The Sapphire Brooch by Katherine Logan (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

dusting of hair peeked through the shirt’s V-neck. He and Jack could be bookends on a shelf stacked with romance novels featuring kilt-clad heroes.

Charlotte squeezed her arms to her chest, surprised by a warm swelling low in her belly. What was different about Braham now to cause such a strong reaction? What did she see she hadn’t seen before? Different clothes? Shaved? Hair washed? All those things and more. In a restful sleep, pain had released its grip, relaxing the tightened muscles around his eyes. No doubt about it. The man was gorgeous, and blessed with a constitution she rarely saw in patients.

He stirred and his eyes opened. “I worried about ye driving here in the rain,” he said in a raspy voice.

She turned on a lamp and the soft yellow light curled around him. “It stopped before I left the city.” She crossed to the other side of the bed and placed her hand on his forehead. “Jack said it only drizzled here.”

Braham’s eyes probed into hers, green and hard and full of questions. “Do I have a fever?”

“You feel slightly warm, but my hands may be cold. She rubbed them, blew on them, and touched her own forehead for comparison. “It’s me.”

He pulled himself up, grimacing slightly, and his biceps bulged as he leaned against the headboard and laced his fingers across his chest.

She had an insane desire to wrap her hand around his arm to feel the muscle flex. A small knot lodged in her throat. “I’m glad you rested. Looks like Jack followed instructions for a change.”

“Doesn’t he always?”

“No. Not often.” It took an effort of will to look away from his sculpted arms and the physical strength they represented. But she did, her eyes moving slowly down to his belly. The pajamas drew her eyes to the area of his incision and down further, to other parts.

She carefully lowered the elastic waistband and peeked at the incision, then gently palpated his abdomen. His body reacted to her touch, and she gently let go of the fabric, steeling herself to not react to his growing erection.

“Looks good.” She cleared her throat. “It’s healing nicely.” She placed her fingers on his wrist. His pulse was strong and fast, but not from illness. So was hers. “Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes. I’ll bring a tray in for you.”

“Are ye cooking?” He watched her. His eyes were liquid and sleepy and full of desire.

Needing a distraction, she reached for an unopened bottle of water on the bedside table, untwisted the cap, and took a long gulp. “If any cooking’s done in this house, Jack does it. He’s an accomplished chef, and has far more patience than I do with certain things.”

“Like what?” Braham asked, his eyebrow arching.

“I don’t do well with patients who ignore my instructions and compromise their healing.”

“I do what I say. Never doubt it.” His biceps twitched ever so slightly, as if to reinforce the statement. “Ye saved my life, and I’m grateful, but in a couple of days I must go home. I have timely information about Richmond’s defenses, the condition of Lee’s army, and, most important, the movement of troops and material between the Petersburg-Richmond corridor and the Shenandoah Valley. Lincoln is waiting for my report, which will directly impact Grant’s major offensives around Petersburg. I have to go back. Even if I wanted to stay, Charlotte, it’s impossible.”

Her eyes locked with his, and she saw the faint lines of tension at the corners. A sense of foreboding settled in her gut. “You almost died. You’re not even close to healed. You need to give it a couple of weeks, not a few days.”

He tapped his fingertips together rhythmically. “I can’t wait. I’ll take it slow for a few days after I see the president. But I can’t delay here any longer.”

She pulled a reading chair closer to the bed and sat, sighing. “What if the brooch takes us back to Richmond? You won’t have the strength to fight your way out.”

He stopped tapping, steepled his fingers, and pressed them against his lips. “Where did ye leave from? Cedar Creek, right? And ye returned there. If we leave from Washington City, we should arrive there as well.”

“You obviously have more faith in the sapphire than I do.”

He dropped his hands and shrugged. “It’s my Celtic heritage, I suppose. A friend once told me some see darkness where others see only the absence of light.”

Charlotte scratched gently at the side of her face, letting the thought swirl around in her brain. “What does it mean?”

He glanced out toward the river, and his voice whispered over her skin like the cool breeze blowing in through the window. “There is more to the world than we can see. Always keep yer mind open. Even without light, ye can hear and feel and taste. But if ye close yerself off to other possibilities, ye’ll wither in the darkness.”

He took her hand in his, with all its cuts and bruises from the fight he had been in, and, using a warm fingertip, traced the lines etched into her palm. The corner of his lip turned up in a wry smile. “When I lay dying, a doctor who I thought was a man came to my bed and held my hand. When I looked into his eyes, I knew I had a life yet to live. It was the darkest place I’d ever been, but I could feel and taste and smell the light.”

His vivid memories held hope. Hers, on the other hand, had turned into nightmares. She shook off the edgy sensation triggered by her traumatic experiences after being catapulted into another world. “Another couple of hours and you would have been dead.”

“Ye arrived when ye were meant to arrive. If I hadn’t been dying, there would have been guards posted, and I probably would have been chained to the bed.”

Heat rose to her face and her heart raced. “Let’s not talk about it. Are you