Читать книгу The Heart of a Stranger - Sheri WhiteFeather, Sheri WhiteFeather - Страница 8

Life was complicated. That much twenty-eight-year-old Lourdes Quinterez could attest to.

Her only ranch hand had returned to Mexico to attend to a family emergency today. By all indications he would not be coming back.

His understandable defection was the least of her worries, she supposed. Painted Spirit, the once-thriving horse farm she’d inherited from her grandfather, suffered from financial neglect. Back taxes had culminated into bank loans, and honoring those loans had drained the ranch’s resources dry, making other debts nearly impossible to pay.

As the dry Texas wind scorched her cheeks and whipped her unbound hair away from her face, Lourdes entered the barn and headed to the granary to take inventory, telling herself to keep her wits. Her family—a surrogate grandmother, a visiting teenager and her sweet four-year-old twins—depended on her to make ends meet.

If only those ends weren’t so frazzled. If only the farm hadn’t gotten so run-down. If only—

Suddenly a shadow, a dark intrusion behind a pallet of grain, snared her attention. Was it a predator?

She froze, hugging the clipboard she carried to her chest. Lourdes didn’t scare easily, but the distorted figure, or what she could see of him near the ground, appeared human.

She preferred the animal variety.

A man in her barn meant trouble. Was he a drifter? A drunk sleeping off a hangover? Someone prone to violence?

She glanced around for something to use as a weapon, and spotted an old, rusted hay hook stored with several dilapidated boxes of junk in the corner.

Thank goodness long days and exhausted nights had left her too busy to haul away the collected debris.

She inched forward and latched on to the hay hook, setting down her clipboard in the process.

The human shadow didn’t move. But she did. Slowly, cautiously, silently cursing the shuffle of her timeworn boots.

She peered around the view-obstructing pallet and caught her breath.

The intruder, a broad-shouldered man slumped against the wall, was in no condition to fend off an attack, not even by an adrenaline-pumped female wielding metal prongs.

He was already bruised and bleeding.

She moved closer. He’d been beaten, pummeled, she presumed, by hard-hitting fists. His rumpled clothes, a denim shirt and a pair of jeans, bore signs of a struggle. Had his face taken the brunt of the beating? Or had he sustained other injuries, as well?

She knelt at his side, and for a moment their gazes locked.

Then she realized he fought to stay conscious, battling for the strength to hang on.

Lourdes abandoned the hay hook and pressed her hand to his forehead. His skin was hot and damp.

Without thinking, she smoothed the front of his thick, dark hair away from his face, the way a mother would soothe a fevered child’s brow.

He squinted. One of his eyes nearly swelled shut. Streaks of dirt and dried blood camouflaged his face, smearing below his nose and across his cheeks, where he’d apparently wiped the mixture with a telltale sleeve.

How long had he been in the barn? All night? Or had he taken refuge early this morning?

She had to get him inside, into a safe, warm bed. Cáco would know what to do. Her surrogate grandmother was a healer, practiced in the art of ancient medicine.

Suddenly a sensible voice in her head cautioned: Don’t bring a stranger into your home. Don’t invite trouble. Pawn him off on an ambulance instead.

And offend Cáco? Some of the Indians in the area lived and breathed by the Comanche woman’s healings.

But she doubted this man was Indian. He looked—

What? Latino? Greek? Italian? A combination thereof?

Did it matter? Cáco would insist on taking him under her wing nonetheless.

Lourdes went to the granary door and called out to Amy, Cáco’s biological granddaughter, a city girl who stayed at the ranch during her school breaks.

Amy appeared almost instantly. After Lourdes led her to the stranger, the teenager practically swallowed the wad of gum in her mouth.

Although Amy was the descendant of a long line of medicine women, the girl blanched. “Who is he?” she asked, with wide-eyed horror.

“I don’t know. But we have to take him to Cáco.” Before he passes out, Lourdes thought.

Gauging the man’s bulk, Amy made a worried face. “Can he walk?”

“I hope so. At least as far as the truck.” Lourdes knelt beside the stranger again. He probably weighed two hundred pounds. Carrying him was out of the question.

“Can you walk?” she asked him, echoing Amy’s concern. When he didn’t respond, she added, “If we help?”

He blinked, then nodded, his gaze not quite focused.

Getting him on his feet proved the most difficult, but once he was up, Lourdes and Amy refused to let go. They kept their arms around his waist, encouraging him to lean on them for support. Sandwiched between them, he stood at least six-three, hulking like a bruised and battered giant.

Lourdes prayed he didn’t give up and fall to the ground, taking her and Amy with him. Already the teenager’s narrow shoulders sagged from his weight. Lourdes wasn’t faring much better. His unsteady steps put her off balance, making her weave like a tanked-up cowboy on a saloon-slumming night.

They helped him into the truck, and he landed on the bench seat and slumped against Lourdes as she climbed in beside him.

From this proximity, the stranger’s sweat-dampened skin mingled with the faint, metallic smell of blood, creating a dark and dangerous pheromone.

Everything about him seemed dark and dangerous—his olive skin, those midnight-colored eyes, the blackish-brown hair Lourdes had smoothed across his brow.

She gave Amy the keys to the pickup, and the fifteen-year-old accepted them eagerly, making use of her driver learner’s permit.

The young girl clutched the steering wheel, lead-footing the Ford across the terrain, popping her gum with each jarring bump. Lourdes didn’t ask her to slow down. A half-conscious man seemed like a good excuse to speed.

The desertlike air blasted through the open window, fanning Lourdes’s face with heat. She wondered if the feverish man could feel it, too.

Amy stopped at the house, killed the engine and tore off, racing through the back door for her grandmother.

“We should wait here,” Lourdes said to the stranger, knowing the anxious teenager hadn’t given them a choice.

She certainly couldn’t haul him up the scattered-stone walkway herself.

Cáco, a robust woman with a gray-streaked bun, finally appeared. Her cotton dress flurried around her, billowing in the breeze.

Lourdes had never been so happy to see Cáco.

“Amy is looking after your daughters,” the older lady said as she opened the truck, informing her that all of the youngsters, including the gum-smacking teenager, had been gently shooed away.

Lourdes nodded and stepped aside, giving Cáco access to the injured man.

First the Comanche woman gazed steadily into his eyes, and then she ran deft fingers through his hair, cupping the back of his head. As she found a tender spot, he flinched.

“Someone must have hit you with a blunt object. That’s why you’re so dizzy,” she told him. “Do you think you can stay on your feet until we get you inside?”

He nodded, and even though the effort cost him, he remained upright. But the moment, the very instant Lourdes and Cáco guided him to an empty bed, he pitched forward, losing the consciousness he’d been fighting all along.

The stranger wasn’t out for long. He came to with Cáco checking his vital signs. Testing his basic brain functions, she evaluated the size of his pupils and their reaction to light. He didn’t appear to pass the memory tests. He answered her questions with jumbled words.

“Watch him,” she told Lourdes. “Call me if he loses consciousness again. I’m going to boil a root mixture.”

“All right.” Lourdes kept a bedside vigil.

The stranger rolled over, moaned and grabbed a pillow. Too tall for the double bed, his booted feet draped over the edge.

His partially untucked shirt bore a torn sleeve and two missing buttons at the hem, Lourdes noticed, and his Wranglers were stained, as well. They rode a bit too low on his hips. Someone had nearly beaten the life out of him, and his clothes had gotten tugged and tattered in the scuffle.

Cáco finally came back and placed a basin of water and a stack of washcloths on a functional nightstand. The guest room was small and tidy, with paneled walls, braided area rugs and a gold-veined mirror, depicting the era in which Lourdes had been born.

She glanced at the bed and wondered how old the injured man was. Thirtysomething, she suspected.

“Help me undress him,” Cáco said, as the stranger closed his eyes.

Remove the bloodied shirt stretching across his ample chest and the jeans slung low on those lean hips? “Is that necessary?” Lourdes asked stupidly.

Cáco gave her an exasperated look. “Of course it is. I need to examine him for other injuries, and he should be bathed. Cleansed of the fever.”

She reached for his shirt, leaving Lourdes his boots and pants.

“Did he say anything to you?” the older woman asked.

“No.” She could do this, damn it. She knew how to work a cowboy boot off a person’s foot.

“He has a concussion.” Cáco released his shirt buttons. “We’ll have to keep a close eye on him. Even a mild head injury can cause the brain to malfunction. For days, sometimes weeks.” She opened his shirt, then made a stunned sound.

In the midst of peeling off his socks, Lourdes glanced up to see what had startled the old woman.

Instantly, she knew. The silver cross around his neck looked hauntingly familiar.

“Cáco?” She stared at her surrogate grandmother, but got no response.

Unable to stop herself, Lourdes moved closer. It couldn’t be, could it?

She reached for the necklace. It looked the same, identical to the one that had belonged to her father. The sentimental heirloom Lourdes’s now-deceased husband had pawned years before, with her other jewelry. More valuable pieces had been taken, but the silver cross had been an emotional loss.

She turned the shining object over. And found the inscription.

To keep you safe.

It was her cross. Her family history. Her heart.

Had this man purchased it from the pawnshop all those years ago? Lourdes had tried to recover the necklace after she’d discovered what her husband had done, but the sentimental heirloom had already been sold.

“Where did he get this?” she asked aloud. And why had he showed up at her ranch? Beaten and bruised?

He opened his eyes, and she flinched and dropped the necklace. It thumped against his chest. Against his heart.

Cáco didn’t say a word. She stood back as the man lifted his hand and stroked Lourdes’s cheek. The tips of his fingers grazed gently, making her warm and tingly.

A lover’s touch. A stranger’s unexpected caress.

A second later, his hand slid from her face and melted onto the bed, loose and fluid against a starched white sheet.

From there, he remained still. He seemed dazed, confused. Lost in the recesses of his mind.

I’m confused, too, Lourdes thought, glancing at the sterling silver cross once again.

Cáco stepped forward and unbuttoned the cuffs on his shirt, working the garment from his arms, resuming her task.

Lourdes took heed, knowing she was expected to do the same. But it wasn’t easy, not with him watching her through those glazed eyes.

Feeling sensuously intrusive, she unbuckled his belt and unzipped his jeans, mindful to leave his boxers in place as she pulled the pants down his legs.

Endless legs. Long, muscular and dusted with hair.

While Cáco ran her clinical hands along his body, looking for cracked ribs and swollen kneecaps, Lourdes rummaged through his jeans, hoping to find his wallet—his ID, his name, his date of birth, an address, pictures of his family.

She searched every pocket and uncovered absolutely nothing. No indication of who he was.

“He must have been robbed,” she concluded out loud, glancing at his scraped knuckles.

Had he fought back? Enraged his attackers by defending himself? Surely more than one man had accosted him.

How many had he battled? Two? Three?

“No bones are broken,” Cáco observed.

The man blinked and turned his head to the sound of the old woman’s voice. In turn, she dipped a washcloth into the basin of root-boiled water and cleaned his face with the now-tepid liquid, reassuring him that he would be all right.

Once the dirt and blood were wiped away, Lourdes couldn’t deny his appeal. Even with a swollen eye, a split lip and discoloration from the bruises, he was remarkably handsome.

Cáco handed her a fresh washcloth. “Finish bathing him, and I’ll tend to the rest of his medicine.”

After her surrogate grandmother left the room, Lourdes sat on the edge of the bed. He made a rough sound, a low masculine groan, as she sponged his neck and worked the damp washcloth over his chest, unintentionally arousing his nipples.

She inhaled a shaky breath and took care to bathe his stomach. It revealed a ripple of muscle, a line of hair below his navel and the horrible marks where he’d been pounded or kicked.

“I’m sorry someone hurt you,” she said, wondering if he knew how intimately he’d touched her cheek. If he’d meant for her to feel that tingly connection.

He didn’t respond. Instead the mysterious stranger closed his eyes and slept, leaving her with the echo of a rapidly beating heart.

And the image of her most prized possession blazing against dark, dangerous skin.

Hours later, after completing her chores on the ranch, Lourdes prepared the family meal.

Aside from modern appliances, the kitchen reflected vintage charm. She supposed the old place was a bit eclectic, with its unusual style. The house had been built in the ’40s and remodeled in the ’70s, and both decades melded together in a hodgepodge of warm woods, gold-and-green tiles and crystal doorknobs.

She seared pork chops and added grated cheese to a big pot of elbow macaroni, making her daughters’ favorite dish.

Cáco came in and drew her attention. The old woman placed an empty cup in the sink. Lourdes knew she’d fixed a coral root tea for her patient to drink, along with a comfrey poultice for his bruises. Cáco acquired herbs from suppliers all over the country, keeping whatever she needed on hand.

“How is he?” Lourdes asked.

“Confused,” the older woman answered. “But that’s to be expected. He mumbled some nonsense for a while, then went back to sleep.”

Lourdes leaned against the counter. “We should call the sheriff.”

“What for?”

“To report what happened to him.”

Cáco washed her hands and dried them on a paper towel. Her bun had come loose, and now her bound hair dangled softly on the back of her head. Silver discs danced in her ears, spinning two carefully engraved bear paws.

“We don’t know what happened to him,” she finally said.

Lourdes turned to stir the macaroni and cheese. “He was beaten.”

“Yes, he was.” The old woman began mixing a ranch dressing for the salad. “But he was meant to come here. To find you. To return the necklace.” She lifted her head, her dark eyes glittering. “And we’re meant to help him. To be here when he needs us.”

Lourdes wanted to argue, but she couldn’t. Cáco often knew things, sensed things that left other people with goose bumps. Of course that didn’t make her an all-wise, all-knowing Indian. Sometimes she twisted logic and made life seem more supernatural than it was.

Cáco’s superstitions ran deep. She refused to gaze in a mirror when the sky thundered, fearful lightning would look in and strike her. She’d tied crow feathers to the twins’ cribs when they were babies to protect them from evil influences. Cáco had insisted on either that or a taxidermy-stuffed bat to watch over the girls.

Lourdes had agreed to the feathers.

She looked up to find Cáco staring at her.

Okay. Fine. A stranger had appeared out of the blue, wearing a piece of Lourdes’s heart.

“I won’t call the sheriff,” she found herself saying. She wouldn’t let the authorities intervene. Not yet. Not while the man was still under Cáco’s care.

“Good.” The stubborn old woman’s lips twitched into a triumphant smile. She liked getting her way.

Lourdes added a little water to the pork chops, making them sizzle. Her skin had sizzled, too. Heated from his touch. “He’ll probably want to contact the police on his own.”

“Maybe.” Cáco blended the salad dressing with a whisk. “And maybe not. We shouldn’t push him. He needs to rest.”

Already the old woman had become possessive of the injured stranger, protecting him as if he were one of her own. But Lourdes had expected as much.

“Mama?” a small voice said.

Lourdes turned to see her daughters standing in the doorway. Her beautiful girls, with their long, tawny hair and root beer-brown eyes. They held hands, as they often did, clutching each other the way they must have done in the womb.

Nina, the chatterbox, and Paige, the observer. Sometimes they conversed in an odd guttural language, words only the two of them understood.

They probably wouldn’t have minded being watched over by a stuffed bat.

“Can we see the sick man?” Nina asked.

Lourdes wanted to gather her inquisitive little chicks and hug them close, shield them from what had been done to the stranger, but keeping them away from him would only make them more curious.

She glanced at Cáco for approval and received a silent nod in response. Then a word of caution.

“Try not to wake him.”

Nina’s eyes grew big and innocent. “We’ll be quiet.” She turned to her sister. “Won’t we?”

Paige bobbed her head, and as Lourdes led them to the guest room, both girls walked with an exaggerated tiptoe, proving how quiet they could be.

Their silence didn’t last.

They gasped when they saw him, sleeping amid his bruises.

“He has lots of ow-ees,” Nina said.

“Yes, he does.” Lourdes gazed at Cáco’s patient. He lay on his side, one long leg exposed, the other tangled within the sheet. He held a pillow next to his body, the way a man might hold a woman he intended to keep.

Gently, possessively.

Suddenly her skin grew warm, and she longed to touch him, to feel the impression the silver cross made against his chest.

What impression?

The necklace wasn’t a brand. And for now, it was hidden, trapped against the pillow in his arms.

“Did somebody hurt him, Mama?” Paige, the observer, asked.

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Paige and Nina moved forward. Lourdes tried to stop them, but the children slipped past.

The four-year-olds stood for a moment, just staring at the stranger, then they reached out and patted his hair, giving him the kind of comfort they liked to receive.

Lourdes’s eyes went misty. Her girls had never known a father. There were no important men in their lives, no one to offer masculine guidance.

Of course the louse who’d sired them wouldn’t have fit the bill. Gunther Jones had been a criminal and a convict, a drug addict and a thief.

And what kind of man are you? she wanted to ask the sleeping stranger.

Maybe he was married. Maybe he had a wife and children, a family who loved him, who wondered and worried why he hadn’t come home.

She glanced at his left hand, at the absence of a ring. Then again, maybe he was single. Or divorced. Or—

What? A criminal? A thief?

I should call the sheriff, she thought.

But she’d promised Cáco that she wouldn’t.

“Come on,” she said to the twins, drawing them away from the bed. “It’s time to eat.”

She prodded her daughters out the door, then stopped to look back at the man.

The handsome intruder was already weaving his way into her life.