Читать книгу Surgeon Sheik's Rescue - Лорет Энн Уайт - Страница 11

Chapter 3

It was late, a blanket of snow hushing the night world outside, but inside her small room Bella was still buzzing from her experience at the restaurant as she opened her Skype contact list, clicked on Hurley’s icon, hit Video Call.

Hurley answered on the second ring, his affable features looming live onto her screen, his reddish-brown dreads framing his freckled face, the fishbowl effect of the webcam making him look even rounder than usual.

“Bella,” he said. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the past forty-eight hours. I have—”

“It’s him, Hurley,” she said quietly. “The man living in the abbey is Prince Tariq Al Arif. The palace lied about his death. MagMo failed to assassinate him.” She spoke in a whisper, a sense of urgency, secrecy taking hold of her.

“Are you certain? Are you ready to run something on the site?”

“I need proof before I break anything. If I send you some of the high-resolution images of his face, you think you and Scoob could try for a biometrics match?”

“Without a doubt. Scoob’s facial-recognition software is top-of-the-line security stuff, Bella. If it’s him, we’ll get a match. But—”

“Hang on.” Bella quickly began loading the digital images into a file. She hit Send, then glanced up registering for the first time a strange sheen of perspiration on Hurley’s face.

“Hurley? Is everything okay?”

“Your Watchdog page got another anonymous IM, Bella. Same sender.”

“What did it say?”

He rubbed his brow, inhaling deeply. “It was a digital image from an old newspaper. I’m sending it to you now.”

Bella clicked on the icon, accepting the file. It opened onto her laptop—an image of two men in black-tie attire, champagne glasses in hand. One of the men was Sam Etherington, taken when he was a lot younger. He had his arm around the shoulders of a dark-haired, stocky guy with receding hairline and a small goatee.”

“Who’s the guy with Etherington?” Bella said, peering closer.

“Benjamin Raber. The photo ran on the social page of a Chicago newspaper fifteen years ago.”

She glanced up, met Hurley’s eyes. “Raber? As in Johnson’s boss? The head of Strategic Alliances, the alleged front for STRIKE?”

“Same guy.”

“Did the tipster say anything about this photo?”

He swallowed, and worry wormed deeper into Bella.

“Hurley, what’s going on?”

“All the message said was ‘Blackmail is a powerful tool and Johnson was an instrument.’”

“What does that mean?” Bella asked, looking more closely at the two men in the photo, arm in arm. Friends. Celebrating. “That Etherington was blackmailing Raber? Forcing him to use STRIKE—and Johnson—to carry out assassinations?”

“Maybe it’s vice versa—Raber blackmailing Etherington.”

“Holy Christ,” she whispered. “Hurley, we have got to find whoever sent these tips. We need more information, we need proof. We—”

“Scoob already found her, Bella.”

“Her?” Bella whispered.

“She’s dead.”

Bella’s world spun. “What do you mean...dead?”

“This IM with the photo attached appeared on your Watchdog profile just over forty-eight hours ago. Scoob’s software trap caught it instantly, and his program started tracking back to her IP address even as she tried to burrow out ahead of the trap. But we got an ID.” He swallowed. “Her name was Althea Winston. She was Travis Johnson’s widow.”

Bella put her hand over her mouth.

“Althea was a computer expert, Bella. Her husband could have told her things no one else would have known. Her tipping us off could have been about revenge for her husband’s death, her way of seeking justice for him. But she must’ve been scared they’d come after her. And now, forty-eight hours after she sent that last IM, she’s dead.”

Bella’s heart began to thud against her rib cage. “How did she die?”

“It was all over the news this morning. Althea and her five-year-old daughter were killed in a freak car accident on the way to the kid’s school. Road was icy. They were sideswiped by a gray Dodge Ram 4500, no plates. Impact forced them through the bridge barrier and they went over, through ice, into the river. The truck fled the scene.”

Just like the “accident” that had sent Senator Sam Etherington’s ex-wife and twins over a bridge.

Looking ill, Hurley said, “Scoob figures someone started monitoring Althea’s electronic movements after you posted that photo linking Tariq Al Arif to Alexis Etherington. It must have sent up red flags, and they had to have fingered Johnson’s widow as a possible leak. Then when she contacted your page again with this, they had her red-handed.”

Bella sat back, horrified. She’d found an old newspaper photograph of the senator’s missing ex-wife, Dr. Alexis Etherington, with Dr. Tariq Al Arif at a medical convention in Chicago years ago. She’d posted it online with a story she’d written after Tariq’s family had announced his “death.” In the caption, she’d suggested there might be old links between the Etheringtons and the Al Arifs. Bella had hoped this hoped this might solicit information, and it had. Now this.

“Jesus, Hurley,” Bella whispered. “We killed her. My investigation. This is my fault.”

“Bella, even if her death is linked to this, it’s not your fault—Althea had to have known she was taking a risk by tipping you off in the first place. She had to have known they meant serious business after her husband was killed.”

“Who the hell is they, Hurley! STRIKE? Strategic Alliances? Raber? Sam Etherington’s people? Why on earth would Etherington want to kill an Al Arif prince, anyway? He’s the one promising an oil deal with their kingdom should he get into office. And how does MagMo fit in to all this?”

“We need to figure all that out before they find you.” Hurley’s features were tight. “This is why I’ve been trying to get a hold of you—since Scoob’s trap chased back to Althea Winston’s IP addy, someone’s been trying to use the same digital trail as a route back into our systems.”

Nausea washed through Bella’s stomach. “Did they get in?”

“Not yet. We’ve increased security parameters. But they’re circling like sharks, and they’re going to keep trying to find a way to penetrate our system.” Hurley paused, wiping the gleam from the top of his lip. “It’s best you contact us only when really necessary, Bella. You’ve still got that prepaid cell?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to get one, too. And I’m using a laptop that’s not connected to our servers to be safe. We’ll run these photos you’ve just sent through the biometrics software, then I’m going to shred them, so keep copies on your end. I’m not going to store anything this side, in case these people get in.”

The gravity of Hurley’s words, the news of Althea Winston’s death, settled like ice in Bella’s chest. Finding that tipster had been Bella’s hope of finding proof, someone who might eventually go on record. Now she was dead. Like her husband. Silenced.

“We’re up against a wall now, Hurley,” she said quietly. “We have nothing concrete to link Etherington to the attempts on the lives of the Al Arifs. Or to these recent deaths. Or my attack.”

“You still have the fact that Tariq is alive, if these photos are a match. That’s a big story in itself. We run that, and we could get more tips. Plus Scoob is still trying to clean up that audio we recorded of Senator Etherington and his aide, Isaiah Gold, near the fountain last summer. That new parabolic mike design picked up everything, the trouble is filtering out the noise of the water.”

“The odds of something coming from that audio are practically nonexistent, even if Scoob does manage to clean it up. They could’ve been discussing baseball for all we know.”

“There’s a reason Sam and Isaiah routinely leave the office and cross the lawn to talk by a noisy fountain. We think it’s to discuss things they don’t want on tape. We took photos of them doing it—if we find something on that audio—”

“It’s a long shot, Hurley. You guys have made a hobby of eavesdropping on politicians with your gimmicks for years, and what have you got so far?”

His mouth flattened, and she instantly felt sorry.

“I’m sorry. It’s just...I’m rattled about Althea’s death.”

“We all are. Go get the sheik, Bella. Get him to talk. Somehow this all ties back to Sam.”

She signed off, shut her laptop and sat staring into space awhile. Outside the snow continued to fall. She’d survived her attack. Althea Winston had not been so lucky. Had it been the same people?

Bella’s assailants had spoken Arabic and she figured they might be part of MagMo. Two of them also had Arabic daggers. But this wouldn’t fit Sam Etherington’s people.

Bella reached into her pocket and took out a small, gold medallion. She’d ripped it from the neck of one of her assailants as she’d tried to fight him off.

The medallion depicted a sun superimposed by a hooked dagger, and it lay warm in her hand, the gold gleaming dully in the light from her lamp. She hadn’t shown it to the police—the cops had been no help when her apartment had been ransacked, and by that point, Bella trusted no one.

It was also when she’d fled the country.

Slipping the medallion onto a chain around her neck, she turned up the oil heater and climbed under the duvet on her small cot. She lay there, feeling alone, vulnerable. Scared. This story was potentially so big it overwhelmed her.

She muttered a curse. She was a journalist. This was everything she’d wanted, surely—an earth-shattering scoop? And when something truly scared you, it generally meant you were heading in the right direction. Wasn’t that the mantra of self-help gurus?

This was going to be her ticket back into the mainstream, her revenge against the Daily for dumping her. She wanted to shove this story in Derek’s face, show him she was worth something. She wanted the whole world to see Bella DiCaprio was not some little orphan cast-off. She was someone to be reckoned with.

A familiar, stubborn anger filled Bella, and determination steeled her. She was not averse to risk. She was going to get this. The trick would be in finding a way to get the sheik to talk to her, to find out how much he knew, and how this might all be connected.

And tomorrow was her chance, when she went to see him in the abbey.

* * *

The following afternoon found Bella pushing her bike through several inches of snow for the last mile to the monastery. The wind off the Atlantic was biting, the sky low and somber. Hurley’s words threaded through her mind.

We need to figure out who they are before they find you...

She rounded a hill of rock and the stone walls of the abbey suddenly loomed in the distance, black and menacing under skiffs of white. It would be full dark within the hour, she thought. A bite of raw fear twisted into her sense of foreboding.

What if her assailants back in D.C. were linked to Tariq’s people—would his family kill to keep his secret? Would they come after her if they knew she was here, on the island, now?

As she reached the iron gates, her fingers felt numb on the handlebars despite the gloves she wore. And another, more sinister thought niggled into her mind—what if Tariq’s reason for suddenly summoning her to his monastery was to silence her?

Her attackers in D.C. had spoken Arabic. And they had carried traditional-looking curved daggers. Sam’s people would not have done so, surely?

She paused and looked up at the row of hostile iron spikes, thinking of the gold medallion in her pocket—the image of a sun, superimposed with a hooked Arabic dagger. The wind was picking up and it had started snowing again, tiny ice crystals pricking into her face. Bella reached up and pressed the intercom in the stone pillar on the right side of the gate. A bell clanged somewhere inside the monastery, resonant, distant, an ancient sound that seemed at odds with the modern security. Her gaze was pulled up to the high-tech motion-sensor cameras watching her. Anxiety wrapped around Bella.

She told herself to relax. It was unlikely Tariq knew who she was at this point. But her alias was superficial—it wouldn’t hold up to any real background investigation. She needed to get to the heart of the reason she was here sooner rather than later.

Bella waited almost a full minute. Snow came down faster now, angled by the wind.

She rang again, and at the sound of the clanging something moved under the blanket in her bike basket. With a sharp start Bella realized she’d almost forgotten the Papillon pup Madame had insisted she take with her if she wanted time off this evening.

“Kiki needs attention and exercise, Amelie,” Madame Dubois had said. “This is why I hired you. If you want to go to the abbey, you will need to take Kiki.”

The Papillon was not the only thing Bella had been obliged to trek up the hill this evening—in the carrier on the back of her bike was a hamper, which Madame had shoved into her hands as she left.

“What’s this?” Bella had asked.

“The way to a man’s heart, Amelie—” Madame said, nodding to the hamper “—is always through his stomach. Take the basket.”

“I’m not looking for a way into anyone’s heart,” Bella had responded irritably. At the same time she reminded herself to play along. If Estelle Dubois believed in her eccentric old mind that Bella was romantically interested in the mysterious stranger from the abbey, it could make coming up here a lot easier.

Bella lifted the edge of the blanket. Kiki poked her nose out into the cold, giving a little body wiggle and whimper. “Hang on,” she whispered to the pup. “You can run around when we get inside.”

As she spoke the iron gates suddenly began to creak open, no one in sight. A frisson of nerves chased over her skin.

She began to wheel her bike through the gates and up to the great stone entrance, her tires making narrow tracks behind her in the slush.

Stone columns flanked a double door of heavy wood that was carved with warring demons and angels and arched to a point. The handles were iron rings.

As Bella approached, the door opened a crack and a slice of pale yellow light spliced the gloom. A butler with dark complexion and hooded eyes appeared, unsmiling.

“I’m Amelie Chenard,” she said, unnerved by the inhospitable set of the man’s features. “Monsieur Du Val is expecting me.”

He gave a barely perceptible tip of his head and stepped back, making room for her to enter. Bella rested her bike against the wall and removed Kiki from the basket. She asked the butler to bring in the hamper from the back of the bike.

With a deadpan expression, he removed the basket and Bella followed him into a massive hall. The ceilings were vaulted, high. A massive iron chandelier hung from a chain above a thick wood table in the center of the hall. Fat candles burned in sconces along the walls. The air inside was cold and had a strange weight to it. Clearly, central heating had not been part of the refurbishment.

“Monsieur is waiting in the library,” the butler said, setting her hamper on the table. “If I can take your coat?” He held out a dark-skinned hand.

“Could you hold this for me?” She offered Kiki to him.

The butler’s eyes flashed up, meeting hers properly for the first time.

“The dog?”

“Please, so I can take off my coat.”

Uneasy, the man took the ball of wriggling fur, holding Kiki at arm’s length as she tried to lick his face. Bella shrugged out of her slicker and removed her hat, holding them out to the butler. He called out for assistance.

Another male servant came hurrying into the hallway, looking surprised as the butler handed him the dog and muttered in French for him to watch it while Mademoiselle Chenard visited with the Monsieur. Bella took note of their accents as they conversed. Both rolled their r’s low in their throats in the way of Arabic.

“Her name is Kiki,” she called out after the man as he turned to leave with the dog. He shot a dark glance over his shoulder. Bella smiled inwardly and said a silent thank-you to Madame Dubois as she followed the butler down a wide and dimly lit stone corridor. The dog was easing her tension.

The air in this part of the abbey smelled slightly musty, like an old church. The butler stopped to open a thick wooden door, showing Bella into a library.

She entered cautiously. The room was massive but warm, with lots of rich wood paneling. Bookshelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling. A cello stood at one end of the room, the smooth wood gleaming from the light of a fire that crackled softly in a big stone hearth. Persian rugs in rich reds and rust browns covered the floors. At the far end of the room another door opened into what looked like a study—Bella could see a desk of polished black wood. On it rested a stubby phone—satellite phone, she guessed—along with a pile of papers.

“Mademoiselle Chenard,” the butler announced before sliding quietly away and closing the door.

Tariq stood up from the chair he’d been seated in next to the fire. The size of the wingback had hidden him from view. He turned slowly to face her.

Bella’s heart stilled as last summer’s headlines flooded through her mind.

Heir to Al Na’Jar Throne Dead. Renowned Surgeon Prince Dies. Prince Assassinated. Palace Mourns...

And here he was.

Already she could see the new headlines.

Sheik Al Arif Found Alive. Palace Lied. MagMo failed to Assassinate Heir. Al Na’Jar Prince Found Recovering in France.

She could also imagine the photographs she’d taken of him on the cliff splashed over news pages, and a disturbing little thought entered her mind. Why break this story on the Watchdog site—why not take it straight to one of the major media outlets? It would be her byline, her photo credits. Then she thought of Hurley, Scoob, Agnes, all the investigative legwork they’d done to help her get to this point. Guilt wormed into her.

“Come in,” he said, his voice rich, resonant. Deep.

Bella swallowed and took a few steps forward, tension tightening in her stomach.

He stepped around the chair, facing her square. He wore black pants—expensively cut, perfectly pressed. His white shirt was open at the neck showing a silk cravat. His hair was a glossy raven in the firelight. The eye patch lent him an air of mystery. In spite of his scars his presence shimmered with intensity, authority, wealth and something charismatically—and darkly—seductive.

Bella’s gaze settled on his mouth, the way his lip turned down on the left. An earlier photograph of him shifted to mind—Tariq smiling as he accepted a polo trophy, his teeth stark white against dusky skin. The photographer had captured a fire that had burned bright in his black eyes that day. Bella wondered if he could still smile, or if that ability, too, had been stolen from him by MagMo terrorists.

She came a little closer, holding out her hand. “I’m Amelie—”

“Amelie Chenard,” he said, lifting his chin slightly and clasping his own hands behind his back. He made no move toward her. She dropped her hand back to her side, feeling awkward, and wondered if he was hiding his maimed hand this way. What did it take for a man once so devastatingly good-looking, so talented a neurosurgeon, to deal with this change in his body, his life?

“You work for Estelle Dubois,” he said. “You’re here to do research for a novel.” He paused, watching her intently. “Or so I am told.”

“Yes,” she said simply, waiting to see where he was going to take this.

“This would be your debut novel.” It wasn’t a question.

She smiled, warmly. Or so she hoped. “So, you’ve looked me up?”

He said nothing.

Apprehension rose in her.

Before she’d left the States, Hurley and Scoob had managed to create a basic internet presence for “Amelie Chenard,” but it was superficial. Anyone digging deeper would soon see that. Bella had been lucky to secure her job with Estelle Dubois only two days after her arrival on Ile-en-Mer, and she’d managed to do it without applying for permits of any sort. She also hadn’t used her passport or any ID since arriving in France via the Chunnel, and so far she hadn’t touched the credit cards hidden in her room alongside her passport and driver’s license.

“Yes, it will be my first, at least under my own name, should it be published.” She tried to hold her smile. “If you did look up my website you’ll have seen that I’ve worked as a ghost writer to date, but contracts have bound me to confidentiality as to whom I’ve written for.”

His gaze bored into her, hot, intense. She tried not to blink, to look away. But her skin heated.

Still, he remained silent, waiting.

She cleared her throat. “I grew tired of being in the shadows all the time,” she said. “I want to step out, do something for myself, make my own name. Hence the new website, and now, my own book.” Bella hoped this would explain the apparent lack of internet litter around her alias. “It’s why I came to France, to this island. For the research. And I thought it might be good to stay awhile, absorb the local culture, the rhythms of the people.”

His butler appeared like a ghost, startling Bella—she hadn’t even heard the door open. He set Madame’s hamper on a table near the fire, then left. The sheik didn’t even glance at his servant, or the hamper.

Silently Bella thanked Madame again—clearly she was going to need a diversion, something to break the fortress of ice this man had built around himself. She glanced at the hamper, wondering what was inside.

“Your French is good,” he said abruptly.

“Thank you. I minored in French and philosophy.”

“Where?”

Perspiration suddenly prickled over her body. “Seattle,” she lied. It was the first place that came to mind that was not Chicago or D.C., and she’d visited the university there so she knew something about it.

“What was your major?”

“Literature,” she lied again, then forced a light laugh. “You’re making me feel as though I pushed my bike all the way up here simply to be interrogated.”

His features remained implacable. “You’ve been following me, Amelie. I want to know why.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” she said quietly, her smile dying on her lips. “I was hoping for a tour of the abbey, and I wanted to ask you about the ghost, the history of the place.” Silence hung between them. The fire crackled and popped, giving a slight hiss.

“Is Seattle your home, Amelie?”

She swallowed the panic ballooning in her throat. “Yes.”

“You were born there?”

“Portland, Oregon.” She cursed herself even as the words came out of her mouth. She was just digging a deeper hole for herself. She had to open up real channels of communication before he dug further into her background and discovered she was a fake.

“And you decided to come live in France while you researched this idea for a novel?”

“You manage to make that sound condescending.”

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t sound it.

“It was more than just the research,” she said, cutting closer to the truth now. “I had some personal issues, a recent breakup with a man I thought I loved, and I needed to get away for a while.”

Damn, why was she even going there? She spoke too much when she was nervous.

Something crossed his features, then was gone—she’d gotten through to him, briefly.

“I don’t appreciate being followed, Amelie,” he said finally, more gently.

“I really did try a more conventional approach—I rang the bell at the gate twice, but there was no answer. I asked around the village if anyone had a phone number for the abbey. Then Madame Dubois said you liked to walk along the cliffs in the afternoon, so I followed you on the heath.” She paused. “I confess, after seeing you standing at the edge of the cliffs, I became curious beyond the book research. I wanted to meet you.”

“To see firsthand the beast who lives in a haunted stone monastery on the cliffs—to see his scars? Is that why you took photographs of me, inspiration for your gothic novel?”

The bitterness—the rawness in his voice—was a shock, a punch to her gut. “That’s not—”

“Not what the villagers think of me—the scarred monster in the haunted abbey?”

Bella inhaled deeply. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.” She pointed her arm in the direction of the village. “Those locals have nothing but respect for you and your privacy. They treat you like a revered guest on this island—”

“Because I have money.”

She dropped her hand, stared.

“Think about it, Amelie. The trappings of wealth are all I have left. They buy me a measure of dignity. They allow me privacy.”

She heard the subtext—he could no longer work as a surgeon, no longer play his cello, win his polo matches...he’d lost the love of his life, the desire to help run his country. He needed to be alone.

“And so you hide,” she said quietly, “behind your wealth, in a remote abbey because you don’t want people to see your face, because you think you’re somehow damaged?”

He studied her, his presence seeming to glower with a dark, angry, yet magnetic power.

“How did it happen, Tahar?”

Something tore sharp and fast across the one side of his face, a ghost of an emotion, there, then gone, as if she might have imagined it. The other side of his face remained immobile, stiff. It was as if his psyche was split in two—a modern-day Jekyll and Hyde.

Her heart hammered. Perhaps she’d stepped over the line. But Bella told herself it was a normal question from someone who had nothing to hide. And he was the one who’d broached the subject by referring to himself as a “scarred beast of a man.”

But his gaze, his energy, was so intense, crackling, dark, she felt her cheeks go hot and she looked away. “I’m sorry. That was forward. I don’t need to know. I only wanted to—”

“It was a car accident,” he said abruptly. “I was in a coma for a while afterward.”

Surprise rippled through her. She opened her mouth but words eluded her. In her mind she could see Derek’s photo, Tariq fleeing the burning jet, such fierceness, such pain in his eyes as he tried to save his fiancée. Guilt sliced through her and she cursed the hungry newshound inside her own body.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I...there are no easy words for something like this. And I suspect you don’t want platitudes, anyway.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” He strode over to the hamper on the table, opened the lid of the wicker hamper as he spoke. “What did you bring?”

“Actually it’s from Madame Dubois. I have no idea what’s in there.”

He pulled out a bottle of Chateau Luneau cabernet franc and his gaze ticked to hers. “She knows what I like,” he said very quietly. “And so do you—this is what you were drinking in the restaurant.”

Tension shimmered. A piece of wet wood hissed in the fire, and Bella could hear wind moaning up in the turrets somewhere. She thought she could also hear the distant crash of waves at the foot of the cliffs upon which they were perched, the rhythmic thrust of the Atlantic—a pulse as old as time. She shook herself.

“Madame Dubois told me about the wine,” she said quietly. “She also told me you dined at Le Grotte every Tuesday night. I went there to meet you. I had hoped to strike up conversation through the wine, and then ask for a tour of the abbey.” She forced a laugh, but it felt hollow. “The wine just about broke my budget.”

A twitch of amusement ran along the right side of his mouth. Or had she imagined it? Whatever it was, something seemed to shift in the color of the evening.

From the hamper he removed a round of cheese and a box of crackers. He set them on the table. Reaching in again, he pulled out two wineglasses and a corkscrew. He held the glasses up, crooked his brow.

Ridiculously, Bella felt her cheeks flush again. She told herself it was the warmth of the fire finally getting through after her cold ride. Yet there was something so damn sensual about this dark, damaged man, something so barely restrained it overwhelmed her, and more. It set her nerves tingling for the feel of his touch against her skin.

“Madame insisted I bring the hamper,” she said, her voice thickening. “Estelle Dubois maintains the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. She seems to think every single woman must be in search of a male.” Even as the words came out her mouth she wished she could take them back. Bella was suddenly floundering, in part, she realized, because she’d been attracted to Tariq—both physically and mentally—long before this moment.

To find him alive, to actually be in his powerful presence, was rattling her. Because Tariq Al Arif in the flesh more than exceeded Bella’s expectations. Everything about him exuded the aura of a Saharan prince from an exotic country steeped in ancient, desert tradition, and standing so near him, she didn’t feel quite real. Again she felt like an Alice that had slipped through some kind of fairy-tale looking glass. Bella in the castle with the scarred “beast” of a prince.

“And you’re not?”

She coughed, eyes watering. “Not what?”

“Looking for a man.”

The heat in her cheeks deepened and she felt irritated by her body’s betrayal. “Like I said, I had a bad breakup with my ex. I came to get away from all that, quite frankly.”

“So it was serious, this relationship of yours?”

“I thought it was.”

Tariq angled his head slightly, reading her. Then he set the wineglasses on the table, picked up the bottle of wine and the corkscrew.

Turning his back to her he struggled to uncork the bottle.

Bella went quickly up to him. “Here, let me.” She reached out, taking the bottle and opener from him. Her hand brushed against his skin as she did, and heat shocked through her. Bella froze, met his eye.

Anger crackled from him in waves. She understood. He’d been a top neurosurgeon and now he couldn’t even open a bottle of wine without fumbling.

“I can see you’re left-handed,” she said softly, averting her eyes from his crippled fingers, focusing instead on twisting the corkscrew, heat still rippling through her. “It must be difficult—” she popped the cork “—adjusting to the use of a nondominant hand.”

A muscle began to work at his jaw.

She poured the wine, handed him a glass, careful not to connect with his skin again.

“Will you ever fully regain use of your left hand?” she said quietly.

Will you ever operate again, play the cello, ride a horse...

He stared at her, intense, silent. Bella began to feel self-conscious.

“I apologize—I’m stepping out of my bounds tonight. What I really—”

“I might regain all the refinement of a wooden club,” he said, taking a deep swallow of his wine. She watched his Adam’s apple move under dusky skin. “If I do the physiotherapy.”

Madame’s words sifted into Bella’s mind.

A private ferry came over from the mainland with gymnasium equipment. A woman came with it... I think she had something to do with the gymnasium equipment, perhaps a personal trainer. But she left very abruptly, the next day...

He’d fired his physiotherapist.

“You’re not doing the exercises?”

He turned and strode to the fire, stared into the flames, glass in hand, firelight dancing in the burgundy liquid.

“To put it simply,” he said, still facing the fire, his voice low and deep in his throat. “The brain-to-limb connection is one of the hardest to regain. Sometimes, I’ll be holding an object in my left hand, then I get distracted, and the thing just drops from my fingers because the neurological connection is missing.”