Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn discussion
Monday Puzzler
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Monday Puzzler, 03/21/11
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Clean, he realized, attempting to ID the scent. Not sterile. Lavender, maybe. He shifted a shoulder, turned his head and sank into luxury. Down pillows. Expensive linens.
Finally, he opened his eyes to soft, slanting sunlight that shone through tall narrow windows, then glanced off gleaming hardwood floors in flickering prisms of blue, yellow and green. It was morning. But of what day? He lifted his arm to check his watch. Gone. Then he slid his hand down beneath the sheet to discover that his clothes were also gone.
He might have been alarmed, maybe should have been, except he recognized the style and the opulence of his quarters.
He was lying in a huge bed in the middle of an equally large bedroom. Tall plastered walls had been painted a cool shade of blue. Pricey artwork hung everywhere, adorned dressers, bookcases. Ornate, expensive furniture – the woman loved her dead kings – filled the room. Sheer panels billowed softly in an ocean-scented breeze that eased in through floor to ceiling windows.
An oasis. Juliana’s oasis. Yeah, he recognized her touch. May have even slept in this bed once before. The question was, why was he here now?
And the bigger question, why was there a long, leggy and very mouthy redhead sound asleep in a chair beside the bed? And the mother of all questions: Why would a woman who had hated his guts on first sight and from all indications hadn’t changed her opinion in the nine months since she’d left Argentina be holding vigil at his side.
He stared at _______________‘s sleeping face. At the generous, ripe mouth that could fool an unsuspecting man into thinking that only sweetness and light and uncensored sex could possibly slip between those lush, sensual lips. At the thick turn of auburn lashes that brushed her cheeks and covered eyes the color of forest moss. Eyes, he reminded himself, that could shoot daggers at a moment’s notice and slice a man’s ego to the quick.
The woman was a pest, a nuisance and the worst kind of trouble. So why was he fighting to convince himself he wasn’t glad to see her?
Drugs, he concluded. Juliana had doused him with some heavy-duty painkillers. But that didn’t answer the most obvious question. What was ______ doing here in Argentina?
He lay his head back down on the pillow, stared at the ceiling and tapped his memory for answers.
They flooded in like the sunlight deluging the room.
The stake out.
The machine gunner.
_________ on the steps of the Congress building.
The car bomb.
Slowly, the rest of the details filed together into a progressive line. He’d come to in Doc’s make-shift ER in back of the cantina. Juliana had been there. Had
told him he needed surgery on his leg.
His leg. Shit. Oh, shit. His leg.
Panic boiled up in his gut with a roiling nausea. He braced himself, then jerked the sheet aside. Forced himself to look down. It was still there.
Sweet Jesus God, his leg was still there. Wrapped from knee to ankle in thick, sterile dressing, but it was there. Relief made him light-headed. The soft rustle of fabric made him realize he had an audience. And he was laying there bare-ass naked.
“I … um … you’re … oh, gosh … awake.”
He turned his head, said nothing. Only watched as ________ stiffly straightened in the chair and made several valiant attempts to keep her gaze above his lap level.
Tried and failed.