The Stranger and Tessa Jones

by Christine Rimmer

  He squeezed her hand. “Headache.”

  “I can give you a mild painkiller—acetaminophen.”

  The way she said it made him smile. “You can?”

  “Just now, before you called for me, I got out my trusty Family Medical Guide and did a little reading on traumatic brain injury.”

  Traumatic brain injury. It didn’t sound good. “That’s what I’ve got?”

  “I’m no doctor, but it looks that way to me.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a myth that you can’t have Tylenol. And you know how they always say don’t let patients with head injuries sleep? That’s a myth, too. You can sleep as much as you want.”

  “Good to know. What else?”

  Something happened in those green-gold eyes. He suspected that a lot of what she’d read hadn’t been especially reassuring. “Long story,” she answered at last. “You can read it all yourself. Later.” She pulled open the drawer in the nightstand and took out a bottle of Tylenol. Once she’d given him two and helped him swallow more water to wash them down, she tucked the covers up beneath his chin. “Rest a little. I’ll be back to check on you every fifteen minutes or so. And if you need me, just give a holler.”

  “Will do.”

  She rose and started to go.

  He stopped her in the doorway, where the bulldog waited. “One more thing…”

  She turned back, her hand on the doorframe. “Yeah?”

  “What did you do with my clothes?”

  She made a sound in her throat. “Yikes. I guess that was kind of a shock, huh? Waking up in your underwear?”

  “I got through it. And the whole process was a lot easier for me than for you—I mean, since I was out cold at the time and did nothing but just lie there.”

  She looked so earnest then. “I thought you’d be more comfortable, you know, without them. And then I did need to patch up your knees. That was easier without your pants in the way.”

  “Good call,” he reassured her. “I just wondered where they were.”

  “They’re laid out in the basement to dry now, but it’s not looking real hopeful. Everything but the socks were dry clean only. I did what I could with them—mending them and cleaning them up, I mean. But most of those greasy black stains wouldn’t come out.”

  “My boots?”

  She folded her arms and leaned on the doorframe. “I put them near the woodstove in the other room—not too close, but close enough they’ll dry a little faster.”

  “Thank you,” he said, seriously now. “Again. For everything. ” They looked at each other across the short distance from the bed to the door. He liked looking at her.

  She said, kind of shyly, “I have a question, too.”

  “Anything.” He said it automatically, and then realized there were hundreds of questions—thousands—to which he had no answers. But he’d do his best.

  For her.

  “I don’t know your name.” She glanced downward, still shy. He thought how she’d managed to drag him in here, how she’d stripped him to his boxers and bandaged him up and put him in bed. How she’d mended his clothes and washed them and put his boots near—but not too near—the fire. All without even knowing his name.

  Don’t feel bad, he wanted to tell her. I don’t know my name, either. But something had him holding back those words. He sensed that whoever he was in his real life, he wasn’t a man who’d go around admitting that he had no clue who he was or where he’d come from. Uh-uh. Not even to the woman who had saved his life.

  He smiled. Slowly. “You mean I failed to introduce myself?”

  “As a matter of fact, you did.”

  “Bill,” he said. “My name is Bill.”

  She laughed then, softly, leaning into the doorframe, that patch-eyed dog looking up at her. Then she drew herself up to her full six feet or so. “Oh, come on.”

  But he only insisted, “Call me Bill.” Why not? It was as good a name as any. Maybe he’d be a better Bill than the idiot who’d jilted her for that showgirl. “Did you leave the rest of those dishes out there in the storm?”

  She hitched up her chin. “You bet I did. They’re buried already, not to be seen until the spring thaw.”

  “You’ve got quite an arm on you.”

  “I played basketball in high school. Shooting guard. Varsity team. Boys’ varsity team.” She spoke with pride. “It’s a small school. They need every good shooting arm they can get.”

  “Wow. Impressive.”

  A modest nod. Then, firmly, “Rest.”

  “Rest, Bill,” he corrected.

  “All right. Have it your way.” Softly, she repeated, “Rest, Bill.”

  He did rest. When he woke again, his headache had faded away and it was dark in the room. The curtains were drawn over the windows and no light bled in from outside. It must be nighttime.

  The door to the hall was open. There was a light on, low, out there. The clock on the nightstand said it was 5:46 p.m. He started to call for Tessa, but then thought he’d try sitting up by himself again first.

  His sore stomach muscles complained, but he did it. He reached for the switch on the bedside lamp and turned it on. Then he twisted to bolster the pillows against the headboard for support, and winced at the sharp pain down low on his belly.

  What the hell? Wasn’t there any part of his body that hadn’t been bruised or bloodied?

  He pushed back the blankets, eased the elastic of the boxers wide and peered inside. Good news: The family jewels were there, intact. But a deep bruise had imprinted itself in purple, green and black, across his lap. From some kind of belt restraint, maybe?

  Car accident?

  Was that it? He’d been in a car crash?

  He studied his torso, checking for the mark of a chest restraint among all the other bruises. There wasn’t one. Just a rainbow of black and purple splotches at random intervals on his ribcage and across his upper belly.

  His head had started to pound again. He shut his eyes, breathed in and out through his nose. It worked. Slowly, the pounding faded. With a sigh of relief, he leaned back against the pillows. A minute or two ticked by as he gathered his strength for the next effort.

  When he thought he could manage it, he tried for water—and succeeded. He reached over and poured some into the glass and brought the glass to his lips. It tasted like heaven, cool and refreshing. He was careful, as Tessa had warned him to be, not to gulp it down. He savored it—one swallow. Two.

  So far, so good. He set the glass on his chest and rested again. Then he took a third sip.

  “You are feeling better.” She stood in the doorway, beaming.

  He felt absurdly proud and raised the glass to her in a toast. “Yes, I am.”

  “I heated up some chicken broth. Think you’re ready for that?”

  He reached over and set the glass on the nightstand. “Bring it on.”

  She fed him the broth. Yeah, okay, he probably could have managed to feed himself by then. But it felt good, to be spoiled by her. So he shamelessly accepted each salty, hot spoonful from her tender hands.

  After that, she told him to rest again. He didn’t argue. Obediently, he stretched out and let her smooth the covers over him. She turned off the light before she went out.

  But the minute she left the room, he realized he needed a trip to the john. He considered calling her back.

  But come on. Hadn’t she done more than enough already? He could certainly deal with taking a whiz on his own. So he sat up, flipped the light back on and pushed back the covers. He swung his battered legs over the side of the bed. And then, one hand on the nightstand for balance, he pushed himself upright.

  Not bad. Not bad at all.

  Eyeing the shut door in the corner, he gauged the odds it would lead to a bathroom. Might as well find out. He started moving. It wasn’t pretty. He shuffled along like a crippled old man. But at least he was on his feet and moving forward.

  When he reached the door at last, he pulled it open
on a combination closet and bath. The closet consisted of a recessed space to the left. Straight ahead was the bathroom. He hobbled on in there and took care of business.

  After that, he washed his hands, taking his time over it as he stared at the stranger in the mirror. Black hair, blue eyes. A groove in his chin—what they called a cleft. A bandage covering the gash on his forehead. Bruises and scrapes everywhere…

  There were lotions and creams on the sink counter. He picked up one of the bottles and read the tiny print on the back, which taught him not only that the lotion contained glycerin and almond oil, but also that his eyesight was pretty damn good.

  Whoever he was, he probably didn’t need glasses.

  Once he’d dried his hands and hung the hand towel back on its hook, he snooped around some more.

  One drawer held makeup in trays, another brushes and combs. A third, a blow-dryer and one of those curling-iron things.

  Taking it slow, he returned to the bedroom.

  She was waiting for him. “I thought I heard the toilet flush…” She started toward him. “Here. Let me—”

  He put up a hand. “Tessa.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Leave a man a little damn dignity, will you?”

  She stopped in midstep. “Have it your way…Bill.” She turned her back, giving him at least a show of privacy, as he shuffled his way to the bed, got in and arranged the covers over himself.

  “This is your room, isn’t it?” he asked when he was settled.

  She faced him with a nod. “I have a spare sleeping area, but it’s a loft. No way was I dragging you up the stairs. Not good for you, way too much work for me.”

  “I’m sorry to put you out of your room.”

  “Couldn’t be helped. And if you want to show you’re really grateful, get well.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “You do seem better.”

  “I am. Is there a remote for the TV?”

  “In the nightstand drawer.” She was leaning in the doorway again.

  He opened the drawer and took out the remote and pointed it at the TV, which came on to a commercial of a woman in an evening dress mopping a kitchen floor. “Local news?”

  She told him the channel. He switched to it and got the weather report. A sexy brunette stood in front of a Doppler-radar map of the western states. “This is a bad one, folks. A blizzard for the record books. The front is slow-moving, which means it will be hanging around over the northern Sierra, dumping up to eight feet of snow before it’s over…”

  Tessa said, “Funny about the weather report. Half the time it’s nothing you couldn’t learn by looking out the window.” And she left him.

  He sipped more water and waited for the rest of the news, which came after the weather, the blizzard being the main event.

  The second story had him sitting up straighter: a Learjet had crashed in nearby Plumas County, in a snowy field not far from the intersection of Highway 49 and Gold Lake Road. The business jet, owned by a Texas-based company called BravoCorp, had been en route to the Bay Area, and blown off course by the storm.

  He was reasonably certain the highway that went through North Magdalene was Highway 49. Although he couldn’t recall when or how the trucker had picked him up, he remembered the ride. More or less. There had been a sign, hadn’t there, one that said it was Scenic Highway 49?

  His heart pounded faster to match the ache in his head as he waited for a picture of the face he’d seen in the bathroom mirror to flash on the screen, to hear his real name, and that they were looking for him.

  But then the pretty, sincere-sounding newscaster said the pilot, copilot and single passenger had miraculously all survived the crash and were hospitalized in fair-to-critical condition…

  All present and accounted for. His pulse stopped galloping and the throb in his head diminished. If he’d been in a crash, it hadn’t been on that particular plane.

  The news continued. No stories of car crashes or men in clothing inappropriate for freezing weather going missing somewhere in the Sierras. If anyone was looking for him, they hadn’t managed to get it on the news.

  He flipped channels for a while. There weren’t many of them. Eventually, he gave up and turned it off. He put the remote on the nightstand and dozed.

  After the stranger in her bedroom managed to make it to the bathroom on his own, Tessa decided that checking on him every fifteen minutes was probably overkill. She looked in on him at 7:00 p.m. and again at 7:30. That second time, after he’d been asleep for a while, she crept in to turn off the light and ended up standing by the bed, gazing down at him. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

  In the light that bled in from the hallway, she studied his face. It was a very handsome face, square-jawed, with a cleft in the chin and a blade of a nose. His mouth had a certain sexy, tempting curve to it. His hair was black as night and thick, the kind of hair any normal woman would want to run her fingers through. The white bandage on his forehead stood out against his tanned skin. He needed a shave. But the shadow of beard on his sculpted cheekbones only made him look more handsome. More masculine…

  Bill, he’d called himself. She felt her lips curve in a smile at the thought. The man was a whole other kind of Bill from the one who had dumped her for a showgirl.

  She turned off the light and tiptoed out the door, where Mona Lou was waiting for her, looking slightly puzzled as to why there was a strange man in her human’s bed. Tessa knelt and gave the dog a scratch right where she liked it, in the folds of her neck. She pressed her cheek to Mona’s warm, short coat and whispered, “Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

  The dog let out a low whine and wagged her stumpy tail in response.

  In the kitchen, Tessa dished up wet food for both Mona Lou and Gigi. Then she made herself a sandwich and ate in the great room with the TV on, changing the channels, looking for a news bulletin about a tall, blue-eyed, black-haired man who’d gone missing in the Sierras wearing lightweight slacks, a buff-colored jacket and a cashmere sweater.

  There was no bulletin. She cleaned up after her meal and went back to her chair in front of the TV. With Gigi cuddled up beside her and Mona stretched out at her feet, she switched channels some more, looking for news of the stranger. She wished she had the Internet—her service was dial-up, no good with the phone dead. Only last summer, North Magdalene had gotten broadband service. She should have switched over, but somehow she’d never gotten around to it.

  After checking on her patient again and finding him sleeping, she tried to read. It was hard to concentrate. She was worried about him.

  He seemed to be doing pretty well—clear-headed when awake and enjoying normal sleep. But he’d been comatose for hours in the afternoon. According to her Family Medical Guide, extended unconsciousness after head trauma was not a good thing. The book advised calling an ambulance when a head trauma victim passed out. He might have a subdural hematoma, blood on the brain. And if he did have one of those and it was acute, even with treatment, which he was not getting, he could die.

  The book also said that, as she’d suspected, she shouln’t have moved him. She should have covered him and made him as comfortable as possible where he was and then waited for professional help. Too bad the book didn’t say what to do when you were stuck in a blizzard with the phone line down.

  The phone. Maybe it had come on again.

  She checked. Still dead.

  He’s fine, she kept telling herself. He’s going to be fine.

  And then she would stew over how he’d told her nothing about himself except that she should call him Bill. He hadn’t mentioned who might be worried for him, who might be wondering where he’d gone off to and if he was okay.

  She had a feeling he didn’t know who he was.

  Amnesia. It was one of the symptoms—along with headache, unconsciousness and mental confusion—of acute subdural hematoma. Amnesia. She reached for the medical guide again and looked up the scary word. The book said there were
several different types of memory loss. It could happen from emotional trauma. Or head trauma—which it was obvious he’d had.

  Then again, maybe he knew exactly who he was. Maybe he was just a closed-mouth kind of guy. Or maybe he had done something…bad. Something he was keeping—along with his identity—strictly to himself.

  Maybe he had some other totally valid reason to keep who he really was a secret. She just couldn’t believe he had evil intent. He seemed a good man.

  Didn’t he?

  How could she tell? How could she know?

  Look at Bill Toomey. Tessa groaned and shook her head. The tour bus driver had not been her first romantic disappointment. She had to admit that she wasn’t any great judge of male character. The Bill in her bedroom could be a bad man. Or a good one. He could be hiding something—or simply have forgotten who the heck he was.

  Wait, she thought. Why think the worst? The man in her bedroom had been grateful and respectful. And polite. He’d done nothing to make her think ill of him. Until he did something out of line, she would believe in his basic decency and leave it at that.

  She went in to check on him at 10:20. He was sleeping peacefully. She took her cell out with her when she left the room.

  In the great room, she dialed her dad’s number. Nothing. Feeling slightly frantic, she tried the kitchen phone again. Silence.

  She was alone with the stranger and she’d better get used to it. There was no need to panic. He was going to get well. After all, he had been sleeping normally when she checked on him—or at least, she thought he had.

  No. Think positive. She knew he had. He was getting better. She was certain of that.

  He started shouting at 10:45 p.m.

  Chapter Four

  A woman was screaming. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, we’re going to die! I can’t die. Somebody help me! Help me, Ash. Help me, please!”

  Then a man’s voice shouted, “Sit still! Be calm!”

  The shouting startled him to wakefulness. Only then did he realize that the shouting had come from his own mouth. “Wha…?”

  A tall figure appeared in the doorway. He saw broad, shapely shoulders, a halo of golden hair. Was this the one who had screamed?