Intimate Knowledge Page 3

  Someone had neglected to shave him that morning, and his beard scratched her face as she pressed her cheek against his.

  The five-o’clock shadow made him look even more robust and masculine, Penelope decided. As did the strand of brown hair that fell across his forehead. Tenderly she smoothed it back.

  For a moment, she almost expected him to open those gorgeous blue eyes and smile that lazy half smile she knew so well. She could almost imagine the touch of his hand as he pulled her to him, the feel of his mouth against hers as he kissed her in that slow, deliberate way he had.

  Slow and deliberate. Yes, that was Simon’s style. He could be so maddeningly cautious. So…reserved when at times what Penelope had secretly wanted was for him to walk into her office, throw everything off her neatly organized desk and take her, right then and there, with the door unlocked to boot.

  Of course, she’d never told him about that fantasy. Simon wasn’t the risky sort, and he never lost control. Never. Not once.

  Oh, he was passionate. And quite a skilled lover, even though…

  Well, no use dwelling on that.

  None of that mattered anyway. What mattered was how much she loved him. And what she would give to have him well again.

  Penelope pulled up a chair and settled in. “What shall we talk about today?” she said cheerily. “I know you’re probably tired of hearing about work, but that pretty much consumes my life these days. It’s the only thing that keeps me going when I’m away from you.”

  She took his hand and drew his palm up to her lips as she watched his face. No reaction.

  “Anyway, there’s so much going on at the museum right now. The general contractor has promised the renovations will be completed before the gala benefit and live auction on Saturday night, but I’m not holding my breath. You know how it is with construction.

  “And to top it all off, Avery will be in Mexico until Thursday or Friday. Remember that private collector I told you about last time I was here? Manuel Vargas? We’re in the final stages of negotiations with him, and it looks very promising. The collection has never been viewed by the public so it’ll be quite a coup for the museum if we can pull this off. He has examples from all the major Mesoamerican civilizations, and at least two of the Olmec masks date back to 1200 B.C. But I think the Andean pieces are my favorites. The intricacy of the gold work is breathtaking.”

  Penelope’s gaze was still on Simon’s face as she shifted in her chair, making herself more comfortable. “Let’s see, what else is new? Oh, yes, Cassandra is off on another trek through the rain forest, and I think she and Dad had some kind of blowup before she left. I don’t know what it was about, but the whole family is acting kind of strange these days. Mother is being all secretive, and there’s some kind of tension between Helen and Grayson.”

  Penelope scoured Simon’s face. “You probably don’t care about any of this, do you?” she murmured. “I wonder if you can even hear me. If you realize how much I still love you. That hasn’t changed, you know. If anything…” Her words trailed off as tears formed behind her lids.

  Penelope tried to keep her visits with Simon as upbeat as possible, but sometimes it was hard not to show her emotions. Sometimes it was hard not to let her fears consume her. What if he never woke up? How was she supposed to get on with her life without him?

  Already her family was trying to persuade her to do just that. Oh, they didn’t come right out and say it in so many words, of course, but lately, both her mother and Helen had been tossing around some not-so-subtle hints that perhaps Penelope should start getting out more.

  Her mother had even ambushed her with a blind date, although she claimed it was no such thing. The fact that Penelope and Dr. Doug Fairchild, who worked at the clinic with her father and had once dated Helen, had turned up at the same intimate dinner party had been nothing more than a happy coincidence. Right.

  Helen had tried to pull the same stunt with Alejandro Salizar, her husband’s handsome business partner, but luckily Penelope had gotten wind of the setup beforehand and nixed the whole idea.

  It was an unusual position for her to be in, turning down so many attractive and eligible suitors, but Penelope had no doubt that both Doug and Alex had ulterior motives or they never would have allowed themselves to be ensnared by her mother and sister’s matchmaking.

  When Penelope had finally caught on to what they were up to, she’d invited Athena and Helen to lunch and over dessert had made it clear that she still considered herself engaged and thoroughly committed to Simon. She did not appreciate their meddling one little bit.

  “Darling, we’re just trying to get you out of that dreary museum now and then. An evening out won’t kill you,” her mother had insisted. “In fact, it’ll do you a world of good. You’ve been under such duress lately. What you really should do is take a little holiday. Don’t you agree, Helen?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” her dazzling sister had rushed to concur. “Just a little trip to get away from it all for a few days. Go someplace fun. Relax in the sun. Swim. Snorkel. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

  Penelope’s eyes had narrowed in suspicion. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you two were trying to get rid of me for some reason.”

  Her mother and sister had laughed, but not before they shared a brief, uneasy glance.

  Penelope had no idea what they were up to, but she had a feeling it had something to do with the overall tension in the family lately. Something was going on, and whatever it was, they didn’t want Penelope to know about it, perhaps because, as her mother said, she’d been under so much stress lately.

  Penelope hadn’t pressed them, nor had she taken their suggestion seriously. At least not then. But now she was almost ashamed to admit how tempting a vacation sounded. Nothing lengthy or elaborate. Just a few days all to herself. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to get away from the museum for some time to come.

  She sighed wistfully as she searched Simon’s face for even the tiniest response to her presence. In the weeks and months since his accident, she’d seen nothing to indicate he was aware of her visits. Not even the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of a muscle.

  But his features had become so familiar and dear to her that she knew every curve and angle of his face, every imperfection—the tiny indented scar above his mouth, the larger, fresher scar just inside his hairline from the accident, the slightly crooked nose.

  She could never look at that face and not remember the day he’d walked into the museum, the way his eyes had deepened behind his glasses even before she told him who she was.

  And then when she’d eventually dragged him to her parents’ house for Friday-night dinner, a Moon tradition, he’d so impressed her with his ability to hold his own with her family. Soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, he refused to be intimidated by her father’s cool appraisal or her mother’s incessant grilling. Nor had he been susceptible to Helen’s beauty or Cassandra’s charm or even Ariadne’s eccentricity.

  He had eyes only for Penelope, plain old vanilla Penelope, and if possible, she’d fallen even more deeply in love with him that night.

  He had a way of looking at her across the table as if she were the only woman in the room. Penelope experienced that same shivery feeling now as she remembered other things about that night.

  They’d left right after dinner and gone straight back to her apartment, where they made love for the first time. It wasn’t so much that Penelope had been swept away by passion as she’d been overcome by Simon’s tenderness. His attentiveness.

  And afterward, when he held her in his arms so protectively, it didn’t really matter that she hadn’t—

  “Ms. Moon?”

  She glanced up to find Yvette Dickerson, Simon’s nurse, glaring at her from the doorway. Penelope tried to hide her distaste, but she didn’t like the woman.

  For one thing, Yvette seemed overly possessive of Simon, and for another, she was extremely intimidating. Tall, lean and graceful, she looked m
ore like a model than a nurse. Her face was all angles and cheekbones, her lips full, her eyebrows beautifully shaped.

  She arched one of those gorgeous eyebrows now as she gave Penelope a cool dismissal. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid visiting hours are over. It’s time for Mr. Decker’s therapy.”

  “So soon?” Penelope protested. “I haven’t even had an hour with him.”

  The woman’s smile was infuriatingly condescending. “Now, now, you don’t want to impede Mr. Decker’s recovery, do you?”

  “Of course not. But I drove all the way up here—”

  Yvette glanced at her watch, obviously bored by the whole conversation. “I’ll step outside while you say goodbye. But please don’t linger. We can hardly be expected to disrupt our entire schedule just to accommodate yours, now can we?”

  The door closed with a click, and Penelope resisted the urge to do something childish, like stick out her tongue.

  Instead she bent over Simon’s bed and touched his face. His skin was so warm. So…alive. She trailed her hand down his arm. His muscles were still rock hard. Surprising for someone in his condition. She supposed that was a good reason to let him get on with his therapy.

  She bent and pressed her cheek to his. “Are you dreaming?” she murmured against his ear.

  Placing her hand on his chest, she felt the beat of his heart. It was strong and steady. Why couldn’t he wake up?

  “Do you know what I dream about, Simon? I have this recurring dream, actually. It’s about…us.” She searched his face for a moment, then leaned in again and placed her mouth against his ear. “I’m at my desk, busy as always, and I look up to find you standing in my office doorway. You seem different somehow. More as sertive and maybe even a little dangerous. And the way you look at me makes my heart race….”

  Penelope paused to take a shaky breath. “You walk slowly toward me, removing your glasses and your jacket and tossing them aside. Then you loosen your tie. But your gaze never leaves mine, and I can’t look away, either. It’s as if you’ve mesmerized me.

  “And then…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You kneel in front of my chair and slide your hands up my skirt…and you…”

  Startled, Penelope drew back. Was it her imagination, or had Simon’s heartbeat accelerated?

  She pressed her hand against his chest. The rhythm was still strong. Still steady. No change. It must have been her imagination.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Penelope knew it was Yvette reminding her that her time was up.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Penelope murmured, and then stepping back, she bent to retrieve her purse.

  As she glanced down, she saw a pair of glasses lying just underneath the bed. The frames were dark and thick, exactly like the pair Simon had worn before his accident, but Penelope had assumed those had been broken in the crash.

  And anyway, why would a man in a coma need his glasses?

  Penelope picked them up and carefully placed them on the table beside his bed. Then moving toward the door, she turned to have one last look, one final image that would have to sustain her until her next visit. Fighting back tears, she stepped into the hall.

  Yvette stood just outside the door, arms folded, her expression faintly resentful. “All done?”

  Penelope ignored the question. “I found a pair of glasses in Simon’s room. Do you know who they belong to?”

  Yvette shrugged. “Someone probably left them by mistake. Why?”

  Penelope hesitated. “They look exactly like the ones Simon wore before his accident.”

  “So what? A lot of people have that style.”

  Penelope frowned. “How do you know? You never saw him in his glasses.”

  Yvette looked momentarily flustered, then she said in an annoyed tone, “Why are you making such a mystery out of a pair of glasses? They probably belong to Mr. Decker’s father. He comes in several times a week to read to his son. Like I said, he may have left them by mistake.”

  It was a perfectly legitimate assumption, and Penelope had no reason to doubt Yvette Dickerson’s sincerity except for the fact that she didn’t like the woman. But in this case, the nurse was probably right. Penelope was making too much of a pair of forgotten eyeglasses.

  But she was still preoccupied with those glasses a few minutes later when she walked through the lobby. She nodded to the woman behind the front desk, and the receptionist returned her smile and waved absently as Penelope headed for the exit.

  There was nothing the least bit suspicious about the woman’s demeanor or her actions, but for some reason, Penelope glanced back just as she pushed open the door. The receptionist’s eyes were still on her, but the smile had vanished and she was speaking rather urgently to someone on the phone.

  All the way across the parking lot, Penelope tried to shrug off her disquiet, but she kept looking over her shoulder. She had the strangest feeling that something wasn’t right.

  Finally, knowing she would never have a moment’s peace until she got to the bottom of her anxiety, she retraced her steps across the parking lot and positioned herself outside the entrance where she could see into the lobby but couldn’t be spotted. She waited until the receptionist left her station, and then Penelope opened the door and slipped inside.

  Stealing past the front desk, she hurried down the long corridor to Simon’s room. Glancing up and down the hallway, she opened the door and stepped inside.

  And gasped.

  Simon was gone.

  Chapter Four

  “It was all very strange,” Penelope told her neighbor, Tay Domingo, later that same day as they sat out on her apartment balcony, sipping margaritas and enjoying the warm September twilight.

  A breeze rippled through the palm trees, and the scent of jasmine, heavy and sweet, drifted up from the courtyard. A horn sounded somewhere nearby, and a dog barked once, then went silent. A shiver of unease slipped up Penelope’s backbone, although she had no idea why.

  Or maybe she did.

  The visit with Simon had left her nervous and edgy. All the way home, she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something was wrong, even after everyone at Fairhaven had assured her that Simon had simply been taken to the physical-therapy unit.

  Freddy was curled in her lap, and he must have sensed her restlessness because he turned and gave her an irritated glare before digging his claws into her legs.

  “Ouch!”

  “Don’t let him get away with that,” Tay scolded as she leaned over to shoo the temperamental cat from Penelope’s lap. “Bad kitty. Go find a rat to terrorize.”

  Freddy gave them both a baleful glance before he leaped from the balcony onto the trellis, then scampered down to the courtyard.

  “You’ll pay for that later,” Penelope murmured.

  Tay grimaced. “Don’t I know it? That cat’s so damn prickly these days I’m almost afraid to close my eyes when he’s in the same room. Maybe he needs a companion or something. But then, don’t we all?” She twirled a plumeria blossom beneath her nose.

  Tay, a thirty-something massage therapist, had recently opened her own day spa in the West University area. The overpriced beauty salons were cropping up in strip centers all over the city, but Tay insisted the Mayan Temple offered something unique—her own line of beauty products created from formulas that had been handed down for generations in her family. And Tay’s fabulous complexion, not to mention her smoldering sensuality, was certainly a great testimonial.

  “Now where were we?” she said lazily. “Oh, yes. Your visit with Simon. I still don’t understand what you found so strange about it. The nurse said they were taking him to physical therapy, right? So what’s the problem?”

  “The nurse said it was time for his physical therapy,” Penelope clarified. She flicked a speck of salt from the rim of her glass. “There’s a big difference. I always assumed that the physical therapist came to Simon’s room to work with him, or at the most, they wheeled his bed to the physical-therapy unit. But to actual
ly move him… that’s no easy feat. I just don’t see how they managed it. Not in such a short amount of time.”

  “Well, they are experts.” Tay shot Penelope a puzzled look. “What exactly are you trying to say here, Pen? You think Simon got up and walked to physical therapy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what?”

  Penelope bit her lip. “I know it sounds crazy, but I just have a feeling that something isn’t right about that place, especially after I found those glasses.”

  “Which the nurse said probably belonged to Simon’s father. And even if they are Simon’s, so what? His father could have brought them to the hospital so that Simon would have them when he wakes up. I think that’s rather sweet.”

  Penelope hadn’t even considered that possibility.

  “You know what’s really going on here, don’t you?” Tay propped her feet on the balcony railing as she ran her hand through her long, black hair, then shook out the glossy tresses. It was an unconsciously sexy gesture that Penelope had seen her sisters perform a thousand times but had never quite mastered herself.

  She pushed her own choppy blond bob behind her ears. “No, what?”

  “You’re feeling guilty because you don’t get to see him often enough. Maybe you’re even a little jealous of all the time Nurse What’s-her-name spends with him. It’s like she’s usurping your position or something. In your mind, you should be the one taking care of him. And if that woman’s half as attractive and pushy as you say she is, then it’s only natural you’d feel some hostility toward her. Your uneasiness is just a manifestation of your guilt and your resentment at being forced to playing second fiddle in Simon’s life.”

  Tay’s analysis hit a little too close to home, and Penelope shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She couldn’t deny that Yvette Dickerson was part of the problem. There was something about the woman that rubbed Penelope the wrong way. Maybe it was because she’d been surrounded by beautiful women all her life and she knew firsthand how manipulative and petty they could sometimes be. How deeply their sense of entitlement sometimes ran.