“Clean me?” Mary asked weakly, sure she’d misunderstood.
“Yes.” Dante raised a washcloth she hadn’t noticed in his hand and gave her face another swipe. “Francis, Russell and I were so busy trying to hold you down and keep you from harming yourself I did not get the chance before now. You only calmed this morning and by then we were so exhausted . . .” He shrugged. “But when I woke from my rest and saw your face I thought I’d best clean it. I did not want you to wake up, see your face all covered with blood and . . . What?” he asked uncertainly when she suddenly closed her eyes with relief.
“I thought you were licking my face,” she admitted.
“What?” he asked with disbelief.
“Well, really I thought Bailey was licking my face, but then when I opened my eyes and it was you here I—” She shook her head and waved the matter away. “Never mind. I have more urgent matters to attend to. Where is the bathroom?”
“Oh, it is there,” Dante said, turning to gesture to a door in the wall behind him.
The moment he turned his face away, Mary tossed the blankets and sheets aside. All she had on was an overlarge T-shirt. She’d rather been hoping for more than that, perhaps joggers and a T-shirt or something else that would cover her from throat to toes. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Equally unfortunately, she had to relieve herself so badly that she couldn’t wait for him to leave so that she could get up. So, Mary leapt from the bed and sped around it to dash to the bathroom door. She was inside and slamming it closed so quickly she even impressed herself. Adrenaline was apparently a truly amazing thing, Mary thought as she hiked up the T-shirt and dropped to sit on the toilet.
As she tore some toilet paper off the roll, Mary remembered a time when she was young and being chased by a boy at school. He was known to like to grab the boobs of all the girls while they were out on the playground at recess. Mary had seen him coming up behind her one day, hands out and at the ready, and she’d taken off at a dead run. Her feet had moved so fast they’d barely touched the ground. It had felt to her as if she’d almost just flown across the playground.
Mary hadn’t thought she still had it in her. But it seemed even an old broad could practically fly when faced with humiliation. And having handsome, young-looking Dante get a gander at her dimpled thighs was definitely a humiliating prospect to her. He was so damned perfect, and she so wasn’t.
Grimacing, she finished her business, flushed the toilet, and stood to wash her hands. It was as she soaped her hands that Mary actually looked at any part of herself for the first time, and then she paused and frowned with confusion. Her hands were pale and as smooth as a baby’s bottom, the nails long.
Actually overly long, she thought with a frown and turned her hands over then back. She hadn’t seen these hands in years—many, many years. Time had scarred and wrinkled them, marring them with age spots and—but no more. Now they looked like they belonged to a young woman. Someone maybe twenty or twenty-five and—
Thoughts dying, Mary stilled and stared blindly at her hands, her mind suddenly racing, and then she slowly lifted her head and peered into the mirror over the sink. An old friend stared back.
“Dante!” Mary called, her voice coming out strangled.
“Yes?” He answered right away. It sounded like he was right outside the door. “Are you all right?”
Mary merely stared at the woman in the mirror. Her hair had grown a bit and now hung almost to her shoulders. It was also a golden blond for the first couple of inches, before becoming the platinum white age had turned it to. It actually looked kind of cool, she noted with surprise. Like some kind of young, hip hairdo.
Her face also looked young under the smudges of dirt and blood still on it. Mary picked up the folded washcloth on the counter and dampened it, then ran it over her face, cleaning away the smears of blood that Dante had missed. Then she let the cloth drop into the sink and simply stared at herself. Her cheekbones were high, her lips full, and her eyelids no longer looked like they were drooping with exhaustion. But her eyes themselves? They were a beautiful cornflower blue mixed with a silver that had never been there before.
“Oh my,” she breathed.
“Mary?” Dante asked through the door with concern. “If you do not answer me I am coming in.”
“What did you do?” she asked in almost a whisper. “Look what you did to me.”
The door opened behind her and Mary shifted her gaze briefly from herself to Dante. He looked worried.
“I am sorry I had to turn you without asking permission,” he said quietly. “But you were dying. I could not let you die.”
“Ah,” Mary breathed and shifted her gaze back to her own face again. He’d turned her. This was her peak condition. She must have been badly injured in the accident after they’d been forced off the road.
“The RV?” she asked, her gaze still sliding over her face.