and drenched his own hair. “Your turn,” he said.

She squeezed shampoo into her hand, replaced the bottle, and then realized that she'd have to stand on tiptoe to get to his hair. He was much taller than she was. She found that it involved an intimacy they hadn't shared since the night they'd created Bernadette.

His reaction was a little disconcerting. The second her breasts touched his chest, as she lifted against him to shampoo his hair, he went taut and groaned audibly.

She froze in position, her hands in his hair, her eyes faintly surprised as they met the glitter of his own.

“I haven't had a woman in a long time,” he ground out.

She still hesitated. “Is this…painful?”

His hand slid to the base of her spine and pulled her hard against him. “This is,” he said huskily as the threat of his body pressed hard into her belly.

Her lips parted. She shivered at the blatant capability that was just faintly threatening.

“You had Bernadette normally, didn't you?” he asked in a strained tone.

She nodded.

His cheekbones flushed again. “Maybe you could take all of me without pain, after that,” he said in a soft, sensuous tone.

Erotic images flooded her mind. She was already vibrating with desire, this close to him. The look on his face, added to the vivid images of the statement, made her color and a faint shudder that he could feel eased through her body.

He backed into the spray of water, rinsing the soap out of his hair. Seconds later, he bent, and his hard mouth moved very gently against her parted lips. He was hesitant, careful with her. He brushed at her upper lip and slid just the tip of his tongue under it, teasing, arousing. One powerful leg inserted itself slowly between hers in a sensual motion that made her want to ease his passage. Her legs slipped apart and she gasped as she felt him move, so that his body was pressed intimately to her own.

He felt her immediate response. His mouth opened and hardened urgently on her soft mouth. She moaned as the kiss built to unmanageable proportions and her body began to shiver with the force of her hunger for him.

He drew back, turning off the shower. He reached for towels and blotted the moisture from her body while she did the same for him. He handed her the hair dryer wordlessly, his eyes making threats and promises with equal blatant meaning.

She could barely breathe. There was a lingering fear of remembered pain, but her body didn't care. She ached to lie in bed with him and let him do anything he liked to her.

And he knew. It was in the taut lines of his body, the glitter of his dark eyes as she finished drying both his wavy dark hair and her own long blond tresses. He took the hair blower from her and unplugged it. She made one hesitant move toward her clothing. He blocked it by pulling her against him.

She couldn't resist him. Curiosity and desire mixed, making her helpless.