Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 269 - 7

Chapter 269: Chapter 7

"I think the dog is going to be fine," the physician told Rayne and Liam as he looked around for his first aid bag. The ambulance drivers had left earlier, after settling the dog on the floor near the coffee table in the main room of Rayne’s room.

"He’ll sleep through the night, assuming I gave him the right dosage. Tomorrow, you should take him over to town and let a vet there have a look at him and take some X-rays of his skull and shoulder."

"I can’t thank you enough," Rayne said sincerely, "and I’m terribly sorry about your arm." She apologized for the bite he’d received from the dog.

"The bite isn’t extremely deep, but it is rather painful," he replied stiffly while collecting bandages and antiseptic from the table near the terrace doors. "And of course now there’s the question of rabies to consider."

Rayne stifled a smile that was part anxiety and part mortification. "I thought you said that whoever you spoke to at the hospital just now told you there hasn’t been a case of rabies reported on the island in years?"

"Yes. However, it’s important that you keep that animal with you until you leave. After that, I’ll take care of him. I wish you would let me take him with me now."

"I want to look after him myself while I’m here," Rayne said. She had a feeling the physician would prefer to euthanize Eric to find out immediately if he had rabies, rather than wait out a ten-day quarantine period to see if Eric developed symptoms of it.

"If he shows any symptoms of rabies while he’s with you, I need to know about it immediately so that I can be treated. Agreed?"

"Absolutely," Rayne said, and nodded for emphasis.

"And you understand clearly what those symptoms are?"

"I wrote them down right here," Rayne said, holding up the tablet.

"If this dog were to disappear before ten days from now," the doctor lectured, "I would have to undergo treatment for rabies, whether he actually has rabies or not."

Liam had heard enough about this highly unlikely eventuality that didn’t need to be addressed unless it became an unlikely reality. The dog had been so weak and disoriented that his bite had barely broken the doctor’s skin, but the man had howled in pain and bandaged his arm as if a major artery had been severed.

"We understand perfectly," Liam said smoothly, and ushered the doctor to the door. "We’ll keep him on a leash when he goes outside," he added, and swept the door open.

In the doorway, the doctor hesitated, and turned back around. "Do you have a leash?"

"No. I’ll get one in the morning."

The man still balked. "You’ll do it first thing in the morning?"

"At the crack of dawn," Liam averred, and, putting his hand lightly on the other man’s elbow, he turned him around and propelled him unceremoniously out the door.

Rayne watched that maneuver from the other side of the room, amused and impressed by Liam’s sangfroid and his swift efficiency in times of stress. In the few years she’d known him, she’d criticized him soundly—and unjustly—for how he’d once called her ugly as a teen for having pimples and braces, and how he’d ignored all of her love letters, and for all the rumors of him changing women like a piece of clothing.

But in less than 24 hours of being in his presence and involving him in a dramatic canine-rescue effort, she was starting to regard him as a friend and ally rather than as an enemy who was out to harm or murder her like his other rumored girlfriends.

Rayne’s cordial feelings for him were evident in her warm smile as she said, "I still owe you dinner. I could call room service and we could eat out on the terrace if you like."

Since Max planned to arrive the next evening, Rayne suggested the only other alternative she could offer. "Or would you rather forget about dinner and let me pay for your shirt instead?" She wondered if Liam would notice that she’d limited him to only those two choices, but his reaction was so nonchalant that she decided he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

"Dinner here will be fine," Liam replied. "You owe me a meal," he added mildly, "and I always collect on debts that are owed to me." She was obviously expecting a boyfriend to arrive the next day, he realized, or else she’d have offered an explanation for not being able to have dinner with him some other night. A boyfriend who paid for all of her expenses in the hotel, he thought grimly.

Rayne folded her arms loosely across her chest and regarded him with amusement. "Do you really?"

"Always," he replied, reaching for the Hotel Services folder on the desk.

"Then how much do I owe you for the physician and ambulance?"

"Nothing," Liam said, flipping to the Room Service section of the handbook.

"Didn’t you offer them money so that they’d agree to come out here and treat a dog?"

He shrugged nonchalantly, "I just sweet talked them."

"I see," Rayne replied, pretending she believed his story. "And is that why they got here so fast, too? I mean, they were here less than ten minutes after you walked into the lobby."

Liam glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She was watching him with a knowing little smile, and he had a sudden, impossibly premature impulse to wrap her in his arms and cover that tantalizing mouth with his. That thought made a smile tug at the corner of his own lips as he shrugged again and said, "They got here quickly because it’s a very small island."

"And also because you are the infamous Liam Thompson," she remarked with a smile, understanding he’d used his connections to help her tonight. It was no surprise that the ambulance would answer to him. After all, he was Liam Thompson, a famous ex-soldier who’d modeled once with his picture on a billboard for almost a year, and then a successful CEO of Thompson’s Corporation.

Trying to ignore the impulse to laugh, Liam focused on the menu. "What would you like for dinner?"

Rayne named the same delicious meal she’d ordered the night before. "I think I’ll have the sea scallops and a prawn and avocado salad," she said, bending down to check on the sleeping dog.

"Would you like me to phone room service?" he asked.

"Yes, please," Rayne said over her shoulder. "Order anything and everything you like," she joked, imagining the enormous tip he must have given to entice the ambulance drivers and a physician to race at top speed to the rescue of an injured stray dog.

Eric’s nose felt warm to her touch, and his breathing was shallow and a little fast, but the physician had told her to expect this. Behind her, she heard Liam pick up the telephone receiver, but a moment later he put it back in the cradle with a sharp clack. Puzzled, Rayne glanced over her shoulder and saw him standing beside the phone, holding a piece of paper in his hand, his dark brows drawn into a scowl.

A sheet of paper... her paper! Her sheet of paper with the note she’d written to help Max identify him if she disappeared. "I can explain," she said, surging to her feet and walking over to him.

"I’m dying to hear it," he said coolly, handing the note to her in angry disbelief. She must have thought him a murderer who killed most of his women once he got bored with them, like the rumors spread by his bastard stepbrother. She didn’t even trust him enough to go out without leaving a paper behind to ensure her safety.

Rayne reacted to the chill in his tone with an intensity that startled her. She didn’t want to insult him or make him think badly of her—not now, not when she was so grateful to him and liked him so much, as a friend, of course. He hadn’t sounded this curt and unfriendly when she blamed him for the Michelada and dumped it on his shirt. Trying to think of the least offensive explanation she could give him, she reread what she’d written on the note.

"I’ve gone out to dinner with Liam Thompson. I met him this afternoon in the Stonebar when I spilled a Michelada on his shirt. The waiter can confirm that if I don’t return."

Stalling for time, she laid the offensive note back on the desk. "Tonight," she began haltingly, "when I wasn’t sure what I should wear to dinner, I decided to call you and ask where we were going." She paused, nervously rubbing her palms against the sides of her pants.

"Go on," he said brusquely.

"But when I phoned the hotel operator and asked him to ring your room, he said you weren’t staying here. That made me... well... uneasy. Possibilities started to occur to me that I hadn’t considered earlier when I believed you were a guest here and agreed to have dinner with you."

"What possibilities?" he demanded.

Rayne wanted to be evasive, but that was impossible with his rapier-dark gaze pinning hers. "There were certain things about you that made me think you might be a"—she almost choked on the word—"murderer."

His scowl deepened. "A what?"

"Please, just try to look at it from my perspective. Two of your girlfriends were murdered in the same year you started dating them. They all died on the night you took them out for dinner, or so I’ve heard. And now you were hanging around a very expensive hotel that you’re not staying at. You’re outrageously handsome, you’re incredibly smooth, you’re totally charming, and you’re a... a Casanova from what I’ve known. Within two or three minutes of meeting, when we were never friends before, you asked me to take you to dinner."

His expression hadn’t softened a bit, which told Rayne two things: He wasn’t flattered by her complimentary remarks about his looks and charm, nor was he pleased that she called him a Casanova. He was waiting for an explanation as to why she’d instructed whoever read the note to confirm with the waiter when they weren’t strangers to each other.

Raking her hair back off her forehead, she admitted the entire embarrassing truth. "I was upset at the possibility that I’d been tricked into having dinner with a woman murderer, but then I realized you could be a lot worse than that."

"I can’t think of anything more repulsive than being a woman murderer."

"No, but you could have been worse than ’repulsive.’ Remember you didn’t like me nor my brother in the past, and suddenly now you want me to take you to dinner, so I was afraid you had another motive for doing that..." Rayne trailed off, feeling like a colossal idiot.

"So you left a note for someone to find in case you disappeared?" Rayne nodded miserably.

"Because you wanted to be sure I wouldn’t get away with... your murder?" Rayne was so mortified and so annoyed with herself that she missed the thread of amusement in his deep voice. Unable to hold his gaze, she looked toward Eric. "It didn’t seem quite so idiotic then as it does now."

For the third time in a few minutes, Liam had to fight down the impulse to haul her into his arms. To distract himself, he turned away and picked up the telephone.

Startled by his abrupt move, Rayne said, "Who are you calling?"

"Room service," he said mildly.

"For a moment I thought you were about to call your men," Rayne said apologetically with an awkward smile. "Carry on with the order, Mr. Thompson."

Liam shook his head and carried on with his call. Rayne Wallace, he realized in amusement, was the first straightforward woman he’d ever been around who didn’t hide her thoughts. And he liked that about her. He liked her, he decided. He was still grinning when the room service operator answered his call.