Rafe Carlisle woke with a start, dazed and disoriented for the seconds it took to register his surroundings and the woman shaking him by the shoulders. Slowly the pieces came back to him, a series of snapshots that blurred in and out of focus with the pounding of his head.

He remembered landing the company jet at Bourke Airport, remembered heading out again in the Cessna. The storm he’d thought he could outrace. A hazel-eyed angel of mercy and rain so loud he’d thought it was pounding holes in his skull. 

Vaguely he recalled waking at his angel’s homestead and the struggle to get him inside. Less vaguely he recalled the cold compress she applied to the side of his head. Such a promising start, spoiled when she insisted he sit still, stay awake and answer the same questions over and over with a persistency that hammered worse than his killer headache.

Realizing she’d succeeded in waking him, Nurse Naggard stopped the shaking and leaned back out of his face. This brought her into clearer focus, and Rafe blinked with surprise. “You showered.”

“Only because you kept nagging,” she said archly

He kept nagging? That was rich! 

He thought about telling her so, but she shifted again, totally distracting him with the sharp, sweet scent of whatever she’d showered with. And her hair...he hadn’t noticed she had so much of it. The mass of damp, brown curls hung almost to her waist. Pity about the twin furrows of worry and annoyance between her brows--they completely ruined the pretty effect. 

Rafe started to shake his head with regret, then stopped himself. Any movement caused a rolling wave of nausea, as if his brain hadn’t regained its balance after whatever walloping it had taken. She’d told him he’d been out cold for a minute or two, that he must have hit his head during what had been a rough landing. 
He didn’t remember.

He did remember she’d been wet, right through. Now she wore a green sweater that looked soft and pretty and dry. “You changed,” he said. “Good.”

“You slept,” she countered. “Bad.”

Ah, yes, his nagging angel of mercy had a quick mouth. He remembered that now. “I was just resting my eyes.” 

A lie, but a fair one, given the way she kept trying to blind him. Right on cue she picked up a flashlight and tapped it against the palm of her hand. Her very own instrument of torture. 

“No.” He held up a hand, keeping her at bay. “Enough is enough. I remember where I am and who I am. I remember my mother’s name, my brothers’ names, and even my third cousin Jasper’s middle name.”

The last was an exaggeration, but he’d had it with this routine. Every half hour, her same questions, his same answers, while the beam of light burned a hole clear through his pupil and into his brain. 

“Don’t be a baby.” She picked up his hand and turned it over. Despite the “baby” barb, Rafe let her take his pulse. He liked the cool press of her fingers against his wrist, liked the serious intensity on her face and the infinitesimal movement of her lips as she counted the beats. “Only one more hour, as per the doctor’s instructions.”

The doctor she’d called when the weather defeated her aim of driving him to the nearest hospital. The instructions involved basic observations and this neuro-responsive B.S. that he’d endured for at least three hours. And that, he decided, was long enough.

“My pupils are equal and reacting?” he asked.

“Last time I checked, yes, but--“

“Has anything changed in the last half hour?”

“No, but--“

“Fine.” Rafe wrested the flashlight from her hand. “No more. I’m going to sleep.”

He started to lift his legs, angling himself to lie down, and her voice rose in alarm. “You’re not sleeping here. The couch is too short. It’s not comfort--”

“It’s horizontal.” And at the moment that’s all Rafe required. To shut his eyes, to stop talking and rest his aching brain--

“There’s a bed made up,” she relented with a heavy sigh. “But first, are you sure you don’t need to call anyone?”

“No calls,” he said. 

“What about food?” 

“Just bed.” 

He got to his feet. And when his brain took a moment to adjust to the new upright perspective, she helped him steady. He didn’t mind the solicitous hand at his elbow, and he liked the sweep of her hair against his shoulder and the scent--peaches, he decided--that drifted from her skin. He enjoyed the brush of her hip against his thigh as she ushered him to a hallway off the living room. And when he started to turn into the first doorway, when she stood her ground and blocked his progress, he really enjoyed the soft pressure of her breast against his ribs.

“That’s my room,” she said, a bit breathless as if she, too, was aware of that unplanned contact. “You’re next on the right.” She steered him that way. “And it would ease my mind if you could stay awake ten minutes so I can do one more check.“

“I’ll be asleep in five.”

She made an impatient sound, tongue against teeth. “Are you always this difficult?” 

“Are you?”

Surprise swung her gaze up to meet his. A pretty mix of gray and green and brown, her eyes, in the muted light of the hallway. “I’m not difficult.”

“Huh.” Whirring head notwithstanding, he felt an urge to tease--to look into those pretty eyes and ask if that meant she was easy. But she nudged the door to his room open, flicked the light switch, and the sudden brightness knifed through his brain. 

A short uncensored curse hissed from his mouth. Muttering a quick apology, she turned the light off, but Rafe had caught a glimpse of the bed. Big, broad, dressed in a mile-thick quilt, it crooned, Come to Mama. 

“Oh, yeah,” Rafe murmured, pushing off the doorjamb to answer that sultry siren’s call. 

Catriona, apparently, moved too. 

Perhaps she thought he needed help negotiating the semi-darkness. Perhaps she was still hand-on-elbow in case her patient fell. Whatever the reason, she was there at his side, fussing about extra blankets and bathroom directions, when he made it bedside. 

And when, with a blissful moan, he collapsed into the thick folds of feather-down comforter, she overbalanced and went down with him. He heard the heavy hitch of her surprised breath as the bed came up to greet their fall. Horizontal at last, engulfed in sweet-smelling quilt and sweeter-smelling female, Rafe couldn’t bring himself to move. 

He should, he mused, at least move his hand--the one resting atop a very sweet curve of breast. And he would, just as soon as he summoned enough energy. Meanwhile his eyes drifted shut and the night he’d planned before leaving Sydney drifted through his dwindling consciousness.

If not for the storm he’d be at his destination now. His unexpected arrival would have shocked the blazes out of his one-time girlfriend, Nikki Bates, but not nearly as much as the reason for his visit. Right about now he’d have been getting to that point. Despite a mountain of reservations and providing he could wring the words from his resistive mind, he’d have been asking Nikki how she felt about having his baby.

Excerpt from THE RICH STRANGER, Silhouette Desire® Sept 2005, ISBN 0373766807
©Bronwyn Jameson

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