Saving Andi: St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS

by Raffin, Barbara

  She turned and found Tuff in her usual spot under the table…and Cole watching her with unnerving speculation. She set the bowls on the table, averting her eyes as she asked, "You want butter for your biscuits?"

  "No."

  She sat, regretting she'd placed herself across from him rather than kitty-corner. It meant she had to keep her eyes lowered or face him and his probing gaze.

  "You getting any other feelings of familiarity about anything?" she asked before he started questioning her about her past.

  "No," he said. "But I have a question for you."

  Here it comes.

  "What's your name?"

  #

  She looked like a deer caught in headlights. What had she thought he was going to ask her? What didn't she want to tell him?

  "Andi," she said, bowing her head over her stew bowl. "Everybody calls me Andi."

  "Okay," he said, watching her cram a spoonful of stew into her mouth. "That'll do for now."

  She glanced up at him, eyes wide and expectant.

  He shrugged. "Given how little you know about me and how much trouble I'm causing you, I can't hardly expect you to spill your life story to me, can I?"

  She chewed slowly, her eyes narrowing—contemplating right up until she swallowed. "Andrinna Johanson. That's my legal name. But I hate my first name."

  "Fair enough," he said and dug into his stew.

  But he couldn't stop the questions nagging at the back of his skull.

  Why was she risking her own safety for him?

  Why hadn't she called the cops on him?

  Was she hiding from the cops, too? Providing he was hiding from them. He just couldn't get a gut fix on where he stood in regards to any law enforcement agencies.

  As they ate, he let his gaze rove around the cabin's great room. He'd been right about the lateness of the day, the orange glow piercing the curtains on the windows to either side of the fireplace evidence of a setting sun. Mentally, he calculated the cabin faced south with the bedroom in the northeast corner behind the eastward-facing kitchen.

  He didn't know why the position of the cabin was important. But it felt right to get his bearings, like knowing his escape routes. Two doors to this place. The front one opening into the living-kitchen area and another in the west wall beyond the fireplace near the bathroom at the back of the cabin. Plenty of windows…all covered by curtains thin enough to let light in but heavy enough to prevent prying eyes seeing in. Add in the heavy-duty deadbolt on the door behind her and he judged her a woman who knew the details of security.

  Because she was hiding away from something—someone?

  He remembered her saying something about being a caretaker for vacant camps. Did that go along with hiding out? The cabins were in the woods. Maybe.

  The not-so-distant rumble of a semi-truck rolled through the cabin. He glanced at the window over the kitchen sink.

  "Are we on a highway?" he asked.

  "Yeah," she said, digging into her stew, not meeting his gaze.

  He stared at the top of her head, confused. Who hid out along a highway?

  "The traffic won't keep you up, if that's what you're thinking," she said, glancing up at him. "It's not a heavily traveled highway."

  Damn, but that blow to his head must have screwed up his instincts as well as his memory. He'd have bet his life she was hiding out. But, if she wasn't, then betting his life on her might be a big mistake.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cole set down his biscuit and spoon, his full focus on Andi. "So, just how much danger are we in?"

  She met his gaze, gravy soaked biscuit halfway to her mouth. "You're the one someone wants dead."

  "But by bringing me into your home, you've put yourself in harm's way as well."

  She lowered her biscuit and straightened in her seat. "Yeah, well, guess that's why I've been keeping my curtains closed and doors bolted."

  "What I'm asking is how did you get me here? How much of a trail did you leave for my would-be killer to follow?"

  She drew a deep breath. "I brought you out on a toboggan. There was no hiding the skid marks in the snow out to the county road where I'd parked my snowmobile. But trust me. It'd take an experienced tracker to follow the rest of our trail." She re-dipped her biscuit in her stew and took a bite.

  "I'd feel better if I knew how you can be so certain of that."

  She chewed slowly, eyes locked on his, and swallowed. "You like to be in charge, don't you?"

  "I like to be informed. There's a difference."

  She waved him off. "Fine. Whatever."

  He opened his mouth to protest. But she set down her biscuit, leaned forward, elbows braced on the table and hands steepled in front of her. "I took a direct route back here because you were in bad shape. But once I got you stabilized and settled in, I backtracked, sweeping the trail from the shoulder of the highway. Then I laid a false trail heading north. Even had Tuff ride the toboggan to give it weight. About a quarter mile up the road, I parked the sleds, hiked home, got my truck, and loaded up everything. I made sure to leave tire tracks on the shoulder of the road heading north and turned around on the pavement where I would leave no tracks. It should be enough for whoever is tracking you to assume whoever picked you up took you to the hospital in Marquette…given he or she even knows that much about tracking."

  "And if he doesn't and just starts checking the nearest residences, which I'm assuming includes yours, what is he going to find in your driveway?"

  "No fresh snowmobile tracks and definitely no traces of a toboggan."

  He raised questioning eyebrows at her.

  She huffed. "You want every little detail. Okay. I swept the area clean of the incriminating tracks and ran my truck back and forth in the driveway a few times for good measure."

  "And the toboggan?"

  "Hidden away in the rafters of my garage."

  He stared into his bowl of stew a few moments, thinking. "Your tracks must be around the camp where you found me…and Tuff Stuff's."

  "I didn't know how bled out you were. I didn't have the time to mess up Tuff's tracks. But I was wearing snowshoes. It'd take a very experienced tracker to figure out whether a man or woman was wearing them."

  He met her gaze. "They come here and see your big dog, they'll figure it out quick enough."

  "They? Are you remembering something?"

  "Nothing specific. Just a sense that there's more than one of them."

  "Any sense whether they were locals or not?"

  He shrugged. "Does where they came from make my predicament better or worse?"

  "A local would likely track that blood trail you left through the woods to the camp where I found you."

  "And a local might not be fooled by your false trail?" he ventured.

  "I'm better at tracking than most around here."

  He gave her a two-finger salute. "I believe you."

  "How gallant of you," she said, her tone less than cordial. "Anything else you want to know?"

  Yeah. A whole lot more.

  But little of it had to do with the topic at hand, and he doubted she was in any mood to share her life story with him. Besides, a weariness had settled over his shoulders.

  Still, he felt the need to end the conversation on a more cordial note. A whiff of the fragrant stew he lifted towards his lips reminded him women liked being complimented on their cooking. He remembered that much.

  "Great tasting beef stew," he said, through a mouthful.

  A shy smile flexed across her lips before she shrugged it away, informing him, "It's only venison. Price of beef is crazy high."

  He grinned at her. "Well, whatever the protein, it tastes great."

  "Says the hungry guy who's been on a diet of broth," she countered.

  "It is good," he said, his weariness dragging at his smile. "Can't you just accept a compliment?"

  Her brow wrinkled. "Guess I'm just not used to getting many."

  And another piece in the puzzle of Andi Johans
on fell in place, a piece touching the one referencing the men in her past being jerks.

  #

  Andi lay on the couch, a fleece throw wrapped around her, and the room dark save for the glow off the embers in the fireplace. With her patient past the critical stage, she was letting the fire on the hearth burnout, leaving the heating of the cabin to the more efficient wood stove. But she hadn't been able to stop watching that open fire as it died away—hadn't been able to fall asleep. She had too many questions about the man sleeping in her bed, especially about why she'd brought him into her home.

  Granted, she'd been influenced by how badly things had gone the last time she'd called the authorities for help. But she'd come to realize something not so obvious had motivated her. A need to take care of Cole when he'd been helpless, like when Theo was little and their father used the belt on him.

  But Cole had lost a lot of blood. She really should have gotten him to a hospital.

  …Where they'd have promptly called in the police because bullet wounds had to be reported.

  And without a memory, he didn't even know who wanted him dead let alone why. What could the police do to protect him with that limited information? And what if his would-be killer was among those charged with law enforcement? No way could she throw him into the proverbial lion's den.

  There was that need to protect again, a motherliness she'd found in herself after her mother had died and she'd had to take care of little Theo. Could that be all there was to her caring for Cole, motherly instinct?

  Nicely put together. Bedroom eyes. Thoughts of calloused fingers touching her.

  No! She'd decided long ago to live her life without men. Trouble. That's all they'd ever been for her. Never mind Cole's dimpled smiles, his politeness, his protecting her with his body when he thought the popping knot in the fireplace was gunfire. He was major trouble, given someone was out to kill him. And that he didn't even know what side of the law he was on…

  Though, she wasn't sure that last mattered as much as it should to her. Problem was she didn't know if he was a different kind of trouble for her or the same old kind. Right now, he seemed to be all of the old kind rolled together with a new twist.

  Maybe the allure he brought was some excitement into her humdrum life. His missing memory—his penchant for security. All those scars. The oddity of his latest wound.

  The wedding ring he didn't wear.

  She winced, confused by the mishmash of feelings that object brought to the surface.

  Wrong. She wasn't confused. She didn't want him to remember there might be someone else in his life and she knew exactly why. The ache deep in her belly told her how very much she missed a man's arms wrapped around her. She'd always chased the protection of a lover's arms. Probably because, once Theo had grown into a man-sized boy, his arms had protected her. But his arms had nothing to do with sex and her lovers had never been protective.

  She hadn't escaped her old ways at all. Still the girl attracted to the wrong kind of guy. Thanks to an old man and an older brother who'd taught her familial bonds weren't always loving—that, if she wanted love, she'd have to find it elsewhere. And given their examples, she didn't know any better than to go after bad boys. Was that all there was to her bad choices, better the devil you know than the one you don't?

  And the relationship she had with her baby brother? It'd good. They'd been close. Maybe that's why she'd chased the hope there was someone out there who would care for her the way she longed to be loved…even if she looked for that kind of love in the wrong kind of man.

  Hope. It was a double-edged blade. Good and bad. Good in that it had kept her going through the years, albeit often in a self-destructive way. Bad in that it kept her reaching for the unattainable.

  Which was why she'd tried to eliminate hope from her life. Hell, she thought she'd succeeded. She'd lived a relatively numb life for two years. No troubles. Then that thin spire of smoke had drawn her to a supposedly vacant camp and a half-dead man.

  Why had she let herself become involved? Because Cole whatever his name had brought back all the feelings of the day Theo had died?

  And all the mistakes.

  And the hope, though at the moment she wasn't sure what hope that would be. Maybe redemption of some sort.

  Whatever the reason, she was in too deep now. What was done was done.

  She heard the bedsprings as Cole shifted. He was restless tonight, too.

  Not unexpected. He'd slept most of the day. Probably wasn't all that tired anymore. Plus, he had his own demons to search out.

  At least she hoped it was his own past occupying his thoughts. He'd been curious about her over supper. Initially, his interrogation was self-serving, insisting on knowing how she'd gotten him back to her cabin and covered their tracks. Though, right from the first question, he'd said we.

  How much danger are we in?

  Like they were in this together.

  They were. She'd established that the moment she chose to bring him into her home instead of calling the authorities, whatever her reasons.

  At least, once determining she wasn't an idiot, Cole had the good sense not to push for anything beyond her name.

  No, his methods included softening her up with compliments about her stew and a dimpled smile. And that he made her feel needed, maybe even wanted.

  Yeah, there it was. That old feeling. Hope that someone would want her as badly as she needed him. She closed her eyes, willing the feeling away.

  The mattress springs in the next room groaned again, reminding her how very near Cole was. She could get up, walk through that open door, and crawl into bed with him. He'd wrap his arms around her, hold her. But would they protect her or just be a prelude to sex?

  She should just go up in the loft and sleep. That's what she should do before she made the mistake of crawling into bed with Cole and finding out his arms were as fickle a fit to her as any of her lovers' had been.

  But she still didn't trust he had the strength to navigate without another body to prop him up, and he was too much man to pry off the floor by herself. And given Tuff had chosen to sleep midway between them, which meant across the bedroom threshold, Cole was bound to be tripped up by the dog.

  So she added another couple logs to the wood stove, closed the dampers on the fireplace, and returned to the warm nest of her cloud-studded, sky blue fleece throw. A pretty blanket was all the fantasy she dared allow herself.

  #

  Cole stood to the side of the bedroom window, the curtain parted a crack. He watched the highway. Andi had told him the truth about it being lightly traveled. In the middle of the night few lights passed. He shouldn't have doubted her.

  But he'd discovered he liked to know what was going on for himself. Like what or who might be lurking in the shadows around the cabin.

  As good a job as it sounded like Andi did covering their tracks, the area was too rural with too few houses for a bad guy to check out once he figured out he'd been led astray…assuming whoever wanted him dead was the bad guy and not him. How he knew about the sparse habitation of where he'd ended up might have been a mystery to him if he didn't know he was in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where even the towns seemed rural. How he knew where he was he couldn't explain. But it seemed a memory he could trust.

  He swayed, caught himself against the wall. Damn, this lightheadedness. He made sure the window was well covered and flopped back on the bed, still fighting to think everything through even though his head yet reeled.

  He should be the one out on the couch. That way, he'd be the first person the bad guy encountered. Even if whoever was after him broke in guns blazing, Andi would be warned and could escape…if she were in the bedroom. He'd have to change that arrangement in the morning.

  He must have dozed off as he woke rolled up on top of the bed in the quilt, the room dark. It took him several seconds to figure out she'd let the fire in the fireplace die out—that there was nothing wrong.

  His muscles relaxed. But hi
s mind picked up where it had last left off.

  His being here put Andi in danger. But, even if he knew where to go, his leaving would only leave her unprotected from a killer's visit. Something about that churned in his gut. A feeling of responsibility that seemed to go back beyond her saving him.

  And why hadn't she handed him over to the cops or brought him to a hospital…where they would have reported a gunshot victim to the police? Did she have an aversion to cops? That's what his gut instinct had told him the moment he'd found out she hadn't called them.

  Yet he'd been wrong about her hiding out from the law. At least that's what living along a highway frequented by State Police suggested.

  Who was this woman who put herself in danger by rescuing a shot-up stranger?

  He pressed his head into the pillow and closed his eyes. Slim but muscular. Strong in body and mind. She had the smarts to cover their tracks and a whole lot more. The stack of books on her nightstand, their varied subjects suggesting she was well-read.

  How did she know what to do with a gunshot wound? He'd watched her change his bandages, got a good look as she dealt with the front wound. It showed no signs of infection and had been sewn up. Sewing up flesh wasn't for the squeamish. And there'd been nothing among the book stack about medical procedure.

  When he'd remarked about the stippling around the bullet hole in his shirt indicating he'd been shot at close range, her response revealed she already knew what it meant. Where had his angel of mercy learned about stippling? No police procedurals among that book stack, either.

  It wasn't hard to speculate on where a woman who'd grown up in the woods of Michigan's U. P. had learned about guns and tracking and making venison stew. This capable woman with dark hair and darker eyes—eyes in which he'd seen concern, guilt, resistance, and a hint of humor.

  He smiled at the memory of her smug look when he'd noticed the gun she'd handed him was absent any bullets—of how it put a glint of mischief in her eye. He'd take a girl with a mischievous past over a straight arrow any day. Mischief taught a person street smarts, or, in her case, woods smarts. He didn't know how he knew that. He just did.