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He laid her hand on the blanket, pulled a chair up to the side of the bed, and sank into it.
“This is not exactly how I envisioned ‘running into you’ again,” he admitted, trailing his finger across her arm. “I was supposed to arrive in town looking for a building for our new office. You were supposed to drive by in your sheriff’s vehicle.” He smiled at the image he’d imagined so many times. “You didn’t have to go to the trouble of being hurt and in a coma to get me to come back. I was coming back anyway.”
He smoothed a strand of her hair back from her forehead.
Her skin was cool to the touch.
Despite the monitor’s monotonous beeping, indicating Shelby’s steady heartbeat, Remy found himself leaning forward, his gaze on her chest beneath the blanket.
His breath caught and held until Shelby’s chest rose ever so slightly on an indrawn breath.
He released the air in his lungs and sat back. “What happened?” he asked softly. “Who did this to you?”
She didn’t answer. He didn’t expect her to. But that didn’t make him give up hope. As soon as she was back, they’d figure out who’d attacked her in the swamp and in the hospital and bring them down.
“I just need you to wake up, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about us. I want to renegotiate our prior agreement.”
Her hand twitched.
He reached out and lifted her hand in his.
“One night with you was not enough. I knew it as soon as you left the fishing shack that morning. I would’ve called you, but you were so insistent that you didn’t want more.” He pressed his lips to the back of her knuckles. “I should’ve called anyway. What was the worst that could happen? You could’ve told me to bug off. I would have, long enough to get my shit together and get back to the bayou.”
Remy had heard that people in comas could hear voices; they just couldn’t respond.
Shelby didn’t respond, but could she hear his voice?
If she could, at least she’d know he was there, and she wasn’t alone.
“The bottom line is that since the storm, I haven’t stopped thinking about you. You might have walked away, or in your case, boated away, with no intention of ever starting something with me. But I’m here to tell you, I want to start something with you. I want to see where it goes. I’m finally at a place where I want to share my life with someone else. I hope that someone is you,” he said softly. “What do you want?”
He paused, stared at her pale face and willed her eyes to open.
“So, are you going to play hard to get and act like we never made love in a fishing shack? I hope not. My memory of our time together is so vivid I wake up expecting to find you lying in bed beside me.” He lowered his voice and scooted closer. “Your naked body pressed against mine. But I’m not just interested in making love with you. I want more. I want to spend time getting to know you. I want you to want to get to know me.”
He rambled on into the wee hours of the morning when his voice grew hoarse, and he couldn’t talk anymore. Then he held her hand in his and memorized the lines in her palm.
Around four-thirty in the morning, a lab tech came through to collect a blood sample, followed by a nurse who charted Shelby’s vital signs.
Even after being poked and prodded, Shelby didn’t wake.
Once the medical staff left the room and silence returned, Remy closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the blanket beside Shelby’s arm. Tired after being up for over twenty-four hours, he wanted to rest his eyes for a few short minutes. As soon as his eyes closed, his other senses remained on alert to footsteps in the hallway, the steady beep of the monitor, soft voices talking outside the door and every possible movement from the woman lying in the bed.
For a few minutes, Remy slept, images of Shelby lying naked on the bed in the fishing hut, smiling up at him haunting his dreams.
Chapter 5
Dark water.
Swirling.
Swirling.
Swimming.
Arms moving to keep her head above the surface.
Of what?
