The Unlikely Groom. Wendy Douglas
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demanded that she hold her arms, her legs—everything—stiff and steady. Better yet, that she give up movement entirely. She tried, but the blood continued to pound through her veins and her head drummed with a heavy, relentless beat that left her hardly able to think. In fact, the drumming and pounding produced a steady rhythm that paced her heart and seemed to aim specifically for the most sensitive spots in her forehead and behind her eyes.
Ashlynne caught and held her breath, but that only seemed to make things worse. She gave in with a weary sigh and allowed her breath to trickle out, bit by bit. At the same time she relaxed her muscles and tested her extremities: fingers and toes, hands and feet, arms and legs. They all worked, though she couldn’t imagine quite how. Her body’s natural reaction must have been responsible, for she couldn’t seem to manage much else.
She shifted with a trifle more bravery and discovered a new ache, this one low in her back. Ashlynne pried open one eye and gradually realized at what an unnatural, crooked angle that she lay. Just as bad, her tongue felt thick and fuzzy and her mouth carried a dry, awful taste, as though she’d eaten dirt and ash—or worse.
Gingerly, hoping for some relief, she tested her lips with her tongue. They felt dry and cracked, too, but she’d come to expect that from Alaskan winter weather.
Alaska.
With just the word, everything came tumbling back into her mind in one great rush. She sat up with a gasp, at the same time clasping one hand to her throat as though that would stifle any other noise. It might have done the job, but the relentless pounding in her head only increased.
Moving carefully, she pressed her fingertips to her temples and gingerly massaged her forehead. She dared no other movement as she peered about her…and then she discovered herself in a small room, dark and gloomy. An odd assortment of crates, barrels and boxes surrounded her, all stacked in haphazard disarray. A mop and bucket, broom and dustpan and other assorted cleaning supplies filled one corner.
Daring a braver look, she turned by slow degrees to investigate the rest of the room. A line of pegs, used as clothes hangers, marched across the wall and a small chest of drawers squatted next to them. A cracked piece of mirror hung crookedly on the wall above it.
Her heart stumbled as did her breathing and Ashlynne lost any chance to ignore the reality of her situation. She had never before seen this room and she had no earthly idea where she was. She was in someone’s bed—but whose? She tried to scramble to her feet but found herself virtually wrapped in a cocoon made up of her heavy woolen cloak. It tangled around her legs and kept her imprisoned on a bed that was actually more of a cot, she realized as she struggled to free herself.
“Be careful.”
The voice, low and husky, was also male. She recognized it immediately and absolutely.
Lucas Templeton.
Ashlynne gave a sharp little grunt of surprise. The noise sounded most unlady-like, but she didn’t care. She forced herself to settle back on the bed as she wriggled around to free her legs as best she could, and at the same time, she scanned the room to find him.
In the far corner, disguised by shadows and her ignorance that he was there, she finally spotted him. He slouched in a chair with enough lazy grace that suggested he was a man who would be comfortable wherever he went.
She’d gotten the same impression of him last night.
He stared back at her, his gaze somehow unexpected. He looked unsurprised to see her or her reaction, as though he had been lounging there and watching her for some time now. Most certainly as she slept. Had he reached some obscure conclusions? And about what?
Aside from that, had he slept? And if so, where? Dull shadows clung to the far corners of the room and gave his eyes a sleepy, heavy-lidded appearance that suggested so. Perhaps she’d awoken him.
Other than that, he looked much the same as he had last night: tousled and wicked and all too male. She didn’t want to notice—hated that she did. She had so much else at stake, so much else with which to concern herself, and yet she couldn’t deny that she was aware of Lucas in a way that went clear through to her soul.
What should she say to him? Especially now, after everything that had happened.
“Where am I?”
It was all that occurred to her. Worse, her voice croaked with an embarrassing thinness. Ashlynne swallowed and forced herself to maintain a steady gaze in Lucas’s direction.
“In my bed.” He shot her a heavy glare that seemed pointed at the same time and told her nothing.
She frowned. It made her feel better and she hoped it would put Lucas in his place. Her unseemly awareness of him or not, the man remained a scoundrel. He very deliberately wanted to make things sound as bad as he could, and that wasn’t fair.
He was the one who’d given her the whiskey, after all.
Oh, dear Lord. Ashlynne dropped her gaze to her lap and her hands went icy cold. Whiskey, she remembered, and a new wrinkle in her memory smoothed itself out. She’d had several cups of coffee laced with whiskey and swallowed them down without so much as a second thought. In a saloon. On the night of her brother’s murder.
How could she? She’d never done anything that dreadful! Worse, that disrespectful. What kind of woman had she become?
But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—take the time to answer the questions now. Self-reproach could—and would—come later, once she was alone. She wanted no witness for the emotional storm that waited just beneath her ability to control it.
For the moment she forced herself to look at Lucas once more. She leveled a steady gaze in his direction and spoke in a clear voice. “So this is your bed.” She paused. “Or your cot, as it were.”
“Complaining about the accommodations?”
“Not at all. I’m more interested in knowing exactly where your bed is.”
Lucas shrugged. “Where else? In the back room at the Star.”
The back room of a saloon. Ashlynne’s heart dropped. Humiliation urged her to hide her face in her hands, but she resisted with stiffened shoulders and clenched fists. She wouldn’t give Lucas Templeton the satisfaction of seeing her like that—and she couldn’t afford to give her weaker side the victory.
She forced herself to maintain direct eye contact with Lucas and to ignore the sour churning that had roiled up in her stomach. “How did I get here?”
“I brought you,” he said as he pushed himself straight and unfolded his body from the chair. He moved in one grand, sweeping motion that seemed completely unsuitable for a man his size.
He should have been more awkward, clumsier, she thought with a spurt of irritation. It would be only fair. Handsome men shouldn’t have every other ability at their beck and call, as well.
And she shouldn’t be noticing the man or how he moved.
“I didn’t know what else to do with you,” he added after a moment. “You couldn’t seem to tell me where you were staying.” He gave his lips a brief twist that she suspected was supposed to have been a smile. Even so, he didn’t appear at all amused.
He started across the room, taking a lazy detour that skirted a crooked stack of crates. The path brought him perilously close to the bed and Ashlynne’s instincts screamed at her to scoot back. Stubbornly she held herself still.
He passed by to stop at a window that Ashlynne hadn’t noticed before. A bit of light seeped from beneath a dark piece of brocade fabric that had been tacked over it in an odd-looking curtain.
Lucas tugged the makeshift drapery away from the window and hooked it around a nail to stay back. Light flooded the room, a pale, thin brightness that she recognized already as a winter day this far north. In summer, she’d been told, the midnight sun could be blinding. At the moment this was enough to force Ashlynne’s eyelids to snap closed and she jerked her hand up to shield her face.