Picking Up the Pieces. Barbara Gale

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СКАЧАТЬ brushing him aside. But Harry was unimpressed. Feeling the onset of a headache, a sure sign that his fever was rising, he wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Playing this one close to the breast, Allie?” Watching her flinch, he guessed that his remark hit home. “Ah, the rich and famous at play.”

      “This is not a game. I do not play games.”

      “Then times have changed,” he retorted, suddenly too tired to take her on. Too bad she didn’t understand the facts, or she would appreciate his foul mood. Four months photographing a South American rainforest would exhaust anyone, but one hour with Althea Almott would be just as exhausting. Maybe he should take her advice and move on, pretend he never saw her. The mysterious infection he was fighting that was turning his insides out would be a handicap in dealing with her. And the damned snow was rotten luck when he was weak as could be with no energy to fight the elements. He should have flown to Cancun the way the doctors suggested and slept on the beach until summer.

      And the good news was that no reporter was around to take notes. He could just imagine the headlines: Ambassador’s Wife Snowbound with Lover.

      Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Just look how she sat, perched on the edge of the plastic chair, trying to hide behind those huge rhinestone sunglasses—at three o’clock in the morning, for Pete’s sake. As if any reporter worth his salt wasn’t going to spot the world’s most famous black model—or anybody, for that matter—wrapped in a fifty-thousand-dollar fur coat.

      Ex-model, he corrected himself.

      Wife, now, to the American ambassador to France. No longer the hillbilly country girl from Alabama he’d been so wild about a decade ago. Refashioned: buffed and polished till her smooth black skin glowed like a pearl; her long, slender neck dripped with diamonds; her clothes custom-fitted by Versace. Beyond his touch. She was royalty now; she dined with princes.

      It was the sight of her fellow passengers scattered around the drafty building, trying to get comfortable in a place designed to keep them moving, that finally convinced Althea she really was stuck at the airport. Her frustration was clear. She removed her sunglasses to reward Harry with a long, hard stare. “Harry, your concern is commendable, but I didn’t ask for your help, and I surely don’t appreciate your lousy mood. Like I said before, why don’t you put down my bag and disappear?”

      Her thick-lashed amber eyes may have made her famous, but flashing as they were, Harry was immune. “Althea, honey, I swear I would if I could, but my conscience would never let me sleep. There’s about two, maybe three more inches of snow due to come down before this storm is done, so like it or not, we’re stuck with each other. So, what’s it going to be? How would you like to play this out?” Harry gave her a long searching look.

      He watched as she considered the question, her beautiful face a portrait of uncertainty as she scanned the terminal, looking for an alternative. In the end, he merely shrugged. “All right, Allie, a compromise. We hang out together, and I ask no questions. That way my conscience won’t bother me, and your privacy won’t be invaded.”

      Flopping down beside her, he suddenly didn’t want any answers. He was too busy trying to deny the band of sweat that had broken out across his brow, trying to force down the bile rising in his throat, control the furious way his head was spinning. Christ, was he really going to embarrass himself right there in the terminal? Hell, there was no way he was going to make it home if this kept up. Why weren’t the damned pills working?

      Althea…

      But he couldn’t work words past his parched lips.

      Althea…my head…I can’t breathe… Althea, stop swaying…

      Althea…

      Chapter One

      The waiting room in Elmhurst Hospital was chilly and poorly lit, but Althea didn’t mind. She had her fur coat to warm her and hospital protocol to distract her. Waiting for an ambulance at the snowbound airport had been a major distraction of worry, too, but eventually it arrived to whisk them away. Then the paperwork, and all those questions for which she didn’t have answers. But as long as they were tending to Harry Bensen, wherever he was, having been swallowed up by the medical machine, she didn’t care what the admitting nurse wrote down.

      How strange it had been to run into him. Of all people, didn’t one always say? Old lover, lost love. The set of his shoulders, the way he walked, the tilt of his head, the color of his hair. Had he honestly thought she could ever forget? A woman never forgot her first love. Never.

      When finally she was allowed to see him, every inch of Harry’s torso was wired to various monitors, and an IV was dripping magical curatives into his arm. Although Althea was able to smile with some measure of relief, she couldn’t help noticing how frail he seemed, lying against the starched linen of the hospital bed, his lips white and chapped, the rest of him an alarming shade of yellow. Fighting an odd impulse to brush her lips across his brow, she instead allowed her fingers to skim his burning temple. Harry’s eyes fluttered at the featherlight touch.

      “Hey soldier, how are you feeling?” she whispered.

      Depleted by his illness, tremendously dehydrated, and dazed by the drugs dripping into his arm, Harry was grateful to feel a cool hand on his body. Barely able to open his eyes, his smile was tenuous as he fought the surge of happiness he felt when he saw who was standing by his bedside.

      Althea leaned over him, her concern plain as she brushed his hair from his forehead. Obviously fighting, too, an ineffable sadness. “Oh, Harry, why didn’t you tell me how sick you were? No, don’t answer that,” she hushed him with a timid smile. “It was my fault, I had no idea, I should have noticed. Malaria. Who would have thought? You sure scared the heck out of me, back at the airport, collapsing like that without any warning.”

      “Next time…I’ll send…a telegram.”

      “I wish you would,” Althea admonished him tenderly, recalling her horror as Harry had slid to the cold ground, a ballet in slow motion. “Never mind. The doctors aren’t quite sure what you have but they’re pumping you up with antibiotics. Your blood count is high so they’re running a few tests, but they do promise you a full recovery. They said you have to take better care of yourself, though. No more trips to steamy climates, for one thing.”

      “They…said so?”

      “That and more, way more than I should know about your body,” she teased gently. “I think they assume I’m your wife.”

      “You didn’t correct them?”

      “The path of least resistance.” She thought he was smiling but couldn’t be sure, his lips were so cracked. It probably hurt to speak, it probably hurt for him to move anything, given his high fever.

      “Hush now, I’ll do all the talking.” Gently she pressed a piece of ice to his parched mouth. With the lightest touch she bathed his face and hands with a wet washcloth, trying to cool him down. Eventually he seemed to be more comfortable. You poor guy, she thought, what on earth have you been doing to get to this point? I sure hope this is the worst you’re going to go through. But she knew that was wishful thinking; she hadn’t seen anyone this ill in ages.

      Not wishing to disturb him, but unwilling to leave him alone, Althea sat by his side for an hour, until a nurse came to check on his IV. Although the nurse told her she could stay as long as she liked, Althea knew she still had to battle the snow and figured this was a good time to leave. Quietly she gathered СКАЧАТЬ