Now You See Him(4)

She shook her head, forcing such morbid thoughts away,, and the movement caught his eye. Across the deserted tarmac he looked at her, and while she knew that he wouldn't be able to see that well across the artificially lit distance, she suddenly felt uneasy. As if she'd been caught spying.

Opening the wire gate, she started toward him, forcing a welcoming smile onto her stiff face. "You must be Michael Dowd," she said when she reached him. "I'm Frances Neeley, better known as Francey." And she held out her hand.

It took him a moment to laboriously shift the cane, then reach out his own thin hand. His grasp was weak, ominously so, and for a moment she forgot her own concerns in worry over him. "I'm Michael," he agreed, and his voice was surprisingly warm, strong and unnervingly British, During her brief time with Patrick Dugan she'd learned to think of British accents as those belonging to the enemy, compared to Patrick's charming lilt… No, she wouldn't think of that.

"How was your trip?" she asked, pushing away her instinctive doubts. "How are you feeling? The Jeep's just over there—you won't have far to walk. Unless you'd like me to see whether I could find a wheelchair."

"No wheelchair," he said flatly. "I've already spent too much time in them since the car accident. And I feel like hell."

Querulous, Francey thought with a trace of satisfaction. A pale, weak, querulous man. A pain in the butt and nothing worse.

And then he looked down at her and smiled, and the charm he was exerting was a palpable thing, something she could no more resist than she could stop her heart from beating. "I'm a pain in the butt, aren't I?" he said, reading her mind. "I promise you I won't spend my time here whining. I'm just done in."

She found herself smiling back, up into eyes that were very, very blue. "That's all right," she said soothingly, falling into her natural role of caretaker. "We'll get you home to Belle Reste and get you settled. By tomorrow you'll be able to lie out in the sun and feel a lot better."

"If you say so." His expression was wry. "Lead the way to the Jeep. I'm assuming that pink monstrosity is yours."

"Daniel's, not mine. Where's your luggage?"

"Lost," he said succinctly. "The airline people said they've managed to track it down, and someone will be bringing it over in the morning. In the meantime, I can borrow something of Daniel's can't I?"

"Of course." She held out her arm, to give him some extra strength to lean on, and for a moment he simply looked at her, his eyes distant and unreadable.

"Thanks," he said, taking it and leaning heavily. "I need all the help I can get."

It was a slow process to reach the Jeep. By the time she got him settled she was breathing heavily herself, and she glanced over at him as he lay back in the seat, his eyes closed, his color pale, his chest rising and falling beneath the too-big suit. "Are you sure you're all right? We don't have much in the way of hospital facilities here on the island, but they might be able to help—"

"I'll be fine," he said without opening his eyes, and his voice sounded slightly fainter.

Whatever doubts she'd had about him vanished the moment she realized how very sick he was. She'd been able to be a remote, gracious hostess to the other lost souls Daniel had sent her. Michael Dowd was another prospect altogether. For the first time in months she found someone whose needs superseded her own. Someone to concentrate on, ignoring her own helpless pain. From the moment she'd felt his weak clasp and looked into his pain-lined face, she'd known he wasn't really a threat at all. He was simply a sick man, someone she wanted to help.

She drove with uncharacteristic sedateness through the narrow streets of the town, then headed up into the hills toward Belle Reste with only a decorous increase in speed. Driving was one thing she really enjoyed, and during the past few months of penance and mourning she'd been denying herself that pleasure. Now, suddenly, she felt like stretching her wings, but she knew that with an invalid beside her she had to be as demure as an old lady. Maybe tomorrow she would see about renting a car after all. A small sporty convertible, something with a little power beneath the hood. Her new houseguest would probably enjoy going for drives once his strength increased a bit.

The road to Belle Reste was a series of three hills and three valleys, with the villa lying at the end of the final valley on a spit of land jutting out into the warm Caribbean. With Francey keeping a sedate pace and a companionable silence as her passenger rested, they made it through the first hill and valley, up the next hill, and were heading downward again when the car began gathering momentum.