Once More With Feeling (9 page)

She looked younger.

Had she really needed to lose weight so
badly that even a near-fatal car crash had improved her
appearance?

She needed proof she was imagining all the
changes, but she didn't want to risk another look. She settled for
raising her hands. Seconds passed as she lifted them to eye level.
Her nails were short and blunt, probably to keep her from
scratching herself or one of her caretakers. But her fingers were
long and shapely, like her legs. She stared at them and tried to
analyze in what ways they seemed different. Had her fingers always
been this long? Her hands this narrow?

There was something else. Something missing.
She stared harder, even though her hands were trembling by now. Her
skin seemed darker, more an olive tint than rose. Maybe her heart
wasn't pumping properly or her liver or kidneys had sustained
damage.

There was something missing.

She moved her hands closer to her face and
squinted at them. She stared at the hand closest to the door, and
then she remembered. Her wedding ring and the solitaire diamond
that Owen had given her on their tenth wedding anniversary were
gone.

She dropped her hand to the bed and closed
her eyes again. Of course the rings were gone. She was in a
hospital where anything could disappear. On admittance they had
probably taken all her jewelry and locked it in a safe. Owen
probably had everything in his possession.

There was something missing.

She opened her eyes again and raised her
hand one last time. She stared at her ring finger, and then she
realized what was wrong. There was no white space where her wedding
ring had been. She had worn the wide gold band for twenty-five
years without once removing it, but there was no tan line above it.
The space where her rings should have been was exactly the same
color as the rest of her.

This was not her hand.

She almost laughed at her own absurd
conclusion. Whose hand could it be? Had they grafted a new one
after the accident? Was she some sort of female monster for a
modern Dr. Frankenstein to assemble? If so, he had stolen legs from
a Rockette and hands from a model, and she should be nothing but
grateful. Maybe Owen would be so intrigued he would forget Anna and
remember to come home every night.

The hand in question stole its way to her
abdomen. She was as flat and taut as she had been before pregnancy.
She moved it slowly higher to her breasts. They were firm, young
somehow, and the nipples seemed larger than she'd remembered. She
examined her breasts every month like clockwork. She knew how they
felt. They didn't feel like this.

Her hand stole higher, first to her
shoulder, then to the side of her neck. She expected to feel her
hair, but there was nothing there. She wondered if someone had cut
it off or worse, shaved her head. She was too old for that look and
too young to have lost all her vanity.

Just over her ear she felt the soft brush of
hair against her fingertips. They had cut it, then. She wondered
who had done it? The ends curved over her fingers, and a deeper
foray indicated it was probably cut into layers. It felt
surprisingly thick and almost coarse in texture. Not like her hair
at all. She had always been afraid to try a short cut because her
hair was wispy and fine.

She moaned. The news was good, but she was
increasingly panicked. She had survived in one piece, and she was
able to think and even to move again. But nothing felt as it
should. No matter how many times she tried to tell herself that
this isolation from her own body was to be expected, she couldn't
make herself believe it. She had not discovered one familiar thing
about herself, except the fact that she was undeniably female.

She needed proof. Just one bit of proof was
all it would take. Then she could go back to sleep and forget all
this.

A birthmark. She was surprised the solution
was so simple. She had a birthmark on the inside of one arm. It
wasn't particularly large, and it had faded with the years, but as
a child she had been so self-conscious about it that she had
refused to wear short sleeves. She was wearing short sleeves now,
and it would be a small matter to raise her arm and
investigate.

She rested first and gathered her strength.
She remembered the first time Owen had discovered the birthmark,
and the romantic fuss he had made over it. She had never known that
a man's lips in that very spot could reduce a woman to putty. But
in the early years of their marriage, Owen had reduced her to putty
frequently.

She lifted her arm at last. The sleeve of
her gown clung and she swatted at it with the opposite hand until
it fell back toward her shoulder. She stared at her arm, her thin,
firm arm, unmarred by any blemish.

"No!"

She turned to her other side, praying she
had made a mistake. She had chosen the wrong arm. That was all.
This sleeve fell away without fuss and she stared at another
expanse of unblemished flesh.

"No!"

The door opened with a hiss. "Hey, what's
going on here?"

Elisabeth recognized Perry's voice, but she
was too distraught to respond. She moaned and wrapped her arms over
her chest. "No . . ."

Perry came into view. "Are you in pain? Do
you need a shot? It's almost time."

"No . . ."

"You poor baby doll. What can Perry do for
you? Do you want me to get the doctor?"

"Please . . ." Elisabeth was sobbing, great
gulping sobs that seemed to echo through her head.

"Now, I'll be right back. He's still on the
floor. Don't you go anywhere, candy cane. You stay right
there."

The door hissed again.

Elisabeth tried to sit up. She had to have
another look, a closer look, but she was too weak. She couldn't
raise herself this time. She flailed from side to side
helplessly.

She heard footsteps in the hallway, then the
door opened wider. "Calm down. You've got to calm down. This is
going to set you back weeks."

Elisabeth recognized Dr. Roney's voice, but
she couldn't seem to obey his commands. She was panic-stricken.

She felt hands at her shoulders, holding her
in place. "Please, you've got to stop this. I don't want to put you
in restraints."

She turned her head toward the sound of his
voice. His face loomed above her. "Please. . ."

"Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I'm not . . . myself."

He smiled his sanctimonious, fatherly smile.
"Of course you aren't. You're not going to feel like yourself or
even look like yourself for a while. But you will eventually. I
promise you will." He continued to hold her shoulders, but he
turned his head away and said something to Perry. Then he turned
back to Elisabeth. "I'm going to have Perry give you something to
help you feel calmer. And when you wake up the next time, you'll be
that much closer to recovery."

"I'm not . . . me!"

"But you will be. I promise. You're going to
be as good as new, Miss Dugan. And you're going to be right back on
television before you know it." He winked conspiratorially. "And
that's the whole truth."

The man who came into view the next time
Elisabeth opened her eyes was dark-haired and dark-eyed. She stared
at his cynical pirate's smile and commanded herself not to
panic.

"You look like hell," he said.

She moistened her lips, but no sound issued
from her throat.

"Don't talk." He reached for her hand, but
not, she suspected, to take her pulse. He linked fingers and lifted
her hand to his lips to kiss her fingertips, lingering over each
and every one.

When he had baptized them all he held her
palm against his lips. "You know you scared us to death. Nobody can
talk about anything else."

"Who . . ." The voice that emerged was husky
and low. Not her voice at all.

His dark eyes narrowed. "Don't you know
me?"

She had a terrible feeling that she did. The
feel of his lips was far too familiar, and so was the feel of his
hand holding hers. His face was familiar, too. Only the last time
she'd seen it, the only times she'd ever seen his face, it had been
framed in a television screen in her bedroom.

"Charles . . ."

"Casey to you, my love. You've never called
me Charles in your life."

"Casey . . ."

"How are you feeling? Are you in much
pain?"

She had to be dreaming. There were rational
explanations for everything, even the most bizarre anomalies. She
believed in science, in painstaking exploration and conclusions
based on logic. She was not lying in a hospital bed staring up at
Charles Casey, the sexiest television reporter on the airwaves. She
was dreaming of him.

When she didn't speak he went on. "They say
you're making a good recovery. It can't be soon enough to suit
me."

"Who . . . do you think. . . I am?"

This time he kissed her knuckles, then he
rubbed them against his sandpapery cheek. "I know who you are. "
His voice dropped a key. "Better than almost anyone."

"What. . . do you know?"

Eyes glittering, he lifted one raven-wing
eyebrow. "Do you want all the details?"

This was not real, and this raw hunk of
sensuality was not standing beside her bed. But now that she was
certain of that, she thought she might as well enjoy the fantasy.
Owen--who was probably somewhere with Anna living his own personal
fantasies--could be damned. "Every . . . bit."

His voice deepened to a husky rasp. "I know
that you have a mole right between your breasts, a sweet little
mole that's just visible where your bra dips. . . on those rare
occasions that you wear a bra. "

She lifted her unclaimed hand to her chest,
which was covered by a plain blue hospital gown. "That's hardly. .
. everything."

His eyes smoldered. "I know exactly where to
kiss you, starting with that sweet, sexy mole and working my way in
lazy, lazy circles to the peak of each breast. And I know the way
you pretend it doesn't do much for you, while inside you're
melting."

"You're an egotist . . . off camera,
too."

He laughed, a rich, deep laugh that made her
think of bittersweet chocolate and rainy Paris midnights--and she
was sure he depended on it. "Ah, you understand me too well,
Gyps."

"Gyps?"

"Gypsy, then. But we've never been formal
with each other, have we?"

"Not you, too." She closed her eyes. Of
course this was why Charles Casey had entered her dreamworld. He
worked on
The Whole Truth
with Gypsy Dugan. She had been on
the way to see Gypsy Dugan at Stony Brook. And she had crashed her
Mercedes into Gypsy's limo.

Or she thought she had. Quite possibly that
was all part of the same dream. For all she knew, she'd played
double dare with a city bus or an eighteen-wheeler. Her memory of
Gypsy Dugan driving the limo could be as ridiculous as the rest of
this.

"Not me, what?" Casey's voice was close to
her ear.

She opened her eyes, fully expecting him to
have turned into someone else. But the same devilishly handsome man
was smiling down at her. "Who am I?" She rotated her head a little
to see if he metamorphosed into a three headed goat or Sarah
Palin's mother.

"Have you really forgotten?"

"Enlighten . . . me."

"Your real name isn't Gypsy, but I'm not
supposed to know that. You're little Mary Agnes Dugan from
Cleveland, and you started calling yourself Gypsy when you ran away
to New York."

"Mary Agnes . . ." She couldn't picture the
woman that the world knew as Gypsy Dugan with such ordinary
names.

"Mary's not too surprising. Your mother
spends her life on her knees."

"My mother's . . . alive?"

"Your mother's right here in this hospital,
or she was a little while ago. But we've made the staff keep her
away from you. She's a woman guaranteed to send anyone back into a
coma."

She congratulated herself on having such a
rich dream life. Not only did she have a gorgeous man at her
bedside, she had an interesting dysfunctional family, besides. She
supposed if her real-life family was too busy to sit by her
bedside, this was the next best thing.

Casey rubbed her knuckles against his cheek
again. Something, some uninjured edge of her libido, responded with
a frisson of warmth. "I can't stay much longer," he said. "They
only gave me five minutes. Tell me, are you putting me on, or are
you really confused about who you are?"

Elisabeth wasn't confused at all. She knew
exactly who she was. And when she woke up for real, she knew she
would look down at the same soft, middle-aged body and hear the
same mellow, cultured tones echoing from her lips. In the meantime
she really ought to be enjoying this for all it was worth. Up
close, Charles Casey was a fine sight indeed.

"Just a bit . . . confused." She tried a
smile, and it seemed to work. He drew his brows together, and his
gaze went to her lips. "Kiss me, Casey."

"With pleasure." He leaned closer. He
smelled deliciously familiar, although she couldn't place his
cologne. The spicy scent made her heart beat faster, as if her body
had been preprogrammed to respond to him, and his scent was the
cue. His lips were warm against hers and wonderfully firm. The kiss
was gentle enough, but it promised myriad pleasures that wouldn't
be gentle at all. He lingered, his lips still close to hers. "You
can be a real witch, Gyps, and there've been times when I wished
you were out of my life for good. But not like this. I'm glad
you're going to be all right."

"Am . . . I?"

"Yeah. You're going to be all right, and
you're going to come back on the show and make everyone's life hell
again. We're counting on it."

"Casey . . ."

"What?"

"The accident . . . Was anyone else . .
.?