Safe Harbour

As to that, Silvio wasn’t 100 percent convinced, at least, not in this particular case. “That still remains to be seen, Miss Stevi.”

The patient appeared to be breathing more easily now, she thought. And it might have been her imagination, but she thought his color was a little better. A little less pale at any rate.

“How long do you think he’ll be unconscious?” she asked.

“That is difficult to say,” Silvio said. “The man has lost a lot of blood, but that appears to be the only wound. Since you do not want to take him to a hospital—”

“I don’t,” she said with feeling. “At least not until he can speak for himself.”

The expression on Silvio’s face was stern. “Hopefully, it will not be too late by then.”

“It won’t be,” she answered.

“How can you be so sure?” It wasn’t a challenge so much as a desire to know why she was so confident she was right.

“I just am,” she answered.

Silvio sighed. He was going to have to step up his efforts to watch over this family. “Then we will just have to wait and see,” he said calmly, like a man who was going to sit back and wait for things to unfold.

He rose from the side of the bed. From his perspective, there was nothing else he could do until the man woke up. But there was just one more thing he needed to know.

“When will you tell your father about this?” he pressed.

She nodded toward the stranger. “Not until he wakes up and can tell me what happened to him.”

She saw the doubt on Silvio’s face. She knew he was worried about her and she appreciated that the man cared enough to concern himself this way about her—about her whole family, really. But from her point of view, she was being rational in her decision.

“I need to have something more to tell my father than ‘Look what I found on the beach today, Dad. It washed up on the shore right at my feet. Can I keep it?’ I want to be able to explain how he came to be here and why he has that bullet wound in his chest. Or Dad will think I’m crazy.”

Silvio’s eyes locked onto hers. “I could see your father’s point.”

“I know, I know,” Stevi agreed.

She closed her eyes as she searched her mind for something she could say that would ease Silvio’s doubts.

“On some level, so can I,” she finally admitted. “And I really can’t explain why, but something tells me that bringing him here, having you take care of him, instead of carting him off to the nearest hospital and handing him off to be someone else’s problem, is the right thing to do.”

He appeared unconvinced. “Right for who, Miss Stevi? Him? Or you?”

Again, she didn’t have anything logical to offer as an explanation. A gut feeling didn’t really translate all that well into logic.

“Maybe both. Him, definitely.”

“And if he is a criminal?” Silvio pressed.

But he’s not. I just know it. She flashed the gardener a smile. “Then you and Shane and Wyatt will protect me.”

“And who will protect me from your father when he finds out that I let you do this?”

Stevi’s grin grew wider, brighter, as she answered, “Why, me, of course.”

Silvio shook his head. There was no amusement in his eyes.

“You will forgive me, Miss Stevi,” he told her solemnly, “but I do not find your assurance to be comforting. I do not like lying to the man who took me in without question.”

“Did you ever think that my father might want to do the same thing for this man?” she challenged.

Try as she might, she couldn’t read Silvio’s expression or guess what he was thinking.

“If you feel that way, then why are you hiding him in your room?” Silvio posed. “Why do we not go to your father right now and tell him?”

Silvio responded only to the truth, so she gave him an honest answer. “Because he asked me to help him and right now, this is part of it.”

Silvio looked at her in surprise. “He talked to you?”

She nodded.

Silvio frowned and sighed mightily. “I do not know where to begin. Do you know what kind of a chance you took?” he asked. “When you saw him lying on the beach like that, you should have come to get me right away. This man could have hurt you.”

“He was half-drowned and he had a bullet wound in his chest. This man couldn’t have hurt a sand flea,” she protested, waving a hand.

“He could have been pretending to be unconscious so that he could overpower you,” Silvio pointed out.

She laughed.

“The beach was deserted. How could he have even known I was coming?” She looked at him and knew her words were falling on deaf ears. “You’re going to go on worrying about this, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer her directly. “We will have this conversation again after you tell your father.”

She nodded her agreement. “Okay, it’s a deal.” Silvio crossed back to the door. She saw the hesitation in his eyes as he looked back over his shoulder at the man on her bed.

“I do not like leaving you with him.”

“He’s wounded,” she reminded him. “Not to mention unconscious.”

Silvio still didn’t budge. “What will you do?” he asked.

She wasn’t sure what he was really asking, so she told him exactly what she intended to do next. “Take a shower, change, get some breakfast. The usual.”

The frown on his square, tanned face deepened. “You are going to undress?”

She answered his question as seriously as she could. “I find taking a shower with my clothes on doesn’t get me as clean as I’d like.”

He didn’t crack a smile. “Lock the bathroom door.”

CHAPTER FOUR

SMILING TO HERSELF, she flipped the lock on her bedroom door as a precautionary measure. Not because she didn’t want Silvio to walk in—he was the only one she actually didn’t mind coming in at this point. However, if anyone else walked in and saw the stranger in bed while she was in the shower, she would have to do a great deal of explaining really quickly.