Explosive (2 page)

Did those things relate to the fact that Thomas was standing on her dock, looking dazed and shell-shocked? And if so, what was he doing
here
? There was no way he could understand that
she,
of all people, knew details about the dark labyrinth of his family life.

She placed the paintbrush she’d been gripping into a coffee can filled with water and headed toward the side door. She glanced down at herself, hesitating. A few swipes of dried lavender tempura paint decorated her bare ribs and abdomen. She wore a bikini with a pair of jean shorts pulled over the bottoms and white canvas tennis shoes that were so ancient the cloth was separating from the soles in spots.

She should go and change—throw on a shirt at the very least.

But then she recalled the way his head hung at a queer angle as he stared at the sunset-infused lake and she descended the steps.

The closer she got to his rigid figure, the more anxious she became. Before her feet hit the dock, she saw the way that his rib cage moved in and out. It struck her as strange—eerie, even—how he stood so still and yet appeared to be panting, as though from some invisible exertion.

She gasped when he spun around as her foot hit the wooden dock, looking like a ready, lethal warrior anticipating attack. A sensation like flowing, hot liquid sank through her lower belly.

For a few seconds, they just stood frozen in each other’s sights, his stare unnerving her. His jaw was covered with whiskers that were two shades darker than the hair on his head. He typically combed his long bangs back in a conservative style that suited his polished work image. Currently, they hung loose, bracketing his dark brows and eyes that had always reminded Sophie of a deep forest wood with shards of sunlight breaking through the topmost branches.

Sophie heard a speedboat motor hum in the distance through the increasingly loud throb of the heartbeat in her ears.

After a moment she summoned her voice, trying to grasp on to a fleeing sense of reality.

“Thomas? What a surprise. It’s me—Dr. Gable? Sophie? From Dr. Lancaster’s office?” She waved lamely at the glistening waters and laughed. “I hadn’t realized we shared space at Haven Lake as well.”

Despite her growing uncertainty, she’d forced her voice into the level, reassuring tone she took with someone who was agitated or panicked. She’d had her share of crisis training to become a physician, but even before she’d gone to medical school she’d worked for a year as a clinical social worker with abused children. She’d long ago learned to soothe instinctively . . . without thought.

She was so caught up in the bizarre, electric moment that it never occurred to her to question why she would treat a six foot four male in his prime, a man who typically moved through the minutes of his life with the easy grace of a prince, like an agitated child. Especially since Thomas Nicasio hardly seemed childlike to her at that moment. If anything, he reminded her of a wild, cornered animal.

A wild,
dangerous
animal?

The worn black T-shirt he wore carried the inexplicable caption
Mighty are those that flirt with fate, EOD
. The material skimmed across his long, lean torso, making it easy for her to see his rapid breathing. She’d never seen him in anything but a suit before, but she had to admit his broad shoulders, narrow hips, strong thighs, and long legs were perfectly suited to jeans. Her gaze skittered across his crotch. She glanced guiltily back up to his rigid face in time to see a spark ignite in his eyes.

Her heartbeat amplified in her ears.

A strong sexual current had often leapt between them in the past, but at the moment, Sophie felt burned by the heat of his stare. She tensed when he took a step toward her.

“Tom. Call me Tom.”

Her mouth fell open at the sound of his deep, hoarse voice. Why did he sound like he hadn’t spoken in days? Her expert eye took in the pinched look of his bold, masculine features, the whiteness at the corners of his mouth, the look of exhaustion that seemed to reside behind the maniclike intensity of his gaze.

She turned her shoulder to him in a nonthreatening stance and beckoned with her hand.

“Why don’t you come inside, Tom. You must be thirsty.”

For a few seconds she had no idea what he would do, this man who was both familiar to her and yet a stranger, a man who had never said much more than a few dozen words to her at a time if he spoke at all. He might have laughed. He might have flown at her in a rage. Anything and everything seemed possible in that gravid moment. Considering her readiness for catastrophe, what he did next should have seemed mild.

Instead, it jolted her to the core of her being.

He walked toward her with a long-legged stride that ate up the space between them in a second. She tensed and a tingling sensation ran beneath her skin when his gaze traveled over her naked torso.

He halted less than a foot away from her.

Close.

Closer than casual human contact.

“I came looking for you.”

She felt his warm breath tickle her upturned face. He reached for her. His hand felt hot and dry encircling her own, as if he had a furnace working overtime inside him. She just stared up at him, speechless.

“I came looking for you, Sophie,” he repeated.

“Why?”

He just nodded soberly toward her house. She was still stunned when he gently urged her to accompany him, his stare never leaving her face.

The wraparound porch was a landscape of golden light and shadow when they approached the side entrance to the house. The door squeaked open, and she led him onto the screened-in portion of the porch. Their hands were still locked, so she felt it when he paused. She turned back to see him staring at her work in progress. He glanced from the painting to the lake, and back at the canvas again, his expression unreadable.

“It’s not very good. I just do it for fun,” she said, wondering why she whispered. Maybe it was because the atmosphere suddenly seemed electrically charged, expectant . . . like the air before a storm. Her breath stilled when he suddenly transferred his gaze to her naked abdomen.

“I was wondering why you had purple paint on you.”

She gave a small laugh when she saw how his well-shaped lips quirked—very slightly—in amusement.

“I used to tell Rick you were like the little girl in the neighborhood who was always so clean; the kind that Mama wouldn’t let play rough with the other kids . . . the kind that was never allowed to get dirty.” His palpable gaze flickered over her breasts and neck before he met her stare.

Her mirth faded.

“Rick said that was just my lame excuse not to ask you out,” he finished.

Sophie swallowed thickly. This situation just kept getting more and more bizarre. She knew from her friend Andy how close Thomas had been to his brother, Rick Carlisle. Not that she wouldn’t have already guessed it the few times she’d witnessed the two men’s easy camaraderie when she’d glimpsed them together in her office or in the building.

“You must be upset, Tom,” she whispered. “Is that why you’re here? Are you hurting . . . after your brother’s and nephew’s death?”

His eyes glittered with emotion in an otherwise masklike countenance.

“Come inside.” She tightened her hold on his hand and guided him down the dim hallway to the kitchen. The windows there faced east, depriving them of the sunset light. She flipped a switch, chasing away the dark shadows.

If she’d thought that electric lights and her cheery, homey kitchen would bring a sense of normalcy to this surreal situation, she’d thought wrong. One glance at Thomas’s tall, whipcord lean body and rigid features and she existed in the
Twilight Zone
all over again. Perhaps it was the thick, nearly tangible cloud of tension that surrounded him that contributed to her sense of floundering for familiar territory.

She released his hand and headed toward the refrigerator, trying to shake off her sense of unease.

“I made fresh lemonade earlier today. Would you care for some?”

“Do you have anything harder?” he rasped.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “I have some wine in the pantry.”

“Never mind. Lemonade is fine.”

She studied him anxiously. Under the bright fluorescent lights, she could more easily see that a fine sheen of sweat covered his face.

Fever,
she thought.

“Why don’t you sit down at the bar,” she suggested before she headed toward the refrigerator. She filled two glasses with ice and lemonade and handed him one. He hadn’t taken her advice to sit down and still stood in the precise spot where she’d left him. He took the glass and drained the contents in two seconds. When he’d finished, she took the empty glass and gave him the other one. While he drank, she encircled the wrist of his free hand with her own.

He swallowed the second glass of lemonade almost as quickly as the first. When he’d finished, she sensed him watching her from above, his head lowered while she concentrated and counted the beats of his rapid, strong pulse while watching the seconds pass on her kitchen clock.

The silence seemed to press on them like a thick cloak.

“Would you like some more?” she asked after she’d finished and dropped his wrist.

“No. I’ve had enough.”

“Tom, you’re ill,” she said, looking up at him.

He blinked. He glanced around her kitchen with a slight scowl on his features. His confusion seemed to fade when he looked at her face again.

“You might be right. I’m not sure how I got here.”

She took the glass he held from his stiff grip and set it along with the other one on the kitchen island.

“Do you mean you don’t remember?”

For a few seconds he seemed uncertain. “I remember driving here. I had to get away.”

“Had to get away from what?” she asked slowly.

He just stared at her with those brooding green eyes flecked with gold. Sophie supposed that given everything that had happened to Thomas Nicasio lately, he had plenty of reasons for needing an escape.

He remained immobile when she reached up to touch his forehead and cheek. His skin felt clammy. She mentally cursed when she recalled she didn’t have a thermometer in the lake house. Still, she’d guess that if he ran a fever, it wasn’t an alarming one.

Her fingers delved through thick, surprisingly soft hair, searching for wounds on his scalp. A shiver coursed through him when her hand reached the base of his skull. She caught his scent. Despite his obvious illness and uncharacteristically disheveled state, Thomas Nicasio smelled
good
.

Cautiously, she met his stare.

For a few seconds, neither of them moved. Sophie suspected neither of them breathed.

“Did you hit your head, Tom?” she asked eventually, her fingers resuming their careful search.

“I don’t think so.”

“Have you been drinking?” she asked, even though she’d inhaled his breath and already suspected that he wasn’t drunk. He shook his head.

“Drugs?”

Again, he shook his head. She pushed back his hair. Her gaze shot to his when she saw the discoloration near his hairline on his left temple.

“You
have
been hit.” She reached for the wrist of his right arm, holding his stare all the while. Her mind churned when she glanced down and saw the abrasions and flecks of dried blood on his knuckle.

“You’ve been in a fight,” she stated tersely. Did a shadow of defiance cross his features, or was that her imagination? Well, perhaps she had sounded accusatory. It wasn’t her place to judge him, after all. “Are you in any pain?”

“No.”

“Sick to your stomach?”

He shrugged negligently.

“How is it that you’re
here
, Tom?” she asked, despite the memory of what he’d said earlier.

I came looking for you, Sophie
.

He wasn’t entirely lucid, after all.

“Do you know someone who lives near here?” she prompted when he didn’t speak.

“No. I only know you.”

“Well ... why did you come looking for
me
?” she couldn’t resist asking in an anxious rush. “Did you find yourself getting ill on the road and need a doctor? Did you remember me telling you I was vacationing here, at Haven Lake?”

A spasm went through him and he cupped his right brow with his palm, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I’m taking you to the emergency room in Effingham,” she declared, alarmed by the sight of what must have been a jolt of intense pain going through him.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you’ve
got
to, you’re not well and—”

“I’m
not
going to the hospital,” he grated out between clenched teeth.

She went completely still at his harsh tone. She considered calling the police, but then he opened his eyes.

“All right.”

The two words leaving her own lips surprised her a little, but she felt as if she didn’t have a choice once she’d looked into those twin pools of turmoil and anguish. “You might have a concussion, but you’re feverish, as well. I’ll get you some Tylenol and then you need to rest. Will you at least promise me to do that for now?”

“I’m not sleepy,” he said hoarsely. His gaze lowered. Heat flooded her cheeks. He stared at her breasts covered in the thin bikini top. Her body responded to his blatantly sexual gaze against her will. Her nipples stiffened beneath the flimsy fabric.

He stepped toward her.

Sophie stepped back.

“You’re ill. You need to rest. Is there someone you want me to call? Will someone be missing you in Chicago? Never mind. Come on,” she said when he just stared at her. She waved her hand and led him down the dim hallway to the guest bedroom. She turned on the light and inspected the state of the room. She hadn’t been in it since early June, just after Andy and his wife, Sheila, had visited for a weekend.

Her mind sifted through his symptoms, trying to make sense of his bizarre presentation as she bustled around in the guest bath, laying out clean towels and getting Tylenol out of the medicine cabinet. His feverish state implied that something physical was going on, but the pain she’d seen in his eyes just moments ago argued for something psychological. The bruise on his temple wasn’t massive, but she knew the brain could sustain considerable injury from a blow without any obvious external trauma.