Hot Picks: Exotic Propositions. Кейт Хьюит

was a brief pause, and then Lukas said gruffly, ‘I wanted to make sure you and Annabel were all right.’

      A ridiculous bubble of delight filled Rhiannon. Lukas almost sounded as if he cared. She didn’t know why that should please her so much, why it made her face split into a wide smile, but it did.

      Oh, it did.

      ‘We’re fine,’ she said. She sat on the edge of the bed, the phone cradled to her ear. ‘I had dinner with your father tonight.’

      ‘You did?’ Lukas sounded surprised. ‘And you weren’t on the menu?’

      Rhiannon giggled; Lukas’s answering chuckle made shivers of delight race along her arms, down her spine, straight to her soul. ‘No, actually, I wasn’t. We were both civil…more than civil. Although…’ She paused, going over the dinner conversation in her mind. ‘He almost sounded like he had some kind of plan.’

      ‘Plan?’

      ‘For me. Us.’

      ‘Us?’ Lukas repeated thoughtfully, and Rhiannon was conscious of the intimacy, the presumption of the word. There was no ‘us’.

      Except right now it felt as if there was.

      ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I was reading too much into a few comments,’ she said hastily.

      ‘You don’t know my father,’ Lukas replied. ‘He always has a plan.’

      They were both silent for a moment; Rhiannon could hear Lukas breathing. There was something so intimate about a telephone conversation, she thought. A conversation just to hear voices, to connect.

      A connection.

      ‘As long as you’re all right,’ Lukas finally said a bit brusquely, ‘I should go. It’s been a long day.’

      ‘Yes, of course.’ So much for the connection. ‘Goodbye,’ she said awkwardly.

      Lukas’s voice was rough as he replied, ‘Goodnight, Rhiannon.’

      Rhiannon listened to the click in her ear before disconnecting herself. She laid the mobile phone on her bedside table, closed her eyes.

      The maelstrom of emotions within her was confusing, potent. She shouldn’t be affected by one little phone conversation—yet she was.

      She was.

      She wanted him. She missed him.

      Rhiannon pushed herself off the bed, grabbed her pyjamas.

      She would not think about Lukas. There was no point. There was no future. In a few days, weeks, everything could change. Lukas could demand she leave.

      Or he could ask her to stay.

      Hadn’t she learned there were no fairy tale endings? Rhiannon reminded herself. Surely she wasn’t dreaming…again?

      She was shaken awake several hours later.

      ‘Miss! Miss Rhiannon!’ Adeia crouched next to her bed, her worn face tense and pale with anxiety. ‘It’s the master.’

      ‘The master?’ Rhiannon sat up, pushing her hair out of her face.

      ‘Master Theo,’ Adeia said in a high, strained voice. ‘He came down to the kitchen for something to eat and he started…’ She paused, baffled, searching for the word in English. ‘Shaking.’

      ‘Shaking?’ Rhiannon was already slipping out of bed, throwing a dressing gown over her pyjamas. ‘Where is he now? Has a doctor been called?’

      ‘My husband Athos helped him back upstairs,’ Adeia said. ‘I called the doctor…he comes from the next island. He’ll be here by boat as soon as he can. You said you were a nurse…?’

      ‘Yes, I am. I’ll have a look.’ Rhiannon tossed a glance over her shoulder; Annabel was still asleep.

      Adeia led her down the tiled hallway to Theo’s bedroom, right at the end.

      The room was surprisingly small and Spartan—the room of a man who had never grown accustomed to luxury. Theo lay in bed, still and silent.

      Rhiannon approached the bed. He looked even more careworn than he had this evening—smaller, somehow, more fragile. Rhiannon’s heart gave a strange little twist and she laid her hand on the old man’s brow.

      His eyes flickered, then opened. ‘What…what are you…?’ he said in a weak, halting voice.

      ‘You had a seizure,’ Rhiannon informed him quietly. ‘Adeia called me. I’m a nurse.’

      ‘I want…’ He swallowed, started again. ‘I want a doctor.’

      ‘The doctor’s been called. He’ll be here shortly. In the meantime, I’m just going to check your vitals.’

      Theo glared at her, too weak to resist, and Rhiannon gave him a small encouraging smile as she quickly checked him over. He seemed all right, she decided, while at the same time acknowledging to herself the seriousness of a man Theo’s age having a seizure.

      Dawn was edging the sky when the doctor’s boat scraped against the island’s dock, and Rhiannon’s eyes were gritty with fatigue.

      She’d kept watch by Theo’s bed, in case there was anything to report to the doctor. She’d watched him drift in and out of sleep, his eyes glazed, and knew she would have to ring Lukas.

      ‘He’s stable for now,’ the doctor told her in a low voice after he’d seen Theo. ‘As the tumour affects more parts of his brain, more aspects of his life will be affected.’ He paused, his expression sober. ‘He knows this…knows it will continue to get more difficult.’

      Rhiannon nodded. It was no more than she’d expected, and yet it still hurt. It always hurt to hear of someone’s pain, the suffering of watching a life slip slowly—or not so slowly—away.

      ‘What should we expect now?’ she asked.

      The doctor shrugged. ‘More seizures, some lessened mobility, increased difficulty in talking. You are his nurse?’

      ‘Not…not exactly,’ Rhiannon replied, surprised. ‘I mean, I am a nurse, but not…’

      The doctor looked nonplussed. ‘You’re here; you’re a nurse. I don’t see many others around. If you have questions, you may ring me. All you can really do is make him comfortable. We are managing his decline.’

      Rhiannon nodded and thanked him, before heading upstairs with a heavy heart. She waited until Annabel was fed and dressed and busy with Adeia before ringing Lukas.

      He answered on the first ring. ‘Rhiannon? Is something wrong?’

      ‘Lukas…’ Her voice came out thready. She stopped, started again. ‘Lukas, your father had a seizure last night.’

      There was a moment of silence, frozen, tense, and then Lukas repeated blankly, ‘A seizure?’

      ‘The doctor came. He said your father’s stable for now, but…’

      ‘But?’ Lukas repeated softly.

      ‘But,’ Rhiannon admitted, ‘his condition is likely to deteriorate more rapidly from now on.’

      There was another silence; Rhiannon’s heart ached. She longed to comfort him, to put her arms around him. The realisation surprised her with its sorrowful power.

      ‘I’ll come back,’ Lukas said finally. ‘I should have been there.’

      ‘There was nothing—’

      ‘I should have been there.’ His voice was flat, dead. ‘Goodbye, Rhiannon. Thank you for telling me.’

      Yet another responsibility Lukas had put on himself, she thought as she put down the mobile. Another burden weighing him down.

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