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“What kind?”
“A Vietnam veteran, I understand.”
“Yes. He was a POW, too, but managed to escape.”
“Did he...handle you well?”
Ah, yes, she was thinking. But she capped the fountain of passionate memories that bubbled inside her like uncorked champagne. “Yes, Father. Very well. I wouldn’t have survived without him.”
She didn’t want to tell him about her personal involvement with Cooper so soon after her return. Her father would have to be apprised of her feelings gradually. They might be met with resistance, because Bill Carlson was an opinionated man.
He was also intuitive. One didn’t easily pull the wool over his eyes. Keeping her tone as casual as possible, Rusty said, “Will you try to locate him for me tonight?” It wasn’t an unusual request. Her father had contacts all over the city. “Let him know where I am. We got separated at the airport.”
“Why is it even necessary for you to see this man again?”
He might just as well have asked her why it was necessary for her to go on breathing. “I want to thank him properly for saving my life,” she said as a diversion.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Carlson told her just as the chauffeur wheeled under the porte cochere of the private clinic.
Even though her father had paved the way, it was two hours later before Rusty was left alone in her plush room. Decorated with original works of art and contemporary furniture, it resembled a chic apartment more than it did a hospital room. She lay in a firm, comfortable, mechanized bed with soft pillows beneath her head. She was wearing a new designer nightgown, one of several her father had packed in the suitcase that had been waiting for her when she checked in. All her favorite cosmetics and toiletries had been placed in the bathroom. She had the staff at her beck and call. All she had to do was pick up the phone on her nightstand.
She was miserable.
For one thing, her leg was sore as a result of the surgeon’s examination. As a safety precaution X-rays had been taken, but they revealed no broken bones.
“Cooper said nothing was broken,” she quietly informed the doctor. He had frowned over the jagged scar. When he lamented the crude stitching that had been done, Rusty jumped to Cooper’s defense. “He was trying to save my leg,” she snapped.
Suddenly she was fiercely proud of that scar and not all that excited about seeing it erased, which, she was told, would require at least three reconstructive operations—maybe more. To her, the scar was like a badge of courage.
Besides, Cooper had spent a great deal of time with it the night before, kissing the raised, puckered skin and telling her that it didn’t turn him off in the slightest and, in fact, made him “horny as hell” every time he looked at it. She had contemplated telling that to the pompous plastic surgeon.
She hadn’t. Indeed, she hadn’t said much of anything. She simply didn’t have the energy. All she could think about was how blessed it was going to be when she was left alone to go to sleep.
But now that she had the opportunity, she couldn’t. Doubts and fears and unhappiness were keeping her awake. Where was Cooper? Why hadn’t he followed her? It had been a circus at the airport, but surely he could have stayed with her if he’d really wanted to.
When the nurse came in offering her a sedative, she gladly swallowed the pill. Otherwise she knew she’d never fall asleep without Cooper’s hard, warm presence embracing her.
Chapter Eleven
I mean, my God! We couldn’t believe it! Our Rusty in a plane crash!”
“It must have been dreadful.”
Rusty looked up from the pillows of her hospital bed at the two well-dressed women and wished they would vanish in a puff of smoke. As soon as her breakfast tray had been carried out by an efficient and ebullient nurse, her two friends had breezed into her room.
Reeking of exotic perfume and avid curiosity, they said they wanted to be the first to commiserate. Rusty suspected that what they really wanted was to be the first to hear the delicious details of her “Canadian caper,” as one had called it.
“No, I couldn’t say it was much fun,” Rusty said tiredly. She had awakened long before breakfast was served. She was accustomed to waking up with the sun now. Thanks to the tranquilizing pill she’d been given the night before, she had slept soundly. Her lack of animation stemmed from dejection more than fatigue. Her spirits were at an extremely low ebb, and her friends’ efforts to raise them were having the opposite effect.
“As soon as you get out of here, we’re treating you to a day of self-indulgence at the salon. Hair, skin, massage. Just look at your poor nails.” One lifted her listless hand, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “They’re ravaged.”
Rusty smiled wanly, remembering how upset she’d been when Cooper had pared off her fingernails with his hunting knife. “I didn’t get around to having a manicure.” It was meant to be facetious, but her friends were nodding sympathetically. “I was too busy trying to stay alive.”
One shook her intentionally tousled blond head and shuddered delicately, causing the Hermes scarf around her neck to slip. The dozen or so silver bangle bracelets on her wrist jingled like the harness on a Christmas reindeer. “You were so brave, Rusty. I think I would rather have died than go through all that you did.”
Rusty was about to refute that remark, when she remembered that not too long ago she could have said something that shallow. “I always thought I would, too. You’d be amazed how strong the human animal’s survival instincts are. In a situation like the one I was in, they take over.”
But her friends weren’t interested in philosophy. They wanted to hear the nitty-gritty. The get-down-and-get-dirty good stuff. One was sitting on the foot of Rusty’s bed; the other was leaning forward from the chair beside it. They looked like scavenger birds perched and ready to pick her bones clean the second she succumbed.
