‘One, I don’t own this house. It belongs to my business partner, Torin O’Connor. And two—’ He glanced up to find her open-mouthed. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Your partner’s name is Torin…O’Connor?’ she asked. One hand stole to the side of her head and stroked the small, white scar on her left temple.
‘Yes. Do you know him?’ Surely Tor would have said if he’d recognised this girl from her photograph. He couldn’t know her, or he wouldn’t have sanctioned this job in the first place. Would he?
CHAPTER EIGHT
HEATHER
Heather collected her wits, scattered to the wind by another in a long line of shocks she’d endured tonight. Torin O’Connor. That was a name she hadn’t heard in a very, very long time. She released a shaky breath.
‘No. I don’t know him. The name sounded…familiar.’ She picked at a breadroll, tearing it to pieces and squishing it into tiny, doughy balls. When she had four perfect little white spheres, she felt calm enough to take him on again. If she humanised herself enough and showed him the craziness of what he was doing, he might let her go.
‘You were about to tell me how lucrative the kidnapping game is nowadays.’ She pasted on a look of polite enquiry and had the satisfaction of seeing Kade’s jaw clench. At least she’d distracted him from asking about her reaction to Torin’s name.
‘I’m not kidnapping you,’ he said.
‘Oh? What do you call luring me out here under false pretences and keeping me prisoner, then?’ She sipped her wine, determined not to lose herself in an alcoholic daze. ‘A new kind of second date?’
His glower cleared and he chuckled. Heather had to stop herself from smiling. Even when she wasn’t touching him, his emotions were contagious. But she had to hold herself aloof if she was to think her way out of this.
‘Well, you did disappear on me at lunch…Fiona.’ He sent her that annoyingly sexy, lopsided grin again.
‘I had somewhere—and someone—else to be.’
‘Mmmm. Katherine Douglas in yet another town. I know. I followed you.’ He selected another rough chunk of buttered breadroll to dip in the dregs of his stew.
‘You followed me?’ Heather gaped at him. ‘But I was on buses for days. I mean, it couldn’t have been safe, driving that far alone.’ She glanced around apprehensively. ‘You are alone, aren’t you?’ If he had a team of people lurking somewhere to help then she had no chance of escape.
‘Yep. Don’t need anyone else here.’ He cocked his head. ‘Took me a while to track you down. After I lost you in the café—neatly done, by the way. Worthy of Mata Hari herself.’
His eyes held scorn, anger and a hint of admiration. She flushed.
‘I made sure to keep an eye on the mall,’ he continued. ‘Sure enough, you went on a shopping spree and lo, into the bathroom went flirty Fiona MacDonald. Out came the mistress of cool, Katherine Douglas.’ He screwed up his nose. ‘I didn’t know your new name, so when the bus company wouldn’t tell me who you were or where you were going, I had to tag along behind. My office sent a team to help. Then I set this up.’ He gestured at the room, full of ironic pride as he studied her from beneath his lashes.
‘So how…why…?’ Heather spread her hands. ‘Why here. Why a week later? Why me?’
Kade tossed back the last of his wine before replying.
‘I have to get you to New York without causing a major scene in public.’
‘New York!’ Heather shot to her feet. Her chair tipped and crashed to the ground, loud in the silence of the vast house. ‘Why do you have to get me to New York? Who sent you after me?’
Kade walked around the table to tower over her. Heather, who stood five foot eight, felt dwarfed by his six foot of muscle. She shrank away before regrouping. There was a hardness in him she hadn’t seen before and didn’t like.
‘The who is not relevant right now.’ He raked her with a contemptuously cold gaze that almost physically hurt. ‘The why should be obvious.’ With a slight sneer, he collected her plate and cutlery before striding into the kitchen. Dishes clattered and he swore.
Heather drew a deep, shaky breath. The strength of the man; the power of his emotional field shattered her each time he came near. If he’d touched her, feeling that kind of anger, she couldn’t have coped with the onslaught. What was happening to her? No-one had ever had such a huge influence on her before. Not since her father. After leaving home, she’d learned how to block people rather than fight their feelings. She was able to shield herself from most people but it took energy, so she tried to avoid being touched. Right from the start, Kade had been different.
It shook her to the core; kept her offbalance.
‘No,’ she managed, calmly as she could, ‘it’s not obvious. What have I done that warrants this kind of treatment and…animosity…from you? I don’t even know you.’
He spun back and stalked close, his face rigid. ‘No. You don’t know me. But I know what you do and I don’t want to know you, believe me. You make me sick.’
Heather retreated before the waves of his conflicting emotions, genuinely frightened for the first time. Desire, confusion, and frustrated anger emanating from him, battering at her self-control, threatening to consume her.
‘What have I done that’s so awful?’ she whispered.
He reached out and she flinched. Instead, he dropped his hands and spoke through gritted teeth.
‘You’re responsible for the deaths of at least one young woman and baby—and that’s only the ones we know about.’ He grabbed her wrist.
Energy poured from her into him. Anger flowed back, overwhelming the small measure of calm she’d held onto. She cried out.
His dark brows snapped together. He released her and stared at his hand, then at her face, searching. ‘God! You’re terrified of me. I should loathe the sight of you…so why do I feel…?’ His voice trailed away.
In the long silence that followed, the houselights dimmed to yellow, sputtered and restarted in full strength.
He swore. ‘I’m going out to fix the generator. It was low on fuel before and I don’t want to lose power in the middle of the night.’ He pointed at the kitchen. ‘Help yourself to coffee or tea. I’ll be back in a minute.’
When he left through the rear door, Heather stayed where she was for a minute. Then she righted the chair, sank onto it and covered her face.
Oh God.
Her mother had warned her this day might come. That one day she’d be called to justice for her decisions. If only he knew how hard each death had been; how difficult the decision had been to let them go; how each departing life had ripped out a tiny part of her own soul; how she ached with the pain of each loss even now.
He couldn’t possibly understand. No-one could. Kade Miller only saw her as everyone else in the world did: a midwife operating outside the system, thereby endangering the lives of innocent young women and babies.
She uttered a short, mirthless laugh and rose. She had to get out of here. Before he returned. Even if she had to walk through the storm to town. No way was she going to New York with him. Not to see Andrew Carleton. That name had bled through the connection and she knew who he was. What he really wanted.
Her.
She strode for the hall. There must be cold-weather clothes stored in a closet somewhere. Glancing quickly at the kitchen window, she knew a moment’s apprehension. The wind had strengthened. It screamed through the trees outside and battered the windows with sleet and snow flurries. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
She flung open the coat-closet. There. A thick down-filled coat. Perfect.
A sharp crack and a loud crash echoed behind the house. Agony sliced into her left thigh. Pain billowed behind her ear and in her chest and arm. Bent double, she almost succumbed to it and drowned in the wave of blackness that followed. Dizzy and weak, she staggered along the hall, aiming for the rear door. Unable to resist.
Something had happened to Kade Miller.
#
Snow lashed her in an icy torrent as Heather wrested open the door and squinted into a white-black night. Wind whipped through trees that sighed, shrilled, and creaked in protest. Snow and sleet stung her cheeks. Cold seeped through her jeans and boots, numbing her toes. She tucked ungloved fingers under her armpits and jogged on the spot.
‘Kade!’ Her voice was snatched away, stolen by wind, muffled by snow. She quivered, listening. No reply. She called again, louder. Her words were sucked into nothingness.
She stepped out into ankle-deep snow that now piled into drifts around the house. A dark, square shape off to her right was probably the generator shed. But where was Kade? The house platform was carved out of the hillside. Only a few feet of flat ground lay between the house and a retaining wall, behind, just visible through the blurring snow. There was nowhere else for him to go.
There! Next to the generator shed. A brief hiatus in the snowfall showed a large, bare tree branch lying across the yard and a dark, motionless form huddled beside it, already half-covered in snow.
Cautious of the slippery, unknown surface, Heather picked her way over. Her extremeties were numb, the cold eating into her flesh, stealing what little warmth and energy she’d regained with food. She hurried on.
Dropping to her knees in the snow, she brushed the white stuff off his face and pried open one eyelid. No response. Then a tiny puff of breath from his lips gave her hope. He lived. A slow, steady pulse throbbed in his neck. But how much damage had the branch done? Calling his name did nothing. If he’d been hit on the skull he could be in serious trouble.
She inspected every inch of his body, using all her senses to gauge his injuries. There: a long, shallow gash over his ribs on the left side; two ribs fractured by the feel of it. And the left forearm he’d used to fend off the falling branch: both bones broken but not compounded. Another deep wound that ran the length of his left leg from thigh to knee, bleeding heavily. That was a worry. Finally, she felt his skull, dismayed to find her fingers again sticky with blood that oozed from a wound behind his right ear. At least his neck and spine were unbroken—she got no sense of injury there.
Ripping off strips from his shirt and hers, she put a rough pressure bandage on the worst leg injury.
He’d managed to avoid being trapped beneath the branch. That gave her some hope of getting him into the house. Now she had to get him inside before they both froze to death and he bled out. The distance to the door may as well be a mile.
Despair gripped her harder than the cold. Tears formed and froze to ice on her cheeks.
‘Damn you. I wish I could leave you here, you stupid bastard!’ Cursing her own sense of responsibility, Heather reached under his arms and hefted him. Her feet slipped on the icy ground and she sat, hard, on her ass in the wet snow.
She tried again. This time she stayed up and dragged his heavy, inert body—step by shuffling step—across the seeming-acres of space to the house. The thick trail of dark blood left behind was rapidly covered by more snow. Twice more she fell, bruising her thigh on the sharp corner of the stairs the second time. Screaming her anger gave her the strength to haul him up the last few steps to get inside the door. Once in, she slammed the heavy timber shut, resting her head on it weakly, sobbing.
It had taken far too long. He was pale, his pulse slower and skin clammy, fingers and lips blue. Being inside the house wasn’t enough. He would bleed to death in a few minutes. She had to heal the worst wounds, stop the bleeding and get him warm so his body would repair what she couldn’t.
Her frozen fingers struggled first with boots then buttons until finally she simply ripped off his shirt, sending buttons flying. The fastener and zip on his jeans defeated her and she swore again. Staggering to the kitchen she snatched a knife and made short work of the tattered remains of his jeans, slicing them from ankle to hip and peeling them off.
Finally, in the half-lit hall, she saw him in all his battered, naked glory and almost quit. Covered in gore, his leg once again sluggishly oozing, the sight of his injuries revealed her worst fear.
Too much to fix. Too much damage.
He might survive, but she probably wouldn’t.
There wasn’t enough time, or even a chance, of getting out through the deepening storm. Even if the phones worked, no-one could get to them here, in this wind and snow. His life lay in her reluctant hands.
Saving him could mean sacrificing herself. Was she prepared to do that? Prepared to give everything for a man who knew nothing about her and feared and hated what little he thought he understood? And if she saved him, and somehow survived, he would still pass her over to Carleton.
Heather stared down at him and bit her lip. She could let him bleed out, clean the house of her trace, take his car in the morning and run.
She would be free again.
But Torin. He was Kade’s partner and this was his house. Torin would come after her. Relentless, because that’s the sort of person he was: loyal, fierce. He’d lost enough. He didn’t deserve to lose his friend.
And, from her connection with Kade, she knew Kade was a good person. Someone joyful, reliable, loving, caring beneath the superficial veneer of anger and the scars of his own past traumas. Someone deeply thoughtful and self-aware.
Someone worth saving. Maybe more so than she was.
She studied the strong planes of his face, softened by sleep and smeared with blood.
Then she examined her own scarlet-streaked hands.
‘Shit.’
CHAPTER NINE
KADE
Kade surfaced slowly from a bizarre dream involving snow and blood and pain. As wakefulness pried its way into the fuzzy depths of his brain, with it came self-castigation.
How stupid was he? He’d practically run out of the house, angry and confused after talking to the woman, Katherine/Fiona/Alanna—whatever. In his blind rage, he’d filled the generator’s tank and stalked toward the house without watching his path.
He’d lost his footing and fallen to the icy ground. No. That wasn’t right. He concentrated, focussing on each action taken, until memory returned. A tree branch. That’s what it was. He remembered pain in his…leg, his arm and …head? Then cold blackness.
No. That must have been a dream. Because he now lay, warm and pain-free, on the…where was he? Gingerly lifting his head, Kade felt a twinge of warning from his body—as though he’d overdone it at the gym. But he hadn’t been to the gym for a month.
He squinted in the pale half-light that seeped around thick curtains. Only one place had such revolting green and gold striped wallpaper. How had he come to be snugly tucked in bed in the downstairs bedroom of Torin’s holiday house?
Tentatively, he touched the back of his scalp and felt a slight, tender bump. Tossing the covers aside, he inspected his left thigh. How odd. Somehow he’d expected to find a nasty fracture, or a dislocated kneecap or even a cut of some sort. But all he could see was a purple and green bruised area on his thigh, centred around a thin, white line that appeared almost like an old scar. The same went for his arm, he realised, spotting the heavier area of purple-blue bruising on his forearm. He touched it and grunted at the stab of pain. Pressing his ribs revealed more large, tender areas of bruising.
Not a dream, then, But not as drastic as he thought. He must have fallen hard to be this banged up, though.
Swinging his leg over the edge, he put some weight on it. There, a slight twinge of pain, but nothing unbearable. Hmmm. Maybe he’d twisted his knee and received a good thump from the tree branch when it fell. Lucky.
Obviously the woman had found him and brought him inside.
A soft chime from the bedside clock, brought a new source of astonishment. Ten a.m. He’d been out for over seventeen hours!
He looked at his nakedness. She’d undressed him, too. Which meant she’d have found his carkeys…
Damn damn damn damn! Of all the stupid, idiotic, unprofessional, dimwitted…She would be long gone. Maybe Tor could track the car’s gps, if she hadn
’t ditched it or sold it to a chop shop.
A robe lay across the foot of the bed and he draped the terrycloth over his shoulders. He headed for the door, staggering a few steps. His head swam and his knees sagged. Steadying himself on the door he waited until the dizzy spell passed.
His hand lay on the doorknob when a soft sigh revealed the presence of a second person in the room. He squinted into the shadowed corner beside the window. There she was, tucked in an overstuffed armchair, asleep.
What the hell? He crouched beside her. She wore the same jeans and blue tshirt she’d had on last night, but they were covered in some dark stains he couldn’t identify in the grey morning light. Her hands were pushed into her armpits and her bare toes were curled under. She shivered and moaned in her sleep.
Why did she seem so…fragile and cold. The room was warm, thanks to the house’s excellent heating system. A whimper emanated from her. That drew his attention to her face.
What the…? Deep bruises circled her eyes and her skin was ashen pale; her lush lips thin and almost white.
Tentatively, Kade stroked her cheek, then pressed his palm there. Why was her skin so cold and clammy? She shivered again, coughing.
Damn, she must have caught some sort of flu dragging him in out of the snow last night. Stupid girl! She could have just woken him up. He could have walked. The thought was savage but he slipped gentle arms beneath her too-thin body.
An unpleasant, familiar smell rose from her clothes. What on earth had she spilled on herself? The very familiarity of the scent nagged at him as he placed her in the still-warm bed he’d left. What was it? After a moment’s hesitation, he repaid her services by stripping off the filthy clothes. Left in only her underwear and bra, she seemed vulnerable and a lot less robust than he remembered. She moaned in her sleep. He yanked the covers over her shoulders.
Healing Heather Page 6
