Roman's Heart

by Sharon Sala

  “It’s human nature to be in a state of constant change. I don’t think it’s unusual to not know everything there is to know about oneself.”

  Daisy leaned back, eyeing the big man with hard intent, trying to picture him in an unsettled situation.

  “Somehow, I can’t see you losing focus.”

  Roman had never felt as out of sync as he did right now. He tried to look away, but couldn’t.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think we all wear blinders from time to time. It’s nature’s way of protecting us from something we’re not ready to face.”

  Daisy folded her hands in her lap.

  “Roman?”

  He hesitated to answer, wishing he was anywhere except pinned beneath that clear green gaze. Finally, he was forced to respond.

  “What?”

  “Are you running away from something, too?”

  Only myself. But he chose not to answer her.

  The wind subsided sometime during the night. Roman woke suddenly from a deep, dreamless sleep. He lay in the bed, listening for a sound from below, wondering if it was Daisy he’d heard.

  But there was nothing but silence. He relaxed, telling himself to go back to sleep. Sleep wouldn’t come. It took a few seconds longer before he realized that the quiet wasn’t only inside the cabin; it was outside, as well.

  The storm is over!

  He rolled out of bed and reached for his jeans, telling himself he probably needed to put wood on the fire and knowing all the way down the stairs that he just wanted to see Daisy’s face. He needed to know she was right where he’d left her—safe and warm by the fire.

  He thought of trying the phone again. Maybe now that the winds had died down he would be able to get through to the ranch. Then he glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to three, which meant it was a quarter to four back home. No use waking everyone up now. There would be plenty of time in the morning to try the call.

  He leaned over the sofa. Daisy was still there and rolled up in her blankets. Her hair was tousled and falling down on her forehead, as well as all over the pillow. Again, the urge to brush it out of her eyes was strong, but he stayed his ground, reminding himself not to get too close.

  The fire was sputtering on a weak, dying flame, and he added some wood, taking comfort in the blaze that came forth. Then he stood, quietly moving the screen back in place and dusting off his hands, satisfied that they would be warm until morning.

  He turned, glancing down at Daisy once more and making sure she was covered. Several seconds passed before he realized she was watching him. It startled him. He was the private investigator. He was the one used to doing the observations. He didn’t much like being on the other end of the spectrum.

  “Sorry,” he said briefly. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  She didn’t speak, but her gaze moved over his body in a way that made him nervous. She stared, from the waistband of his jeans to the thrust of his chin and then down again. At this point, he clenched his teeth as a muscle in his jaw began to jerk.

  Damn this impossible situation. “Are you warm enough?”

  Her gaze locked on to his. “What’s happening?”

  Her voice was soft and sleepy, and the sound did a number on his heart. The barriers that he so prudently kept up were in serious trouble of shattering.

  “The storm has passed...at least for the time being. I came down to add some wood to the fire.”

  “Oh.”

  Another lengthy silence ensued. The heat from the fire was warming his backside quite nicely, but it was the heat in his belly that was starting to burn.

  “Go back to sleep, Daisy.”

  Like a child, she obeyed, and when she shut her eyes, he thought he heard her sigh.

  He headed for the stairs without looking back, dropping into bed and closing his eyes, willing himself to sleep. But it took a very long time for nature to overtake nerves. It was almost dawn before it happened, and it was after nine when the smell of cooking food drifted into the loft and brought him into an upright position.

  The knowledge that he’d overslept was only half as startling to him as the fact that Daisy had rummaged around downstairs long enough to cook. It was disconcerting to know he’d accepted her presence enough to sleep through the noise.

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and grimaced as he looked down at his jeans. They looked slept in, which figured, since he hadn’t pulled them off after he’d gotten up last night. Then he shrugged and reached for his boots. The leather was cold and stiff as he pulled them on, and he wished he’d left them downstairs by the fire.

  He grabbed a black sweatshirt from the back of the chair and pulled it over his head as he started down the stairs. By the time he came out of the bathroom, his hair was damp, as was the dayold growth of black whiskers still glistening from the water he’d sloshed on his face.

  He entered the kitchen just as Daisy was taking a pan from the oven. The smell of fresh-baked bread hit him right where it mattered. His belly grumbled, but it wasn’t all hunger that drew him into the room. Part of it had to do with the woman at the stove. There was a smudge of flour on the breast of her red plaid shirt, and a smaller one on the side of her cheek. Her hair was piled high on her head, but there were long, curling tendrils that had escaped from the knot, teasing the sides of her cheeks, as well as the back of her neck.

  “I made biscuits.” She held up the pan as if it were a sevenlayer cake frosted with gold.

  All he could manage was a smile and a nod.

  Her eyes were alight with a joy he envied. “I wasn’t sure I knew how,” she continued as she set the pan on the old wooden table with a thump. “But you know, it was like you said. When I don’t think about it too hard, I find I do things on instinct.”

  He took a deep breath and finally found the guts to speak.

  “You didn’t have to cook.”

  “I know, but you’ve been so good to take care of me. It was the least I could do.”

  “Your hands...”

  Still smiling, she held them up. “They’re still a bit stiff, but that ointment you used worked wonders. Most of the soreness is gone.” She turned and reached for the coffeepot. “Time’s a great healer, you know.”

  The phrase had come to her from nowhere, but the moment she said it, the image of a short, gray-haired man flashed through her mind. She held her breath, certain that at any moment she would hear his voice and then know who he was. But the notion disappeared as quickly as it had come, and when she turned back around, some of the delight in her morning had faded.

  Roman saw her shoulders tense and suspected she’d had another one of her “moments.” When he saw her face, he knew he’d been right.

  “It will get better.”

  Daisy blinked back tears of frustration as she poured out the coffee.

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to say the same of those biscuits.”

  Again, her humor in the face of a serious situation caught Roman unaware, and he chuckled.

  The transformation of his expression was startling—from cold to devastatingly handsome. Daisy busied herself with flatware and plates, and by the time the table was set, she had her emotions firmly in check.

  They shared the food, but little else, each lost in troublesome thoughts. A short while later, their elation fell even further. Yes, the storm was over, but from the looks of the sky, another was impending. Twice Roman tried to use his cellular phone to call out, and each time, all he got for his trouble was static.

  He kept thinking that if what Daisy remembered was true, there could be other people who’d gone down in the plane she’d been on. The authorities needed to be notified of the crash, and of her whereabouts, as well. But the snow was up over his knees, and the road he’d come up on was obliterated. Without the use of his phone, there was nothing they could do but wait for the weather to break.

  Chapter 4

  Davis Benton was standing on the roof of the Denver hospital when the medi-flig
ht helicopter landed. He’d been waiting for this moment ever since he’d been notified of Gordon Mallory’s plane going down. The terror of knowing his only daughter had been on the flight had been exacerbated by the snowstorm that had followed the crash. For a day and a half, search had been impossible. It was one of the few times in Davis’s life when being rich didn’t count. He could have bought this hospital and a dozen like it more than ten times over and never noticed a dent in his holdings. But he hadn’t been able to beg, order or coerce even one pilot to take a chance on searching for the downed plane.

  He’d been in Denver since the day before yesterday, waiting for a search to begin. Holly was his only daughter, in fact, his only child. They’d been close, but not unnecessarily so, and even though she was a grown woman, he was still dealing with the fact that she’d planned a trip with Mallory without telling him first.

  He squinted, shielding his eyes and pulling the collar of his coat closer around his throat as the helicopter began to descend. All he’d been told was that they were coming in with three victims. Two were in serious condition. One of them was dead. His heart was in his throat as he watched the chopper descend. He kept thinking of death and how final it was.

  Davis Benton had firsthand knowledge of such things. One day he’d been a happy, expectant father awaiting the birth of his first child, and before the day was out, his wife had gone into labor, delivered their baby and then died. Marsha had been taken from him without warning, yet he’d managed to survive. But if Holly was taken from him, there wasn’t enough money in the world to make up for her loss.

  The wind from the blades of the descending helicopter burned at his eyes as he tried desperately to focus.

  Please, God, don’t let Holly be dead.

  When the chopper landed, his first instincts were to run toward it. But then the rescue team emerged and began unloading gurneys out of the helicopter’s belly, and he found himself unable to move.

  One group of hospital personnel raced past him, their expressions fixed with a purpose he didn’t dare impede. His stare was blank, frozen with the horror only a parent could know as he gazed at the shape, then the face, of the first patient they pushed by him.

  When he realized it was a man, his heart sank. That left only one other survivor. The odds in Holly’s favor had just dropped.

  “Please, please, please,” Davis heard himself muttering, and blinked furiously to clear the thick film of tears from his eyes.

  When the second gumey came out, even from here, he knew it wasn’t his girl. The body was too long and the hair too light. They came closer, and he recognized the bloody but familiar face of Gordon Mallory.

  At that point, his legs went weak. It was all he could do to stand upright as the last gurney was pulled out. When they began moving the covered body toward the rooftop entrance to the hospital, he became faint.

  Hang in there, he told himself. You owe it to Holly.

  “Wait!” he begged as they started to move past him.

  The rescuers paused, their faces grim from the exhaustion and cold.

  “Please,” Davis said, reaching toward the body. “My baby...I need to see my girl.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the nearest rescuer said. “But this isn’t a woman. It’s a man.”

  Davis’s hand began to shake. “But Holly...where’s Holly?”

  The rescuer shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but there was no woman at the crash site. Only the three men we pulled out of the plane.”

  Davis was forced to step aside as they moved past him, but his mind was in a panic.

  My God! They came back without her! How could they do that? Why didn’t they stay to look for her?

  He thought of her bleeding and disoriented, of wandering off from the crash site and then lying somewhere buried beneath the snow. Although it had been a long time since he’d bothered to pray for anything, he closed his eyes.

  “Help her, Lord, because I fear right now she cannot help herself.”

  His mind was in a whirl. He had to get the rescue team back out there! But where to start? They’d obviously known there was a woman on board. He knew enough to realize they had probably searched as much as possible, but whatever clues would have been left had most likely been obliterated by the snow. A knot formed in his belly as the impossibility of the situation became real. What on earth were they going to do?

  Then it hit him. Mallory was alive! And he would have answers. With resolve in his heart, Davis Benton bolted into the hospital.

  It had been snowing since noon. As Roman had feared, the storm wasn’t over. Being shut inside had made the day endless for both of them. They had done nothing but sidestep each other’s presence, and now with the onset of the second wave of the storm, the cabin was closing in.

  They spent the afternoon in near silence. Daisy tried to nap, and Roman pretended to read a book. He turned forty-four pages before it dawned on him that not only did he not remember what he’d been reading, but he didn’t even know the title of the book. He gave it up as a lost cause and played solitaire until dark.

  Then, while Roman was gathering in wood for the night, Daisy disappeared. When he heard water running in the tub, he knew where she’d gone. But an hour later, she had yet to emerge, and he was beginning to wonder if she was all right. Twice, he walked to the door with full intentions of calling to her, and for lack of a good reason, changed his mind each time.

  He was in the kitchen when he heard her footsteps in the hall. A skitter of nerves danced their way down his back, but he made himself stay where he was. Instead, he reached for another potato and began to scrub it beneath the water running in the sink.

  “Need any help?” Daisy asked.

  “Nope.”

  “I took a bath and washed out a few things.”

  That made sense. Their choices of clothing were limited.

  “I heard,” he said, and scrubbed even harder on the hapless vegetable.

  “It felt good to soak. Worked a lot of the soreness out in my muscles.”

  Soak? She was soaking. The hair stood on the backs of his arms as the image enveloped him.

  “I changed clothes, too. I hope you don’t mind, but you know how it is. Don’t you just hate to put the same clothes back on once you’ve bathed?”

  He turned, and the potato he’d been scrubbing fell out of his hands and into the sink while the water continued to flow.

  “Uh...”

  “It doesn’t really fit, but it’s so much warmer than the other shirt you loaned me. I know you have several, or I wouldn’t have assumed.”

  “Fit?”

  He wasn’t making much sense, but Daisy thought nothing of it. The man was hardly a conversationalist. She pushed the rolledup sleeves back up toward her elbows.

  “I know it’s way too long, but the cabin gets cold at night and I thought it would be warmer to sleep in.”

  “Sleep?”

  “Yes. Your sweatshirt will be so much warmer to sleep in. You don’t mind...do you?”

  He shook his head, unable to tear his gaze away from what she held in her hands.

  She turned away, her voice becoming fainter as she walked out of the kitchen, but he heard enough to know it was going to be a long night.

  “I’m going to lay my underwear by the fireplace to dry, then I’ll help you fix dinner.”

  Underwear. Those were the “few things” that she’d laundered. Every time he went to add wood to the fire, he’d be dodging lingerie. Well, hunky-damn-dory. Those blasted daisy panties and that bit-of-nothing bra were going to be the evening’s entertainment.

  He spun, turning off the water with a vicious twist of his wrist, then poking a couple of holes in the potato before tossing it into the oven with the other one he’d just cleaned.

  Frustration mounted as he yanked a cast-iron skillet out of the cabinet and slammed it on the stove while considering the possibility of never speaking to Royal again.

  She came back into the kitchen with th
at smile in her eyes, and Roman’s temper fizzled like a wet match. If he hadn’t come, what would have happened to her? Guilt hit him. She would probably have frozen to death, that’s what. So what was a little inconvenience, compared to her life? It wasn’t going to kill him to dodge a couple of unmentionables. And he was a very grown male, not some sex-starved teenager with a full set of raging hormones. So she didn’t have a stitch on under his sweatshirt except those jeans, and they were so old and faded they clung to her skin like silk. So what? Now, if she’d been some tall, leggy blonde, this might have been a different story. He reminded himself again that she just wasn’t his type. Daisy...or whatever her name was...was more than safe. Then she handed him a can of com and the can opener and smiled. Yes, she was safe, but was he?

  Daisy whimpered in her sleep, but the sound went unheard. High in the loft above, Roman tossed restlessly, trying to find ease, both in his mind and his bed, unaware that her dreams had taken her back into hell.

  Heat waves danced just above the surface of the runway as Holly Benton got out of the cab. The private plane was there, right where Gordon said it would be. She glanced at her watch She was early. But that was all right. It wouldn’t take long to tell him she’d decided not to go. This was a step in their relationship she wasn’t ready to take. In fact, she wasn’t certain the day would ever come when she’d be ready to take a step like this with him He was nice, and he treated her wonderfully, wining and dining her all over Las Vegas, but he didn’t make her heart skip beats. All her life, she’d heard her father talking about how much he’d loved her mother and that the mere sound of her voice had made his heart skip a beat. She wanted that kind of relationship-that kind of love. But it wasn’t going to happen with Gordon.

  She turned to the cab driver. “Wait for me. This won’t take long.”

  He settled back in the seat as she started across the tarmac.

  She could hear Gordon’s voice inside the plane as she started up the steps. The tone was loud and threatening, and she wondered what on earth had angered him. Not once in the three months she’d known him had she ever heard him raise his voice, and because it was so out of character, she hesitated, thereby forever changing her fate.