Читать книгу The Cowboy And The Countess - Darlene Scalera - Страница 14

The Lexus came to another upward concrete curve. Centrifugal force pulled K.C. toward the latched door. The seat belt pushed against his chest. Hilary sat strapped beside him. She gave him a wide smile, her teeth white pearls echoed in the beads wrapped around her throat.

K.C. turned his head and saw the shiny skeleton of L.A. below. Soaring bends of concrete arched over one another, while others seeped ground-level—supine planes of highway meeting, then moving on, smooth, glossy with traffic.

The car crested the incline. Leon braked hard, throwing K.C. forward. Before them was a white, sterile structure, frozen even in the strong L.A. shimmer.

K.C. studied the building. The words cold, clinical came to his mind. Where had they brought him? Why? He had agreed to undergo the recommended tests, but it was his understanding they were to be done at the UCLA Medical Center. The fortress before him, with its blank walls and flat top, had more the look of a prison.

He glanced at Hilary, seeing her white smile. He looked front, seeing the flushed ripple of skin rimming the back of Leon’s collar.

As if feeling eyes upon him, Leon twisted around and grinned at K.C. from over the seat’s leather curve. “Here we are.”

K.C. looked to the low, white rise before them, then back at his escorts. Nothing looked familiar.

Hilary laid a cool palm on his forearm. “Shall we go inside, darling?”

He stepped out of the car into the thinned air and walked with Hilary and Leon to the white box of a building, its corners sharpened by the sun’s albino sheen.

Inside was as unrelieved as the outside. Great walls of unbroken white, cool, uncovered floors of pale maple, broad, boxy furniture. No baseboards, no moldings, no lamps, no drapes. Everything had been stripped to its barest possibilities.