Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [77]
The lights came on in the hallway, and Jackson greeted it with a burst of profanity. “Where are the goddamn lights in this room?”
“Aren’t any.” Dean’s voice came from over by the doorway, and the beam of flashlight washed over the room, stopping on Coltrane and Jilly. “My, my, don’t you two look cozy? Should we leave you alone to enjoy yourselves?”
“Don’t move,” Coltrane breathed in her ear, ignoring Dean. Jilly said nothing, still in that strangely altered state.
“Where the fuck is Rachel-Ann?” Jackson demanded.
“Didn’t see her,” Dean replied, seemingly undisturbed. “Though I thought I heard a car drive away when I was looking for the fuse box.”
“Fuse box? I told you this place was a firetrap. And Rachel-Ann couldn’t have left—I boxed her in.” Even from her strange sense of distance Jilly could hear the smug satisfaction in her father’s voice.
“That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have taken another car,” Dean said reasonably. “Looks like she got away, after all.”
“Shit! You’ve got to help me find her. Bring that flashlight!” There was no missing the rage in Jackson’s voice.
“But what about Jilly?”
“Coltrane will see to her.”
“Assholes,” Coltrane muttered beneath his breath when they were alone. “Are you okay?”
Still that odd, floating feeling. “I don’t know,” she said.
“There’s broken glass all around us. I don’t want to make things worse by moving too quickly. Are you bleeding?”
“I don’t know,” she said again, almost dreamily.
“Shit. Don’t pass out on me!” He sounded oddly panicked. She couldn’t imagine why. The darkness was soft, warm, and those annoying noises had gone. She wasn’t particularly comfortable, but if she concentrated on the weight of his body on top of hers rather than what lay beneath her, she was happy enough.
He moved, his weight lifting off her as he put his hands down on either side of her, and a moment later he’d pushed himself back, a muttered curse escaping as he straightened up.
“Stay put,” he said. “I’m going to find some lights.”
“I wasn’t planning on moving,” she said in a wry, dreamy voice. It wasn’t as nice without him covering her, though she was having an easier time breathing. And she definitely didn’t like it when he left her alone in the room, in the darkness.
Reality was beginning to rear its ugly head. Her back was stinging, and she thought she could feel the warm wetness of blood beneath her. Rachel-Ann had disappeared, all hell had broken loose, and she was lying on a bed of glass….
She started to shift, but Coltrane was already back. “I told you not to move.” He sounded harsh. A moment later a small pool of light illuminated the scene. The same damned bare-bulbed lamp that had lit the previous night’s little scene. Embarrassing as that had been in retrospect, she still preferred it to tonight’s absurd disaster.
“I’m going to pull you straight up,” he said, looming over her like a huge, dark shadow. “Don’t wiggle, don’t squirm, just let me pull you.”
“And if I’ve hurt my back?” She managed to find some of her usual tartness.
“Then you’ll be paralyzed for life and you’ll stop annoying me,” he said. He leaned down and reached for her hands. “One, two, three.”
She was up, soaring, his unexpected force propelling her against him with such strength that the two of them fell back against the sofa, her on top this time.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Coltrane muttered.
This time she didn’t hesitate, putting her hands on his chest and pushing herself upward, away from him, only to shriek with surprise at the pain in her back.
“Shit,” Coltrane said again. “Look at your back.”
“An anatomical impossibility, slightly different from the one I was going to suggest to you.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. And then he laughed, a great, whooshing sound of relief and something else. “You are amazing,