Page 59 of Vistaria Has Fallen

“I can tell you my dreams. I’d rather show you, though. For that I need both hands free.”

“Show me?”

“Oh yes,” he said, his voice lower still and hoarse. “I have the details memorized.”

She shivered, despite the sun.

“Giveme the one image that has stayed with you,” he said. “I know there must be at least one. A moment from your dreams. Just as you did that night atAshcroft’s, when I touched your breast. You said you had dreamed it, only—”

“The reality was better than the dream,” she finished. Despite her awkwardness at discussing such intimate details aloud, her body was responding. “Your hand on my hip.” Hervoice was husky, too.

“Ah...you’re such a delight. A realist and a romantic in one long, delicious package. You’ve just let the realist stay in charge for too long. Since the long-departed Robert, I’m guessing.” He spared a swift look at her. “Did he prey on the romantic in you?”

“I suppose that’s what he did do,” she said slowly, thinking it through. “He convinced me he loved me and that we’dbe together forever, only he had to get through medical school, first.”

“So you moved in with him, left college, supported him and loved him,” he finished. “Until he got his internship.”

“Yes.” Her cheeks burned.

His hand came down on her thigh and squeezed. Empathy. He knew. He had seen it all without explanation.

The pounding anticipation made her voice thick and unsteady as she said, “Howsafe is it here? Can you put the gun aside?”

He seemed to consider that. “Aside, but not too far aside.”

“Do it. And take off your jacket too.”

He shot a look at her, an indecipherable glance with the sunglasses obscuring his eyes. He reached inside the jacket and pulled out the same automatic pistol she had seen in the palace last night. After checking the safety he slid it onto the shelfbelow the windscreen. Then he pulled off the hat and threw it into the back of the Jeep. His dark red hair, which looked almost black in dim light, ruffled in the wind, the deep red highlights gleaming.

“Sunglasses, too,” she insisted.

“Of course.” He took them off, folded them up with one hand and tucked them into his jacket pocket. “Better?” The indigo eyes narrowed against the sun.

“Muchbetter,” she assured him. “The jacket.”

“You’ll have to help me.”

“With pleasure.”

He grinned and held out his right arm so she could tug the jacket down over his hand and let him slide his arm out. Then the left arm. He leaned forward and she pulled the jacket away from him and dropped it into the back of the Jeep, over his hat.

His shirt, what looked like a normal short-sleeved businessshirt, billowed around his shoulders and chest, moving in the small breeze created by the passage of the Jeep. She studied his thick, tanned forearms and the wide wrists, as he held the steering wheel.

“The shirt, now,” she said, her heart beat picking up speed.

“You do it.”

Oh my...

Calli sat on her knees, anchoring herself with her hand over the back of her seat and reached to slip the firstbutton undone. Nick stayed silent, his eyes on the road, as she undid the second, the third, the fourth, fifth. She reached the waistband of his jeans. She pulled the shirt out of the jeans and undid the final button. The shirt flew open like a parachute blossoming in the wind stream, revealing the broad expanse of his chest. Tanned skin over well-defined muscles and below the two dark, erectnipples his abdomen rippled, the six-pack clear and hard.

“Oh...” she breathed and rested her hand on his shoulder, feeling the heat and soft yield of his flesh.

“You like what you see?”

“Oh, yes.” She pulled at the sleeves of his shirt, removing it altogether, leaving him topless. His shoulders had powerful round caps of muscles; his biceps and triceps flexed under the skin with each movementof his hands on the wheel. A scar, pale and faded from age, marked his right shoulder. She touched it.

“Bullet,” he said softly.