On the Wings of Love

As she spoke, the rescuers suddenly pulled the man’s legs free of the wreck. With a sharp moan of pain, he lapsed back into unconsciousness. Alex glanced over her shoulder and saw that one of his high-topped leather boots was grotesquely twisted. His leg, she realized, was badly broken.

“Let’s get him to the house!” she shouted. “Careful—support that leg!”

“We’ll take him,” Buck said. “Alex, you run on ahead. Get somebody to call a doctor.”

“No, I’ve got him.” She cradled the unconscious head, refusing to let go. She had found him. She had reached him first and saved him. It was as if, somehow, the young pilot had become hers.

Most of the party guests had lined up along the top of the dune to watch. Alex felt their eyes on her as she backed out of the water, her skirt dripping and encrusted with sand. Hands reached out to support the weight of the pilot’s torso. He stirred against her breast, his lips forming words she couldn’t hear.

Alex’s mother struggled down the slope toward her, walking sideways to keep from sliding in the loose sand. “What a sight you are, Alexandra!” she gasped. “I almost fainted when I saw you out there in the water.”

“The pilot’s hurt!” Alex said. “Have someone run to the house and telephone Dr. Fleury!” She cradled the man’s head, ignoring her mother’s outstretched arms. “Please, Mama, I’m fine!”

Her mother stared down at her, still hesitant. “But your gown—you’re covered with blood!”

Alex glanced down at the ugly lavender dress. The bodice and skirt were blotched with crimson. A little shiver went through her as she felt the pressure of the pilot’s firm jaw through the thin fabric. Her head went up. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not my blood. It’s his.”

Chapter Two

Rafe awoke with a body-wrenching jerk. He had felt himself falling, spinning downward in a ripping descent that seemed slow only because it had no bottom. Now he felt the starch-crisped softness of a pillowcase against his cheek and realized he’d been dreaming. The dream had merged with reality until he was no longer sure where one left off and the other began.

Keeping his eyes tightly closed, he tried to piece together the fragmented memory of the crash—the plummeting plane, pulling on the stick until his hands bled, the water rushing upward to meet him. Then blackness, broken only by a flash of lucid pain.

Even then he’d been hallucinating, Rafe reckoned. Those violet eyes looking down at him could not have been real. Only angels had eyes like that. Or devils, maybe. And considering the life he’d led, Rafe would have been less surprised to find himself in hell than in heaven.

Not that it mattered. No body that ached as much as his could be dead. He was still among the living. But where?

Rafe forced his leaden eyelids to open.

The first thing he saw was sunlight streaming through a tall, cane-shuttered window. It was so bright that he had to close his eyes again. The hospital, he thought. That’s where he was. And running up the bloody bill, most likely. When they found out he wasn’t rich, he’d be out on the street.

He turned his head to one side, even that small motion hurting. Lord, what had he done to himself?

Concentrating, he willed his eyes to open again. This time he could see more of the room—a large teakwood armoire with oriental hardware; a richly woven Turkish carpet on the floor; a four-foot brass vase trailing the fronds of a huge, lacy fern. On the wall above the vase—Rafe gasped when he saw it—was the snarling, mounted head of a Bengal tiger.

A hospital? “Not bloody likely,” Rafe muttered out loud.

Burning with curiosity, he raised himself on one elbow and tried to sit up. Pain shot a searing path up his right leg as he twisted it. Broken, Rafe concluded dourly even before he felt the heavy splint. Broken nastily. It would be many weeks mending.

Blast! Rafe cursed his luck. Next week’s big air show, with $100,000 in prizes, was to have been the turning point of his life. He was gambling everything on the chance that he would find a backer to invest in the aeroplane he’d designed and built. He’d had a chance. A good chance. Now his aeroplane, his leg and his dreams all lay shattered.

Slowly Rafe sank back onto the pillow. He would rebuild the aeroplane, of course. And he would fly again. But he’d lost the season. He had missed his big chance. Damn! He glanced around the strangely exotic room again. Where in hell’s name was he, anyway? And where was his aeroplane?

The sound of approaching footsteps outside the half-open door broke into his thoughts. Instinctively Rafe froze. Life had taught him to be cautious. Even in a place like this, you could never tell who might be slinking around the halls. Once, in a perfectly respectable New Orleans hotel, he had gone to sleep and almost lost his life to a wallet-snatching bellhop with a stiletto in his boot. This place looked too ritzy for such shenanigans, but all the same…

Hinges creaked softly as the door swung all the way open. Rafe lay still, his eyes closed, as the footsteps padded across the carpet toward him. They were light and swift—a woman’s, Rafe guessed, relaxing a bit. Though a woman could be just as dangerous as a man. What would she look like? he caught himself wondering. Would she be young? Pretty? And what would she be doing in this room? He let her come closer, playing the game as long as he dared.

Now he sensed the light press of her body against the side of the bed. She was looking down at him. Rafe could feel her eyes, like sunlight on his face. His heart drummed against the wall of his chest, so loudly that he wondered if she could hear it.

She leaned closer. Rafe could hear the soft, feminine whisper of her breathing. He smelled no perfume, though. That was a bad sign. A perfumed woman approaching a man in bed usually had just one thing on her mind. That would be easy enough to manage, even with a broken leg—with a little cooperation from the lady, of course. But this female didn’t seem bent on seduction. She was too quiet.

Whatever her game, it was time to end it. Rafe opened his eyes. At the same instant, he moved, striking with the speed of a diamondback. Before the girl could even gasp, he had seized her arms in his two hands. He jerked her down and forward, bringing her face to a level with his own.

Startled eyes stared into his—violet-blue eyes, as cool and translucent as sapphires, and strangely familiar. Maybe he hadn’t been hallucinating after all. Or maybe he still was.

“Let me go!” she gasped.

“Not until you tell me where I am,” Rafe said.

She tried to pull away, twisting hard against the grip of his hands, but he was too strong for her. When she saw that she couldn’t escape, she stopped struggling. Her eyes glared at him through the tumble of her loose, tawny hair.

“Why, you stupid, addle-brained son of a baboon!” she said in a low voice. “If you want to know where you are, all you have to do is ask! There’s no reason for you to behave like an animal! Now let go of me, Mr. Garrick, before I scream bloody murder!”

Half amused, half embarrassed, Rafe let her go. The little spitfire was right about his behavior, he admitted grudgingly. If anyone in this place had meant to harm him, they could easily have done it while he was still unconscious from the crash. He had acted out of instinct. Acted rashly.

“How did you know my name?”

“It’s written on the lining of your jacket.” She had taken a couple of steps backward, giving Rafe his first real chance to study her. She was taller than he’d first realized. Prettier, too, with a windblown mane of hair and a face that could have been stamped on an ancient Greek coin, or used to launch a thousand ships. But she was dressed like a child, in a white middy blouse and a rumpled pongee skirt. Grains of sand clung to her bare feet. Innocence was written all over her. Rafe sighed. He liked his women experienced and eager.

“I’ve been down on the beach watching our groundskeepers dig your aeroplane out,” she said, keeping her distance. “They were almost finished when I left to check on you.” She ran a sun-browned hand through her hair, the motion pulling her blouse tight against one perfect, pear-shaped breast. Rafe felt the familiar surge of heat in his loins. Innocent or not, this female was no child.

“Not that I need have bothered,” she continued in a low, breathy voice. “You seem to have your strength back, Mr. Garrick.” Her straight, dark brows almost touched as she scowled at him. “What in heaven’s name did you think I was trying to do to you?”

Rafe tried to laugh and winced when it hurt. Maybe a rib or two had been cracked along with the leg. “You’ve got me there,” he said. “I’d just awakened, you see, and I didn’t quite have my bearings. I still don’t have them, for that matter, so if you’d care to explain—”

“You’re English, aren’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“The way you speak—you sound English,” she persisted.

“All right. My parents came over on a boat from Liverpool when I was twelve,” Rafe said a bit impatiently. And they both died of typhoid eleven months later in a filthy Brooklyn tenement, he kept himself from adding. He never made a habit of telling people his life story. People had enough troubles of their own.

“I thought so,” she said. “I’m good with accents.”

“Look,” Rafe said, wondering if the female was stalling on purpose or if she was just naturally exasperating, “I need to know some things, like where I am and how long I’ve been here. And I need to know about my aeroplane. How bad is the damage? If you can’t tell me, for Pete’s sake, stop babbling and go get somebody who can!”

He saw at once that he had pushed her too far. Her chin went up and her nostrils flared like a blooded filly’s. “You look, Mr. Garrick,” she said coldly. “When your aeroplane crashed I was the first to reach it. I found you hanging halfway out of the machine with your head in the water. I held you up and kept you from drowning while the men got your legs free—and I ruined a brand-new party gown in the process. Now that you’re awake and I’ve met you, I realize I should have saved the gown!”

With an angry swirl of her pongee skirt, she spun out of the door and was gone.

Rafe groaned. “Hey!” he called after her. “I’m sorry! Come on back!” But the silence, like the wet sand that glittered on the carpet where she’d stood, mocked him. Minutes passed, and she didn’t return.

There was nothing to do but get up and investigate the situation himself, Rafe decided. Gritting his teeth, he rolled over onto his right side. Slow and easy, that was the way. Once he was on his feet, maybe he’d be able to get to the bottom of this mess.

And a fine mess it was! He remembered crashing the aeroplane, but he knew nothing about his rescuers. The girl had said the groundskeepers were on the beach, digging the aeroplane free, but what did that mean? What did these people plan to do with it, and with him? He had to find out fast.

Beads of sweat stood out on Rafe’s forehead as he pushed himself to a sitting position. The pain in his ribs was nauseating. Cautiously he inspected his own body. Someone had dressed him in a pair of gray silk pajamas that were finer than anything he’d ever worn. One of the legs had been ripped open to accommodate the bulk of the splint. Under the jacket, his ribs were bound with strips of muslin. A patch of gauze dressing covered a gash on his forehead.