Czytaj książkę: «The Loner And The Lady»

One

Only a fool would be out on a night like this, Seth Brogan thought, scowling as the wind lashed rain in under the brim of his Stetson and sent another rivulet running under the neck of his slicker. Only a fool would come out on the mountain in this weather, looking for a stupid female that didn’t have enough sense to stay home when a storm threatened.

Seth’s drenched jeans chafed his skin with every step he took along the uneven path. His left thigh ached the way it always did in the cold these days, but so far, at least, it wasn’t seizing up on him. Now if he could just find that bitch—his foot slipped in the mud and he cursed—find her before she started dropping those pups. She had to be nearly due, the way her stomach practically dragged the ground.

“Rocky!” he hollered, but the wind snatched the dog’s name out of his mouth so quickly he hardly heard it himself.

Nothing. His frown tightened down another notch. As he followed the murky beam from his flashlight farther up the path a rock shifted underfoot, nearly sending him down.

So he was a fool. What else was new?

He rounded the big boulder that he’d named Mama Bear soon after finding this refuge. His light stabbed beneath the overhang he’d been aiming for, where an ugly yellow dog lay on the sheltered dirt, panting cheerfully.

When lightning seared the sky, he had about one second’s warning. One second to hear something crashing through the scrub to his right, something large and very close, its approach hidden in the maelstrom of wind and renewed darkness after the lightning’s glare. Barely enough time to turn and brace himself.

“What the hell!”

Thunder boomed about two feet above his head. He reached out and caught the slim form that ran and fell right into him—caught it by its shoulders as another fork of lightning stabbed the sky. In the stark, actinic brilliance he saw that he held a woman, a young woman, with fear-blank eyes and blood—oh, Lord. Blood, black as sin in the brief dazzle of light, covered the side of her face.

Thunder followed lightning as fast as the tail follows the dog. The woman jerked under the onslaught of noise and threw herself up against him.

Seth froze in astonishment so complete that, for one foolish moment, the storm ceased to exist. She’d come right at him, right up into his arms as if she hadn’t seen him. Well, he realized, as his arm moved belatedly to steady the frightened creature plastered against his chest, obviously she hadn’t seen his face as clearly as he’d seen hers. Too seared, and maybe halfway into shock.

He felt the sigh that shuddered through her as his arm tightened around her. With that exhalation, she went limp.

He damned near dropped her. She wasn’t all that heavy, but the startling nearness of her, the foreign sensation of touch, dulled his reactions. Clutching her body tighter to him, he searched out the tender spot under her jaw with his other hand. The skin there was sticky with her blood, but he felt the rhythm of her heartbeat, a little too fast but strong enough.

Thank God.

He’d never get her into a proper carry, not when he had to keep hold of the flashlight to have any hope of making it back down to the cabin. But once in a while his size came in handy. He bent, tucked his shoulder into her stomach and stood. His knee protested sharply. He looked over his unburdened shoulder. “Dammit, dog,” he yelled over the wind, “come on!”

Rocky didn’t always come when he called her. She was a stray, after all, and didn’t know him that well, though she’d hung around for a month now. Seth started down the path. He didn’t look back. But his heart gave a relieved thump when he felt a fat, warm body press up against his legs.

“Good dog,” he said, though she probably couldn’t hear him over the storm. “Good girl.”

By the time he reached the cabin, his knee ached steadily and his calf muscles burned and twitched. He knew what that meant. Not much longer, he mentally told his leg as he staggered with his limp burden onto the covered porch that ran along the front of the cabin. Hold up a few more minutes, he told the throbbing muscles as he limped into the cabin’s one large room.

He’d been too low on fuel the past couple days to run the generator, so the only light was a fitful reddish glow from the fireplace in the center of the big, undivided room. It was enough for him to steer his way to the sleeping area on the opposite side of the room, but once there he didn’t dare bend to set her down on the oversize bed. His knee might buckle and he’d fall over on top of her. So he more or less dropped her onto the quilt-covered mattress.

His calf spasmed. “Ah, hell,” he gasped, sinking to one knee, his bad leg stretched out straight. The muscles of his face clenched almost as tightly as the ones knotting his calf as he rubbed the leg. After a moment the spasm eased.

He needed to get the leg warm and stay off it. He knew that but couldn’t do it yet. With a grimace he pulled himself onto the bed beside her and laid his fingers on her throat to check the pulse—still rapid, but was it a little weaker?

He had to get her warm before she went into shock. He threw the bed covers over her, then stood and limped back to the door to shut out the rain.

Rocky had curled up in her favorite spot, the rag rug in front of the fireplace. “Sorry, old girl,” he said to the dog watching him curiously. “I know you don’t like closed doors any more than I do, but we’ve got to get this place heated up for whoever is bleeding all over my bed.”

Seth hung the slicker onto its peg and tossed his Stetson on the table by the door. When he did, the strip of cloth he’d used to tie his hair back came out. He muttered under his breath but didn’t bother retying it as he grabbed his first aid kit and two kerosene lanterns.

He lit the lanterns and set one on the table by the bed, the other on the shelf above it. Extra blankets came from the chest at the foot of the bed. His kit went on the floor beside him. Then there was nothing left to do but tend her, and for the first time since moving to the mountain, Seth regretted his refusal to have a phone line run to the cabin. Not that help could have reached them. The storm would render the road impassable for days, and no helicopter could fly in this weather. But he could have talked to a physician, gotten some backup. It had been a long time since he’d used any part of his training.

Her lapse into unconsciousness worried him. A subdural hematoma could send a person into coma hours after the original blow to the head, even if they’d been up and lucid afterward. He checked her pulse again. It was still fast, which didn’t indicate hematoma but might presage shock. She was very pale. Even the warm glow of the lanterns hadn’t put any color in her face.

It was a lovely face. Delicate. He couldn’t help noticing that as he pulled the penlight from his kit. She had a dainty little nose, and lips that were probably pretty when they weren’t all cracked and colorless. He peeled back one of her eyelids, shining his light directly into her eye. The pupil contracted quickly. He let the lid close again.

Even her coloring was delicate. Her eyebrows arched in perfect, pastel half-moons above her closed eyes. Pale lashes rested, motionless, against her bleached cheeks, and short blond hair clung to her scalp like mud.

He checked the other eye. Her pupils responded evenly, thank God.

Blood covered one side of that pretty face. He hesitated briefly—his kit was fairly complete but lacked disposable gloves, since he’d never expected to treat anyone but himself with it. Still, what choice was there? Leaving her untended wasn’t an option.

He explored the left side of her head carefully and found a swelling above her temple, then began cleaning away the blood so he could see where she was hurt. She stirred but didn’t wake. He found several lacerations. It looked as if she’d fallen and scraped or torn the skin on a rough surface. None of the scrapes were deep enough to worry about, and the cuts had pretty much stopped bleeding.

Time for a proper reading of her pulse and pressure. He cuffed her and timed the pulse, watching her chest rise and fall as he counted. Respiration shallow but not too fast, which was good. Pulse over ninety…bad. Blood pressure at the low end of normal. Skin chilly to the touch.

She wasn’t in shock yet. But she was in danger of it. He had to get her warm and pray there was no internal bleeding.

She sure wasn’t dressed for the mountains. Or for a storm. Her sleeveless green top and full pants looked dressy. They had the sheen of silk, too. Linda had worn a lot of silk, expensive things like this. Whatever this woman’s outfit had cost originally, though, it was useless now, muddy and torn.

The top buttoned down the front with those aggravating little cloth-covered buttons that women like. Her skin beneath the cloth had a disturbing chill, and his big fingers made slow work of those blasted buttons. So he quit trying to preserve her ruined clothes and tore the top open.

She had beautiful breasts.

Seth didn’t stop, couldn’t stop in the middle of stripping her chilled body to stare, but he couldn’t keep from looking, either. To save him he couldn’t have stopped looking.

She was soft and white and…perfect. From the coral tips of her breasts, nicely peaked from the cold, to the way her slender waist flared into the curve of her hips, to the pretty nest of curls at the top of her thighs, she was the most perfectly shaped woman he’d ever seen.

Or maybe I’ve just forgotten, he thought, lips tight with anger at himself when he realized he’d been so busy gawking at her that he’d forgotten to take her shoes off before pulling down her slacks and panties. Her well-worn running shoes sure didn’t go with the rest of her outfit. Quickly he pulled the knotted laces free, jerked the shoes off and finished stripping her.

It had been so long. So very long.

He removed everything—socks, watch and a dainty little locket on a chain, dropping them in the pile with her clothes. But he kept his touch impersonal as he checked her as quickly as he could for any injuries that had been hidden by her clothing.

No detectable damage. He could hope that meant he’d found everything. He wrapped her carefully in a blanket, struck with a ridiculous sense of loss when her lovely body was covered. Changing the damp bedding beneath her didn’t take long. By the time he had her settled between clean sheets and fresh blankets with her legs slightly elevated by pillows, her skin was warming, though her color was still bad.

He waited a few minutes, rubbing his knee, then took another blood pressure reading. The results told him plainly that she was responding to the increased warmth, which meant it was unlikely she had any internal hemorrhaging. Relief swamped him.

He decided to get an antibiotic dressing on the facial lacerations. When he applied it, though, she jerked away, dislodging the covers. He paused, waiting to see if she’d wake. Almost hoping she wouldn’t. Because then she’d see him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and he meant for everything he was and wasn’t, everything he’d thought but hadn’t done when he looked at her. His hand lingered for a moment, just a moment, on her soft flesh before he tugged the covers up and stood.

First he added a couple of logs to the fire. Then he got out of his own wet things, rubbed himself dry briskly and pulled on jeans and a shirt he didn’t bother to button. He filled the coffeepot with water and hung it from the hook over the fire.

It was going to be a long night. He’d have to keep an eye on her, try to wake her every hour or so.

He looked over her clothing as he spread it out on the hearth to dry, noting the designer label hand-stitched inside. Damp sheets and quilts went anywhere he found a spot for them. Good thing he didn’t intend to sleep anytime soon. There wasn’t a dry blanket in the place, except for those covering her.

He pulled the big, handmade rocker next to the hearth in the sleeping area and sat, heaving a sigh of relief. His knee and calf ached badly, but he hoped the heat from the fire would help enough that he wouldn’t be too crippled up tomorrow.

He held up her watch and necklace, examining the mellow gold in the glow of firelight. Both were expensive. Neither told him why a woman like her was out in the wilderness at midnight, bloody and wounded.

An automobile accident? It wasn’t completely consistent with her injuries—the lump on her head was in the wrong place, for one thing—but it was all he could think of just then. Highway 142 did lie on the other side of Old Baldy, and the climb wasn’t a difficult one—in dry, daylit weather, for a hiker in good shape. Hard to believe she’d crossed Old Baldy’s slopes in the middle of a thunderstorm, at night, with an injury to her head.

He glanced at the bed where she lay, a small, helpless lump under the blankets. He had no business, no business whatsoever, remembering what she looked like without the covers, without any covering at all. He’d better remember that. Because she was going to wake up. That was the only acceptable alternative. She was going to look at him and realize he’d undressed her, that he’d seen her.

She’d probably hate him for that.

His hand lifted absently to stroke the scar tissue on the left side of his face, scarring that ran down his neck to his shoulder and splashed across the top of his chest. Life wasn’t like fairy tales. The woman in his bed wasn’t going to like knowing that the Beast had looked on her beauty.

Pain came in colors and textures. At the bottom of the ocean, pain was mostly pressure, a distant, enveloping purple, but as she drew nearer the surface, pain turned a crackly, yellowish green.

A bruise-colored feeling. That was the surface, and she didn’t want to go there, not yet. Not when the pain was still so strong. But something, someone, was calling her, pulling her reluctantly nearer…gradually she realized the pain came from her head. It hurt. Completely. Relentlessly. And there was something else…all at once she remembered terror, and fought her way up and out.

Her eyes opened. Someone groaned. And above her, bending over her…

He was big. His inky dark hair hung loose around his face, and his eyes were as black as his hair. His skin was rough, as were the features in his narrow face, and half of his face was ruined.

And she knew him. He’d come to her out of the terrible darkness, catching her when she fell, stopping her flight with his big arms. She remembered seeing his face in the white flare of lightning, seeing his eyes, black and liquid as the night around them, seeing the ruined side of his face and thinking that he was hurt, too, hurt like her. With a sigh of relief she closed her eyes and let herself sink back down, knowing she was safe. Because he was here.

Seth stared down at the woman in his bed. She’d woken. She was going to be all right. She’d woken and seen him…

And smiled.

She woke to the smell of food cooking and the sound of bird song. Dreams and nightmares sluiced off her like water as she surfaced, a swimmer rising from murky depths. Her head hurt worse than it ever had in her life, and her bladder was miserably full. When she cracked open her eyes, light seeped in like pain.

Bacon? Did she smell bacon frying?

She looked around without turning her head. Moving would definitely be a mistake. The light wasn’t really very bright, she realized as her eyes focused. The closest window showed a dim, rainy day outside, though that didn’t seem to discourage the noisy chorus of birds. Inside was a cabin, a real log cabin with the walls planed smooth and varnished in some places, left rough in others. The effect was unusual but pleasing. She looked up at a high ceiling of glossy boards. The big bed she was in pointed her feet at a fireplace in the center of the room, circled by a low, brick hearth.

Something—no, someone—was missing. Someone who had been taking care of her. “I, uh…” She stopped and tried to swallow. Her throat was as dry as her bladder was full.

He moved into her range of vision from somewhere near her feet. He was big—one of those really big men who, she thought with a slow blink, when seen from a distance, don’t look unusually large because everything is in balance. He didn’t make a sound as he came to stand next to her bed and looked down at her.

Her eyes drifted up to his face. His dark hair hung loose below his jaw line. Livid scar tissue covered him from the crest of his cheekbone on down past his jaw, his neck, disappearing under the collar of his plain blue work shirt. The skin was shiny smooth, the angry color left by bad burns. The scarring distracted her.

Then she noticed the way his hands were knotted into fists at his sides. “What’s wrong?” she croaked, alarmed. Was she even sicker, more damaged, than her pounding head suggested?

His big hands relaxed. “I didn’t know if you were completely awake this time.” His voice matched the rest of him, deep and solid and vaguely reassuring.

“How long…?”

“You’ve been out for over fifteen hours,” he said, sitting on the bed beside her. “I think you’ve just been sleeping, though, not unconscious, since the last time I woke you. Where do you hurt?” He put his big hands on her neck and probed gently.

“My head.” Fifteen hours. She tried, and failed, to think of what had happened to her.

“Anywhere else?” He prodded her lightly. “Here? Or here?”

“No.” Why was she here, in this cabin, with him? The effort to think made the pounding in her head increase until it throbbed all the way along her jaw and down her neck. She gave up and closed her eyes. “I’m very thirsty.”

The bed creaked as he shifted. “It should be okay for you to sit up for a drink. I’ll have to lift you a bit,” he said, and slid an arm carefully under her shoulders, supporting her neck. For all his care, it still hurt fiercely when he raised her off the pillow, and she made a small sound.

“Take it easy,” he murmured, and held a glass to her lips. His low voice cooled the jagged edges of her pain the way the water soothed her dry throat. She managed several sips.

“Better?” he asked in that comforting voice as he laid her back down.

She thought about nodding and didn’t. She thought about lying there until her other problem went away—but it wasn’t going to. She forced her eyes open, wretchedly embarrassed. “I need to use the bathroom.”

He nodded, the undamaged half of his face as unrevealing as the burned side. “I’ll get a bowl for you to use as a bedpan.”

“No way.” Surely, if he helped her, she could make it to the bathroom. She couldn’t stand the idea of some stranger, no matter how kind, helping her with such a private matter.

Some stranger?

No, he wasn’t a stranger. He was…his face was familiar, of course it was, and she’d think of his name in a minute. In a minute she’d remember…

By the time he came back to the bed, the humiliating bowl in his hand, her breath came in quick, fearful pants, like a dog. “Who are you?” she whispered.

He stopped dead. If his face had been unrevealing before, it was flatly blank now. “Seth,” he said slowly. “Seth Brogan.”

She closed her mouth. Licked her dry lips. Stared at him as if she could force her way through his deliberate blankness, force her way through to what she desperately needed. And asked her next question. “Who am I?”