Come Lie With Me. Linda Howard

his shoulder and returned to her room.

      Blake wasn’t like her other patients. Still lying awake over an hour later, she tried to decide why she was so determined to make him walk again. It wasn’t just her normal devotion to a patient; in some way she didn’t yet understand, it was important to her personally that he once again become the man he had been. He had been such a strong man, a man so vibrantly alive that he was the center of attention wherever he went. She knew that. She had to restore him to that.

      He was so near to death. Richard had been correct in saying that he wouldn’t live another year the way he was. Blake had been willing himself to die. She had gotten his attention that morning with her shock tactics, but she had to keep it until he could actually see himself progressing, until he realized that he could recover. She would never be able to forgive herself if she failed him.

      She finally slept for about two hours, rising before dawn with a restless anticipation driving her. She would have loved to run on the beach, but Phoenix didn’t have a beach, and she didn’t know the grounds well enough to go trotting around them in the dark. For all she knew Blake had attack dogs patrolling at night. But despite her lack of sleep she was brimming with energy. She tried to burn off some of it by doing a brisk routine of exercises, but the shower she took afterward so refreshed her that she felt she was ready to tackle the world. Well, at least Blake Remington!

      It was even earlier than it had been the morning before when she gave in to her enthusiasm and bounded into his room, snapping on the light as she did, because it was still dark.

      “Good morning,” she chirped.

      He was still on his side; he opened one blue eye, surveyed her with an expression of horror, then uttered an explicit word that would have gotten his mouth washed out with soap if he’d been younger. Dione grinned at him.

      “Are you ready to start?” she asked innocently.

      “Hell, no!” he barked. “Lady, it’s the middle of the night!”

      “Not quite. It’s almost dawn.”

      “Almost? How close to almost?”

      “In just a few minutes,” she soothed, then ruined it by laughing as she threw the covers off him. “Don’t you want to see the sunrise?”

      “No!”

      “Don’t be such a spoilsport,” she coaxed, swinging his legs off the bed. “Watch the sunrise with me.”

      “I don’t want to watch the sunrise, with you or anyone else,” he snarled. “I want to sleep!”