Why couldn’t Luca mind his own damn business? Not only had he found himself caught in a robbery, the police were only a block away and now a foreign woman—based on the fact she was shouting in English—had fainted right in front of his bike.
“Non. Non, non, non.” Luca put the bike in neutral, jumped off and bent down beside the crumpled woman. He shook her shoulder. “Reveillez-vous.” Wake up.
The woman moaned, her lids fluttered and then she passed out again. He could see the beginnings of a bruise blossoming along her hairline.
“La vache!” The words scraped the back of his throat. Glancing up and down the street, Luca weighed his options. What if he propped her unconscious body in a doorway...
A quick survey of the street revealed that the two closest doors were covered in paper with signs in the window advertising space for rent.
Not good.
The sirens were loud and close.
Dammit. He couldn’t leave her. And he definitely couldn’t get caught at the scene of a crime. He’d wind up in another media shitstorm.
Luca fit his hands beneath the woman’s arms and lifted her to her feet. She briefly came to, giving him just enough time to instruct her to straddle the bike. However, once she was astride, she slumped forward.
The sound of more sirens approaching from another direction got Luca’s pulse racing. He scooted the woman’s body forward on the seat—God, she wasn’t very big, was she?—and then straddled the seat behind her. He shifted into first and then wrapped his left arm around the woman’s waist to hold her steady while he slowly drove the seven blocks, down side streets and alleys, to his rented flat. The ride only took ten minutes and would have been faster if he could have shifted into a higher gear, but that was impossible to do while holding on to an unconscious woman.
The fact she was still out cold was not a good sign.
She better not die.
What the hell was he doing, bringing an unconscious foreigner back to his flat? He must be out of his mind. Luca could see the headlines smeared across the papers and news channels: Dead Foreigner Found in Luca Legrand’s Secret Residence. Foul Play Suspected.
But what choice did he have?
Luca parked his motorcycle in the underground lot, carefully scooped the woman up into his arms and carried her to the elevator that would take him to the fifth floor.
Once inside the flat, he laid her on his bed, got an ice pack out of the freezer—one he kept for when his leg ached—wrapped it in a towel and placed it on the woman’s temple.
“Ne me quitte pas,” he whispered, brushing hair off her forehead and temple so he could press the cold pack against her wound.
“What does that mean?” she asked softly, her eyes still closed.
Oh, thank God. “I’m asking you not to die. Please.”
A small smile touched her lips and she covered his hand with hers. Her touch was light and cool, and Luca felt a stirring of tenderness toward this complete stranger.
“Okay,” she murmured. “I’ll try.”
Then she passed out again.
Rubbing his temples, he gazed down at the slight woman who took up less than a third of his bed. She was showing all of the signs of a concussion; he’d seen it too many times to count on the racing circuit, and although he couldn’t risk taking her to a hospital or calling an ambulance, he had to get her medical help.
Back in the bedroom, in the drawer of the small bedside table, was his old phone, the one he hadn’t turned on in two weeks. He grabbed it, booted it up and typed a name into his contact list. Then he pressed the call button. As the phone rang, his heart beat fiercely in his chest.
It wasn’t anxiety, nor was it adrenaline. This was something else, like he was teetering on the edge of a precipice, vertigo pulling at him, forcing him to jump, and just as he felt himself fall...he noticed the rocks below.
* * *
Jasmine woke up to the sound of her own groans. She lay there for a few minutes, listening to the pounding cymbals inside her head, each clash punctuated with a sharp pain that lanced the side of her skull and reverberated through her temples down to her jaw.
Random images from the last few days flashed through her brain. Her wedding had been cancelled, she’d boarded a plane to Paris...
Jasmine’s stomach heaved dryly as she recalled nearly getting kicked off the plane. But she hadn’t, had she? She’d made it to Paris, right?
Then what...?
Hmm...? Why was it so hard to remember? Was she hungover? She sat up and her head swam like she was wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. Wait a second, she didn’t wear glasses, did she?
She touched her face. No glasses. Then Jasmine rubbed her eyes, and when her vision cleared, she took in her surroundings. She didn’t recognize a thing.
Where the hell was she?
“Ah, our patient is awake.”
Jasmine turned her head—too quickly—causing her to squeeze her lids shut in pain. When she opened her eyes, she saw a man she’d never seen before. He was tall and thin, wearing a tailored shirt and pants. His face was all angles with sunken eyes and cheeks that made his cheekbones prominent. He had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and smiled kindly.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Hugo Caron. I am a doctor.” The man spoke English slowly, with a French accent.
“Where am I?”
“You are in a private residence in Paris.”
“In Paris?”
“Yes. You have bumped your head and I believe you have sustained a concussion. I need to perform some tests to see how serious it is.”
When the man stepped to the side of the bed, Jasmine realized there was someone else in the room. Another man who stood in the shadows.
“Who’s that?” she asked, pointing.
The doctor turned, as if he also hadn’t realized there was someone there. “That is...” he began slowly, “the man who found you. You were unconscious on the street. He brought you here and called me.”
“Oh.”
Why was everything so foggy? Why did none of this make sense? What had happened to her once she’d arrived in Paris?
“Oh!” She put her hand to her mouth, a snippet of a memory returning.
Have yourself a sex-venture. It was Ashley’s voice in her head.
Slowly this time, Jazz took in her surroundings. The queen-sized bed with the dark sheets and comforter. A masculine choice. The room, a foil to the suite at the hotel—oh, wait, she remembered the hotel! It was airy and light and decorated with antiques—this room was painted taupe and had modern furnishings.
“I’m going to do some tests and then ask you some questions, okay?”
Jazz nodded but stopped herself when the motion caused instant nausea. “Okay,” she whispered.
The doctor shone a light in each of her eyes and then asked her to follow his finger as he moved it from side to side in front of her face. He checked her ears with a scope, and her hearing by speaking quietly into each one. With gentle fingers, he touched a tender spot on the side of her head.
“Ouch.”
“I’m sorry.” He tilted her head up and to the side to get a better look at whatever injury she’d sustained and he hmmed.
“Okay. Straighten your arm out to the side,”