Dictator s Daughter (12 page)

“I love you, Sean. Please find a way to get
me out of here; call your friend,” she laid her head back on the
pillow and closed her eyes.

Sean was confused yet again. Was she talking
to him or did she know someone else named Sean? He continued to fan
her body and lay wet towels on her. Her fever hadn’t lowered, but
it wasn’t growing either.

His thoughts wandered back to the kiss. He’d
never experienced anything like that before. It sent tingles
through his body just thinking about it, but at the same time, he
scolded himself for allowing it to happen at all.

“Sean, you’ve got to get out of here! They’re
coming and are going to kill you! Hurry!” She tried to get up again
and he held her down by her shoulders. She struggled against his
strength and she started sobbing uncontrollably, “Why, why?”

“It’s OK, Eliwese.”

“Sean I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!”

He felt compelled to comfort her. He lay down
on his side, and she rolled into his embrace, with her head resting
just under his chin.

“I should have known better than to involve
him. My father kills all the men in my life, except Riley.” She
said this last statement in a calm voice and it made Sean wonder if
she were herself again.

“Eliwese, tell me how you feel.”

“I’ll be better once I’m free of him,” she
answered in her delirium.

He thought he would try to find out some
information about her, “How are you going to be free of him?”

“I’ll cross first, and then I’ll take him
down!”

Her calculated vengeance shocked Sean, but
then again, he was surprised she answered at all. He pushed for
more answers. “How will you pull that off?”

Her face lit up with excitement. She lifted
her head and her eyes scanned the room as if someone might hear
what she had to say. “My sister will pretend to be me. He won’t
even know I’m gone, because he never sleeps with me anyway. By the
time anyone realizes I’ve vanished I’ll be long gone.” She sounded
proud of herself.

“What about your sister? Will she be
alright?”

“Yes, she’ll be fine. She is the second born;
she holds no importance with my father. He can’t kill her, he can’t
be proud of her and she can’t give him an heir.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Three times,” she pressed her head into the
crook of his arm.

“What do you mean three times?” He was
shocked with her answer.

“This is why I have to get out of here. If he
can’t get what he wants, he kills them. I won’t let him make me
feel responsible for anyone else’s death.”

She snuggled closer to his chest and didn’t
say anything else. He put his arm around her back and lay thinking
about what she said. Of course, there was always the possibility
she was just dreaming and that none of it were true. But what if it
was true? Could a father be so cruel to his own daughter? Maybe she
was talking about her husband, Prince Vasilios Lampros from the
newspaper? He didn’t know what to believe. He held her close to him
and gently massaged the back of her head while she slept.

After a few minutes Sean felt movement under
his arm. He looked down at her and found she was crying softly
again. “Shhh, shhh, it’s going to be alright.”

She said something he could not hear. He
backed away from her so he could hear her.

“Eliwese?”

“I have nothing else to live for, he’s dead,”
she said softly with tears following the path of least
resistance.

“Who’s dead?”

“Sean,” she said in a choked whisper. “He
shot him.”

“How do you know?”

“He died in my arms,” she cried harder.

Sean didn’t know what to say. Part of him
thought it really didn’t matter what he said, because she wouldn’t
remember it anyway. The other part of him held such sympathy for
her that he wanted to try to help her feel better.

“You can avenge his death,” he said with a
bold effort to lift her spirits.

She looked at him with the saddest face he
had ever seen. “I’ll join him in death.”

Sean pulled her close again and said softly,
“No, just rest. We’ll get you better, you’ll see.” He was thinking
he would love the chance to kill her father himself.

The clock face showed just after midnight.
She had fallen asleep and he gently rolled her on her back. He
scanned her forehead with the thermometer, one-hundred three
degrees. The IV bag needed changing and he had a nagging hunger
pain in his gut. When he went into the prep room to retrieve
another bag, he grabbed a box of granola bars and came back to the
room.

His shirt was soaked where she had cuddled up
next to him because of the moisture her ace bandage absorbed from
his ministrations. He took off his shirt and felt the moistness of
his own skin realizing that under the bandage her skin would be
pruning up. He needed to remove it so she could dry off.

In her unconscious state he couldn’t simply
sit her up to unwrap it, so he figured he would cut the bandage
off. He knew once it was cut open her bare chest would be exposed
and the thought made him uneasy. He decided to get a button up
shirt from the dresser to put on her once the bandage was
removed.

Sean left the room for a pair of scissors
with his mind racing and his gut clenched. He wished she would just
wake up and remove the bandage herself, or better yet, he wished
his mother was here to do it for him.

The thought made him imagine his family. His
throat seized at the idea of anything happening to them. He shook
his head to refocus. He had a job to do right now; to care for
Eliwese.

He entered the room and planned his job out
in his head.
Simple,
he thought,
cut off the bandage and
help her arms into the shirt. I’ll have to roll her around a bit to
get the shirt under her, but that should be easy enough. OK, you
can do this.
He bolstered himself up and inhaled a deep breath
forcing it out of his lungs with a heave.

Sean began cutting up the middle of her
chest. With each cut, the bandage jumped away from the scissors.
His heart raced; he wished it would stop so he hurried and cut all
the way to the top. He tried not to look at her nakedness but it
was near impossible; his peripheral vision betrayed him and he
cursed himself for being such an insensitive ass.

He reached his hand up the right sleeve and
took her limp hand to thread it through the sleeve. Then he rolled
her a little to her left side to push the shirt under her back. He
then rolled her to her right side and tried to pull the shirt out
from under her. It proved to be difficult as the shirt bunched
under her.

He rolled her on her back. He couldn’t help
but notice how her breasts gently bounced. He reached across her,
and with both hands, pulled her shoulders toward him to sit her up
slightly. Her head lolled back like a newborn baby and Sean reacted
quickly by reaching all the way around her back and supporting her
head with his hand. This quick maneuver put their chests together,
skin-to-skin and for the briefest of seconds Sean could feel the
soft silky smooth skin of her breasts as they pressed against
him.

His heart raced even faster and his cheeks
heated up as he lowered her back to the bed. Out of sheer
frustration, he pulled the shirt out from under her and off of her
one arm and draped it over her like a sheet.

Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

I’m such an idiot! He thought to himself as
he glanced at her left arm realizing her IV was inserted in that
arm. He wouldn’t have been able to put her arm into the sleeve with
all the tubing and the IV bag. He hadn’t planned far enough ahead
to realize the whole shirt plan wouldn’t have worked to begin
with.

I’m a bigger moron than my brother! He
probably would have foreseen the problem and pointed it out to
me
, he thought. Sean had to admit that sometimes he made things
harder than they should be.

He turned his back to her with his heart
racing and his face hot. Why was he so embarrassed? It’s not like
he hadn’t seen a naked woman before. What made this different? Then
the thought came to his head; Eliwese had gone through so much
trouble to conceal her identity and now he was exposing her and she
couldn’t do anything about it.

However, taking care of her was a good thing
he was trying to do, so maybe it wasn’t so bad.

He got up and walked it off. He poured
himself another cup of coffee and pulled a shirt out of the
dresser. As he was about to shut the drawer, he looked in the
mirror on the wall and saw Eliwese looking at him. He quickly
turned around to face her, still holding the shirt.

“Sean, you’re amazing,” she said in a breathy
soft voice and with a dreamy smile.

He couldn’t tell if she was delirious or not.
“Why?”

“You are the only guy I’ve ever met to try so
hard to keep my dignity intact.”

“What do you mean?” He was still wondering if
she was in her right mind.

“I mean, even though I’m incapacitated, you
did not try to take advantage of me. Many men in your position
would not have been such gentlemen.”

He walked over to her, pulling the shirt on
as he walked, and he sat down on the bed. “Do you know who I
am?”

“Of course, you’re Sean.” Her eyes squinted
with question.

“Tell me something about me.” He tested
her.

“You broke up with your fiancée, finally.”
She smiled at him.

He smiled back and reached out with his hand
and held hers.

Propped up with extra pillows behind her,
Eliwese tried to sip the warm broth Sean brought her. Her fever had
dropped down to one-hundred and two degrees.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she said to
Sean after finishing her broth.

“Oh, um, alright. How about if I carry you in
there and you can ‘take care of business’ and I’ll carry you
back?”

She nodded.

He scooped her up under her knees and under
her shoulder blades. She reached her right arm around his back and
winced with the pain her movement brought, which in turn caused him
to tighten his grip behind her back. He didn’t want to touch her
wound but ended up pressing his fingertips into the side of her
breast.

The shirt across her chest shifted a little
and she wrapped her left arm across to hold the shirt in place.

“Eliwese, you’ll have to unhook the IV bag
and hold it.”

She reached with her other arm and took the
bag off the hook.

Once in the bathroom, he set her down on her
feet, checked her balance and hung the IV bag on the back of the
bathroom door. He stepped outside for a few minutes until she
called his name.

When he re-entered the bathroom, he saw she
had put her right arm into the shirt but needed help with the other
arm and the IV.

Sean reached deep within himself to a place
that did not include arousal. He needed the strength to help her
without emotions and sensations getting in the way.

He stepped forward and took the IV bag and
threaded it effortlessly through the sleeve and then guided her
arm. Sean hung up the bag and began buttoning her shirt. He started
at the top in an effort to quickly cover her up. When he finished,
he looked at her, “How about I help you back to the bed now?”

“You’re the best doctor I’ve ever had,” she
said once situated back in bed.

He shrugged his shoulders and looked away
from her.

“I mean it, Sean,” she said intensely. “I’m
sorry I had to deceive you. I hope I’ll be able to tell you exactly
why sometime in the future.”

“Well, I don’t know why you’re holding back,
I know who you are, and it’s not like we have anything to do right
now.”

“I can’t, Sean.”

“Eliwese, why did you cross?” Sean asked the
question earnestly in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, she would
finally answer him.

She turned her head away from Sean.

He stood to leave because he felt certain
this meant she wasn’t going to talk, like always. “Alright, can I
get you anything?” He changed the subject.

“No. Sean, how long have we been here?”

“I don’t know, ten hours or something like
that.” He was frustrated.

“Would you tell me what happened? I don’t
remember.”

Sean sat down in the armchair beside the bed.
“Well, I made the decision to evacuate and we left the house. We
drove to a campground and I called my father to warn him to leave.
While I spoke to him, I could hear commotion in the background that
could only mean a raid was in progress. Some other man got on the
phone and asked where we were. I hung up and turned off the phone
and we high-tailed it out of there. We didn’t get far before
someone started shooting at us. I forced his car off the road and
brought you here.”

“What made you decide to evacuate?”

“Lyndee informed me her new crosser is the
mother of Riley Stone, and that he told her she would be safe at
our house because you were there. I didn’t want to waste a second
in getting you out of there. Apparently, that’s all the longer it
took for a raid to go down.”

“He moved his own mother out? Why would he do
that?” she wondered out loud.

“Eliwese, why did you cross?” he asked
again.

“What did you do with my padding?” She
avoided his question.

“I had to cut it off of you,” he said in an
exhale. His aggravation escalated.

“That padding cost me a lot of money. It was
especially handmade by a movie props man.” She grieved for her
padding as if it were a family member.

“The padding did its job for a real long
time. I took a shot at you being gay rather than possibly being a
girl. I’d say you got your money’s worth out of it. But Eliwese,
why do you keep avoiding my question?”

“I don’t want to tell you. It’s as simple as
that,” she said with her eyes closed.