OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (23 page)

Certain Erica was in a deep sleep, Keeley lifted her injured hand and tucked it under the quilt. She stood on her unreliable legs and briefly leaned against the bed for support.

She had to get to her room. Fast. Needed to be alone.

She made her way to the door, stopped when her hand closed over the knob, and shut her eyes against the smothering feeling creeping over her like a dank fog. Her heart quivering in her breast, she tightened her grip on the latch, ignored the palpitations, the tingling in her arms, and opened her door.

Damn it to hell! She wasn’t a weak-kneed, useless fool. She could control this. She could. It might have got the better of her a few times in Africa, but not here. Not at home.

Dear God, all I have to do is get down a few stairs. Can you lend a hand?

Erica was in pain and Keeley ached with it, had absorbed it, trembled with it. Damn it. She didn’t have time for a bout of self-indulgent, quivering panic. Whether she liked Erica or not, she needed her, and her babies needed her. She had to be strong, face the evil encroaching on Mayday House. Tonight that evil had lurked in the black shaft of Erica’s gun, disabling her, pushing her mind into the blank white of fear.

Like before.

She closed the door on Erica’s room and slumped against the wall, planning to rest a second, get her bearings.

When she saw Gus standing at the top of the stairs, she knew he’d been waiting for her, and the heat of embarrassment warmed her neck, made her try to straighten. She didn’t want to be seen like this, weak- kneed and wobbly.

Without a word, Gus had helped her get Erica up the stairs and into bed; then just as wordlessly he’d left her to calm the distraught woman, soothe her as best she could, and make promises she wasn’t at all sure she could keep.

Now he stood in front of her, stone still, his shadowed gaze sliding over her, smooth and intense—as if he were a doctor studying a complex X-ray. “You okay?”

Her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak, but she managed a nod. Any hint of the truth and he’d think she was crazy.

She pushed away from the door, took a couple of steps, then stopped, focused on clearing her head and fighting her body’s weak-muscled urge to let go and crumple to the floor.

“I don’t think you are okay.” Gus walked to where she stood, leaning like a rag doll against the wall. “Put your arm around my waist.” He pulled her to his side. Too busy battling back her panic demons, she didn’t fight him. Didn’t want to fight him.

He was strong, and solid, and with each step down the stairs, their bodies shifted and rubbed against each other, the friction warm and reassuring.

She didn’t know whether to be angry at him for throwing a knife, or grateful he’d saved her life. Whether or not Erica would have pulled the trigger, she’d never know, and wasn’t sure she wanted to. In this moment, she was grateful for Gus’s strength, the heat of him seeping into her cold bones.

She stumbled on the last stair and leaned into Gus to keep from falling, her fingers curling around his belt.

“Easy, I’ve got you.” He pulled her closer.

Keeley tried not to tremble and quake, to fight the dizziness, but she was losing the battle. She had to lie down. Curl into a ball. Hold herself together until it passed. She hoped it wouldn’t be days—like the last time.

“Here we go.” He opened the door to her room and helped her into her bed with the same deft movements he’d used with Erica earlier. “This happen often?” He reached over her for a second pillow and put it under her head.

Keeley tugged the ancient quilt up to her neck and shivered. “Not lately,” she murmured, still cold despite the heavy quilt. “And it’s not nearly as bad.”

He turned on the bedside lamp. “Delayed stress. It’s not every day you stare down a gun barrel.” He picked up the glass on her bedside table, took it to the bathroom, and filled it with water. “Here.” He placed his hand at the back of her head, tilted it, and held the glass to her mouth.

She sipped, then sagged back against the pillow and snuggled deep under the covers. God, she was a wimp. She couldn’t stop the shakes. He went back to the bathroom, returned with a damp facecloth. When he touched her cheek with the coolness of it, she took it from his hand—or tried to. “I can do it. Thanks.”

For a second both of them held onto the cloth; then Gus let go. He sat on the edge of the bed, and she felt his hip against her thigh. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No. You can go now.” She sounded ungrateful, dismissive, but couldn’t help it. Her heart pounded scarily in her chest, and unless she wanted him to literally see her sweat—it always came with these attacks—she’d best get him gone. “And thanks … again.” With that she covered her whole face with the cloth and closed her eyes, intent on breathing slowly instead of pumping air through her lungs as if she were tuning a pipe organ. Most times it worked, the breathing business.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

His words filtered through the damp facecloth. “Until you’re asleep,” he added.

“Sleep will be a long time coming,” she said from behind the cloth. “I’m okay. Really,” she added.

Breathe, Keeley, breathe. You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.
She took another breath, and except for her throat constricting as though it were in a noose, and the prickling sensation in her arms, she felt a little better.

Gus took the cloth from her face and gave her a serious scan. “You are
not
okay. What you are is a mess.”

The light hurt, and she pulled the cloth back over her eyes. “Mayday House is a mess. Me, I’m all right. So go.”

He put his hand on her forehead, smoothed her hair back, and then said, “Roll over.”

“What?”

“Get on your stomach. Either you do it, or I do it for you.” He tugged the cloth from her hand.

“I don’t think I—” Actually she didn’t know what she thought. Her stupid panic episode was swamped by her body’s unexpected—and currently indecipherable—reaction to the man looming over her bed in the middle of the night telling her what to do, as if it were a normal occurrence.

“Do it, Farrell. I know what I’m doing.” His tone was softer, more cajoling, but no less determined. “I won’t hurt you, and I won’t touch anything you don’t want touched.”

She set her eyes on his, and he didn’t blink. Neither did she. What she did was roll over.

The next second the quilt was down to her hips, exposing nothing but her thick flannel nightgown. “Shift closer to me.” Using both hands, he gripped her waist and moved her toward the edge of the bed.

“Concentrate on your breathing—like you were doing before,” he instructed. “Now relax your arms.” He positioned her arms at her sides, inches from her body, then returned his hands to her waist, sliding them up her back to her shoulders in one long, firm glide. Gripping and kneading her shoulders with strong fingers, he pulled down, released, pulled down and released, before sliding his hands again to her lower back. This time when he started back up, he used more force, probing her spine with his thumbs and applying pressure to her sides and back with strong, expert fingers. Then the neck again, easy, rhythmic … Her eyes drifted closed.

Dear God, it was heaven.

It had been so long since she’d been touched.

“The breathing, remember? Deep. As deep as you can. In. Out. Concentrate. Good.”

Keeley did what she was told, matched her breathing to the rhythm in his hands. His amazing hands.

“You’re doing great. Keep it up.”

Why was he whispering? She tried to open her eyes, but they felt too heavy to bother with.

She felt his hand stroke her hair, his fingers run along her cheek. He said something else, something about real massage needing skin; then she was gone.

Keeley woke with a start, sitting abruptly upright and looking at the clock. Past four-thirty. She’d slept an hour, maybe more.

“Feeling better?” Gus’s voice came from the darkness beside her bed.

“You’re still here,” she said, the words as unnecessary as her hand flying to her throat and closing the open collar of her gown. He was only a shadow in the chair he’d pulled up to the bedside—a very still shadow. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew his eyes were on her. “We should talk to Erica, decide what to do,” she said, then added, “Did you know that Erica and her brother make, uh, explicit adult films?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You checked on her?” She guessed it made sense he would, given that he was in the security business. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Would it have mattered? Didn’t make her less pregnant.”

“No, I suppose not. But I should call Christiana, let her know she has … family.” Although Keeley knew she’d be underwhelmed by her new relatives—or at least the business they were in.

“Erica can wait. So can Christiana. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”

“It is tomorrow.” She let go of her collar and swung her body to sit on the bed, facing him. The bed was an old four-poster, too high for her to sit and have her feet touch the floor. She let them dangle, shoving her hair off her face. “I should go check on her.”

“I already did. She’s sleeping sound enough. All you’ll do is wake her up.”

Her eyes, losing the last of sleep, grew accustomed to the dim light provided by a watery moon seeping through the clouds. The room came into focus. A less shadowy Gus emerged, sitting comfortably in her wicker chair, his long legs stretched out in from of him. He was staring at her feet. “Pink nail polish,” he said. “You surprised me.”

“That knife from nowhere surprised me. Where did you learn to do that? Better yet, why?”

“Survival. My father gave me my first knife, taught me how to use it. I was seven. I thought it smart to hone my skills through the years.”

“You could have hurt Erica.”

“No, I couldn’t, but she could’ve hurt you.”

“She’s pregnant, for heaven’s sake.”

“She had a gun pointed at your face.”

“I don’t want weapons in Mayday House. Knives or guns.” She gave him a pointed look. “I don’t want anyone hurt.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “Now if we’re done agreeing with each other, I’ll ask again. How are you feeling?”

As agreements went, his had the solidity of smoke, but Keeley knew the end of a subject when she saw one. No point in pressing her point right now, but if he thought she was going to let this go, he was dead wrong. What she’d do was wait until her wits were less scattered, her mind less cottoned with sleep.

“I’m fine.” She paused. “Your massage did the trick. You’re good with your hands.”

His mouth twitched. “So I’ve been told.”

Keeley felt herself redden, but knew he wouldn’t see it in the dimness of the room. “I meant in a professional sense.”

Another twitch of his lips.

She blushed deeper. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“You mean your discomfort with my past career choice?”

“Yes.”

“No. I’m more caught up in my own confusion when I think of yours.”

“My being a nun,” she stated, unable to say he wasn’t alone with his confusion. Despite the years she’d tried, she never did fit the mold. Mary Weaver had been right all along.
Your calling is to do good in this world, girl, but you? A nun? Won’t suit you at all.
Turned out she was right, even though Keeley’s decision to leave her order left her feeling a miserable failure. “I thought it was the right choice for me at the time. It wasn’t.”

“Marc? Your husband. Was he right for you?”

“Yes, he was.” His question made her hesitate. “But the truth is things weren’t feeling right for me in my order even before Marc. I’d already decided I wasn’t cut for the cloth.” A cloth woven of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The poverty was okay, and she’d coped with the chastity issue all right—until Marc, but the obedience? There she had messed up.

“What cloth are you cut for?”

She eyed him. “What makes you so nosy all of a sudden?”

“Interested, not ‘nosy,’” he said. “And it comes with the job,” he said, adding, “The panic attacks. When did they start?”

She slid off the bed, slipped on the thick terry robe she’d draped over one of its posts. Pulling the sash tight to her waist, she turned back to him. “First off, it’s none of your business, and second, they’re not panic attacks—at least not like they were.”

“How were they?”

Lord, she’d never known a man so still—so relentless. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“No.”

Keeley wasn’t afraid to face her weaknesses, just reluctant. Talking about her past, her personal difficulties since leaving Africa, smacked of self-absorption. Yet there was something inside her wanting—needing—to get her story out. Whether Gus Hammond was the person to hear it, she didn’t know. While she wasn’t sure he’d understand, something told her he wouldn’t judge. It was enough.

“The last six months in the Sudan were tough.” She closed her eyes a moment. “So much death. When the militia stormed into the villages, they didn’t care who they killed—or how. People were butchered. Men, women, children, it didn’t matter to them. It was like a murderous frenzy. Everyone was afraid, no one felt safe—and no one knew when or if their village would be hit next.” She took a few steps away from him, then back. “Our camp, close to the Chad border, had been lucky. But the luck didn’t last.”

She rubbed her upper chest, her heart. “They came at sunup. The first thing we heard was the sound of trucks—and horses. There were horses … Odd, I thought. Then the yelling. Gunfire …” She licked her dry lips as the images came. “They started shooting, first into the air, then at … everything, the villagers—running for their lives—their homes, the animals … just shooting. Shooting.
Shooting
.” Keeley massaged her temples. She’d never forget the din. The wailing and screams. The old man with one leg, trying to run with his cane. Falling. The shiny rifles spilling red death into the already-miserable refugee camp.

More bullets in the guns than stars in the sky.

She took a breath and went on, “Our hospital and sleeping tents were on the edge of the village. That gave us a little time, but in the end there was nothing to do but run and hide wherever you could. There were five patients in the hospital, an old man, a young girl who’d just given birth, her newborn, and two children. We, myself and two of the aid workers attached to Medics-At-Large, gathered them up, and along with the people streaming out of the village, ran—as my mother would have said, as if the devil himself was on our heels.” She stopped. “Which in this case he was.”