The Heart of a Stranger. Sheri WhiteFeather
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the concussion. Your head injury,” she clarified.
He went after the peaches again, ignoring the oatmeal he’d discarded. He ate carefully, inserting the spoon in the side of his mouth that wasn’t swollen. “Your name is Lourdes, and you’re not from France.”
“That’s right. What’s your name?” she asked, wondering why she hadn’t inquired before now.
He gave her a panicked stare.
Dear God, she thought. Dear, sweet God. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. “It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t.” He dropped his spoon, and it bounced against the tray, making a metallic hum. “I don’t know who the hell I am. Not my name. Where I live. Where I’m from.”
“It’ll come back to you.”
“When?”
A few days? A few weeks? She had no idea. “I’ll ask Cáco. She understands more about head injuries than I do.”
“Where’s my driver’s license?”
“We think it was stolen. With your wallet.”
“I don’t have a name. What kind of person doesn’t have a name?”
She reached for his hand to stop the quaking. She would be afraid if she’d lost her identity, too. “I’ll give you one.”
His chest rose and fell. He was a handsome stranger, she thought. A disoriented John Doe.
John?
No, that was too obvious. “Juan,” she said.
“Juan,” he repeated, accepting her choice. “Juan what? I need a last name. People have last names.”
A handsome stranger.
“Guapo,” Lourdes decided.
He merely blinked.
“Is that all right?” she asked.
Was it? he wondered. He knew what Guapo meant. Handsome in Spanish.
Had she chosen that name purposely? Did she like the way he looked?
How could she? He’d caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He’d seen the swelling and the bruising, the gash across his mouth.
What was ugly in Spanish?
Feo.
Maybe she should have called him Juan Feo instead.
“Is the name I gave you all right?” she asked again.
A little embarrassed, he nodded. If the pretty woman in his dream thought he was handsome, what could he do?
He cocked his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. This wasn’t a dream. She kept telling him that. This was real.
But how was that possible? She seemed like an angel, with the honey-colored streaks in her hair and the gilded light in her chocolate-brown eyes.
Angels only existed in dreams.
A French angel who spoke Spanish. Surely, he was confused.
He didn’t stop to think of why he spoke Spanish, too. He just knew that he did. Or that he understood enough of the language to get by.
“I’m not very hungry anymore,” he said. His head hurt from all the confusion, and his eyelids had grown heavy.
She took the tray away and placed it on top of a simple oak dresser. “You look sleepy.”
“I am.” He wanted to ask her to lie down with him, but decided that wouldn’t be a very gentlemanly thing to do. Then he remembered that he’d already asked her, and she’d refused. Of course, she’d refused. They were strangers. And she had children with another man.
“Where’s your husband, Lourdes?”
She turned and fussed with the collar on her shirt. She was dressed like a cowgirl, with varying shades of denim hugging her curvaceous body. “I don’t have a husband. He died before I could divorce him.”
He thought that was an odd thing for her to say, but he was glad she wasn’t married. He didn’t want her cuddling up to someone else at night.
He had a right to covet his dream.
“I should let you sleep. Besides, I still have to eat. And get my daughters up. And go to work.”
“When will I see you again?” he asked, worried that she’d disappear, that he’d truly created her in his mind.
“Soon,” she said, reaching for the tray.
He closed his eyes for what seemed like a second, but when he opened them, the room was empty.
Juan Guapo’s angel was already gone.
Three days went by, but Lourdes hadn’t seen much of Juan. She’d deliberately kept her distance. He was Cáco’s patient, after all. And Lourdes was busy with the ranch. A busy bee, trying to keep her mind off a man who might be married.
She gazed at the horses in pasture. Her herd was small, but striking, a glorious sea of color, patches of chestnut, bay and black splashed against white. The paint horse was an eye-catching champion, praised in cultures all over the world.
Their image appeared in cave drawings in south-central Europe and on tombs in ancient Egypt.
Lourdes revered them with all her heart.
The way she revered the silver cross Juan wore.
Damn it. She ran her hands through her breeze-ravaged hair. Why did her thoughts always turn to him?
Because she was a foolish woman behaving like a schoolgirl.
She checked her watch and realized she was stalling, dragging her feet to go home for lunch.
Cursing her growling stomach, she gave up the fight. Her temporary ranch hand had headed into town to meet his wife at the diner.
And Juan—
Would disappear from her life soon enough, she acknowledged as she drove to her destination with the windows down and the radio turned up.
Two songs later, Lourdes entered the house and headed for the kitchen. After opening the refrigerator, she removed the covered containers Cáco had left for her. Beneath the lids, she found a ham and cheese sandwich, a pasta salad and an assortment of diced fruit.
Where was Cáco? Lourdes glanced at the microwave clock. Ironing clothes in the laundry room, most likely. Finishing her chores so she could watch the two o’clock soap opera that entertained her for an hour each day.
Lourdes made up a plate and went to the dining room, then stopped when she saw Juan sitting at the table with Amy, Nina and Paige.
The twins occupied the chairs on either side of Juan, and Amy had taken up residence across from them.
The teenager drew on a sophisticated sketchpad while the other three made haphazard art with crayons and coloring books.
He was coloring with her daughters.
Dressed in the jeans Cáco must have laundered for him, with no shirt and no shoes, he looked like a tenderhearted renegade. He’d shaved, showered and combed his damp hair away from his face. Lourdes knew Cáco had purchased a few simple toiletries for him at the market, adding an extra toothbrush, disposables razors and deodorant to the grocery list. He’d probably washed his hair with the no-more-tears baby shampoo already in the bathroom. But she supposed that was safer on his bruise-ringed eyes.
Nina wiggled in her chair, turned and saw Lourdes. “Hi, Mama.”
“Hi, baby.”
“We’re coloring.”
“So I see.”
Paige wiggled a little, too. Then grinned