LITMIR.BIZ

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“Don’t worry, I’m not going to charge you rent.”

      Thinking was rapidly becoming difficult for him. He needed to stay on point. “I’ve got places to go, people to see.”

      “The places’ll still be there tomorrow. And the day after that,” she added for good measure. “And if the people are worth anything, so will they.”

      Kayla had no doubt that the pill was taking effect. She should have given it to him in the first place, she thought, but she’d needed his input to see how bad he was. He was going to be asleep in a few more minutes, she judged.

      She sat down on the coffee table facing him. Taylor lowered his haunches and sat down beside her like a silent consort.

      “Right now,” she continued in a soft, soothing voice, “you need to rest. The roads are probably flooded, so you wouldn’t be going anywhere, anyway. Every time it rains like this, Shelby becomes an island.”

      “Shelby?” he asked groggily.

      “The town you’re passing through.” It was hardly a dot on the map. Most people didn’t even know they’d been through it. Leaning forward, Kayla placed her hand on his arm to make him feel secure. “I gave you something to make you sleep, Alain. Stop fighting it and just let it do its thing.”

      He liked the way his name sounded on her lips.

      The thought floated through his head without preamble. He was drifting, he realized. And his limbs were growing heavier, as if they didn’t belong to him anymore.

      “If…I…fall asleep…” He was really struggling to get the words out now.

      She leaned in closer to hear him. “Yes?”

      “Will…you…have your way with me now?”

      She laughed and shook her head. This one was something else.

      “No,” she assured him, not quite able to erase the smile from her lips. “I won’t have my way with you.”

      “Too…bad.”

      And then there was no more conversation. His eyelids had won the battle and closed down.

      Chapter Four

      He was being watched.

      The unshakable sensation of having a pair of eyes fixed on him, on his every move—from close range—bore through the oppressive, thick haze that was swirling around him.

      Alain struggled to surface, to reach full consciousness and open his eyes. When he finally succeeded, only extreme control kept him from crying out in surprise.

      Approximately five inches separated his face from the dog’s muzzle.

      Alain jerked up, drawing his elbows in under him.

      The salvo of pain that shot through him registered an instant later. This time, a moan did escape.

      In response, the dog reared up and licked him. Alain grimaced and made a noise that expressed something less than pleasure over the encounter.

      “Welcome back.”

      The cheerful voice was coming from behind him. Before he could turn his head to look at her, Kayla moved into his line of vision.

      She’d changed her clothes, he noticed. It looked as if she was wearing the same curve-hugging jeans, but instead of a T-shirt, she had on a green pullover sweater that played up the color of her eyes—among other things.

      It took him a second to raise his gaze to her face. “How long was I out?”

      She bent to pat Winchester on the head. The dog had spent the entire night at Alain’s side. There was a definite attachment forming, at least from the dog’s point of view.

      “You slept through the night,” Kayla told him. She had spent it in the chair opposite him, watching to make sure he was all right. “Rather peacefully, I might add.” And then, because he’d mentioned a woman’s name during the night, she couldn’t resist asking, “Who’s Lily?”

      That question had come at him from left field. Did this woman know his mother? It seemed unlikely, given that she was wrapped up with her animals, and the only animals her mother liked were the two-legged kind. In bed.

      Alain watched Kayla’s face as he answered, “My mother. Why?”

      “You called out to her once during the night.” She cocked her head, curious. “You call your mother by her first name?” She’d been around six years old before she even knew her parents had other names besides Mommy and Daddy. She couldn’t imagine referring to either of them by their given names.

      “No, not really.” Since he couldn’t remember if he’d even dreamed, he hadn’t a clue as to why he’d call out his mother’s name, and he didn’t know any other Lily. But he was more curious about something else. “You stayed up all night watching me sleep?” Why would she do that? he wondered, feeling oddly comforted by the act.

      Kayla laughed as she shook her head. “We’re a little rural here, but I’m not that desperate for entertainment. No, I didn’t stay up all night watching you sleep. I spent part of it sleeping myself,” she assured him.

      In actuality, she’d spent very little of it asleep. His breathing had been labored at one point, and she’d worried that she might have given him too much of the medication, so she’d remained awake to monitor him. But she didn’t feel there was any reason for Alain to know that.

      “Nothing I wouldn’t have done for any of my other patients,” she continued nonchalantly. “Even if you don’t have fur.” And then she looked a little more serious. “How’s the head?”

      Until she asked, Alain hadn’t realized that the anvil chorus was no longer practicing their latest performance inside his skull. He touched his forehead slowly as if to assure himself that it was still there.

      “Headache’s gone,” he said in amazement. The way it had hurt last night, he’d been fairly certain it was going to split his head open. And now it was gone, as if it had never existed. Except for the state of his ribs, he actually felt pretty good.

      Pleased, Kayla nodded. “Good.” Moving away from the coffee table, she turned toward the kitchen. “Hungry?”

      He was about to say no. He was never hungry first thing in the morning, requiring only pitch-black coffee until several hours after he was awake and at work. But this morning there was this unfamiliar pinch in his stomach. It probably had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t had any dinner last night, he reasoned.

      He nodded slowly in response to her question. “Yes, I am.”

      Kayla caught the inflection in his voice. “You sound surprised.”

      “I am,” he admitted. “I’m not usually hungry first thing in the morning.”

      He was probably always too busy to notice, she guessed. People in the city tended to spin their wheels a lot, going nowhere and making good time at it. She should know; she’d been one of those people for a while. “Country air will do that to you.”

      Her comment surprised him. “So you consider this the country?”

      That seemed like an odd thing for him to ask. “Don’t you?”

      Alain laughed shortly. “Last night, I considered it Oz,” he admitted. “But usually ‘country’ means farmland to me.”

      She supposed there was an argument for that. To her, any place that didn’t pack in a hundred people to the square yard was the country.

      “There used to be nothing but farms around here. We’ve still got a few.” And she loved to drive by them whenever she had the chance. Not to mention that the families on that acreage were always opened to taking in some of her dogs. “Corn and strawberries, mostly,” she added.

      Ariel was shifting

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