She smiled at Carlos. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
He shook his head. “I have work to do, but I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon.”
“Thank you for all your help.”
“Amen to that,” Ben added.
> “It was my pleasure.” He nodded to them both before getting back in the tender.
Once inside the ship, it felt like Terri had entered a hotel complete with rooms, stairways, corridors and elevators. Ben clasped her elbow and guided her along the hallway several hundred feet before unlocking the door to what was a small, private elevator.
“Just set the bags and suitcase on the floor,” he instructed the stewards whose navy and white uniforms looked smart and professional.
After thanking them for their help, he pushed a button and the door closed. Terri stood breathlessly close to the man who’d been haunting her dreams for the last few nights.
When she started to feel a little dizzy, she was tempted to put a hand on his arm for support. It was hard to tell if it was his nearness or the speed of the elevator that had produced the strange sensation. Luckily they reached their destination before she made a complete fool of herself and fell against him.
Terri expected the elevator door to open into another corridor. But as she was coming to find out, nothing had been as it seemed from the moment she’d heard the message about Richard on her answering machine.
In this case, the elevator served as the front door to a home like the kind you drooled over in an architectural magazine. She might as well have stepped into some heavenly villa on one of the Greek Islands. Rounded archways and white walls with area rugs and furnishings provided splashes of vivid color.
They stood in a stunning foyer. “How beautiful!”
“Let me show you around.”
She took one look at his drawn features and shook her head. “I can do that myself. You’re pale. Leave everything in the elevator,” she said when he made a move to pick up her suitcase. “I’ll get it. Right now you need to lie down. Let’s go.”
He studied her for a moment before starting down the hall on her right. The whole place was air-conditioned, bringing blessed cool to the interior.
“In there is the guest bedroom.”
She followed him past that room to his bedroom, another spacious haven done in the same decor.
“While you’re in the bathroom, I’ll turn down your bed.”
It was king-size with a Mondrian print-on-white quilt. Paintings and dark hand-carved wood furniture provided the contrast to white walls.
When Ben emerged from the bathroom still dressed in the same clothes, she urged him to get on the bed where she’d propped some pillows. Without asking his permission, she removed his shoes and socks. A sigh slipped out of him, telling her she’d done the right thing.
“Just rest. I’ll bring you something to eat.”
As she hurried from the room to the elevator, she thought he might have called her name, but she kept on going. He needed food.
It didn’t take long to carry the bags to the kitchen. She found it beyond the dining room, which adjoined the living room. Terri loved to cook and couldn’t have been happier to discover the modern kitchen was an absolute dream with every convenience.
Broth might be all right for a drink, but her patient needed something more fortifying right now. She rummaged through the sacks until she found a can of beef stew whose contents she put in the blender. In a minute she poured the puree into a saucepan and warmed it on the stove.
With some more poking around, she found a tray. Eventually she’d loaded it with the stew, a can of peach nectar which she’d opened, a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers.
When she entered the bedroom, Ben’s eyes were closed. But he must have smelled the aroma because his lids flew open at her approach.
“Let’s hope this will help your weakness. You should have stayed in the hospital another day you know.”
“I had to get out of there.”
She understood, but she didn’t tell him that.
As soon as he sat up straight, she put the tray on his lap. “Do you need a painkiller?”