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“Perhaps he’ll slow down a little now,” Julie said gently. “People can change, you know, even people like Patrick.” But the look in her pretty green eyes said she didn’t really believe it any more than he did.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to excuse myself,” the doctor said. “There’s another patient I have to see before I leave. If you have any questions, I’ll be in my office tomorrow.”
Alex watched him walk away, took a steadying breath and turned toward Julie. “Shall we go in and see him?” he asked with tender affection.
He had known Julie Ferris for the past eight years, had been her mentor in the real estate business and come to love her like the daughter he never had. He knew she cared a great deal for his son. But not enough to overlook his many failings. Even Alex couldn’t hope for that.
Julie took hold of his thin, veined hand, lacing her fingers through his. As Nathan shoved his wheelchair through the door, he noticed how tired she looked, the tight, strained lines around her mouth. It appeared as if she had slept in the wrinkled pink linen suit she wore. Perhaps for a time she had.
Julie held the door so Nathan could push him into the room. Surprisingly Patrick’s eyes were open when they walked in.
Julie left Alex’s side and moved toward him, clasped one of his dark hands in her own. “We’ve been so worried. How are you feeling?”
“Better.” He smiled at her, but it looked strained and unsteady. “I’m glad you’re here. I should have known you…would be.” The words sounded rough, husky, as if he had trouble forcing them out.
“Your father’s here, too.” Julie stepped back as Nathan wheeled Alex closer to the bed.
“I got here as soon as I heard,” he said. “Julie was playing protector. She didn’t call me until she knew for sure you’d be all right.”
Patrick smiled again, a little less stiffly this time. “She spends more time watching out for other people than she does watching out for herself.”
“Are you kidding?” Julie squeezed his hand. “If I didn’t have someone to look after, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
“You can look after me any time you like,” Patrick said, and for an instant, he seemed surprised he’d said the words, then he relaxed and looked up at her. “The doctor says I’ll be out of here in a couple of days. You can look after me back at the office.”
“He also says you’re supposed to take it easy. If it takes Babs and me, Nathan, Alex and Dr. Manley all put together, we’re going to see that you do.”
Patrick said nothing to that. He was watching her strangely, staring into her eyes as if he wanted to reach down inside her. Color crept into her cheeks. Her hand fluttered nervously when she withdrew it from his.
A noise in the hall disturbed them, drew Alex’s attention to the opening door. “I’m sorry,” the stout nurse said, “but all of you will have to leave. It’s time for Mr. Donovan’s medication. He needs peace and quiet, and as much rest as he can get.”
Patrick made an disgruntled sound in his throat.
“I’ll be back to see you in the morning,” Julie said. “In the meantime, get some sleep—and Patrick?” A fine black eyebrow arched up. “For once in your life, do what the doctor says.”
But Julie’s admonitions had never had much success in controlling Patrick’s excesses. Alex wished his son could learn to control himself.
Sitting at her desk, going over the Whitelaw escrow file, Julie answered the phone and was surprised to hear the sound of Patrick’s voice coming through the receiver.
“Julie?”
“Patrick? You’re feeling well enough to use the phone?”
“Yes…in fact they’re releasing me today.” Since his heart attack, his voice sounded a little huskier than it usually did, a bit gruffer, yet at the same time more refined. Perhaps it was the oxygen he’d been forced to breathe…or maybe it was just her imagination.
“That’s wonderful, Patrick.” She had gone to see him during visiting hours every day, but after the first time, she had stayed only briefly. As soon as word got out of Patrick’s illness, the corridor outside his room had been clogged with his legions of women, which was why the next words that came from him over the phone were so surprising.
“I was wondering…if you weren’t too busy…if you might be able to pick me up.”
Something unfurled in her stomach, a mixture of wariness and pleasure. Julie ruthlessly forced it down. When she spoke to him next, a note of tartness rose into her voice. “I thought Anna, or Charlotte, or—”
“If you don’t have time, I understand. I know how much work you have to do.”
She felt churlish and silly. She and Patrick were friends, after all. Of course she’d be happy to pick him up. “I’m not that busy. What time are you being released?”
“Sometime after two. They didn’t exactly say.”
“All right, I’ll be there at two.”
“It might be later. I can call you after the paperwork’s done and I’m ready to leave. It won’t take long for you to get here.”
“I’ll be there at two. I can imagine how eager you are to get out of there. Maybe I can hurry things along.” If it hadn’t seemed so foolish, she would have sworn she could feel him smile as she hung up the phone.
As Patrick had predicted, the paperwork wasn’t finished when she arrived at the hospital at two-fifteen. Patrick was still in bed, fidgeting nervously, ringing the bell for the nurse for at least the tenth time since noon.
“Sorry,” he said, “I should have insisted you wait for my call.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll speak to the nurse and see if I can’t get them to hurry.”
A few minutes later, she returned with the news that Dr. Manley had just come in and signed the release forms. The nurse would be there in a few more minutes to help him get dressed. As soon as he was ready, he could leave.
“I don’t need the woman’s help,” Patrick grumbled, swinging his long, suntanned legs to the side of the bed. The sheet slid away. Julie noticed the white cotton hospital gown had bunched midthigh and that his bare legs were muscled and covered with a dusting of fine black hair. “She’s more overbearing than a…than a…”
“Drill sergeant?” Julie supplied.
He seemed to ponder that. Then he smiled. “Exactly. I’d rather do it on my own.” But when he tried to stand up, his legs turned suddenly unsteady and a shaft of weakness rippled through him.
“Here, let me help you.”
Patrick swayed precariously as she drew near and only the arm she slid beneath his shoulders kept him from sprawling on the floor.
“Thanks,” he said softly.
He was staring at her oddly, studying her with those striking blue eyes. Something fluttered in her stomach, sent a thread of heat spiraling through her. It made her notice how handsome he was, even with his hair slightly mussed and the ugly white hospital gown sliding off a wide, tanned shoulder. It was ridiculous and yet she couldn’t deny that physically, she had always been attracted to Patrick.
His glance shifted, came to rest on the place where their two bodies touched. She could feel the heat shimmering between them and apparently so could he. His whole body stiffened and impulsively he jerked away, nearly knocking them both to the ground.
“For heaven’s sake, Patrick, take it easy. If you keep that up, you’re going to land us both in a heap. Why don’t you just stand still and I’ll get your clothes. You can sit in the chair and put them on.”
He simply nodded. His face looked flushed and even his ears were red. She couldn’t imagine Patrick Donovan being embarrassed in front of a woman, but it certainly looked as though he was. She took her time removing his shirt, shoes, and pants from the tiny closet, giving him a chance to collect himself. The items were freshly laundered, she saw, not the clothes he had been wearing when he’d been brought in. Anna or Charlotte or one of his whoevers must have brought clean clothes from his apartment. She wondered why he hadn’t asked the woman to pick him up.
Setting his garments on a table beside the chair, she pulled open the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me. All you have to do is call out.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said stiffly, and began to rifle through the clothes.
Outside the room, Julie sat down on a narrow gray vinyl bench. Watching patients and nurses, doctors and visitors making their way down the hall, she toyed with the strap of her purse and hoped Patrick was truly all right.
A few minutes later, the door opened up and he walked out into the corridor, smiling as if he was pleased with himself for simply getting dressed, though she couldn’t imagine why he would be.
“I’m ready if you are,” he said.
Julie came to her feet. “I’m afraid you still can’t leave. You’ll have to go out in a wheelchair. The nurse says that’s hospital policy.” It occurred to her that for a man recovering from a heart attack, he certainly looked good.
In navy blue slacks and a short-sleeved, knit pullover sweater, he could have just stepped off of a billboard.
Patrick stared at her and frowned. “A wheelchair? Why would I have to do that?”
“Because they don’t want to get sued if you should fall.”
The nurse walked up just then, a big beefy woman in her fifties. “That’s right, Mr. Donovan, that’s the way it’s got to be, and if you want to blame somebody for it, blame the shyster lawyer who sued us for damages and won.”
He had nothing to say to that, just sat down quietly and let the woman wheel him away. Julie was a little amazed. Patrick was anything but meek, especially when he didn’t get his way. Then again, maybe the heart attack had left him weaker than he looked.
Val let the woman push him into the elevator and the stainless steel doors slid closed. Beside him in a soft peach suit, Julie Ferris fidgeted with the strap of her over-the-shoulder purse.
He tried not to look at her. When he did, he thought of the way Patrick Donovan’s body—his body now—had behaved when she had unwittingly pressed against him to steady his wobbly legs.
He understood what had happened. He understood an erection—theoretically.
The soft feel of her breasts had triggered a memory of her naked, thrashing on the blue-veined curlon examination table, her small, well-formed body fighting the invisible force that had held her in place.
The meshing of that memory with those Patrick Donovan carried, heightened by the close physical contact, had caused his reproductive organ to grow momentarily hard. He knew it meant the male of the species was physically aroused, that he wanted to mate with the female and deposit his sperm.
He just hadn’t understood the way the sensation would make him feel.
He said nothing as the nurse wheeled him silently down the hall, but soon his thoughts of Julie Ferris were swamped by more pressing sensations. The noise of footfalls in the corridor, the soft thud of rubber-soled shoes mixed with the crisp slap of leather. The dull roar of mingling voices, some of them low and speaking in whispers, others raised in heated debate as they hurried through the halls. The odors he had noticed in his room earlier were magnified a thousand times out here, some of them so strong they made his nostrils burn.
As they approached the front doors, sunlight streamed into the reception area. Val blinked several times, wincing as the bright rays stabbed painfully behind his eyes.
“Take care of him, Ms. Ferris,” the nurse said, pushing the wheelchair out through the automatic doors and onto the wide cement steps in front of the building. A strong female arm helped him stand up. “I guarantee he’ll be a handful.” She winked and Julie smiled.
He watched the woman walk away, saying nothing, too caught up in the sights and sounds pressing in on him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Julie asked, her expression worried, her eyes fixed on his face. She linked an arm through his, helping to steady him. “All of a sudden, you look kind of pale.”
Val ran his tongue across lips that felt rubbery and numb. Even if he could tell her what he was feeling, he couldn’t possibly begin to describe it. There was no way to express the riot of colors—the bright green of the lawns and trees, the azure blue of the sky, the stunningly vivid red of a sports car roaring past them on the street.
“I’m fine, Julie. I’ll just be glad to get home.”
She studied him with concern. “The car’s right out front in the passenger loading zone. We don’t have far to go.”
She said nothing more and neither did he. He could barely function for the jagged sensations ripping through his head. Toril was a planet of peace and serenity. There were no bright colors, no loud noises, no pungent smells. It was a pastel world, a world of grays and browns and a few muted blues, a palette of shaded colors that seemed amazingly washed out in comparison to the splashy, vibrant hues that enlivened the world of Earth.
Aside from the clothes he had seen on the subjects they had been studying, and what they had observed of the planet through their surveillance devices, he had never experienced anything to compare with the rich display spread before him like a banquet for the eyes. On Toril, the sky was a nondescript white, the plant life, even in blossom, brightened to no more than shades of weak pastel. People dressed in solid colors of those same watered shades, the styles varying little between social orders, the three different races, or male and female gender.
Here it seemed as though each individual tried to carve out his own identity by the color and style of his clothes. It gave the place an atmosphere of constant festivity, a parade of vibrant stripes, prints, and plaids all run together in a mishmash of design and color that splashed against the inner wall of the eye.
They had nearly reached the curb when a car horn blared and he stumbled backward. Another horn answered then another and another, driving the cacophony straight into his head. His hands came up to cover his ears, and beside him he felt Julie stiffen.
“Get in the car,” she commanded, opening the door and easing him in. Noticing his growing pallor, she moved the seat back a little and helped him settle his long legs inside.
The car was small, a Mercedes, Patrick’s memory said. But the top was up and so were the windows. When Julie closed the door, some of the loud noise abated. As she eased herself into the driver’s seat, snapped her seat belt then his, Val leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
“You don’t look good. Maybe it’s too soon for you to leave. Maybe I should take you back inside.”
His eyes snapped open. He sat up a little straighter in the seat. “I’m fine. I just want to go home.”
“Are you sure, Patrick—and don’t lie to me. I’d feel terrible if something else happened to you.”
He turned his head in her direction, an odd tingling warmth in the pit of his stomach. “Would you?”
The color rushed into her cheeks. He knew the surge of blood was caused by feelings of embarrassment. He understood the sensation, since it had already happened to him.
“Of course, I’d care. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes…friends.” But in his head, something said friendship wasn’t all that Patrick had felt for Julie Ferris and it was never what he’d wanted.
Val lay back against the seat as the car rumbled to life, the funny vibrations running up his back and shoulders. In the confines of the car, a faint, sweet fragrance drifted over from Julie’s side of the car, a smell so subtle he hadn’t noticed it before.
“I like the…perfume…you’re wearing,” he said, testing the word on his tongue.
“It’s Michael Kors. Your father bought it for me last year for my birthday. It’s expensive, but it’s definitely my favorite.”
“Mine, too,” he said, inhaling deeply. There were no vile smells on Toril, not like the ones he’d noticed in the hospital, or those drifting up from the gutter he had whiffed as he’d slid into the car. But there was also nothing like the soft sweet fragrance of Michael Kors, either. He liked the way it mingled with Julie’s own special scent, giving her a softly feminine fragrance all her own.
The small car hummed along. Val settled back in the seat, stretching his long legs out as best he could. Outside the window, the landscape of Beverly Hills slid past in a blur of sound and color. Automobiles of every design and hue crammed the streets to overflowing. People crowded along the sidewalks, hurrying to destinations he couldn’t begin to guess. Buildings rose up from the pavement, their storefronts shaded by bright canvas awnings, the windows glowing with vibrant signs made of…neon…yes, that was the word.
“We’re almost there,” Julie said, turning the car off Wilshire onto Oakhurst Drive. Just past Burton Way, she slowed the engine, turned, and pulled off the road, stopping in front of the heavy metal fence that enclosed the parking garage. “I found this with your clothes.”
She held up a small square box Patrick’s memory said opened the door to the underground parking. “One of your lady friends must have come by and picked it up along with the rest of your things.”
The woman called Anna, he recalled. A tall, slenderly built blond female who had come to see him several times in the hospital. She had kissed him, he recalled, not an unpleasant sensation, but when she had reached beneath the covers to stroke his sex, he’d nearly had a second heart attack.
Patrick’s memory had kicked in, enlightening him on their recent acquaintance—and the fact the woman was a great deal of the reason that, aside from the part of Patrick that Val had absorbed, the living, reasoning essence of Patrick Donovan was gone.
Still, the transformation was not as he’d expected. With each passing hour, he felt a subtle shifting, a reaching out, a melding of consciousness as new information, more of Patrick’s being was fully absorbed. He had expected to be solidly in control, less vulnerable to the thoughts Patrick once had, the emotions he had experienced.
Instead it was if he and Patrick had merged, begun to form a third, distinctly different being. It frightened him. Made him worry what residue those changes might leave inside him.
Fear. Val could taste it in his mouth.
It was an emotion unknown to the people of Toril.
Six
“But I don’t want to come out for the weekend, Julie. I’d rather stay here.”
“Come on, honey,” Julie coaxed her sister over the phone, “it’s my birthday. Babs is coming for dinner on Saturday night. Owen’s in town. He’s promised he’ll stop by. We’ll have ourselves a party.”
