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Leaving the kitchen, she raced into her bedroom and pulled a pair of jeans from her dresser drawer. She tugged them on, then grabbed her bra and a light blue sweatshirt and pulled them on, as well.
She had seven hundred dollars tucked into a sock in her drawer. Her mother had always told her to keep a little mad money in the house in case of an emergency.
“Losing your mind is definitely an emergency,” Willa muttered as she pulled the bills from her sock and shoved them into the back pocket of her jeans.
As she grabbed her keys from the table and headed outside she wondered if he was dying. She’d heard of strange stories like this, people appearing to other people in visions or dreams just before they passed away. Of course, she’d never heard of one of those apparitions making wild, passionate love to somebody.
The only other explanation was that she really had truly lost her mind.
The night air was chilly and she was grateful for the warmth of the sweatshirt as she got into her car and started the engine.
Hurry! Please hurry.
“I’m doing the best I can,” she muttered as she backed out of the driveway. Maybe she should just hurry and check into a psych ward because if she told anybody about this they would definitely think she was nuts. At the moment she would probably agree with them.
Jared. In her dream he’d said his name was Jared. How had her imagination come up with that name? She’d never met anyone named Jared in her life.
She pulled in to the hospital parking lot and the urgency that she’d felt before screamed inside her. She parked and ran for the hospital entrance.
At this time of night the hallways were silent and dim. She hoped she didn’t run in to anyone. She didn’t want to try to explain what she was doing here.
With each step she took she felt more ridiculous. What was she doing? She was an intelligent, rational human being following a phantom voice in her head in the middle of the night.
Her footsteps slowed as the reality of what she was doing sank in. This was insane. John Doe was in a coma. He couldn’t be asking for her help. She’d had a dream and somehow her mind had gotten all scrambled.
Willa! Hurry!
Once again the voice exploded in her head. Urgent. Frantic. And Willa couldn’t ignore the sense of alarm that raced through her blood.
She ran to his room and stopped short in the doorway. He lay on the bed just as he had been when she’d left earlier. His eyes were closed, his breathing regular, and aside from feeling like a fool, she felt ridiculously disappointed.
She drew a deep breath to still the race of her heart and moved to his side. His eyes snapped open and she gasped as he grabbed her hand with a firm grip.
“Willa.” His deep voice whispered her name as his intense blue eyes bored into hers. “You have to get me out of here. They’re going to kill me if you don’t.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_00565172-3a0a-5110-a349-19c577ad3c8b)
Willa’s face was as pale as the sheet that covered him and her eyes were wide and a curious blend of gray and green as she stared at him.
Jared Maddox knew he’d shocked her, first by the fact that he was conscious and second by his intense plea, but he didn’t have time to explain. He had to get out of here immediately.
He would have walked out on his own, but after six months in a hospital bed he knew he was as weak as a newborn and he desperately needed Willa’s help.
“Please,” he said as he tightened his fingers around her slender forearm. “You have to help me get out of here. There are people who are hunting me, men who want to destroy me, and they’re very near.”
He released his grip on her arm and sat up to swing his legs over the side of the bed. That simple movement half exhausted him.
Willa remained frozen at the side of the bed, her pretty features still radiating shock. “Willa, for God’s sake, please help me. It’s a matter of my life and death.”
As he said the words he began to rip out all the wires and tubes that had been connected to him.
“This is a bad idea,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “You shouldn’t be leaving the hospital like this.”
“Willa, with or without your help, even if I have to crawl out of here, I have to go. Otherwise I’m a dead man.”
He wasn’t sure if it was his actions or the urgency in his voice that finally snapped her inertia. He was only grateful when she hurried to his side and helped him get the last of the wires unattached from his body.
They were getting closer—the hunters—and Jared knew if he and Willa didn’t get out of here immediately he’d be lost.
He got to his feet and would have fallen if she hadn’t supported him. His weakness shocked him. It was far worse than he’d anticipated.
“Take me anywhere,” he murmured, unmindful of the flap of the hospital gown at his back. “Just get me out of here as quickly as possible.” He threw his arm around her shoulder, hating that he had to depend on anyone, but knowing without her help he was definitely a dead man.
Even though he was focused on the danger of the moment, he couldn’t help but pick up her thoughts. They screamed in his head.
She was afraid, not so much of him but rather of what she was about to do in taking him out of the hospital. She had questions, too, about who he was and who might be after him. Was he telling the truth or was this some sort of a result of brain injury?
Now wasn’t the time for him to answer those questions and he wasn’t sure he’d ever tell her the whole truth. The last thing he wanted to do was bring danger to the woman who had been his emotional lifeline while he’d been comatose.
She didn’t say a word as she helped him to the hospital-room door. She peeked around the corner and then they left the room and entered the long, dimly lit hallway.
He could smell her, a faint floral scent that was as familiar to him as the sound of his own heartbeat. It was a scent he associated with compassion and tenderness, qualities that had been absent for all of his twenty-eight years except for the past six months.
Neither of them said a word as they slowly made their way toward the exit in the distance. Until the moment when she’d walked in to his hospital room minutes earlier, he’d had no idea what she looked like, but he knew her scent, the gentle touch of her hands, and he also knew many of her innermost thoughts.
Thankfully they encountered nobody else in the hallways. By the time they left the building Jared was beyond exhaustion. It was only sheer determination and desperation that drove him to put one foot in front of the other.
She led him to a car and helped him into the passenger seat and then he watched as she hurried around the front of the car to the other side.
He liked the way she looked. She was tall and slender with light blond hair she’d pulled back into a low ponytail. He suspected he would have thought her beautiful even if she’d been bald and weighed eight hundred pounds because he knew the beauty of her soul.
She slid behind the steering wheel and a cacophony of voices suddenly resounded in his head, the familiar voices of dangerous men. Close. They were so close and getting closer every minute.
“Please, we have to hurry,” he urged her. “We have to get away from here.”
“I must be out of my mind,” she murmured as she jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine. “Buckle up,” she demanded as she backed out of the parking space and then changed gears and raced for the hospital exit.
He fumbled with the seat belt and finally managed to get it secured around him as she wheeled out of the parking lot and onto a main road.
Within seconds the voices in his head had faded away and the urgency that had filled him since the moment he’d regained consciousness began to ebb.
He was left with an overwhelming exhaustion. It didn’t matter where she took him, at least for now he knew he was safe.
The men who hunted him would find his hospital bed empty and nobody would be able to tell them what had happened to him. If nothing else he’d bought himself some time.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked.
“My house,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s only about five minutes from here. You can’t be by yourself right now. You shouldn’t even be out of the hospital.” There was more than a little censure in her voice.
“Trust me, the hospital was the last place I needed to be.” He leaned back against the headrest and fought the weariness. What he needed more than anything at the moment was a chance to regain some strength and then he needed to try to contact his twin brother.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” she asked as she turned down a tree-lined residential street. “How can you know somebody is after you? You’ve been in a coma for the past six months.”
He raised his head and looked at her, wondering how much he should tell her. As little as possible, he decided. “I just know,” he replied and couldn’t help the weary sigh that escaped him.
“You’re exhausted. You have no business being out of bed,” she exclaimed. “And I should have my head examined for having anything to do with all this.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your head,” he replied. “Willa, you just have to trust me.”
“How do you know my name?” She cast him a quick sideways glance and then focused back on the road.
“The same way you know mine. The same way I knew I was in danger. It’s complicated.”
She turned into the driveway of a neat ranch house and with a press of a button the garage door rose. She pulled in to the garage, then unbuckled her seat belt and turned to look at him, the only illumination the light from the garage-door opener in the ceiling of the garage.
“Are you crazy or am I?” she asked softly.
“You’re the most sane person I’ve ever known,” he replied. “Can we get inside?” He was irritated to realize he felt slightly faint.
“Of course.” She got out of the car and hurried around to his door to help him out. Once again he found himself leaning heavily against her as they walked through the door that led into a cheerful kitchen.
“On the sofa,” she commanded as they walked through the kitchen and into the living room. She guided him to the overstuffed navy sofa, where he collapsed.
“Lie down,” she said and went over to a desk where she grabbed a blood pressure cuff. “I want to check your vitals.”
“I’m fine. I just need to get my strength back.” He plucked at the gown he wore. “And I need to get some clothes.”
She said nothing as she took his blood pressure and then checked his pulse. As always he found her simplest of touches not only familiar and comforting, but also more than a little bit provocative.
He thought of what they’d shared hours earlier when he’d invaded her dreams. Hot. And wild. They’d moved together in perfect unison. It had only been a dream but it had been one of the best experiences of his life.
As she stepped back from him he noticed the faint pink of her cheeks, as if she, too, was remembering her dream. “Your vitals are all good.”
“I feel fine. I’m just incredibly tired.”
“I’ll get you a pillow and blanket. You need to rest and then in the morning you’re going to answer some questions.” As she left the living room and went down the hallway, he felt her fear, this time not just for him but of him.
She returned a moment later carrying a sheet, blanket and pillow. He stood as she efficiently made the sofa into a bed for him for the night. When she was finished he sat back down. “Willa, you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’d never hurt you. Your voice, your touch, was what pulled me through the darkness.”
Her eyes searched his as if she could find all the answers to her questions there. “We weren’t sure you’d make it back. When they first brought you in we didn’t think you’d last through the night. But I hoped …” She let her voice trail off and again her cheeks filled with color.
“I know, and it was your hope that made the difference.” He knew his words pleased her. He also knew that the connection she’d felt for him had been more than patient and nurse.
In a perfect world he would have loved to explore the crazy connection they shared. He would have loved to pursue a normal relationship with her, but this wasn’t a perfect world and he wasn’t a normal man.
“There’s a twenty-four-hour discount store two blocks from here. I’ll go now and pick up some clothes for you,” she said. “Will you be okay here alone for thirty minutes or so?”
“I’ll be fine, but shouldn’t you get some sleep?” he asked.
“Right now I’m too wound up to sleep,” she replied.
“I’ll get you some things you need and then we’ll figure everything else out in the morning.”
“Willa, thank you.”
For the first time since she’d walked into his hospital room she smiled and it was just as he’d imagined—warm and inviting and lovely. “Don’t thank me yet. I still think that sometime between the time I left work and the time I walked back into your room I went completely and totally crazy.”
She walked back into the kitchen and he heard her grab her purse from the counter, then a moment later the sound of the garage door opening and then closing.
Jared listened to the sounds of the house, so different than the noise in the hospital. Rest. He needed to rest and get his strength back as quickly as possible. The men who were after him wouldn’t just go away.
Somehow they’d figured out that the John Doe in the hospital in Grand Forks was the man they sought. They knew he was in the area and he wouldn’t be safe until he could get far away and even then safety was just a desirable fantasy. Why it had taken them so long to find him, he wasn’t sure. But now that they had, they wouldn’t give up.
Willa. Thoughts of her jumped back into his mind. He’d told her the truth when he’d said that she’d been what had brought him through the darkness of the coma. He’d not only looked forward to her gentle touch and the pleasant scent of her perfume, but also the sound of her voice as she spoke to him and her thoughts that were both exciting and interesting in their very normalcy.
He would have loved to pursue something with her, something deep and meaningful, something hot and wild and like nothing he’d ever experienced before, but he was afraid for her. He brought nothing but danger to her and he couldn’t forget that.
He closed his eyes and wondered if he would ever be safe, if he would ever know what normal felt like.
THREE O’clock in the morning and she was in a store getting clothes for a man who had just come out of a six-month coma and insisted bad men were after him. She had to be out of her mind.
Willa pushed the shopping cart toward the men’s jeans section and hoped she guessed his size right. She could have waited until morning to do this, but she’d needed to get away from him for a few minutes and besides, she hadn’t wanted to see him in the morning with that skimpy butt-baring hospital gown. “And what a fine butt it is,” she muttered as she grabbed two pair of jeans that she thought would fit him.
Was he really in some kind of danger or was he delusional? she wondered as she headed to the T-shirts. She tossed a packet of three T-shirts in different colors into her basket and then frowned as she thought about underwear.
Boxers or briefs?
Briefs.
A gasp escaped her. It was definitely his voice she heard in her head. It was as if he stood next to her in the store and whispered in her ear.
And it wasn’t the first time he’d been inside her head. She grabbed a packet of briefs off the shelf and then hurried toward the checkout.
She felt as if she’d stepped into the middle of some sort of science-fiction flick. The only problem was the movie was halfway over and nobody would explain to her what she’d missed.
She’d never really believed in psychic abilities like mental telepathy and precognition. She never looked up in the sky for UFOs or worried about seven years of bad luck if she broke a mirror.
She was rooted in reality, with no flights of fancy, and yet she knew with an unsettling certainty that somehow he was able to communicate with her inside her head.
Had the dream been real? Had he somehow really been with her in her bedroom, made love to her through some sort of spirit world?
Her cheeks burned with her blush as she paid for her purchases. Funny, she didn’t even consider paying with a credit card because she knew charge card transactions could be traced. She’d already half bought in to his assertion that somebody evil was after him.
She had just gotten into her car and started the engine when her cell phone rang. She jumped and grabbed it from her purse and looked at the caller ID. It was the hospital.
Play dumb. Please, don’t tell. The words thundered in her head.
She shut off the car engine and drew a deep breath. “Don’t worry,” she said dryly. There was no way she could say anything about what happened. Jared would potentially be put in danger, but she’d definitely lose her job and be locked up in a mental ward.
