Passion and Scandal (16 page)

"Just a hat. Not cool, like mine." He reached up behind him to touch the bill of the baseball cap he wore. "One of them fancy lady hats that sticks out all around."

"You mean with a brim?" Steve made a motion with his hand, sketching a hat brim in the air around his head.

"Yeah," the kid said. "With one of them brims. Pulled kinda low over her face."

"Did you see what color it was?"

He shrugged. "Dark," he said. "Maybe black or brown."

Steve nodded and dug a hand into his pocket. "Thanks." He handed the kid a ten-dollar bill. "You've been a big help."

"Hey, thanks yourself, man," the kid said, and dragged up the hem of his T-shirt to stuff the bill into the pocket of his baggy shorts.

Steve turned back to Willow. "Think you can make it across under your own power, sweetheart?" he said, indicating the street with a tilt of his head. "Or would you like me to carry you?"

Willow smiled and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. "I'll walk," she said dryly, and then leaned her head against his shoulder for support. "You lead the way."

Chapter 9

Willow had noticed the blood soaking through the lower right leg of Steve's jeans by the time they made it up the narrow staircase and into his office. She tried to insist that he sit on the sofa and wait while she went down the hall to the washroom and brought back a wet cloth but he wouldn't hear of it. They ended up going down to the washroom together. It was one of those old-fashioned ones with a pedestal sink, a dispenser of continuous-loop cloth toweling, and ugly green tile running halfway up the walls. Using one of the clean towels he kept in the lowest drawer of his filing cabinet as a washcloth, they took turns cleaning each other's wounds.

He dabbed at the shallow abrasions on her elbows first, gently cleaning out the clinging bits of dirt while she gritted her teeth and tried not to whimper.

"It'll be all right, sweetheart," he crooned, keeping up a steady stream of soothing words while he worked over her, as if she were a child who needed to be reassured. "I'm almost finished. Just a little bit more now," he murmured, stopping every minute or so to make sure it wasn't too much for her to bear.

And then it was her turn to minister to him.

"I think you ought to have stitches in this," Willow said, on her knees behind him as she dabbed at the wound on his leg through the jagged tear in his jeans.

"Is it still bleeding?"

"No." She dabbed at it again, gently, being careful not to disturb the crust that was already forming. "But it looks awful. It'll heal all jagged if you don't get it stitched up."

"As long as it's not bleeding, it's fine," he said, twisting around to look down at it. "I wish you'd get the hell up from there." He frowned at her, leaning over to hook a hand under her arm and pull her up. "You'll ruin your dress on that floor. It's probably not as clean as it should be."

She had to smile at that. "My dress is already ruined," she said wryly. "In a contest between silk and asphalt, silk'll lose every time. Guaranteed."

He glanced down, noticing for the first time that her pretty print dress was ripped down one side. Without asking permission, he pushed the fabric out of the way to examine her leg for damage. Her panty hose were shredded across her outer thigh, as if they'd been pulled over a grater. The skin beneath looked red and raw. Before she knew what was happening, he had both hands up under her dress.

"What are you doing?" she squealed in alarm, grabbing at his hands through the slippery silk.

"Getting rid of these panty hose. I need to see how bad your leg is."

"All right," she said, knowing she wasn't going to dissuade him once he'd decided on a course of action. "But I'll do it."

The way he was going about it, she'd end up losing her underpants as well as her panty hose. And if that happened, she suspected their first time would be in a grubby little public washroom up against a tiled wall. While that had a certain rough appeal, she didn't think she was up to it at the moment—and never mind that it wasn't the setting she'd pictured when she thought about making love with Steve for the first time.

"I have to take my shoes off first," she said, lifting her foot to rest it on the edge of the toilet. She nearly lost her balance when she leaned over to unbuckle the T-strap.

Steve reached out to steady her, righting her before she had a chance to do more than totter. "What's the matter?" he demanded, fear for her making his voice harsh. "Do you feel faint?"

"I just got a little dizzy when I bent over like that. I'm all right now."

"It's not all right, damn it. Here—" he took her hands and put them on the edge of the sink "—hold on to this while I get your shoes off." He sank down on one knee, lifting her left foot, and then her right, up on his other knee to unbuckle her shoes and slip them off. "Okay," he said, looking up at her from his position at her feet. "Let's peel those panty hose down."

Willow thought fleetingly of her vow to have him on his knees, but this wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind. "Turn around," she ordered.

"Oh, for cryin out loud," he burst out. "It's not like I haven't seen a woman take off her panty hose before."

"You haven't seen this woman take off her panty hose," she said stubbornly, a touch of asperity in her voice. "And if you don't cooperate now, you may
never
see me take them off," she threatened, not realizing the promise implicit in her words. She made a little circling motion with her index finger. "Turn around."

With a reluctant grin, Steve got to his feet and turned around.

Willow flicked up the sides of her skirt, slipped her fingers under the waistband of her ruined panty hose, and pushed them down to her thighs. Her breath hissed out through her teeth as nylon scrapped over the tender skin of her left thigh. "Not yet," she said when Steve started to turn. "I'll tell you when."

She eased the shredded nylon down past the scraped area and then leaned against the sink, balancing herself with one hand at a time as she lifted each knee in turn to push the hose off over her feet without bending her head. "Okay," she said, as she dropped them in the trash can.

There was no way she could stop him from tending to the wound himself, and she didn't even try. Pulling the edge of her ripped skirt up and back with one hand, she held it out of the way while he dabbed at the affected area with the wet towel.

"It's just a friction burn," he assured her, pressing the cool, damp fabric against her thigh with the flat of his hand to soothe it. "Nowhere near as bad as the scrapes on your elbows. It'll be a little tender for a day or two and you'll probably have a bruise but that's all."

"Good," she murmured, letting the skirt fall back into place as she moved away from him. "I guess we're finished in here, then, aren't we?" She bent over to pick up her shoes as she spoke, forgetting about the dizziness that seemed to strike whenever she lowered her head.

The next thing she knew she was lying on the sofa in Steve's office with his hands gently moving through her hair, her eyes and forehead covered by a wet cloth that was dribbling rivulets of cold water into her ears and down her neck. She lifted her hand to push it away.

"Lie still," Steve ordered, holding her down by putting one hand in the middle of her chest when she tried to sit up.

"You're drowning me," she complained, struggling against his hold. "Let me up."

"All right. Take it easy." He took the wet towel from her head and dropped it on the floor. "Just lie still for another minute," he said, as he continued to move his hands over her head. "Tender?" he asked, when she flinched.

"A little."

"There's no bump but I think we should take you to the hospital to have a doctor look you over, just in case."

"No hospital," Willow insisted. "I'll be fine. Really. I've had much worse falls while riding," she reassured him. "Let me sit up."

He slipped his arm under her neck, carefully cradling her head against his shoulder. "Slowly," he murmured as he lifted her upright. "Okay?" he asked, his gaze on her face, watching for the slightest sign that she might be going to faint again.

"Okay," she agreed, with a tiny, careful nod, testing to see how her head felt.

"Don't you
ever
do that to me again," he ordered fiercely.

Her eyes widened at the vehemence in his tone. "I didn't exactly do it on purpose," she pointed out.

"Well, just don't do it again. You nearly scared the life out of me."

"Sorry," she murmured. "I'll try not to keel over in front of you again."

"See that you don't," he said, completely missing the wry edge to her tone as he stood and headed for his office door. "I'm going to go get your shoes. Don't move an inch until I get back."

Willow did as he ordered only because—she told herself—it was the prudent thing to do. While he was gone, she took the opportunity to tilt her head, carefully, from side to side and back and forth. There was a little light-headedness but as long as she didn't move too fast the dizziness didn't return. She'd probably have a whopper of a headache later but she'd live.

She was just about to stand up and test herself a little further, when Steve came back into the room with her shoes. Wisely, she stayed where she was, docilely allowing him to, once again, kneel at her feet while he buckled the scuffed T-straps on for her.

"Do you think you can stand up?" he asked when he finished.

"I think I can manage," she said dryly.

He helped her to her feet as if she were an invalid, holding on to her until it became apparent that she could, indeed, stand up under her own power. Leaving her alone by the sofa for a moment, he gathered up her jacket and purse, and then came back. "Let's get you to a hospital," he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to lead her toward the door.

Willow stopped dead in her tracks. "No hospital. If I go to a hospital, they'll want to keep me overnight for observation. I'm not doing that."

"Damn it, Willow, you
fainted."

"I didn't faint," she said, indignantly. "I got a little dizzy and
you
overreacted."

"You could have a concussion."

"I don't have a concussion," she assured him. "Trust me. I've had concussions before and I know what they feel like." She sighed with exasperation. It was nice to be coddled and fussed over. Very nice. But enough was enough; she'd told him before that she wasn't some fragile flower. "Look, Steve, I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I'm fine. All I need is a hot shower, a little room service and a good night's sleep."

He considered that for a moment. "All right, fine," he agreed, and started her toward the door again. "I'll take you to my place. You can get everything you need there."

"Your place?"
She felt a frisson of... something... slither down her spine, despite the fact that she was in no condition to deal with it at the moment. "Why your place? What's wrong with my hotel room?"

"You'd be alone in your hotel room. What if you fainted in the shower?" he challenged her. "What if you're wrong and you do have a concussion?"
What if the person who tried to run you down decides to try something else?
"You need someone around to check on you every couple of hours throughout the night. It's either me or the doctors over at the UCLA Med Center," he said, a look of bulldog stubbornness on his handsome face. "Take your pick."

Willow made a split-second executive decision. "Okay, we'll go to your place."

* * *

Steve's place turned out to be a far cry from what Willow expected. Instead of some dinky efficiency apartment in one of the apartment buildings near his office, he drove her to an isolated house in the Santa Monica foothills, just off Laurel Canyon Boulevard. It wasn't much to look at from the outside: simple, rugged, unprepossessing, with thick adobe walls and a low, red-tiled roof. The landscaping had been left mostly to Mother Nature, sweet-smelling wild grasses, chaparral, and native scrub had been deliberately left to mix with the cultivated greenery around the house, the boundaries of the garden areas marked by meandering borders of large rocks.

It reminded Willow a little of where she had grown up. Not the vegetation, exactly—there was more pine and evergreen on Blackberry Meadows' isolated mountain acreage—but the feeling. Rural and a little bit wild. Her town house in Portland was in the heart of the city, convenient to everything, and she liked it well enough. But, sometimes, she missed the peaceful solitude of a setting like this.

As she stepped out of the car, Willow heard a coyote howl, off in the distance. She glanced toward the sound, and then up at Steve. "But you're so close to the city," she said, amazed.

"I know. Isn't it great?" He grinned, showing his dimple. "I get deer out here, too. And raccoons and owls. And there's a pair of red-tailed hawks that hunt for their breakfast from that stand of trees every morning." He pointed to a small copse of eucalyptus, their silvery green leaves rustling in a light evening breeze. "Come on inside," he said, guiding her up the path to the front door, "and let's get you settled in."