Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 144: Thank you for saving my life

Chapter 144: Thank you for saving my life

As the moon peeked out of the winter night sky, its glow mingled with the dancing, falling snowflakes and illuminated the cozy huge house, nestled in the mountains.

It was after 11 P.M. when Mia woke up with a confused start, a sofa pillow clutched to her chest on the sofa where she’d fallen asleep. A slight movement off to her right caught her attention, and she quickly turned her head at the same time an amused male voice remarked, "A nurse who abandons her patient and falls asleep on duty does not get paid."

Mia’s so called patient was standing with his shoulder propped casually against the fireplace mantel and his arms crossed over his chest, watching her with a lazy smile. His hair looked damp as if he’d just came out from a shower, with his brown shirt that was open at the throat and his casual home trouser, Neil Wayner looked incredibly handsome, completely recovered...and very amused about something.

Trying to ignore the treacherous leap her heart gave at the sight of his mesmerizing, intimate smile, Mia hastily sat up. "Your cellmate, Kai Martinez...he didn’t die," she told him hurriedly, wanting to put his mind at ease about that immediately so he wouldn’t end up wanting to kill himself again. "The doctors his family brought say he’s going to be all right."

"I heard that." He assured.

"Y-you did?" Mia asked cautiously. But It occurred to her that he might have heard it on the television while he was dressing up and she was sleep. If not...if he remembered her telling him that, then it was embarrassingly possible he might also remember the other things she’d said in those unguarded minutes when she thought he was beyond hearing.

She waited, hoping he would tell her that he’d heard it from the television, but he continued watching her with that smile tugging at his lips, and Mia felt her entire body grow warm with embarrassment. "How do you feel?" she asked, hastily standing up.

"Better now. When I woke up, I felt like a potato being baked in its own skin."

"What? Oh, you mean the bedroom got too hot because of the fire and warmer?" She asked, realizing her mistake of forgetting to check on him.

He nodded. "I kept dreaming I had died and gone to hell. When I opened my eyes, I saw the fire leaping around me, and I was pretty sure of it because of the intense heat."

"I’m sorry," Mia said, anxiously searching his face for any sign of lingering ill effects from his exposure to the heat.

"Don’t be sorry. I realized very quickly that I couldn’t really be in hell." He joked light-heartedly.

His lighthearted mood was so contagious and so utterly welcoming that she reached up to lay the back of her hand against his forehead to test his body temperature without realizing what she was doing. "How did you know you weren’t in hell then?"

"Because..." he said quietly while looking down her face with a gentle expression she hadn’t seen on his face since they’d gotten here, "part of the time, an angel was hovering over me."

An involuntary blush was quick to rise to her cheeks, but she covered it up with a small laugh. "You were obviously hallucinating in your condition," she joked.

"Was I?" He breathed.

This time, there was no mistaking the husky timbre in his voice that sent little butterflies fluttering in her stomach, and she quickly pulled her hand away from his head, but she couldn’t quite free her gaze from his silver eyes.

"Definitely." She whispered softly.

From the corner of her eye, Mia suddenly noticed that an ornament was turned the wrong way on the mantle beside Neil’s shoulder, and she impulsively reached out to straighten it, then she rearranged the two smaller ornaments beside that one.

"Mia," he called in a deep, velvety voice that had a dangerous effect on her heart rate, "look at me."

When she turned to look at him, he said with quiet gravity, "Thank you for saving my life."

Mesmerized by his tone and the expression in his eyes, she had to clear her throat to stop her own voice from shaking. "Thank you for trying to save mine, too."

Something stirred in the depths of his silver eyes, something hot and inviting, and Mia’s pulse tripled even though he didn’t attempt to touch her.

Trying to switch the mood to one of a safe zone, she asked the first question that came to mind, "A-are you hungry?"

"Why didn’t you leave?" he asked instead of answering her question.

Neil’s tone of voice warned her that he wouldn’t allow a change of subject until he had gotten answers, and she sank down onto the sofa, but she looked at the centrepiece on the table because she couldn’t quite meet his searching gaze. "I couldn’t leave you out there to die, not when you’d risked your life thinking I had drowned." She noticed that two of the white silk artificial flowers in the centrepiece were bent at awkward angles and she obeyed the automatic impulse to lean forward and fix them.

Neil’s eyes followed her actions of fixing things for the second time but he went on to ask. "Then why didn’t you leave after you got me back here and into bed?"

Mia felt as if she were wandering through a field filled with rose torns. Even if she had the courage to look at him and blurt out exactly how she felt about him, she couldn’t be certain that her confession wouldn’t backfire on her face, she couldn’t be certain how he’d react and if he’d even acknowledge her feelings.

"For one thing, I honestly didn’t think of it, and besides..." she trailed off not knowing what to say, but then she added, "I didn’t leave because I didn’t know where the car keys were."

He raised a suspicious brow before saying, "They were in my trouser pocket, the same trouser you took off me."

"Actually, I...I didn’t think of looking for the car keys. I suppose I was simply too worried about you to think clearly at that time."

"Don’t you find that a little odd given the circumstances you ended up here with me?" He persisted, adding to her nervousness.

Mia leaned forward and picked up a pile of old news papers that were lying half off the table and laid them fully on the table, then she moved the crystal bowl of silk flowers two inches to the left, to the center of the table as she spoke. "Everything has seemed pretty odd for the past few days," she said cautiously. "I can’t begin to guess what would be normal behavior in these circumstances anymore."

Standing up, Mia began straightening the pillows she’d disarranged during her nap on the sofa. She was bending down to pick one up from the carpet when he said in a laughter-tinged voice, "That’s a habit you have, isn’t it— rearranging things when you feel uneasy?"

"I wouldn’t say that. I’m just a very... tidy person." She stood up and looked at him, and her composure slipped toward laughter as she noticed his dark brows were raised in mocking challenge and his eyes were gleaming with amused fascination as he waited for her to admit that she was uneasy.

"All right," she said with a helpless little laugh, "I admit it. It’s a habit of mine, I rearrange things when I’m nervous or angry." As she finished putting the pillow where it belonged, she then added with a rueful smile, "Once, when I was nervous about failing an exam in the University, I reorganized everything in the halls of our apartment building in Whispering Way, then I began to mop the floors, I didn’t stop until evening when my...mom came to stop me."

His eyes laughed at her story, but his voice was puzzled and solemn. "Am I doing something that makes you nervous now?"

Mia laughed anxiously, then she said with a lame attempt at seriousness, "You’ve been doing things that make me extremely nervous for past few days we’ve been together!"

Despite her scolding tone, the way she was looking at him filled Neil with so much tenderness: There was no trace of fear or suspicion or revulsion or hatred anywhere on her lovely, expressive face, and it seemed like a lifetime since anyone had looked at him like this. His own uncle and subordinates hadn’t really believed he was innocent. Mia did. He would have known it just by looking at her, but the memory of her words at the river, the way her voice had broken when she said them, made it a thousand times more meaningful...

’Remember when you said you wanted someone to believe that you’re innocent? I didn’t completely believe you then, but I do now. I swear to the Heavens! I know you didn’t kill my mom.’

She could have left him to die at the river, or if that was unthinkable at that moment, she could have gotten him back here, then taken the car keys from his pocket and called the authorities from a phonebooth on the way as he’d taken her phone. But she hadn’t. Because she really believed he was innocent. Neil wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her how much that meant to him, he wanted to bask in the warmth of her smile and hear her contagious laughter again. Most of all, he wanted to feel her mouth on his, to kiss her and caress her until they were both wild, and then to thank her for the gift of her trust with his body. Because that was the only thing he had to give her now.

He knew she sensed a change in their relationship and for some unknown reason, it seemed to be making her more nervous than she’d been when he was holding a gun on her. He knew that just as surely as he knew they were going to make love tonight on his bed and that she wanted to almost as much as he did.

Mia waited for him to say something or to resort at her last jibe, and when he didn’t, she stepped back and gestured toward the kitchen. "Are you hungry?" she asked for the second time. And he

nodded slowly, but her hand stilled at the husky intimacy she thought she heard in his voice when he said, "I am starved."

Mia told herself very firmly that he had not deliberately chosen that particular word because it had been used during their quarrel last night in a sexual moment. She cleared her throat, trying to look innocent of all such thoughts as she said very politely, "What would you like to eat?"

"What are you offering tonight?" he countered, playing verbal chess with her with such ease that Mia wasn’t at all certain if all the double meanings to their exchange existed only in her imagination.

"I was offering food, of course." She said.

"Of course, you were," he solemnly agreed, but his eyes were glinting with amusement.

"Hot soup, to be specific." She said.

"It’s important to be specific." He replied, his gaze never leaving hers for a second.

Mia decided to make a quick retreat from the strangely charged conversation and began backing away toward the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. "I’ll prepare a quick dinner and serve the soup over there on the dinning."

"Let’s eat here by the fire instead," he suggested, his voice like a soft caress over her skin. "It’s comfortable and cozier."