by Cindy Dees
Carefully, he slipped his hand under her head and felt her scalp for bumps or blood. Nothing. His palm slid ever so gently down the back of her neck, counting vertebrae and checking for any protrusions or swelling to indicate a neck injury. Nothing.
Very gently, he ran his thumbs outward from the hollow of her throat, tracing the line of her collarbones. So delicate. So feminine. And thankfully, intact. He swept his hands down her rib cage next, shocked at how much of them his hands spanned. She really was a tiny little thing. Her T-shirt was soft and worn beneath his hands and felt like...home.
He could tell by looking that her legs were lying at the correct angles. She might have wrenched a knee or ankle, but nothing was obviously broken. He sat back on his heels, frowning. She was going to get cold fast lying on the ground like this, though.
He slipped his arms underneath her shoulders and knees, and awkwardly climbed to his feet. Aw, hell. His ribs protested violently, and he gritted his teeth against the fiery agony shooting through his side. He staggered up the front steps with her and laid her down on the dry wood porch.
She started to stir and he jumped back from her as if she would bite him, hating himself for the impulse. Since when had he become afraid of small, unconscious women who meant him no harm? Was he that screwed up in the head? He was a warrior, for crying out loud. He’d stared down death and laughed in its face more times than he cared to count.
And yet, here he was, hiding from humanity. Hiding from himself. From his own memories. He backed another step away from Anna as she reached for her head and felt it gingerly. She opened her eyes, frowning faintly until she caught sight of him.
“Oh dear,” she sighed. “I am a bit of a klutz, aren’t I?”
He felt no need to restate the obvious. Of course she was a klutz. A rather adorable one, in fact.
She sat up and reached for the porch post. He offered his hand down to her. She looked startled, nervous even. But she laid her hand in his. It was soft. Fine boned. As delicate as the rest of her. And cold, too. He gave a gentle tug and she popped up to her feet. He watched, his gut turbulent as she dusted off her rear end. Her very nice rear end. Cupped temptingly in those skinny jeans. Off-limits. Dangerous.
“You’d best come inside,” he said gruffly. “Warm up and make sure you don’t have a concussion or something.”
She stared up at him as if she didn’t comprehend his words. She mumbled, “Feels like weather moving in. I’d better get off the mountain before it hits.”
“Are you sure? You hit your head hard enough to knock you out. You should stay a little while. Just to be safe—”
She cut him off. “Thanks. But I’ll be okay.”
One part of his mind chanted silently to her, Go away. Go away. Go away. But another part of it whispered, Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go. He wasn’t going to beg. And it was her life, after all. Still, he wished she would stay long enough to make sure she wasn’t seriously hurt.
She’d gotten that look in her eyes again. The haunted one that screamed of mistreatment and abuse at the hands of a man.
He crossed his arms over his chest, anchoring his hands to stop them from reaching out and forcing her to stay. He wasn’t about to force any woman to do anything she didn’t want to. Especially when it put that awful hurt look in her eyes.
He watched helplessly as she turned and navigated the porch steps facing forward this time, with better success than before.
She glanced over her shoulder at him as she opened her car door, her eyes wide with fear. As much as he hated the idea of a woman being afraid of him, maybe if she was scared of him, she would leave him the hell alone.
Except something painful twisted deep in his gut as he stood there, unmoving, and watched her drive away. Lonely. He was lonely.
Which was no less than he’d earned.
It was better this way. He didn’t deserve to be part of the human race.
Chapter 3
She’d made it back to the sprawling stone-and-log mansion that had literally stolen her breath when she’d passed it on her way up to Brett Morgan’s place when it started to sleet. She barely spared a glance for the massive dwelling now. She had to get down to a lower altitude and warmer temperatures that would turn this wintry precipitation back into relatively harmless rain. Her lightweight car wasn’t the least bit suited for the high Rockies.
She couldn’t stop picturing the man she’d left behind, brooding on his mountain. There was something...wounded...about him.
God knew, she’d never been able to resist hard-luck cases. She had taken in cats and dogs and wild animals—and humans—in need of healing for pretty much her entire life. There was no reason to believe that impulse would stop just because she had come home to Sunny Creek or because she was wounded herself.
Dark was falling by the time she pulled into the driveway of her bungalow—a renovation project in progress. She hadn’t grown up here; her mother had inherited the run-down house from a crazy great-uncle after Anna left town.
She could picture the finished craftsman cottage in her mind’s eye, but whether she would ever actually transform the decrepit structure before her into that homey, welcoming vision was anyone’s guess.
But hey. The new roof didn’t leak. And good Lord willing, the furnace she’d spent the past two weeks rebuilding would turn on tonight. Winter was coming, sweeping down out of the high reaches to consume the narrow valley that the Sunny Creek and town by the same name huddled in.
As she hustled inside her house on a gust of bitter wind, a few snowflakes flew past her nose. Yep. The cold was already cutting painfully through her California-conditioned body.
She called Vinny Benson, owner of the junk shop in Hillsdale, as soon as she shrugged out of her coat, scarf, sweater, and mittens. “Hey, Vinny. It’s your favorite impoverished house renovator.”
“Hey, baby. You coming to see me tonight? The windows I got are sweet. Original weighted mechanisms and everything. Dimensions are exactly what you need.”
“I’m sure I’m going to buy them, but I got hung up at the diner today and can’t make it over tonight. Looks like some weather’s blowing in anyway. I can’t risk the trip over the McMinn Pass.”
“It’s not snowing up in the pass, yet. Come on over to Hillsdale anyway. If you get snowed in, you can always shack up with me.”
A chill chattered down her spine. That was the sort of thing a teenaged Eddie would have said. Vinny was endlessly hitting on her, but so far, was harmless. So far. Not that she trusted any man to stay harmless for long. She had no intention of getting snowed in with him or anyone else. She took a deep breath and forced herself not to tell him what she really thought of him and all men. “I can head over there first thing in the morning to buy the windows. Just hold them for me, please.” She grimaced and amended, “Pretty please?”
She despised flirting with men, but if it got her the wooden replacement windows for her living room that she’d been hunting for desperately since she bought this house, she would find a way to stand it.
Vinny tried to extract a dinner date out of her in exchange for holding the stupid windows, but she made a lame excuse about having to work and dodged that bullet. Finally, he agreed to just hold the windows for her.
That unpleasant fire put out, she moved through the kitchen into the bungalow’s main room, a combination dining-living area. Might as well sand a little paneling tonight. The exercise would help keep her warm in the drafty house. Until those new windows were installed, she was resigned to more or less camping inside her home.
She set her phone on top of a cheap speaker and blasted beach music as she sighed, picked up a piece of sandpaper and went to work on the wooden wainscoting. At the current rate of progress, she figured she would complete refinishing the walls in approximately a million years.
It would go a ton faster with a power sander, but s
he was trying to save every penny and put all her money back into the materials she needed to restore the home. Elbow grease was free, and she had plenty of that. Besides, the mindlessly repetitive work of sanding wood lulled her brain into a state of thoughtless boredom in which she could actually, oh, sleep from time to time. And the physical labor tired her out enough that, on a good night, she wasn’t beset by nightmares that had her awake and screaming in the wee hours.
Sometimes, the enormity of the project she’d taken on got to her, though, and tonight was one of those times. In lieu of crying, she opted to sing along with a classic Beach Boys tune and dance around the spacious living room. It would be a gracious room if she ever managed to make it habitable for humans. Maybe someday she would finally put this house and her life back together. Someday. But not this day.
* * *
Brett heated up a can of baked beans and poured them over a couple of slices of toast. He was just sitting down to eat the makeshift grub when headlights flashed through the window. Reggie growled beside him.
“Now who’s come to bug us?” he grumbled at the dog.
Reggie merely glared at the front door and growled again, low in his throat.
A door slammed outside, and a familiar voice called, “Brett? You home?”
Oh dear Jesus. His mother. The original Morgan hurricane. No way in hell would she go away quietly after a few not-so-subtle hints like Anna Larkin had. And he couldn’t very well pretend not to be here. Miranda would have to walk right past his truck, parked out front as proud as you please, to get to the front porch. Swearing under his breath, he opened the door.
“Of course I’m home, Mother. My truck’s parked out front and the lights are on in the cabin.”
“I heard there was some excitement down at Pittypat’s today. Are you okay, sweetie?”
He ground his molars together at being called sweetie. He was a freaking commando, for crying out loud, and had killed dozens, or maybe hundreds, of hostiles over the years. Only Miranda Morgan had the gall to call him something so childish and insulting.
“I’m fine. Thanks for coming up to check on me.”
She stomped up the steps like a freight train gathering momentum. Nope. Not gonna take the hint to go away. Dammit. She barreled inside the tiny cabin, filling it up with her huge personality. “This place is a dump. You really should have let me redecorate it before you moved in here,” she announced.
“It’s fine for me. I don’t need anything fancy. Just a roof over my head and a dry place to lie down at night.” What he did most nights didn’t actually qualify as sleep, truth be told. He tossed and turned in between nightmares that woke him sweating in cold terror, most nights.
“Is that what you’re eating for supper?” she demanded. “Come down to the main house and let Willa cook you a proper supper.”
“Willa Mathers? Hank’s daughter?”
“Correct. She helps me out around the house and does some bookkeeping and filing for your father when she’s not studying. She’s going to school, you know. Working on a PhD in counseling or something.”
Good for her. Daughter of the ranch’s longtime foreman, he remembered Willa as a skinny kid with long black braids and a magic touch with horses.
“Seriously, Brett. I’m not letting you sit up here starving yourself to death.”
“Do I look like I’m starving?”
“All this time you’re spending alone isn’t good for you. Come down to the house and eat supper with us every day.”
Brett’s voice went flat. “No.”
He was not putting himself in the way of his father on a daily basis. No way. John Morgan was a born-again son of a bitch, and he could do without his father’s judgment and condescending crap, thank you very much. Just because his father was a decorated war hero didn’t mean his sons had to be the same.
Hell, he didn’t know if he was a hero or a traitor, anyway, after that last mission. If only he could remember—
“You sound as stubborn your father when you talk like that.”
His gaze narrowed to a cold stare. He would take that as a compliment, this time. “Don’t push me, Mom. I’m only here until I figure out what I’m doing next. If you can’t leave me alone like you agreed to, just say the word, and I’m gone.”
Miranda scowled back at him, no less stubborn than him or his father. Silence stretched between them as Brett refused to be the one to give in, and Miranda did the same. Even Reggie felt the tension, for the dog eventually whimpered and came over to bump Brett’s hand. The mutt seemed to be looking for reassurance more than a scratch, so Brett let his hand rest on the dog’s back.
“Fine. Be like that,” Miranda huffed.
He didn’t deign to speak or to let her off the hook.
She flopped down on the ratty sofa and threw up her hands. “So what happened at Pittypat’s? Joe called to tell me you broke a guy’s nose and arm.”
He ground out, “The guy was a punk who tried to rob the place. I stopped him.”
“By half killing him?”
“Trust me. If I had tried to kill him, he would be dead.”
Miranda rolled her eyes, not fazed by the remark. But then, John Morgan was an ex-Green Beret who’d killed his fair share of Vietcong.
Brett picked up a knife and fork and dug into his meal, such as it was. He didn’t invite her up here, and he felt no obligation to entertain her.
“What about the waitress? Joe said she got roughed up but you saved her.”
He shrugged, but his shoulders felt unaccountably tight. It still pissed him off that the punk had slammed her into the counter like that. The fear in her eyes—he would be dreaming about that in his nightmares for days to come. And that other thing in her eyes... He could swear it had been a death wish. What the hell was that all about? “What about her?”
“Is she okay?” Miranda asked in exasperation.
“Of course. I saved her.”
“What’s her name?”
He didn’t want to share her name with anyone. He wanted to hold it close within himself. A secret. His secret. But Miranda was, well, Miranda. Sometimes it just wasn’t worth fighting her. He mumbled, “Larkin. Anna Larkin.”
“Didn’t she go to Hollywood a while back or something ridiculous like that?”
His gut clenched at Anna being labeled ridiculous, which was weird. He hardly knew her. It was none of his business what the locals thought of her. He shrugged. “How the hell would I know what she did? I’ve been overseas for ten years.”
Miranda tapped a front tooth with a short, neat fingernail. “I think she went west with a boy. Her mother was fit to be tied. Disowned her.”
Indeed? That sucked. Although, right about now, he wouldn’t mind being disowned by his own intrusive, pushy mother. He ate in silence, not tasting a bite of his beans and toast.
“Is she all right?” Miranda startled him by asking.
“Who? Anna Larkin?”
“Of course Anna Larkin. Was she hurt today? Was she struck? Did she fall? Hit her head?”
An image of her pitching off his porch earlier leaped to mind, and he winced at the memory of her hitting her head on the ground. He really wished she would’ve stuck around for a little while so he could’ve been sure she was okay. But it wasn’t like he could have bodily dragged her into his cabin and held her against her will.
“I wonder if she’s been to a doctor. She could have a concussion or broken ribs or something.”
“She would know if she had broken ribs,” he replied drily. Lord knew, he still felt his when he exerted himself too hard, four months after he’d broken them. Of course, he’d gotten off easy. Four of his men had died.
Apparently his scowl of self-loathing finally did the trick and convinced Miranda that he had no desire whatsoever to be social with her tonight.
“Don’t
stay up here too long, Brett. You need people around you. Your family loves you.” She came over to force an unwanted hug on him, which he tolerated uncomfortably.
She left, and he listened to her truck retreat down the mountain. Blessed silence settled around him once more. He didn’t deserve a family. And certainly not one that loved him.
Grimly, he gave the leftover beans to Reggie, who lapped them up eagerly and finished with a loud smack of his lips. Dogs surely had the right of it. Live completely in the moment, no past, no future. Just the simple pleasures of right now.
He turned on the television for background noise but didn’t bother to watch whatever flashed across the screen. Instead, a memory of Anna Larkin’s sweet face came to him. Her smile. Her embarrassment when she’d spilled water on him. Her terror when that kid slammed her into the counter...and her bizarre disappointment when he’d come charging to her rescue like some damned knight in shining armor. Who the hell was he kidding? He was nobody’s good guy.
He was the jerk who’d let her go away without finding out if she had a concussion.
He downed a couple of beers but didn’t much feel like getting drunk tonight. Which was a first for him since he’d come home. Maybe all the excitement had taken more out of him than he’d realized. He should call it a night early and get some sleep. Except when he eyed the bed through the open bedroom door, fear came calling, ugly and insidious, crawling inside his gut and gnawing at his insides until he doubled over in pain.
The walls began to close in on him, and his breathing accelerated until he might as well have been running for his life.
And that was exactly what he did. He bolted outside, unable to stand being confined any longer. Reggie had already settled down on his fleece bed in front of the wood-burning stove for the night, so he didn’t go back for the dog.
He climbed into his truck and pointed the heavy vehicle down the mountain without any destination in mind. Maybe he should check out the Sapphire Club. It was a strip joint that had opened up on the edge of Sunny Creek sometime since he’d joined the Army. But he had no appetite for crowds and smoke and drunks, and instead pulled over by a curb in the ramshackle part of Sunny Creek down by where the old lumber mill used to be. The neighborhood had gotten significantly more ramshackle since he left a decade ago, and a bunch of the houses were boarded up and had waist-high lawns of weeds.
