LITMIR.BIZ

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      “True love can happen quite fast,” Olivia said with authority. “I used to think it was a myth. It’s not. You may find out yourself someday.”

      “I might point out that Romeo and Juliet were kids and got in a lot of trouble by rushing into things. Utter disaster, in fact.”

      “Only because their families wouldn’t act civilized,” Olivia retorted.

      “Wait, wait, wait,” Darcy begged. “You’re turning everything around.”

      “I’m in love with John,” Olivia said. “I hope to remain in love with him for the rest of my life. And I hope all of our children can learn to coexist like mature adults.”

      “And I’m sure we all hope that our parents will act like mature adults,” Darcy said with unpleasant sharpness.

      “A member of John’s family is ill in Austin,” Olivia said loftily. “My family lives in Austin. A member can look in on him and see to his well being. It is, Darcy, nothing more than simple courtesy.”

      “Mother, it’s anything but simple.”

      “It’s plain old-fashioned good manners,” Olivia returned. “And it is not, I think, too much to ask. Goodbye now, darling. I need to call John immediately. Love to you and Emerald, too.”

      “Mother—”

      “Kisses for you both,” she said, and hung up.

      Olivia stared out at the ocean, the white surf breaking on the rocky coast. She rebuked herself for her cowardice. But she had meant to reveal things to the girls at her own pace, little by little. Darcy was strong, but Emerald was a different matter. Olivia feared springing things on Emerald.

      So Olivia had said nothing about the brand-new engagement ring on her left hand. And she did not yet intend to.

      She picked up the phone and dialed John’s number. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said apologetically. “I hate to call you at work. But this really is an emergency…”

      SLOAN FELT LIKE A JACKASS.

      He’d been wheeled into the emergency room with as much melodrama as if he’d been spurting blood from a dozen gunshot wounds. He’d been poked, prodded, squeezed, palpated, stripped, sponged and medicated.

      Now he was trapped in a hospital room with a small, withered nun with cold hands. She had a thermometer in his mouth and was feeling the glands in his throat with her icy fingers. Her touch gave him an attack of the chills so severe that he feared he would bite the thermometer in two and die of mercury poisoning.

      The phone beside his bed rang, but when he reached for it, she slapped his hand back. She picked up the receiver herself. “This is Mr. English’s room,” she said in a voice so brisk it crackled. “Sister Mary Frances Foley speaking. Mr. English can’t talk right now.”

      “Yes, I can,” said Sloan around the thermometer.

      The little woman glared at him. “No, you can’t,” she snapped. She addressed the caller again. “May I take a message?”

      She listened, then covered the receiver and stared at him through her wire-framed bifocals. She had pale eyes that seemed to look directly into his brain and see all the sins he had ever committed and all that he would commit. “It’s a woman,” she said disapprovingly. “A Darcy Parker.”

      Sloan felt his face flush, his shudder of cold replaced by a surge of heat. He didn’t know if it was due to his fever or to the mention of the Parker woman. If the woman caused it, he didn’t know exactly why.

      Was it shame over how foolishly he had gone to her door, his judgment warped by fever? He supposed it was. Yet the memory of her dark eyes and slender curves stirred a warmth in him that he suspected had nothing to do with Kuala Lumpur and its mosquitoes.

      “Miss Parker has a question, but—” The nun paused dramatically, then held up her hand like a traffic cop. “I do not want you to speak. I will give you a notebook. On it, you will write down your answer. Answer clearly, write neatly, and don’t ramble.”

      Sloan gave her a stare that told her he was not pleased with her high-handedness. She gave him one that told him she did not care.

      She withdrew a notebook from the folds of her black gown and set it down smartly on his bedside tray. It had a black pencil attached.

      She said, “Miss Parker says your car is at her house. You left it open with the keys in it. She wants to know if you need anything from it. Or if you want the car taken somewhere.”

      Sloan scowled and wrote There’s an overnight bag in the trunk. Tell her to put it in a cab. I’ll pay for it. I’ll send someone for the car later.

      He paused and thought again of raven hair and a quirking, voluptuous mouth. He gripped the pen more tightly and added Thank her for her kindness.

      The nun related his message, then listened again. “No, he’s doing well,” she said. “He’s having his temperature taken, that’s all. And he needs his rest. Goodbye.”

      She hung up, glanced at her watch and took the thermometer from his mouth. She gazed upon it without emotion. “You’ve gone down a degree.”

      “What did she say?” Sloan demanded. “Miss Parker.”

      The nun marked his chart with painstaking care. “She said that she’ll bring your bag herself.”

      “She doesn’t have to do that. I told her to send it by cab.”

      “I wouldn’t object to a kindness,” the sister said primly. “There’s little enough of it in the world.”

      “I mean, she doesn’t have to go to the trouble.” He hesitated, then tried to sound nonchalant. “She, uh, asked how I was?”

      “I thought that was obvious from my end of the conversation.” Neatly she shut the notebook, restored it to the folds of her black garment, and turned away. She left the room so silently that it was as if she weren’t walking, but levitating just above the surface of the floor.

      He looked after her, half wondering if she had been a hallucination. Why did half the women he’d talked to today seem as if they’d come from fever dreams?

      There had been Velda with her jalapeño gumdrops, the girl dressed in chain mail, and the large woman who’d been built like a World Federation wrestler and who had brandished a golf club at him. It was tempting to dismiss them as creatures of a delirium.

      On the other hand, there was Darcy Parker, just as unexpected and not at all easy to dismiss. He thought, I was lying in her lap. Her arms were around me. I was foolish and weak, but she tried to give me comfort. Her breast touched my cheek…

      “Oh, hell,” he muttered, trying to thrust away the image.

      He was a man used to being in control. She’d seen him when he wasn’t. He didn’t relish her seeing him again in circumstances just as pathetic—stuck in a hospital bed wearing a stupid hospital gown, having nuns and nurses descend upon him.

      He opened the drawer of his bedside table, fumbled in his wallet for her card and found it. He would call her, tell her not to come. He reached toward the receiver. He would wait to see her until he was his old self, back to normal and once again in charge of his destiny.

      But before he could touch the phone, it rang. He frowned and picked it up. “Hello?”

      “This is your father,” said John English’s voice. “I don’t know what to ask first. How the hell are you? Or what the hell are you doing in Austin?”

      Sloan gritted his teeth and fell back hard against the pillow. “Hello, Dad,” he said with resignation.

      The last time they’d talked, his father had hung up on him. That, in a way, had triggered the entire circus of fever and folly in which he now found himself.

      “I talked

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