He heard a small plop of sound, like a jacket or sweater being dropped. And there were suddenly new, vague scents in the room—camellias, strawberries, oranges. And through the scissor-slashing pain, he thought he caught a glimpse of long, dark-cinnamon-red hair.
When the headaches got this bad, though, he was never sure what was reality and what was hallucination.
“I don’t want you to waste energy talking,” she continued quietly. “But I need to know what these headaches are about. Your brothers told me you were recovering from injuries. So, did you get hit on your head or your neck? Is that the cause of the pain?”
He tried to answer without moving his lips. “No. I’ve got dirty bomb parts sticking out all over my body.
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But not my neck. Not my head. Hell.” He squeezed his eyes closed, clenched his teeth. “No more talking. Go away.”
“I will,” she promised him blithely, but then didn’t. “So this is a migraine?”
He didn’t answer, but that didn’t seem to deter her.
“If it’s a migraine, you’ve surely had a doctor prescribe some serious pain medication for you.…”
It was like ignoring taxes. It didn’t work. So he tried answering her again. “I have buckets full of pills.
Ergotamine. Beta-blockers. Calcium channel blocker. Codeine—” Hell. Even talking this quietly jostled new razor-edged nerve endings. “Quit taking them all. Don’t help. Only make me throw up. Then it’s worse…”
Alarmed, he realized she was coming closer. She definitely had long, cinnamon-red hair. Other impressions bombarded him—that strawberry scent and hint of camellias. A wide, sensual mouth.
Snapping clear eyes. Blue eyes. Too blue.
“Get out,” he said. If he had to throw her out, he would. He’d undoubtedly hurl if he tried any real physical movement, end up shaking and sick from the exertion, but this time he meant it. He’d had enough.
Finallyshe seemed to get it, because she obeyed and turned around. He heard the soft footfalls, heard the distant sound of the back door opening, his brothers’ voices, then the door closing again.
The sudden silence should have given him peace, but it wasn’t that easy. He concentrated on closing his eyes, not moving, not thinking, not breathing any more than he had to. But the little boy’s face kept showing up in his mind. A child. A young child. Like all the young children he used to teach. And the drum thudding in his brain sounded like a judge’s gavel, as if he were being accused of a nameless crime, as if he’d been found guilty without ever having a chance to defend himself.
He was sinking deeper into the pain when he heard her voice again—her voice, her sounds, her presence and, yeah, her dogs. One leaped on his stomach, tried to nuzzle under his hand.
“Down, Mop,” she whispered, and again the scruffy pup immediately obeyed. As if she thought he could conceivably be interested, she started chitchatting in that velvet-low voice. “Normally I work at home, so the dogs are used to being with me. And I do leave them sometimes. They’ve got a dog door and a big, fenced-in backyard. But the thing is, they just hate it when I leave in the evening, so I tend to bring them if I possibly can.”
“No.” This had gone on far enough. He got it now—the purpose of the casual chitchat had been to distract him from whatever the Sam Hill she was doing. He heard rustling sounds behind him, smelled more odd, evocative fragrances, then heard the strike of a match. When she turned off the lamp, the only light in the room came from the teardrop flames of a few candles. The darkness was much easier on his eyes, his head, only the rest of the smells and sounds made no sense. They weren’t bad sensations. They were just alien to the house and him.
“Close your eyes,” she repeated.
“No. Why? For God’s sake, do I have to get up and throw you out of the house to get you to leave?”
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“Fox,” she said gently, “close your damn eyes and quit fighting me. I’m nobody you need to worry about. Just shut up and let go.”
That was such a ridiculous thing for a stranger to say that momentarily he was too startled to respond.
Even the memory flashes disappeared. He tried to concentrate, because he was determined to push past the pain and get up. She was leaving. He figured she had to be some kind of medical do-gooder his brothers had brought in, but it didn’t make any difference. He was a pinch away from losing his cookies.
His only hope was staying so still that the pain got no worse.
Except that he had to get rid of the redhead first. “You’re all done, lady. I don’t know what the hell you…I…oh. Oh. Oh, God.”
She touched him.
She was behind him, out of sight, must have knelt down right at his head, because he felt her hands on his temples. Cool, smooth fingers whispered on his temples and forehead. There was a substance on her hands—something slippery that smelled like Creamsicles. She stroked the narrow spot below his eyebrows, then the vee above his nose, then soothed that light-scented oil into his forehead, into his hairline.
He opened his mouth to swear at her again, even got out the ‘f’ sound of the word he furiously wanted to express…only he forgot.
He meant to swear, he really did, but nothing came out but a groan.
A weak, vulnerable groan. Exasperated, he tried to do the cussing thing again, only to repeat the same problem. He forgot.
Her fingers sifted into his short, coarse hair, fingertips gently massaging the skin, the pads of the fingers soothing, smoothing. The slick, soft stuff went into his hair, into his scalp. He didn’t care.
“I can’t make a migraine go away,” she said quietly. “But if we can get you
