Читать книгу The Stranger and Tessa Jones - Christine Rimmer - Страница 9

Warmth.

Impossible, but somehow, he was warm again. He moaned and opened his eyes. A ceiling. He was in a room. In a bed, his head on a white pillow, his body covered in a clean-smelling sheet and thick blankets. There was a dresser against the wall and a rocking chair in the corner. A shut door—to the closet or a bathroom?—on one side of the dresser, and an open one to a hallway on the other.

Gray daylight shone weakly in the wide window to the right of the bed. It was snowing hard, the white flakes hurling themselves at the glass.

A clock on the nightstand said it was 4:15 p.m. Vaguely, he recalled passing out in the snow. It had been sometime after noon then, hadn’t it? That would mean he’d been out for at least a few hours. That is, if it was still the same day.

He looked around some more. There were lots of framed photographs on the wall and on the dresser beside the dark eye of a small TV. They were, for the most part, pictures of a lot of people he’d never seen before.

But he did recognize the big blonde, the one who threw dishes and yelled at a guy named Bill. She was in several of the pictures. Laughing, with her head thrown back in one. Smiling broadly in another. And shyly in a third.

I’m in a bedroom in the blonde’s house. He remembered the house—the tin roof, the chimney pipe with its trail of smoke spiraling into the gray sky…

When he’d passed out cold in the snow, the blonde must have brought him in here. Somehow. Or maybe someone else was here, someone who’d come out of the house after he was unconscious, someone who had helped her.

His mouth was dry as a desert ravine. He needed water. There was a white pitcher and an empty glass on the nightstand. He reached out his hand to the pitcher—and then let it drop. He’d have the pitcher’s contents all over him if he tried to fill the glass lying down.

Okay, then. He would sit up.

With a groan, he popped to a sitting position. His head spun. So he dropped back flat again.

After a moment, he dragged himself up more carefully. That time, he managed to stay sitting until the spinning slowed a little. About then, he realized that beyond a wide variety of bruises and welts, his torso was bare. He pushed away the warm blankets.

She had taken his pants, too, leaving him in his boxers—black ones. Of silk, it appeared. Or was that satin? He felt a pained smile curve his lips as he realized that he didn’t even recognize his own underwear.

The smile faded to a scowl as he continued the inventory of his battered body. His bare feet and legs were crisscrossed with strange, violent-looking bruises. She’d bandaged his cut-up knees.

He touched his face, felt gauze over the cut on the left side of his forehead. Weakness claimed him and he knew he didn’t have the energy required to reach over, lift the pitcher and fill the glass.

Pitiful. Just pitiful. Wincing, flopping back down onto the pillow and dragging the blankets over himself again, he looked around the bedroom for his clothes and his shoes.

If they were there, he couldn’t see them.

From somewhere in another part of the house, he heard conversation. A low drone of voices. At first he thought the blonde must be talking to someone, maybe whoever had helped her get him inside and into this bed—but then he heard music, a vaguely familiar commercial jingle, and he figured it out: Someone was watching TV.

He considered simply lying there until he felt up to trying to drink water again, to getting on his feet. Or until someone entered the room and saw he was awake. But in the end, he needed to know if the blonde was there, to be certain he wasn’t alone in a strange house, with a TV left on in the other room.

“Hello?” It came out a raspy whisper. As if his voice had stopped working with the rest of him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello?”

A moment later, she appeared, tall and strong and so healthy-looking, in the doorway. She wore a yellow sweater and blue jeans and a shining, hopeful smile. Her blond hair fell, thick and loose, on her shoulders.

There was a dog, too. A bandy-legged bulldog with a patch over one eye. When she stopped in the doorway, the dog lumbered around in front of her and sat at her feet.

“You’re awake!” She sounded absolutely thrilled.

Her excitement at his merely being conscious had the strangest effect on him. It warmed him within. He made his lips form a smile to answer hers.

“Water?” He croaked the word. “I can’t…manage it.”

She came to him and sat on the edge of the bed. He watched as she filled the glass from the pitcher. Gently, she slid a cool hand behind his head, lifting him enough that he could sip, and then putting the glass to his lips with care. “Easy,” she whispered. “Take it slow…” The water moistened his dry mouth and soothed his parched throat.

“More,” he croaked, when she took the glass away.

“Careful, okay? Not too much, not at first.” She tipped the glass to his mouth again and he drank—less than he wanted. But enough that he no longer felt so dry.

She lowered his head back to the pillow and smoothed the covers around him. “Better?”

He breathed in that special, clean scent of hers. “Thank you.”

“Give it a few minutes, to see if it stays down. Then if you want more—”

“Wait. No…”

She tipped her head to the side and the soft waves of her hair swung out. He wanted to touch those curls. They seemed so…vibrant. So full of that special warmth and goodness he had already come to associate with her. Her smile had changed, became a little puzzled. “No?”

“I mean, I’m not only thanking you for the water. Thank you for…everything. For saving me. Before I saw you, I was starting to think I would die.”

She did what she’d done out in the snow, pressed her hand to the side of his face. It felt good there. “You did scare me, I have to admit. I thought more than once that I’d lost you. But here you are. Safe. Warm. And conscious. And that’s just…” Her soft mouth bloomed into another sweet smile. “Terrific.”

He remembered the trucker, his offer of a doctor, and realized he’d been pretty out of it, refusing medical care that way. “I guess you called a doctor, huh?”

She swallowed, glanced away.

He untangled an arm from under the covers and touched her—a brushing touch, on the side of her arm. “What? Is something wrong?”

She looked at him again. He did like her eyes, that light hazel color, green rayed with gold. Between her smooth brows there was a slight frown.

“Just tell me,” he said. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

She shrugged. “Well, that depends on what you call bad.” A quivery sigh escaped her. “The phone’s dead. And the snow is really coming down. It’s just the two of us here and we’re not getting out for a day or two, at least. Nobody’s getting in, either. Including a doctor.”

He took her hand then, and twined their fingers together. Strange, but it seemed the most natural thing, to hold her hand. She thought so, too—at least, she didn’t try to pull away. He asked, “You’ve got plenty of wood for the fire, right?”

She nodded. “And propane heat, too. The tank out back is full, which is great.”

“And food.”

“That’s right.”

“And water and electricity. I even heard a TV.”

“Yep. Everything’s working fine. Except the phone.”

“Tessa—it is Tessa, right?”

“Yep.”

“Tessa,” he said again, because he liked the sound of it. “I’ll be okay now. I’m sure I will.”

“Yes.” She said it in a passionate whisper. “You’ll be fine. Of course you will. Fine…” With the hand not captured in his, she touched his forehead, on the side without the bandage, in the tender, protective way his mother used to do when he was small.

His mother. He frowned. For a moment, in his mind’s eye, he’d almost seen her face. But the image was gone in an instant. And his head was aching again. Not the ice-pick-stabbing ache, but the low, insistent throb.

“What is it?” Tessa leaned closer. “What’s wrong?”

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.