The Stranger and Tessa Jones. Christine Rimmer
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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