Fantasy Unlimited Page 14

  'He's a good provider.'

  'Insurance!' Snort and another sip of Martini. 'Dull, dull, dull. And Diane isn't much better.'

  'She's been a fine daughter-in-law to ye. When you were sick...'

  Margaret sniffed. 'She disapproves of me, you know. Always has.'

  'And I'm thinking that Samantha turned out just fine. She's a wee bit on the serious side, but there's no harm in that.'

  'Serious? Samantha was ancient at five, and she isn't much better now. Well, I've done my best by her—a new hairdo, new clothes, sexy underwear to put her in the spirit of the thing. I just hope she can relax enough to enjoy it.'

  'The lass is probably dancing her heart out with some lovely young man.'

  Margaret perked up a bit. 'You think so? You think she'd know what to do with a lovely young man if she found him?'

  'Well,' said Cassie, 'she's a Lorimer, isn't she?'

  'Her father's a Lorimer, too, but if she's got one ounce of me in her... well, there's hope, then. Definitely hope.'

  And with that statement, Margaret drained her martini and, leaning back in her chair, closed her eyes and faced the sun.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Samantha opened her eyes and found herself staring once again at the blue curtains that covered the window of the ship's infirmary. They were patterned with tiny yellow roses, and the light coming in from behind the curtains turned the roses to a shimmering gold, a colour whose brightness caused Samantha to close her eyes hurriedly again. There was a refuge, she had already discovered, in the cool darkness behind her eyelids where sleep was capable of erasing pain and illness. It was a sanctuary that she had returned to time and again since that nightmarish evening of the telephone call and the hotel and her collapse into Josh's arms.

  She had only the very faintest memory of what had actually happened that night. She could remember the tinny sound of her grandmother's recorded voice, the bright lights of the hotel lobby growing dark around her, Josh's white dinner jacket appearing to be a beacon in the growing mist. She could recall her yearning to reach him, the feel of his arms going around her, and then the frightening way their strength seemed to disappear when everything around her went black and she had slipped down into the void of oblivion.

  What had happened after that, she knew only from the stories of other people. After her fainting spell, she had been rushed to a hospital where she was pronounced ill with a 'flu whose longevity and virulence had already made it legendary in the Greek medical community. Since the 'flu was not wildly contagious or life-threatening, she had been brought back to the Princess Marguerita where she had been put to bed in the infirmary and tended by the ship's nurse, a large and severe woman, who had been looking after Samantha with a solicitude above and beyond the call of duty.

  Not that Samantha had always been aware of what was going on. She had spent the first twenty-four hours semi-conscious and half delirious as the fever raged through her. Aspirin and alcohol rubs had brought the fever down to a manageable level and her nausea and dizziness had eventually disappeared, but the vicious headache had remained. This hyper-sensitivity and terrible head pain had lasted for two days, leaving in its wake a headache that she could just manage to tolerate and a weakness so pervasive that she barely had enough energy to get out of bed.

  It was at this point in her illness that the captain of the ship had arrived to discuss the possibility that she might leave the ship at Crete, and Samantha had agreed that it was probably for the best. She hated the idea of staying in the infirmary for the next three days, but she couldn't imagine how she would cope with the landing in Athens. It was hard enough to get around a foreign city when one was in the best of health; it seemed insurmountable to her when she was in pain and as weak as a kitten. So she had no choice but to acquiesce when he had told her that the ship had been in communication with a travel agent on Crete, who had confirmed a reservation in her name for an Olympic Airlines flight from Crete to Athens and a TWA flight from Athens to New York.

  The news that Samantha was about to leave the ship in mid-cruise and was well enough to receive visitors had brought friends and acquaintances down to the infirmary for bedside chats.

  Marybeth had walked into Samantha's small room in the infirmary with a bouncy step and a wide smile. She'd looked like health personified, blonde and tanned, the golden shade of her skin contrasting with the white of her tennis clothes. When she had seen Samantha flat on her back, her eyes sunken and her face pale, she had tried to douse the happy expression and appear duly sorrowful and sympathetic, but the smile kept breaking through her attempt at solemnity the way the sun insists upon breaking through a thin layer of cloud.

  'What's the good news?' Samantha had asked.

  Marybeth sat down on the chair, took one of Samantha's hands and ignored her question. 'Honeychile, you had us all so worried! Why, you've got no idea how frightened we were. We've been checking our temperatures and looking out for spots and...'

  'Spots?'

  'As in measles and chickenpox and scarlet fever.'

  Samantha couldn't help laughing even though doing so made her head ache. 'I've only got 'flu! Come on, Marybeth, what's been happening? I saw some odd things at the dance the night I got sick.'

  'Odd things? What odd things?'

  Marybeth was fingering the pleats on her short white tennis skirt, but Samantha wasn't deceived either by her seeming nonchalance or her seeming ignorance. 'Things between you and David, Reuben, and Helen, Betty and the purser.'

  'Well,' said Marybeth, 'Betty has had a thing going with the purser since before Rhodes. He's unmarried and crazy about her.'

  'And Reuben?'

  Marybeth shrugged. 'He likes glamorous widows. He and the redhead have been inseparable for days.'

  'And how does David fit into all this?'

  Marybeth had the decency to look a bit shamefaced. 'Now, Samantha, I know this is going to sound just awful, but David and I had concocted... well, a scheme to make you and Reuben jealous.'

  'Jealous?'

  'Well, neither of us were getting anywhere, you see, so I suggested to David that he and I act as if we were madly keen on one another. That way you two would feel threatened and realise just how much you liked us.' She cleared her throat. 'Am I making sense?'

  'I'm afraid so,' Samantha said drily.

  'Now, honeybunch, don't go all moral on me. Everything's fair in the war between the sexes—that's how I look on it. But-the trouble was... well, that David and I...' and she blushed a fiery red, 'well, we discovered that we liked each other instead.' She leaned forward. 'You really don't care, do you?'

  Samantha shook her head. 'I've never been interested in David in that way. You've known that.'

  Marybeth sat back and let out a sigh of relief. 'Well, I thought that was the case, but I did just have a niggling worry that you might have been playing a very deep game with him.'

  Samantha gave her a weary smile. 'I'm not capable of deep games.'

  'I've tired you out,' Marybeth said guiltily. 'I'd better go before that dragon of a nurse out there attacks me.' She stood up and smoothed down her tennis skirt.

  'Marybeth ‑?' Samantha began.

  'Yes?'

  'Is...has... I just wondered if...'

  Marybeth gave her a knowing smile. 'If it's Josh you're worried about, you shouldn't be. He and the dragon have practically come to blows.'

  'Oh.' Samantha could feel her cheeks redden.

  'Just tell me one thing, honeychile. How on earth did you manage to steal him away from the rapacious redhead? I tried everything in my repertoire, but it didn't work. I could have sworn that you didn't even lift your little finger, and he came running. And when I remember how you two didn't get along at first...'She shook her head in admiration. 'Just tell me how you did it.'

  Samantha wished she had the answer to that question, but she hadn't a clue. She'd never known why Josh had, all of a sudden, taken such an interest in her. And it was that uncertainty that had
led her into such ridiculous suspicions as believing that he had been hired by Fantasy Unlimited to sweep her off her feet. Of course, she now understood that her paranoia had been the result of the 'flu.

  'I don't know how I did it,' she said weakly. 'I guess it was my scintillating conversation.'

  'You are a very intelligent person,' Marybeth agreed.

  'Men don't fall for intelligence,' Samantha replied wryly and from long experience. 'They only respect it.'

  'Well,' said Marybeth, 'you must have what it takes. Goodness knows how you did, Samantha, but you've managed the impossible.'

  'The impossible?'

  'Hooking the handsomest and most eligible man on the Princess Marguerita,' Marybeth said with conviction. 'And he's smitten, honeybunch. Absolutely smitten!'

  The handsomest and most eligible man on the Princess Marguerita wasn't actually thinking about the state of his heart at the moment. He was having another irritating conversation with the nurse who had guarded Samantha's door with such a vengeance that he'd been ready to throttle her any number of times in the past few days. In fact, he had got so frustrated with her that he'd actually had dreams about her. In one of them, her grey corkscrew curls turned into snakes and her heavy features into the face of a stubborn mule.

  'I'm sorry,' she was saying smugly, 'but you can't go in until the other visitor leaves. I'm afraid Miss Lorimer doesn't have the strength to cope with more than one person at a time.'

  'I'd like to know how she copes with you,' Josh muttered impatiently through clenched teeth as he leaned against the door-jamb of the infirmary.

  The nurse, who had been studying a file in front of her, now looked up at him through her steel-rimmed glasses and said frostily, 'I beg your pardon?'

  'Nothing,' he said, and clutched the bouquet of roses he had brought so tightly that a thorn broke the skin on his thumb. He cursed under his breath and was sucking his finger when the door to Samantha's room opened and Marybeth came bouncing out.

  'Next,' she said gaily, giving Josh a saucy grin.

  'Just a minute,' said the nurse, standing up. 'I'll have to check and see if Miss Lorimer can handle another visitor.'

  Marybeth took one look at Josh's face as the nurse disappeared into Samantha's room and laughed. 'She's a dragon, isn't she?'

  'A gorgon,' he said. 'How's Samantha?'

  'Tired, I think. She's awfully pale.'

  'I... '

  'I'm sorry,' the nurse said, reappearing in the doorway, 'but I believe Miss Lorimer is in no condition...'

  Josh glared at her. 'Did you tell her who I was?'

  The nurse's lips pressed together. 'I don't see that it matters who you are.'

  'This is it,' he muttered to Marybeth. 'I've had it!' And before Marybeth's delighted eyes, he advanced on the nurse, brandishing his bouquet of roses. 'Move!' he demanded.

  'If you think...'

  'Move!'

  It was obvious that the nurse had never before seen a bouquet of roses wielded as if it were a weapon, but she took one look at the waving flowers and then at Josh's determined face and had enough sense to know that discretion is the better part of valour.

  She moved one step to the side and gave him a slit-eyed look. 'If you're not out of there in five minutes,' she said threateningly, 'then...'

  'Then what?' he countered with equal menace.

  'Then I'll call the captain.'

  But by that time Josh wouldn't have even cared if he'd been told he had to walk the plank. He had entered the bedroom and seen Samantha lying there, pale and fragile against the white of the sheets, her eyes dark smudges in her face, her hair a tangle of curls on the pillow. She wore a white nightgown with blue ribbons threaded through eyelets at the neck, and at the sight of her, his heart twisted, tightened, made his breath come short.

  'Sam?' he said, closing the door behind him.

  'Were you and the nurse having a battle?' she asked, her smile wan.

  'I won,' he said, putting the flowers on the table beside her bed and then sitting down in the chair. 'How are you?' he added.

  'Recovering.'

  He took one of her hands in his. The skin was cool, but her hand felt incredibly delicate as if she'd lost a lot of weight. He could feel each separate bone and tendon.

  'You have to be careful,' he told her. 'The doctors said that if you don't give yourself a chance to get well, you could get complications.'

  'I know,' Samantha said. 'I'm being a superlative patient.'

  She smiled again and pulled herself upright against the pillows, but Josh could see how much the effort cost her. She went even paler if that were possible, and the hand he was holding trembled slightly. He had an overwhelming urge to take her in his arms, but he was also afraid he might crush her. She seemed so thin, so pale, so ethereal.

  'Are you eating anything?' he asked in concern.

  In spite of her frailty, Samantha's sense of humour had not deserted her. 'Well, Dr Sinclair, I'm about to graduate from chicken soup to beef broth. It's supposed to be very invigorating and build up the blood and all that sort of thing.'

  Josh was quite willing to fall into the spirit of the thing. He would have done anything at this point to make Samantha happy. 'And how about your temperature, Miss Lorimer? Has it been normal?'

  'I think so.'

  He put a clinical hand to her forehead. 'Cool,' he pronounced. 'You just might make it.'

  'What a relief!'

  'And your pulse.' He pressed a finger to her wrist. 'A bit rapid. Is there any reason for that?'

  Her face was solemn. 'Not that I know of, doctor.'

  'Of course, I'm worried about those heart palpitations.'

  Samantha gave him an uneasy look. 'What heart palpitations?'

  'They're very typical of 'flu.'

  'I haven't had any heart palpitations.'

  'You're sure?'

  'I...'

  But Josh had leaned forward and placed a hand below her left breast. Through the thin fabric of her nightgown he could feel the warmth and wonderful weight of her, the steady trip-trip of her heart. 'No heart palpitations,' he said jokingly, but when he looked up at her, he saw tears in her eyes and nothing could stop him from moving over to the bed, taking her in his arms, crushing her towards him, holding her so close that both of them could hardly breathe.

  'Sam,' he said into the soft skin of her neck where the silky curls began. 'Please don't cry. I didn't mean to hurt you.'

  Her voice wavered. 'You didn't hurt me.'

  'Then why...?'He loosened his hold and looked down at her.

  Her eyelashes were damp and spiky; tears turned her eyes to a brilliant blue. 'Josh, I shouldn't have run away from you like that. It was so foolish and dumb. You can't imagine what I'd been thinking, and...' 'Hush!' He could feel her distress in the trembling of her body, and he held her even closer, his hand stroking her curls. He had so many things to tell her, so many actions to explain. 'Listen, Sam, I'm the one who's been the idiot.'

  'No, I've...'

  There was a knock at the door. 'Mr Sinclair? Your time is up.'

  'God damn that nurse! When are you leaving?'

  'This afternoon—at about four o'clock.'

  'Are you strong enough for the trip?'

  'The entire airline has been alerted,' Samantha said wryly. 'I'll have a wheelchair at every airport and stewardesses hovering over me.'

  'Sam...'

  'Mr Sinclair! Your time is up!'

  'God!' There was no time to tell her everything in his heart. He couldn't even explain how he had tried unsuccessfully to get a seat on her flights so that he could accompany her back to New York. He couldn't begin to sort through the complexities of his emotions for her, the changes he'd been through, the knowledge that had come to him when she had collapsed in his arms. 'Sam,' he said hurriedly, 'we have to talk.'

  'But...'

  'I'm going to try to get back to New York as soon as I can. I've got your address from the purser and I'll come and see you.'<
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  'Oh, Josh!' She was so weak that the slightest emotion made her cry, and the tears started again, brimming in her eyes and tumbling down her pale cheeks.

  Josh touched a salty drop with his finger. 'I...'

  The door was flung open, and the nurse stood in it, her arms akimbo, elbows jutting out, her hands planted on her wide hips. She took in the sight of Josh with a tearful Samantha in his arms and said coldly, 'I knew you were going to upset my patient. Kindly get off that bed.'

  Josh ignored her. 'Sam, I...'

  'Off!'

  The nurse was bearing down on them, an outraged tank of a woman, ready to do battle wherever necessary. He took one quick glance at her, gave Samantha one final tight hug and finally said what he'd been trying to say ever since his arrival into that tiny room. He didn't want the nurse to hear, so he dropped his voice to its lowest register and whispered the words very lightly into the ivory shell of Samantha's ear.

  'I love you,' he said.

  Samantha hummed happily to herself as she walked up to her grandmother's apartment building. There were a number of reasons why she felt so happy. First of all, Manhattan's uncertain weather had turned quite definitely into spring on this lovely Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining, the air was balmy and the sounds of birds singing could be heard even over the ever-present drone of city traffic. Then there was the state of her health. Four days had passed since her return from Greece, and she was once again feeling like her normal self. The headache had finally disappeared and, with it, the awful weakness that had made her tremble and flush and cry at every little thing that happened to her. This morning she had got up, finally unpacked her suitcases, energetically cleaned her apartment and, in looking at a mirror, had discovered that, apart from an excessive thinness, the old Samantha was back.

  But the best thing of all was that she was now well enough to take pleasure in her last memories of the cruise. She'd been ill, it was true, but she could, with perfect recall, remember Josh's arms around her, his concern for her and the words he had whispered in her ear. He loved her, he had said so. She had thought such a thing impossible; over and over again, she had reminded herself that what had happened on the cruise was artificial, unreal, a stage set where emotions were exaggerated and blown out of proportion. The cruise had seemed like one enormous illusion. Look at the way everyone had changed partners halfway through as if they'd been part of a large board game where luck, a dice throw, the spin of a wheel could alter emotions, feelings, attractions.