Sudden Recall. Jean Barrett
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his parents down on Seabrook Island, and if I cancel—”
“Don’t cancel. Go, and stop looking at me like that. It’s not as if I’m entirely on my own. The Davises are just across the garden.”
Tia went, though reluctantly and with last-minute instructions about the patient, which she followed with a promise to phone Eden in the morning before she left with her boyfriend.
Eden was relieved when she was finally able to close and lock the door behind her upstairs neighbor. She shouldn’t have been relieved. She was all alone now with a man she knew nothing about, a stranger who had arrived out of nowhere in the middle of a wild night. There was everything about him to make her apprehensive, but her only fear was that he wouldn’t be able to tell her what she would give her soul to know.
She stood there for a moment in the stillness of the apartment, listening to the sounds of the wind and the rain outside. Then she crossed the parlor and went into the guest room to look in on her patient.
The light from the door she left open was sufficient to reveal the man who lay there, undisturbed by her entrance. She stood beside the bed, gazing down at him, remembering the body concealed now by the quilt that covered his length. It was a tall body, and though it had suffered, it was solidly built, with powerful shoulders, lean hips and long legs. A body that had been conditioned for—
What? She had no way of knowing. That was as much a mystery as the rest of him, including his square-jawed face. “Hard to tell,” Tia had observed when she’d been working on that face, “but there could be something worth looking at under all this battering.”
Restless, he stirred briefly, muttering something in his sleep before he became quiet again. Whatever it was, Eden was unable to understand it. Nothing he had murmured since collapsing on the piazza had been intelligible. Except for those first three words. “Am I home?”
She didn’t know what, if anything, he had meant by them or why at the time she had been so moved at hearing them. Am I home?
Eden mentally embraced those words now, clung to them, because only this way, remembering their poignancy, could she go on convincing herself that she was not making a terrible mistake by keeping this man in her home.
Chapter Two
Eden loved her adopted city. Charleston had so many things to offer, the climate being one of them. Even in midwinter like this, the weather was generally mild. Having grown up in Chicago, she appreciated that.
Last night’s frigid temperature had been an exception. But this morning, early though it still was, the thermometer had climbed to a balmy level that had prompted her to open the door to the garden where the sun was already drying the soaked and sagging vegetation.
Eden could hear the tolling of the bells from Charleston’s historic churches summoning worshipers to Sunday services. It was another thing she enjoyed about the city. Not this morning, however. She was too anxious to be soothed by their restful sounds drifting through the open doorway as she waited for the coffeemaker to finish brewing.
The phone on the kitchen wall rang. She picked it up, knowing it would be Tia, knowing, too, what her friend would immediately ask. She wasn’t wrong.
“Is he awake yet?”
Eden was careful to keep her concern out of her voice. “He’s still sleeping, but after what he must have gone through that’s to be expected, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. You check his vital signs like I showed you?”
“Yes. They’re normal.”
“You want me to come down?”
Eden heard an impatient sound in the background and realized that Tia’s boyfriend was there and not happy about an offer that would delay them. “That’s not necessary. I’ll give him another hour, and if he isn’t conscious by then, I’ll wake him myself.”
“And if you can’t revive him—”
“I’ll call an ambulance. Look, don’t worry. I can handle it. Just go and enjoy your day.”
Eden’s certainty evaporated when she hung up. She was back to wondering again, asking herself the same question that had troubled her since she had last looked in on her patient. Could he have a serious head injury, and was she denying him the treatment he needed by keeping him here?
It was the thought of Nathanial that kept her from reaching for the phone again. Smothering the threat of guilt, she glanced at the coffeemaker, saw that the brew was ready and poured herself a steaming mug. The first few sips steadied her.
Mug in hand, she headed once more for the guest room. Spreading the door inward, she stole quietly into the room. Her silence this time was unnecessary. He was awake.
Apparently sensing her presence, he turned his head on the pillow and gazed at her from a pair of deep brown eyes that were more alert than she would have expected, and far more unsettling. There was something positively intimate in the way they held her gaze.
“Hello,” he said, his voice slow and raspy.
Eden held the mug in front of her, as though she were gripping a weapon. Swallowing nervously, she made the effort to address him with a casualness she was a long way from feeling. “Good morning. How do you feel?”
He frowned, considering her question for a moment before answering her in that husky voice. “Like an eighteen-wheeler rolled over me. I seem to be aching in places I didn’t know I had.”
“Your head?”
“Not inside, but—” He broke off to raise one of his hands to his head. His fingers began to explore the wounds on his face. He looked puzzled when they encountered the bandage across the bridge of his nose. “Your work?”
Eden shook her head. “No, Tia’s from upstairs. She’s a nurse-practitioner.”
“I’ll have to thank Tia.”
“You’ll have to wait to do that. She left for the day.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t remember Tia. Is she one of our friends?”
Eden thought it was an odd thing for him to say. He sounded normal enough otherwise. In fact, he was in a far better state than she could have hoped for, but she experienced a moment of uneasiness. If he was still dazed, not entirely lucid, it could mean he had sustained a head injury after all.
He was looking at her as though waiting for her reassurance. “Well, she’s my friend, anyway. Are you sure you don’t have anything like a headache? Or some dizziness maybe?”
“Not this morning, no.”
She fought the need to ask him about Nathanial, why he had been carrying a photograph of a child she was convinced was her son along with her business card, both of which were tucked now into her purse for safekeeping. But an interrogation like that would be insensitive when his well-being had to be their immediate concern. Her urgent questions would have to wait.
“Does that mean you did have a headache last night? That you experienced dizziness?”
“I suppose so,” he said vaguely.
“You had quite a lump on the back of your skull. The swelling went down after Tia applied ice packs.”
“That’s good.”
He didn’t seem troubled by any of it, but Eden was beginning to be worried for him. How could he be so blithe about everything? His behavior under the circumstances didn’t seem altogether rational. “Do you remember last night at all? How you found your way here and passed out on the piazza?”
“Sure I do. I had a hell of a time getting here.”
“What happened to you? How did you get those injuries?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why?”