Perfect Timing: Those Were the Days / Pistols at Dawn / Time After Time. Nancy Warren

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      CHAPTER FOUR

      DR. WILLIAMS bent over the girl, his hand clutching her wrist, his focus directed solely at his pocketwatch. The woman, Tucker noticed, also had a watch. Hers was strapped to a pink strip and wrapped around her wrist. An usual piece of adornment, to be sure. Like nothing he’d seen before, either among the women of Beverly Hills or during his European travels.

      He’d almost pointed it out to Talia and Blythe, but something had caused him to hold his tongue, and by the time Blythe had looked at him, her eyes questioning and concerned, the timepiece had disappeared under the sleeve of the girl’s strange garment.

      “Doctor?” the girl said. “Am I okay?”

      Dr. Williams stood up, stroking his chin. “Your pulse is a bit fast, but not of a level to raise concern. Your pupils are responding properly to light and your reflexes are perfectly normal. Except for your dizzy spells and your inability to remember how you got here, I’d have to say you seem like a perfectly healthy young woman.”

      “Thank you,” she said, with obvious relief.

      “I do need to ask you some questions now, though. I conducted the physical examination, first, to rule out any injuries or illnesses. But now—”

      “You want to check my head. I get it.”

      Williams’s smile was gentle, and Tucker found himself grateful he was treating the woman with such care. Intellectually, he knew that was a ridiculous reaction. The woman had appeared mysteriously in his drawing room, dressed in dark clothes and unknown to any of his friends or guests. A logical guess was that she intended to steal from them, just as Jonathan had suggested. Their kiss, however, had told him otherwise. The press of her lips against his had been a reaction filled with need and desire, but also with honesty. And the longing that had fired his blood had been like nothing he’d experienced before.

      Logic, therefore, had very little hold on Tucker at the moment. He was, quite simply, infatuated. More, he knew—from her face and from her touch—that she did not intend any harm for him or his family. She was in trouble. She needed him.

      And, in truth, he needed her, too. He didn’t understand the depth of feeling that coursed through him, but he knew that it was real.

      “Ask me anything,” the girl was saying to Dr. Williams.

      “Do you know what your name is?”

      “Sylvia,” she said, and Tucker couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t volunteer her last name.

      “A pleasure to meet you, Sylvia,” Dr. Williams said. “Do you know our president?”

      The girl laughed, a little nervously. “Do I look like a girl who moves in those social circles?”

      Tucker laughed, and the doctor joined in.

      “I don’t mean to be flip,” Sylvia said. “But I’m fine. Truly. Just a little dizzy. I was disoriented, but I’m better now.”

      “But you came for Louisa,” Blythe said. “And we don’t know a Louisa.”

      “I met her at a party,” Sylvia said. “Perhaps I misunderstood her last name. Or perhaps she was playing a trick on me.”

      “Why would she do that?” Tucker asked.

      “I don’t know.”

      “Can you stand?” That from the doctor.

      She drew in a breath. “I think so.” She started to climb to her feet, taking Tucker’s outstretched arm when he offered it to her. “Yes,” she said. “See, I’m much better.” She kept clinging to his arm, though, a fact that didn’t trouble Tucker at all.

      “And do you know where you live, my dear?” the doctor asked.

      “Doctor, of course. You’re acting as if no one has ever fainted before,” she said with a charming smile. To Tucker’s eyes, though, the smile didn’t seem to reach her core. She was, he realized, lying. Or at least not telling them the full truth.

      “How’s your head?” he asked. “Anna will have made a place for you by now in one of the guest rooms. We should let you get some sleep.”

      “Oh,” she said. “I couldn’t. I mean, I should…” She trailed off with a frown.

      “You should?”

      “I was just going to say that I should go home. But—”

      “Later,” he said, determined to keep her there. “It’s late, and I wouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ