A Hero's Redemption. Suzanne Mcminn
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on the woman leaning over him. She lifted his hand, touching his wrist. There were bruised marks circling it.
“What happened to you?” she repeated.
Her hair was thick, like a dark cloud, falling around her slender face. Light from the lamp behind her framed her like a halo of fire.
He could hear wind moaning, the creaking of the house in the storm.
That’s why he was so cold. He’d been out there, in the storm. She’d brought him up to the house, gotten him inside. She’d saved his life.
He’d been in an accident. He remembered slashing pain, the force as his body made impact, then—Her. He remembered her…
“Who…?” he whispered roughly. His tongue felt thick, unfamiliar even as his still-swimming vision registered recognition. He remembered her.
“Calla,” she said.
Jones. Calla Jones.
“Jones,” she finished
His mind reeled. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be Calla Jones.
“Can you tell me yours?” she asked.
He stared at her for a beat that seemed to last forever. Pain streaked through his temples and he drew a sharp breath. The pain from his bruised ribs almost had him blacking out.
“Don’t try to talk anymore,” she said sharply. He felt her fingers brush the skin at his waistband. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to ask you anything, not now.”
He struggled to stay conscious, to focus on her, this woman who couldn’t be real, couldn’t be who she said she was. She was a dream, a fantasy. Her eyes were brown, the softest shade of brown he’d ever seen. And she was pretty. So pretty.
She was pretty and she was taking his pants off.
His clothes were wet. That was it. She was just trying to make him warm. He tried to help again, reached for the button of the pants. His stiff fingers shook and wouldn’t bend right. He felt her warm fingers brushing his away. Her long cloud-hair swished across his cold, bare stomach as she leaned over him, then slid away as she moved down the bed, pulled on his shoes.
He felt like a baby. He forced himself up and black spots popped across his vision.
“Just let me do it,” she entreated. He heard her soft voice from far away, but he could feel her right there, her soothing touch as she pulled off his clothes. Then she was back. “Come on, you have to get under the covers.” She reached for him, rolled him to the side, then back as she moved the covers, tucked them around him now.
He’d never been so cold in his life—bone-deep cold even as he could feel the heat of the electric blanket against his skin. For a dream, this one was awfully painful. Inside, deep inside, he was freezing. He drifted, his eyes too heavy…She came and went and he was barely aware of her, then he felt her hands, gently, at his temples and something stinging—
Pure pain ricocheted through his head and his eyes burst open. He moved and more agony seared his chest.
“God, don’t move. I think your ribs are bruised or broken. I don’t know. I’m trying to be careful, but this is a bad cut.”
He fell back, sucking painful air into his lungs. His limbs felt like jelly. He didn’t think he could move again if his life depended on it. It hurt too much.
“Just be still,” she said sternly and he focused on the seductive sound of her voice. He heard something tear, felt her fingers taping something to his head. Felt himself floating, and he went willingly.
This dream might hurt, but reality wasn’t any better. In reality, Calla Jones was dead.
Chapter 2
He woke, disoriented. He couldn’t see anything. He was blind. Then the lamp beside the bed popped on. He blinked, light hurting his eyes.
The windows were dark. Everything was still, silent.
His vision cleared slowly. Faded wallpaper covered the upper half of the room, white wainscoting at the bottom. A quilt in a ringed pattern hung on the opposite wall between an antique dresser and a chair.
A wave of panic washed over him. He pushed up from the bed, hissing in agony as he swung his legs to the floor. Gripping the corner of the headboard, he straightened on wavering knees.
He was naked. The woman—There had been a woman. He’d thought she’d said her name was Calla Jones, even thought she’d looked like Calla Jones. But that wasn’t possible. He’d heard her wrong, imagined the resemblance.
She’d taken his clothes off, everything but his briefs, warmed him in her bed. And he was sure it was her bed. Everything surrounding him in the room—the pretty perfume and cream bottles marching across the old dresser, the flowered wreath on the wall, the lacy coverlet on the bed—screamed feminine occupation.
He hung on to the knobbed corner of the headboard again while he took shallow, agonizing breaths and willed himself to stay upright even as black pain threatened to consume him. He tried to focus, assess the damage—his head throbbed, his ribs screamed. But everything worked, if painfully. He wasn’t broken, just bruised.
And he was in trouble. Terrible trouble. He had to get dressed. He had to get out of here.
“Oh, my God.” He heard a rush of footsteps through the agony wrapping his mind. “Get back in bed. What are you doing? If you pass out and fall, you’ll just hurt yourself more!”
Arms slipped around his waist; soft, caring arms, guiding him back down. Relief buckled his knees and he didn’t fight her, let her ease him back onto the bed in one miserable, slow move.
“You have to rest. You can’t do this.” The woman’s voice was clipped, frustrated. Warm brown eyes sparked at him. Warm brown eyes that looked just like Calla Jones’s eyes. The resemblance was startling.
But it was just that, a resemblance. Calla Jones was dead.
She tucked blankets back around him. “I think you’ve got some bruised ribs, but I’m not a doctor. And you are not a very good patient.”
She chewed her lip in the way he remembered, suddenly, she had before. She was looking at him, too, and the very real, very fragile awareness in her gaze almost hurt to see.
“We lost electricity. I had to go outside and get the generator going,” she said.
That explained the pitch-black he’d woken to, and the lamp suddenly popping on. But it didn’t explain her. She started to rise and without thinking, he reached for her hand, stopping her.
“Don’t go.” His mouth was so dry, he could barely get the words out. “Who are you?”
She stared at him. “I’m just going to put your clothes in the laundry.” She tugged her hand from his, impatient, yet there was something more than impatience in her eyes. Something wounded. “My name is Calla. Calla Jones. This is Haven Christmas Tree Farm.”
His head reeled, and for a moment he couldn’t focus or think. Then her face cleared in his vision, Calla Jones’s face, and he saw her eyes gaze to his wrists.
“It looks,” she whispered, “as if you’d been bound. What happened to you?”
Of course his wrists had been bound. His ankles had been shackled, too. And all of that meant that Calla Jones was long dead. He was dreaming, had to be dreaming. What other explanation was there?
“I don’t know what’s happened to me,” he said, his voice hoarse suddenly. He’d lost his mind, maybe. I was being transported, bound, to prison for your murder. Dane supposed he could tell her that.
She was looking at him, confusion in her gaze. She seemed young, he thought suddenly, really young, with slender hollows in her cheeks and those soft, soft brown eyes, even as he could detect the faint lines around