Setting her gently on her feet by the giant bed, he leaned over to drag the covers back before standing tall and letting a small smile loose. ‘Take it off.’
‘Excuse me?’
He jerked his chin. ‘That industrial-strength whatever-it-is you’re wearing. What is it with women and those boned things, anyway?’
A squeak of outrage sounded in the base of her sore throat. ‘You’re unbelievable. Go away.’
‘I’ll go when you’re all tucked up in bed. Anything happens to you within twenty-four hours of hitting L.A. I might feel guilty for bringing you here…’
Somewhere in the growing red mist of her anger came a question that temporarily made her gape at him. ‘You brought me here? I thought the studio brought me here? Are you telling me you paid for all of this—the flights and the limo pick-up and the fancy room and everything?’
Say no!
‘Yes.’
Uh-oh. Room swaying again. But when his hands grasped her elbows she tugged them away and managed to turn round before she flumped down onto the mattress. Automatically toeing her shoes off her feet, she shook her head and blinked into the middle distance. ‘I thought the studio paid for it.’
‘They paid for a script. We took the money. Now we have to deliver.’
What had she got herself into? She couldn’t be beholden to him. It wasn’t as if she had the money to pay him back—not until they were paid the balance of their advance for the last script. Even then. Every cent was precious. There was no guarantee she could start writing again without Will and make money at it. Not that she’d tried the last time…
A crooked forefinger arrived under her chin and lifted it to force her gaze upwards. Then he examined her eyes for the most maddening amount of time while she held her breath. ‘You need to sleep. I’ll come back later and check up on how you’re feeling.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Go take that ridiculous thing off while I’m here—in case you pass out again.’
‘I won’t pass—’
‘Humour me.’
Pursing her lips, she reached for her pyjamas from under the soft pillows, pushed to her feet and scowled at him on her way to the bathroom, ‘I don’t know that I can work with this new bossy Will.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I don’t like him.’
Closing the door with a satisfyingly loud click, she took a second to lean against the wood until the world stopped spinning again. For a long time she’d told herself her life was a mess, but it was a glorious kind of mess. Now she felt very much like dropping the ‘glorious’ part…
She had to sit on the edge of the bathtub to struggle her way out of everything without another dizzy spell. Then she hid the offending underwear under a pile of towels, in case he decided to use the bathroom before he left. Stupid cold! That was what she got for working in a room full of children—she must have incubated the germs on the plane. So much for being considerate and taking the time to see the children through the last term, postponing her trip by a couple of weeks until the summer holidays. They’d repaid her in germs. Bless them.
‘You okay in there?’ He sounded as if he was standing right by the door.
When she yanked it open, he was.
‘You can go away now.’
Will blocked her exit and took his sweet time looking her over from head to toe and back up again, for the second time in as many hours. Only this time it left her skin tingling with more than the cold sweat from her cold. Just one comment about her two-sizes-too-big pyjamas and he was a dead man.
Then his gaze clashed with hers and her eyes widened. What was that?
He stepped back. ‘Bed.’
Cassidy made a big deal about making sure she patted the covers down the full length of her legs when she was between the cool cotton sheets. The room was wonderfully cool too. Had he turned on the air-conditioning for her? Then she saw the glass of water on the bedside table, alongside the remote control for the television, a box of tissues and the large folder with all the hotel’s numbers in it. He’d thought of everything. It was amazingly considerate, actually. It tempered the sharpness brought on by her humiliation, and her voice was calmer as she snuggled down against the large pile of cushions.
‘There. Happy now?’
When she chanced another look at him he had the edges of his dark jacket pushed back and his large hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. He seemed so much larger than she remembered—as if he filled the room. And yet still with those boyishly devastating good looks and that thick head of dark hair, with its upward curls at his nape, and the sharply intelligent eyes that studied her so intensely she felt a need to run and hide…
Half of her silently pleaded with him to go away.
The other half probably wished he’d never left to begin with.
‘I’ll be back later.’
‘You don’t need to. Call in the morning if you like. I’ll sleep.’
The green of his eyes flashed with determination. ‘I’ll be back later.’
The balance of power within Cassidy swayed towards ‘go away’. ‘I won’t open the door Will.’
‘I know.’ He took his hands out of his pockets and backed towards the door, his long legs making the journey in three steps. Then he lifted a hand and casually turned something over between his long fingers like a baton, ‘That’s why I’m keeping your key card.’
Cassidy could have growled at him. But instead she rolled her eyes as she turned away and punched the pillows into shape, hearing the door click quietly shut behind her. After counting to ten, just to be sure, she fought the need to cry. Oh, how much easier it would be if she could hate him…
He was way out of her league now. Way out.
She wanted to go home.
CHAPTER TWO
THE dream was feverish. In the no man’s land between deep sleep and consciousness came vivid images that were a mixture of the past, the present and some imaginary point in time real only in her mind. The sheets knotted around her legs felt cumbersome, still heavy, even though she’d long since kicked the blanket to one side and damp strands of her auburn hair were stuck to her cheeks and her forehead.
She felt awful.
But she was old enough and wise enough to know she was at the sweating-it-out stage. She just had to let it run its course and her body would fight it off. It might mean she was looking at a few days holed up in the hotel room, but it wasn’t as if it was the worst hotel in the world, was it?
The low light from her bedside lamp shone irritatingly through the backs of her eyelids, and voices sounded from the television she had on low volume to help lull her to sleep. She’d never been particularly good with silence. But then neither was she accustomed to the noises of a busy American hotel. So keeping the TV on had seemed like a plan—especially when she’d discovered a channel that showed the familiar programmes she was used to watching at home. That was why it took a moment for her to drag her mind out of its half-slumber into a cognitive state. The door had to have been knocked on several times by then, she figured—with increasing levels of volume…
‘Cass?’ It was Will.
She