Star of His Heart - Brenda Jackson [62]
She quickly sat straight up in bed.
“I was beginning to think I’d applied too much pressure to that nerve.”
Netherland traced Ashton’s voice to the doorway. He was standing there wearing the same clothes he’d worn when he had shown up at her place. She blinked. Her mind was kind of foggy as to when that had been. Last night? This morning? Yesterday? “Where am I?” she decided to ask.
Ashton came into the room and stood opposite the bed. “You’re at my ranch on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma.”
“Oklahoma!”
“Yes.”
“But how did I get here?”
“I chartered a plane and brought you here.”
Netherland shook her head, trying to remember. “You came to see me last night at my place. Right?”
“Yes.” He walked over to a table and picked up a chilled bottle of water out of an ice bucket.
“And you touched me, here,” she said, placing her hand beneath her ear as she remembered him doing.
He turned around to her as he poured water into a glass. “Yes.”
“I don’t remember anything after that.”
He walked over to her. “You wouldn’t. I placed you in a deep sleep.” He handed her the glass of cold water. “You need to drink this. Your body will experience extreme thirst for a couple of hours or so.”
She took the glass he offered. After taking a sip, she looked up at him and asked. “You put me in some sort of unconscious state?”
“Yes.”
In a way, that really didn’t surprise her. The man was able to bypass alarm systems, for heaven’s sake. “Why? Why did you bring me here, Ashton?”
He sat on the side of the bed. “There are some things you and I need to work out.”
Netherland looked at the glass, then back at him. “Some things can’t be worked out, Ashton.”
He inclined his head slightly when he said, “There’s nothing that can’t be worked out between us.”
A part of Netherland—a big part—wished that was true, but knew it wasn’t. “How can I fight a vision, Ashton? Especially when it’s a vision that isn’t true but one you believe in. Maybe I should have told you earlier of my inability to have children but I—”
“You can have children.”
Netherland raised a brow as she looked up at him. “Excuse me?”
“I said you can have children.”
She released a deep, angry sigh. He was taking the news of her infertility worse than Erik had. At least her ex-husband had accepted what she’d told him. Ashton didn’t want to do that. He was in a state of denial. “I believe I know my body a whole lot better than you do,” she snapped. Netherland’s anger increased when Ashton had the nerve to smile.
“Yes, Netherland, for now you do but that will change soon enough. By the end of the week I will know your body better than anyone. Even you. Trust me.”
Netherland thought about that for a minute, then said in a soft voice, “It’s not about trust, Ashton.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Would you force yourself on me?”
The expression on his face indicated he thought the question was ludicrous. “Of course not!”
Netherland released a satisfied sigh. Now they were getting somewhere. The only thing she could count on right now was his sense of honor and doing what was right. It was something a marine lived by. “And you would not keep me here against my will, would you?”
A rogue grin tilted the corners of Ashton’s lips. “Now that I would do.”
“Why?” she asked, taken aback when she saw determination stamped all over his features. She drew a deep breath and looked away, avoiding the irresistible and tantalizing look in his eyes.
“Because like I told you earlier, we need to work out some things.”
She forced herself to look back at him. “Some things can’t be worked out with words, Ashton.”
“I don’t plan on using words, Netherland.”
The husky tone of Ashton’s voice made Netherland feel hot inside when a mental image of what he’d just alluded to flashed in her mind. She quickly took another sip of the cool, refreshing water, appreciating the smooth liquid as it worked its way down past the knot in her throat. “You’re not a doctor, Ashton.”
His gaze lingered on her damp lips. They were lips he had a firsthand knowledge of. “I didn’t say I was.”
Netherland met his stare