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stay
    away from him, to let matters die between them. Even as that command pushed at her
    mind, she found herself walking to his door. She reached out to lay the palm of her
    hand against the coolness of the iron filigree then laid her forehead on the polished oak
    of the frame.
    “Why, Dáire?” she asked. “Why couldn’t you have just walked away from
    whomever it is you work for?”
    The thought of the company that owned Dáire Cronin—body and soul, his strong
    arms and loyalty—darted across Star’s mind and she lifted her head and moved back
    from the door. If there was another human being Star could hate more than she did the
    person for whom Dáire worked, that person hadn’t been introduced to her yet.
    Turning her back on Dáire and the happiness they had once known, Star went into
    her suite and locked out the treacherous thoughts of the man her body longed for more
    than breath.
    20
    HardWind
    Chapter Three
    The room was spinning—canting away from him in whirls of black streaks and red
    blotches. A pounding drum throbbed between his temples to send shockwaves of
    agony reverberating through his head. Lying on his belly with the side of his face
    pressed against the pillow—a position he took when filthy drunk—he understood why
    he hurt so badly. What he didn’t understand was why he felt glued to the bed, unable
    to pry himself up.
    Across the room, the light-blocking drapes had been pulled together to shut out the
    fierce Florida sunshine, but a tiny crack speared from cornice board to floor like a klieg
    light. The intensity of that one small chink in the otherwise fortified wall of drapery
    seemed to pierce his skull with its persistent brightness.
    “Argh.”
    It was a heartfelt, piteous sound of a man wishing he could die but knowing full
    well he was going to survive. There was hopelessness, despondency and overwhelming
    misery in that single ululation and it hung on the air like the death caw of a dying
    raven.
    Pain—intense, jagged, knife-like pain—sliced through Dáire’s head, yet he could
    not seem to lift it away from the breath-warmed, flesh-heated surface of his odorous
    pillow. There wasn’t a bone in his body, a muscle, a vein or sinew that did not ache
    with excruciating precision. His stomach was lurching with every quiet intake of air.
    His throat seemed filled with rising gorge that burned its way up his nose to cauterize
    his sinuses.
    And not one aspirin, not one single painkiller waited in his medicine chest to
    relieve the violence of his agony. He knew this before Jackson came tiptoeing into the
    bedroom to inform him the cupboard was bare of analgesics of any number, strength or
    brand.
    “Argh.”
    This time it was a wounded plea for help.
    “Sit tight,” Jackson said in as soft a voice as he could, yet it seemed to the suffering
    man lying crucified to the sticky bed sheets that he had shouted at the top of his
    gravelly voice.
    Jackson was grinning as he knocked on Star’s door. He knew she’d be there and he
    knew she’d answer when she saw it was him, and she did. “Trick or treat,” he said.
    “Whatcha need?” she asked, trying to hide a yawn. It was almost six in the morning
    and she wasn’t a morning person. Dressed in a pale lavender terrycloth bathrobe that
    21
    Charlotte Boyett-Compo
    swept down to her bare toes, she looked far younger than her thirty-six, almost thirtyseven, years.
    “As much as I am enjoying watching him suffer, I come seeking killers of pain and
    soothers of pukedom,” Jackson told her.
    Star stepped back to allow him entrance. “I’ve got capsules or suppositories. Which
    do you want?”
    “You’re joking, right?” Jackson asked with a snort. “Although he might enjoy it—
    and I’ve no doubt he would—I’ve no desire to stick anything up his tight little ass,
    hunky bugger that he is. Give me the capsules. What about for his pain?”
    “Let him suffer,” she said as she padded into her bathroom to retrieve the