The rain was cold on Kate’s face. It
was colder still as it soaked through her jacket and jeans. It turned the pain
she was suffering into misery and the misery into tears that ran down her cheeks
to mingle with the rain.
Huddled against the tree whose roots
had tripped her, she looked up at the wind-twisted maples and birches that
dominated the Michigan forest. Their tender new leaves offered scant protection
from the deluge, and she knew it would only get worse. This was no spring shower
but a northwester off Lake Superior. It had blown in without warning and turned
the fair afternoon sky into a mass of roiling black clouds. Running along the
rutted dirt track, trying to beat the storm, had been worse than useless; in her
haste, she’d fallen—and it looked as if she wasn’t going to be getting up
again any time soon.
Kate grimaced. The ankle was bad. Her
fingers trembled as she gently poked the thick cotton sock covering it, and she
winced at the sharp pain that accompanied the tentative exploration.
A loud crack followed by a wrenching
groan brought her gaze flashing upward in time to see an old hemlock, maybe a
hundred yards away, split wide open. Cleaved in two, the dying giant
crashed earthward, wreaking havoc on neighboring trees as it fell. In the next
instant, when a switch of maple leaves stung her face, she cried out, inching
her way around the tree trunk in a futile search for shelter.
She knew she was being childish,
letting a storm frighten her, but circumstances were rapidly undermining her
confidence. She was alone and in pain, and her left ankle was swelling rapidly.
It was storming violently. The Nielsens, whose house she’d just left, lived a
half mile south. Bourner’s Crossing, where she lived, was two miles north. And
crawling the distance in either direction would be impossible.
Maybe a fisherman would find her, or a
park ranger. It was more likely, though, that she wouldn’t be missed until
tomorrow morning, when she didn’t show up at the office for her meeting with
Doc. Meanwhile, what would she do that night, as the temperature dropped, to
keep from freezing in clothes that were soaking wet?
With the wind howling and the rain
beating upon her, Kate stared at her foot and tried to stop crying. Normally,
she didn’t mind crying, but these tears made her uncomfortable. They were an
expression of helplessness, an echo of the queasy, panicky feeling growing
inside her, and she fought against them, hoping that if she could control the
tears, she’d control the panic.
It didn’t work. Kathleen Morgan,
eldest of six Morgan children, rarely wallowed in self-pity and never gave in to
hysterics. She was on the verge of indulging in both, however, when a loud male
voice, coming out of nowhere, pushed her over the edge.
“Lady, what the hell are you—”
She screamed, recoiling, before she’d
even gotten a look at the figure looming over her. When he moved a step closer
to hunker down beside her, she tried to scramble away, wrenching her ankle in
the process.
“Ouch! Oh, Lord—”
“Hey, it’s okay.” His voice was
deep and gravelly as he shouted over the roar of the storm. “What’re you
doing here? Are you hurt?”
She struggled to speak past the lump in
her throat.
“Look”—he laid a hand on her
arm—“we’ve got to get out of this. There’re trees going down.”
Kate tried to blink the blinding wind
and rain out of her eyes, but she got only a glimpse of the man through a gray
curtain of water: lean thighs
encased in blue denim, broad shoulders hunched inside a worn leather jacket, a
face of sharp lines, and dripping wet hair.
His hand tightened on her arm. “Did
you hear me? We’ve got to get—”
“Can’t walk,” she croaked. “My
ankle. It’s twisted.” His gaze slid away from hers, zeroing in on the
injured limb. “I was on my way h‑home from the N-Nielsens’. They live
down the road, and Erik . . . Erik
has a truck. He’ll help if you— Oh!”
The wind shifted, blowing a sheet of
rain in their faces, and Kate shrank farther against the tree.
Swearing a blue streak, the man stood
abruptly to shrug out of his jacket and drop it around her shoulders.
“Oh, th-thank you, but . . .”
He snatched her knapsack off the
ground, slung it over his shoulder, then reached down to her. “Give me your
hand. I’ll carry you.”
Kate saw how quickly the pounding rain
soaked his chambray shirt and noted irrelevantly, “You’re going to get
cold.”
He gave her an exasperated look.
“I’ll survive. Now, come on, before we both drown!”
“But it’s too far for you to try to
carry me, and Erik—”
“Dammit, just shut up and give me
your hand, okay? We can argue later!”
Kate’s breath caught in her throat,
and she flushed with embarrassment. He was right; she sounded ridiculous. She
wasn’t thinking very well, though, and it seemed a great effort to shove her
concerns aside enough to hold out her hand and let the man enfold it in his
grasp.
His hand was strong and warm despite
the cold, and he pulled her upward in an easy motion.
“Honestly,” she began, “I could
wait while you go—” Her suggestion died abruptly when he drew her arm around
his neck, slipped his arm under her knees, and lifted her.
She gasped. “Are you s-sure about
this? The pack’s heavy, and I’m not exactly . . . l-little.
Let me hop or— Oh!”
He tossed her slightly to shift her
weight, and her arms locked in a death grip around his neck.
“It’s all right, honey,” he said.
“You let me handle this.” And with that, he began walking down the
mud-washed track.
Kate was too stunned to utter another
word. It’s all right, honey? No one ever talked to her that way. Nor
was she used to being “handled”; she was used to doing the handling herself.
Still, amid her pain and the punishing torrent, she was relieved he wasn’t
giving her choices she was incapable of making.
Kate buried her face against his
shoulder. Soon enough he’d realize he couldn’t carry her far and would want
to put her down. Not that she was overweight, but the ample curves on her
five-foot-six-inch form could not, in her estimation, be considered
insignificant. He didn’t put her down, though, and after a minute or two, she
stopped worrying that he would slip or drop her.
He didn’t move like a man who was
unsure of himself. He didn’t feel like one, either. His body was all lean
muscle on a tall, broad-shouldered frame. He moved carefully and as quickly as
the wind and the rutted, slick track would allow, carrying her not easily but
with confidence. Slowly, some of
that confidence seeped into her.
After what seemed a long time, the man
stopped walking. Kate lifted her head and saw through the rain that they’d
reached a small, cedar-shingled hunter’s cabin, one of many scattered
throughout the forest.
“I’m going to put you down,” he
warned, setting her on one foot, her back braced against the cabin. Her hands
clutched his shoulders, and he gave her a questioning look. “Will you be
okay?”
She nodded, but the instant he moved
away, her knee buckled and she slid to the ground. He grabbed for her, but she
waved him off. “Go on. I’m f‑fine.”
She obviously wasn’t, but he left her
sitting there to reach for the door. It was locked, and he rattled the handle,
slamming his shoulder against the stout pine several times before giving up.
Moving to the window to the right of the door, he yanked hard on the shutter
until it banged open. Then, giving the window a cursory look to see that it was
locked, he stood back and put his booted foot through one of the panes.
Kate winced at the sound of shattering
glass, then watched anxiously as he reached inside, unlocked the window, and
slid it up until he could climb through. He did so with long-legged ease and, an
instant later, opened the door. This time her arms went around his neck
unhesitantly as he lifted her, carried her inside, and kicked the door closed
behind them.
The sound of branches scraping across
the roof combined with the clomp of heavy boots as the man strode across the
plank floor. Maneuvering in the semidarkness to a couch that sat facing the
hearth, he started to lower Kate onto it but stopped when she tensed.
“The f-floor. Closer to the
f-fireplace,” she rasped.
He put her down on the braided rug in
front of the cold hearth, and she hugged her ankle close, shutting her eyes
against the pain. Her relief at being out of the wind and rain was palpable, but
for the first time she realized how badly she was shivering. Her teeth were
chattering, and she couldn’t clamp her jaw tightly enough to make them stop.
A sudden slam made her eyes fly open,
though she had to strain to see across the room. Her rescuer had closed the
shutter against the driving rain and, in doing so, had cut off the only dim
source of light. She could scarcely make out his shadowed form as he grabbed
something from the day bed along the front wall, then moved toward her, his
boots crunching on broken glass.
Dropping to one knee in front of her,
he started to drape a blanket around her shoulders. Hesitating, he finally
tossed the blanket aside. “Got to get these wet things off,” he muttered,
“or the blanket won’t do much good.”
Right, Kate thought, but she couldn’t
make her muscles move to help herself. He wasn’t wasting time letting her try.
Without asking permission, he pulled his leather jacket, the inside of which was
still dry, from her shoulders, then went to work on the buttons of hers, which,
being denim, was saturated all the way through.
She struggled to speak. “I’m
K-Kathleen Morgan, but p‑people call me K‑Kate.”
“Sam Reese,” he replied, pulling
one sodden sleeve, then the other, off her arms. “Hell, you’re soaked to the
skin. Look, Katie, I know this is kind of short acquaintance, but . . .”
Above all else, Kate was practical; she
knew this was no time for modesty. Besides, it was nearly pitch dark in the
cabin—dubious reassurance, at best, but it quelled any protest her inhibitions
may have offered as Sam Reese’s long fingers skimmed down the buttons of her
cotton blouse, leaving gaping fabric in their wake. He yanked the hem out of her
jeans, then lifted each hand in turn to loosen the cuffs. The darkness didn’t
hinder him, she noticed, and she appreciated his tactful comment when his hands
slid inside the sopping blouse to peel it off her shoulders.
“Now, I’m just going to close my
eyes, here, and . . .”
“I’m . . .
f-freezing,” she whispered.
“Honey, you’re not just freezing.
You’re in shock.”
“Uh-uh.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not y-yet.” But almost. Over a
twisted ankle and a storm. It was mortifying.
Her shirt slapped onto the floor in a
wet heap, and in the next instant he had reached behind her and unhooked her
bra—one-handed. In the dark. She might be cold and hurting, but she had enough
sense left to realize she was being undressed by an expert. When his hands
skated down her hips and discovered that her jeans were mostly dry above
mid-thigh, she was relieved. Even putting modesty aside, she couldn’t have
coped with having them pulled off over her ankle.
The wool blanket was thick and scratchy
and warm as he rubbed it over her bared back and shoulders.
“S-Sam, you know . . .
you’re n-not exactly . . . c‑catching me at my
b‑best.”
“Is that so?”
“I promise, I’m u-usually a lot
d-different.”
“You telling me these goose bumps
aren’t permanent?”
“I’m r-really . . .
v-very efficient.”
“Well, Katie, we all have our off
days. You sit tight while I hunt up some matches and get a fire started.”
He drew the blanket around her, and she
clutched the ends together between her breasts. Fire. That sounded like
salvation. She knew the cabin, knew it had heat and lights, but the power came
from a liquid gas generator located outside. Weather conditions being what they
were, a fire was the easiest, fastest way to make heat.
“In my pack,” Kate said.
“F‑flash . . . light.
And matches.”
“Good girl,” Sam murmured, dragging
the pack across the rug toward them. “I was beginning to wish I hadn’t quit
smoking.”
As he unbuckled the straps and began
sorting through the knapsack, she tried to concentrate on him rather than the
pain. He was on his knees, only inches away, and with every shallow breath she
took she caught the scent of him—unembellished male blended with the smell of
his wet leather jacket beside her and the wool around her shoulders. In the face
of physical discomfort, her senses focused on those clean, honest smells and
found in them something immensely comforting.
A beam of light shot across the room as
he switched on the flashlight. He used it to find the matches, then turned to
the fireplace. There was wood piled beside the hearth, and when he began
arranging logs, she almost asked him to find her aspirin first; but if he was
half as cold as she was, fire was more important.
Gritting her teeth and telling herself
she could wait a little longer, Kate searched for something to say to keep her
mind off her ankle.
“Did you know about this c-cabin, or
did we just get l‑lucky?”
Sam answered without looking at her.
“I’m renting it.”
“You’re renting this p-place?”
“Right.”
“So, how c-come we . . .
had to break in?”
“No key. I stopped to look around
before I went to meet the owner—a man named Fournier.”
“Yes, I know Steve.”
Sam shot her a quick glance, and she
added, “He’s my brother-in-law. He’s m-married to my sister, Cressie.”
His replies hardly encouraged conversation, but she persisted out of her own
need. “Besides, I k-know everybody around here.”
Sam’s “humph” was unimpressed as
he broke kindling to stuff under the logs he’d stacked.
Kate closed her eyes briefly, then
tried one more time. “Where are you f-from?”
“Detroit,” he said, then reached
for the matches to light the fire. The tip of a wooden match scraped briefly on
the side of the box, then flared. He waited an instant, until the flame
steadied, then touched it to the kindling in several places. The logs, being
seasoned and dry, caught quickly, and soon tongues of fire licked at the
hardwood.
Eager for heat, she wiggled closer as
she reached for her knapsack.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“A black case. It’s in the
b-bottom. Somewhere.”
She let him take the pack from her, and
he produced the case in seconds, snapping it open, then giving her a startled
look at the sight of her stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, and other medical
equipment.
“You a doctor?”
“A n-nurse practitioner and
midwife.” She was having trouble preserving her modesty and rooting through
the bag at the same time. “Please. Do you s-see the aspirin?”
“Got it.”
“Give me th-three.”
Without comment, he uncapped the bottle
and tapped the pills into the palm she’d stuck out from under the blanket. She
groaned when her uncontrollable shaking made two roll onto the floor. “I’m
sor—”
“Hush,” he said, steadying her hand
with his own as he shook out two more. His hand closed over hers, curling her
fingers around the tablets; then he waited until she had them in her mouth
before recapping the bottle.
“What’s in here?” he asked,
unscrewing her Thermos.
She answered with the aspirin on her
tongue. “Coffee.”
He wouldn’t even let her try to
handle the plastic cup but held it for her as she drank to swallow the pills.
Caffeine might not be the best cure for a bad case of nerves, but she was
desperate enough for its warmth that she reached with both shaky hands for the
cup.
Sam hesitated. “You sure?”
“No, but it f-feels good. Hot.”
He held the cup out to her but didn’t
let go when her fingers trembled against it. Instead, his hands covered hers to
hold it securely. Slumped and shivering, her eyes closed, she concentrated on
the way the heat from both the cup and his strong, steady hands seemed to travel
up her arms to warm the rest of her body.
It
should have felt strange, she thought vaguely, to sit there, nearly naked and
less than half coherent, while a stranger touched her with such familiar ease.
Yet it didn’t feel strange at all. It felt right and natural, the way it
should feel when circumstances defeated pretense and formality, and people were
forced to trust each other in a hurry, under stress.
She knew the feeling well. She’d
experienced it treating gunshot wounds in victims of hunting accidents and
stitching cuts in unlucky hikers and fisherman. It was at its strongest when the
isolation of the northern wilderness necessitated that she deliver the baby of a
woman she barely knew. The sudden, intense intimacy, the bond that formed at
those needful times between two people whose only common ground was their
essential humanity. Yes, she knew the feeling.
Still, she’d never experienced it
from this side of the fence. She was always the helper, the rescuer, the strong,
reassuring one who, hopefully, made everything all right again. To be treated as
she might treat a patient contradicted Kate’s view of herself entirely, and,
under less dire circumstances, she probably would have balked. Having
reluctantly accepted the situation, though, she discovered it wasn’t so bad.
In fact, if she thought about it too closely, it might even make her cry.
For having Sam Reese hold her hands to help her get warm was, very
simply, the nicest thing anybody had done for her in a long time.
Slowly, her shivering lessened.
Clearly, Sam felt the change, too, for he withdrew his hands. Taking a ragged
breath, she opened her eyes to discover the coffee wasn’t sloshing in the cup.
The pain in her ankle was atrocious, but she felt better—still a little
rattled, but together enough to remember she wasn’t the only one who was cold
and wet.
Offering him the cup, she spoke in a
voice closer to her own. “Here. Pour yourself some. And you should do
something about your wet shirt.”
“I’m okay,” he said, taking the
nearly empty cup from her and setting it aside.
He was crouched in front of her, one
side of his face bathed in firelight, the other side in shadows. He wasn’t
handsome in any typical way, but she found the rough-hewn planes of his face
compelling. Lines fanned out around
his eyes and creased the corners of his mouth, carved in skin bronzed by the
sun. Like his harsh-edged voice, his features were distinctly masculine—a
thin, straight nose and high, sharp cheekbones beneath which his face was long
and a bit too hollow. In contrast, his mouth was generous, with a fullness to
the lower lip that made it disturbingly sensual. His hair swept back from a high
forehead and was medium brown streaked with blond. She guessed he was close to
forty.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“A little. Thanks.” She tried to
smile as she met his gaze.
His eyes were clear gray. In the
firelight, they were almost colorless, like prisms that in one instant reflected
light and in the next, absorbed it. A second later, though, the sparkling irises
darkened to a muted pewter, and Kate felt cheated. For a moment she’d seen
something in the depths of Sam Reese’s eyes that belied the tough image he
projected.
He rose to drag two straight chairs
from the kitchen table to the fire, then draped her garments and his jacket over
them to dry.
“What about your jeans?” he asked.
“Do you want to try to dry them out?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t
dare take them off over this foot. . . . Sam?”
He glanced at her, and she tried
another smile, this time revealing a hint of dimples. “I acted like a complete
idiot back there. I’m sorry.”
He lifted one shoulder in a loose
shrug. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I was worried. And I’m very
glad you showed up.”
With a nod of acknowledgment, he walked
away.
Kate wanted to ask him not to leave
her. The throbbing in her ankle was bone-deep, and talking helped to keep her
from coming unglued. Her eyes followed him, her fingers knotting the wool
chafing her breasts, as he scouted the farther reaches of
the cabin. The purpose of his search became clear when
he pulled a broom from the closet in the corner of the kitchen.
“So, are you in the area to fish?”
she asked, her tone brittle with forced cheerfulness.
Sam crossed the room and began sweeping
up the broken glass, giving her a brief “Maybe.”
“Lake Gogebic is practically next
door, and it’s the best place for walleye. But just about any direction you
go, you’ll find water to throw a line in.”
“Hmm.”
“Then again, if you’re a hiker, you
can’t go wrong, either. Of course, this is our slow season—and the snow
melted early this year, too. People come to the Upper Peninsula to see fall
colors or to ski or hunt. About the only thing now is fishing. Are you going to
be staying long?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“On how long I decide to stay.”
“Oh.”
Leaning the broom against the wall, he
studied her from across the room. Then, slowly, with what appeared to be
reluctance, he came over to stoop in front of her. His eyes were full of an
emotion she couldn’t begin to read, and he seemed to be deliberating as he
worried a corner of his bottom lip with his teeth.
Finally he asked, “Is it bad?”
His directness startled her after his
vague, terse statements.
“Your ankle,” he said, when she
didn’t answer. “Do you know how bad it is?”
Her gaze fell from his, and she tried
to muster some breezy assurance. “Oh, it’s nothing an ice pack won’t
cure.”
It was a ridiculous lie. Her ankle was
obviously swollen, her hiking shoe biting into the flesh around it.
Lifting her gaze, she said tentatively,
“You know, I would like to get this shoe off, but . . . well,
do you think you could lend me a hand?”
For a moment Sam neither moved nor
spoke, though his gaze darted from her face to her ankle several times. Then,
abruptly he surged to his feet and pivoted away, reaching for the poker hanging
beside the fireplace.
“You’ll do better yourself,” he
replied, giving the logs a shove. “I’d just wrench it worse.”
His refusal struck Kate as odd in light
of everything else he’d done for her, but she wasn’t about to push. Maybe he
was squeamish about injuries and medical things.
Gamely, she tucked her blanket so it
wouldn’t fall open, then stuck her hands out from under it to begin working at
her wet shoelace. It was soon obvious, however, that her short-trimmed nails and
shaky fingers couldn’t untie it. She kept trying, but pain and frustration and
raw nerves drove her rapidly to tears.
“Cut it.”
Her eyes were brimming when her gaze
flew upward to collide with Sam’s. He was standing beside her, an open
pocketknife lying across his outstretched palm. She looked from the knife to him
in pain and confusion, not understanding how a man could sound so hard and cool
when his eyes said he was anything but. Understanding even less his almost
anguished expression when his gaze dropped to her ankle.
Was he that squeamish? If so, why did
he torture himself by watching as she took the knife from him, slipped the blade
under the lace of her shoe, and sliced it? And why did he hover over her as she
whimpered through the agonizing process of working the shoe off her foot?
Finally, when her hand slipped on the wet leather and she gasped at the sudden
jerk, he made a low, strangled sound and strode away.
His behavior was definitely odd; but
then, she’d seen enough men, especially macho types like Sam Reese, turn to
jelly over medical emergencies. As she sliced her cotton sock from shin to toes
with the knife and peeled it off, she had only a vague awareness that he was
pacing the room like an animal paces a cage.
By the time the injured foot was bare,
she felt sick to her stomach. Besides that, she was beginning to think about the
ramifications of her injury. She wanted to believe it was only a sprain but
feared it was worse. In any case, she was facing a trip to the hospital for
x-rays, at least a few days in bed with her foot elevated, and maybe weeks of
hobbling around on crutches, dragging a cast.
But, darn it, she didn’t have time for beds and crutches and casts.
Laura Graff’s baby was due in ten days. And she’d promised Cressie and Steve
she’d stay with the kids one evening soon so they could get out. And there was
Bert Andrews, with his new high blood pressure medication, who had to be closely
monitored. And she’d promised Alison Lenox she’d talk to her biology classes
next week about prenatal development. . . .
Kate groaned at the long list of
obligations. Some were part of her job, but many were things she’d agreed to
do simply because she enjoyed doing things for people. Yet here she was with a
messed-up ankle, and all she could do about it was worry.
“Doc’s going to strangle me,” she
murmured, giving voice to her anxious thoughts.
“Aren’t you allowed to get hurt or
sick?”
She glanced up to see Sam standing on
the other side of the hearth. Uttering a short laugh, she replied. “I don’t
know. I’ve never tried.”
“This Doc guy—who is he?”
“Dr. William Cabot. His office is in
Bourner’s Crossing. I’ve been working with him for about three years.”
“And he’s the slave-driver type?”
She shook her head. “No, Doc won’t
really be mad at me. But he’s an older man, and he depends on me to handle
most of the emergencies. I also do all the prenatal care, and I deliver babies
for women who can’t make it to the hospital, and . . . well,
things like that.”
“You mean, you do the legwork.”
She cast a woeful glance at her ankle.
“As much as I dislike your choice of words right now, yes.”
“So maybe he’ll have to get
somebody to help out for a while.”
“I wish it were that easy. But look,
it’s my fault I’m in this mess, and I’ll figure it out. Now, tell me the
truth, Sam, are you really from Detroit? Because you sure don’t look it.”
His face went blank at her shift in
topic. Then, slowly, one side of his mouth sloped into a smile. “How does
somebody look like they’re from Detroit?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You sound
like you’re from the Midwest. But I’d have said you live somewhere hot and
sunny.”
He cocked an eyebrow, and she directed
a look at his hair. “It’s the tan and the beach‑boy blond streaks. In
the summer, my sisters and I used to smear lemon juice all over our hair, trying
to make it look like that. But it never worked.” With a toss of her head, she
caught her long, wet braid in her fingers and looked at it, dismayed. “We had
to settle for plain and ordinary brown.”
There was a brief silence, then Sam
drawled, “I don’t know, Katie. Plain and ordinary can be real nice . . .
under the right circumstances.”
His lazy, sultry tone got her
attention. Her gaze flashed to his, and she blinked, certain she wasn’t
reading him right. The harsh lines of his face revealed nothing, but those gray
eyes told her things his expression did not. She knew with every feminine
instinct she possessed that she wasn’t mistaken.
His gaze still held an odd wariness she didn’t understand, but it also
held interest—frank, sexual interest that was made even plainer as his gaze
slid over her blanket-wrapped body in a slow perusal.
Kate flushed, her gaze skittering away. She wasn’t accustomed to being
eyed so openly. Men always seemed to look at her as a big sister or a friend,
which usually meant their shoulder to cry on. They almost never looked at her that
way. And the not-so-subtle message in Sam’s appraisal was even harder
to believe given that she must resemble a drowned rat.
Squirming a little inside the blanket,
she busied herself by working her waist-length hair out of its braid. It was
imperative to keep talking, although she wasn’t sure anymore if it was to keep
her mind off her ankle or her eyes off Sam Reese’s sexy mouth and its
unsettling smile.
“So, are you really from Detroit?”
she asked.
“Yeah, but I haven’t lived there in
a long time.”
“Am I right? Do you live somewhere
hot and sunny?”
“It’s definitely hot and sunny in
the Mojave Desert.”
Kate’s fingers, caught in the tangles
of her hair, stilled. “The desert? What do you do in the desert?”
“Nothing, right now.”
“Well, what did you do?”
He paused before answering. “I flew
planes.”
“Oh, you were a pilot!”
“I am a pilot.”
He said it with such vehemence that she
felt as if she should apologize for her ignorance.
“Were you—” She stopped to
correct herself. “Are you in the Air Force?”
Sam shook his head. “I was in the
Navy, but I’ve been out ten years.”
“So you fly commercial planes now?”
When he didn’t respond, she looked up
to see that he was staring at her—and he didn’t look happy.
“You know, Katie,” he said,
“you’re awful damned nosy.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. “I’m
sorry. I don’t usually babble like this, but—”
“But your ankle hurts.”
There it was again:
the reminder that, regardless of what he said, he understood.
He was willing to cooperate, up to a point. Then something would
happen—maybe she was asking questions he didn’t want to answer—and he’d
balk.
Well, we all have our secrets, she
thought. He’s as entitled to his as I am to mine.
“The aspirin helped a little,” she
mumbled, glancing toward the shuttered window. “Listen, maybe the rain’s let
up. You could probably go get Erik now, and I’m sure he’d take me—”
“It’s still pouring,” Sam
interrupted her. “When the storm blows over, I’ll take you home.”
“But I’ve already put you to a lot
of trouble and—”
“Katie.”
“—it’s getting late—close to
dinnertime, and—”
“Stop it.”
She sucked in a quick breath, and her
gaze snapped to his.
“You haven’t been any trouble. I
just don’t—” He broke off, his eyes reflecting indecision. An instant
later, he scowled. “Listen, I’m a little touchy about answering questions.
I’ve been doing a lot of it lately. I know why you’ve got to keep
talking—and, believe me, I’m sorry as hell about your ankle—but I’m not
much of a talker. Okay?”
She supposed that scowl could be darned intimidating, and she was sure he
intended it to be. But it was too late for that. He’d carried her out of the
rain and undressed her and helped her get pills into her mouth. He’d held her
shaking hands around a hot cup of coffee in unquestioning silence until she was
warm. There was no way she could be intimidated by him. And he must have
realized it, for his expression gradually softened.
“Forget Nielsen,” he said.
“I’ll take you home.”
She hesitated only a second or two
before giving him a single nod of acceptance. She held his gaze a moment longer,
but when he turned away to stare into the fire, her gaze slid over him and she
suddenly registered that his hands were rubbing his crossed arms—and that his
shirt was still wet.
“You’re cold,” she said.
His right hand, wrapped over is left
biceps, stopped moving. “I’m okay.”
“Where are your things, Sam? If
we’re going to be here a while longer, you should put on a dry shirt.”
He shook his head. “My Jeep’s
around back, but I’m not going to unload it in this deluge.”
“I guess everything’d be wet by the
time you got it inside,” she agreed. “But your shirt would dry faster if you
hung it with the other things.”
He shrugged off her concern. “I’m
fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re cold.”
When he didn’t answer, Kate sighed.
“Look I feel bad enough, causing you all this trouble—and don’t tell me I
haven’t. I was a pain in the neck when you found me, and you’ve got a broken
window to fix because of me. I’d feel better if I didn’t think you were
freezing.”
His head turned, and she met his gaze
with an encouraging look. “If you’re worried I’ll faint at the sight of a
man’s naked chest, forget it. I grew up with three brothers. And in my line of
work, believe me, hairy chests are the least of what I have to look at.”
He didn’t respond to her attempt at
levity but continued to give her that wary, closed expression. Then, suddenly,
he yanked open the buttons of his shirt, tore the wet garment off, and flung it
over the chair with his jacket. Without pausing to glance at her, he grabbed the
poker and squatted in front of the fire to give the blazing logs a few good
jabs. He made a production of it, shifting
logs until streams of sparks were flying up the chimney.
But she was hardly aware of his
actions. Her eyes were wide with shock, riveted to his lean torso.
Shiny, flat scars, dozens of them:
They mottled his right side—chest, ribs, back, and upper arm. All were
the result of burns—all but one, and that one commanded her attention. A
single arc that began over his heart, swept under the curve of his right
pectoral and around his rib cage, and ended close to his spine: It
was a surgical scar, one she was certain must have resulted from a monumental
effort to repair internal injuries.
Her first thought was to wonder what
had happened to him. Her second was to regret persuading him to take off his
shirt when he clearly hadn’t wanted her to see the marred flesh. Her third was
to note that it would take a lot more than scars to diminish all that unashamed
virility. Scarred or not, Sam Reese was quite a man.
“Is there a grocery store in
Bourner’s Crossing?”
Kate hardly heard Sam’s question. She
was studying the pattern of crisp hair, muscle, and scars on his chest. He was
stooped down across from her, stuffing her medical bag and Thermos into her
pack, and when she didn’t answer his hands fell still.
“Have you changed your mind about
fainting?”
Her gaze flew to his and locked for the
space of a heartbeat—long enough for her cheeks to stain red.
“No.” She dropped her gaze. “No,
of course not.”
A minute of strained silence passed
before he resumed the packing. “I’m hoping I don’t have to drive a lot
further tonight to find a store that’s open. Is there one in town?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What time does it close.”
“Whenever Mrs. D. calls Mr. D. home
to dinner.”
Vaguely, Kate realized how worthless
her answer was, and that realization led to an awareness that she was staring
again. Her gaze flickered upward, and when she found him watching her, her blush
deepened at being caught a second time. This time, though, she held his defiant
gaze. I dare you to say what you’re thinking, his eyes seemed to say.
And manners dictated that she keep her mouth shut.
But she was no actress. Even when she
was at her best—which she certainly wasn’t—it would have taken more talent
than she possessed to pretend she didn’t see the scars. Finally, she had to
ask, “Sam, what happened?”
Something dark flickered in his eyes,
but he applied his attention to buckling the straps of the knapsack as he spoke.
“I ran into some trouble with a plane.”
“You mean you crashed?”
“That’s the general idea.”
His tone was so lacking in emotion, she
could almost hear him adding, But it was no big deal.
“How long ago was it?”
“A little over a year.”
Not long enough for the burns to lose
their angry look, nor for him to sound even half so dispassionate about it. At
least, she thought, she understood why he’d been upset about her ankle; given
what he’d suffered, it was easy to see why pain, even someone else’s, would
bring back agonizing memories for him. As she tried to imagine what those
memories must be like, her gaze coasted over him again, her expression an
unconscious reflection of her thoughts.
“Cut it out.”
The sharp order brought her gaze up to
meet his angry scowl.
“Listen,” Sam growled, “I don’t
need you or anybody else feeling sorry for me.”
Actually, the thought of feeling sorry
for him was laughable. He stirred a welter of emotions inside her, but pity
wasn’t one of them. Still, she
knew what he must have seen on her face.
“I wasn’t feeling sorry for you,”
Kate said. “I was feeling, well, bad, I guess. Not about the scars, though. I
promise you, Sam, I’ve seen worse.”
His look was suspicious, but he seemed
to believe her.
“It’s my nurse’s instincts,”
she went on. “I can’t help thinking about how badly you must have been
hurt.” Her gaze traveled over him, and she shivered. “A plane crash!
Heavens! It’s hard to believe you survived at all.”
An instant of silence flashed past
before Sam muttered, “Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t.” And with that, he
grabbed her clothes off the chair and tossed them into her lap.
Kate stared at the clothes, then at
him. Then she frowned. “What is that supposed to mean—maybe you didn’t?”
He buttoned his half-dry shirt as he
answered. “Nothing. Forget it.”
“You’re here, and you’re alive,
aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Look, the rain’s stopped.”
He picked up his jacket, nodding toward the door. “I’ll bring the Jeep
around front while you get dressed. Or, uh”—his eyes skimmed over
her—“do you need some help?”
His tone wasn’t suggestive; the offer
was sincere, for all its reluctance. But it wasn’t dark anymore, and she was
no longer the stranger in need he’d undressed an hour ago.
She turned to look at the fire. “No,
thanks. I can manage.”
He walked to the door, stopping when
he’d opened it to glance over his shoulder. “Listen, Katie,” he said,
“I’m a nasty bastard to be around lately. Don’t take it personally. And
don’t try to make sense of it, either. Not much about life makes sense,
anyway. Take my word for it.”
And then he was gone.