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"Hey." Killian's voice was soft, husky. "I shouldn't have said that. It's not your fault. Viloula knew what she was risking. It's not your fault."
Lainie didn't look at him. She couldn't. Instead, she nodded.
He started to reach for her, then drew back.
She lifted her moist gaze to his face.
"I just care about her," he said quietly.
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"Yeah. Me, too."
They stared at each other, and in his gaze, Lainie saw the same helplessness that threatened to overtake her. She thought she should say something to him, but she had no idea what. The memory of his violent hug was so close, she could almost feel his arms around her again, warming her.
"Are .. ." She tried not to finish the sentence, but she couldn't help herself. "Are you really going to let Skeeter take me to Fortune Flats?"
He nodded.
"Why Skeeter and not you?"
He didn't look at her. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Lainie. Just accept it."
She gave a soft, hollow laugh. "I've never been good at just accepting things."
Slowly, reluctantly, he met her gaze. There was a bleakness in his eyes that took her breath away, made her feel?again?as if she knew him. As if his pains were hers, somehow. "I can't help you, Lainie."
"You mean you won't."
Without answering, he turned back to the sleeping woman. "Here, Viloula," he murmured, reaching into the water basin beside him. Pulling up the towel, he twisted it. Water streamed through his fingers and splashed into the bowl. Gently he pressed the wet rag to her fevered forehead.
The simple gesture threw Lainie back in time for an instant. Suddenly she was a you
ng mother again, nursing her baby daughter through chicken pox. She remembered keenly how alone she had felt when Kelly's fever spiked, how incompetent she'd felt.
She would have given anything to have someone beside her, someone to help her.
She cast a sideways glance at Killian. He sat hunched
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over Viloula's bed, his big, suntanned hand covering one of hers. His hair was dirty and limp, hanging in a ratty silver tangle over his collar. A day's growth of black beard shadowed his cheeks, made his face look bruised in the pale light.
He'd never looked more handsome. She remembered how she'd felt when he had rescued her in the cave. In that instant, everything Viloula said seemed more than possible. Killian wasn't just a character in her book, wasn't simply a physical embodiment of her imagination.
Suddenly it hurt to look at him. She closed her eyes, but in the enforced darkness it was worse; she imagined his touch on her forehead, heard his softly spoken words: "You'll be all right, Viloula. You'll be all right."
A shiver traced her spine. She opened her mouth and stared at him, feeling unaccountably dizzy.
She'd spent a lifetime wondering what it must feel like to be cared for, looked after. She'd sought that welcoming, comforting touch in a hundred men's hands, until, at last, she'd stopped waiting for it. She'd even thought that she'd stopped wanting it.
But now, watching Killian minister to Viloula, she saw the naked, painful truth. She'd never stopped; it had lain dormant inside her beneath an avalanche of enforced coldness. She felt it now, an aching, hurtful need to be held and touched and cared for.
As if drawn by her thoughts, he looked at her. "Are you okay?"
She swallowed hard. "Fine."
He stared at her for a long time, as if seeking something in her eyes. "Go to sleep," he said at last. "I'll watch her."
