Chapter 16

She frowned. 'I don't remember falling,' she acknowledged in a dazed undertone. 'Not at all.'

Luc moved closer, looking less sartorially splendid than was his wont. His black hair was tousled, his tie crumpled, the top two buttons of his silk shirt undone at his brown throat. 'It was my fault,' he said tautly.

'I'm sure it wasn't,' Catherine soothed in some surprise.

'It was.' Dark eyes gleamed down at her almost suspiciously. 'If I hadn't tried to pull you into my arms when you were trying to get away from me, it wouldn't have happened.'

'I was trying to get away from you?' Nothing in her memory-banks could come to terms with that startling concept.

'You tripped over a rug and went down. You struck your head on the side of a table. Madre de Dio, cara…I thought you'd broken your neck!' Luc relived with unfamiliar emotionalism, a tiny muscle pulling tight at the corner of his compressed mouth. 'I thought you were dead…I really thought you were dead.' The repetition was harsh, not quite steady.

'I'm sorry.' A vaguely panicky sensation was beginning to nudge at her nerve-endings. If Luc hadn't been there, it would have swallowed her up completely. Yet his intent stare, his whole demeanour was somehow far from reassuring. Other little oddities, beyond her inability to recall her fall, were springing to mind. 'The nurses…that doctor…they were English. Are we in England?' she demanded shakily.

'Are we—?' He put a strange stress on her choice of pronoun, his strong features shuttered, uncommunicative. 'We're in London. Don't you know that?' he probed very quietly.

'I don't remember coming to London with you!' Catherine admitted in a stricken rush. 'Why don't I remember?'

Luc appraised her for a count of ten seconds before he abandoned his stance at a distance and dropped down gracefully on to the side of the bed. 'You've got concussion and you're feeling confused. That's all,' he murmured calmly. 'Absolutely nothing to worry about.'

'I can't help being worried—it's scary!' she confided.

'You have nothing to be scared of.' Luc had the aspect of someone carefully de-programming a potential hysteric.

Her fingers crept into contact with the hand he had braced on the mattress and feathered across his palm in silent apology. 'How long have we been in London?'

Luc tensed. 'Is that important?' As he caught her invasive fingers between his and carried them to his mouth, it suddenly became a matter of complete irrelevance.

Watching her from beneath a luxuriant fringe of ebony lashes, he ran the tip of his tongue slowly along each individual finger before burying his lips hotly in the centre of her palm. A quiver of weakening pleasure lanced through her and an ache stirred in her pelvis. It was incredibly erotic.

'Is it?' he prompted.

'Is…what?' she mumbled, distanced from all rational thought by the power of sensation.

Disappointingly, he laid her hand back down, but he retained a grip on it, a surprisingly fierce grip. 'What is the last thing you remember?'

With immense effort, she relocated her thinking processes and was rewarded. Remembering the answer to that question was as reassuringly easy as falling off the proverbial log. 'You had the flu,' she announced with satisfaction.

'The flu.' Black brows drew together in a frown and then magically cleared again. 'Si, the flu. That was nineteen eighty—'

She wrinkled her nose. 'I do know what year it is, Luc.'

'Senz'altro. Of course you do. The year improves like a good vintage.' As she looked up at him uncomprehendingly, he bent over her with a faint smile and smoothed a stray strand of wavy hair from her creased forehead.

'It seems so long ago, and, when I think about it, it seems sort of hazy,' she complained.

'Don't think about it,' Luc advised.

'Is it late?' she whispered.

'Almost midnight.'

'You should go back to the hotel…are we in a hotel?' she pressed, anxious again.

'Stop worrying. It'll all come back,' Luc forecast softly. 'Sooner or later. And then we will laugh about this, I promise you.'

His thumb was absently stroking her wrist. She raised her free hand, powered by an extraordinarily strong need just to touch him, and traced the stubborn angle of his hard jawline. His dark skin was blue-shadowed, interestingly rough in texture. He had mesmeric eyes, she reflected dizzily, dark in shadow or dissatisfaction, golden in sunlight or passion. Vaguely she wondered why he wasn't kissing her.

In that department, Luc never required either encouragement or prompting. When he came back from a business trip, he swept through the door, snatched her into his arms and infrequently controlled his desire long enough to reach the bedroom. And when he was with her it sometimes seemed that she couldn't cook or clean or do anything without being intercepted.

*********

Author: Hope you're enjoying it.